THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: ITS PROGRESS AND EXPANSION AT HOME AND ABROAD COMPRISING A DESCRIPTION AND HISTORY OF THE BRITISH COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES. BY EDGAR SANDERSON, M.A. (CANTAB.), AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE", "OUTLINES OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY", ETC., ETC. ILLUSTRATED BY ENGRAVINGS AND MAPS. sixtieth year of Queen Victoria's reign now the longest in British 1 history presents a most opportune and happy occasion for laying before the public a comprehensive work on the British Empire, which has prospered so signally under her sway. It is the duty of every patriotic Briton to make himself acquainted with the history of the Empire. As set forth in this comprehensive Work, it is a glorious tale of noble deeds and exciting events. There are the French and Indian wars in CANADA; the conquest of INDIA, the mutiny, and the Afghan campaigns; the founding of AUSTRALIA and the discovery of the gold-fields; the Maori wars in NEW ZEALAND; and the struggles with black men and Boers in AFRICA. Canada, India, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, these are the big areas which are painted with British red on the world's map. But this same colour is dotted all over the globe ; and so the reader will find a full account of every single colony, possession, and dependency where flies the Union flag. Such a book, therefore, is invaluable to the scholar, the trader, those who have kin beyond the sea, the general reader, and even the younger members of the family. The mighty expansion of the Empire abroad is profoundly interesting, but so also is its progress at home. Consequently, this history gives a complete account of affairs in Parliament during the century, with special reference to the great reforms which have been achieved, and their results on the national life. It also presents a very interesting and fair-minded story of Irish affairs from 1801 to the present time. During the nineteenth century vast improvements have been accom- plished in the material, moral, and social condition of Great Britain. This progress is set forth in chapters upon such subjects as manufactures, ship- building, engineering; the postal and telegraph systems; sanitary and temperance reforms; the army and navy; popular sports and amusements; education, science, literature, and art. This Work does not deal exclusively with the formal facts of history; many romantic and sensational events from our domestic annals are fully described. Great conflagrations and shipwrecks; mining, railway, and other disasters; sensational crimes and notable trials. These and many more subjects are dealt with in a terse and engaging style which leads the reader on from chapter to chapter with never-ceasing interest. The author of this Work is specially fitted for his task by scholarship and experience. EDGAR SANDERSON, M.A. (Cantab.), is the well-known author of many important historical books, all of which have been emin- ently successful. In this, his latest work, he has sought to present his readers with an entertaining narrative, vivid and vigorous in style, and of the deepest interest from beginning to end. The value of this Work will be enhanced by a series of about fifty very fine illustrations, drawn specially for this history by some of the leading artists of the day. There will also be a set of carefully-prepared maps, showing the various colonies and dependencies of the British Empire, the routes of explorers, the ocean -routes to all parts of the world, and the telegraph lines connecting the Empire. A complete index is also appended for purposes of easy reference. THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY will be published by subscription, and printed on specially manufactured paper, super-royal 8vo size. It will be issued in 22 parts, price 2s. each; or 6 volumes, cloth elegant, price gs. each. BLACKIE & SON, LIMITED; LONDON, GLASGOW, EDINBURGH, AND DUBLIN. THE BRITISH EMPIRE NINETEENTH CENTURY W. H. MARGETSON. SABBATH-DAY WITH THE PILGRIM FATHERS AT THEIR FIRST SETTLEMENT IN NEW PLYMOUTH. Vol. t, p. :o6. SABBATH-DAY WITH THE PILGRIM FATHERS AT THEIR FIRST SETTLEMENT IN NEW PLYMOUTH. In August, 1620, the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth with a company of men, women, and children, who went forth to the New World in search of religious freedom. They touched land at Cape Cod in November, and finally, after many disasters and disappointments, settled at a place on the coast of Massachusetts, which they named New Plymouth. Here they built a church and fort, and these with the houses were surrounded by a stockade. The Settlement suffered severely at first, especially from the rigours of the winter; but these Pilgrim Fathers prospered in time, and founded the great colony which was known as New England. THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ITS PROGRESS AND EXPANSION AT HOME AND ABROAD COMPRISING A DESCRIPTION AND HISTORY OF THE BRITISH COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES BY EDGAR SANDERSON, M.A. (CANTAB.) AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE", "OUTLINES OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY' ETC. ETC. ILLUSTRATED BY ENGRAVINGS AND MAPS VOLUME I. BLACKIE & SON, LIMITED LONDON, GLASGOW, EDINBURGH, AND DUBLIN 1898 College Library . CONTENTS. VOL. I. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS. Page SABBATH-DAY WITH THE PILGRIM FATHERS AT THEIR FIRST SETTLEMENT IN NEW PLYMOUTH, - Frontis. ADMIRAL RODNEY DIRECTS THE BATTLE ON BOARD THE FORMIDABLE, 30 THE BRITISH TROOPS FORCE A LANDING AT ABOUKIR BAY IN FACE OF THE FRENCH BATTERIES, - 36 THE HUMOURS OF STOURBRIDGE FAIR IN THE OLDEN TIMES, - 62 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SPANISH "BATTERING SHIPS" BY THE BRITISH AT GIB- RALTAR, - 138 GOVERNOR PHILLIP ADDRESSING THE FIRST AUSTRALIAN SETTLERS UPON LANDING AT SYDNEY COVE, - - - - - 154 VIEW OF THE TOWN AND FORTRESS OF QUEBEC: A.D. 1759, - 232 GENERAL WOLFE is MORTALLY WOUNDED AS HE LEADS THE CHARGE ON THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM, - - - 240 MAP OF THE WORLD, showing all the British Possessions coloured Red, ... i MAP OF BRITISH COLONIES SOUTH OF CANADA, to 1783, - - .... 104 MAP OF CANADA to illustrate the History of 1503-1801, 204 BOOK I. GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND BEFORE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Purpose of the work Peaceful achievements of the nineteenth century Its distinguished place in history Revolution in social life Changes in the mental and political world Our vast Colonial Dependencies and Asiatic Empire, ......... i CHAPTER II. SKETCH OF THE GROWTH OF THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION. The Great Charter First complete Parliament The Church of the Middle Ages The Refor- mation Rise of the Puritans Union of the two crowns Scotland and Ireland James I. and "divine right" Charles I. The Restoration Persecution of Nonconformists Habeas Corpus Act James II. The Revolution William and Mary The Bill of Rights and Toleration Act ^ Freedom of the Press Act of Settlement, - - 6 vi CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Page System of party government Union of England and Scotland Accession of the Hanoverian dynasty The Septennial Act Rebellions of 1715 and 1745 Walpole the first "prime minister" George III. Lord North and the "King's friends" John Wilkes The Gordon Riots Demand for reform of House of Commons Reform bills introduced by William 1'itt Freedom of the press vindicated Independence of juries established, - - 18 CHAPTER IV. BRITAIN AT WAR IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Britain's military position Duke of Marlborough Peace of Utrecht War of the Austrian Suc- cessionThe Seven Years' War William Pitt, Clive, and Wolfe Admirals Rodney, Hood, and Hyde Parker Peace of Versailles The French Revolution The "Young Corsican " at Toulon Sir Sidney Smith, Horatio Nelson, and Lord Howe Arthur Wel- lesley Buonaparte's threatened invasion Victory off Cape St. Vincent Buonaparte's expedition to Egypt Victories of the Nile and Alexandria Continental combination against Britain Battle of Copenhagen Peace of Amiens Result of the wars, - - 27 CHAPTER V. STATE OF IRELAND DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Penal laws against the Roman Catholics The Irish Parliament Convention of Dungannon "Whiteboys" and "United Irishmen" Formation of "Orange" lodges Cruelties prac- tised on the Roman Catholics Irish rebellion of 1798 Act for union with Great Britain passed, 38 CHAPTER VI. RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Prevalence of Deism Assailants and defenders of the Christian faith Corruption among the clergy of the Church of England Rise of Methodism Prison reform Hospitals founded Granville Sharp and slavery Rise of the Evangelical party William Romaine, John Newton, and Charles Simeon, ------- - - - 46 CHAPTER VII. GROWTH OF INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE PREVIOUS TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Early industries The Danes give an impulse to English commerce Foreign workers settle in England Craft- and merchant-guilds organized Efforts of Edward I. to establish trade Edward III. "the father of English commerce" "Staple towns" established Importance of fairs Ravages of the Black Death Trading by merchant-adventurers Early "mercan- tile system " Discoveries of new lands Trinity House established Commercial policy Extinction of trade monopolies Expansion of trade Banking system established Progress of agriculture Reclamation of waste lands Industries and commerce of Scotland, - '57 CHAPTER VIII. INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Restrictions on trade disappearing Adam Smith's teachings -Government bounties The first silk mill in England Woollen and cotton manufactures Inventions of John Kay, Har- greaves, Arkwright, Lees, and Crompton Cartwright's power-loom Wedgwood's improve- ments in pottery James Watt and the steam-engine Improvements in bleaching and calico-printing Development of the coal and iron trades Effects on the distribution of the population Progress in agriculture Board of Agriculture and agricultural societies estab- lished Improvements in internal communication The post-office Comparative statistics at close of the century, ............. 72 CONTENTS. vii BOOK II. BRITISH COLONIES AND POSSESSIONS BEFORE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. CHARACTER AND METHODS OF COLONIZATION EARLY NAVIGATORS. Page Our Colonies in general Modern sense of the term "colony" Methods of colonization Maritime enterprise in fifteenth century Discoveries of Columbus, Vespucci, and the Cabots Spanish colonization in America The aboriginal tribes, 94 CHAPTER II. THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES TILL THEIR SEPARATION FROM BRITAIN. Britain begins her colonial dominion Sir Walter Raleigh Colonization of Virginia The slave-trade introduced The "Pilgrim Fathers" End of Dutch sway The Thirteen Colonies Progress of the colonies The quarrel with Great Britain Attempt to impose taxes Faneuil Hall and Boston Harbour Beginning of the Revolutionary War General Washington Surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga Surrender of Lord Cormvallis Paul Jones and the privateers Independence acknowledged Constitution of the United States The first president and first ambassador Progress of the cotton cultivation, - - 103 CHAPTER III. COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN EUROPE AND AFRICA. Early history of Gibraltar Its acquisition by Britain Attempts by Spain to recover possession Gallant and successful defence by General Eliott Gambia and the Gold Coast African trading companies St. Helena Sierra Leone, - - - - - - 133 CHAPTER IV. AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. Peculiar conditions of early Australian colonization First authentic notices of Australia or New Holland Dampier surveys part of the coast Captain Cook the first real discoverer of the continent The British flag hoisted in New South Wales Transportation of convicts to Botany Bay Captain Phillip appointed governor A visit from the French Norfolk Island occupied Hardships of the first settlers, and difficulties with the convicts Free emigrants begin to arrive Major Grose succeeds Captain Phillip -A demoralizing truck- system introduced Growing prosperity of the colony Early attempts to explore the continent Important surveys of the coasts by Bass and Flinders Flinders detained at Mauritius by the French governor His return to England, and death, - - - 142 CHAPTER V. CANADA EARLY HISTORY (1534-1713). First efforts by the French to colonize Canada Jacques Cartier De la Roche's attempt to form a settlement Pontgrave and Chauvin Champlain, the founder of French Canada Colony of Acadie Beginning of Quebec The Algonquins, Iroquois, and other Indian tribes Arrival of the Jesuits Richelieu's policy towards Canada Quebec surrendered to the English, and basely restored by Charles I. Able rule of Governor Champlain Indian outrages Colbert's able administration Marquis de Tracy and Governor de Courcelles Encouragements for emigration from France Ravages of disease and drunkenness among the Indians Governor de Frontenac La Salle's expedition to the west Massacre of Lachine French attacks on English territory English expeditions against Montreal and Quebec Failure of English attempts for the conquest of Canada, - ... 167 CHAPTER VI. CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN (1713-1763). Condition of Canada under De Vaudreuil and De Beauharnois Beginning of the great conflict The Ohio Company and Mr. George Washington General Braddock's expedition against Fort Duquesne Able services of Sir William Johnson Capture of Oswego by Vlii CONTENTS. Page the French Futile British expedition against Quebec Fort William Henry surrenders to the French Massacre by the Indians Pitt's resolution to expel the French from Canada Early career of General Wolfe Failure of British attack on Ticonderoga Siege and final surrender of Quebec Wolfe and Mont calm mortally wounded Effort of the French to recover Quebec Montreal surrenders to the British Canada ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Paris, - 203 CHAPTER VII. CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE (1763-1801). War with the Indians Pontiac the Ottawa chief Major Gladwin's gallant defence of Fort Detroit British forts captured Colonel Bouquet's expedition Sir William Johnson's negotiations with the Indians Submission of Pontiac and the tribes The French Canadians under the new rule General Murray becomes governor Able administration of his successor Quebec Act of 1774 Surrender of St. John's Quebec besieged by the Americans Loyalty of the Canadians Province of Ontario created and colonized Constitutional Act of 1791 Upper and Lower Canada formed Characteristics of the French Canadian, - 246 CHAPTER VIII. NEWFOUNDLAND NOVA SCOTIA NEW BRUNSWICK PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. Discovery of Newfoundland Customs regulating the fisheries The English flag planted on its coast Importance of the cod-fishery Attempts to colonize by the English Lord Baltimore's colony W r ise rule of Sir David Kirke Newfoundland finally ceded to Britain St. John's seized by the French, but recaptured After-history of the island Nova Scotia or Acadia A Scottish settlement at Port Royal The country restored to France Cromwell's expedition to Port Royal Joint occupation by English and French Acadia ceded to France Contests between the English and French settlers Sir William Phipps' expedition against Port Royal The colony becomes a British possession Difficulties with the French inhabitants Governorship of Paul Mascarene Arrival of English emigrants Difficulties with the Acadians Their expatriation Representative government established The colonies of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, - - 274 CHAPTER IX. HUDSON'S BAY AND THE GREAT NORTH-WEST. Early history of Hudson's Bay territory The Hudson's Bay Company Rupert's Land- Troubles with the French traders Assigned to Britain at the Peace of Versailles Explo- ration of the Great North-western regions The Verendryes Their important discoveries Sir Alexander Mackenzie crosses the Rocky Mountains, - 302 CHAPTER X. COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. Geographical division and history Barbados Introduction of negro labour into the island Enterprising spirit of the Barbadians The Bermudas or Somers' Islands Leeward Islands St. Kitts Nevis Antigua Montserrat Dominica Virgin Islands Windward Islands Tobago St. Lucia Grenada and the Grenadines St. Vincent The Bahamas British Honduras or Belize Trinidad Jamaica, - . - 3 ro GREEJHLAW ijA * ^j( .-Jarvisi. P/icen^r If ..Valdai J L ! OS" 31F.RCATC3 OLASC-C'-W *: F: i Nil U RGB AT HOiME AND ABROAD, BOOK I. GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND BEFORE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. Purpose of the work Peaceful achievements of the nineteenth century Its distinguished place in history Revolution in social life Changes in the mental and political world Our vast Colonial Dependencies and Asiatic Empire. THE purpose of this work is to depict the progress and condition of the British Empire in the nineteenth century, and to furnish a complete historical and descriptive account of our Colonial Possessions and Dependencies in every quarter of the globe, from the time of British occupation, or, in some cases, from an earlier period, till the present day. In pursuing this object, we hope to see little of party conflicts or of political intrigues. The din of parliamentary debates will concern us only so far as, from amid the tumult of the strife, great legislative measures have emerged, conceived in wisdom, wrought with skill, and rich in blessings for generations yet unborn. Those statesmen and warriors alone will appear upon the scene whose names are renowned for eminent services of lasting value, rendered by them to the coun- try of their birth. A history of peaceful progress in the civilized arts, a record of physical, moral, and intellectual improvement, will render homage to men distinguished rather by attainments in learning and in culture, by inventive skill, by patient investi- gation, and by brilliant discovery in the realm of science, by daring and endurance in travel and exploration, than by victories won in warfare waged against human foes. v/" VOL. I. 1 2 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. The place reserved in history for the peaceful achievements of the nineteenth century is, beyond doubt, one of the first order of distinction. No equal period of the world's history has wit- nessed economical changes of such a kind and degree, so wonderful in themselves, so abiding and far-reaching in their influence and effects. Science has lengthened human life, has vastly abridged distance, and, for the transmission of news, has annihilated time. Nature, at many points, has been, according to the divine ordin- ance, conquered by man. The earth has been at last subdued, and vast regions once void are fast being replenished. The abun- dance of the means of life, combined with the natural fertility of the stock, has more than tripled, since 1801, the population of Great Britain. Apart from Canada and India, the British nation has acquired, during this century, settlements beyond the seas now peopled by some millions of our race. The wealth of the whole people, through manufactures and trade, along with the operation of fiscal reforms, has vastly increased; and, in spite of the evils due to keen competition, the necessaries, the comforts, and even some of the luxuries of life are far more widely distributed than ever before among the class who exist by manual toil. The improvements effected in what was old, the discovery and development of new forces, have wrought a revolution in social life without example in the history of the world. Men not yet conscious of old age have beheld a transition, in the means of locomotion alone, from almost barbarous times to an era of high civilization. The traveller by train thinks with horror of the days of movement by coach, not at the call of enjoyment under sunny skies, but on compulsion of affairs demanding long, dreary, and shelterless passage beneath driving rain or snow, over perilous and miry roads. The facts all around us, in this marvellous age, tran- scend the conceptions of fiction and romance. The moving palace of the great steamship lines, the production and contents of the daily gazette, are triumphs of human skill and organization at which, on a sudden revelation, the people of the last century would stand aghast. Man's knowledge of nature's secrets and resources has so increased in extension and in depth, that a new world of acquirement has come into our possession more than equal, for practical effect on human life, to all that was known before the beginning of the period with which we propose to deal. INTRODUCTORY. Not less striking have been the changes of the nineteenth century in the mental and political world. A new British demo- cracy exists along with new methods, standards, and beliefs in literature, philosophy, education, and art. Every department of intellectual research and social order is rife with the restless activity and energy of this unparalleled age. Countless societies exist, composed of men devoted, in the labour of a life, or as the cherished pursuit of hours of leisure, to the artistic and literary records of past ages, to scientific discovery, to the enforcement of sound principles in practical and social science, and to the cultivation of art in every kind. Year by year vast stores are thus added to the accumulated treasure inherited from past ages. The endless ener- getic work of men and women who are true lovers of their kind is seen in numberless associations founded and supported for the relief of human suffering and the redress of wrong. Change is not always improvement and progress towards higher things, but this, at least, is certain, that during the nineteenth century, among the British race, human pain has been diminished, human happiness and comfort have greatly grown, human sympathies have been enlarged, human eyes have brightened with a better hope for the future of the world. Nor is it merely energetic effort and kindly impulse that are ceaselessly at war with evils new and old. Scientific method and skilful organization are among the great marks of the present age, and, in the face of social problems to be solved, and public diffi- culties to be encountered, they afford a reasonable expectation, as we look to what has been surmounted and achieved during the nineteenth century, that real and permanent improvement will not fail to be attained. When we turn from the narrow limits of the British Isles to our expansion abroad, and contemplate the vast colonial realm, the Greater Britain beyond Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific seas, we are confronted by a spectacle of interest and importance unequalled, unapproached in the whole course of political history. The Roman Empire in olden time embraced nearly the whole civilized world; but the world, as then fully known, comprised less than half the area of Europe, a fringe of northern Africa, and a part of south-western Asia. The Russian Empire in modern days is equal in area to the British possessions, but is only in a slight 4 OUR KMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. degree a colonial dominion. Two hundred years ago John Milton, great alike as poet and publicist, pictured, in prophetic mood, England as standing " with all her daughter-lands about her", but his imagination, vivid as it was, could not prefigure a New Zea- land, an Australia, a great South African dominion, or such a territory as the larger Canada. Still less could he forecast those unique events in all colonial history the loss to England of one great dependency in North America, just preceded by the acquire- ment of new lands on the same great continent, and followed, in due time, by expansion of that conquest into a colonized area extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific shore. Last to take the field for the prize of colonial possession, Great Britain has long ago and far away outstripped all her rivals; and mainly through her children is the civilization of Europe at this moment being spread throughout the world. Our language, our literature, our institutions, our political freedom have been transplanted to regions nigh upon the Arctic circle, and beneath the Southern Cross, and new cities are ever growing, new communities arising, new fields and gardens being reclaimed from wilderness, in a colonial realm about sixty times as large as the motherland. The mistaken policy which alienated one great British community, and so created the United States of North America, has been long exchanged for a treatment which enables our distant fellow- subjects to speak with real affection of Great Britain as " Home". From these great new lands many a young colonist comes to study in the ancient, stately, and picturesque abodes of English, Scottish, and Irish learning, and to display his athletic vigour in the field and on the golf-links, on the tennis-ground and the stream. Now and again an old or middle-aged Canadian or Australian magnate arrives on our shores to seek reception within the walls of the imperial Parliament, or to purchase an estate, to found a new family in Great Britain, and to lay his bones in the land which bred himself or his sire. Closely connected by blood, language, and traditions, and by the interests of trade in which our settlers furnish food and raw material for textile fabrics in profitable barter for the productions of the British loom and forge, the British race at home and abroad, save in the United States, forms one great democracy of nearly fifty million souls, subjects of the same benignant rule. INTRODUCTORY. 5 Our great Asiatic dependency, the Indian Empire, presents a strong contrast to the other colonial dominions. There alone o we have the spectacle of two hundred thousand Britons, civilians and armed men, controlling more than two hundred millions of men of foreign races, religions, and tongues. The most remark- able fact about the acquirement of this dominion is its accidental, unforeseen development. About three hundred years ago, in the last days of Queen Elizabeth, a trading company is formed for traffic in the Eastern lands and seas. Two centuries and a half elapse, and that Company, which has long represented really the might and majesty of Great Britain and her rulers, has become virtual mistress of the whole vast Indian peninsula, as well as of a large territory to the east of the Bay of Bengal. The manner of this phenomenal achievement will be told hereafter; the fact is one of the marvels of history. The nation derives no direct benefit of tribute or profit from this possession save that which accrues from the operations of trade. No revenue is raised by taxation beyond that which is absolutely needed to cover the expense of administration. The subjects of the Queen in India are in no wise treated as the victims of conquest, but are now as free from plunder or oppression at our hands as the dwellers in any of the British colonies mainly composed of British emi- grants and their children. Through her presence in India Britain has become a great Oriental power, and contiguity with the Asiatic possessions of Russia creates for our Cabinets a new foreign policy demanding anxious and vigilant care. As the nature of our acquisition of this Eastern sphere of rule is without example, so is the future, the end of this great enterprise, beyond all calculation. From this preliminary sketch of the task which lies before us, we may now pass to some account of the British Empire in times prior to the nineteenth century, and trace, mainly during the eighteenth century, the steps by which the nation arrived at the position which she occupied in the year 1801. 6 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. CHAPTER II. SKETCH OF THE GROWTH OF THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION. The Great Charter First complete Parliament England under the Tudors The Church of the Middle Ages The Reformation Church of England Rise of the Puritans Union of the two crowns Scotland and Ireland James I. and "divine right "- Charles I. The Restoration Persecution of Nonconformists Habeas Corpus Act James II. The Revolution William and Mary The Bill of Rights and Tolera- tion Act Freedom of the Press Act of Settlement. Celts or Britons; Romans; conquering Teutonic tribes; Scandi- navian warriors, first as mere invaders and plunderers, then as dwellers settling down among, and absorbed by the English race; Norman subjugation and feudal rule; these are the phases which, in the changes and conflicts of nearly twelve hundred years, indicate the slow formation, and bring us to the political birth, of the English nation. The Great Charter, wrung from King John by the armed Norman barons, proclaimed that Eng- land was destined to be and to live politically free. In the days of the tyrant's grandson, one of our greatest monarchs, Edward the First, the distinction between Normans and English almost vanished, and the great first complete Parliament, that of 1295, furnished the outline of our modern constitution. This assembly, which first sat in two houses under Edward the Third, contained both lay and spiritual barons, along with elected re- presentatives of counties, cities, and boroughs. Here, in the thirteenth century, we find the source of our freedom, our pros- perity, and our national fame. The rise of a House of Commons, destined to be the model for representative assemblies in all free nations, was coeval with the creation of the earliest colleges at our two great ancient seats of learning; with the formation of a noble language, and with the dawn of a splendid literature, " the brightest, the purest, the most durable of all the glories of our country; a literature rich in precious truth and precious fiction; a literature which boasts of the prince of all poets and of the prince of all philosophers ; a literature which has exercised an influence wider than that of our commerce, and mightier than that of our arms". The new nation soon gave assurance of the prowess of her sons on the field of battle. In the Hundred Years' GROWTH OF THE CONSTITUTION. / War, though she happily failed in all attempts at the conquest of France, the knights and yeomen who went forth from her shores proved themselves to be truly formidable foes. In the fourteenth, and early in the fifteenth centuries, English skill in the arts of peace was displayed in the erection of the noble cathedrals which modern architects regard with envy and despair. Thus did the English people assert a claim to a foremost place among the nations of the last age of the mediaeval world. During the same period the House of Commons was growing in strength, sometimes in alliance with the king against the barons, sometimes in concert with the lords against the king. Before the close of Plantagenet times, not only was the monarchy of England so far limited that the king, without parliament, could make no law, raise no money by taxation, and rule only by the laws of the land, with advisers and agents responsible to parliament through the power of impeachment; but the Commons, for themselves, had gained the right to share in all legislation, to originate money grants, to exercise freedom of speech in debate, to enjoy freedom from arrest, and to determine disputed elections to their House. Feudalism was almost at an end; all men born on English soil had become freemen, and could all, below the peerage, claim and maintain, under the common law, equal civil rights in the courts of justice. The internecine strife among the nobles, known as the Wars of the Roses, caused the collapse, for a time, of this constitutional liberty. The old nobles almost vanished through mutual extermination on the field of battle and by bills of attain- der. A statute of Henry the Sixth, in 1430, restricted voting for knights of the shire, or county members of the House of Commons, to freeholders of property " to the value of forty shillings by the year", a sum then equal to many pounds of our day. The strength of both Lords and Commons was seriously cur- tailed in Tudor times, under what has been called the " New" or "Popular" Monarchy, this latter expression meaning a royal power dependent on popular will, and controlled by the risk of insurrec- tion, against which the sovereign, happily for English freedom, could bring no standing army to operate. As regards the House of Commons, the borough franchise, as well as the county voting, was greatly restricted by confinement to a class of privileged 8 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. burgesses, and the assembly was largely subject to royal and oli- garchical influence. The Tudor sovereigns, indeed, used Parliament, in the main, only for their own ends. During the last twelve years of Henry the Seventh, only one Parliament was held. Henry the Eighth summoned no Parliament from 1515 to 1522, and none again from 1523 to 1530. Royal proclamations acquired the force of law, and the Privy Council, aided by such institutions as the Star Chamber, superseded, to a large extent, the work of juries, and saved servile officials from the punishment of their misdeeds. Money was raised from the wealthy by "benevolences" or enforced presents, and from the trading class by forced loans which were not repaid; by judicial fines, and by the plunder of the Church. Yet the spirit and strength of English subjects prevented the Tudor dictatorship from passing into the despotism which befell other European nations France, and Germany, and Spain. In- dividuals might and did suffer, but the masses were ever ready to resist gross and general oppression. The people kept in their hands the power of the purse. When Henry the Eighth, without the consent of Parliament, required of his subjects a contribution amounting to one-sixth of their goods, a general outcry, with the appearance of thousands of men in arms, compelled him not only to withdraw his demands, but to make a public and solemn apology for his infraction of English laws. In 1523, the House of Commons, with great Sir Thomas More as Speaker, resisted the imperious Wolsey at the height of his power, and voted only half of the money asked by the crown. Such a people could not be enslaved, and, by taking their stand firmly on their constitutional right to give or withhold money, they prevented the sovereign from hiring professional soldiers in numbers sufficient to enforce his will, and our forefathers thus escaped the fate of the countries where parliamentary institutions soon ceased to exist. The insular position of England, guarding her from foreign invasion, dispensed with the need of regular troops until the time came when Parlia- ment had provided ample securities against their misuse for the ends of tyranny. In Tudor times we have the religious revolution which was so greatly to affect the future of the British Isles. The Church of the Middle Ages, invested with great power and wealth, had been a state within a state, and some of the most dramatic and GROWTH OF THE CONSTITUTION. 9 stirring scenes of our history had arisen from the conflict be- tween the ecclesiastical and the lay authority. In feudal times she had rendered eminent services to the cause of human happi- ness and progress. In the library the Church had preserved, and in the writing-room of the monastery her devotees had copied and multiplied, the classic treasures of the past. Her chronicles had handed down to posterity the record of events. Of her wealth the hungry had been fed, the college and the school estab- lished and endowed. By the skill which, in earlier days, was the almost exclusive possession of monk and priest, the sick had been healed, and the arts of peace had been practised and advanced, in the reclamation of wastes, the tillage of the soil, and the erection and adornment of magnificent architectural shrines and abodes. By the pleading of her priests the feudal master had often been persuaded to free the slave, and to lighten the burdens of the vassals bound to him by feudal law. The persecuted and the weak had been sheltered in her sanctuaries, and, in the person of Stephen Langton and the like, she had lifted up the bold voice of men who, fearing God, feared none besides, against the wrong- doer and oppressor, the mail-clad baron and the supreme feudal lord, the crowned and anointed kinof. The ranks of English o <_> statesmen and diplomatists, prior to the Reformation, were often recruited from the clerical order. From Dunstan to Wolsey, churchmen were seen directing the greatest affairs with a skill and knowledge rarely found among laymen. During the fifteenth century this great institution largely de- clined in character and power. The movement led by Wyclif had been, indeed, suppressed, for the fulness of time had not yet come. The days of the Renascence, or Revival of Learning, when the printing-press spread fast and far the thoughts of mutineers against the domination of the Church, found the clergy no longer the sole or the chief proprietors of knowledge. Men were asking for reasons, and inquiring into dogmas, rather than yielding implicit belief, and Henry the Eighth, without any defect of orthodoxy in himself, took advantage of the times for his private ends. The Houses were summoned to do his work. A ready compliance passed the needful statutes, and the king, with his Protestant adviser, Thomas Cromwell, as chief agent, effected the separation of the English Church from the see of Rome. The Church was stripped of her 10 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. wealth, and received a new earthly head in the person of the sovereign. The creed and ritual of the Reformed Church were almost settled, by Cranmer and others, in the reign of Henry's son, and, after the short-lived reaction under Mary Tudor, the Church was finally established by Elizabeth in the form of a "mean between two extremes", a compromise which has ever since enabled Anglican churchmen to hold widely divergent views on many im- portant points. Midway between Geneva and Rome, she embraces at once those who differ little in doctrine from Calvin and Knox, and those who, in many points, are in sympathy and harmony with the feelings and principles of devoted adherents of the Roman see. The royal supremacy involved in the very existence of the English Church has had important political effects in binding her ministers and laymen to the throne by the ties at once of hope, gratitude, and fear. Her tastes and traditions are all monarchical. On the other hand, those who, from the first, dissented from the Church on the question of prelacy, and especially those who strictly followed the theology of Calvin, formed the party known, under Elizabeth, as Puritans. The persecution which they endured from the great Tudor queen made the party hostile to the royal pre- rogative, and the mercantile classes in the towns, with a large section of the smaller landed gentry, became powerful upholders of popular rights and popular claims in the early Stuart days. In Scotland, especially, the democratic nature of the established Presbyterian church government, and in Wales the strong Calvin- istic theology adopted by the numerous Nonconformists, composing the main body of the people, had great influence on political feeling and opinion, and largely contributed to form the Liberal and Radical sentiments and views by which those countries are dis- tinguished in these latest days of the nineteenth century. The union of the territory under one king created a Great Britain. That illustrious monarch, Edward the First, had made Wales subject to English rule, though the Principality was not represented in Parliament till the days of Henry the Eighth. Edward and his degenerate son had vainly striven to gain a permanent hold on Scotland, and the northern country, em- bracing the French alliance, was in a state of hostility, active or quiescent, towards her neighbour, for nearly three centuries. The union of the crowns in the person of James the First of GROWTH OF THE CONSTITUTION. II England and Sixth of Scotland would have been productive of immediate benefit to both countries, if the Stuart sovereigns of the male line had been wise and benignant rulers. The first Stuart king of England, indeed, was the first ruler of the whole British Isles. Ireland, invaded and partially subdued under Henry the Second, had fought, with fitful fierceness, for the expulsion of the hated "Saxon", but had been thoroughly conquered by Mountjoy in the last years of Elizabeth. The last O'Donnel and O'Neil who held the rank of independent princes or chiefs did homage to James at his palace of Whitehall, and thenceforward the British monarch's writs ran, and his judges held assize, in every part of Ireland. In 1590, on James' marriage with the Danish princess Anne, Den- mark had formally resigned all claims to the sovereignty of the Orkney Isles, and that mixed Scandinavian and Scottish population came finally under British rule. Scotland, giving instead of receiving a king, retained her own laws and constitution, with tribunals and parliaments independent of those which sat at West- minster. The administration of the country was in Scottish hands, but her connection with a wealthier and stronger nation caused her, though in name an independent kingdom, to receive, for more than a century, much of the treatment of a subject province. As for Ireland, she was openly ruled as a dependency won by the sword. The English settlers, wholly relying on the mother country for safety and existence, were subject to her dictation, and, for their own parts, they oppressed the people among whom they had fixed their abodes. The Irish, alone among the nations of northern Europe, had remained faithful to the old religion, and sectarian animosity was thus added to the hatred inspired by the alien conquering race. The cruelties perpetrated by English invaders and persecutors in the later Tudor times made the Celtic population of Ireland regard the executive administration, wholly in English hands, as the hated rule of foreigners and foes, ab- horrent to the ruled in character, nationality, and religious faith. Such were the conditions under which all the British Isles, in 1603, were found peaceably united as the realms of the same king. For nearly a century, under Stuart rule, England saw herself deposed from her high place among the nations of Europe, save during a brief interregnum, in which the genius of Cromwell, backed by a formidable army and fleet, asserted her claims with 12 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. great vigour and success. The nation, for a long period, was involved in momentous struggles concerning the rights of parlia- ments and kings. James the First brought with him from Scotland the theory of divine right. Scottish kings had for centuries been subject to being thwarted by turbulent mediaeval barons, and James the Sixth found all the charms of novelty in the theories of absolute power as the right of monarchs, which were so much opposed to his experience and practice of rule in his Scottish realm. The new system, contrary to all the implied teaching of both the Old and the New Testaments, held that the Supreme Being had ordained, as the right method of rule over nations, hereditary monarchy, with succession in due order of primogeni- ture; with despotic authority residing in the sovereign; with all limits on the prerogative liable to be removed by him, who alone could impose them as concessions of his free will and pleasure. No treaty concluded by a king with his people could be held bind- ing on him, as it merely declared his present intentions, and those intentions were subject to change. It is needless to point out, that this patriarchal theory of government was wholly alien from pre- vious practice in England. Many kings had reigned in defiance of the strict rule of descent. The Tudors had paid little heed to the "divine" institution, and Henry the Eighth had obtained an act of parliament empowering him to leave the crown by will. Eliza- beth induced Parliament to pass a law, making it treason to deny the reigning sovereign's competency, with the assent of Parliament, to alter the succession. The "divine right of kings", as a matter known to Englishmen, is completely disposed of by these and other facts. During the hundred and sixty years which preceded the union of the Red and White Roses, in the marriage of Henry of Lancaster to Elizabeth of York, nine kings reigned in England, and of these nine kings, six were deposed, and five lost their lives as well as their crowns, either by secret murder or in civil war. James the First had an obvious interest, however, in asserting that birth confers rights anterior to law, and unalterable by law, for he was excluded from the throne of England by the will of Henry the Eighth, but was the undoubted heir by descent from both William the Conqueror and Egbert. The new king's strong adherence to episcopal government in the Church won many supporters, amongst the English clergy, of the new theory of kingly rule, and divine right GROWTH OF THE CONSTITUTION. 13 was soon preached from pulpits of the Established Church. The claims of the monarch assumed this extreme form just when a republican spirit had begun to be prominent in Parliament and in the country. At the very close of Elizabeth's reign, a strong parliamentary and popular attack had been made upon the odious monopolies, and the haughty and despotic, but judicious, Tudor queen had felt compelled to recede, as she did, in the right way and at the right time, before a display of public spirit, in favour of public liberties, which seemed to threaten armed revolt. The lesson was wholly lost upon her successors. James the First did all that monarch could to irritate, alarm, and insult a parliament which he could not venture to attempt to coerce or suppress. He imprisoned some patriotic members. He tore out of the journals of the Commons, with his own hand, the page containing the famous Protestation, which declared the "liberties, franchises, privi- leges, and jurisdictions of parliament" to be "the ancient and un- doubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England ". Those outrages only caused the undaunted spirit of the English- men of those days to swell higher and higher against arbitrary rule. At the same time, the schism between the Church and the Non- conformists was ever growing wider. Both parties went into extremes. The Anglican clergy in many quarters favoured "divine right", and drew nearer to the old religion in ritual and doctrine. The Puritans, irritated by persecution, adopted the stern spirit of the Old Testament rather than the benignity of the New. They made the Lord's Day into a strict Jewish Sabbath; they gave to their children the names of Hebrew warriors and patriarchs; they dwelt much on Old Testament examples of cruel vengeance wrought on foes; they denounced popular pastimes and innocent amusements as sins, and often made religion displeasing to the young and the light-hearted by their sanctimonious precision, their Pharisaical cant, their sour solemnity of face, and the nasal twang with which, in and out of season, they degraded the imagery and style of Scripture by application to the most trivial matters of daily life. With all this, their sound morality in matters of real importance, their high standard of right and wrong, their reckless disregard of man's approval in matters of conscience, created an influence which has never ceased to act for good on the social life of their country. To the Puritans, above all, the British people 14 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. are indebted for the inestimable treasure of constitutional free- dom. James the First died, and left the throne to a son trained in his own school of royal prerogative. The son bettered the lessons received from the sire. Aided by Laud and Wentworth in church and state, Charles the First strove for, and for some years exer- cised, despotic rule. His Scottish subjects were alienated by gross interference with their religious system. The patience of a large section of the English people was worn out at last. When the monarch, attended by an armed guard of court bravoes, went to the House of Commons intent to seize, within the walls sacred to free debate, the persons of patriotic members, the inevitable end came in civil war. The king expiated his tyranny and his bad faith on the stricken fields of Marston Moor and Naseby, and ended his career, by the cruel, lawless, and impolitic act of a small but fanatical and powerful armed party of his people, on the scaffold at Whitehall. This terrible lesson was not lost upon his son and successor at the " Restoration", which succeeded vain attempts to create a new constitution. There was no more thought of kingship by divine right. A parliament must and did exist along with the restored monarchy, and a very corrupt parliament it was. Bribery by bare gold, and royal influence in various forms, tampered with debates and votes; but even this House of Commons again and again checked the royal will, and Charles the Second, with all his moral worthlessness, was far too clever and cautious to provoke a new civil war, and " be sent again on his travels", as in the early days of his legal reign. He "managed", like a dexterous politician as he was, quite of the modern school, his ministers, his Parliament, and his people, and died regretted at any rate by the people of his capital, leaving a signal example to persons in high places of the value of polite and charming manners. In religious affairs under Charles, the Episcopal Church had been restored, but with a modi- fied spirit which claimed no divine sanction for Episcopacy, while it inculcated devotion to monarchical power. Under the persecution of the "Clarendon Code " the new Act of Uniformity, the Cor- poration Act, the Conventicle Act, the Five Mile Act Non- conformists or Dissenters were prohibited, under severe penalties, from worshipping according to their own beliefs; they were excluded GROWTH OF THE CONSTITUTION. 15 from municipal office, and from the service of the state ; and in many cases their ministers were debarred from earning their bread by teaching, when ejection from their benefices, as men not ordained by bishops, had deprived them of their livelihood in the service of the Church. In foreign affairs, Britain had sunk to the lowest point. The king was the pensioner of the French mon- arch, and had engaged in schemes for the establishment, by the aid of French troops, of arbitrary rule and the Roman Catholic faith. In the latter part of Charles the Second's reign, the party names of Tory and Whig, corresponding to the modern Conservative and Liberal, had been assumed by the parties who respectively favoured the royal prerogative (not, of course, any longer meaning mere arbitrary rule), and the cause of progress towards complete civil and religious freedom. Under Charles the Second two important things the one a wise judicial decision, the other a most beneficent statute came to favour the personal freedom of British subjects. In 1670, Vaughan, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, laid it down that jurors cannot legally be fined for verdicts given against the direction of the judge. Henceforth juries, freed from all coercion, could safely give their verdicts in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, guided by the evidence produced before them. In 1679 the Habeas Cor- pus Act once for all secured, save in cases of suspension by the will of Parliament, the freedom of all subjects that obey the law of the land. Under this statute, the name of which is taken from the first words, in law Latin, of the written fiat of a judge sent to the governor of a jail, the order " You must produce the body " compels the production of a prisoner for trial before a legal court, and prevents arbitrary imprisonment at the will of the crown officers. Under severe penalties judges are bound, on application, to issue the writ of Habeas Corpus, and governors of prisons must act upon the order. It was further ordained that no prisoner must be confined beyond the seas, and that, once acquitted, none shall be committed to prison again on the same charge. The innocent alone are sheltered by this law, which forces the guilty to submit to speedy trial. James the Second, by obstinate misrule, brought matters to a speedy and decisive issue. The new king was sincerely convinced l6 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. of the claims of his religion, the Roman Catholic faith secretly held, and avowed on the bed of death, by his brother Charles. In devo- tion to this faith, he threw away the excellent position bequeathed to him, and strengthened by the abortive result of the foolish and wicked enterprise of Monmouth. By the humble tone of his first and only parliament, James was encouraged towards arbitrary measures, and he had the promise of support from his brother's old patron, the King of France. He chose his ministers, in 1687, from the extreme Catholic section of his advisers, and, under the " dispensing power " which he claimed and exercised, he virtually annulled the Test Act, and proceeded to fill with Catholics, pro- fessed or real, numerous posts in the army and civil service. The universities were wronged and insulted by a new High Commission Court for ecclesiastical affairs, and the Church of England was out- raged both at Oxford and Cambridge, and in the person of her prelates, arrested and tried for respectfully asking the sovereign not to require them to violate the law of the land. Scotland, harassed by religious persecution of the Covenanters, or advanced Presbyterians, in the late reign, now saw the religious laws sus- pended by royal prerogative, and old distrust of the Stuarts prevented even moderate Presbyterians from being conciliated by indulgence extended to themselves along with the Catholics, who alone were admitted to office. In Ireland, the Catholics were placed in a dominant position, and an army was being raised there for the coercion of Great Britain. The acquittal of the Seven Bishops gave the signal for action to the Whig nobles who had long been negotiating with William of Orange, nephew and son-in-law of James. That very able, brave, and influential prince was the Protestant champion of Europe, and the bitter and determined foe of Louis the Fourteenth, who was aiming at, and had in large measure acquired, the position of a dictator in continental affairs. The birth of an heir to James, in June, 1688, decided William to accept the invitation of the Whig leaders for an invasion of England with Dutch troops, who, in case of need, would support an insurrection in behalf of the Protestant religion and of the civil rights of the people of Great Britain. James, left without support from any class of his subjects, and unable to rely upon the army which he had raised, fled helplessly to France, and after vain efforts to maintain, by French aid, a hold GROWTH OF THE CONSTITUTION. 17 upon Ireland, he ceased from all personal connection with the British Isles, and died an exile, and a pensioner of the generous Louis, at St. Germains in 1701. The cause of the Stuart king in Scotland, maintained at Killie- crankie by Viscount Dundee, did not long survive the death of the victor in the hour of triumph, and William the Third and his wife, Mary the Second, daughter of James, became sovereigns of the United Kingdoms early in 1689, on terms which, in the Bill of Rights, amply secured for future subjects of the crown the main substance, including germs to be thereafter developed, of complete civil and religious freedom. Such was the event called "the Glorious Revolution"; one which changed the dynasty, and, by creating a purely parliamentary title for future holders of the royal position, completely did away with the theory of " divine right ". Henceforth Parliament became the chief power in the constitution, and the House of Commons, controlling the public purse, was to be the stronger part of Parlia- ment. The beneficent effects of this grand reform, " the fruitful parent of reforms ", were quickly seen in the Toleration Act, which relieved Protestant dissenters from some of the penalties of the Clarendon Code, and allowed them to worship freely in their own way. They were still excluded, like the Catholics, from municipal and other offices, to which the next century saw them admitted by recognized evasions, and through the passing of in- demnity bills. In 1695, when the House of Commons refused to renew the act against unlicensed printing, the censorship came to an end, and " freedom of the press " had its rise. The foreign action of William the Third restored Britain to a high position among the nations, and henceforth she had her full share in continental affairs, and in the arrangements made for the maintenance of the "balance of power". During William's reign we have our first legal " standing army ", controlled by Parlia- ment through an annual Mutiny Act and the power of the purse; the origin of the national system of finance in a public loan, a national debt, and the establishment of the Bank of England; and an innovation which has since become an institution of the highest importance, the first ministry, afterwards known as the "Cabinet". It was by slow degrees that, during the eighteenth century, this body of men, never recognized by the law, became an executive VOL. I. 1 8 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. and deliberative committee of the dominant party, or majority, in the House of Commons, including peers of the same political views, and invested with the attributes of united responsibility, concerted action, and political unanimity on all important questions. At the close of the reign, a clause in the Act of Settlement, which secured the Protestant Hanoverian succession to the crown, made the judges independent of the sovereign, by conferring on them a tenure of office during good behaviour, and making it lawful to remove them from their high and dignified positions only upon address to the crown carried by vote in both Houses of Parliament. The death of William the Third, in 1 702, thus saw the constitutional freedom of these realms, and the substance of public right in civil and reli- gious affairs, established upon a basis which, for nearly two hundred years, has never for a moment been shaken or disturbed. CHAPTER III. CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. System of party government under Tories and Whigs Union of England and Scotland Accession of the Hanoverian dynasty The Septennial Act Rebellions of 1715 and 1745 Walpole the first "prime minister" George III. Lord North and the " King's friends" John Wilkes The Gordon Riots Demand for reform of House of Commons Reform bills introduced by William Pitt Freedom of the press vindicated by Erskine and Fox Political prosecutions Independence of juries established. Under Queen Anne, the country saw the early growth of the system of party government Tories and Whigs which has ever since been the condition of our political existence. In politics, as in religion, men have always held, and will hold, different opinions, and when Parliament became the chief authority in the state the only practical method of rule was one by which the administration of affairs was intrusted in turns to rival parties, struggling for place and power. As the House of Commons held the control of taxation, and, by refusing supplies of money needed for the public service, could bring the machine of govern- ment to a stand, that House acquired the greatest weight in the constitutional system, and political leaders, in one reign at least vigorously helped by the sovereign, were ever striving to secure THE CONSTITUTION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. IQ for their own party a majority of supporters in that assembly. Hence came the "bribery and corruption", the intimidation, the gross revelry, the rioting, and other disorders attendant upon par- liamentary elections. The chief event of Anne's reign in domestic affairs was the parliamentary union with Scotland, which had been aimed at by James the First, effected for a brief space by Cromwell, permitted to lapse at the Restoration, and strongly desired by William the Third. After some vain attempts, in discussion be- tween English and Scottish commissioners, and with a strong opposition in Scotland, the measure was carried in 1707, and the one kingdom of " Great Britain " was thus fully formed. The succession to the throne, the parliament, the standards of coin, weights, and measures, the laws of trade, customs, and excise were to be the same for both countries. The Presbyterian Church was to remain as the established religion of Scotland; the four Scottish universities and the judicial administration were left as before, except that an appeal was granted from decisions of the Court of Session to the House of Lords. Scottish civil and criminal law was retained, and in the Parliament of Great Britain, the northern country was represented by forty-five members of the Commons, and by sixteen Scottish peers, chosen for each parliament by the whole body of their fellow-peers in Scotland, in the House of Lords. This great political change proved, after the subsidence of mutual jealousies and suspicions, to be of great benefit to both countries. England was freed from the constant danger of divided interests which might end in civil war. The trading skill, energy, and enterprise of the Scottish people were provided with a new and free career. The vast growth of wealth in Scotland dates from that auspicious event. The two peoples were, by degrees, knit into one, and the peculiarities and diversities of national character have long ceased to interfere with mutual kindness and respect. On May ist, 1707, the hoisting of the flag called the Union Jack, which blends the crosses of the patron saints, St. Andrew and St. George, marked the completion of the union of Scotland and England. The accession to the British throne of George the First, Elector of Hanover, created for Britain a new foreign policy, which 2O OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. was productive of much embarrassment and loss. In wars with which we are not now concerned, this country was compelled to provide, as far as might be, for the safety of her sovereign's con- tinental dominions, in which his British subjects had no real interest. The installation of the Hanoverian dynasty, or House of Brunswick, had also some important effects on internal affairs. The new sove- reign could not speak English, and none of his ministers could speak or understand German, with the sole exception of Lord Carteret. The king was thus left without influence on the Cabinet, and, as he understood nothing of British affairs, parties, or politicians, the power and patronage of the crown fell, for a long term of years, into the hands of the oligarchy of Whig statesmen who had, at the close of Anne's reign, favoured and promoted the German succes- sion. For nearly fifty years the Whigs were supreme, maintaining their power until a young sovereign born on British soil effected their discomfiture, and brought the Tories to the front for a still longer period of political control. The two Jacobite attempts against the House of Hanover utterly failed. The Mar rebellion of 1715 was altogether contemptible: James Stuart, the elder Pretender, cut a very poor figure, and effected nothing beyond causing some useless bloodshed at Sheriffmuir and at Preston, followed by the execution of Lords Kenmure and Derwentwater. The Septennial Act, still in force, giving to parliaments a possible duration of seven years instead of three, was an important indirect result of the '15. The Scottish rising in 1745 appeared far more formidable. The younger Pretender, " bonnie Prince Charlie " of Jacobite song, was a much more attractive personage than his father, and it is possible that, if he would have consented to change his religious faith, he might have endangered the throne of George the Second. England, however, would lend no support to a Stuart claimant who was also a Catholic, and the advance of the High- landers as far as Derby, which struck terror to faint hearts in the capital, was followed by a retreat which, after one or two successes over the royal troops, ended in the final collapse on Culloden Moor, near Inverness. After this tragical event, and the cruelties per- petrated by the soldiers of " butcher Cumberland", the Highlands were, for the first time, really made subject to British rule, and the construction of military roads, the opening up of the wild country THE CONSTITUTION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 21 to peaceful traffic, with the wise policy of enlisting the activity, strength, and courage of the people in the service of the dynasty which their sires had sought to dethrone, produced the happiest results for law, order, and civilization. The colours borne by the noble Highland regiments waved, seldom in defeat, never in dis- grace, very often in glorious victory, on many a field of battle, and a union of hearts came to hallow the political connection of north and south. Sir Robert Walpole's tenure of power as chief minister for over twenty years, under George the First and his successor, was an important matter in the history of the Cabinet as an institution. He may probably be regarded as the first statesman who was "prime minister". He established the principle of supremacy for one man over his colleagues, and thenceforth a minister who might be at variance with his chief was expected to resign his office. Previous ministries had been often composed, by the sovereign's choice, of men of both parties, without reference to the prevailing majority in the House of Commons. Walpole insisted on leading a cabinet composed of men who shared his views on all important points of policy, and so he gave the model of ministries such as we now see in charge of the work of government. The head of the ministry was, in those days, selected by the king, and maintained in power, if need were, by the purchase of votes in the House of Commons. Hard cash, pensions, sinecures, well-paid offices, garters, and stars, were at the minister's disposal for the purposes of corruption, and only repeated defeats in the Commons, or a great display of public feeling, could drive an obnoxious statesman from power. The remedies for this condition of affairs, a great extension of the franchise and a redistribution of political power among constitu- encies, were matters which, in Walpole's day, lay in a future removed from him by nearly a century. Some progress was made in the direction of religious freedom. From the year 1728 onwards, an Act of Indemnity was annually passed, freeing Protestant dis- senters from the penalties of the Test Act, when they had held municipal offices against the statute. Walpole, however, Whig though he was, opposed and defeated motions for the repeal of the act itself. He was unwilling to wound the prejudices of church- men, or to meddle with the existing settlement of ecclesiastical affairs. 22 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. The accession of George the Third brought to the throne a young sovereign trained in somewhat high notions of the regal position and prerogative, and resolved to carry those ideas into practice. He found himself possessed of enormous wealth and influence through the income derived from the large "civil list" granted by parliament for England and Ireland; the hereditary revenues of Scotland; the great revenues obtained from his German territory ; and the patronage of posts in church and state. The sovereign, from the first, employed these ample resources of cor- ruption to obtain majorities in parliament, and the strong will described by his opponents as "obstinacy", with his persistent attention to what was daily passing in the Commons, enabled him to wield an authority unknown to his two predecessors. Men in high place were freely punished for daring to oppose the royal will on public affairs. Lord-lieutenants thus incurred summary dis- missal, and office-holders of lower class were removed for votes in the Commons hostile to a minister supported by the king. The Tories were now restored to political power, and the Whigs, divided into factious groups, were mostly left in the cold shade of opposition. In 1770 a prime minister was found, in the person of Lord North, who was content to be simply the servant of the sovereign, and in public policy to carry out his will. He had at his disposal, in the House of Commons, a body of men known as the "king's friends". This "reptile species of politicians" was never before and never since known in this country. They were mem- bers of no party, and had no political ties, except those which bound them to the throne. They were holders of places of much emolu- ment, little work, and no responsibility. Secure in such posts under all changes of cabinet office, they were content to support the king against any ministry or minister whose measures he dis- liked, and to thwart at every turn those who opposed the royal views. At this period of our political history, we find existing a House of Commons which, largely composed of the nominees of the crown or of great nobles, and elected on a narrow franchise, showed a tyrannous spirit towards the rights of electors, and was bitterly jealous of public interference with what were deemed to be parliamentary privileges. In the case of John Wilkes, the choice of the Middlesex electors was set aside again and again with THE CONSTITUTION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 23 deliberate and insolent injustice. In 1771, the House of Commons engaged in a conflict with the lord mayor and other city magis- trates in a matter affecting the right of printers to publish reports of the debates. In 1728 and in 1738 the House had declared any publication of speeches made in parliament to be a breach of privilege. The times had now changed. The original cause of secrecy for debates, which was to enable members to escape royal wrath against free utterances, had ceased with the close of Stuart times, when Parliament acquired supreme power in the state. The House of Commons, under George the Third, was seeking, in fact, to escape responsibility to the nation at large. The public press was acquiring yearly greater influence on opinion, and it was of high importance to the public interests that the sayings and doings of members of the Commons, within the walls of their House, should be known outside. In both the cases here mentioned, the cause of public freedom won the day. Wilkes was soon quietly allowed to take his seat for Middlesex, and from 1771 onwards there was practically free reporting of debates. A small step towards the rights of citizenship for the Catholic subjects of the crown was taken in 1778, when a severe act of 1700 was repealed. That statute had subjected to heavy penalties the celebration of the mass, and had prohibited Catholics from pur- chasing land, with many restrictions on its acquirement by in- heritance. This disgraceful law had from the first been left almost devoid of practical effect, and the Gordon or No Popery riots of 1 780, which were due to its repeal, are the strongest possible proof of the degraded ignorance, little more than a century ago, of the population of London. Without the shadow of a grievance, at the summons of a madman, a hundred thousand people rose in insur- rection. For nearly a week anarchy existed in the greatest and wealthiest of European cities. The houses of Parliament were besieged by the mob, and lay peers and bishops were forced to flee. The chapels of foreign ambassadors, buildings made sacred by the law of nations, were destroyed. The house of a chief justice was demolished. Thirty-six fires were blazing at once in London. Before order was restored through the firmness of the king, who set the troops to work, more than five hundred persons were shot down by musketry. As the close of the eighteenth century drew near, a strong 24 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. feeling arose in favour of reform in the constitution of the House of Commons. New towns were rising into political importance, and desired representation in Parliament. There were many thoughtful persons who wished to break up the system of influence by which the crown and the great land-owners contrived to nom- inate a considerable portion of members of the Commons. Some small reforms were made in 1782. Revenue officers, a class obviously under government control, were disfranchised. Public contractors were prevented from sitting in the Commons, and some changes were made in the civil list, which abolished useless offices, and limited the number and value of pensions. Some bills for parliamentary reform, introduced by the younger William Pitt, suffered rejection in the House of Commons, and the whole subject was set aside by the reaction due to the excesses of the great French Revolution in 1789. Amongst minor changes in favour of religious freedom, we may here record the relief of dissenting ministers and schoolmasters from the declaration required by the Toleration Act, against the Roman Catholic doctrine of transub- stantiation, and in favour of the doctrine of the Trinity. This was carried in 1779. Three years later, Protestant dissenters were allowed to celebrate marriages in their own chapels. All proposi- tions for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts of Charles the Second's reign, with a view to the admission of Catholics to municipal offices and to seats in Parliament, were rejected in the House of Commons. Towards the end of the century, freedom of the press was nobly vindicated by the most brilliant of all advocates, Thomas Erskine, sometime lord chancellor of England, and by Charles James Fox, one of the greatest of Whig statesmen. Erskine, in the very year (1778) that he was called to the bar, sprang at one bound, by a single speech, into the foremost rank. He was junior counsel, with four others, in defence, on a trial for libel, of Captain Baillie, governor of Greenwich Hospital. That noble institution, then the home of England's gallant and war-worn seamen, was at that time grossly abused. The first lord of the admiralty, a certain wicked Lord Sandwich, was in the habit of introducing into the hospital as inmates men who were not sailors at all. This was done simply for the purposes of electoral corruption. Baillie, after vain remon- strance, exposed the matter in a pamphlet, and was prosecuted THE CONSTITUTION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 25 criminally for libel. The real though not the nominal prosecutor was Sandwich, and Erskine, in his magnificent speech, boldly un- masked his lordship by name, and vindicated the right of censuring with severity the mal-administration of a public institution. In other cases the same great forensic orator rendered priceless services to the cause of freedom. After the outbreak of the French Revolution, societies formed in England to advocate change were stirred to fresh life. There was the "London Corresponding Society", to urge Radical opinions. In 1792, the association called the "Friends of the People" was established, embracing many men who were eminent in politics and literature, with Erskine and other members of parliament. Pitt, following rather the feeling of his supporters in parliament and outside than his own judgment, adopted severe repressive measures. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. Many respectable persons who urged reform were severely pun- ished by imprisonment, the pillory, and heavy fines, for "seditious" words. The "Scottish martyrs", Palmer and Muir, were trans- ported for "sedition", and a Traitorous Correspondence Act made it "treason" to hold any intercourse with France without special permission under the great seal. In 1794, prosecutions for "sedi- tion" and "treason" continued. Skirving, the secretary of an Edinburgh meeting of the "Friends of the People", was transported, and Watt was executed for treason. Then came a Treasonable Practices Bill, by which writing, printing, preaching, or speaking to incite the people to hatred or contempt of the king, or the established government and constitution of the realm, was made a " high misdemeanour". The Seditious Meetings Bill forbade the assemblage of more than fifty persons for considering peti- tions or addresses for alteration of matters in church or state, or for discussing any grievance, without previous notice to, and the attendance of, a magistrate, who should act as censor on any pro- position or discourse. All remonstrance in Parliament was vain; the measures were carried by large majorities, and in 1799, an Act was passed suppressing the United Societies and the London Corresponding Society, as well as all debating clubs. Such was the benign system of rule under which the grand- fathers of men now middle-aged were living in the last days of the eighteenth century, and the mere statement of the facts, com- 26 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. pared with the existing system under Queen Victoria, is an eloquent exposition of "good old times", and a standard by which we may measure the progress made in constitutional freedom. While the spirit of tyrannical repression was thus rampant, while new laws were gagging free-born Britons, and statutes were strained to punish common liberty of utterance in speech and print; while the courts were daily occupied with the discussion and determina- tion of grave constitutional problems, Erskine was eagerly and honourably prominent on the side of that temperate freedom which Britons have in many a contest made their own inalienable posses- sion. Thoroughly understanding the principles of the British constitution, and never committing the error of vindicating freedom by an appeal to abstract rights or to a false philosophy, Erskine was often able to bring juries over to the side of liberty and reason even in the midst of the terror aroused by the excesses of the French Revolution, and to coerce into impartiality and fairness of exposition judges who were only too ready to interpret the laws in a despotic sense. It was thus that in 1794 he procured the acquittal of Hardy and Home Tooke, charged with treason as members of the London Corresponding Society. One of the most important points with which Erskine had to deal was the state of the law of libel. In 1764, Lord Mansfield, chief justice of the King's Bench, had decided that, in cases of prosecution for libel, the jury were only to deal with the fact of publication, leaving it to the judge to decide on the libellous character of the matter implicated. This doctrine, if it were maintained, clearly put the liberty of the press at the mercy of judges appointed by the crown, and went far towards re-establishing in England the hateful Star Chamber of the worst times of Stuart tyranny. From this peril the press of Britain was saved mainly by the courageous and brilliant advocacy of Erskine. Twenty years after Mansfield's decision, in 1784, Dr. Shipley, the Dean of St. Asaph, was prosecuted for publishing a seditious libel in the form of a pamphlet on the principles of government, written by his brother-in-law, the famous scholar, Sir William Jones. In this pamphlet was laid down the not very monstrous doctrine of the right and duty of resistance to lawless tyranny. After Erskine's speech for the defence, the jury found Dr. Shipley "guilty of pub- lishing only". Mr. Justice Buller, a narrow-minded lawyer who BRITAIN AT WAR IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 27 presided at the trial, induced the jury, after much brow-beating, to omit the last word, and to leave to the Court the decision as to whether the publication were a libel or not. This verdict was recorded, and the law thus again laid down was justly regarded as a heavy blow at freedom. Erskine then moved for a new trial, and his argument in support of this motion is a most masterly and exhaustive defence of the right of juries to decide on the substance of a libel, as well as on the fact of its publication. The court declined to sustain his view, but the cause thus defeated in the law-courts won not long afterwards a signal triumph in Parlia- ment. In 1792, Fox carried his Libel Bill, reversing Lord Mansfield's and the late decisions, and giving to juries full scope in libel cases. Thus was secured the freedom of the press, which, in the words of Junius, "is the palladium of all the civil, political, and religious rights of an Englishman"; thus was maintained "the right of juries to return a general verdict, in all cases whatsoever, as an essential part of our constitution, not to be controlled or limited by the judges, not, in any shape, questionable by the legislature". CHAPTER IV. BRITAIN AT WAR IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Britain's military position during the reigns of William III. and Anne Duke of Marlborough Peace of Utrecht War of the Austrian Succession The Seven Years' War William Pitt, Clive, and Wolfe Admirals Rodney, Hood, and Hyde Parker Peace of Versailles The French Revolution The "Young Corsican" at Toulon Sir Sidney Smith, Horatio Nelson, and Lord Howe Arthur Wellesley Buonaparte's threatened invasion Victory off Cape St. Vincent Naval Mutinies Victory at Camperdown Buonaparte's expedition to Egypt Victories of the Nile and Alexandria Continental combination against Britain Battle of Copenhagen Peace of Amiens Result of the wars in the expansion of British trade and colonial possessions. The contests waged against France under William the Third and Queen Anne completely restored Great Britain to the position in Europe which had been lost during the two previous reigns. The ambitious schemes of Louis the Fourteenth were decisively checked, and his country was reduced to exhaustion. The military credit of England was more than merely revived. William, one of the com- 28 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. manders who met almost constant defeat without incurring serious loss of repute as a general, headed our first regular army. Noth- ing could exceed his courage, or his resolution after ill-success, and the soldiers whom he led into battle were worthy of their general. He was pitted, however, against the best armies of that age, organized by the genius of Louvois, and commanded with great ability by Luxembourg, and he failed, save in the capture of Namur, to obtain the victories which he fully deserved. The consummate skill of Maryborough, backed by the utmost bravery in our troops, deprived the French of the proud military position which they had held in Europe since the decline of Spain. The British army was thenceforth known as one composed of men invincible in a fair field, against equal numbers and leadership. Blenheim, Ramillies, and Oudenarde dissipated for ever Louis' dreams of European conquest, and nothing but political intrigues, depriving Marlborough of his command, prevented him from marching in victorious strength, at the head of his gallant army and with the allies led by his noble colleague, Prince Eugene, to the gates of Paris, and dictating terms to the French monarch within the walls of his capital. The British navy had asserted its power in the battle of La Hogue, when the courage of the sailors had wrung from the exiled James high eulogies for those whom he saw destroying, at the close of the struggle, the very ships intended to strive for his restoration to his lost kingdom. After the Peace of Utrecht there came a lull of warfare for a time. That treaty had left a Bourbon prince upon the throne of Spain, and the countries thus connected by dynastic ties will soon be found engaged in fresh contests against the hated power which, in the Armada fight, and on the soil of Bavaria and Flanders, had lowered their pride by sea and land. The time is filled with diplomatic jargon of "Pragmatic Sanctions" concerning the house of Austria, "Family Compacts" between the sovereigns of the house of Bourbon, and much else that, in the words of Carlyle, as he treats of this period, "we will forget". The War of the Aus- trian Succession, waged from 1741 to 1748, gave Britain a victory at Dettingen, when George the Second, brave if little else, was the last of our sovereigns to lead troops in battle, and dismounting from his horse, went on sword in hand, cheering his " brave boys ". Our defeat at Fontenoy, under the Duke of Cumberland, was made BRITAIN AT WAR IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 29 glorious by the courage of a British brigade, advancing against a host of foes, with cannon playing on their front and on both flanks, and retiring, after vain efforts, in a steady and heroic form that the gallant Frenchmen could not forbear to praise. The great contest known as the Seven Years War, from 1756 to 1763, had its triumphs, as we shall see, on other fields than those of Europe. We showed the world, as the great Frederick of Prussia declared, " a man " at last, in William Pitt the elder, better known as Earl of Chatham. In East and West, Clive and Plassey, Wolfe and Quebec, became immortal names. In Europe, the naval disgrace incurred at Minorca by the hapless Byng was more than retrieved by Boscawen at Lagos Bay, and by Hawke on the iron-bound coast of Brittany. The Duke of Cumberland's ignominious capitu- lation, with forty thousand Hanoverian troops, at Kloster-seven, and the loss of Hanover, were followed by a British share in the victory of Minden, when the second general of that age, Ferdinand of Brunswick, overcame the French. Before the war closed, the two chief colonial towns of Spain, Havana in Cuba, and Manilla on the Philippines, became, with a vast booty, the prey of Britain, glorious prizes of combined naval and military force, tamely restored, in exchange for the then worthless Florida, by the ministry of the day. In the momentous contest which endured from 1775 to 1783, Great Britain met at last the three chief maritime powers in their combined strength, France and Holland and Spain. Since the days of Van Tromp, save for a brief space before the victory of La Hogue, the dwellers on the southern shores of Britain had never seen a hostile fleet sailing defiant and unattacked in the waters of the Channel. More than once or twice this spectacle was presented during that perilous time. Action after action was fought against the enemy's ships. In January, 1780, Rodney captured or destroyed eight Spanish vessels off Cape St. Vincent. Hood, with nineteen men-of-war, fought a drawn battle in 1781 against twenty-eight French ships, under De Grasse, on the Vir- ginian coast. In the same year, Hyde Parker defeated the Dutch in their own waters. By slow degrees our strength at sea was asserted and main- tained against these formidable odds, and the naval part of the struggle was gloriously closed by Rodney's brilliant exploit in the West Indian waters. The united force of France and Spain, 30 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. among those islands, amounted to sixty ships of the line, and all our possessions in that part of the world had been captured by the foe except Barbadoes, Antigua, and Jamaica. In February, 1782, Sir George Rodney, the commander-in-chief on the West India station, arrived at Barbadoes with twelve line-of-battle ships. A great French armament was preparing against Jamaica, and at this crisis Rodney was joined by Sir Samuel Hood's squadron. With three more ships arrived from home, Rodney now had thirty- six sail. Hood's old antagonist, the Comte de Grasse, put to sea on April 8th with thirty-three first-rates, including his flag-ship, the Ville de Paris, of 1 10 guns, one of the finest vessels afloat. There were thousands of troops on board the French vessels for the intended land operations at Jamaica. Rodney at once weighed anchor, and started from St. Lucia, eager to close before De Grasse could be joined by Spanish ships. After a partial action between Hood and the enemy, a general battle was engaged in on April 1 2th, in the waters between the islands Mariegalante, Dominica, and Guadeloupe. From seven in the morning till sun- set a fierce contest raged, as the British ships came up, received from Rodney the signal for close combat, and laid themselves in turn along the enemy's line. Yard-arm to yard-arm lay the ships, pouring in shot that could not miss their mark, and that wrought fearful havoc on the crowded decks of the French. About noon, the British admiral executed the daring and splendid manoeuvre fol- lowed with sublime effect by Nelson at the Nile of breaking the enemy's line. His flagship, the Formidable, found an opening about three ships from the centre, where De Grasse was lying with the Ville de Paris. Rodney was followed by other ves- sels, and they all doubled round upon the hostile ships, and brought part of the enemy under fire on both sides. The French line was completely broken, and thrown into utter disorder by this revived mode of attack, practised in the iyth century against the Dutch, the merit of which, as a modern invention or theory, has been assigned to Mr. Clerk, the author of a very able treatise on naval tactics, published about the time that Rodney left London to take up his command. The credit has been also claimed by Sir Charles Douglas for his father, Rodney's flag-captain on the Formidable, as suggesting to the admiral that the line should be broken, at the moment when the opportunity arose. However ADMIRAL RODNEY DIRECTS THE BATTLE ON BOARD THE FORMIDABLE. A great French fleet, under the Comte de Grasse, arrived in the West Indies, early in 1782. with orders to attack Jamaica. In April it was sighted by the British fleet under Sir George Rodney, and almost at once a fierce contest began. About noon the British Admiral, by a skilful manoeuvre, thrust his flagship through the enemy's line, and ranging up on his weather side, brought several of the French ships under a cross- fire. This new method of attack threw the enemy's fleet into disorder, and at length the French Admiral pulled down his flag in sign of surrender. Five other ships were taken, one was sunk, and the remainder were scat- tered to the four winds. (i) \V. H. OVEREiND. ADMIRAL RODNEY DIRECTS THE BATTLE ON BOARD THE FORMIDABLE. Vol. i. p. 30, 31. BRITAIN AT WAR IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. $[ that may be, it is certain that Rodney was the first naval comman- der of his time to carry the idea into execution, and that to him belongs the credit of promptly seizing the chance presented to him with the coolness of a hero who has all his faculties under com- mand amidst the roaring of cannon, the eddying of smoke, the crashing of torn timbers, and the cries of men maimed by wounds, or excited by the spirit of deadly strife. A grand success rewarded the skill and courage of British seamen. The French admiral, in his great vessel, was compelled at the very close of the battle to strike his flag to Hood, in the Barfleur. Five other large ships were taken, one was sunk, and the remainder were scattered in flight towards various ports, no more to be united in hostile array during the continuance of the war. The carnage on the Ville de o o Paris was seen to be terrific, when an officer went aboard to receive the admiral's sword. Most of De Grasse's officers were killed or wounded, and only two or three stood with him on the quarter- deck. The swift-falling darkness of tropical climes prevented instant pursuit, and a three days' calm off Guadeloupe caused further delay to the victor. A week later, however, Hood over- took five French ships, and captured two frigates and two seventy- fours. The Ville de Paris and another prize, the Glorieux, never reached England, having foundered in a storm off Newfoundland. Thus was Jamaica saved, and the pride of Britain in her navy restored. This war was ended in January, 1783, by the Peace of Versailles. The next great struggle, ten years later, was the first war with France, after the Revolution of 1789. This contest continued for nine years, from 1793 to 1802, and was marked by great events on sea and land, for the last of which we must for a moment overstep the bounds of the eighteenth century. In its earlier stages, little credit was won by British arms in military operations. George the Third's second son, the Duke of York, was no match for the French generals, leading hosts of men who, well trained to war, after some preliminary failures, were also filled with a fierce revolutionary spirit, eager to encounter the soldiers of a monarchy. In 1793 the British troops, under York, with Ger- man allies, defeated the French republicans near Valenciennes, and that fortified town was taken. In the same year, however, Toulon, captured for the French royalists by a British expedition under 32 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Lord Hood, was recovered for the new French state by the skill of a young Corsican colonel of artillery, aged twenty-four years, whose name was Napoleon Buonaparte. It is remarkable that amonor his English antagonists there was the future foiler of his o o o plans for Oriental conquest, Sir Sidney Smith, of Acre renown. Men of the highest order kept coming to the front in those stirring days. In 1794, when Corsica was reduced by Lord Hood, a young naval captain lost his right eye at the siege of Calvi. His name was Horatio Nelson. The naval might and fame of Britain were fully maintained in the same year, on "the glorious first of June", when Lord Howe gained his splendid victory over the Brest fleet, and frustrated a design for the invasion of England. The British and Hanoverians, under the Duke of York, had some suc- cesses, with Austrians and Prussians, against the republican armies in the north-east of France, but in May the duke was surrounded by larger French forces, and barely escaped personal capture, losing fifty guns. In the winter of 1794, our troops, though no longer under the same incompetent commander, were driven by the French from Holland into Westphalia, and in March, 1795, they were forced to embark at Bremen and return to England. A redeeming feature of this ignominious and disastrous retreat was the skill and resolution displayed in the rear-guard by the young colonel of the 33rd regiment of the line. His name was Arthur Wellesley. Holland was at this time overrun and subjugated by the French, and her naval forces were turned against us by the conquerors. At the close of 1795, Buonaparte had risen to the highest military position in France, and the following year saw him victorious over Austria in northern Italy. At this juncture, Spain joined the ranks of Britain's enemies, and our fleets were again confronted by the combined naval forces of the three chief con- tinental maritime countries. An invasion of England was again planned, and squadrons were gathered at Brest, Cadiz, and at the island of Texel on the Dutch coast. The British tars, forced to serve as many of them were by the cruel system of impressment, half-starved and half-poisoned by insufficient and bad food in the iniquitous and corrupt naval system of those times, driven at last by ill-treatment to open mutiny of a formidable kind, were the saviours of their country at this portentous and perilous time. BRITAIN AT WAR IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 33 In February, 1797, Sir John Jervis, with fifteen sail of the line, attacked and smartly defeated, off Cape St. Vincent, a Spanish fleet of more than double his own force. Several of the greatest ships of the enemy were taken. Commodore Nelson, the second in command, in his ship the Captain, of seventy-four guns, disobeyed his superior's signal, and closed with three huge Spanish vessels, the Santissima Trinidad, of 136 guns, the San Josef, of 112, and the Salvador del Mundo, of equal force. The San Nicolas, of 80 guns, and three other Spanish liners, were close at hand. Thomas Trowbridge, in the Culloden, came up to the rescue, and Nelson's dearest friend, Cuthbert Collingwood, was eager to help and to save. The Captain was reduced to a mere wreck, when Nelson, sword in hand, led the boarders on to the capture of the San Nicolas, and then, crying "Westminster Abbey, or victory!", bounded on to the San Josef, and was at once master of another prize. It is well to remind the reader that Nelson's name was not even mentioned in the official letter of Jervis, who was created Earl St. Vincent. That just and generous man was hampered, it is supposed, by some official ideas of etiquette, and by Nelson's daring and, in this case, most useful disobedience of orders. In a private letter his merit was acknowledged by his superior, and the nation soon learnt the truth. The same year was made note- worthy by the naval mutinies at Spithead and the Nore, outbreaks which were quieted by concessions, by firm measures, and by the influence of two commanders justly beloved by our seamen, Lord Howe, and the noble Admiral Duncan. The Spanish navy had been roughly handled, but the French and Dutch ships were to meet, with troops on board, for a landing in Ireland, where, as we shall see, a rebellion had been arranged. The great victory of Duncan at Camperdown, on the coast of Holland opposite Yar- mouth, put an end to this project. The Dutch fleet, of fifteen line- of-battle ships, commanded by the brave and skilful De Winter, was attacked by an equal force, and after a desperate engagement, worthy on both sides of the traditionary naval heroism of Stuart days, the enemy lost eight sail of the line and three frigates, which were brought as prizes to England. Buonaparte, on the failure of attempts against the British Isles, turned his thoughts to conquest in the East. He was now virtually supreme in France, as the chief man in the republican VOL. I. 34 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. government called the Directory, and a powerful expedition, under his command, started for Egypt, as the first great stride towards an attack on our possessions in India. A number of men-of-war and transports carried twenty thousand troops to Alexandria. The Turkish soldiers were defeated in the " battle of the Pyramids"; the famous Mameluke cavalry succumbed; Cairo was taken, and the lower valley of the Nile was in French hands. On August ist, 1798, the enemy were cut off from the power of return to France by Nelson's victory at the Nile. The French fleet was almost destroyed, and Buonaparte, early in 1799, aim- ing now at an overland expedition to India, marched from Egypt into Syria. At the key of that country, the famous fortress of St. Jean d'Acre, a scene of Cceur de Lion's valour against Saladin in the second Crusade, the French general received a rude shock to his own and his soldiers' belief in his invincibility on land. A siege of sixty days, in which the power of Turks in defence, armed with sabre and dagger to meet assaults with the bayonet, was brilliantly displayed, ended in the utter discomfiture of the best efforts made by heroism and skill. A body of British sea- men and marines, led by Sir Sidney Smith, gave most important aid, and caused Buonaparte, many years later, in his exile at St. Helena, to declare of the British seaman, " That man made me miss my destiny". The French general then made his way back to France, where he became sole master, with the title of First Consul. His hatred to Britain was confirmed by Pitt's rejection of his overtures for peace, and by our government's refusal to recognize his new official position as head of the French republic. In 1799 another attempt against the French in Holland failed. Some battles were won, in conjunction with Russian troops, the military abilities of Sir John Moore and Sir Ralph Abercrombie being employed on our side. In the end, however, the sinister presence of the Duke of York as commander-in-chief made itself felt, and he retired from the country in the autumn, by an arrangement with the French and Dutch commanders, which was virtually a capitulation on favourable terms. A large Dutch squadron surrendered to our Admiral Mitchell, and the enemy's schemes for an invasion of Britain were made as futile as were our efforts, at that time, to cope with French forces on the Continent. BRITAIN AT WAR IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 35 Pitt now resolved to expel the French forces from Egypt, and Sir Ralph Abercrombie was sent thither with fifteen thousand men. In March, 1801, the first division of our troops, in face of a tre- mendous fire of shot, shell, grape, and musketry, landed at Aboukir Bay, and, with the most brilliant courage, drove off the opposing French with the bayonet. Their main army, under Menou, was soon afterwards defeated by Abercrombie, one of our best com- manders, at the battle of Aboukir, or Alexandria, where the gallant and able Scot received a fatal wound. His successor, General Hutchinson, took Rosetta, Cairo, and Alexandria, and the French troops, on their surrender, were sent back to France in British ships. Thus ended Buonaparte's efforts towards the Eastern world. The scene of conflict next draws our eyes to the north of Europe. The insane emperor Paul of Russia had formed with Sweden and Denmark an "armed neutrality", to resist by force the British claim to stop and search neutral vessels for " contra- band of war", or stores for warlike use which such ships might be conveying to our foes. Prussia joined the hostile ranks early in 1801: Hanover was occupied, and the north German rivers, the Weser, Ems, and Elbe, were closed against our ships. The government resolved to strike hard and fast at Denmark, the only member of the coalition which possessed a strong naval force. In the fierce battle of Copenhagen, fought on April 2nd, Nelson, again the real hero of the occasion, now as second to Sir Hyde Parker, brought the Danes to terms, and caused their retirement from the combination against Britain. The alliance had already, unknown to Nelson at the time, received its death-blow by the assassination, on March 24th, of the Russian emperor. His son and successor, Alexander the First, at once made peace, and long remained on friendly terms with this country. The struggle ended for a brief space by the truce known as the Peace of Amiens, concluded on March 25th, 1802, between Great Britain, France, Holland, and Spain. These contests of the eighteenth century have an interest apart from and beyond the details which display British energy and courage. The struggles by sea and land which were so eventful and, on the whole, so glorious to our arms, were, above all, important in their real aims and results. They were wars 36 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. waged for trade and for colonial rule. The crisis of modern British history came in the days of the Armada. It was then that our forefathers awoke to a sense of the great destinies that were reserved for the British race. The very bigotry of the time, an evil thing in itself, but overruled, like other evils, for high ends controlled by a supreme Power, aided the new spirit whose workings have been immortalized by Charles Kingsley in West- ward Ho! a story which no real, undegenerate Englishman can read without delight and pride. Who were the hated Spaniards this was the cry the professors of a false faith, the desolators of the Netherlands, at once the victims and the upholders of the Inquisition, that they should inherit and hold the world? True, that in the last days of Elizabeth we had yet no possessions beyond the borders of Europe. During the seventeenth century we were mainly given up to internal constitutional struggles, but Cromwell, fanatic, tyrant in his own despite, the conqueror of his own countrymen, was moved by the old spirit of later Tudor times when he wrested Jamaica from Spain and founded a do- minion in the sunny West Indian isles. Britain had begun that wonderful expansion which was to carry her flag round the world. The growth of our trade under \Valpole as first minister made British merchants eager for new markets, and the industrial development, soon to be traced on these pages, of the latter half of the eighteenth century, gave an irresistible im- pulse to the aspirations after wider territory. Chatham, the em- bodiment of British character in its energy and courage, rose to the occasion, and "the hour and the man" were happily combined. The eighteenth century, so often and so long regarded by the shallow and the ill-informed as a dull and ignoble period of our annals, as they look at kings and courts and the wranglings of politicians, was the era of great contests which were to determine the posses- sion of new worlds to the East and to the West, on the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific, in Indian seas, and far away to the south, verging even on Antarctic waters. With France and Spain, with Louis the Fifteenth, Louis the Sixteenth, the Revolu- tion, and with Napoleon, we fought, at the expense of hundreds of millions of pounds, not merely for the flag, and for our inde- pendence and freedom, but for the trade which ever " follows the flag", for the possession of great and distant lands which were THE BRITISH TROOPS FORCE A LANDING AT ABOUKIR BAY IN FACE OF THE FRENCH BATTERIES. In 1798 Buonaparte, who was then virtually ruler of France, determined to conquer Egypt, as a preliminary to an attack on the British possessions in India. With twenty thousand men he defeated the Turkish army in the Battle of the Pyramids, and in a short time the whole of the lower valley of the Nile was in French hands. In the following year, however, Nelson destroyed the French fleet at the battle of the Nile, and it was then decided by the British Government to drive Buonaparte from Egypt. To that end Sir Ralph Abercrombie was despatched to Aboukir Bay, where he successfully landed his army under a tremendous fire from the French batteries. Soon afterwards he met and defeated the whole French army, and in so doing ended Napoleon's conquests in the East. (2) BRITAIN AT WAR IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 37 either richly provided already with populations to receive the products of our looms, or had "ample verge and room enough" for emigrants from our shores. In America and in Asia, as we shall see, we were face to face with our old European foes, the French, and a decisive duel ensued for mastery in those regions. Compared with this issue, the European part of the contest which lasted, with intervals, from 1740 to 1783, becomes of slight significance. These were our first wars on the larger scale, when our ships and men were engaged in almost every quarter of the globe. The hostility of Napoleon to Britain, armed as he was with the material resources of the great country which he ruled, and, by conquest, of much that lay outside the borders of France, was also, as we have partly seen in dealing with Egypt, fiercely spurred by ambition which had fixed an eager eye upon empire, not in Europe, but in Asia. The eighteenth century, thus viewed, becomes for us the grand epoch of British colonial extension, so far as it was secured by the achievements of armies and fleets. The British navy became irre- sistible: Britain was shown forth as the undisputed mistress of the seas. Able to guard her merchant ships by escorts of men-of-war which could crush the spasmodic efforts of foes whose great fleets had perished in pitched battles of signal victory for the islanders, she spread her goods abroad, ruined the trade of her foes, and established a commercial asceadency long to endure without any hope for would-be rivals. We will elsewhere describe the de- velopment at home of the industrial resources which supplied this country with the pecuniary means of conducting this gigantic struggle to the successful issue sealed by the Peace of 1815. 38 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. CHAPTER V. STATE OF IRELAND DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Penal laws against the Roman Catholics Restrictions upon Irish industries and trade The Irish Parliament Flood and Grattan Convention of Dungannon "White- boys" and "United Irishmen" Formation of "Orange" lodges Cruelties prac- tised on the Roman Catholics Irish rebellion of 1798 Act for union with Great Britain passed. For nearly a century after the last conquest of Ireland, under William the Third, that unhappy country was quiescent with the apathy of exhaustion, misery, and despair. In Elizabeth's reign the native Celts had been hunted like wild beasts; their faith had been proscribed ; their lands had been largely confiscated. Great further land robberies were perpetrated in the days of James the First, his son Charles, Cromwell, and William the Third. In one quarter alone, Ulster, the Protestant "plantation" of Scottish and English settlers, formed by James the First, was there any real prosperity. After the surrender of Limerick in 1691, the treaty which promised religious freedom to the Catholics was grossly violated, and they were made subject to the action of severe "penal laws", passed in the Irish parlia- ment, an assembly composed of Protestant lords, and of members returned for boroughs controlled by the crown or by patrons or by close corporations, and for counties dominated in election affairs by great proprietors of land. Catholics were not permitted to keep school ; to go beyond seas, or to send others thither, for education in the Romish religion. Intermarriage with Protestants was dis- allowed, in case of the possession of an estate in Ireland. Children of mixed marriages were always to be brought up in the Protest- ant faith. A " Papist" could not be guardian to any child, nor hold land, nor possess arms. He could not hold a commission in the army or navy, or be a private soldier. No Catholic could hold any office of honour or emolument in the state, or be a member of any corporation, or vote for members of the Commons, or, if he were a peer, sit or vote in the Lords. Almost all these personal disabilities were equally enforced by law against any Protestant who married a Catholic wife. It was a felony, with transportation, to teach the Catholic religion, and treason, as a IRELAND DURING EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 39 capital offence, to convert a Protestant to the Catholic faith. The legislation devised for the Irish Catholics in that evil time was described by Burke as " a machine as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the per- verted ingenuity of man". The legislation against Irish industries had its origin in the narrow and selfish spirit of commercial monopoly in England which had devised the Navigation Acts against the carrying trade of the Dutch, and was displayed by her in commercial dealings with her "plantations" and colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Irish manufactures and trade were openly suppressed and extirpated. In the reign of Charles the Second, Irish land was chiefly used for pasture, and Irish wealth was derived from the export of cattle, meat, butter and cheese to western English ports. The English landowners complained, and laws of 1665 and 1680 prohibited the importation of all this Irish produce into England. Her trade with the colonies was ruined by legislation which forbade exports thither save in English ships, or imports thence except with first unlading in English harbours. When the Irish land- owners were prevented from exporting their cattle to England, they raised large flocks of sheep and began a manufacture in wool. English jealousy was again aroused, and in 1699 Irish woollens were excluded from the English and all foreign markets. Thou- sands of workmen left Ulster for America and the Continent, and the country was once more reduced to penury, when the people were thrown for sustenance entirely upon the land. The linens of Ireland, and some manufactures in cotton, were also shut out from the English markets by heavy duties. The trade in beer and malt was heavily taxed, and, under George the Second, severe restrictions were laid on Irish manufactures in glass, paper, velvet, hats, and other articles. The breaking up of land from pasture into arable was restricted by legislation, and disastrous famines arose from time to time in the failure to grow sufficient corn. o The political position of the country was that, under the laws procured by Lord-deputy Poynings in 1495, the Irish parliament was subject to the privy-council in England, and, by later legis- lation, to the British parliament at Westminster. By the middle of the eighteenth century much relaxation had arisen in applying 40 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. the laws against religion, but the faith of the great majority of the Irish people was illegal, and there was no repeal of the persecuting statutes. In the early part of George the Third's reign, the Irish parliament began to show some signs of an independent spirit. In 1768 the Commons rejected a money bill "because it did not take its rise in that House", and parliaments in Ireland became octennial, instead of the Commons being chosen for the duration of each reign. Henry Grattan succeeded Flood as the advocate of legislative independence, and England's difficulty of war with her American colonies and with European powers gave Ireland her opportunity. In 1778, the British parliament, on Irish de- mands, gave some relief to Irish trade, and changes were made in the penal code against the Catholics. They could now hold their property on the same terms as Protestants, and in 1782 they were enabled to acquire freeholds for lives or by inheritance, to open schools, and to educate their youth in literature and religion. In 1779 the British government, in dread of invasion, had desired to raise a Protestant militia in Ireland, but there were no funds for their payment, and volunteer corps arose, for part of whom the ruling powers provided arms. Eighty thousand men, all Protestants, were soon enrolled, the Catholics being permitted only to subscribe towards the expenses. It was this volunteer movement which led to the brief legislative independence of Ire- land that existed from 1782 till 1800. Early in the former year the famous Convention of Dungannon was held. This was a meeting of the Protestant leaders of the Ulster volunteers, and after long debate they passed a resolution that " The claim of any body of men, other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ire- land, to make laws to bind that kingdom is unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance". A second resolution was that "We hold the right of private judgment in matters of religion to be equally sacred in others as in ourselves. We rejoice in the re- laxation of the penal laws against our Roman Catholic fellow- subjects, and we conceive this measure to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the union and prosperity of the inhabit- ants of Ireland". The men who passed these resolutions had arms in their hands, and were not to be trifled with. In April, 1782, the Irish parliament carried a Declaration of Rights, de- manding legislative independence, and Great Britain was forced IRELAND DURING EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 41 to come to terms. The legislative and judicial authority of the British parliament was renounced: the right of the privy-council to alter bills transmitted from Ireland was abandoned, and Ireland, for eighteen years, had an independent legislature, and occupied a constitutional position like that of Scotland before the Union of 1707. This Irish Parliament was, however, from the first a fore- doomed failure. Not merely was it purely Protestant, while four-fifths of the Irish people were Catholics, but it did not properly represent even the Protestant minority. Of the 300 members of this Irish House of Commons only 72 were really returned by the Protestant voters, while 123 sat for nomination boroughs, and represented only their patrons. Fifty-three peers directly appointed these "legislators", and could also ensure, by their influence, the election of ten others. Fifty commoners also nominated ninety-one members, and controlled the election of four others. As a representative assembly it was, therefore, a farce more ridiculous even than the British House of Commons prior to 1832. It was, in other ways, a grossly corrupt body, and the government in England influenced its debates and votes by whole- sale and unblushing bribery. The changes needed, in order to turn it into a really representative and useful body, were a thorough franchise reform and Catholic emancipation. For these changes, in those days, it was hopeless to strive, and the last state of the Irish parliament was worse than the first. Pitt, an en- lightened statesman placed in a very difficult position between the promptings of his own judgment and the prejudices of his chief supporters, including those of a monarch now half insane, strove to give more freedom to Irish trade. His efforts failed in both Parliaments, and matters drifted on towards the legis- lative union of the two countries. In 1793, the Irish Catholics obtained the right of voting for Protestant members, but they could not sit in parliament, and George the Third, from scruples which he supposed to affect his coronation oath, declined to grant full political emancipation. The national life of Ireland, deprived of an outlet in Parliament, sought relief in various forms of secret and open organization. The " Whiteboys " and other violent men who met in dark places and wrought corresponding deeds, had long been at work against the 42 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. payment of rent and tithe. As the end of the century drew near, the revolutionary spirit of France produced its effect in Ireland, and in July, 1790, the "Society of United Irishmen", organized by Wolfe Tone and Hamilton Rowan, was formed at Belfast. This body included men of both religions, and proclaimed "an identity of interests and a communion of rights" for all Irishmen. The successes of the French republicans so far alarmed the British government that, in 1793, the Irish Catholics, besides receiving the electoral franchise, were allowed to become barristers, attorneys, freemen of corporations, grand jurors, and magistrates, and to attain the rank of colonel in the army. The country was in a welter of confusion and trouble. The intelligent and leading Catholics o o were conciliated by the policy of concession, but bigots on both sides had formed hostile associations, and in 1795 open war was being waged in pitched battle between the Catholic " Defenders" and the Protestant " Peep-of-day Boys" of Ulster. Then came the formation of " Orange" lodges by the Protestants, in strong opposition to Catholic claims. Early in 1795 Lord Fitzwilliam, a distinguished Whig states- man, an avowed and warm supporter of Catholic emancipation, had arrived in Dublin as viceroy. Many Catholic petitions were pre- sented, asking admission to Parliament, and large numbers of Protestants were in favour of the measure. Then the viceroy, after a reply expressing his sympathy with the Catholics, was suddenly recalled, and this step has been held to have greatly conduced to the subsequent rebellion. The "United Irishmen", largely composed of Presbyterians, now became a secret society, and adopted republican views, aiming at revolution, and separation from Great Britain, instead of merely the reforms which they had vainly striven to obtain. An alliance with France was sought, and the Directory sent an armament, under their famous young general, Lazare Hoche, in 1796. The hostile fleet was dispersed by a storm, and the enterprise was abandoned. Excessive punishment followed this failure in Irish rebellion. The Catholics in Ulster had already been driven by thousands from their homes, and Lord Gosford, the governor of Armagh, declared that " neither age nor sex, nor even acknowledged innocence of any misconduct, is sufficient to excite mercy, much less to afford protection. The only crime with which the objects of this ruthless persecution are IRELAND DURING EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 43 charged is simply a profession of the Roman Catholic religion". Before the attempted French invasion, the Irish parliament had passed two Coercion Acts, giving large powers of arrest to magis- trates on mere suspicion. The Habeas Corpus Act was sus- pended; martial law was proclaimed; and the country was placed in a state of siege. After the failure of Hoche's expedition the Irish Catholics were delivered over to the tender mercies of the "Orange" yeomanry and of militia regiments from England. The grossest outrages were rife, including methods of torture called "half-hanging", "pitch-capping", and "picketing". "Half- hanging" consisted in stringing up the victim, cutting him down, and allowing him to struggle back to life again. " Pitch-capping" meant the pouring of hot pitch on the head, allowing it to cool, and then roughly tearing off the "cap" thus formed, bringing with it the hair and portions of the scalp. The fearful device of " picketing " placed the bare soles of the tortured man on pegs driven into the ground, with their pointed ends uppermost. His whole weight was thus supported on a most sensitive part, and exquisite pain was caused. The gallant Scottish soldier, Sir Ralph Abercrombie, was appointed to the command of the army in Ireland in December, 1796, and in one of his letters he declares that "here (in Ireland) every crime, every cruelty that could be committed by Cossacks or Calmucks has been committed by the troops". He issued a general order, severely rebuking the " licentiousness which must render the troops formidable to every one but the enemy", and he stoutly refused to withdraw this order at the request of the viceroy, Lord Camden. Within four months he resigned his command to General Lake, being unable to check excesses, and resolved not to play the part of an executioner. The Irish Catholics were goaded by these horrors into pre- mature and unsuccessful revolt. In March, 1798, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, one of their leaders, died of wounds received in his desperate resistance to arrest in Dublin. In May, detached risings took place, chiefly in the counties of Wexford and Wick- low, and the rebels at first gained some successes over the troops. Enniscorthy and Wexford were taken, and cruel massacres of Protestants occurred. After repulse from New Ross and Arklow, the insurgents were finally and decisively defeated by General 44 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Lake at Vinegar Hill, near Enniscorthy, on June 2ist. This event was followed by an exciting episode, not very creditable to the rulers of Ireland and their instruments. In August three frigates, under English colours, dropped anchor in Killala Bay, county Mayo. About eleven hundred Frenchmen, with two guns, under General Humbert, landed. Killala and Ballina were taken, and the invaders were joined by some fourteen hundred Irishmen. With this small force Humbert advanced on Castlebar, which was held by about four thousand yeomanry and militia, in the bad state of discipline denounced, as we have seen, by Aber- crombie. Humbert showed much skill, took the British in flank and drove them away in disgraceful rout, which amply fulfilled Abercrombie's prophecy as to the probable value of lawless troops in action. General Lake was in command, and he left behind him all the artillery, ammunition, and small arms. The fleeing troops scarcely halted until they reached Athlone, eighty miles from the field. They there encountered the viceroy, Lord Corn- wallis, and so ended what the Irish called "the Races of Castle- bar". A brave resistance was made at Castlebar, when the French occupied the town, only by a small body of Highlanders, who scorned to flee rather than fight. The Irish Republic was proclaimed by the French victors and their friends; but there could, of course, be no hope of ultimate success against the large British forces in Ireland. On leaving Castlebar for Sligo, Hum- bert found his march followed or watched by bodies of men, with Lake, General Moore (afterwards Sir John, the hero of Corunna), and Cornwallis in command. He defeated, in a fierce battle, the Limerick militia who faced him forty miles north-east of Castlebar, but was at last surrounded by an overwhelming force, and, after a resistance made for honour's sake, the French general was driven to lay down his arms less than nine hundred French- men thus becoming prisoners to above thirty thousand foes on or near the scene. The suppression of the rebellion of 1 798 was followed by seventies so brutal that the viceroy, Lord Cornwallis, wrote : " There is no law either in town or country but martial law. Numberless murders are committed by our people without any process or examination whatever"; and again, in April, 1799, when all danger of further outbreaks had long ceased, Cornwallis IRELAND DURING EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 45 denounced the system of free quarters for the troops, " which comprehended universal rape and robbery throughout the whole country ". Later still, he declared that the " violence of our loyal friends " (the Orangemen) was such as would, if not checked with the strictest hand, become "a more violent and intolerable tyranny than that of Robespierre ". In this terrible condition of affairs it appeared to Pitt that a legislative union of the two countries was the one policy which afforded a prospect of restored and lasting peace. This policy he adopted, with the full intention of granting therewith full political rights to the Catholics of both Ireland and Great Britain by ad- mitting them to seats in the legislature, and removing all disabilities which now placed them in a position inferior to that of their Protestant fellow-subjects. His beneficent intentions in this respect were frustrated by the obstinate refusal of the king, and the measure was thus deprived of that quality which would have commended it with great force to the feelings of the Irish Catholics who formed the bulk of the nation. The immorality of the inevitable means employed in Ireland in order to effect the Union has been denounced by some of its strongest supporters as an existing fact, men who stoutly oppose its repeal. The Irish Orangeman and Unionist, Mr. Lecky, declares "the Union, as it was carried", to be "a crime of the deepest turpitude a crime which, by imposing, with every circumstance of infamy, a new form of government on a reluctant and protesting nation, has vitiated the whole course of Irish opinion". What is certain is, that Castlereagh, the Chief Secretary chosen by Pitt to carry out the work, spent over a million sterling in buying out the owners of " rotten " or " nominee " boroughs which were disfranchised under the Act. In spite of the destruction of a large part of the correspondence, the clearest evidence exists of military intimidation, of the bribery of the Irish press and the Irish bar, and of the forcible suppression of public meetings called to protest against the measure. The bill was at last carried through the Irish parliament, and on the first day of the nineteenth century the Act came into force. One hundred Irish members now sat in the House of Commons, and the Irish peerage was represented by four bishops, and by twenty-eight lay peers, chosen for life. Irish trade was admitted to a free career, with undoubted benefit to the country, and her share of contribution to the imperial revenue was 46 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. placed at two-fifteenths, far below the proportion due to population, and reckoned in accordance with her degree of national resources. Thus came into political existence " The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland", and the addition of the diagonal cross of St. Patrick, red on a white ground, completed the union flag in its existing form. CHAPTER VI. RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Prevalence of Deism in the reigns of George I. and II. Assailants and defenders of the Christian faith Corruption among the clergy of the Church of England Ignorance and brutality of the lower classes Rise of Methodism The Wesley s and White- field Labours of General James Oglethorpe and John Howard Prison reform Hospitals founded Hannah More, Robert Raikes, Thomas Clarkson, and William W T ilberforce Granville Sharp and slavery Rise of the Evangelical party in the Church of England- William Romaine, John Newton, and Charles Simeon. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, an outbreak of Puritanism within the Church did great service to the cause of religion and morality among the masses, and ended in the estab- lishment of a great body of orthodox or evangelical dissenters. The social condition of both the upper and the lower classes, in the reigns of George the First and George the Second, was such as loudly to call for the efforts of earnest men towards a beneficial change. Christian belief was at a very low ebb in polite society, where opinions had been long tending towards mere Deism. A Deist is understood to be one whose belief in the existence and providence of God is based simply on evidence and reason. He denies all "revelation" or "supernatural religion", and is also known as a " Freethinker". During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a school of English writers appeared advocating such views. The Scriptures were subjected to hostile criticism; the miracles and the main doctrines of the Christian faith were rejected, and some even denied the immortality of the soul. These writers were rather sharp-witted than learned, accurate, or profound, but for a long period they exercised a strong influence on a society devoid of earnestness or enthusiasm on all subjects save self-interest and personal enjoyment. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, soldier, statesman, RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 47 philosopher, and poet, the friend of the Constable Montmorency and of Isaac Casaubon, and the comrade-in-arms of Maurice of Nassau, has been called the " Father of Deism ", from the work, published in 1645, in which he advocated the belief in a supreme God; in virtue and purity as the worship due to Him; in repent- ance for sins; and in a future state of rewards and punishments. He was succeeded by Matthew Tindal, who published in 1730 his Christianity as Old as the Creation, maintaining that there has been no special revelation, and advocating "natural" religion; by John Toland and Woolston; by the third Earl of Shaftesbury, whose Characteristics was published in 1711; by Anthony Collins, whose Discourse on Freethinking appeared in 1713; by Lord Bolingbroke, and others of the same anti-Christian class. A blight came over the Church soon after the close of Queen Anne's reign. Zeal was greatly cooled, doctrine was somewhat lax, and devotion to episcopal and parochial duty was deplorably deficient during the period that came between the Hanoverian succession and the French Revolution. The assailants of Chris- tianity were, indeed, ably met in controversial writing by one of the greatest of English divines, Joseph Butler, bishop of Bristol, and then of Durham, whose Analogy was published in 1736; and by William Law, who answered Tindal's book in 1732, after publishing in 1729 the famous Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, which first aroused religious convictions in Dr. Johnson, wrought deeply and strongly upon the Wesley brothers and their work, and received hearty praise for its sincerity and power from one whose single eulogy could confer lasting renown, Edward Gibbon, the foe of Law's religion, the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Church hierarchy and lower ministers were, however, lacking in that life-example of sincerity and zeal which must always influence both belief and practice in lay society more strongly than bare argument, or dialectical skill, or rhetorical appeal. The English prelates and higher clergy, under George the Second, would often stoop to court, in hope of still better preferment, the king's coarse-mannered female favourites. The levees of the prime minister were more familiar with episcopal faces and garb than the scenes of labour which called for oversight and care. We hear of a Welsh bishop who dwelt amid the hills and dales of Westmoreland, and admitted without shame that he had only once 48 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. visited his diocese. The literature of the day informs us that the best-known, the permanent, resident in many country parishes was the ill-paid curate. The incumbent, rector or vicar, under the evil system which at that time prevailed in the National Church, was a wealthy pluralist, who held and enjoyed the incomes of several benefices, and passed his life in a centre of learning, as at Cambridge or at Oxford or some other cathedral-town, or amid the fashionable throng of London, Bath, and other resorts of the polite world. A large part of the clergy showed, in their daily lives, unbecoming, if not vicious, tastes and habits. The pages of Fielding and Smollett, with all due allowance for satire and exag- geration, cannot be wholly false in their delineation of hard-drinking, gambling priests. The country parson would be often more devoted to his stable, his kennel, and the sports of the field and the race- ground than to his duties inside the church fabric or the abodes of penury and disease. The contemporary denunciations of respec- table men of their own order; the admissions of clerical sinners themselves, in correspondence published in later days; the testi- mony of men like Arthur Young, and Cowper, and Crabbe, leave no room for doubt as to the character of too many of the Georgian clergy in the last century. When they did address their flocks from the pulpit nothing could be, as a rule, more meagre than the matter, more dull, insipid, monotonous, and unaffecting than the delivery of their discourses. As the great actor, Garrick, said, " You clergymen, in the pulpit, deal with the real as if it were fictitious; we players, on the stage, treat the fictitious as the real ". The clergyman of that day who wished to stand well with the fashionable world was bound to avoid the least approach to excitement or enthusiasm in matters connected with his sacred profession. He would be guilty of that worst of sins, " bad taste "; he would be playing the part of a Puritan or " canting dissenter ". The religion and morals of the upper and the lower orders were consonant with the apathy, neglect, and bad example rife among those who were charged with the work of maintaining a high standard of faith and practice. In the fashionable world, the men, and many of the women, were Deists at the best. Their lives were stained by gross vice. Drunkenness, gambling, sexual profligacy, gluttony, were rampant; many a promising young life was cut short by the sword or bullet of the duellist. Virtue and religion RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 49 were found chiefly in the middle and lower middle classes. The lower mass of the people were sunk in a condition of gross ignor- ance, brutality, and vice. Fielding remarks on their insolence and rudeness of language and demeanour, in the streets and on the river, in London, towards those guilty of the crime of being better- garbed than themselves, by virtue of their superior means or station. A French writer notes the " insolent rabble " of porters, sailors, chairmen (the carriers of sedan-chairs), and day-labourers as worthy only of " a country without law or police ". A large portion of the lower class, especially in the towns, almost wholly neglected by the clergy, and cared for only by some of the Baptists and other dissenting bodies, were mere heathens as to religious knowledge and belief, and little better than the brutes in their lives, sodden with the newly-devised drink, gin, and devoted in their hours of ease to dog-fighting, cock-fighting, bear-baiting, and other coarse and cruel recreations. The University of Oxford enjoys the distinction, little valued by her scions in that age, of sending forth the men who were to work with immense and enduring regenerative effect upon this festering immorality and irreligion. John Wesley, son of the rector of Epworth, in the Isle of Axholme, Lincolnshire, after education at Charterhouse School and at Christ Church, became a fellow and classical lecturer of Lincoln College, Oxford, in 1726, and took priest's orders in the Church two years later. He and some other young men, including Wesley's younger brother, Charles, with James Hervey, George Whitefield, a poor scholar of Pembroke College, and William Law, formed the habit of meeting in each other's rooms for prayer, religious converse, and mutual help in efforts towards a life of serious thought and of good works. They taught poor children in the town, visited the sick and the prisoners in the jail, and led strict and holy lives. Such conduct did not fail to draw attention from the idle and profligate society which was then largely found at the universities. A student of Christ Church, sneering at their strict observance of the rules of religion and at the regularity of their lives, dubbed them " Methodists". Hostile wit also styled them "The Holy Club", and " Sacramen- tarians", and " Bible Moths", but the young enthusiasts were not made of moral stuff to be moulded by the force of ridicule. Whitefield, Hervey, and Law also took orders in the Church, VOL. I. $0 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. where their enthusiasm found no encouragement, save in the recognition, most honourable to himself at that time, accorded to Whitefield by Dr. Benson, bishop of Gloucester. That true- hearted prelate, when a complaint was made to him that White- field's first sermon at Gloucester had driven several people mad, coolly expressed a hope that the "madness" would not be for- gotten before the next Sunday. After voyages made to Georgia, in North America, to preach the gospel to the colonists and to the heathen Indians, the Wesleys and Whitefield began to address the " common people " in England in the open air, or in barns, or in dissenting chapels, or where- soever men and women would gather to hear them. This initial work was undertaken in the spring of 1739, and was continued with ardour and industry, amidst the railing or the contempt of the clergy of the Established Church, and the persecution, in word and act, of mobs who, aroused against the preachers, sometimes pelted them with mud and stones. The light literature of England, for forty years, abounds in sneers and slanders aimed at the leaders of, and converts to, the new religious movement. They were denounced as fanatics or as hypocrites, and some of the number, as in all such phases of religious excitement and revival, were open to such reproach, but the work went on, conquering and to conquer, until the dormant Church was herself stirred into new life and shamed into rivalry. A moral and religious revolution was pro- duced which had a great effect in the maintenance of law and order when the wild passions of mankind, along with legitimate desires for conservative reform, were aroused or encouraged by the great political outbreak beyond the Channel. The labours of John Wesley as an itinerant preacher were incessant. He had no permanent residence, and never allowed bad weather or rough roads to stay his journeys of from forty to sixty miles a day on horseback. He read or wrote as he travelled, and often preached four or five times in the space of a single day. Wesley's eloquence was enforced by a dignified manner, a harmonious voice, and a thorough persuasion of the truth and importance of that which he uttered, and, in his perorations, he pointed and drove home his appeals by the use of the Scriptural "thou" and " thee", as though he addressed a single soul, so that each hearer to whom his words were applicable was thrilled as by RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 51 a personal exhortation to repent. The effect of Whitefield's preaching is beyond rivalry in modern days. His voice was so resonant, that the words clearly reached the ears of thirty thousand people gathered in the open air. The tones were as musical and charming as they were far-reaching, and his utterance was rein- forced by vehement action, startling apostrophes, and thrilling appeals of marvellous impetuosity and power. When he addressed a large gathering of coal miners at Kingswood, near Bristol, the rude hearers were at first awed into deep silence, and he has described the feelings which almost overcame himself when, with the open firmament above him, amid the fields where thousands were gathered, some in coaches, some on horseback, and some in the trees, he saw " the white gutters made by the tears which fell down the black cheeks of the men just come out of their coal pits". These two great evangelists widely differed in some points of character and ability. Whitefield rested on his work of rousing sinners by his burning eloquence, without thought of founding a systematic and permanent body of successors to his personal effort. His followers were found in all parts of the land, but they were not organized by him, though some regard him as the founder of " Calvinistic Methodism". On one occasion White- field gave help at a religious revival in Scotland, when the lowest of the people of Glasgow went forth to Cambuslang, and the English Methodist saw thirty thousand persons from all parts around gathered to attend his preaching. Scenes of extraordinary bodily excitement were there beheld, as at many of the English meetings shrieks, fainting fits, convulsions. The ministers of the Scottish Church held various views as to the value of these mani- festations, but the general abiding effect was the diffusion of a more earnest religious feeling throughout Great Britain. John Wesley, at an early period, separated himself, without any personal quarrel, from his eloquent friend and colleague. Wesley did not approve Whitefield's plan of permitting every converted man, how- ever unfitted he might be in knowledge or in training, to become a preacher, and, when he was practically ejected from the Church, he set himself to the work of organizing his followers into a per- manent religious body. It must not be forgotten that Wesley never formally renounced his connection with the Church, and that he was strongly attached 52 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. to Episcopacy, but he and other ordained ministers of the Estab- lishment found themselves excluded from her pulpits, and were fain to work outside. He did not desire to adopt the name of "Methodist", which has adhered (like the word "Christian", itself at first a hostile designation) not only to the body which he founded, but to most, if not to all, the ramifications of this great undesigned schism. Our most brilliant historian describes John Wesley as " a man whose eloquence and logical acuteness might have made him eminent in literature, whose genius for govern- ment was not inferior to that of Richelieu, and who, whatever his errors may have been, devoted all his powers, in defiance of obloquy and derision, to what he sincerely considered as the highest good of his species". Such were the high qualities dis- played by the founder of Methodism. The first conference of the new religious body was held in 1744, and was composed of six clergymen, who considered the topics "What to teach; How to teach; and What to do". Secession from the Church was then disavowed, but five years later the movement took an organic and definite form, with its own ministers, lay preachers, leaders, trustees, and stewards. The empire was divided into circuits for the labours of about seventy ministers, and from this date till John Wesley's death, in 1791, Methodism was becoming divergent from, and at last entirely independent of the Anglican Church. Many excellent hymns were written for the use of the worshippers in " Wesleyan " or Methodist chapels by Charles Wesley and others, and the various "societies" had, at the above date, spread over the United Kingdom, the West Indies, and the United States, and were composed of about 80,000 members. This number has grown to many millions in various parts of the world, formed into several distinct Methodist bodies. The original organization, comprising the Wesleyan Methodists of the United Kingdom, is governed by an annual Conference, now partly made up of laymen, invested with supreme legislative and judicial power, and headed by a president and secretary chosen for one year. The revival of religion wrought by Wesley and his com- peers was coincident with much new philanthropic work on be- half of the most miserable and degraded classes of society. General James Oglethorpe, who had fought on the Continent under Prince Eugene, and had afterwards entered the House RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 53 of Commons, where he sat for more than thirty years, is the man whose "strong benevolence of soul" was sung by Pope. This good man was chairman of the select committee of the Commons which examined into and reported on the terrible cruelty and oppression prevailing in the three London prisons for debtors the Fleet, the King's Bench, and the Marshal- sea. It was mainly due to his exertions that the misdeeds of the wardens of the Fleet, and of the keeper of the Marshalsea, were brought to light. The unhappy debtors were subject to fraud, extortion, filth, starvation, disease, and to torture wrought by heavy fetters, thumb-screws, and iron skull-caps. The gifts of the charitable, to provide food for the prisoners, were often stolen by the wicked men in charge. A wretch named Bambridge, co- warden of the Fleet, was deprived of his office by an Act, and many of the abuses were remedied. The colony of Georgia, in North America, was projected, and founded in 1733 by Oglethorpe, as a place of refuge where debtors lying in English prisons might make a new start in life. It is for beneficent action in regard to prisons that John Howard is renowned. As a young man of large fortune, he was making a voyage to Lisbon in 1756, in order to view the effects of the great earthquake, when he was taken prisoner by a French privateer. That which he saw and suffered in a French dungeon at Brest drew his attention to the treatment of prisoners in British, Irish, and Continental jails. In 1773 he became high-sheriff of Bedfordshire, and he then used his position for practical ends in behalf of prisoners. After a series of tours of investigation, he brought some of the results of his inquiries before Parliament, and two Acts were passed, one for the payment of fixed salaries to jailers, who were thereby debarred from detaining untried, or even acquitted, prisoners for non-payment of arbitrary fees; the other for the enforcement of cleanliness in jails, with the object of staying the outbreaks of the fever which still, when it was brought by " lean and yellow culprits", as in Stuart days, from their cells to the dock, " sometimes avenged them signally on bench, bar, and jury". His important work, The State of Prisons, was published in 1777, and his long labours led, directly or in- directly, to the provision of healthy cells, the separation of the sexes, and the division of debtors from felons. The attention 54 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. which Howard also gave to the condition of hospitals led him to efforts for the prevention of the plague, during which new toils he perished from typhus fever at Kherson, in South Russia, in 1/90. St. George's Hospital, London, followed in 1733 the founding of the noble institution, Guy's Hospital, in 1725; the London and the Middlesex Hospitals arose in 1740 and 1745, and the Small Pox Hospital in 1746. Jonas Han way, a kindly and eccentric merchant, traveller, and navy commissioner, was mainly instrumental in founding the Magdalen Asylum for unhappy women, and the excellent Marine Society for taking distressed boys off the streets, and training them for service on merchant ships or men-of-war. A good example of effort to promote education among the agri- cultural class was given by Hannah More, the friend of Johnson, Reynolds, and Burke, at her dwelling on Cowslip Green, near Bristol. One of the best of English philanthropists and patriots, Robert Raikes, proprietor of the Gloucester Journal, founded Sunday-schools about 1781. He gathered from the streets of his native city parties of degraded boys and girls, children of drunken and neglectful parents, who had left them to become revolting, in sight and sound, to the people passing to public worship on Sunday. Some women were paid to teach these waifs and strays to read, and then to go to church with cleanly persons. Self-respect followed the growth of knowledge and decency, and outcasts became honest and useful citizens. Thus began the great and good work which has, in a later age, placed millions of children in the Sunday-schools of Great Britain. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, some men devoted to good works began the efforts which, early in the nineteenth, were to produce the abolition of the British trade in slaves. The names of Thomas Clarkson, of Zachary Macaulay, the father of the historian, and of William Wilberforce, will be found also in connection with later toils undertaken for the completion of human freedom within the limits of the empire. To Granville Sharp, a scholar and writer of repute, who at one time held a civil post in the Ordnance Office, belongs the glory of obtaining, at great cost of money and exertion, a famous legal decision concerning slaves. It was he who, in effect, "freed the soil of his native land from the taint and the possibility of slavery": he established the pro- RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 55 position that "slaves cannot live in England". Sharp asserted, before the lord mayor, in 1765, the freedom of a maimed negro slave, named Jonathan Strong, who was seized in the city of London by his former master, Mr. David Lisle, a Barbadoes lawyer, who had turned out the man into the streets as useless, after reducing him to that condition by brutal treatment. The lord-mayor discharged the negro from custody, and Lisle then began legal proceedings against Sharp, relying upon opinions stated to have been given in 1729 by the attorney-general and the solicitor-general, to the effect that a slave did not gain his freedom by the fact of coming from the West Indies to Great Britain or Ireland. This opinion was said to have been supported by Lord Chief-justice Mansfield. Sharp then spent nearly two years in the study of the laws which concerned liberty of person for British citizens, and wrote, for private circulation amongst lawyers, a pamphlet on the subject, which seems to have deterred Lisle from proceeding with his action. In 1770 the great case of James Somerset arose. This slave, brought to England by his master, Charles Stewart, in 1769, had left his service. He was then seized in London, and taken on board a vessel for conveyance to Jamaica, to be sold there as a slave. Sharp intervened, and the matter came before Lord Mansfield and three other judges in February, 1770. Counsel for Somerset maintained " that no man at this day is or can be a slave in England ". The case was postponed, for the further consideration of issues so important, and in May the question again came before the Court, on the broad ground "whether a slave, by coming into England, becomes free?". On June 22nd, Lord Mansfield delivered the unanimous judgment of himself and colleagues that "the power claimed (of seizing and detaining Somerset) never was in use here, or acknowledged by the law, and therefore the man must be discharged". Thus was established the principle, as laid down by the counsel for Somerset, following the judgment given, "As soon as any slave sets his foot on English ground, he becomes free". Granville Sharp aided Clarkson in founding, in 1787, the Association for the Abolition of Negro Slavery, and was also instrumental in establishing the colony of Sierra Leone for the reception of freed men. The influence of the Methodist revival was felt, towards 56 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. the end of the eighteenth century, in the Church of England which had practically forced the Methodists out of her com- munion. The " Evangelical party " arose, having its centre at Cambridge, and including some men of distinguished charac- ter and position. William Romaine, of Christ Church, Oxford, who became in 1764 rector of St. Andrew Wardrobe and St. Ann's, Blackfriars, was a great and shining light among this energetic party until his death in 1795. John Newton, curate of Olney, and the friend of the poet Cowper, became rector of St. Mary W r oolnoth, in the city of London, in 1779, and was the author of some famous hymns, dear to the religious world of Eng- land. Cecil, Zachary Macaulay, and William Wilberforce were among the most pious and active members of the Evangelical school, whose leader was Charles Simeon, a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and incumbent of Trinity Church in that town for more than fifty years. He was one of the chief founders of the Church Missionary Society, and it was he who induced Henry Marty n x of St. John's College, the senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman of 1801, to sail for the mission work in the East, where he was to find, after exhausting toil as a preacher, and as a trans- lator of the New Testament into some Oriental tongues, the early grave lamented in some youthful verse from Macaulay's pen. Simeon collected funds for a society to purchase advowsons in the Church, and to this day " Simeon's Trustees " present to certain livings clergymen of the Evangelical party. Simeon and his followers did not further any corporate reforms within the Church, or seek to influence it as a national institution. Their aim was to increase individual piety, and, above all, to create a high standard of clerical devotion to duty, in connection with the holding of sound doctrine, in strict accordance with the teaching of the New Testa- ment and of the primitive church. In this regard much useful work was achieved. INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EARLY TIMES. 57 CHAPTER VII. GROWTH OF INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE PREVIOUS TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Early industries The Danes give an impulse to English commerce Foreign workers settle in England Craft- and merchant-guilds organized Efforts of Edward I. to establish trade Edward III. "the father of English commerce" Manufacture of cloths " Staple towns" established Importance of fairs Ravages of the Black Death cause scarcity of labourers and rise of wages Trading by merchant-adven- turers Early "mercantile system" Discoveries of new lands open new sources of trade Trinity House established Commercial policy of Elizabethan statesmen Extinction of trade monopolies Expansion of trade under James I. and the Commonwealth Banking system established Progress of agriculture Reclama- tion of waste lands Industries and commerce of Scotland. Looking at the whole course of our history since the Norman Conquest, we find that the commercial supremacy of Great Britain, to which she largely owes her foremost position amongst the nations of the world, is of very recent date. It was not till long after Stuart times that we took our place as the wealthiest of existing nations, contributing to the general stock of civilization triumphs of enterprise in trade and manufactures, and a marvellous industrial success among the peoples of the world. Leaving aside for the moment the great primitive occupation, agriculture, we proceed to a rapid sketch of progress prior to the eighteenth century, before treating of the advance "by leaps and bounds" which was witnessed soon after the middle of that momen- tous time. In tracing the changes due to the application of foresight and energy in industrial affairs, we shall see a succession of typical forms of organization, due to the diverse needs and circumstances of different ages in history. Britain has in turns been distinguished among the countries of Europe for the growing of corn, the pro- duction of wool, and the mining of coal and iron, and these different phases of industry were brought to pass not merely by her own wants, but by her commercial dealings and connection with other lands. Social and industrial economy, in the earlier days of civil- ized life, are concerned with the needs and subsistence of large households and of village communities. Thence, in the middle ages, we pass to the organized industry of towns, and again to arrangements for trade and labour which have in view, through a 58 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. regular system of mercantile development, the creation and main- tenance of national wealth and power. The arts of our early English sires, apart from the tilling of the soil, showed skill in the making of weapons, wheeled vehicles, and ships. After their settlement in Britain, and the rise of an England, with the growth of kingly power, and the adoption of the Christian faith, we have industries plied by monks and nuns in their religious houses, as in carpentry and weaving, and in other forms needful for communities that, with the almost entire absence of trade, must supply their own wants. By degrees, we come to hawkers or travelling dealers, and to the rise of rude markets, with warehouses for the storage of food against the day of sale. Monks from abroad introduced the art of illumination of manuscripts, the making of glass, and working in various metals for ornament and for uses before unknown. The English women began to have higher skill in weaving, and to embroider vestments for the service of the church. Under Alfred the Great, ship-building, which had long declined, was revived for the work of defence against the Danes. English merchants had begun to appear at continental marts, and Charles the Great made a sort of commercial treaty with Offa, King of Mercia. The trade in slaves was carried on, against the denunciations of the clergy, Bristol being one of the chief scenes of this traffic in the eleventh century. The coming of the Danes to England gave an impulse to commerce, and wrought with abiding effect on the national char- acter, in reviving the decayed spirit of maritime enterprise. The Norwegians and Danes, at the time when their race so largely settled on British soil, were noted for commercial energy and skill. By way of the Russian rivers and the Caspian or the Black Sea, an export trade in amber was carried on with Oriental lands, in exchange for imported gold, spices, jewels, and other products. The existence, in Swedish museums and private collections, of many thousands of ancient Arabian coins, from many different towns of the Caliphate, is an interesting proof of this traffic, which the Crusades were to divert, in a large measure, to the southern nations of Europe. Their voyages extended to Iceland and Greenland, and the former country was quickly colonized by settlers from Norway. The English now began to trade with the north of Europe, and towns on tidal and other rivers, as well as on the INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EARLY TIMES. 59 coast, grew with the growth of internal, foreign, and coasting traffic. The extended use of money removed the inconveniences of mere barter, and began also to lessen the payment of rents in kind. Another proof of progress was given in the settlement and use of units of length, area, distance, capacity, and value, and in the adoption of some standards of measure and weight. Tolls for facilities of trade were charged, and laws were aimed at commercial crime. After the Norman Conquest, the feudal system of rule dealt a blow at private enterprise in industry and trade. Authority interfered with the prices of home products, and traders were forced to pay exorbitant dues. These disadvantages were com- pensated by the closer connection established between England and the Continent, and the Crusades aroused daring and adventurous spirits, opened new sources of knowledge, and new paths for com- merce. A revival of trade came with the rise of new foreign cities, or the progress of ancient towns in Germany, Italy, and Flanders, and the burghs of Scotland began to develop prosperity arising from toil and traffic. The industries of England received some benefit from a large immigration after the Conquest. A body of Flemings was settled in South Wales by Henry the First, where they pursued their craft as workers in wool. Merchants from Normandy appeared in London, and the art of building, with the substitution of stone for wood, was displayed by foreign masons in cathedrals, abbeys, castles, and other edifices. Weaving appears to have become at this time a regular craft, carried on by foreign artisans, who were not admitted to the municipal privileges of the freemen in the towns. Trades began to be organized in craft- guilds, with royal charters to secure their rights. The extent of trade between Germany and England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries appears from the records of the time which mention British exports of meat and fish, lead and tin, wool and jet, and fatted cattle, in return for which our mer- chants received the silver of German mines, with some supplies of corn in time of need. The Hansa, or Hanseatic League, com- 7 o ' posed of cities in northern Germany and adjacent states, becomes of great importance in the trade of this period. Merchants from Cologne, with special privileges, were settled in London, and the wars of Edward the Third were supported by money borrowed 60 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. from the wealthy members of that guild. In the thirteenth century, we find English wool worked up in the looms of Italian towns. A great export of wine to our shores was made from Gascony and central France. The monks in England at this time were large producers of wool on the abbey-lands, and their wealth enabled them to be free importers of wine and other foreign luxuries. Before the close of the thirteenth century, industry and com- merce had become, in various ways, well arranged for the wants of the time, according to the ideas then prevalent, which regarded local, rather than national, prosperity. The merchant-guilds re- gulated the internal trade of towns, with regard to the sale and quality of goods, the recovery of debts, and the management of markets. The craft-guilds, composed of artisans in different kinds of labour, framed and enforced rules for the direction of their own particular business, and were the mediaeval form of trades-unions. The chief aim, however, was the production of good work, not the raising of the price of labour. The members were not to labour at night, when poor artificial light might mar the result of toil. Bad work was punished, and every effort was made to prevent those who were not members of the craft from producing goods of that class. Youths were trained in the handicraft controlled by each of these corporations, and this practice gave rise to the apprentice system of later days. Financial dealings had been improved in convenience by the ingenuity of Jews, and we find that letters of credit were in common use, and that bills of exchange were known. The keeping of accounts had made advances and had even been introduced on many estates. It was Edward the First that began to organize industrial and commercial transactions upon a national basis. He provided the machinery by which the whole subsequent development of British industry and commerce has been directed and controlled. He organized local powers and interests as parts of one body, con- nected not only with the head, but with all the other members. General legislation, applicable to business throughout the land, superseded local rules, and internal trade was greatly benefited by the establishment of uniform law, custom, and taxation. Edward the First appointed regular custom-house officers, and in seeking sites for new ports, he selected the ground on which INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EARLY TIMES. 6 1 we now see Hull and Great Yarmouth as places to found free towns. Under his guidance, Parliament provided by legislation for the security of merchants travelling by land, for the protection of ships from wreckers, for the recovery of debts, and for the purity of current coin. Great prosperity existed in the commercial towns of England at this time, and the arts of working in metal and stone, painting on glass, and embroidering, were cultivated with much success. Edward the Third, who is usually associated in the minds of modern readers of history only with warfare and ambitious attempts at continental dominion, has been also called, with some justice, the father of English commerce. It is likely that in his French wars he was not moved merely by personal or dynastic ambition, but was chiefly intent on the increase of national power, and on the development of national resources. The conquest of France would have secured peaceful and steady trade between the two countries, and his friendly relations with Flanders would have made her a third member of a commercial union likely to be profit- able to all concerned. It is certain that the victor of Cre9y did what he could to encourage foreign trade, on principles which aimed at obtaining a high price for English exports, and rendering imports cheap to the English consumer. It is certain also that he caused a development of English textile industry. Married to Philippa of Hainault, he was regarded with a friendly eye by the people of the Low Countries, whose artisans were greatly skilled in weaving, and sent the products of their looms in exchange for the raw wool shorn from the backs of English sheep. The weavers of Ghent and Bruges supplied garments to clothe the dwellers in our damp and chilly clime, and the royal revenue was largely derived from the export-tax on the wool which was sent from English ports. Our native weavers produced only the coarser woollens, with some fabrics made of hemp and flax, the chief seats of the trade then lying in Norfolk and Suffolk. There was also a manu- facture of cloth in Wiltshire and adjacent parts of the west. The fine cloths worn by the wealthy were imported from Flanders, in linen as well as woollen fabrics; silks and velvets came hither from Italy. By Edward's encouragement many Flemish artisans came to settle in England, especially at Norwich, then the chief seat of weaving in wool, with a population of some six thousand persons. 62 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. The export of English wool soon declined, in consequence of the increase of home manufacture. Edward also confirmed by statute the institution of "staple towns", where alone, in each district, its chief product or staple could be sold. Only merchants engaged in that particular trade could export its special goods. The staple towns for the chief English commodity, wool, were Newcastle, York, Lincoln, Norwich, Westminster, Canterbury, Chichester, Winchester, Exe- ter, and Bristol. The system was extended to the Continent by the appointment of a particular foreign town for the sale of English produce. At various times, Antwerp, St. Omer, and Calais, after its capture in 1347, had this privilege. The "staple" system ren- dered easier the collection of custom dues, and gave importance to merchants as a rising class of the community. Much of the business of that time was transacted, in provincial towns, at weekly or bi-weekly markets, and at great annual fairs, which increased facilities of communication have long reduced from the position of needs to nuisances, and, in most cases, have utterly abolished. Leeds had a wool fair for the sheep-owners of Lanca- shire and Yorkshire, and the place was then a great resort of English and foreign merchants from the ports on the east coast. On St. Giles' Hill, Winchester, a sixteen-days' fair was yearly held for the sale of all kinds of goods. Stourbridge Fair, near Cam- bridge, was one of the most important in the kingdom, lasting for the whole of September, and visited by the traders from many parts of the Continent, who disembarked at the then convenient harbours of Blakeney and Lynn. The merchants of Genoa and Venice came to this great mart, which was still flourishing in the days of Queen Elizabeth, with gems and spices, velvets and silks. Flanders sent thither the fine woollen and linen cloths of Ghent, Liege, and Bruges. Vintners tasted samples of French and Spanish wines: ship-builders bargained for the pitch and tar of Nor- way. Amber and furs for the use of the wealthy were displayed by merchants of the great Hanseatic League, with copper and iron for domestic and agricultural purposes, and raw flax and yarn for the making of linen. The English dealers took to Stourbridge their great sacks of wool for continental looms, with horses, corn, and cattle, and barley for the Flemings to brew strong ale. The tin of Cornwall, and Derbyshire lead, could there be seen, and the fair was, for a month, a busy town, with its long lines of stalls, THE HUMOURS OF STOURBRIDGE FAIR IN THE OLDP:N TIMES. A great part of England's business was transacted, in the olden times, at large annual fairs. One of these was held at Stourbridge, near Cam- bridge. It lasted the whole month of September, being visited by traders from Genoa, Venice, Ghent, Bruges, and the great towns of the Hanseatic League. Much trafficking was done in gems, spices, cloth, wines, silks, and other such commodities; while there was also a considerable amount of fun and merry-making combined with the serious business. It was a gathering like this which suggested Vanity Fair to the author of The Pilgrim's Progress. (3) VV. S. STAGEY. THE HUMOURS OF STOURBRIDGE FAIR IN THE OLDEN TIMES. Vol. i. p. 62. INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EARLY TIMES. 63 named either from the class of goods exposed for sale, or from the nationalities whose tongues were heard amidst the din of chaffering and fun. Just at the time when the country was greatly prospering in trade and industry, and the mass of the people, chiefly given to the work afforded by pasture and tillage, were even then enjoying higher physical comfort than their fellows in continental countries, a great economic change was wrought by the fearful plague, which broke out in 1348, known as the Black Death. It seems certain from the records that nearly half of the population of England, which may then have been four millions, was swept away in this pestilence. Labourers became very scarce; wages rose about fifty per cent, and legislation strove in vain to find a remedy for the land-owners. The main results were, a great increase in the number of petty farmers, the rapid extinction of villeinage or serfage, and the consequent growth of the class of free labourers on the soil. The agricultural population were seldom in better case, as regards sufficient wages to purchase food, than during the fifteenth century, in spite of wars at home and abroad. The growth in importance of the trading classes, shown in the formation of the great City Companies, who lent large sums to kings, and in the splendid style of living, which enabled William Canynges of Bristol to give fit entertainment to Edward the Fourth, was one cause of the trade-transition to modern times, which has been called the " mercantile system ". Restrictions laid upon the dealings of foreign merchants in England secured for natives the home and retail trade. In the fifteenth century, English merchants began to aim at competition with foreign shipping. No English vessel, up to that time, entered the Mediterranean, and many of the products of the East and of southern Europe reached our shores on board the vessels of the great annual trading squadron from Venice, which brought them to the ports on the English Channel. New companies of English "merchant-adventurers" began to be rivals in the trade of the Hanseatic League, and, under Henry the Fifth, large ships for trading purposes were built at Southampton, Bristol, and Hull. Commercial treaties were made with foreign sovereigns, and near the close of the fifteenth century we find an Italian appointed English consul at Pisa. The protection of home manufactures was sought, under 64 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Edward the Fourth, in the absolute prohibition of import for many classes of finished foreign goods. The " mercantile system " or " theory " was that of increasing national wealth at the expense of other countries, in the belief that prosperity consists in posses- sing much silver and gold, by excluding foreign manufactures, and admitting only raw material to be worked up here for sale abroad. This policy, lately abandoned, had some success at the time of its adoption. In 1463 the English farmers, suffering from imported foreign corn, were cheered by a law which forbade the introduction of the produce from abroad until English corn had passed the high price, at that day, of six shillings and eightpence, or half a mark, per quarter. In manufactures, the chief thing to be noted at this time is the great development in the making of cloth, carried on by capitalists who employed spinners and weavers at their own cottages in the country or tenements in towns. Industrial villages began to arise, and there were even some small beginnings of the modern factory system. When the boundaries of the world were widened by the mari- time discoveries of Columbus, Da Gama, Magalhaens, and other great navigators, near and after the close of the fifteenth century, the trade of the world was placed upon a new basis. The Medi- terranean ceased to be the great centre of commerce. The traffic between East and West was diverted from its paths through Genoa, Venice, and Alexandria, and the new passage round the Cape of Good Hope made Portugal, for a time, the chief trading nation, and Lisbon the great commercial town of western Europe. By slow steps, the merchants of England began to share in the benefits laid open to enterprise in the enlarged sphere of commercial dealing. An epoch had arrived in which our trading class was to enter on the course which ended in making Great Britain the chief owner of shipping, and London and Liverpool, with other great ports, the storehouses for a vast distributing commerce, involving all the nations of the earth. The physical extension of their bounds for European peoples, the throwing down, by courage and skill, of the barriers which had seemed to be impassable for man, placed the British Isles in the centre of the land-masses of the globe, and gave to the inhabitants a new geographical relation to the rest of mankind. Prior to the new discoveries, Britain had lain almost on the INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EARLY TIMES. 65 north-western edge of the regions known to civilized man; she was now to become, as the ages rolled away, the very centre, the beating heart, of the traffic of the world. Our commercial policy henceforth considered not merely the prosperity of the country by herself, but her position relative to other nations. Superiority was now the statesman's aim, and, as time passed on, victorious repulse of formidable foes gave thoughts of imperial sway to the prouder and more ambitious spirits of the coming wielders of mari- time power. In the days of Elizabeth the crisis came. The com- mercial sceptre, transferred from Bruges to Antwerp at the close of the fifteenth century, had passed to London before the end of the sixteenth. Protestant refugees, skilled in the arts of industry and trade, fled to our shores from the cruelties of the Inquisition and of Philip the Second's viceroy, Alva, which were desolating the cities of the Netherlands. Flemish merchants found a home in the English capital, where Elizabeth's friend and entertainer, the generous and hospitable Sir Thomas Gresham, had reared, on the model of the great edifice at Antwerp, the resort of merchants called the Royal Exchange. The defeat and ruin, by the weapons of man and the winds of Heaven, of the Spanish Armada, in 1588, gave England a foremost position among the European nations, as the champion of the Protestant peoples, and as the victor over the power then held dominant on land and sea. From that time forward our future was sure. The navy created by Henry the Eighth, backed by the adventurous courage and skill of Drake and Hawkins, Frobisher and Raleigh, shown in their exploits as privateers and buccaneers, as well as in formal battle against Spanish foes, made England, for the first time since Alfred's days, a nation of admitted strength upon the seas. Under Tudor sovereigns new companies arose for the extension of trade. The Merchant Adventurers, a society formed in the days of Henry the Seventh, was followed by the Turkey Com- pany, for trade with the Levant, by the Russian Company, in 1554, and by the East India Company, in 1600. The interests of shipping on the British coasts were duly regarded when Henry the Eighth established the corporation still known as the Trinity House, a guild whose full style is that of the "Fraternity of the Holy Trinity at Deptford ". Beacons and sea-marks, ballastage and buoys, and the general safety of harbours and coasts became, VOL. I. 66 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. under Elizabeth's charter, the special care of the incorporated Brethren. Bristol at this time acquired a new importance from the American trade, and the decline of the Hanseatic League threw the traffic of the Baltic and northern Europe into the hands of merchants at Boston and Hull. The Elizabethan age was the time when the mercantile system, destined to last for more than two centuries, through civil struggles and the earlier days of colonial expansion, was fully established by careful legislation. This national regulation of industry and trade had for its object the increase of national power. The measures adopted for this end were the accumulation of treasure by means of manufactures and commerce, the increase of shipping, the gather- ing of naval stores, the fostering of fisheries as a nursery of trained and hardy seamen, the establishment of new manufactures, the protection of English commerce and tillage by navigation laws and corn laws. A new Poor Law provided for the support of the helpless and for the punishment of the wilful idler, and the growth of prosperity secured peace at home, while it prepared the people to encounter enemies abroad. The results attained were commen- surate with the efforts made. Passing over for the present the colonial development of Stuart times, we may point to the fact that the policy inaugurated by Elizabethan statesmen enabled Great Britain to outstrip first Por- tugal, then Spain, next Holland, and lastly France, in the race for commercial supremacy. When we turn to the manufactures of the country in the Tudor period, we find a great increase in the working of wool. London employed some thousands of per- sons in the making of woollen caps, and many other towns were engaged in the trade. The worsted trade, with Norwich for its centre, was extended throughout the eastern counties. The broadcloths of the west of England now became famous, and the long stagnant north awoke to new industrial life in the production of various woollen cloths at Halifax, Manchester, and York. Artisans from Flanders settled at Sandwich, Colchester, Maidstone, Lynn, and many other towns, bringing with them im- provements in cloth-making and dyeing, with linen-weaving, thread- making, needle-making, cutlery work, clock-making, pottery, the lace manufacture that arose in Buckinghamshire and adjacent districts, and the famous lace fabrics then founded at Honiton. INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EARLY TIMES. 6/ Before the middle of Elizabeth's reign Norwich had more than four thousand Dutch and Flemish inhabitants, and the " new drapery ", as the cloth made by the foreign settlers was called, was exported very largely to the country from which Spanish cruelty and folly had expelled them. The extinction of many of the injurious monopolies in 1601 was a further benefit to trade. Bir- mingham, a town named in Domesday-book, was now beginning to be known for hardware in the form of knives, cutting tools of all kinds, bits, nails, and swords; and Sheffield, famous for its arrow-heads in the days of Cre9y anc ^ Poitiers, had now the rise of its renown for cutlery in the skill of artisans escaped from the Low Countries. The tin mines of Cornwall were still at work, as they had been for so many hundreds of years, and a valuable copper mine was opened in Cumberland in early Elizabethan days. The iron trade was confined to Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, and loud complaints were made that the land was being stripped of its forests, the wood from which was then the sole material used by workers in smelting the ore. The rich salt deposits of Worcester- shire and Cheshire still remained unused, and our forefathers, for the salting of winter meat and other uses, employed the imports from the south-west of France, or the salt obtained on our own coasts by evaporation. The use of brick for building had been revived, after the disuse of about a thousand years, and the clays of the eastern counties and of the valley of the Thames furnished building material for London and the neighbouring districts. The coal-mining largely practised by the Romans became extinct till Norman clays, and it was not till nearly the middle of the thirteenth century that Newcastle coal was heard of. In the fifteenth, the mining of coal had become a source of revenue, but the want of adequate means to pump water from the pits remained a great hindrance till the time of steam, and the total output was small indeed, compared with that which coming ages were to see. The Stuart age witnessed the commercial triumph of Britain over the energetic little state whose rise was the chief event in northern Europe at the close of the sixteenth century. At the union of the Scottish and English crowns, Holland was the foremost com- mercial and maritime power. Before the accession of her Orange Prince to the British throne, the fisheries, the trade, the war-fleets of this country were at least on a level with those of her sturdy rival. 68 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Blake made Cromwell master of the seas, and only for a short time after the Restoration was this position imperilled by waste and mis- rule. In the reign of James the First, English merchants had become a numerous, wealthy, and powerful class, the chief purchasers of the title of "baronet " invented by the " statecraft " of that needy king. Our trade had spread to all the ports of western Europe and the Mediterranean, of the Baltic and the North Seas. British fishermen were catching the whales of Greenland and the cod of Newfound- land. The Navigation Acts of the Commonwealth did much to destroy the carrying trade of Holland. Before the close of the seventeenth century, our commerce with the East and West Indies had vastly grown. The skilled artisans driven to our shores from France by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685, brought with them to London and to many other towns improvements in the weaving of linen and silk, in the making of clocks, glass, paper, surgical instruments, locks, and other articles of prime utility. These Huguenot refugees, who founded many famous English families the Trenches, Romillys, Martineaus, Boileaus, De Crespignys, Layards, and Millais numbered many thousands of souls, and introduced to the free land of their adoption some millions of capi- tal, with abundant political, military, and literary skill. The cloth manufacture of the country grew apace in this age. The counties of Worcester, Devon, Hereford, Wiltshire, Somerset, and Glouces- ter in the west; Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Westmoreland, with its famous " Kendal-green " cloth, in the north; the old seats of the trade, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex in the east, had weaving industries whose total product, by 1 700, was valued at about seven millions of pounds. The export trade of Newcastle now brought a crowd of colliers from the Tyne to the Thames, where their freights were being used, not only for the workshops, but for house- hold fires, and people were complaining of the " sea-coal smoke", which in Victorian days, mingled with fog, has become such a curse to the citizens of London and all oreat towns. o Along with this material development of the national resources, the financial methods and machinery of commerce were improved. We now have the establishment of a banking system, with the issue of notes, and this was followed, at the end of the seventeenth century, by the reform of the coinage and the foundation of the Bank of England. The same " mercantile system " was continued INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EARLY TIMES. 69 in restrictions on the import of manufactured goods, and on the exportation of native raw material, such as wool and hides and fuller's earth. The encouragement of the woollen manufacture was attempted in an Act of 1666, which enjoined, under heavy penalties, the burial of bodies wrapped in woollen only, instead of in linen shrouds, which latter use tended to increase the importation of foreign goods. The amassment of treasure within the country had been sought in the past by laws forbidding the export of bullion, but, under Charles the Second, full liberty was given to traders to take and send abroad foreign coin and precious metals in other forms, and the attention of legislators on commercial affairs was turned to the doctrine of the "balance of trade", which aimed at preventing imports of foreign merchandise from surpassing in value the exports of native goods. The earliest agriculture and pasturing, after the English Con- quest, was by a partner system under which the oxen of several men were employed together at the plough, while the cattle were fed on land held in common, and the same herd tended, on the grass or amid the woods of oak and beech, the swine and sheep of divers owners. The arable land was managed on the three-field system of one portion being under wheat or rye for a first crop after fallow, another sown with barley or oats, and the third 4ying fallow for a year, till its turn came round for rye or wheat. The monks did much in the draining of fen-lands, and in improving the art of cultivating the soil. In Plantagenet times, as villeinage became extinct, the better sort of serfs were turned into small tenant-farmers, and the poorer kind were labourers, living mainly on wages for tilling the land held by others. At this period, with its rude methods of tillage, a corn- crop of eight bushels, or one quarter to the acre, was reckoned a very good return. Sheep were largely kept for their wool, and oxen were used for drawing the plough and wheeled carts, but the lack of winter food prevented the fatting of much stock for the table. There were plenty of swine, whose meat was salted for winter use. Much care was given to improving the breeds of sheep, for the value of the fleeces, but the finest animals of that day would be diminutive specimens to modern eyes. The lessening of the supply of labour through the great plague of the fourteenth century caused a vast increase of permanent pasture, and in Tudor 70 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. days the inclosures of land for the spread of sheep-farming caused the rising known as Ket's rebellion. o The dissolution of the monasteries by Henry the Eighth de- prived the religious bodies, who had been, in general, excellent and kindly landlords, of all their estates, and their transfer into the possession of the new class of nobles caused a rise of rents which ruined many of the poorer tenants, and led to much pauper- ism. The confiscation of guild-lands by Protector Somerset, under Edward the Sixth, had a like effect upon the agricultural labourers, and caused the insurrections of 1549. In the sixteenth century, the progress made in farming included the use of greater capital, with better breeds of horses and horned cattle, and wiser methods of manuring the land. The growth of corn per acre was doubled, and new objects of tillage were introduced by the Dutch and Flemish immigrants. The gardens, fields, and or- chards began to supply wholesome and agreeable food in cherries, currants, apricots, better kinds of apples, celery, cabbages, carrots, and other vegetables. The hop-gardens of Kent and Surrey were seen to bloom in beauty, and beer became a national home- made beverage, making our Tudor forefathers independent of the Netherlands and Germany for the foaming ale which then held the place of coffee, tea, and cocoa at the morning meal. Before the close of that epoch, England had so far recovered her position as a corn-growing country, that Bacon, writing in 1592, describes her as "feeding other countries" instead of being fed by them. Books upon husbandry began to appear. Sir A. Fitzherbert, in 1534, with a farming experience of forty years, published maxims for the tillers of his day. Thomas Tusser, in 1573, issued his famous Five Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry in rhyming verse. Under the Stuarts, some roots, hitherto confined to the gardens, were grown in fields as a crop after corn, instead of the land being left fallow. The great area of fen-lands around the Wash, which had been useful ground in Roman times, but had relapsed into marsh at the Norman Conquest, was now taken in hand. In 1634, the Earl of Bedford spent three years in attempts to reclaim by drain- ing the great district afterwards named the Bedford Level: the work was only completed, by his successor in the title, in 1688, and in the end about three-quarters of a million of acres became good pasture-land, or corn-land of the best quality. The scheme em- INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EARLY TIMES. 71 ployed was one devised by an ingenious Dutchman, Vermuiden, who cut new channels of a spacious size to receive some of the sluggish waters of the Nene and Welland, Cam and Ouse, and other streams, and so created a current sufficient to clear the river- mouths of soil. The same engineer drained Hatfield Chase, in the south-east of Yorkshire, and relieved the country from the floodings of the Don. It is not needful to say much concerning the industries and commerce of Scotland prior to the Act of Union. The qualities inherent in the Scottish people were such as all the world now recognizes, and have mainly contributed to the wonderful advances made by that country in almost every department of material and mental civilization. Prior to the eighteenth century, it appears that trade, manufactures, and tillage were not in a forward state. The land had been much hampered by civil and religious troubles. The handicrafts were of a rude and homely kind, the chief manu- facture being in linen. The fisheries enabled the people to export, as now, large quantities of salmon and herrings, and Scottish beef, now of superlative merit, was known to English markets in Stuart times, by way of peaceful trade, after the cessation of the border forays conducted by the cattle-lifters of both countries. In 1649 we find Parliament dealing with the importation of the material made at Scottish salt-pans, on complaint of the English makers that "their salt could not keep market " with that produced by their rivals. The impetus to progress came when the statute which effected the parliamentary union swept away trade restrictions on the energies of the Scottish people. The industrial affairs of Ireland have been already dealt with in her history prior to 1801. 72 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. CHAPTER VIII. INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Restrictions on trade disappearing Adam Smith's teachings on political economy Government bounties Lighthouses and marine assurance companies established Story of the first silk mill in England Woollen and cotton manufactures Inven- tions of John Kay, Hargreaves, Arkwright, Lees, and Crompton Cartwright's power-loom Wedgwood's improvements in pottery James Watt and the steam- engine Improvements in the arts of bleaching and calico-printing The linen, paper, and glass manufactures Vast development of the coal and iron trades Effects on the distribution of the population Progress in agriculture Improve- ments in breeds of stock Board of Agriculture and agricultural societies estab- lished Improvements in the means of internal communication Construction of canals Building of bridges The post-office system Comparative statistics at close of the century. Throughout the eighteenth century the principles and practice of the "mercantile system" were maintained, with the old object of regulating trade, now in rivalry with France, as a means of increas- ing national power. It was for this that the cattle-trade and manu- factures of Ireland then treated as a merely conquered and foreign country were hampered and nearly ruined by hostile restrictions, and by the policy of exclusion from any share in British profits; it was for this that the colonies in North America were subjected to enactments of similar purport, if not of equally crushing force. As the century advanced, the "landed interest" began to be overweighted by the growing mercantile and manufacturing classes. Under Walpole's fiscal rule many beneficial changes were made. He aimed at freedom for British exports of manufactured goods, and at ease of import for the raw materials of which they were made. The export duties on home-made goods were almost swept away. The duty on raw silk and on about forty other imports was removed or lightened, and the manufacturing towns and the sea- ports, Birmingham and Manchester, Liverpool and Bristol, grew fast in population and wealth. By the middle of the century, the value of exported goods, which had been about six millions in 1701, had risen to twelve millions. Wise changes in the mode of collecting the customs deprived the smugglers and other fraudulent dealers of a great part of the profits which had previously been so detrimental to the revenue. The industrial system of Elizabethan days was now about to INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 73 break down under the changes wrought by the use of new machinery in manufactures. The science of Political Economy, whose prophet was Adam Smith, now arose to deal with new industrial conditions, and to establish the principle of "natural liberty" for the workings of handicrafts and commerce. This great man, born in 1723, of middle-class parentage, at Kirkcaldy, was educated at the univer- sities of Glasgow and Oxford, became the close friend of David Hume, occupied the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow in 1752, won wide fame in 1759, by his Theory of Moral Sentiments, and died, in 1790, lord-rector of his "nursing mother" in the liberal arts, the seat of learning founded in 1449, under the auspices of Pope Nicholas the Fifth. It is significant and remarkable that the renowned Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, the year when Watt, another distinguished Scot, produced the first effective steam-engine. The new method of dealing with the results of toil was thus simultaneous with the new machine for making labour easy and swift, and the two combined were to work a revolution in the industrial world. Adam Smith was the outcome and the highest product of a new school of economical thought. John Locke, William Petty, Joshua Child, and Dudley North, in England; and the illustrious Turgot, in France, had been striving towards freedom from "regulated" and restricted trade. The world was to be now taught that the increase of personal wealth, by allow- ing to the individual a free use of his particular abilities and energy, was the sure, straight road to the growth of national wealth; and that the growth of national wealth must not be sought in efforts to depress the industries of foreign nations, but in a system which seeks to work good for each in the benefit of all. In this we are somewhat anticipating the course of events. In the earlier part of the century, Parliament sought the good of the British ship-builders in bounties given for the export, from the American colonies to England, of masts and spars, turpentine and hemp, pitch and tar; a trade which would tend to make this country less dependent on the Swedish monopoly in materials for the construction and outfit of a mercantile marine. Bounties were also awarded to those who built stout ships of about five hundred tons burthen or upwards, suitable for arming in self- defence against hostile cruisers or privateers. The authorities 74 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. of the Trinity House adopted measures to improve the safety of the coasts. New lighthouses, as that at the Eddystone in 1709, followed by Smeaton's grand stone building in 1755, were erected at various points. Landmarks, buoys, and floating lights gave further help to navigators, and many Acts were passed for the improvement of harbours on the English and Scottish coasts. Imperfect charts were remedied by more careful and complete surveys, and a mechanical genius of Yorkshire, John Harrison, received, in 1767, a reward of twenty thousand pounds from the government, for the construction, on the principle of the compen- sating balance, of a chronometer which enabled mariners to deter- mine, with near approach to accuracy, the longitude of their vessels at sea. Under George the First, two Assurance Companies, still flourishing, began the business of securing owners against losses by sea; and in 1779, Lloyd's system of marine insurance was fully established among the underwriters who met at the Coffee-house in the Royal Exchange. The Lloyd's List, or ship news, had then been published for more than fifty years. In the development of industries during the earlier half of the century under review may be noted the extension, after the Union, of the Scottish linen manufacture, the growth of copper-mining in Devonshire and Cornwall, and the increased consumption of coal from Newcastle. The cotton manufacture, dependent on material obtained from Cyprus and Smyrna, is certainly known as estab- lished, in some shape, in 1641; it was just becoming a dangerous rival for the makers of linen when the new machinery came to effect an enormous change in the manufacturing system. Do- mestic work was to give place to the labours of the factory or mill, and the small capitalists were to be swallowed up in the swelling waves of industrial advance created by new iron-masters, "cotton-lords", and other producers of goods on a huge and systematic scale. The makers of articles for wear and other use had hitherto either worked at home, at looms or forges in or adjacent to their dwellings, or in small workshops at the abodes of masters who were often also engaged in tillage. There were, indeed, factories or "mills" to be seen, where more than a hundred "hands" were employed, but this was not the usual method. The work was largely put out by masters to be done by the operatives at their own homes, and, in place of large towns, shrouded in INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 75 smoke, with people crowded in close narrow streets and courts, there were countless small industrial villages, where the artisan and family combined the cultivation of a plot of ground, and the tending of fowls and pigs, or even of a cow, with the labours of spinning and weaving, fulling and dyeing, hammering iron and making tools. The earliest of the modern English factories or mills was the establishment for the working of silk, erected at Derby in 1718, by the brothers John, William, and Thomas Lombe. Here, for the first time, motive power was supplied from outside for work per- formed by machinery instead of by human hands. The English dealers in silk thread had long been undersold by imports smuggled in from Italy and France. Rumours came that the abnormal cheapness of the foreign product was due to the use of improved machinery, driven by other power than that of human muscles. The youngest of the three brothers, John Lombe, had some know- ledge of machinery, and he went out to Leghorn in order to strive to penetrate the secret, which was guarded with the utmost care, under the severest penalties for disclosure. By the aid of a priest, who was confessor to the owner of the Italian works, Lombe obtained employment in the mill, and was allowed, as a poor young man whose character was vouched for by the priest, to sleep on the premises. By the help of a dark lantern, instruments, and paper, drawings were made, in the depth of night, of different parts of the machinery, and, again by the assistance of the priest, were sent over to England in bales of silk. The youthful traitor made his escape, and a large mill, with machines driven by a great water- wheel, was erected on the banks of the Derwent. One of the brothers, Sir Thomas Lombe, took out a patent for fourteen years, and received, on its expiration in 1732, a large sum of money from the treasury for the service rendered to the nation. Other mills were soon erected in or near Derby, at Stockport and Congleton in Cheshire, and at other towns. Soon after the middle of the century a burst of inventive power came upon the industrial world of Great Britain. About 1 760 the "flying-shuttle" was applied to quicken the weaving of woollen and cotton goods. This invention was due to John Kay, a native of Bury in Lancashire. At his father's mill in Colchester he first devised improvements in the reeds for looms, by the use of 76 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. polished blades of metal instead of cane, and then contrived an arrangement for throwing the shuttle with more rapidity and greater force, which enabled the weaver to double his daily pro- duction of cloth. The great names of this inventive period in British history are those of Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, Wedgwood, Cartwright, and Watt. James Hargreaves, an illiter- ate and humble weaver, born about 1720 near Blackburn, in Lancashire, was also a carpenter who did some work in constructing a carding-machine for Mr. Robert Peel, the grandfather of the great statesman. Hargreaves was often at a loss for yarn, which his wife and children could not spin fast enough to keep his loom employed. An accident observed by his watchful eye suggested the invention of the "spinning-jenny", whereby eight threads were spun at once instead of a single one. A patent was taken out in 1770, and the number of threads spun at one operation was greatly increased. The claims of Richard Arkwright, born at Preston in 1732, and in 1750 working as a barber at Bolton, have been the subject of much controversy. The invention of the famous " spinning- frame" for cotton, in which an arrangement of rollers drew out the threads to needful fineness, has been ascribed to a friend of Arkwright's, named Thomas Hayes or Highs. Arkwright, it is admitted, was at any rate the man who perfected, developed, and applied the machine. Driven from Preston by the rage of the spinners against his new process, he met, at Nottingham, Mr. Jedediah Strutt of Derby, who had greatly helped the rising trade in hosiery by the application of improvements in the stocking- loom. In 1771 a large mill, with water-power, was set up by Strutt and Arkwright at Cromford in Derbyshire, and Arkwright's skill and energy in organization made him one of the chief founders of the factory system. In legal contests against those who infringed his various patents Arkwright was victorious over some of his opponents, became high-sheriff of Derbyshire, was knighted by George the Third, and died in 1792, the possessor of a vast for- tune. The carding-machine, for straightening the fibres of raw material, before it can be spun into thread, was due to John Lees of Manchester in 1772, and it was perfected by Arkwright in the following year. Samuel Crompton, one of the great benefactors of his kind, INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 77 ranks, so far as pecuniary results for himself were concerned, among the martyrs of the history of invention. Born near Bol- ton in 1753, son of a man who laboured, like many others in that age, both with the loom and with the plough, Crompton set himself to devise a machine for producing better thread than that of Hargreaves. In 1779, after five years' labour, he perfected the famous spinning-mule, which derived its name from the fact of being a hybrid compound of the inventions of both Hargreaves and Arkwright. This most ingenious and valuable invention did the work of the spinning-frame and the spinning-jenny in succes- sive operations, and gave so mighty an impulse to production that, in little more than thirty years, nearly five millions of spindles were being worked by "mules" in the British mills. The hapless inventor was too poor to obtain a patent, and his lack of worldly wisdom and self-assertion led to his being cheated of the secret, for a paltry sum, by a manufacturer at Bolton. The nation was enriched by many millions of pounds, but the paltry sum of five thousand was all that could be wrung out of the government, and this was not obtained till 1812. Crompton failed in the business started with this modest capital, and died, a poor man, in 1827. We come next to the application of inventive power to the process of weaving, which the machines just described, used for making yarn, left in its former rude and slow condition. Edmund Cartwright, born in 1743 at Marnham, in Nottingham- shire, was educated at Oxford, and in 1779 became the rector of Goadby Marwood, near Melton Mowbray. It was a visit to Arkwright's Derbyshire mills that turned the parson's thoughts towards weaving, and in 1785 he invented, in a rude form, the power-loom which was to revolutionize the weaving trade. The enraged hand-weavers burnt down a mill at Manchester contain- ing the new machines, and it was only in the present century, after the adoption of many improvements, that the swift-working loom was generally used. The inventor of the principle justly received a grant of ten thousand pounds. To Josiah Wedgwood, far beyond all others, Britain owes her high position in the fictile trade. He found it a rude industry; he left it a great and flourishing business, producing objects of high art, things of combined beauty and utility. Holland, with her 78 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. ware of Delft, and France, the native land of Bernard Palissy, had hitherto been productive of the best pottery. Some coarse goods had long been made in Staffordshire. German artisans had fur- nished fine porcelain, first at Chelsea, then at Derby, while some improved pottery had begun to appear at Burslem, in Staffordshire. This hamlet, as it then was, gave birth, in 1730, to Wedgwood. His family had long been engaged, with some success, in the trade, and the young Josiah, as an excellent "thrower" or worker at the potter's wheel, for some years worked at his father's business. A weakness of the right knee broke off this toil, and Wedgwood turned his efforts towards artistic improvement in the objects made. In 1759 he had a small factory at Burslem, and made many ex- periments, ending in improvement of both white stoneware and the cream-coloured ware. The colour, the lightness of weight, the form, glaze, and decoration, were beyond all previous make in Europe. The Wedgwood-ware soon had a wide renown for its hardness and durability, and its power of receiving the most delicate and brilliant hues produced by fused metallic oxides and ochres. His admirable works caused the development of the Staffordshire handicraft into the vast industry which has bestowed the name of The Potteries on a large and flourishing district, crowded with towns. In James Watt, we come to the greatest of all transformers of the world's industrial system. Mining, manufactures, agriculture, printing, navigation, and locomotion by land, were all to receive, from the principle applied by the genius of Watt to practical ends, an impulse producing the most marvellous results. The general use of the power of steam in driving machines was due to the inventive skill of this illustrious man, born, the son of a merchant, in 1736, at Greenock. At twenty-one years of age, Watt was maker of mathematical instruments to the University of Glasgow: in 1/63 he became a civil engineer, making surveys for harbours and canals. In the days of the earlier Stuart kings, a French engineer, Solomon de Caus, had thought of employing steam in industry. The Marquis of Worcester, in 1663, showed his acquaintance with a rude form of steam-engine, which was after- wards improved by Thomas Savery and Thomas Newcomen, the former of whom employed the principle of obtaining a vacuum by condensation, while Newcomen developed the Frenchman Papin's INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 79 device of a piston working in a cylinder. Steam was employed for pumping out water that gathered in mines, but the engine was a wasteful machine of little utility, until Watt devised the separate condenser, and made the engine double-acting, by using steam for both the up-stroke and down-stroke of the piston. His adoption of a fly-wheel; of a "governor" to regulate the quantity of steam passing into the cylinder; of an indicator, to measure the pressure upon the piston; and of an automatic slide-valve, to regulate the action of the steam in the cylinder, created a machine almost the same, in essential points, as that now used. In partnership with the able Matthew Boulton of the Soho Foundry, near Birmingham, Watt began to supply manufacturers with the means of working at a speed, and with a power of accurate production, that were soon to transform the face of the land. The first engine constructed by Watt that was ever employed in the weaving trade was one made in 1785 for the works of Messrs. Robinson, at Papplewick, in Nottinghamshire; the first ever used in Lancashire was at the factory of Mr. Drinkwater, in Manchester, four years later. In 1790, Arkwright had one in use at one of his mills; the first Watt's engine used in Scotland was furnished, in 1792, to Messrs. Scott & Stevenson, of Glasgow. In all these cases, the factories whose machines were driven by the new power were engaged in the cotton trade. The steam-engine was soon engaged in flax-spinning at Leeds, and, in 1793, the same rising town first used Watt's mechanism for the spinning of wool. A Bradford worsted-mill applied this mighty agency in 1800, and factories for spinning and weaving soon arose in great numbers in the midlands, north, and north-west, where the coal-fields could furnish cheap supplies of the needed fuel for the engines. The various processes of fabrication were henceforth conducted, on a well-arranged system, under the same roof, or at any rate in various workshops erected in close connection. Machinery took the place, to a vast extent, of human hands, and armies of workpeople, of both sexes and of all ages fit for toil, were brought under a strict discipline in order to maintain the ever-growing supply of clothing and of other goods demanded by the needs of people in four quarters of the globe. The increased production of woven fabrics was accompanied by great improvement in the method of bleaching. The art of chemistry came to the aid of the manufacturers of cotton and linen 8O OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. cloth, and enabled them to whiten, within the space of two or three days, the fabrics which, up to the middle of the eighteenth century, had required labour applied, at long intervals, during six or eight months. A Scot, Dr. Home of Edinburgh, about 1750, taught the bleachers to use water mixed with sulphuric acid instead of sour milk, and the more powerful agent shortened by one-half the time required for bleaching. About thirty years later, the famous Swedish chemist, Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who, in his brief life of forty-four years, made many most valuable discoveries, mentioned, about 1783, the effect of chlorine in whitening a cork. The French chemist, Berthollet, a follower of the illustrious Lavoisier, con- ceived the idea of applying the new acid to the purpose of bleach- ing. In 1785 he won success in his experiments, and James Watt, then staying in Paris, carried the system back to Scotland. His father-in-law, Mr. Macgregor, adopted chlorine, and Mr. Henry, of Manchester, an able chemist, proved to the bleachers of his town and neighbourhood, in 1788, the perfect treatment of cloth by means of the new agent. Its use spread far and wide, and the fabrics of the mills now only needed to remain for a few days in the hands of the bleacher. The art of calico-printing, introduced into England by a Frenchman about 1690, was brought into Lancashire in 1764. Mr. Robert Peel, at his mills near Blackburn, practised the process on a very large scale, and he and his successor, the first baronet, derived therefrom vast profit and fame. The aid of steam was of great value in moving the huge cylinders of engraved copper, and many thousands of hands were soon employed in tending the machinery. When we turn to other branches of trade, we see the linen manufacture greatly developed in Scotland. At the Union, much of the money granted for the fostering of industries was used to encourage the making of linen. In 1727, the Scottish Board of Manufactures invited over some French weavers, skilled in making cambric. They settled between Edinburgh and Leith, on a site still called " Picardy " Place. About the middle of the century, large grants of money were voted by Parliament for increasing the make of linen in the Highlands, and great progress was made. The British Linen Company, still a flourishing banking corporation, was founded at Edinburgh in 1746, for the purpose of lending INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 8 1 money to the makers of the fabric. In 1750, the annual production of Scotland had reached seven millions of yards. The making of finer sorts of paper, introduced by the Huguenot refugees, became established in England and Scotland early in the eighteenth cen- tury. The fabrication of glass for windows and other uses dates from Tudor times, when some Flemings brought the art to London. In Stuart days, Venetian artists improved the trade. In 1773, the " British Plate Glass Manufacturers" was the title of a company founded near St. Helen's, in Lancashire, a district thenceforth largely devoted to the work. The improved use of steam for engines at coal-mines caused a great increase in the output, through the effectual pumping thereby obtained. The iron trade and other manufactures in metal received a sudden and vast development. Early in the eighteenth century, some iron-ore had been imported from abroad, and, after it had been smelted at works in the Forest of Dean, the pure metal was distributed among the merchants, who gave out the rough iron, to be worked up into its various forms for sale, to the domestic makers, or small masters in the craft. A little iron was also made in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The use of coal for smelting, intro- duced or revived in 1713, by Abraham Darby, at the Coalbrook- dale furnaces, in Shropshire, gave some impetus to the manufacture, but it declined again until the introduction of coke as fuel, the invention of a new blowing-machine, the application of steam, and of Henry Cort's processes of puddling and rolling, caused an annual production, by 1788, of the then vast quantity of seventy thousand tons. The great ironworks at Carron, near Falkirk, were founded in 1 760. The vast iron and coal field of South Wales had been opened up, five years previously, by an iron-master named Bacon, who leased a large district near Merthyr Tydvil. Foundries soon arose at Bristol, London, and Liverpool. In 1767, the Coalbrook- dale works made iron rails to replace wooden ones on the tram- ways there used, and in 1778 the first iron bridge ever made was there cast and set up. Another advance in the metal trade was the great production of superior tools and mechanism, due to the ingenuity of Brindley, Smeaton, and other able engineers. Hence came, in time, the substitution, on a large scale, of iron hands for human, in the ingenious machines employed for shaping, planing, slotting, drilling, and other work in metal. A vast trade in the '>' VOL. I. 82 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. construction of machinery to be worked by hands, or driven by steam under human guidance, was an outcome of the new skill and energy displayed in the closing years of the century. The British nation was fairly launched, amid the dangers and losses of war, on the great industrial career which was to supply her with the means of meeting a portion of her vast expenditure, and of holding her own against a host of foes. The industrial revolution had important effects on the distribu- tion of the population. The northern, north-western, and north- midland parts of the country, where great coal-fields were found and were extensively worked, after the application of steam to machinery, drew to themselves the workers of the southern, eastern, and western districts, where the textile trades had hitherto held their chief seats. The growth of manufactures is, in a large degree, indicated by the increased output of coal from the mines, which rose from about two and a half millions of tons in 1700 to over six millions in 1770, and, with a far greater rapidity, to above ten millions of tons in 1795. The change from the domestic to the factory system carried the artisans from villages to towns. The use of steam instead of water, as power for driving machinery, drew them away from the mills once planted, in lonely spots often rich with the beauties of nature in her happiest moods, where running streams came down from springs on wild moors, haunted only by furred and feathered creatures, to work in the valley the spindles and looms of man. The toilers and makers of wealth were now to dwell by factories built near the mines which supplied the needful fuel for the new monster of force that fed on coal. Many a new town had then its rise in southern Lancashire and western Yorkshire. The north of England, and the south-west of Scotland, where coal was found in its richest deposits, became the great centres of wealth and population. The prosperity of Norwich and our eastern towns, famous for crapes and the lighter woollens; of Bradford-on-Avon, and her sisters in the west, noted for fine serge; of Stroud and her neighbour towns of Gloucester- shire, where the Cotswold wool was worked up into the finest broadcloth, began to pale before the rising fortunes of Halifax and Leeds, of Huddersfield and the new Bradford of the West Riding. At Glasgow, bleaching and calico-printing had been established in 1738, thirty years before they were heard of in Lancashire, and, in INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 83 the last years of the century, the discovery of bleaching powder, or chloride of lime, by Mr. Charles Tennant, laid the foundation of the enormous trade in chemicals. The town of the Clyde took up with zeal the inventions of Arkwright, Cartwright, and their com- peers, and embarked, in spinning and weaving, upon that course of industry which, combined with her commerce on every sea, has made her one of the wonders of the world. The cotton trade then, as now, had its English centre in the Lancashire towns clustered round Manchester as their chief, with some slight overflow into the neighbouring parts of Cheshire and west Yorkshire. Grave social and political results followed on the displacement and changed conditions of labour. The class of artisans was forced down to a lower level. Under the old domestic system of manu- factures, the workers bought for themselves the yarn for weaving, and owned the cloth which came from the loom. This they could sell at the market price, and they thus held the position of inde- pendent traders. Under the factory system, which at first, it is true, gave a better income, from the high wages caused by the great production, and the demand for labour, the artisan became depend- ent on the mill-owner. Labour was made subject to capital. We shall notice hereafter the monstrous evils which greed for gain caused to the men, women, and children who worked for others in this revolutionized system of industrial life. The migration from the open country, with its purer air, to the crowded and fetid alleys of factory towns, had serious effects on health and life. The people who were left behind in the rural districts, devoid of their former gains by spinning and weaving, were thrown upon the rates, and the poor-law question, in later years, became hereby prominent in formidable guise. The inevitable evils of a state of transition were felt by the poorer, dependent classes, just as they had been in Tudor times, when agricultural labour underwent a change. The gathering of the workers into towns had also a great politi- cal effect. Close connection led to constant discussion; discussion dealt with and magnified grounds for discontent. The souls of artisans were stirred to their depths by the outbreak in France, which was hailed with joy by Fox and the Whigs, as the champions of freedom, while Pitt, at the outset, had no desire to assume a hostile attitude. The son of the great Chatham was, however, the statesman of the commercial class, and to him the land-owners also, 84 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. both from their own inherent prejudices, and from natural feelings of horror, wrought into fury by Burke's denunciation of French excesses, were looking as, not merely the preserver of internal peace, but the represser of every movement or utterance in favour of reform. All the upper and middle classes at last supported the minister when he waged war with France, for the manufacturers and merchants, in behalf of trade, for the king, clergy, nobles, and land-owners, as the avenger of outrages done to monarchy, to religion, and to lords of the soil. The growing wealth of Great Britain was mortgaged in advance to support the expenditure of the gigantic struggle, and our children's children, and their descendants to a distant age, must feel in taxation the effects of a policy which, right or wrong, commanded the assent of a vast majority of the British people. Great, if gradual, progress was made in the art of tillage and in the breeding of stock during the eighteenth century. A taste for agriculture, not only as a means of livelihood, but as a pursuit for men of wealth and leisure, was widely spread. Many rich merchants and professional men, as well as large owners of the soil, took a personal interest in cultivation. Great improvements were made on large estates, and especial regard was paid to the raising of root-crops and of artificial pasture and various grasses, for the winter-feeding of increased numbers of cattle and sheep, which, in their turn, enriched the soil by larger supplies of excellent manure. The use of lime and clay for mixing with earth that needed such additional elements was largely developed, and the result of effort and of expended capital was seen in greater crops of corn, in weightier cattle, and in more ample fleeces of better quality from the sheep that supplied the weaver with wool. One probably evil feature of the time was the disappearance, to a great degree, of the small freeholders or yeomen, a change which was due to mingled political and social causes. The wealthier merchants, seeking to rival the noble class, and to obtain from the minister whom they supported admission in time to the House of Lords, were ever seeking to purchase land, and the smaller holdings were thus absorbed to form large estates. The system of primo- geniture and of stringent settlements hampered the subdivision of land, and the changed methods of agriculture, demanding larger capital, tended to oust the smaller cultivators. Under numerous INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 85 Acts some millions of acres of common and other lands were inclosed, and thus arose many of the vast estates which still confine the possession of a large portion of British soil to the hands of a few land-owners. The country as a whole gained by the change of system, and by legislation which, in many cases, acted to the hurt of individuals. There was a great rise of rents during this period, amounting, in the case of one family of large land-owners who were regarded as favouring the interests of tenants, to a five-fold increase during the century from less than four shillings to nearly a pound per acre. The labourers who worked the soil suffered, at the same time, a fall of wages, owing to the system, dating from the days of Elizabeth, by which the magistrates regulated the price of their toil. Their poor earnings, under the evil law then existing, were somewhat increased by payments from the rates, and this method of pauperizing the peasantry had very pernicious and long-enduring effects. The price of corn rapidly rose, with the great increase of population, during the latter half of the century, from an average of thirty-six to forty-eight shillings per quarter. The existing corn-laws pro- tected the farmers against imported produce, and men of large capital were able to make considerable profits. As regards improvement in tillage and stock, much was due to the spirit of the age which led men to inquire and to make experiments, and to found societies for the encouragement of the primitive and all-important pursuit. In 1723 the Society of Im- provers was founded in Scotland for the good of agriculture, headed by Lords Reay, Rollo, and Ross, Sir James Fergusson, Sir Archibald Grant, and other patriotic men. Seventy years later, the able, active, and enlightened Sir John Sinclair, of Thurso Castle, after founding a Scottish society for improving the breeds of sheep and the quality of wool, was a main cause of the founda- tion of the Board of Agriculture, whose secretary was the famous traveller and inquirer, Arthur Young. In 1753 the Society of Arts and Manufactures was founded in England, and its work for many years included encouragement to progress in agriculture. In 1777 the Bath and West of England Agricultural Society arose, preceded and followed by many like institutions. The Smithfield Club, whose early title was " the Smithfield Cattle and Sheep Society", arose in 1798. In Scotland, the Highland and 36 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Agricultural Society, still greatly flourishing, was founded in 1784. In Ireland, the year 1734 saw the formation of the Dublin Society for the Promotion of Husbandry, which some years later received a royal charter, and was enabled to do much good work. In the latter half of the period the king himself won the title of " Farmer George ", from his enthusiastic regard for his Windsor farm. The politician Lord Townshend, brother-in-law of Sir Robert Walpole, retired to his Norfolk seat in 1728, and there served his country well by encouraging, the growth of turnips. This root, so valuable as the winter food of sheep, was now planted on fields which had hitherto been left to lie fallow every third year. Norfolk and Suffolk set sound examples in the new husbandry, and a four- course rotation of crops turnips, barley, clover, and wheat began to be pursued. In 1776 Mr. Coke of Holkham, founder of the modern earldom of Leicester, came into possession of his large estate, and by energy and skill wrought wonders of improvement. At that time the land was not inclosed, and the people ate bread made of wheat imported from other parts, or of rye, the only corn there grown. Coke changed the country of his abode into a garden of fertility. Resolved to become a tiller of the soil, he gathered round him the farmers of the district, learned his trade, and in due time became himself a teacher. Landlord and tenants were both enriched by the greater growth of produce and the just rise of rents. Improvement in the sheep, both for use as meat and for quality of wool, made Coke's name famous throughout the world, and his elevation to the peerage, long declined by the modesty of real worth, on the accession of Queen Victoria, was hailed with delight by all true lovers of the art which he improved and of the land of his birth. Suffolk, renowned for its breed of ploughing-horses called " punches ", was now greatly improved by the better and wider drainage of the soil. From the east of England, good example spread. In Bedfordshire, near the close of the century, the Duke of Bedford, at Woburn Abbey, strove to emulate the deeds of the Norfolk squire, and the growth of corn and production of meat were vastly increased. Robert Bakewell, a grazier, of Dishley Grange, in Leicestershire, who died in 1795, had wonderful suc- cess in breeding sheep, horses, and horned cattle, and his repu- tation may be measured by the fact that, in a single season, the INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 87 hire of one of his rams produced the sum of over twelve hundred pounds. Such were some of the men that raised the stock whose descendants were in time to produce the swarming flocks and herds that form the chief wealth of many of our great colonial possessions. The drainage of some of the eastern fens has been already described : the same work was done on a large scale in the low-lying parts of Lincolnshire, and her wolds also began to feel the benefit of improved farming. In the south, the Wilt- shire and Hampshire downs, from the growth of turnips, began to bear greater flocks of sheep. In Yorkshire, the Whig leader, Lord Rockingham, farming two thousand acres of his own land, set an example of good husbandry. Sir Digby Legard, in the east of the same county, succeeded in doubling the product of wheat per acre upon land reclaimed from the wolds, while he raised from the same soil a five-fold increase of the former crops of oats, and a six-fold growth of barley. The rent was raised from a shilling an acre for the grassy wold to a pound per acre for the same land under tillage. In Durham, the short-horn ox was already a famous breed, but it was not till later days that the land was inclosed or duly cultivated. In Northumberland, towards the close of the century, great advances were made in tillage, and the fertile vales of the northern parts gave a large return to improved methods. In the south of Scotland, East Lothian led the way to the admirable culture which was wholly to change the face of the land between the Forth and Clyde and the English border. The beautiful country of the Teviot and the Tweed had then but few inclosures or roads. The men who started the work of improvement which was to lead to such marvellous results of energy and skill have already been noticed. In Ireland, the lack of capital and energy and knowledge, with the curse of the "middleman", combined to produce, on the whole, a system which, making a large part of the population dependent for sub- sistence on a single root, was to cause in the end disastrous effects. The eighteenth century saw much improvement in the means of internal communication which is needed for easy and lucrative traffic. The state of things which existed at the close of the seventeenth century is vividly described in the third chapter of his history by Lord Macaulay. Under Queen Anne, the condition of the roads still greatly hampered the conveyance of goods from 88 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. the places of manufacture to the markets for sale and to the ports for shipment. Only in the summer could large quantities of produce be taken to distant parts, and many small towns and villages suffered from scarcity of grain and fuel. Good husbandry was checked by the lack of cheap manure. About the middle, and in the latter half of the century, these matters were greatly altered. Harder roads dispensed with the work of nearly half the horses formerly needed to drag the waggons through the depth of mire, and the pack-horses could each carry heavier loads. The former condition of the highways may be judged by the fact that, even in 1736, a carriage, in wet weather, required two hours for the drive from St. James's Palace to Kensington, and might be stuck in the mud on the way. In Scotland, the military roads made by General Wade, in the period between the two Jacobite rebellions, did much to open up the Highlands to traffic from the then more civilized southern districts. Many Acts were passed in England for the establishment of turnpike- trusts on highways, and the roads were kept in repair by the tolls levied at the countless gates which, until far into the present reign, were encountered by the traveller by carriage or on horse- back throughout the land. In 1741 a general Act, apart from the turnpike-roads, was passed with the intent of providing for the repair of the parish-roads and other by-ways of traffic. For the conveyance of passengers, the stage-waggon and the waggon-coach were the chief methods known to early Georgian times. In 1739, the advertisement of a " flying- waggon " undertakes to convey people from London to Frome in Somerset, a few miles south of Bath, in two and a half days. The history of the modern mail-coaches begins with the year 1784, when the enterprising Mr. John Palmer, manager of the Bath Theatre, and M.P. for that city, began to carry letters for the Post-office. The coach which left London, under the new system, at eight in the morning, arrived in Bristol an hour before midnight. The plan was adopted by most of the larger towns, and the pace of transit, as the roads grew better and the organi- zation was improved, was raised by degrees from six miles an hour to eight. The care of Parliament was largely devoted to the removal of all hindrances to safe and speedy traffic. The width of the roads, ditching, draining, the prevention of all ob- INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 89 structions by fairs and markets, by floods and falling trees, by straying cattle and rustic sports; the erection of milestones and direction-posts; the placing of the names of towns and villages at the main entrances by the high-roads; the width of wheels, the weights of goods, and the number of passengers to be carried on each vehicle, the horsing, the harnessing, the very forms of axles, and the method of attaching the tires of wheels, were all made, from time to time, subjects of inquiry and regula- tion. More than five hundred turnpike Acts had been passed before the year 1770. Some preparation had thus been made for the increase of trade caused by the industrial revolution. It was not until many years of the present century had passed, however, that the English people saw the swift, well-horsed, perfectly driven, minutely punctual, festive-looking coaches, with scarlet-coated guard and resounding horn, that enlivened the perfect roads made in that age by the skilful labours of Telford and Macadam. The development of our communications by water, of vast importance for the traffic in heavy goods, the products of the rising factories and the mines, was due to the example set by the wise expenditure of a noble and the daring spirit of an engineer. The word " canal " at once suggests the names of James Brindley and of Francis Egerton, third Duke of Bridgewater. The history of canals in Britain would carry us back to the days of Roman occu- pation, when they cut two great Dykes in Lincolnshire, one of which, the Foss Dyke, is still navigable. Near the end of the seventeenth century, the Aire and Calder Navigation made a beginning of the modern system of artificial water-ways. James Brindley, the great pioneer of these important works, was born in Derbyshire, in 1716. First a mill-wright, then an engineer, he showed much skill in the construction of a water-engine for the draining of a coal-mine. By a happy turn of fortune for him and for his country, he came under the notice of the young Duke of Bridgewater, a man who had seen something of the world, and had then retired to one of his estates, wearied of London life, and seek- ing to remove encumbrances from his property. At Worsley, seven miles from Manchester, then, in 1758, containing about forty thousand people, the young noble possessed a rich bed of coal, and his object was to convey the fuel cheaply to his neighbours in 90 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Manchester, and in the end to reach Liverpool. After discussion with Brindley, an audacious plan was formed for constructing a new water-way without locks, by cutting through hills and crossing streams. The bold design, in the course of twelve years, was carried out with complete success. The astonishment of Brindley's countrymen was aroused by the gigantic works now executed. In the mines at Worsley, canals were carried through a mile and a half of tunnels. The course of the great canal lay through valleys where huge mounds of earth were raised to form its bed. Rocky hills were pierced, and at Barton the river Irwell was crossed by an aqueduct six hundred feet in length and nearly forty high. A land agent, John Gilbert, helped to raise money for the expensive operations, and the duke, resolved to finish what he had begun, lived for years on the simplest fare, and reduced his household expenses to the standard of a small trader. In 1771, the "eighth wonder of the world", as a letter of the day styles this canal, had reached, by way of Manchester, Runcorn on the Mersey, forty-two miles from Worsley, and thus brought the coal-pits into connection with the rising seaport of the day. The price of coals in Man- chester fell by one half, and the duke, by this and like enlightened labours, acquired vast wealth. The great engineer to whom the work was intrusted was a plain-looking man, rude in speech and devoid of education. The workings of his brain supplied the place of written documents and drawings, and he gained his undying fame by the sheer force of native ability. This noble achievement was followed by the Grand Trunk Navigation, or Staffordshire Canal, also planned and partly executed by Brindley : his early death in 1772, hastened by excessive toil of body and mind, robbed him of the sight of its completed works. The pottery and iron districts of Staffordshire were thus connected with the Mersey and the Trent. In all, Brindley either made or planned nearly four hundred miles of canal, uniting the Thames, the H umber, the Mersey, and the Severn, and thus giving London communication by water with Bristol, Liverpool, and Hull. Before the end of the century, from 1791 to 1794, there was a " mania ", or rush of speculation, in canals, and more than three thousand miles of such works were ultimately made within the United Kingdom. In Scotland, the Forth and the Clyde were joined by a canal planned in 1768. The Crinan Canal, nine INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 91 miles long, running through charming scenery, and uniting a branch of Lochfyne, in Argyleshire, with the Atlantic at the Sound of Jura, was constructed between 1793 and 1801. This excellent work avoids the passage of seventy miles round the Mull of Kintyre. The famous Caledonian Canal, traversing some of Scotland's noblest scenery, was first devised, as a prac- ticable work, by the eye and judgment of James Watt: its execu- tion came only with the early years of the present century. The canals at that date were largely used, notably in Scotland, for the conveyance of passengers with an ease and smoothness far surpas- sing those of travel on roads. The Forth and Clyde Canal, by means of very light barges called "swift boats", sharply cut at the bows and with fine lines of structure, carried people at the rate of nearly nine miles an hour. The "fly-boats", between London and Birmingham, of a heavier build, had about half that speed. The ordinary boats carried some twenty tons of goods, with a towage of from two to three miles an hour. The building of bridges, an art which forms so important an element in developing communications, made little progress in Europe from the days of the Roman Empire until the eighteenth century, when the French architects led the way to improvement, and the famous Perronet executed works of masterly skill over the Seine at Paris, Nogent, and Neuilly. The longest bridge built in England in mediseval times was that constructed at Burton, over the Trent, of freestone, in the twelfth century. Its thirty-six arches extended for over fifteen hundred feet, and the bridge remained in use until 1864. A really great work was completed in 1750 in the erection, by William Edwards, a country mason, of the bridge over the Taff, midway between Merthyr Tydvil and Cardiff. This bold and ingenious structure gave the name of " Newbridge " to the place where it spans the river with a single arch of 140 feet. The same architect built several other bridges in South Wales. The days of the greatest bridge engineers had not yet arrived. A cast- iron bridge of a single arch, spanning one hundred feet, was erected over the Severn in 1779, at the place thence called " Ironbridge". The constructor of this was Mr. Darby, of the Coalbrookdale Iron Works. In London, old London Bridge, completed in 1209, remained covered with houses until 1757: the structure then, with new parapets and balustrades erected on each side, outlasted the 92 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. century. The old Blackfriars Bridge was completed in 1769, from plans of Robert Mylne, a native of Edinburgh, and once bore the name of Pitt Bridge, in honour of the Earl of Chatham, a designa- tion dropped by degrees from its inconvenience in not marking for strangers the spot where it crossed the river. This bridge con- tinued to exist for nearly a century. The first bridge made at Westminster was opened to the public in 1750, and lasted for more than a hundred years. The other bridges crossing the Thames in London belong to the period since 1800. The first regular inland post was established in 1635, for the keeping up of communications between London and Edinburgh, with by-posts to the chief towns lying near the main road. A royal proclamation, two years later, forbade the carriage of letters by any persons "other than the messengers of the king's postmaster- general", with certain exceptions therein named. This service was under the charge of Thomas Witherings, who had been for some years, with William Frizell, controller of the English post for foreign letters. About this date, eight chief postal lines for England were established at a cost of eightpence to Scotland for a single letter, sixpence in England for a distance exceeding 140 miles, fourpence between So and 140 miles, and twopence for shorter dis- tances. In 1657, under the Commonwealth, many improvements were made, and these were confirmed by statute after the Restora- tion, the year 1662 being the date of the legal establishment of a postal system. In Scotland, the Parliament in 1695 passed an Act for a general letter-post. Towards the end of the seventeenth century a penny-post was set up in London for letters and small parcels, with Thomas Dockwra as controller. In 1710 we have the first modern "Postmaster-general", when an Act rearranged the whole system, and a general post-office for the three kingdoms and the colonies was established. An Irish post-office, as a separate system, was set up by the " independent " parliament in 1 784. With the institution of mail-coaches, as described above, in i 784, Mr. Palmer became controller to the General Post-office, and letters were henceforth carried with far greater safety, regularity, and speed. We may well conclude this part of our subject, displaying some- what of the internal economy of the British Empire up to the year 1 80 1, with a few suggestive figures for comparison with those to be INDUSTRY AND COMMERCE IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 93 hereafter given. The growth of manufactures in the last third of the eighteenth century, the period including what has been called the Industrial Revolution, is thus indicated. In 1766 the number of pounds weight of foreign and colonial wool imported into the United Kingdom was nearly two millions; in 1800, it was above eight and a half millions. In 1764 the number of pounds weight of raw cotton imported was under four millions; in 1800, it just exceeded fifty-six millions. For the iron trade, we take a period of about sixty years. In 1740, the pig-iron made in Great Britain (England, Wales, and Scotland) was a little over seventeen thou- sand tons; in 1796 it amounted to one hundred and twenty-five thousand tons, a quantity more than doubled ten years later. In 1750 the value of exports for England alone approached thirteen millions of pounds sterling; in 1800, for Great Britain, it exceeded thirty-four millions. It is needless to state that in those days but a small part of this increase was due to Scotland and Wales. In 1750, the imports of England alone just exceeded in value seven and three-quarter millions; in 1800, with a great war raging, the value of imports for Great Britain was twenty-eight and a quarter millions. In 1766, the tonnage of ships cleared outwards from British ports was nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand tons, in time of peace, of which nearly fourteen-fifteenths was British shipping. In 1800, during war, the ships cleared out- wards reached nearly two millions of tons, of which more than three-fifths were British. In 1774 the revenue raised in England alone somewhat exceeded seven millions; in 1800 the United Kingdom, for this purpose mostly England, contributed more than thirty-three millions. In 1760 the population of England and Wales was a little beyond six and a half millions; in 1801, the year of the first census, it had nearly reached nine millions. In 1776 the poor-rate just exceeded a million and a half; in 1803 it had reached more than four millions of pounds, an amount which betrays at once an increase of poverty in one class, along with a great growth of national wealth, and a scandalous mismanagement partly due to the operation of a poor-law wholly unsuited to the times. BOOK II. BRITISH COLONIES AND POSSESSIONS BEFORE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. CHAPTER I. CHARACTER AND METHODS OF COLONIZATION EARLY NAVIGATORS. Our Colonies in general Modern sense of the term "colony" Methods of colonization Maritime enterprise of European nations in fifteenth century Discoveries of Columbus, Vespucci, and the Cabots Spanish colonization in America The aboriginal tribes of America. Before entering upon the history of the existing colonies and dependencies of Great Britain during the period prior to the nine- teenth century, it is our purpose to trace the career of those colonies in North America which constituted the fine dominion lost to this country soon after the days that saw the rise of a new British empire in the East, and in the part of America lying north of the settlements which engaged in a successful revolt from British rule. A brief dissertation on colonies in general may well precede a particular account of the important and interesting offshoots from a parent political stem which, with diverse forms of origin and de- velopment, are included in the general term of "British colonies". A "colony", in its original agricultural sense, was more properly called a "plantation", the term applied to the first British settle- ments in the West Indies and in North America. The modern sense of the word implies a community of people whose forefathers, or themselves, quitted their native country to dwell permanently in another land, either devoid or nearly empty of inhabitants, and there pursue their fortunes in some condition of political connection with, or dependence on, the mother country. To this definition we may add that the "colony" may consist of persons whose superior strength, supported by help from home, enables them to dominate a native population in the new land, in spite of great inferiority of numbers on the part of the new-comers. It will be seen that we CHARACTER AND METHODS OF COLONIZATION. 95 thus embrace at any rate a large part of the dependencies of the United Kingdom, since we include the vast Canadian Dominion, the West Indies, the Australasian colonies, most of the African settlements, and many smaller colonial possessions. It is equally clear that India, where the British residents have, for the most part, not made their permanent home, and Malta, and Gibraltar, and Aden, and Cyprus, mainly military and naval posts, lie outside the real meaning of what, in popular use, is the elastic term "colonies", applied officially to all our foreign possessions, with the sole excep- tion of what is termed, with some propriety derived from its mode of acquisition and of tenure, the "Indian Empire". The methods of colonization, by which the " Greater Britain " has been formed, have been as various as the motives which have led men abroad, in all ages of the world, from their own country to foreign lands. In some cases, the love of adventure and the spirit of enterprise, aroused in the hearts of British citizens at the time of the great European awakening under our Tudor sovereigns, drove men across the seas to discover new lands, to coerce aboriginal possessors, to seek new wealth, to be extracted either from hoped-for mines of silver and gold, or from the bosom of a soil making rich returns for cultivation. Rights of settlement and possession were conferred by royal charters on bands of adventurers under some trusted leader, or on the pioneers and agents of companies formed for the prosecution of trade. In other cases, as we shall see, social or political discontent, sometimes due to religious persecution, sent men beyond the stormy waters of the Atlantic to found new homes wherein they might freely worship according to the dictates of their own conscience, or might be exempt from the burdens of poverty or other ills. Again, the British government, from time to time, banished parties of dis- orderly or disaffected subjects, both men and women, to distant parts where they would cease for ever to plague the body politic at home. To some small extent, the missionary spirit, or desire for the conversion of heathens to the Christian faith, influenced our early efforts at colonization, but the commercial motive, the desire for wealth, was the main agent in the colonial expansion attempted and achieved, in turn or simultaneously, by Portugal, Spain, Hol- land, France, and Great Britain. Germany and Italy, the latest of all the colonizing nations, have sent forth people either driven 96 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. abroad by pressure of poverty, or by the purely commercial spirit, or by a desire to escape from military conscription. The success of the British race in colonization has been due to the possession and use of certain physical and moral qualities, in- herent or acquired by the experience of ages. Our nation has, apart from India and some other countries where our citizens abide either in very limited numbers or for a limited time, migrated to temperate or cold climates suited to our bodily constitution and our British way of life. This condition is, in the main, satisfied by Canada and the Cape, by Australia, and above all by New Zealand. Physical endurance, energy, reproductive power, a love of explora- tion, a masterful spirit, a keen commercial sense, a power of adaptation to new circumstances and new peoples, a progressive genius, a faculty of government, native vigour, independence, and self-reliance these are the chief possessions of a people whose descendants are now manifestly destined to occupy a large part of the world with their language, their religion, and their political and social institutions. The Phoenicians, and the Greek republics of olden time made no permanent conquests. The Jews, in ancient and mediaeval times, and the Chinese, in modern days, were and have been mere foreign settlers in countries already occupied by overwhelming numbers of people alien from the immigrating race. The Spaniards and the French showed, the one in Central and South America, the other in Canada and in Hindostan, much power of conciliating native races, but the faculty of ruling, and of retaining dominion in a lasting form, appears to have been granted in a larger degree to men of the Teutonic race, as to the Romans of the ancient world, than to any other of the peoples or states whose name is writ large in the history of mankind. When the possession of the mariner's compass, to show the way; of the printing-press, to spread knowledge; and of gun- powder, to enable small bodies of civilized explorers to overcome large numbers of ignorant natives, had provided fitting instruments for the work to be undertaken, the chief European peoples began to look abroad to distant lands. In the coming contest for supremacy the compact, enterprising Portugal showed the way, round the Cape of Good Hope, to the coasts of India and China, and sailed westwards to Brazil. The conquest of this pioneer in colonization, by her more powerful neighbour, Spain, made an CHARACTER AND METHODS OF COLONIZATION. 97 end of Portugal as a chief people in colonial dominion, leaving her the just and lasting renown of giving to the world Prince Henry the navigator; Bartolomeu Diaz, the first modern mariner to round the Cape; Vasco da Gama, the first modern European to reach the East Indies wholly by sea; Magalhaens, the first European who ever sailed into, and the man who named, the Pacific; and Alfonso d' Albuquerque, the great, because wise and good, viceroy of the Indies. For American discovery the com- mercial republic of Genoa supplied Spain with Christopher Columbus, and her great rival on the Adriatic coast of Italy gave John Cabot, and his son Sebastian, to England. The great colonial empire founded by Spain, with a feudal and despotic system of rule, decayed with the decline, and, to a large degree, perished for her with the downfall of Spanish power in Europe. Political and commercial progress, growth in freedom, mental expansion with the changing times, were wanting to the mother country, and, early in the present century, her American possessions fell away in revolt, to become separate states with republican rule. The Dutch, in due time, freed by desperate efforts from Spanish control, appeared upon the colonizing scene of history. This dogged people of Teutonic blood, gallant seamen, devoted to labour, skilled in trade, acquired a large share in Portugal's eastern sway of commercial affairs. Their mariners were found in Arctic seas, as well as amid the spicy breezes of the coasts of Ceylon and the Moluccas. Their settlers were soon at the Cape of Good Hope, and on the banks of the Hudson in North America. A Dutchman was the first to round Cape Horn; a Dutchman the first to view Tasmania and New Zealand. Worthy antagonists of British sailors in Stuart times, when they fought so bravely for "the honour of the flag", and for the carrying trade which aroused British envy and brought on hostile legislation in the Navigation Acts, this sturdy little nation, after a brief period of brilliant renown, succumbed to our rising maritime power, to remain, in the nineteenth century, one of the most solid and respectable of minor European states, with rich colonial possessions in Eastern seas. The contest in East and West, of Great Britain against France, the last in the line of earlier European colonizing states, will be dealt with at a later stage of this narration. With great aptitude VOL. I. 98 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. for colonization, in courage, warlike skill, enterprise, and tactful dealing with native races, the French were destined, at the moment when complete success appeared to be within their grasp, to lose all that they had won through the efforts of brilliant soldiers abroad, sometimes helped by great statesmanship at home. France, in fact, undertook in colonial affairs what was beyond the strength of a nation engaged, at the same period, in a career of European aggrandizement, and her worthless rulers, in the age preceding the French Revolution, united gross political and economical corruption to the most unwise and ungrateful treatment of able and patriotic colonial leaders. Religious bigotry, directed against the Huguenots, who should have been encouraged, as men skilled in the industrial arts and in maritime affairs, to become the bone and substance of their country's colonial system, was another chief cause of French colonial failure. The world of Europe and America has lately (1892) celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of the great work of exploration due to the genius and courage of Christopher Columbus. We do not in the least degree detract from the fame of that illustrious man when we assert the indubitable fact that he made, not a new discovery, but a re-discovery of a once found and then forgotten region. Five centuries before his time there were colonies of Norsemen in Greenland and in the coast-lands much farther south. The way to North America had been partly and circuitously shown by Danes who, in 874, colonized Iceland, where they found some Irish monks who had come thither from their own country "because they desired for the love of God to be in a state of pilgrimage they recked not where". A rover called Eric the Red, banished for crime, first from Norway and then from Iceland, made his way to Greenland, a region so named by him with the object of drawing settlers as if to a fertile land. Two colonies were there formed in 985. A man named Bjarni, in 986, who had started from Iceland for the purpose of joining his father in Greenland, was driven by north winds within sight of the lands since called New England, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. A son of Eric the Red wintered, in 994, on the coast near Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and the place was called Vynland, from the wild grapes seen growing. Some Irish settlers were found there also, and a district to the south was once called " Great CHARACTER AND METHODS OF COLONIZATION. 99 Ireland". Monuments and runic inscriptions on the American coast confirm the evidence of the Icelandic sagas or tales concern- ing the Danish expeditions. There are statements as to inter- course between Greenland and Iceland in the twelfth century, and between Markland (Nova Scotia) and Iceland in the fourteenth century. These early settlements had, however, been quitted by the people, or the colonists had died off, and in the time of Columbus the matter had been entirely forgotten. The great navigator, Cristoforo Colombo (Latinised into Christopher Columbus, and rendered, in Spanish, as Cristobal Colon, from another Latin form Colonus, referring to his work and its results), was born about 1440, in or near Genoa. After much service at sea, in peace and war, he was wrecked, about 1470, in a naval battle off Cape St. Vincent, and was thrown on the coast of Portugal. At Lisbon he married the daughter of an Italian navigator, who had been governor at Madeira, and Columbus lived for some time at the Portuguese capital, engaged in making charts for his livelihood. The study of his father-in- law's papers and maps seems to have turned his mind to thoughts of western voyages, and in 1474 he desired to reach Asia in that direction. His main object was to benefit the merchants of Genoa, whose land trade with the East was greatly harmed by the conquering and ravaging Turks and Tartars. He had no idea of discovering a " New World", and part of his ambition was to rival the Portuguese efforts at reaching India by the east- ward route round the Cape of Good Hope. It is remarkable that Columbus never knew the real nature of his own discovery, but died, like Amerigo Vespucci, the Florentine, and other earlier successors, in the belief that he had found some part of Asia. Hence came the misnomer of " Indians" for the native people, and of "West Indies" for the groups of isles. After a voyage beyond Iceland in 1477, Columbus spent many years in vain applications for help to wealthy and powerful men of his time. The senate of Genoa, King John II. of Portugal, Henry the Seventh of England, and Spanish grandees, have all the dis- credit of declining to listen to, or, at any rate, to practically aid the persevering and enterprising navigator. The Duke of Medina Celi, shifting the burden of importunity, sent Columbus to Isabella of Castile, and the good offices of Juan Perez de Marchena, a 100 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. monk who had been confessor to the Catholic queen, at last brought the Genoese, in spite of ecclesiastical opposition, into communication with Ferdinand and Isabella. It was not until seven weary years of consideration, with hot and cold fits of changing favour and rejection, had passed away, that the Spanish sovereigns gave their consent to the expedition westwards. Columbus, with the title of admiral, sailed from the harbour of Palos, in the south-west of Spain, with three little ships, the Santa Maria, the Pinta, and the Nina, carrying in all one hundred and twenty men, on Friday, August 3rd, 1492. The interesting, picturesque, and touching details of this memorable voyage the murmurings of the men, the carved staff floating on the waves, the branch with fresh leaves and berries, the distant moving lights on land are known to all readers of maritime discovery. The soil first reached, and touched by the feet of the adventurers amidst tears of joy and prayers and songs of praise, was that of an island styled by Columbus San Salvador (Holy Saviour), and is uncertainly identified with Watling's Island, one of the Bahamas; it was, beyond doubt, an island of that group. The discoverers returned to Europe after visits to Cuba and to Hayti, then called by Columbus Hispaniola or Little Spain. The flag-ship of the admiral, the Santa Maria, had been wrecked; the Pinta had parted company in stormy weather; the Nina alone, with Columbus on board, came to anchor at Palos on March i5th, 1493, amid shouting crowds, ringing bells, and the roar of cannon. The Genoese navigator, who had brought back with him visible and tangible proofs of success in birds, animals, plants, gold, and six natives of the islands, was received at Barcelona with the highest distinction, seated before Ferdinand and Isabella to tell his tale, and created a grandee of Spain. In later voyages, along with many troubles from quarrels, Spanish jealousy of a famous foreigner, bodily disease, and cruel treatment at the hands of insolent officials, Columbus discovered Jamaica, Dominica, Trini- dad, and the mainland of South America, and died at Valladolid, in Spain, in 1506. The race of people found at that period in the West Indian isles is known as Caribs, now existing, in a pure form, only near the Orinoco and in the wilder parts of Guiana. The success of Columbus caused an outburst of exploring enter- prise in the same direction. One of his friends, Amerigo Ves- CHARACTER AND METHODS OF COLONIZATION. IOI pucci, first visited the new region in 1499, and, becoming widely known as the preparer of charts and routes for voyagers, the maker of maps, with an injustice to Columbus in no wise due to Vespucci's action, was immortalized by the bestowal of the name America on the continent now made known to the European world. The mainland of North America was discovered in June, 1497, by Sebastian Cabot, son of John Cabot, a Venetian pilot, who had long been settled as a merchant at Bristol. Sebastian set sail from that port, perhaps with his father, and with one or more brothers. The voyagers reached Labrador, and, as it seems, Nova Scotia. The father probably died about 1498, Sebastian Cabot, in a course of discovery, having made his way to New- foundland in the preceding year, and coasted south as far as Chesapeake Bay. Other explorers aimed at a north-west passage to India, and sailed on various voyages with which we are not now concerned. The opening up of the vast regions of North America was begun by Spanish explorers. Ponce de Leon, governor of Porto Rico, searching, in old age and broken health, for a fabled fountain whose waters would confer perpetual youth, landed, in 1512, on the coast of the region named by him Florida from the day of its discovery, which took place on Easter Sunday, the festival styled, in Spanish, Pasciia Florida. By the year 1522 Cortez had achieved his wonderful conquest of Mexico. De Narvaez, six years later, strove to conquer Florida, but was harassed by the Indians, and driven to take to boats on the Gulf of Mexico, where he perished by shipwreck. The gallant Ferdin- and de Soto, lured by the hope of finding gold, landed with an expedition in Florida in May, 1539, and marched forth into un- known regions with the waving of banners, the gleaming of lances and helmets, and the sound of trumpets. The lands now called Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi were crossed, and in 1541 the party, or some of them, came out of the forest on the banks of the mighty Mississippi, meaning, in the tongue of the Algonquins, a leading aboriginal race, "Great River". After another year of weary travel, unsuccessful in the search for gold, De Soto died, and the enterprise virtually ended with the sinking of his body, for burial, in the stream. Melendez, in 1565, founded a colony in Florida, and named the place St. Augustine, in honour of the 102 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. day: this place is the oldest town in the United States. Cali- fornia, a country whose designation was taken from the name of an island in a Spanish romance, described as full of gold and gems, was explored by expeditions sent out by Cortez from Mexico. Three centuries later, the omen contained in the name California was to receive fulfilment by the discovery of rich auriferous deposits. In 1542 Cabrillo sailed along the Pacific coast as far north as the present Oregon, and in 1582 Santa F6, the second oldest town of the United States, was built in New Mexico. The French explorers will be dealt with when our record arrives at the coming conflict, as waged on American soil, between the two great European rivals in the eighteenth century. The natives of this newly-discovered continent were called " Red Indians" from their coppery hue of skin, and, apart from the Eskimos (Esquimaux) of the far north, were found to be, in all their differences of character and mode of life, essentially one type of mankind. Tall, erect, and strongly built frames; high cheek-bones; deep-set, black eyes; coarse, straight, black hair; prominent noses, were their physical marks. The American Indian, in his native condition, was serious; reserved in manner; proud; brave, and therewith cautious; hardy against bodily pain; kindly to strangers; given to cruel revenge for wrong. War and hunting, in which acuteness of sight and hearing were of great service, formed the chief employments of Indian "braves". In council they have been credited with a taste and talents for eloquent speech. Their religion involved a general belief in one Supreme Power, with minor spirits, good and bad: the expectation of a future life, with its " happy hunting-grounds " for the good, is well known. A superstitious regard for the incantations and juggleries of impostors called " medicine-men " presented a lower form of ideas concerning the natural and spiritual worlds. Few of the native tribes ever emerged from the savage state, the chief exceptions being the Aztecs of Mexico and the peoples of Central America and Peru. The principal families of American Indians were the Athabascans of Alaska and northern Canada; the Algon- quins, who once lived from Labrador southwards to Virginia, and westwards to the Rocky Mountains, and included the Delawares, the Chippeways, and many extinct tribes; the Iroquois, a former warlike race of the valley of the St. Lawrence; the Dakotas, THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. 103 about the upper Mississippi; with smaller divisions, well known from backwoods, frontier, and colonial records as Blackfeet, Paw- nees, Cherokees, Comanches, and other names dear to the youthful readers of " Indian" books. CHAPTER II. THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES TILL THEIR SEPARATION FROM BRITAIN. Britain begins her colonial dominion Sir Walter Raleigh Colonization of Virginia by the London and Plymouth Companies The slave-trade introduced The " Pilgrim Fathers" Birth of " New England" The Dutch claim " New Netherland" End of Dutch sway The Thirteen Colonies General Oglethorpe's emigration plans Progress of the colonies Their differences in social character The quarrel with Great Britain Attempt to impose taxes Faneuil Hall and Boston Harbour Beginning of the Revolutionary War General Washington Surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga Surrender of Lord Cornwallis Paul Jones and the privateers Independence acknowledged by Britain Constitution of the United States The first president and first ambassador Progress of the cotton cultivation. It was in the later Tudor days and in early Stuart times that Britain fairly began to found a colonial dominion, and to have her people living on both shores of the Atlantic. In religious dissension, in the desire for extended trade, and in other sources of action, the causes and motives of emigration are to be discovered. Under Eliza- beth, Sir Walter Raleigh, soldier, mariner, poet, courtier, prose writer, scholar, and gentleman-adventurer, made vain attempts to found settlements in the great undefined territory called, from the un- wedded queen, "Virginia". The art of smoking tobacco was the solitary trophy of Raleigh's enterprises in North America, but he had shown the way for later efforts. The matter was taken in hand by trading corporations, and early in his reign, James the First gave charters for the colonization of Virginia to the London Company and the Plymouth Company. The London merchants were to have the region between the 34th and 38th degrees of latitude; the men of Plymouth were to be masters of the soil, in what was then styled " North Virginia", between the 4ist and 45th degrees. In 1607 a colony sent out by the London Company made at Jamestown, on the river named in honour of the king, the IO4 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. first permanent British settlement in what is now the United States. The fleet of three ships, of 100, 40, and 20 tons, carrying one hundred " adventurers ", had sailed from Blackwall in Decem- ber, 1606, and reached Chesapeake Bay in the following April. Famine and fever destroyed half the colonists during the summer, and then occurred the romantic adventure of Captain John Smith, one of the council under the charter. Brought as a prisoner before the Indian chief, Powhatan, and saved from death by Pocahontas, his daughter, he was allowed to return with supplies of food to his fellow-settlers, and became, through his energy and wise conduct, the saviour of the colony from extinction. There is good evidence to show that a main object of the managers of the London Com- pany was to spread Christian doctrine and civilization among the natives. These founders of Virginia represented the Church of England, and were careful to select emigrants of good character, and men trained in all kinds of trades and crafts, who should steadily work for the benefit of the community. In 1609 a second charter was granted to this South Virginia Company, extending their limits to two hundred miles north and south of the James River, and Lord Delaware, a man of energetic character, was appointed governor. Some hundreds of fresh emigrants went out, carrying large supplies of stores, and these new settlers, with Lord Delaware at their head, arrived just in time to save the colony from ruin due to attacks of the Indians, and to famine and disease. The settlement had to contend with many difficulties, but it prospered by degrees, and the colonists were soon engaged in the growth of the tobacco which was to become so famous in later days, and a main source of wealth to Virginian planters. As regards government, at first control was given to a London council appointed by the king, with a local body to manage affairs, the people having no choice in the matter. A third charter, in 1612, abolished the London council, and placed power in the hands of the stockholders. In 1619 Governor Yeardley called together an assembly at Jamestown, composed of the governor, the local council, and deputies or "burgesses" from the various planta- tions or " boroughs". This was the first legislative body that ever assembled in America. Its laws required ratification by the com- pany in London, but on the other hand, orders sent from London were not to be valid without confirmation by the colonial assembly. ' BRITISH COLONIES South of ANADA To 1783. THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. IO5 In 1621 these privileges were embodied in a written constitution, the first document of that kind seen in America. South Virginia, in accordance with the advance of public spirit in Britain, was thus becoming a nursery of freedom for men of European birth. In 1624 the company was dissolved, through King James' jealousy of the steps taken towards self-government, and the colony became a royal province, with a governor and council appointed by the king, but with the retention of the colonial representative assembly. An element of evil, which was in later times to be developed into vast proportions, with terrible issues in civil strife, had arisen in 1619, when a Dutch trader came into port and sold twenty negroes to the colonists. Their labour was found so valuable in the growth of tobacco, with which the very streets of Jamestown were at one time planted, that large cargoes of " black ivory ", in the slave- dealers' slang, were soon imported, and the banks of the James River were lined with plantations for many a mile. The taste for tobacco was rapidly growing in England, and in Stuart times pro- tective laws, aimed at the Spanish trade in the herb denounced by James the First, were passed to support the Virginian growth. The Plymouth or North Virginia Company, of west-country merchants and gentlemen headed by Chief-justice Popham, wholly failed in attempts to found a colony in the district assigned to them by charter. That part of America was reserved by destiny for settlers of a very different class. Pursuing for a time the fortunes of Virginia, we find the colony suffering from the Navigation Act of 1660, restricting her trade to English ships, and confining her export of tobacco to dealings with England. The house of assembly was chiefly composed of " royalists ", who carried matters with a high hand, levied heavy taxes, narrowed the franchise, and persecuted Non- conformists. There were thus two parties, the aristocratic, com- prising office-holders, royalists who had fled from England under the Commonwealth, and wealthy planters; the democratic, made up of the smaller traders and the working class, who saw them- selves deprived of political rights. In 1676 Virginia was afflicted with an Indian war, followed by an armed civil struggle, in which a young lawyer named Nicholas Bacon headed the demo- crats against Governor Berkeley. The capital, Jamestown, was burned, and all that now remains of the place is the crumbling 106 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. tower of an old church, almost hidden by shrubs, with tall trees waving above some weather-marked tombstones of the churchyard in the rear. The death of Bacon in the hour of success left Berkeley free to exercise a revenge on the patriotic party which aroused the disgust of Charles the Second, and caused his recall. In 1679 Lord Culpepper became governor, and aristocratic rule was restored. The franchise was ' confined to freeholders and householders. The assembly could be summoned solely by the Crown, and could deal only with measures drafted by the governor and council, and approved by the Crown. The legislative body had, however, the sole right of initiating money-bills. The "Pilgrim Fathers" derived their name from the wanderings undertaken in search of religious freedom. Some Puritan " Separa- tists ", of the Brownist or Independent sect, had quitted Scrooby, in Lincolnshire, for Holland, in 1608, driven from their homes by the action of the laws against nonconformity. They settled at Leyden, with John Robinson as pastor, and their numbers were reinforced by brethren arriving from other parts of England. In July, 1620, about half their body, desiring to find a home for their children in a land free from the contaminating influences of old- world civilization, sailed from Delfthaven in the Speedwell. On August 5th, with a few emigrants from England, one hundred and twenty persons sailed from Southampton on board the Mayflower, of 1 80 tons, and the Speedwell. Driven first into the Dart and then into Plymouth by stress of weather, they condemned the Speedwell as an unseaworthy vessel, and at last, on September 6th, 1620, the party of pilgrims, seventy-four men, twenty-eight women, and a number of children, started from Plymouth in the Mayflower, and reached Cape Cod in November, a long way north of the ter- ritory assigned to the Virginia Company. A covenant to obey all laws enacted by the males of the community in council was signed, and John Carver was chosen as governor. An exploring party under Miles Standish, after losing rudder, mast, and sail in a furious storm, placed foot ashore on " Forefathers' Rock ", at the place called New Plymouth, from the port of departure in the motherland. Their companions in the Mayflower ratified the choice of a spot for settlement, and New England thus began to exist. The colony suffered so severely in the first winter that half the number, includ- ing Carver, died, but the rugged character of the new-comers matched THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. IO/ the climate, and they were, happily, received as friends by the Indians. There was no royal charter to interfere with freedom, and the settlers were from the first a self-governed community. A church and fort were erected, and these, with the houses, were sur- rounded by a stockade. New emigrants came out from England, and land was assigned to each household for the growth of corn. In five years' time they were in a position to sell produce to the Indians. In 1633 the colonists had paid off all the debt to the Company in London which had fitted out the party in the May- flower. In 1643 they numbered as many as three thousand souls. The colony of Massachusetts dates from a royal charter granted to a Company in 1629, allotting land in proportion to investment, and leaving the government to a head and council resident in the settlement. Nearly a thousand emigrants, including many influen- tial Puritan families, went out, and founded settlements along the shore of Massachusetts Bay. Governor Winthrop, in 1630, began to build the town of Boston, which became the capital so famous in later days. Very strict discipline, in moral and religious affairs, was maintained in the new colony, and no small amount of bigotry was shown. Church membership was needed for the possession of civil rights. Witches were sought out, and " heretics " were banished. Two members of the council were sent back to England for the crime of using the Church prayer-book, and in 1635, Roger Williams, an eloquent young minister, was driven out for asserting freedom of conscience in certain matters, and, taking refuge among the Indians, he founded a settlement named Providence. Quakers were fined, whipped, imprisoned, banished, and even hanged, but cruelty produced its natural effect of arousing sympathy for sufferers and disgust against persecution, and by degrees the rigour of the bigots was relaxed. Connecticut was founded under the auspices of a Company which included Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brook, who re- ceived from Lord Warwick, the president of the " Council for New England ", in London, a tract of land in the valley named from its chief stream, Connecticut, in the Indian tongue meaning " Long River". In 1635 bodies of emigrants went out, and after disputes with the Dutch, who claimed the territory, they founded the town of Hartford, and secured their position by a fort estab- lished at the mouth of the river. Many settlers from New Plymouth IO6 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. tower of an old church, almost hidden by shrubs, with tall trees waving above some weather-marked tombstones of the churchyard in the rear. The death of Bacon in the hour of success left Berkeley free to exercise a revenge on the patriotic party which aroused the disgust of Charles the Second, and caused his recall. In 1679 Lord Culpepper became governor, and aristocratic rule was restored. The franchise was ' confined to freeholders and householders. The assembly could be summoned solely by the Crown, and could deal only with measures drafted by the governor and council, and approved by the Crown. The legislative body had, however, the sole right of initiating money-bills. The "Pilgrim Fathers" derived their name from the wanderings undertaken in search of religious freedom. Some Puritan " Separa- tists ", of the Brownist or Independent sect, had quitted Scrooby, in Lincolnshire, for Holland, in 1608, driven from their homes by the action of the laws against nonconformity. They settled at Leyden, with John Robinson as pastor, and their numbers were reinforced by brethren arriving from other parts of England. In July, 1620, about half their body, desiring to find a home for their children in a land free from the contaminating influences of old- world civilization, sailed from Delfthaven in the Speedwell. On August 5th, with a few emigrants from England, one hundred and twenty persons sailed from Southampton on board the Mayflower, of 1 80 tons, and the Speedwell. Driven first into the Dart and then into Plymouth by stress of weather, they condemned the Speedwell as an unseaworthy vessel, and at last, on September 6th, 1620, the party of pilgrims, seventy-four men, twenty-eight women, and a number of children, started from Plymouth in the Mayflower, and reached Cape Cod in November, a long way north of the ter- ritory assigned to the Virginia Company. A covenant to obey all laws enacted by the males of the community in council was signed, and John Carver was chosen as governor. An exploring party under Miles Standish, after losing rudder, mast, and sail in a furious storm, placed foot ashore on " Forefathers' Rock ", at the place called New Plymouth, from the port of departure in the motherland. Their companions in the Mayflower ratified the choice of a spot for settlement, and New England thus began to exist. The colony suffered so severely in the first winter that half the number, includ- ing Carver, died, but the rugged character of the new-comers matched THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. IO/ the climate, and they were, happily, received as friends by the Indians. There was no royal charter to interfere with freedom, and the settlers were from the first a self-governed community. A church and fort were erected, and these, with the houses, were sur- rounded by a stockade. New emigrants came out from England, and land was assigned to each household for the growth of corn. In five years' time they were in a position to sell produce to the Indians. In 1633 the colonists had paid off all the debt to the Company in London which had fitted out the party in the May- flower. In 1643 they numbered as many as three thousand souls. The colony of Massachusetts dates from a royal charter granted to a Company in 1629, allotting land in proportion to investment, and leaving the government to a head and council resident in the settlement. Nearly a thousand emigrants, including many influen- tial Puritan families, went out, and founded settlements along the shore of Massachusetts Bay. Governor Winthrop, in 1630, began to build the town of Boston, which became the capital so famous in later days. Very strict discipline, in moral and religious affairs, was maintained in the new colony, and no small amount of bigotry was shown. Church membership was needed for the possession of civil rights. Witches were sought out, and " heretics " were banished. Two members of the council were sent back to England for the crime of using the Church prayer-book, and in 1635, Roger Williams, an eloquent young minister, was driven out for asserting freedom of conscience in certain matters, and, taking refuge among the Indians, he founded a settlement named Providence. Quakers were fined, whipped, imprisoned, banished, and even hanged, but cruelty produced its natural effect of arousing sympathy for sufferers and disgust against persecution, and by degrees the rigour of the bigots was relaxed. Connecticut was founded under the auspices of a Company which included Lord Say and Sele and Lord Brook, who re- ceived from Lord Warwick, the president of the " Council for New England ", in London, a tract of land in the valley named from its chief stream, Connecticut, in the Indian tongue meaning "Long River". In 1635 bodies of emigrants went out, and after disputes with the Dutch, who claimed the territory, they founded the town of Hartford, and secured their position by a fort estab- lished at the mouth of the river. Many settlers from New Plymouth 108 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. and Massachusetts, attracted by the rich meadow-lands, joined the new colony. The progress of Virginia at this time may be estimated by the fact that the plantations extended about seventy miles in- land, and exported abundant supplies of corn to the settlers further north. The spirit of the Puritan founders of Connecticut is seen in their attitude towards the natives. The Indians were regarded as mere foes by those who "claimed to be the divinely- favoured conquerors of a new Canaan". In 1637 the Pequod tribe, who had attacked the new-comers, was utterly destroyed, men women, and children, after an assault upon their palisaded fort, which was set on fire. Most of the natives perished in the flames, and the few that could flee were hunted down to annihilation in the river-swamps. The other tribes took the alarm, and in fear of a combined Indian assault, the colonists of New Plymouth, New- haven (a settlement founded in 1638 by some wealthy London families), Massachusetts, and Connecticut formed a federation, the first of its kind in America, styled " The United Colonies of New England". The civil troubles then raging in Britain left them unfettered by home control, and while they were nominally subject to England, these northern colonies were, from the first, to a large degree independent. At this time the population of Massachusetts had risen to nearly 30,000, and the other New England settle- ments contained over one-third of that number. In 1638 the Rev. John Harvard, a graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who had settled in New England, bequeathed a noble gift of books and money to the college being founded by the general court of Mas- sachusetts at Newton, afterwards called Cambridge, on the river Charles, and now virtually a suburb of Boston. The place had been settled in 1630. In 1639 the first printing-press in America was there set up by Day, a printer brought out from London by Joseph Glover, a Nonconformist minister. The new Cambridge soon became famous for its publications, producing in 1640 the Bay Psalm-book, the first book printed in the British American colonies. It has since acquired world-wide renown as the abode for many years of Longfellow, in a house once occupied by George Wash- ington, and as the seat of the noble institution of learning known as the Harvard University. The origin of Rhode Island colony is seen in the settlement of THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. IOQ Providence, founded as above by Roger Williams, the pioneer in those parts of religious freedom. The soil was fertile, and the place " offered a refuge from the spiritual tyranny of Massachu- setts'" . The island of Aquiday or Aqueduck, called by the Dutch, from the colour of its soil, " Roode " (Red) Island, was occupied, and hence arose the name of the new settlement. A charter was obtained from England, after the victory of the Parliament in the Civil War, and in 1647 the people met to choose their governor and other officials, and to frame laws granting freedom of faith and worship to all. This was " the first legal declaration of liberty of conscience ever adopted in the Old or New World ". Returning for a moment to Virginia, we find that, in 1647, the colony contained some 15,000 Englishmen and some hundreds of slaves, with many thousands of cattle and other stock, and an abundant growth of wheat, tobacco, and maize or Indian corn. The James River had anchored in her waters at one time nearly three dozen ships from London, Holland, Bristol, and New Eng- land. On the execution of Charles the First, Virginia, now con- taining, as we have seen, many royalist refugees, acknowledged his son as Charles the Second, "King of England and Virginia", while the colonies of New England adhered to the cause of the new republic established at home. The list of the New England states is completed in New Hamp- shire, a feeble settlement founded by a man named John Mason, and called after his native English county. From time to time this territory was united to, and again separated from, Massachu- setts, either by the consent of the people or by royal authority. In 1741 the colony became "a royal province", and so remained until the final separation from Great Britain. In 1652 Virginia was forced, by the arrival of an expedition, to submit to the Commonwealth, with an indemnity for the past, and with the sole right of taxation vested in her own Assembly, a most important arrangement in our view of coming events. The Assembly was also to elect all officials. In the same year Boston erected a mint, and began to coin silver in shillings, six- pences, and threepenny pieces. In 1656 many settlers from New England migrated to Jamaica, newly conquered by Cromwell from Spain. In 1660, on the Restoration, a "Council for the Plantations " was created in London, and the New England I 10 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. colonies recognized the authority of Charles the Second, who thereupon granted a charter to Massachusetts, including a con- stitution with full legislative and executive power within the colony, provided their Acts were not at variance with the laws of England. Charters were also given to Connecticut and Rhode Island. The Navigation Acts of 1661 and 1663, allowing the imports and exports of the colonies to be carried only in Eng- lish vessels, and further restricting trade, severely affected the commerce of the now thriving Massachusetts. Much discontent arose, and the colony defied the provisions of the Acts in trading direct with the West Indies. In 1686 James the Second, carrying out a plan formed by his predecessor, placed the government of Massachusetts in the hands of a President and Council, devoid of power to make laws or to impose taxes. No representative assem- bly was to exist, and the abode of freedom was thus subjected to a stern despotic sway. This final effort of Stuart tyranny was swept away by the Revolution of 1689. The troubles of past years had included a war in 1675, against the Indian " King Philip". Many towns in Massachusetts and other parts of New England were burnt, and the struggle lasted till the end of 1676, when Philip was defeated and slain. The colonies now to be dealt with were partly acquired by conquest. The Dutch, in some parts of the New World, had been beforehand with their European rivals in maritime affairs. Captain Henry Hudson, whose name survives in a strait, a grand bay, and a noble and beautiful river, was an English navigator in the service of Holland. In 1609 he entered the harbour where the " Empire City " was thereafter to stand, and sailed for one hundred and fifty miles, in the hope of reaching the Pacific Ocean, up the river to which his name was given. Such were the European conceptions at that date of the shape and size of the North American continent. It was on this discovery that the Dutch based their claim to possess the land stretching from Cape Cod to the river Delaware, to which they gave the designation of " New Netherland ". Their ships soon began to visit this region for traffic in furs with the Indian hunters. In 1615 a trading-post was formed on Manhattan Island, and a fort was erected to the south of the present site of Albany. Their " West India Company" made a permanent settlement at New Amsterdam, THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. Ill and Protestant colonists were brought over from Belgium. Land was purchased from the Indians, and the manors, of which some still remain, were formed by possessors who, with their heirs, were called " patroons ". The records of the Dutch colony include Indian wars, ruthlessly waged on both sides, disputes with the British settlers on the Connecticut and with the Swedes on the Delaware, and the doings of four governors, of whom the last and ablest was Peter Stuyvesant. In 1664 the recapture, by the famous Admiral De Ruyter, of settlements on the Guinea coast, caused the seizure of many Dutch vessels in English ports, and further retaliation was planned. Charles the Second granted New Netherland to his brother James, Duke of York, and a fleet was sent out to give effect to this bestowal. Brave old Stuyvesant desired to resist, but he was a hater of free institutions, and many of the Dutch had been seduced by the prospect of the self-govern- ment enjoyed by their neighbours in Connecticut, and were strongly inclined to make a trial of English rule. In September, 1664, the English flag was hoisted on Manhattan, and the town and colony were renamed New York, in honour of the new proprietor. The English rulers, however, did not grant the desired rights, and in 1673, when England and Holland were again at war, a strong Dutch squadron retook New York by surrender, and the place was again held by Holland for a few months. The peace con- cluded in 1674 restored the colony to Britain; and this was the end of Dutch sway in North America. They left behind them many marks visible to this day. Some of the best families in New York city and state are of Dutch descent. The custom of New Year's Day visits, the children's legend of Santa Clans at Christmas, the Easter coloured eggs, the dough-nuts, or small round cakes of flour, eggs, milk, and sugar, are all of Dutch origin. Washington Irving's History of New York, ascribed to " Diedrich Knickerbocker ", a designation of which the surname commemorates an early settler, is a masterly piece of good-natured satire on the old Dutchmen of Manhattan Island. The little man in knee-breeches and cocked hat, a per- manent figure among literary portraits, gave his name to a favourite style of masculine costume, and to the New York families whose ancestors came out from Holland. The story of Rip Van Winkle, the hero of another charming production of Irving, if it has not 112 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. been read in the original sketch, can never be forgotten by those who have had the privilege of seeing Joseph Jefferson, one of America's, nay, of the world's, greatest actors in his presentment- beautiful in idea, most delicate in execution of the good-natured, worthless Dutchman who wanders to the woods of the Catskill Mountains, falls into a deep slumber, and awakens, after a sleep of many years, to find himself changed from a subject of George the Third into a citizen of the United States, with his wife dead, his beard grown a foot long, and new faces, buildings, and names all around him on his return to his native village near the Hudson. New Jersey, once forming a part of " New Netherland ", was granted by James, Duke of York, in 1664, to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, and derived its name from the largest of the Channel Islands, where Carteret had been governor. It soon became, by sale to William Penn, and by settlement, a Quaker colony, and after union for some time with New York, was made a " royal province " in 1738. It contained also many other Puritan settlers, and Presbyterians who had fled from persecution in Scot- land under Charles the Second. Pennsylvania, destined to become one of the most important territories, was founded by the famous Quaker, William Penn, son of the admiral who captured Jamaica. In payment of a debt due from the Crown the younger Penn received from Charles the Second, in 1682, a grant of the territory lying between New Jersey and Maryland, west of the Delaware. The woody region took its name from the founder and the Latin word for "forest". Penn wished to secure a place of refuge for his persecuted brethren, and applied, from the first, in his new colony the principles pro- fessed by the Quaker sect. Two thousand colonists, despatched in the first year, founded as capital the town of Philadelphia, em- bodying the Greek for "brotherly love". The code called "The Great Law ", drawn up by a legislative body of settlers, required all voters and office-holders to be professors of the Christian faith : apart from that, all Deists were left free to their own religious profession. Penn's kindly words and demeanour at once gained the hearts of the Indians, at an interview, ending in a treaty, held beneath the foliage of a great elm-tree, which, carefully preserved until 1810, was then blown down, and has its site marked by a monument. It is the boast of the peaceful sect who object to THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. 113 oaths that this, the only treaty not sworn to, was the only treaty never broken. Love begets love, and, amidst the internecine conflicts waged between colonists and natives, the Indians never shed the blood of a single Quaker. Delaware was composed of three counties on the lower course of that river, which broke off from Pennsylvania after the founder's return to England. Penn allowed their action, and granted them a separate assembly, but the two colonies remained under one governor until the revolt from the British crown. All the states to the south, lying between Chesapeake Bay and Florida, were formed out of the original extensive " Virginia", and were mainly, in religion, attached to the Anglican Church, and in social and political matters were aristocratic in tastes and form of rule. The foundation of Maryland takes us back to the year 1634, when Charles the First granted to Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, a grant of land in Virginia. The noble- man's object was to find a place of free worship for his brethren who suffered persecution in England. A body of emigrants settled at an Indian village near the mouth of the Potomac, and the colony had its name from the queen, Henrietta Maria. The yield of corn from the virgin soil was so rich that the growers could at once export to New England. The charter gave all freemen a share in legislation, and the assembly in 1649 passed a famous Toleration Act, securing freedom of worship to all Christians. Armed civil! strife occurred at intervals, owing in one case to interference from Virginia, and in another to the disgraceful conduct of a Protestant majority in the assembly, who excluded the Catholics, and declared them outlaws. After a long and varying struggle Maryland was made a "royal province" in 1690, and the Church of England became the established form of religion. The Catholics, with the greatest injustice and ingratitude, were disfranchised in the very territory which they had planted. Redress came in 1715, when the fourth Lord Baltimore recovered the proprietary rights lost to his predecessor, and restored the system of religious toleration. North and South Carolina arose from a grant of 1663, whereby Charles the Second gave to patentees, including Lords Clarendon, Ashley, and Albemarle, the territory lying between Virginia and the river St. Mathias, in Florida. The name was derived from VOL. I. 114 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Carolus, the Latin form of " Charles ". The province was to be directly subject to the Crown, with liberty of conscience for all the people, the proprietors, in other respects, having absolute power for making war and raising money by taxation. Some emigrants from Virginia were already in the land, when settlers from England arrived in 1670, and afterwards founded the city of Charleston. The colony grew fast, from the fertility of the soil and the genial climate, which attracted many Dutchmen from New York. Per- secution in France drove thousands of Huguenots across the Atlantic, where they proved to be, as elsewhere, most valuable acquisitions, in their moral conduct, marked by charity and thrift, their polished manners, and their political, artistic, and agricultural skill. The mulberry and the olive were planted in a new soil, and the descendants of these Huguenots furnished three presidents, in the revolutionary time, to the Congress of Philadelphia. Georgia, the last of the thirteen colonies, belongs alone, in its origin, to the eighteenth century, having been founded in 1732, the year of Washington's birth. Its name was given from the reigning British king: its first settlement was due to the benevolent General Oglethorpe, a man who had served on the Continent under Marl- borough's famous friend and colleague, Prince Eugene. It was when he was M.P. for Haslemere, a Surrey borough at that time, that Oglethorpe planned a new American colony, as a place where the debtors then leading a miserable and useless life in the noisome jails of the period, might enter on a new course of profitable and healthful toil. He also designed the provision of a refuge for certain German Protestants who were suffering bitter persecution from the prince-archbishop of Salzburg, and who were driven into exile, to the number of thirty thousand, as described in Goethe's famous story, Hermann und Dorothea. The sum of ten thousand pounds was furnished by Parliament, and George the Second made a grant of land. In 1733 the good general took out a body of more than a hundred emigrants, and founded the town of Savannah. Two years later he went out with a party of three hundred fresh settlers, including John and Charles Wesley, who preached there for a time. The Indians were conciliated by presents, and, better still, by Oglethorpe's kindly spirit. One of their chiefs gave him a buffalo's skin with the head and feathers of an eagle painted upon it. His explanation was that the eagle signified swiftness and the THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. 115 buffalo strength, qualities displayed by the new-comers in flying like birds over the vast sea, and in meeting hostile attacks. The soft eagle's feathers represented love; the warm buffalo's skin was a protection against cold. " Therefore," said the Indian, " love and protect our families." Further emigrations brought over members of the Church of the Brethren, a Protestant society, popularly known as the Moravians, claiming to represent the old Bohemian Brethren of the days of John Huss. These excellent persons gave examples of a pure and gentle Christian life. A number of sturdy Scottish Highlanders brought bone and sinew to the aid of the new colony. In 1738 the general took out a regiment of six hundred men, with whom he waged war against the Spaniards of Florida. In later days, a declension from the primitive purity of Georgian morals showed itself in the discontent aroused by regula- tions which excluded rum and the use of slaves. The rum had been exported from the West Indies in exchange for lumber and other products of the colony, and the loss of this trade was a real grievance. Oglethorpe left the colony finally in 1743, and nine years later the surrender of the charter to the British government made Georgia a crown colony until the final rupture. The history of the thirteen Colonies, before the revolt, is mainly one of peaceful progress arising from tillage, manufactures, and trade. We find a spirit of independence shown in 1665, when the settlement of New Plymouth " declined to permit the king a voice in the appointment of a governor", and the "general court" of Massachusetts successfully resisted the royal claim to hear, in the courts at home, appeals from the colonial tribunals. At the same time, Massachusetts owned nearly two hundred vessels, mostly hailing from Boston. In 1671, Maryland lays a tax of two shillings a hogshead on exported tobacco, a clear proof of increase in that article of production. In 1687, the governor of New York invites the Iroquois Indians "to bring their trade to Albany". This powerful people was, at this time, harassing the French in Canada, and it was prudent for an English colony to keep them on friendly terms. The intellectual advance is shown in 1692 by the establishment, under royal charter, of the Williamsburg College in Virginia, endowed by government and by private funds, with a large grant of land, and a duty of a penny per pound weight of exported tobacco. In 1716, Yale College, named from its chief founder, Il6 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Elihu Yale, was established at Newhaven, in Connecticut, and now, as Yale University, has a high position among American seats of Earning, with schools for students in theology, arts, medicine, law, and science. In 1699 the North American Colonies had probably attained to a population of 300,000, of whom the bulk were found in New England, Virginia, Maryland, and New York. About one-sixth of the whole, or 50,000, were negro slaves, four-fifths of whom belonged to the southern settlements, where the hotter climate caused a demand for labour unsuited to whites. It is significant of coming opinions and action on the great question of slavery that, so early as 1705, the legislature of Massachusetts, sitting at Boston, imposed a duty of ^4 a-head on every imported negro. Symptoms of coming trouble made themselves observed in 1761, when the restrictions and duties placed on colonial commerce by the English Board of Trade caused a large amount of smuggling, and many evasions of the obnoxious Navigation Acts. In the struggle against the French and their Indian allies, ending in 1763, the men of different colonies, living under diverse systems of rule, had been brought together, to fight side by side in a common quarrel, and, with the better knowledge of each other gained as comrades, the colonists laid aside provincial jealousies, and learned the strength and helpful spirit of union. They had been contending as one nation, apart from the mother country, though they fought, in many cases, side by side with British troops, whose officers caused much irritation by open contempt for the un- skilled, however brave, colonial soldiers. A democratic spirit had arisen in the use of self-government, and some of the colonies had long been accustomed only to taxation voted by their own legis- latures. A sense of freedom and independence was abroad, and the people had grown conscious of their strength. Education had much advanced, especially in New England, and seven other colleges had followed the foundation of Harvard and Yale. The chief industry was agriculture, but manufactures of hats, paper, shoes, furniture, coarse cutlery, and cloth -weaving had been developed in the northern colonies. A large coasting-trade existed, and the bold fishermen of New England were prominent among the whalers of Arctic seas. The chief mode of travel was on foot or horseback, and by means of coasting sloops, though coaches THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. I I/ called " flying machines", journeying in two days from New York to Philadelphia, were introduced at the end of this period. A postal system, of which Benjamin Franklin was one of the earlier directors, was established for the whole country. There were marked differences of social character and life be- tween the peoples of the three different groups of colonies, and, in political and military affairs, when the day of trial came, much divergence of spirit was revealed. The colonists of New England, who dwelt in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, were largely Puritan : strict in morals, simple in life, possessed of free and popular institutions, and of intellectual power which was brilliantly shown in oratorical and literary effort, then and in later days. From New England sprang America's most original metaphysician, Jonathan Edwards, born in Connecticut, in 1 703, author of the Freedom of the Will, and founder of a school of Calvinistic theologians. Daniel Webster, one of the most moving of American speakers, was born in New Hampshire. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the brilliant describer of early New England life, as author of Twice-told Tales, The Scarlet Letter, and The House of the Seven Gables, was of Salem, in Massachusetts. Longfellow first saw the light in Portland, Maine, a state founded in 1820, and forming, in 1 807, the year of the poet's birth, a part of Massachusetts. Dr. Channing, the great preacher, liberal theologian, and opponent of slavery, a graduate of Harvard, was a native of Rhode Island. Emerson, the wise philosopher, lofty in spirit, quaint and delicate in utterance, is one of whom Boston is justly proud. Motley, the vivid and accurate historian of the Dutch Republic, was a man of Massachusetts. The same state produced Bancroft and Prescott, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell. The Middle Group of colonies, New York, New Jersey, Dela- ware, and Pennsylvania, had people of very mixed race. The Dutch in New York, the Swedes in Delaware, German Protestants, Huguenots, Welsh emigrants, with the other British settlers, furnished many shades of social and commercial character. The main occupations were mining and agriculture. There was, during the war against Great Britain, a lack, at various times, of public spirit and self-sacrifice in the cause. One famous politician, Benjamin Franklin, won his renown as a citizen of Pennsylvania, though he, like so many of the illustrious men above named, was Il8 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. born in Massachusetts. New York glories in having given birth to Washington Irving, a prince among essayists, admirable in fiction, and in Spanish history and romance, most loveable of men. The Southern Group, including Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, were all nominally attached, in religious faith, to the Anglican Church, and contained a popula- tion which, in its upper class of large planters, was connected in blood, as existing names show, with families of high standing in the mother-country. There were large numbers of negroes and of inferior whites, chiefly engaged in the cultivation, at this period, of tobacco, to be followed, at a later date, by cotton. Three men of high distinction, including one of the first rank in the world's history, came forth from Virginia to aid the colonial cause in the struggle for independence. Their names are George Washington; Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States; and Patrick Henry, a man of Scottish blood, the greatest of American orators. The social life of these states differed widely from that which was developed further north. Plantations took the place of populous towns and villages, and every estate was a little kingdom in itself, with a large slave population, including men of every trade, and ruled by a proprietor who, in the main, was a just and generous master. His house, often rich in costly furniture and plate, and displaying a high degree of refinement and luxury in the mode of living, was the scene of boundless hospitality to neighbours, and to all well-conducted strangers arriving from other parts of the colonies or from lands beyond the seas. A chief point of rivalry amongst wealthy planters was the possession of fine horses, and the English fox-hunter who might visit the southern colonies would often be able there to enjoy the excitement of the chase, and listen to the music of well-trained hounds in full cry. Apart from the mansion of the owner would be seen the negro quarters, with their poultry-yards and gardens, and the settlement was completed by the great sheds for the " curing " of tobacco, the workshops for smiths, carpenters, and other craftsmen, and the mills for grinding wheat and maize. A pleasant picture of life in " Ole Virginny", as the negroes styled the land, may be found in the noble fiction of Thackeray which forms the sequel to his immortal Henry Esmond. Such was the fine, flourishing, and promising colonial dominion which the motherland was to see torn apart, by the colonists' own THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. 1 19 act, from her political embrace. The causes of the quarrel, remote and immediate, were manifold. Some were of long, slow, and pernicious growth and effect ; others took the form of exasperation which produced instantaneous retaliation of explosive and disastrous force. This history knows nothing of political party, Whig or Tory, Conservative, Radical, or Liberal. The one thing certain, as to the loss of the American colonies, is that, even assuming the colonial subjects of George the Third to have been wholly wrong on the principles involved in the disputes between them and the Crown, the British king and ministers did not act according to the saying of Marcus Aurelius, the wise and benevolent emperor of Rome, which lays down that " a prudent ruler will not offend the prejudices of his people, though he might wish they were wiser". It is equally certain that, as in most quarrels, there were faults on both sides. If there was provocation from the home government, there was also selfishness on the part of colonists who forgot the benefits lately conferred, at vast cost of men and money, by their fellow-subjects in Britain. The capture of Quebec, and the destruction of French power in America, with the maritime superiority acquired by Great Britain, had left the colonists free from all apprehension of danger both by sea and land. They were thus no longer dependent, for their very existence, on the mother- country, and they appear to have been somewhat hasty in showing resentment for attempts to exact a small contribution towards the cost of the struggle which had brought them a great, manifest, and lasting advantage. There had been efforts made, in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, to obtain a revenue from the colonies, and many dis- putes had arisen concerning schemes for colonial defence, and methods of federal union amongst the different colonies. The restrictions on colonial trade appeared, to the colonists them- selves, to be part of a system devised and worked for the benefit of the home merchants. They felt as if they were being treated, in this respect, as a mere possession, as conquered people, though the claim to interfere at all with any of their affairs was based upon the fact that they were brothers and Britons, mainly one with their fellow -subjects at home in blood, language, and religion. The Navigation Acts had long been evaded in various ways, notably in an illicit trade carried on by the colonists with South I2O OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. America, whereby they obtained silver bullion in exchange for timber and other produce. In an evil hour, George Grenville, Chancellor of the Exchequer and prime-minister in 1 765, began to read the despatches from the colonies, which had long been habitually left unopened and dusty in the pigeon-holes of the official whose business it was to manage colonial affairs. Grenville discovered what was going on to the detriment of the revenue, and, eager to pay off some of the National Debt, which had increased, between 1748 and 1763, from about seventy-five to one hundred and thirty millions, he resolved to levy some taxation from the colonies. This able, intrepid, pertinacious, and narrow-minded man had the highest notions concerning the powers of Parliament, and was, in fact, a tyrant who disguised tyranny under constitutional forms. King and subjects alike were small, in his view, compared with the sacred House composed of the people's representatives. He held that the colonies could lawfully be taxed, and all that was lawful was also, in the minister's view, not only expedient, but a laudable discharge of duty to the state. The two great champions of the American colonies against Grenville were the elder Pitt, soon to become Earl of Chatham, and Edmund Burke. They took, however, different grounds, Pitt holding that the colonial assemblies were parliaments which alone possessed the right of taxation : Burke thought that the British Parliament had the abstract right to tax, but that it was expedient to consult the feelings of the colonists, and request a voluntary, instead of demanding a legal contribution. The colonists held to the principle of " no taxation without repre- sentation". In 1/64 Parliament carried a resolution that it was "just and necessary for a revenue to be raised in his majesty's domin- ions in America for defraying the expenses of defending, pro- tecting, and securing the same ". " Writs of Assistance ", or warrants authorizing the British custom-house officers in the colonies to search for smuggled goods, were issued, and aroused great indignation at Boston, where James Otis, advocate-general of Massachusetts, denounced them as " instruments of slavery on the one hand and villainy on the other". In 1765 the Stamp Act was passed, for levying duties in America by way of stamps on deeds and other legal documents, newspapers, and pamphlets. The THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. 121 assembly of Virginia first publicly opposed the law, and Patrick Henry, a brilliant and rising young lawyer, introducing a resolution which denied the right of Parliament to tax America, took occasion, amid cries of "Treason!" from several quarters of the House, to remind George the Third of the fate of Julius Caesar and Charles the First. John Ashe, speaker of the North Carolina Assembly, told Governor Tryon, " This law will be resisted to blood and to death." The houses of British officials were mobbed, stamps were seized, prominent loyalists were hung in effigy, British manufactures were " boycotted" by " Daughters of Liberty" wearing nothing but hosiery made of home-spun yarn, and " Sons of Liberty" were banded in resistance to the law. In February, 1766, when the mild Lord Rockingham had succeeded Grenville as prime-minister, the Stamp Act was repealed, after nearly ^7000 had been expended in gathering a stamp revenue of four thousand. At the same time a Declaratory Act was passed asserting that Great Britain had the right and authority to make laws binding upon the colonies and people of America in all cases whatsoever. In 1767, under the Duke of Grafton as nominal premier, Charles Townshend, Chancellor of the Exchequer, imposed additional custom-dues in America on glass, paper, painters' colours, and tea, in order to raise a revenue for the payment of the officials appointed by the Crown. A fresh cause of quarrel was thus estab- lished, and the government at home, anticipating resistance, carried a Mutiny Bill, ordering the colonies to provide quarters and supplies for the troops sent out to enforce the laws. This ill -judging and menacing Act stirred violent indignation in America. The New York legislature refused compliance, and was suspended from its functions by another Act of the home Parliament. The Massachusetts Assembly sent round a circular urging the other colonies to unite for the redress of grievances, and refused, on demand, to recall the letters. This legislative body was then suspended by the Governor. In October, 1768, British troops, under General Gage, entered Boston, and, on being refused quarters, took possession of the State House. The British Parlia- ment, early in the following year, denounced the action of the Massachusetts Assembly, and requested the king to order the Governor to send treasonable persons home for trial before a Special Commission. About this time, the House of Burgesses in 122 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Virginia was dissolved by the Governor for condemning the pro- posed transmission to England of persons accused of treason. Swiftly now and surely, matters were thus drifting to the cataract of civil war. Lord North became prime-minister in 1770, and all the American import-duties were repealed, saving the tax of three- pence per pound on tea, which was maintained as a matter of principle. The revenue from this source was only three hun- dred pounds a year, but the government, in its "firm" attitude, supported by the king, thus defied the colonial contention that the home Parliament had no constitutional right to tax at all those who did not send representatives to that assembly. There had already been a small conflict between the troops of General Gage and the citizens of Boston, in which three men were shot dead and eight wounded by the soldiers, two of whom were tried and convicted of manslaughter. An English revenue -schooner, which had run aground in 1772, was destroyed by the people of Rhode Island. In the following year, an ominous step was taken by the men of Virginia, when the leading burgesses united the colonies by appointing a committee to maintain correspondence and communi- cation with them. The final provocation given to the colonists was one of a peculiar kind, in the shape of a favour conferred. The East India Company was in financial difficulties when Lord North arranged for them to get rid of a large quantity of tea lying in their London warehouses, by permitting its shipment to America without pay- ment of the English duty, then fixed at one shilling per pound. The colonists, paying only threepence, would drink their tea more cheaply than the people of England. The subterfuge aroused hot indignation. New York and Philadelphia prevailed on the captains of the tea-ships which arrived there to depart without unloading their cargoes. At Charlestown, the tea was landed, but no man would purchase it, and it lay in the cellars until it was spoiled by damp. In Boston, as all the world knows, a party of citizens, after a meeting held at the famous Faneuil Hall, since called the "cradle of liberty", boarded the ships, in the disguise of Indians, and blackened the surface of the harbour -waters by emptying overboard some hundreds of tea-chests. The men of Massachusetts, who headed the cause of freedom at the north, as THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. 123 Virginia led the way in the south, were further exasperated by insults offered at the Privy Council, in London, to their repre- sentative, Benjamin Franklin. The immediate effect of the " Boston Tea Party", as it was styled in America, was that, early in 1774, the British Parliament passed measures closing the port of Boston, revoking the charter of Massachusetts, and providing that persons accused of capital crimes should be sent for trial either to England, or to some other colony than that in which the offence was committed. The council of the colony was to be chosen by the Crown, the judges nominated by the governor, and the late rioters were to be sent to England for trial. The Virginia House of Burgesses, for protesting against the treatment of Boston, was again dissolved by the governor, but the leading citizens met at the Raleigh Tavern, in Williamsburg, Virginia, and directed the Committee of Correspondence to propose to the other colonies a general congress. The colonists were now divided into opponents of the crown as "Whigs", and loyalists, called "Tories". The aspirants after freedom took up the words of Patrick Henry, " Give me liberty or give me death". Bodies of soldiers were formed by the "Whigs", under the name of "minute men", as ready to act in arms at the shortest notice. It is clear that but a spark was needed to explode such a magazine. In September, 1774, a congress representing all the colonies except Georgia assembled at Philadelphia, and agreed upon a " Declaration of Rights", with the adoption of addresses to the people of Great Britain and of the colonies. It does not appear that the idea of independence was yet entertained. A protest against standing armies, without popular consent, was made, and, until the redress of grievances, it was resolved to abandon all commercial intercourse with Great Britain. Lord North, in 1775, began a policy of concession, which came too late. The colonists were not to be taxed by Parliament, pro- vided they taxed themselves with the approbation of the British king and legislature. Before this news could reach America, the battle of Lexington had been fought. In this running conflict, a body of British troops, sent by General Gage to destroy military stores at Concord, eighteen miles from Boston, was most severely handled by the " minute men " of Massachusetts, and returned with the loss of about three hundred men. One hundred Americans 124 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. had fallen, and the blood of the colonists was now at fever-heat. Gage was hemmed in at Boston by twenty thousand men ; the forts of Crown Point and Ticonderoga were taken, and on May loth, 1775, the Congress of the Colonies met at Philadelphia. The famous Olive Branch Petition to the British king was adopted, but George refused to receive a document emanating from an un- lawful assembly; he would not recognize a "Congress", but would receive the submission of "Colonies". Washington, meanwhile, had been appointed commander-in-chief of the colonial forces, and the battle of Bunker's Hill, near Boston, though it was a defeat for the Americans, greatly encouraged the colonies, whose untrained men had killed or wounded more than one thousand choice British troops at a cost to themselves of less than half the number. The civil war had begun, and on July 4th, 1776, the Congress at Philadelphia adopted the renowned Declaration of Independence, drawn up by a committee composed of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Living- stone. The resolution was carried at two o'clock, while the streets of Philadelphia were crowded with anxious people. In the steeple of the old State House was a bell on which, by a happy coincidence, was inscribed, " Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof". When the glad tidings came from the place of assembly, a boy, posted below by the ringer, clapped his hands and shouted out "Ring! Ring!" The iron clapper did its work; the streets rang with shouts of applause, every steeple took up the peal, and the night drew on with blazing bonfires and booming cannon, proclaiming to the world, as events were to prove, the advent of a new nation. It would be an ungracious task to pursue in detail the momentous contest, happily unique in British history, which was now to be waged. Citizens of the United States of America were, during the year 1892, visitors to the number of eighteen thousand at the tomb of Shakespeare in the grand old church of Stratford-on-Avon. There, and in the great Abbey, "where so many enmities lie buried", the men and women of two mighty nations meet on the common ground of associations fraught with deathless interest and renown, and have long since agreed to inter there all bitter memories of the past. The chief reputation created during this conflict between the mother-country and her daughter-states was that of Washington. THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. 125 This great man was descended from an Englishman, John Wash- ington, who emigrated in 1657, and he was the eldest son, by a second wife, of a substantial farmer in Westmoreland county, Virginia. Born in 1732, he became, at an early age, a surveyor by profession. As an officer of the Virginia militia, he soon took the field against the French, showing high military qualities, but without meeting the due reward of success. In 1754 he was compelled, in command of his regiment, to surrender to a superior force, and, in the following year, serving as a volunteer under General Braddock, he was almost the only officer who returned safe from the disastrous expedition against the French at Fort Duquesne. By the death of his half-brother he became a wealthy landowner, in the possession of the Mount Vernon estates and plantations, and, as a member of the Virginia Assembly, he gained the high regard of his fellow-colonists which caused his appointment as their supreme leader in war at the crisis of their political history. The real greatness of Washington corresponds, in one direction, with that belonging to other heroic figures of the first rank in history, such as Wellington and William of Orange. Indomitable patience and resolution amidst difficulties which would have utterly subdued a man of weaker soul carried him on to final triumph. He rises to the highest point in the dark hours of defeat, and of the dismay and discouragement which follow thereon. Contending, with raw troops, against large bodies of British regulars, aided by Hessians and other German hirelings, and, to the disgrace of England, by hordes of savage Indians, he was often unable to make head against the foe. Driven from New York, in 1776, by Clinton, Howe, and Cornwallis, after the defeat of Putnam at Long Island, and of himself at White Plains, he made his way to Penn- sylvania, where he found himself heading a mere handful of ragged, disheartened fugitives. Many leading colonists then turned ' loyal- ists,' but Washington never for a moment lost heart. On the night of Christmas, 1776, he crossed the Delaware, in a storm of sleet, amid the dangers of drifting ice, with a picked force, routed the Hessians at Trenton in the midst of their festivities, took a thousand prisoners, slew their leader, and crossed back to his camp with the loss of but four men, two killed in action, two frozen to death. This brilliant feat kept with the colours crowds of men whose term of service was expiring, and brought large numbers of recruits. I2b OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. In the first days of 1 777, a masterly device, which deceived Corn- wallis, gave Washington another victory at Princeton, and his con- duct of affairs at this period is said to have won the highest praise from Frederick the Great. The Pennsylvania campaign of this year included a defeat for Washington at Brandywine, the loss of Philadelphia, and another defeat of Washington at Germantown. Then came the terrible winter passed by the American leader and his beaten and disheartened troops at Valley Forge, north-west of Philadelphia. In bitter cold, scantily clad and fed, shoeless, sick, the men were sustained by the heroic courage of their general, strong in the sublime faith inspired by the cause which he held to be that of justice, and were ready to take the field in the spring with the new hopes derived from the capitulation of Burgoyne in October, 1777, and the adhesion of France. The surrender at Saratoga, between Lake Champlain and New York, where General Burgoyne, with nearly 6000 men, laid down his arms to overwhelming numbers under General Gates, was one of the decisive events of modern history. Franklin, already renowned for his diplomatic skill, had been despatched to France, and the chief European rival of Great Britain now acknowledged the independence of the " United States ", a title assumed at a Congress held in November, 1777, and sent out a fleet, with troops on board, to help the "rebels" against King George. In February, 17/8, a bill was passed through the British Par- liament, formally renouncing the claim to tax the colonies, and naming commissioners to treat for peace. Lord North, however, was acrain too late, for in that same month France concluded an _> alliance with the new nation beyond the Atlantic. The Americans would not now listen to any overtures which did not recognize their political severance. It was in April of the same year that the historic scene, recorded by the brush of the Boston painter, Copley, in his ill-named " Death of Chatham ", occurred in the House of Lords. The Duke of Richmond moved to recognize the indepen- dence of the States, and the great British champion of colonial rights, protesting with such vehemence as was left to his enfeebled frame " against the dismemberment of this ancient and noble monarchy ", sank down in the fit which, a few weeks later, was followed by his death in one of the most gloomy periods of the fortunes of the land which he loved so well. THE NORTH AMERICAN COLONIES. I2/ During 1778 and the two succeeding years, the British troops were often successful in the field, especially in the southern states, and Washington himself was again defeated. In 1781 the persis- tence of the leader and the faithful adherents of the American cause was rewarded by a great and finally decisive success. On October 1 9th, at Yorktown, in the east of Virginia, Lord Cornwallis, with about 7000 men, blockaded on land by Washington and the French general La Fayette, and by a French fleet on the coast, held out until his last cartridge was spent, and then had no resource but surrender. It was felt by both sides that the end had now virtually come. It was two o'clock in the morning when the momentous news arrived at Philadelphia, and the people were awakened by the watchmen's cry " Past two o'clock and Cornwallis is taken ". The streets were soon thronged with joyous crowds, and Congress, meeting at an early hour, marched in procession to the Lutheran church to make thanksgivings for this glorious issue. On Sunday at noon of November 25th, more than five weeks after the event had occurred, the British cabinet received the ominous news. Lord North, faithful to his king and to what he had held to be the righteous cause, cried in his distress " O God! it is all over". He had never uttered truer words than those. The incidents of the war included successes for privateers who were let loose by Washington on British commerce with disastrous results. Five hundred ships were taken, and the famous Paul Jones, of Scottish birth, commanding a vessel called The Ranger, attacked Whitehaven, in Cumberland, in 1778, set fire to the ship- ping, and plundered the Earl of Selkirk's mansion. In the following year, on board of his 42-gun frigate, the Bon Homme Richard, he threatened Leith, and, attacking a convoy of merchantmen in the North Sea, he captured, after a most sanguinary fight, the British war-sloop Serapis, off Flamborough Head. Her consort was also taken by another ship of Paul Jones' little squadron. Even after Yorktown, the Americans were in a position of much difficulty, though the end of the struggle was well assured, when their antagonist was faced in Europe by the forces of France and Holland and Spain. The colonists, however, had lost all their foreign trade; the currency was worthless; tillage and manufactures had been neglected; countless villages and homesteads had been burned. Charleston was held by the British for more than a year, 128 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. and Savannah and New York for about two years, after the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis, and George the Third was still resolved to continue the effort to conquer the " rebellion ". The powerful and benignant influence of Washington was needed to prevent disastrous quarrel between the army and the civil powers, but the feeling of the British nation, with the resigna- tion of Lord North in March, 1782, prepared the way for the Peace of Versailles, in January, 1783, acknowledging the thirteen Colonies of America to be free, sovereign, and independent states, and relinquished, for the British crown, all claims to the govern- ment thereof, and to proprietary and territorial rights. The treaty was signed, on behalf of the Americans, by John Adams, of Massa- chusetts, Benjamin Franklin, of Pennsylvania, and John Jay, of New York. The causes of success in a war waged by a people numbering only two millions against the enormous odds of Great Britain, with about ten millions (exclusive of Ireland) and an over- whelming superiority in resources of every kind, must be sought in the distance of the scene of action from the British base of opera- tions, in the combination of powerful European foes with which Britain was required to deal, and, above all, in the constancy, deter- mination, and skill displayed, amongst much despondency of feeble souls, and much traitorous ill-will to the colonial cause, by George Washington, General Gates, General Greene, and other leaders of their country's levies. Whatever the causes, whatever the remoter issues were to be, right or wrong, for good or for evil, the work was done, and a new nation was thus placed on the roll of independent states. As one immediate consequence of this great change in Ameri- can affairs, many of the people who called themselves " United Empire Loyalists" migrated from the United States into Canada and adjacent territory, where they settled, to the number of about forty thousand, on the banks of the St. Lawrence and the shores of Lake Ontario, and in that part of Nova Scotia which was after- wards called New Brunswick. Lands were assigned to them by the British government, and a great impulse was given to the progress of the territory which had been lately conquered from the French. Soon after the conclusion of peace at Versailles, the army was dis- banded, and Washington, after a solemn and affecting farewell to his officers, retired to his estate of Mount Vernon, with the eulogies THE UNITED STATES. 129 and thanks of the people whom he, beyond all others, had contri- buted to make an independent nation. The first business to be undertaken was the formation of a system of rule, as to which men's minds were greatly divided. The separate States were jealous of each other, and many people were opposed to the formation of a national government, with large powers vested in a Congress. A convention was called to Philadelphia in 1787, with Washington as its president, and lengthy deliberations ended in the adoption of a new constitution, which came into operation two years later. The constitution of Great Britain was the model chosen by the organizers of a system of rule for the new power. The chief aim was to separate the Executive, the Legislative, and the Judicial functions. In the mother-country, the sovereign and the ministers were the execu- tive department of administration. The legislative powers lay with Parliament. The judges, during good behaviour, were inde- pendent of both, and secure in their exalted and important positions. The needful express provision for the circumstances of the case in hand was that by which local powers were reserved for the several States, who agreed to resign to a central authority certain rights of action expressed in a strictly definite bond of federal union. In accordance with their pattern, thus modified, the President became an elective sovereign, chosen for four years' tenure of office, by electors chosen from each state in numbers proportioned to population. These electoral delegates were supposed to represent the flower of the citizens in wisdom and fitness to choose a tem- porary ruler. In fact, they are themselves chosen as men who are pledged to the support of one of the particular candidates, Demo- cratic or Republican, already nominated by opposite parties. A vice-president for four years is chosen in the same way. The President's executive powers are those of a constitutional sovereign in regard to peace and war, the issue of coinage and notes, but he possesses and uses a power long become obsolete in Great Britain, that of vetoing bills of Congress, unless they are passed by a two- thirds majority in both houses. The Secretaries of State and other ministers are selected by him ; they do not, like our Cabinet and some other high officials, sit in the Parliament. The House of Representatives, one branch of the legislature, is VOL. I. 9 I3O OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. chosen by the people of each state, in numbers proportionate to the population, and under a franchise of local regulation. The Senate consists of members elected by the local legislatures of the several States, two from each State, and they sit for six years, the chamber being renewed by the biennial retirement of a third of the members. The powers and privileges of these two bodies resemble those of the two British Houses of Parliament; the Senate being a republican " House of Lords ", with the right of judging officers of state impeached by the House of Representatives. The more popular body, as with us, has the sole right of introducing bills for taxation. The judges hold office, as in Great Britain since the Act of Settlement, " for life or good behaviour ". One important restriction exists upon the power and validity of Acts of Congress : they must be in accordance with what is laid down in the written Constitution, and a judge may decide that an Act, or a clause or section of an Act, is contrary thereto, and is thereby annulled. There could be but one man to whom the eyes of the American people turned as the first President of the new republic, and Wash- ington, inaugurated in that high office in April, 1789, was chosen for a second term in 1793. He died in December, 1799, some two years after the close of his second period of rule, leaving the country mainly of his creation fairly launched on her grand career. Mr. Chauncy Depew, one of America's greatest living speakers, delivering the Columbian oration at Chicago in October, 1892, referred in proud terms of eulogy to the first century of his country's history. He declared that "the constitution and govern- ment of the United States had now passed the period of experi- ment, after a hundred years of successful trial, and that their demonstrated permanency and power were revolutionizing the governments of the world. Anarchists and Socialists had taken no root, and made no converts, on American soil. Religion had flourished, and a living and practical Christianity was the charac- teristic of the people. They had accumulated wealth far beyond the visions of the Cathay of Columbus or the El Dorado of De Soto ". In describing the effects of the American experiment upon the Old World, the orator claimed that " the sum of human happiness had been boundlessly increased by the millions who had THE UNITED STATES. 131 found new homes and improved conditions of life on the soil of the New World, and that the returning tide of lesson and experience had incalculably enriched the fatherlands whence these emigrants issued. France was rudely roused from the sullen submission to centuries of tyranny by her soldiers as they returned from service in the American Revolutionary War. The orgies of the Reign of Terror were the revenges and excesses of a people who had dis- covered their power, but were not prepared for its beneficent use. After fleeing from herself into the arms of Napoleon, France, in the processes of her evolution from darkness to light, had tried Bourbon, and Orleanist, and a Napoleon again, and had cast them all aside. Now, in the fulness of time, and through training in the school of hardest experience, the French people had reared and were enjoying a permanent Republic. England of the Mayflower and of James the Second, England of George the Third and of Lord North, had enlarged her suffrage, and was to-day animated and governed by the democratic spirit. The United States threw wide her gates for, and gladly received with open arms, those who, by intelligence and virtue, by loyalty and thrift, were worthy of admission to the equal advantages and priceless gift of American citizenship." Making all abatement for the natural pride of an American citizen in the marvellous progress and wide-spread influence of his country, we may fairly say that " this witness is true ". We proceed to trace briefly the relations existing between the mother-country and the United States in the period which followed on the close of the Revolutionary War. When the struggle was over, and the final separation was effected, the British king, who had largely been responsible for the original quarrel, accepted the position with an excellent grace. In receiving at St. James' the first American ambassador, John Adams, George the Third, on the arrival of the minister in 1785, addressed him thus: " I will be very frank with you. I was the last to conform to the separation; but the separation having been made, and having become in- evitable, I have always said, as I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power. Let the circumstances of language, religion, and blood have their full effect." 132 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. It is idle to speculate on what would have happened if the motherland had never quarrelled with her offspring. It is certain that Great Britain quickly recovered from the shock received in the loss of her colonies. The trade of the old country grew fast along with the growth of prosperity in the new. The United States, with her rich and virgin soil, soon acquired the means of largely importing the manufactured goods poured into the market by the workers in the British hives of industry. William Pitt strove for perfect freedom of trade with the new republic, and, though he failed in this effort, the commerce between the countries soon attained proportions which had never yet been reached. This was largely due to the cultivation of cotton, which was successfully begun in the southern states during the War of Inde- pendence. This valuable shrub, known from distant ages in India, and brought thence into Egypt in the sixth century before the Christian era, was introduced into Europe about the ninth century, being planted by the Moorish conquerors of Spain in the fertile plains of Valencia. Cotton factories soon arose at Cordova, Granada, and Seville, and by the fourteenth century the cotton stuffs of Granada were held to be superior even to the Syrian fabrics. The making of cotton-cloth appears to have been prac- tised by the Mexicans and Peruvians long before Europeans arrived in the New World. The British colonists of Virginia began to plant the cotton-shrub as an experiment in 1621, but the amount of cotton produced was very small, and the first impetus towards a large culture appears to have been given by the intro- duction of new plants, at the time above-mentioned, from the Bahamas into Carolina and Georgia. The invention of the cotton- gin, in 1793, by Eli Whitney, a native of Massachusetts, was a great event in the history of the United States. This machine effected with ease and rapidity the separation of the fibre from the seed, a process hitherto performed by hand with slow and toilsome labour. The cotton was thus made ready for export at a lower price, and a new source for raw material at a cheap rate was thus laid open to British manufacturers. POSSESSIONS IN EUROPE AND AFRICA. 133 CHAPTER III. COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN EUROPE AND AFRICA. Early history of Gibraltar Its acquisition by Britain Attempts by Spain to recover possession Gallant and successful defence by General Eliott. Gambia and the Gold Coast African trading companies St. Helena Sierra Leone. We proceed to a historical record of the dependencies, settle- ments, colonies, and foreign possessions of Great Britain, as they existed prior to the opening of the nineteenth century. Geo- graphical, commercial, and statistical accounts of the whole Colonial Empire, with the mode of government obtaining in each at the date of writing, are reserved for a later section of this work. Apart from the Channel Islands, the great rock-fortress of Gibraltar was the only foreign European dependency of Great Britain at the opening of the nineteenth century. This world- famous promontory of the south of Spain was known to the early navigators of Phoenicia. The Greeks gave it the name of Calpe> and this hill on the northern side of the strait, and that above Ceuta on the African coast, styled A by la, were the ancient Columns or Pillars of Hercules, deriving that name from various forms of a mythological story concerning the demigod, who either, in one account, erected pillars at those points to mark the limit of his travels to the west, or tore asunder the solid earth so as to make the strait, and turn one mountain into two. The Columns of Hercules were, for many ages, treated as the boundary of the western world, beyond which lay the ocean-stream that surrounded the flat disk of earth as conceived by men of olden time. Gibraltar came within the range of mediaeval history, and re- ceived its present name when the Saracens, whose conquering arms had been carried along the northern coast of Africa, had reached the western ocean. It was in the year 711 that one of their leaders, Tarik, crossed the strait to undertake the conquest of the Visigothic kingdom in the region afterwards known as Spain. The great rock was by him furnished with a castle, of which one old tower remains, and the position was held as one which afforded a sound base of operations towards the north, and a point of safe and speedy landing from the African side. The Arabic name of 134 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Gebel-el-Tarik, or ///// of Tarik, passed, by an obvious process of corruption, into Gibraltar. In 1302, Ferdinand the Second, king of Castile, won it back from its Moorish possessors. The place, however, again changed hands, and only became firmly, though not then finally, a Spanish possession in 1462. The rock was then converted into a fortress of the modern type, mounted with guns, and provided with various artificial works of strength. The acquirement of Gibraltar was the sole permanent success achieved by British arms in Spain during Queen Anne's War of the Spanish Succession. The opportunity for its seizure was afforded, through the gross neglect of the then degenerate rulers of Spain, to a combined British and Dutch force, consisting of a fleet commanded by Sir George Rooke and Sir Cloudesley Shovel, carrying soldiers under the Prince of Hesse- Darmstadt. In the last days of July, 1704, the Spanish garrison within the works numbered only a hundred men. The chivalrous commander dis- dained surrender even to odds so great, and a force of two thousand marines, led by the German prince, was landed on the isthmus to cut off supplies from the mainland of Spain. On August 2nd the guns of the squadron opened fire, and, on the following day, after further bombardment, the place was carried by an escalade of British sailors on the precipitous eastern face of the rock, while a part of the garrison were engaged in prayer at the festival of some saint, instead of manning the works and guns. A simultaneous attack on the south mole-head ended, after heavy loss to the stormers from the explosion of a mine, in the capture of the ramparts in that quarter, and the surrender of the post on honourable terms. The English flag was at once hoisted by Sir George Rooke, though the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt wished to raise the Spanish standard and to secure the fortress for " Charles the Third ", son of the emperor Leopold, and titular king of Spain. Two thousand men were left as a garrison, and, though the importance of the conquest was not fully understood at the time, Gibraltar was retained, in 1713, by the terms of the Peace of Utrecht. The Spanish government had, from the first, severely felt the loss of their southern stronghold, and two fierce attempts at repos- session had been made in 1704 and the following year. In 1727, when further trouble arose with Spain, an army under the Count de las Torres attacked the fortress, and strove to fulfil their leader's POSSESSIONS IN EUROPE AND AFRICA. 135 boast that in six weeks' time the " heretics " should be driven into the sea. The British fleet kept the garrison well supplied with food and ammunition, and a siege of four months, from February till June, closed with the discomfiture of the assailing force, the fire of whose guns had wrought little or no damage. The last and by far the greatest attempt for the forcible recovery of Gibraltar from British hands was made in the siege which con- tinued from June 2ist, 1779, until March, 1783. In that dark period of our country's fortunes, when the British fleets were matched against the combined marine forces of France and Spain and Holland, and British armies were unable to hold their own, beyond the Atlantic, against colonial levies, the historic and suc- cessful resistance of Gibraltar, one of the grandest achievements in modern times, saved the country's honour, and nobly vindicated our British claim to the possession of dogged valour and endurance against immeasurable odds. The place was invested, on the land- side, by a vast Spanish force, and lines of works, mounting many scores of cannon, were erected for bombardment. The governor and commander-in-chief, General George Augustus Eliott, headed a garrison of five thousand men, a force including about one thou- sand Hanoverians. This brave man, then in his sixty-second year, was born on Christmas-day, 1717, the seventh son of Sir Gilbert Eliott, a Rox- burgh baronet. Wounded at Dettingen, and engaged at Fontenoy, Eliott, as a colonel of light horse, had also served with the English force aiding Frederick the Great, the first captain of that age, against Austria in the latter half of the Seven Years' War. By a happy choice, he was sent out to put Gibraltar in a state of defence, for which purpose he was backed by about five hundred artillery- men and engineers. Towards the end of June, 1779, the place was cut off on the side of Spain, and the friendly intercourse with the Spanish villages, the excursions into the cork-forests, and the visits to the Barbary coast, which had lent a charming variety to a life of garrison routine, came to an end for the holders of the fortress. Their country's fleets were hard beset even in the British Channel, and, at an early period of the investment, the supplies of fresh food, in corn, fruit, and meat from the African coast, were made difficult of arrival through the presence of Spanish ships in the bay. The people of 136 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. the town of Gibraltar, lying at the foot of the rock on the western side, had neglected the order to keep always in hand a store of provisions for six months' consumption. They were destined, in due time, to pay dearly for this disregard of the dictates of common prudence. The works of the fortress could scorn the earlier bom- bardments from the Spanish lines, but within a few months of the commencement of the blockade there were serious menaces of famine. In the earliest days of 1780, the wives and children of officers and troops were partly living on the wild herbs that grew on the face of the Rock. In that same month of January, Rodney's victory over the Spanish fleet near Cape St. Vincent brought relief by ending the sea-blockade, and throwing into the place a large store of provisions. The garrison was also reinforced, and the troops could face the enemy with renewed hopes of final success. In June, 1780, the besiegers failed in an attempt with fire-ships against the British squadron. As month after month wore away, the thoughts of the whole civilized world were turned upon the rock-fortress, beleaguered in vain, while the flag of Great Britain still proudly floated above its batteries and corridors, hewn out by man from the solid stone. The first inquiry of Charles the Third of Spain, as he awoke to the light of a new morning, was, " Is It taken?" At a later stage, the Queen of Spain had her seat placed upon a lofty hill still called " The Queen's Chair", and vowed that she would never move from the spot until the English flag was lowered. Her release was brought about by General Eliott's courtesy in striking his colours, on this understanding, for a few hours. In the autumn of 1780, the continued use of salt provisions caused a terrible outbreak of scurvy, relieved at last by the capture of a Danish vessel with a cargo of lemons and oranges. The value of lemon-juice, which had recently been proved by Captain Cook, as a specific for the scourge of mariners in those days, was quickly demonstrated anew in the hospitals of Gibraltar. The want of food, partly arising from the Sultan of Morocco's churlish prohibition of trade with his ports, was again creating severe distress in the spring of 1781. The soldiers and the townsfolk were well-nigh starving when fresh relief arrived. In April, Admiral Darby forced away the blockading ships, and brought in a convoy of a hundred vessels laden with stores. The baffled besiegers, now Spanish and French, POSSESSIONS IN EUROPE AND AFRICA. 137 at once began a severe bombardment from their works to the north, and from gunboats in the bay, laying the town in ruins, but making slight impression on the batteries of the fortress or on the fighting strength of the garrison. Through May and June their fire was maintained, and the powerful siege-works received daily additions of a formidable kind. It was in the last week of November, 1781, that the gallant Eliott resolved to show his enemy that the troops under his com- mand could strike outside as well as from within the shelter of their stronghold. At sunset of the 26th, Brigadier Ross led a sortie of two thousand men against the hostile lines at the distance of three- quarters of a mile. The foe were taken completely by surprise, and fled in panic, leaving the British to work their will on the captured works. The pioneers and artillerymen quickly destroyed the thick and lofty ramparts; the gabions and wooden gun-plat- forms were set on fire, and in half an hour the flames consumed all the wood-work in the lines. The cannon and mortars were ren- dered useless by spikes driven into the touch-holes, the magazines were blown up, and the assailants retired with a loss of only thirty men, after destroying, in one hour, works which had cost three millions sterling for construction, and the lives of five thousand men from the British fire. All efforts at renewal were foiled by Eliott's discharge of red-hot shot, maintained until the whole of the advanced works were again destroyed. During the remainder of that year, and the spring of 1782, the blockade continued, with daily firing from the Spanish gunboats and from the batteries on land. The approach of peace urged the enemy to a final and desperate attempt at recovering the great fortress for the crown of Spain. The native army numbered nearly thirty thousand men, and in September, 1782, the Due de Crillon, fresh from the conquest of Minorca, was in command of a yet larger French army. The chief war-engineers of Europe had been invited, by large rewards, to furnish plans for the reduction of Gibraltar in a combined attack by sea and land. The method devised by the Chevalier d'A^on was adopted with eager hopes of success. In the port of Alge9iras, on the opposite side of Gibraltar Bay, ten large ships were cut down, and turned, at a great cost, into floating batteries of very ingenious, peculiar, and formidable construction. In order to make 138 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. them, as it was fondly believed, proof against fire and the risk of submersion, these great engines of war were surrounded with raw hides, backed by thick layers of wet sand, and were furnished with bomb-proof roofs, and with large quantities of the cork abounding in the Spanish forests. Eliott, for his part, prepared his furnaces, which were placed in all parts of the defensive works. The French and Spanish fleets, which had been menacing our coasts in the Channel, had come southwards to share in the final effort, and the government at home ordered Lord Howe to equip his fleet at Portsmouth for the relief of Gibraltar. It was at this time, on August 29th, 1782, that the magnificent Royal George, of 108 guns, sank at Spithead with Admiral Kempenfeldt on board. On September nth, Howe sailed from Spithead with a powerful naval armament, having on board two regiments to strengthen the garrison, and convoying many transports laden with stores. Before he could arrive on the scene of action, the fate of Gibraltar had been decided by British valour, energy, and skill. The hostile bombardment began on September 8th, and was vigorously sustained for a week. On the 1 3th, the terrific storm of red-hot shot, shell, and cold cannon- balls, kept up from the fortress with accurate aim, completed its work of triumphant repulse. The towering Rock, the bay of Gibraltar, the waters of the Strait, the African shore, were illumi- nated by the flames of the "incombustible" floating-batteries, and British soldiers were soon employed in saving the panic-stricken crews of the foe. The sun rose upon a scene of utter destruction, and the arrival of Lord Howe on October iith drove off the French and Spanish fleets, while his supplies of men and food placed the noble garrison beyond all risk from within or from without. The siege, now practically over, was continued, in a languid fashion, during the winter, and ended with the peace of 1783, after a continuance of three years and seven months. The total loss of the garrison was but twelve hundred men, of whom less than five hundred perished or were disabled by the enemy's fire. From that hour Gibraltar has remained a British possession. Her defender, who ranks, for combined skill, intrepidity, and moral courage, among the greatest soldiers of his century, was ennobled as Lord Heathfield, a title derived from his Sussex estate, and Baron of THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SPANISH "BATTERING SHIPS" BY THE BRITISH AT GIBRALTAR. The combined naval forces of France, Spain, and Holland sought to wrest Gibraltar from Britain in a great siege which lasted from June, 1779, to March, 1783. The chief war-engineers of Europe had been induced, by large rewards, to furnish devices for the capture of the fortress, and the floating batteries of the Chevalier d' Argon was the method finally adopted. These batteries were built up from the frameworks of ten large ships, which were surrounded with raw hides, and furnished with bomb-proof roofs. They were supposed to be invulnerable and incombustible, but when they were towed into position, the storm of red-hot shot and shell from Gibraltar soon set them in a blaze. In a short time the panic-stricken crews jumped overboard, and so this attempt, like all the other attempts to reduce the fortress held by Governor Elliot, ended in complete failure. POSSESSIONS IN EUROPE AND AFRICA. 139 Gibraltar, with the further distinctions of the Knighthood of the Bath, the thanks of Parliament, and a pension of ^1500 a year. The earliest history of our African possessions takes us back to the fifteenth century. The great river Gambia was discovered by the early Portuguese navigators, but no settlement was made by Portugal on that part of the west African coast. In 1588, the year of the Armada, a charter for trade with the Gambia was granted by Queen Elizabeth to some Exeter merchants, but nothing was attempted, it seems, in the way of settlement until 1618, when a Company was formed in London, and unsuccessful efforts were made to open commercial relations with the natives. In 1664 the post now called Fort James was built on St. Mary's Island, at the mouth of the river, and a British hold on that region was thus secured. During the eighteenth century, the chief trade of the settlement w r as that in negroes, exported as slaves to the "planta- tions" of America and the West Indies. The Treaty of Versailles, in 1783, secured the Gambia trade for England, while France received the sole possession of rights in the river Senegal, with trifling reservations in each region, which were afterwards made the subject of exchange between the Powers. The Upper Guinea coast was visited by adventurous French traders from Rouen and Dieppe in the latter half of the fourteenth century, and the return of vessels with a fair amount of gold and other produce aroused much interest. A settlement was formed on shore at La Mine, afterwards called, by the Portuguese, Elmina, and the place was duly provided with a church for worship, and with forts for defence. The Portuguese arrived as colonizers on the Gold Coast about 1483, when they occupied the abandoned French post, and settled at various points in that region. They held almost a monopoly of the Guinea trade for more than a hundred years, though merchant ships from Bristol had arrived on the scene about the middle of the sixteenth century. In the first half of the seventeenth, the Dutch, now risen to a high point of naval and commercial power and prosperity, ousted the Portuguese from that quarter by the capture of their chief fort, and were soon followed by their English rivals. In 1662, a Royal Company of Adventurers was formed, and the Dutch and English were soon in conflict. The settlements of Holland were taken by England, only to be again lost, except Cape Coast Castle, to the famous De 140 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Ruyter. The trading company was soon dissolved, to be succeeded, in 1672, by the Royal African Company, which erected forts, and trading -posts or factories, at several points between Accra and Dixcove. The works at Cape Coast Castle were strengthened, and a good hold of the strip of territory was thus obtained. In 1750 the Company was deprived of its charter, and its settlements were transferred to a new African Company of Merchants, founded by an Act, subsidized by the government, and invested with the right of trading on the coast and of establishing posts between twenty degrees of north and south latitude. Fighting with their Dutch neighbours was a chronic trouble to the British traders until the general peace of 1 783. The world-renowned islet of St. Helena was discovered, on St. Helena's day, May 2ist, 1502, by the Portuguese naval captain, Juan de Nova. It was at that time without human inhabitants, and covered with thick forest. Its existence, or, at least, its position, was kept as a strict secret from the other European nations until its re-discovery by Thomas Cavendish in 1588. This famous Elizabethan navigator, the second Englishman to sail round the world, crossed the Pacific after a plundering expedition to the Spanish possessions on the west coast of America, and on June Qth, about three weeks after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, he landed on the island. The crew of his vessel, the only survivor of three which had sailed forth from Plymouth nearly two years gone, were in grievous suffering from sickness, and found health and refreshment from its pleasant fruits and herbs, planted there by the Portuguese, and from the flesh of the swine and wild goats that roamed in the woods and on the hills, and of the turkeys, pheasants, and partridges that formed the fair region's feathered game. The place was abandoned by the Portuguese to the Dutch, who held it for some years, about the middle of the seventeenth century, and then deserted the island in their turn. In 1651 it was occupied by our East India Company, which was empowered, by a charter of the year after the Restoration, to plant and fortify the place. During the ensuing Dutch wars, it was twice seized by Holland, but was finally retaken, in May, 1673, by Commodore Sir Richard Munden, and was granted, by a new charter of Charles the Second, to the East India Company, who remained its masters until many years after the opening of the nineteenth century. POSSESSIONS IN EUROPE AND AFRICA. 14! During all that period, its chief use lay in its convenient position as a place of call, to procure fresh water, provisions, and fruit, or to refit after damage, for ships on the homeward voyage round the Cape. St. Helena is fairly placed in the middle of the South Atlantic trade-wind, and in the direct route of ships returning from Eastern seas. Sierra Leone, or " Lion Mountain", named from the terrific roar of the tropical thunder over its heights, was discovered in 1462 by the Portuguese navigator, Da Cintra. Its British history dates only from 1787, when the tract of land now partly occupied by Freetown was given up by a native chief to an English society, formed to help free and destitute negroes. The decision of Lord Mansfield in 1770, recorded above, that no human being can be detained as a slave on British soil, had thrown many of these persons, abandoned by previous owners, on the streets of London, Bristol, and other commercial towns. A cargo of these free emigrants was sent out in 1787, and, four years later, a Company, including Clarkson and Wilberforce, Thornton and Granville Sharp, was formed, with powers secured by an Act. A large body of negroes, quitting Nova Scotia for a land of more genial clime, landed in the following year, and good hopes for the prosperity of the new colony were formed by its benevolent promoters. In 1800, there was a fresh arrival of freed negroes from Jamaica, but the settlement was not an entire success. Its later history will be given in coming pages of the present work. 142 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. CHAPTER IV. AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. Peculiar conditions of early Australian colonization First authentic notices of Australia or New Holland Dampier surveys part of the coast Captain Cook the first real discoverer of the continent The British flag hoisted in New South Wales Trans- portation of convicts to Botany Bay Captain Phillip appointed governor He explores Port Jackson, and selects Sydney Cove for a settlement A visit from the French Norfolk Island occupied Hardships ot the first settlers, and difficulties with the convicts Fresh consignments of criminals sent from Britain Free emigrants begin to arrive Major Grose succeeds Captain Phillip A demoralizing truck-system introduced Captains Paterson and Hunter successively governors Growing prosperity of the colony John Macarthur inaugurates the wool trade. Early attempts to explore the continent Important surveys of the coasts by Bass and Flinders Flinders unjustly detained at Mauritius by the French governor, and deprived of his papers His return to England, and death. In all the Empire, Australia possesses the truest models of " colonies ", as lands of virgin soil, containing from the first but few aborigines, and formed into states by emigration conducted mainly for the purpose of founding new homes, through tillage or stock-keeping, for a surplus population from the old country, Great Britain. This vast continental-island resembles North America, apart from Mexico, in showing no traces of former dwellers who played any part in the advance of civilization. There are no stately ruins to declare that it was ever the seat of empire, founded and held by a people great in industries and arts. The region, when it was discovered by Europeans, appears to have been declined as worthless. The Dutch might have added it to their colonial dominions, but their merchants could see there no prospect of wealth to be easily and quickly won, as in the "spice islands" of East Indian seas, nor any other opening for profitable settlement. The real origin of Australian colonization was, as will be seen, somewhat ignominious. A British navigator, sailing along the south-eastern coast, makes a good report of the land as one fitted for settlers, and the government first uses the territory as a place of deportation for criminals, excluded from North America by the newly-won independence of the colonies that had become the "United States". Thus it was that "Botany Bay", 'which, even in the " fifties " of the present century, was still a name of sinister AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. 143 sound, was at first selected as a place of abode for those who, in the words of one of the early Australian convicts, Charles Bar- rington, the famous pickpocket, " left their country for their country's good ". It is another feature of Australian history that, from the first hour of a British landing, uncontested by any other of the Euro- pean nations, the great territory has been wholly a British posses- sion. No Wolfe, no Clive, was needed there to urge in battle our rightful or wrongful claims against earlier wielders of power. The British flag alone has ever floated on Australian forts, alone has caught the breezes blowing on Australian shores. The sole o o frontier is the sea. The internal history, save for the briefest and least important of civil broils, and fights of settlers, sometimes harsh and even cruel, against " mobs " of ignorant and savage natives, has been one of perfect peace. We begin herewith the history of a land which started on her colonial career as a prison, and passed, by slow degrees, into a grand ever-widening wool- farm and a garden rich in corn and wine and other goodly produce, from beneath whose soil there came, with a rush, to light the riches of a splendid gold-mine. The colony then became, " by leaps and bounds ", a nation, emulating the mother-country, far away beyond the seas, in material, social, political, and intel- lectual advance. Having lately completed the first century of her history in the records of civilization, Australia presents herself to our gaze as a region finely illustrative of British powers of progress, as a land which is developing, under novel climatic, social, and economical conditions, a new type of Briton, dwelling amid scenes lit up with brightest suns, burning in bluest skies, by day, where the vault of heaven, by night, is spangled with the most lustrous of stars. For many an age, in the words of one of her most tuneful poets, she rested, like " some sweet child within a chamber darkened, left sleeping long into a troubled day", while the distant world of Europe struggled on, through civil and religious strife and turmoil, into a higher and a better life. The day of Australia's awakening came at last, and the best of European energy and skill went forth to possess and to cultivate the region found again "by strong prying eyes of English seekers", a continent to be "a realm for happier sons " of those who came, " one land whose history had 144 UR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. not begun", "a spacious reach of earth that has no heartache for a ruined past", "a gracious freehold for the free" men of Great Britain to have and to rule in a beneficent tenure of peaceful progress, and there build up a new empire " beyond the rim of an enchanted sea". Passing from poetry into more sober but not more truthful or instructive prose, we find that the ancient geographical writers, Strabo, Pliny, and Ptolemy, the last (and latest) of whom flourished in the second century of the Christian era, have allusions to the existence of a mysterious great south land. It is believed that the soldiers of Alexander the Great brought back with them from India fragments of stories, long current there and in China, con- cerning a vast island visited by birds of passage and by the more adventurous savages of what is now called the Malay Archipelago. In modern times, Australia may have been first discovered by a French navigator from Provence, named Le Testu, who was on its northern shores about the year 1531. It is certain that, in a rude form, the region is marked on some French charts of 1542, as Jave la Grande, or " Great Java." A book by Cornelius Wytfliet, published at Louvain in 1598, mentions the land. The first authenticated discovery was made in 1601 by a Portuguese named Manoel de Eredia. In 1606, a Spanish navi- gator, Luis de Torres, who was second in command of an expedi- tion, consisting of three small ships, intrusted by the governor of Peru to Fernandez de Quiros, was separated from his chief in stormy weather, and passed through the strait, called by his own name, between Australia and New Guinea. Torres may or may not have caught sight, in his southward gaze, of the greater island, but in the same year, beyond doubt, the Dutch came upon the scene, and a vessel named the Duyffhen or Dove, landed some men, who were killed by the natives, on the north-west shore of the great Gulf of Carpentaria. During the next twenty years, several Dutch navigators were engaged, at intervals, in viewing the north-western and western coasts, and the arid nature of much of the country, so widely differing from the south-east in appear- ance and fertility, was doubtless a chief reason for the Hollanders showing no desire to gain in that quarter fresh colonial territory. The words on the map still bear token of the former presence of Dutch navigators, in " Arnhem Land" and "Cape Arnhem ", AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. 145 "Dirk Hartog Island", and "Cape Leeuwin ", or Lioness, from the name of the Dutch vessel which sailed along much of the southern coast in 1622. The claim of the Batavian explorers to early discovery was asserted by the title of "New Holland", the name which remained in use for the whole region until a period well advanced into the present century. The designation " Aus- tralia ", used by Samuel Purchas, the follower of Hakluyt, in his famous book of voyages and travels, Purchas his Pilgrimes, published in 1625, and by other old writers, for the great un- explored southern continent, was revived by Captain Flinders, whom we shall meet hereafter, and was adopted by the early Australian colonists about the year 1817, afterwards passing into general, official, and lasting acceptance. In 1696, we find Willem de Vlaming, another Dutchman, arriving with three ships off the mouth of the Swan River, and in the early days of the following year, a boat's crew sent ashore found the commemorative tin plate left behind by Dirk Hartog more than eighty years before. A few natives were seen, but no intercourse with them took place, and the expedition soon returned to Batavia, on the north-west coast of Java, which was then, as it remains, the capital of the Dutch East Indian possessions. " Dampier Archipelago " and " Dampier Land ", on the west coast, reveal the presence of William Dampier, the first English- man, so far as is now known, who ever set eyes on the mainland of Australia, and probably the first man of any nation who made any formal survey of the coast, or attempted to gain some real acquaintance with the interior. This adventurous mixture of the explorer with the buccaneer was born near Yeovil, in Somerset- shire, in 1652, and spent his youth and early manhood in voyages to the East and West Indies. After some years passed as a log- wood cutter on the coast of Yucatan, he joined a party of buc- caneers in 1679, who crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and plundered the Spanish coast far to the south. In 1683 he started with another semi-piratical expedition, which took him along the shores of Mexico, Peru, and Chili, and across the Pacific to the Philip- pine Islands, China, and other localities. After many adventures, including a forced stay, through a quarrel with his comrades, on the Nicobar Islands, Dampier made his way to England in 1691, and published, six years later, an account of his voyage round the VOL. I. 10 146 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. world. It was during this long cruise that Dampier and some of his companions, in January, 1688, landed on the north-west coast of "New Holland", spending some weeks in refitting the ships, and gaining some knowledge of the surrounding country. The two volumes of Dampier's travels aroused the interest of William the Third, and in 1699 he was placed in command of a small vessel named the Roebuck, provisioned for a long voyage, and supplied with a crew of fifty men. The leader was instructed to ascertain whether "New Holland" were a continent or merely an archipelago. In August the ship entered Sharks' Bay, the fine inlet on the west coast, deriving its name from an enormous shark there caught, and from the number of those fierce foes of the manner with which its waters were then, as now, infested. Nearly a thousand miles of the coast, northwards as far as Roe- buck Bay, were carefully explored, with frequent landings in search of fresh water, which was only once obtained. Some natives were seen, but were too shy for friendly intercourse, and too swift-footed for capture. He describes them as "miserable wretches", devoid of raiment or dwellings, living upon fish, and having tall, lean, upright bodies. The region seen by Dampier was mainly low and sandy. The only animal which struck him was, beyond doubt, the kangaroo, which he describes as "like a raccoon", but "jumping about on its long hind-legs ". The navigators who sailed to the southern seas in that age were fated, as it seems, to reach the north-western and western sides of New Holland, the least attractive to the visitor who sees nothing but the coast-lands, and this fact, for many years, turned men's thoughts away from the region as one likely to prove valuable for settlement. The Dutch, who could most fairly claim possession, lost the reward due to their many efforts, simply because they knew not the value of the prize which they had won, and the legal doctrine of non user caused their right to lapse. Dampier, after cruising along New Guinea and some adjacent islands, returned to England without having solved the problem presented by the " Great South Land," and his report of what appeared to be a wholly barren and worthless region had its natural effect on the minds of explorers and colonizers. The day was to arrive, seventy years after Dampier's second visit, when a greater man than he was to light upon a fairer spot AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. 147 in the vast mysterious land. On the morning of April 28th, 1770, a party of dusky natives, armed with boomerangs and spears, their bare bodies decked only with streaks of white, lay on the shore of a little bay on the south-east coast of the long-neglected region which still bore the name assigned by some patriotic Dutch navi- gator, be he Abel Tasman or any other Hollander. The sky was clear overhead, glowing with the light of the southern sun. The wavelets rustled at the natives' feet on the long curving bar of sand, and the gray-winged gulls were wading in the shallow pools, or uttering notes of call, as they rose and fell and circled in the air with capricious flight. Faintly to the ear comes the boom of the waves from the open Pacific, as they break against the shore outside the bold headlands at the entrance of the bay. Over rocks in the rear the water drips with a lulling sound of harmony with the breeze that blows through the metallic leafage of the gum-trees in the forest. But these children of the soil have little regard for the beauties of the scene amidst which they dwell. Their gaze is fixed on a ship that rounds the headland to the south, preceded by a pinnace rowing along the beach in search of an anchorage. They spring to their feet in an attitude of menace, and keep pace with the vessel as she moves near the shore. The anchor is dropped, and the ship swings round opposite a group of trees near some huts whence issue the smell and smoke of native cooking. The scene is homely, but the circumstance is historic. The ship is the famous Endeavour', her commander is James Cook. He comes, though he knows it not yet, to be the first real discoverer of Australia, the pioneer of a new and mighty empire for his native land. His vessel has been beating up from the southward, skirting a beautiful line of cliffs, with breaks into tiny havens, and with beaches, here and there, of fair white sand. In the afternoon he prepares to land, and, eager to make friends, if he may, with the people, he flings beads and nails to propitiate two savages who take their stand, with uplifted spears, on a jutting rock. They pick up the nails and beads with evident delight, but still oppose any effort to land, and only flee when, in reply to a stone flung at the boat, some small shot from a musket peppers their legs. They soon return with rude shields for their protection, but the spear and shield cannot match the musket, and another shot drives the natives to the woods. The party land and examine the huts, leaving 148 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. behind some ribbons and beads and pieces of cloth, as friendly tokens in exchange for two or three spears secured as mementoes of the visit. The captain sails round the shallow bay in his pinnace, and some excellent hauls of fish are taken. Two of his passenger-friends on board, named Banks and Solander, whose names are affixed to the rocky headlands at the mouth, are enchanted with the wealth of plants, unseen before by scientific eyes, displayed on the shores of the new-found bay. An endless variety of flowers and flowering shrubs would have dazzled their sight with a profusion of brightest yellows and blues, and reds and purples, and purest whites, in the early summer of the Australian year; but April there is the autumn-time, and the once glowing mass of petals on tree and shrub, plant, moss, and grass, unrelieved by the bright and abundant green of the British foliage, is now beheld in less brilliant array. The novel and varied abundance of the plants, with parasites and vines linking the gum-trees in pendent chains of foliage, amply justified the title assigned by Cook on the suggestion of his friends, and accepted by posterity, of " Botany Bay." A trip inland showed the voyagers flocks of bright-hued parrots and paroquets, with the crested cockatoos never before seen by European eyes. It is curious that, in two ways, the voyagers should have missed seeing the magnificent harbour just north of Botany Bay. In their rambles along shore and inland, they must have come within a few hundred yards of hills whence their eyes would have looked down upon its waters. After hoisting the British flag, amid the roar of the ship's cannon, and volleys of musketry, near both the northern and southern head- lands, and claiming the country for George the Third, under the name of New South Wales, from its resemblance in coast-line to the south of the Principality, Cook sailed away on May 6th to the northwards. He soon passed a small opening in the land, which he named " Port Jackson ", in honour of his friend Sir George Jackson, Secretary to the Admiralty. His neglect to enter was the second failure to discover the errand haven which he thus named o without any idea of its real proportions. As he coasted the lofty land, with rolling hills clad in foliage to the summits, the ship came to an anchor in the broad and shallow " Moreton Bay ", and, con- tinuing the northward voyage, she reached the latitude of the great coral barrier-reef. At Keppel Bay, Cook, Banks, and Solander AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. 149 took a long walk inland, seeing hills erected by the white ants, many flights of bright-winged butterflies, and some beautiful birds. After thirteen hundred miles of voyaging along a coast never before seen by Europeans, Cook, not far from a point which he styled " Cape Tribulation ", had a narrow escape of losing his ship. At ten o'clock on a moonlit night, as the Endeavour sailed through twenty-fathom water, a sudden crash, followed by a quiver which ran through the hull, and a heeling over till she lay fixed on one side, showed that they had struck on a coral reef. The lightening of the vessel, with the loss of cannon and part of the stores, and the rise of the tide on the following night, set them afloat, but with a leak only reduced to a degree with which the pumps could cope, by the ingenious device of passing a sail below and hauling it tight with ropes on each side. The vessel was beached at the mouth of a stream called by the captain " Endeavour River", and it was then found that she had mainly owed her safety to a huge piece of coral left sticking in the timber, and thereby narrowing the rent which had been made. During the repairs, Banks, with two greyhounds which he had on board, varied his botanical studies by the first kangaroo-hunt that an European had ever enjoyed, though the game, with its long leaps, was found to be too nimble for the dogs. The voyagers then sailed, still northwards, to Cape York, and passed through Torres Strait, arriving in England, after grievous suffering and many deaths from tropical fever, in about two years from the time of departure. The original object of Captain Cook's voyage is well known. The great mariner, whose rise in life was due to natural ability and the sheer merit of self-improvement and courageous effort, was born at Marton, in breezy Cleveland, Yorkshire, in 1728, son of a field-labourer, and apprenticed to a draper at the little fishing- town of Staithes, ten miles north of Whitby. The lad could not brook life behind a counter, and was soon found sailing in the coasting and Baltic trade. In 1755 he entered the navy as an able seaman, and four years more saw him ranked as master. With many years' experience gained in surveying about the St. Lawrence and New- foundland, and after time and trouble devoted to mathematics and scientific navigation, Cook became lieutenant in 1 768, and was well chosen to command, as we have seen, the ship sent forth, in August, 1 769, with scientific men on board, to observe in the southern seas I5O OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. the rare phenomenon of the transit of Venus across the disc of the sun. The Royal Society induced the king to make the expedition a national undertaking, and Cook, who had displayed the utmost coolness and the steadiest nerve in taking soundings for Wolfe, within earshot of the hostile sentries' challenge, in front of Quebec, had thus received his first great chance of fame. We are not now concerned with his brilliant later career in Antarctic and Pacific seas, his discovery of New Caledonia, the Sandwich Islands, and many other new lands, closed by his tragical death in 1779, at the hands of the natives of Hawaii, the largest island of the group named after Lord Sandwich, then at the head of the Admiralty. The main fact of Captain Cook's life, for our present purpose, is his voyage along the eastern coast of Australia, and especially his landing at Botany Bay. He it was who first, in the true sense, discovered Australia for his country and the rest of the civilized world. Favoured by fortune in the point of his access, and aided by his keen and practical eye, Cook saw the value of the new land as a place for colonization. While Banks and Solander, true to their vocation, were exulting in the acquirement of new scientific specimens, the commander of the expedition had observed rich pasturage, patches of black soil which promised great fertility as a return for tillage, and freestone good for house-building. The report which he made was duly noted by government officials, and was turned to account when the time arrived. Meanwhile, Cook's discovery of eastern Australia made a revolution in European beliefs concerning the distant land. The impression made by Dampier was effaced, and the navigators of other nations turned their thoughts, and then steered their ships, towards Australian shores. Apart from Cook's claim on behalf of his king and country, Great Britain, as we shall see, narrowly escaped the assertion of a right in favour of France. It was not till after the Treaty of Versailles in 1783, granting independence to our late North American colonies, that the difficulty caused by the want of a place whither to transport felons, caused the official mind to bethink itself of Botany Bay. In i 787, Viscount Sydney, the Secretary of State for Home affairs, to whose control, in a measure, colonial matters also belonged, resolved to found a con- vict-settlement in the spot described by Captain Cook. The new policy was dictated by considerations of benevolence as well as of AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. 151 public convenience. The pity of good men had been aroused in behalf of the criminal class, who were declared by some philan- thropical writers to be victims of a vicious social system, and the public conscience was, in some degree, shocked by the frequent executions which took place under the then atrocious criminal code. The royal prerogative was often used in commuting death to banishment for life, with capital punishment for unauthorized return, and the benevolent were anxious to afford to criminals, on a distant shore, the chance of a new and better career. Hence came the sailing in the month of May, 1787, of the notable expedition called the " First Fleet ". The Sirius frigate, under Captain Hunter; an armed tender, the Supply, under Lieu- tenant Ball; three store-ships, and six transports, carried altogether more than a thousand persons, all under the control of Captain Arthur Phillip as Commodore for the voyage, and as Governor for the projected colony. The new movement was made under an Act of 1783, for the transportation of offenders "beyond the seas", and their removal from the lately-established and now crowded " peni- tentiaries " and hulks. Public interest had been widely and warmly aroused, when the ships went forth, conveying ten civil officials, over two hundred marines and their officers, with wives and children, about eighty free persons of various trades and callings, five hundred male and nearly two hundred female convicts. Mr. Collins went out as judge-advocate, with the duty of presiding in the military courts which were to administer justice. The confinement and crowding of an eight months' voyage, with disease either brought on board or thus engendered, proved fatal to eighty-nine persons. After touching at Teneriffe, Rio de Janeiro, and the Cape of Good Hope, the whole of the ships came to an anchor in Botany Bay on January i8th, 1788, and the two succeeding days, and a debarka- tion was promptly effected. The head of the expedition had been happily chosen for the very important work in hand. Captain Phillip was one of the noblest types of mankind a British sailor of the highest class. Now in his fiftieth year, he had served in the navy at the capture of Havannah, the capital of Cuba, in 1762, and, a year later, when the Treaty of Paris gave him leisure, he had married and settled down to farming at Lyndhurst, in the New Forest. Afloat again in the great war when Britain was engaged with the naval forces of 152 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. France and Spain and Holland, he was now selected for duties to which he was, by nature and training, admirably fitted. Accus- tomed to discipline and method, of gentle and most sympathetic nature, calm of soul and patient in the hour of difficulty and distress, generous and hopeful, self-reliant, decided, prompt and terrible in his rarely-needed punishments, he dealt with the circumstances of a novel and difficult position in such a way as to earn the blessings of those whom he ruled, and to win the renown of one of Australia's foremost governors in character and ability, as he was first in order of time. Captain Phillip soon found reason to regard the beautiful Botany Bay as a spot unsuitable for the foundation of his penal colony. Most of the ground, from its sandy or rocky nature, was not fitted for tillage, and the only fresh water to be seen lay in swampy soil likely, in a hot climate, to breed fever for those committed to his care. The waters of the bay were so shallow as to prevent a near access to the shore for most of his vessels, which were compelled to anchor out near to the headlands, exposed to the roll of the great Pacific waves. With three ships' boats he went forth in search of a more convenient haven and place for settlement, and, passing northwards for eight or nine miles, he turned into the opening, believed by Cook to be a mere boat-harbour, and named by him, as he passed, Port Jackson. The winding channel was guarded on either side by lofty, grim -looking rocky cliffs, and then a few oar -strokes brought the searcher in sight of one of the finest prospects of its kind in the world. Far away to the west, until it was lost on the horizon, lay a vast expanse of water, winding into countless creeks, the coast clad in foliage of dark-green woods, the surface dotted with little sunny isles, the beaches of the bays fringed with strips of gold-hued sand. Silent lay the scene beneath the blue of Aus- tralian skies on the January day which there affords the warmth of summer at its height, as the boats glided onwards and flung from their oars the first foam ever churned from the surface of that sea, since the dawn of the world, by the arm of any civilized man. On projecting rocks stood dark-skinned groups of natives at the gaze, as the white men looked with enchanted eyes on the matchless beauty of the new-found refuge for the exiled band. After three days spent in examining parts of the spacious harbour and explor- ing some of the numerous inlets, a site was selected at a tree-shaded AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. 153 cove, into which a purling stream discharged its clear waters. Close to the rocks which lined the shore there was anchorage for ships in a depth of twenty feet, and it would be needless to construct wharves or piers. The place was named by its discoverer Sydney Cove, in honour of the Secretary of State, and on its shores were shortly to arise the beginnings of the now stately and beautiful town known to all the world as Sydney. On his return to Botany Bay, Phillip found parties of convicts engaged in digging wells and in making wharves for the landing of goods, but the news of his discovery of the grand harbour to the north brought these toils at once to an end, and preparations were made for a move on the morrow. At daybreak of January 26th the anchors were being weighed, and the echoes of the sailors' chorus were rolling round the bay, when two strange vessels were seen standing in between the headlands. They were flying the French flag, and proved to be the Boussole and the Astrolabe, under the command of the Count de la Perouse, his second-in-command M. de Langle, of the Astrolabe, having been killed a month previ- ously in an encounter with the fierce natives of the Navigators Islands. The famous and ill-fated La Perouse was thus, as we hinted above, a week too late upon the scene to claim that part of New Holland for the Bourbon king, the hapless Louis the Six- teenth, so shortly to be face to face with armed revolt in his capital. The French navigator, who had been distinguished in the late war against Great Britain, by destroying forts of the Hudson Bay Company, received a courteous welcome from Phillip, and came to anchor in the bay, where he remained for some weeks. In the last days of February, or the early days of March, the Frenchmen sailed forth from Botany Bay, and from that hour, for many a year, they vanished from the sight, and even from all knowledge, of civilized man. French expeditions of search went forth in vain, and it was not until the year 1826 that any light was thrown on the mysterious end of La Perouse and his men. Captain Dillon, of the East India Company's service, was at that time cruising in southern seas, when he came upon the relics of shipwrecks which had occurred at the Vanikoro Reefs, off an island of that name lying north of the New Hebrides. Both vessels had gone ashore and part of one crew had escaped from the sea, some to die by the hands of savages, others to sail off in a small vessel of their own building, and never to be heard 154 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. of again in Europe. Some guns, anchors, and chains, recovered from the spot in 1883, are now to be seen in a Paris museum. On the northern shore of Botany Bay stands a tall pillar, backed by Norfolk Island pines, in memory of the French explorer and his comrades. January 26th, 1788, is a memorable date in Australasian history. In the evening of that day the whole party of emigrants went ashore in Sydney Cove. A few trees were cleared away on the bank of the little stream, and on this open space a flagstaff was erected. The Union Jack was run up, and, after the firing of three volleys, the governor read his commission to the assembled com- pany. A canvas dwelling was put up for his accommodation, with a piece of garden-ground on which to plant the saplings of orange, grape, and fig brought from the Cape of Good Hope. The next few days beheld a toilsome and bustling scene where trees were being felled, and axes, saws, and hammers plied for the building of huts under the orders of the convict overseers and the directions of the skilled free craftsmen. When some approach to comfort and order had been secured, the women of the party came ashore, and on the following day, February yth, a ceremonial took place. The marines were drawn up in square, and Governor Phillip addressed the first settlers of Australia, including the convict party, in a few words of manly eloquence, some of which have proved to be pro- phetic of good fortune surpassing the most sanguine hopes which he could ever have formed. The convicts, for their part, were exhorted to pay a due regard to their own welfare, by leading better lives in their new abode. His speech concluded thus: " What Frobisher, Raleigh, Delaware, and Gates did for America, that we are this day met to do for Australia, but under happier auspices. Our enterprise was wisely conceived, deliberately devised, and efficiently organized; the Sovereign, the Parliament, and the people united to give it their authority, encouragement, and sanc- tion. We are here to take possession of this fifth division of the globe, on behalf of the British people, and to found a state which, we hope, will not only occupy and rule this great country, but will also be the beneficent patroness of the entire southern hemisphere. How grand is the prospect which lies before this youthful nation!" Within a brief space of time, the labour of the emigrants had laid a firm foundation of the first Australian town. Round the head of the cove were placed the main buildings needful for the kind of GOVERNOR PHILLIP ADDRESSING TH E FIRST AUSTRALIAN SETTLERS UPON LANDING AT SYDNEY COVE. In May, 1787, an expedition, consisting of a frigate and tender, with store-ships, transports, and about a thousand people, sailed from England to found a colony in Australia. Early in the following year they discovered a great harbour inside the headlands of Port Jackson, and landed at a point which they named Sydney Cove now the city of Sydney. Here Captain Phillip, the head of the expedition, assembled all the colonists and addressed them in stirring words. His concluding sentences were prophetic: "We are here," he said, " to take possession of this fifth division of the globe on behalf of the British people, and to found a State, which, we hope, will not only occupy and rule this great country, but will also be the beneficent patron of the whole southern hemisphere. How grand is the prospect which lies before this youthful nation!" W. S. STAGEY. GOVERNOR PHILLIP ADDRESSING THE FIRST AUSTRALIAN SETTLERS UPON LANDING AT SYDNEY COVE. Vol. i. p. 154. AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. 155 community which had just started on its career. The prisoners' huts were flanked by the marine barracks. The prison, near the waterside, was faced by another barrack. The officers' quarters were erected a little way inland, and beyond them lay the maga- zine. Storehouses and workshops were put in hand, and a hospital was provided for the many sufferers from scurvy and other bodily ills. At the end of the western headland were placed an observa- tory, or look-out station, and a battery for signalling. The first "Government House" of Australia was constructed on the eastern side of the cove, and beyond that, inland, were buildings for a farm. A stratum of clay, some distance to the south, became the site of brickfields and kilns, and the erection of a gallows, as a necessary terror to the many evil-doers, completed the equipment of the infant colony. The governor was destined to discover, at an early day, that he had been charged by his sovereign with the execution of a very difficult and arduous task. The opening history of New South Wales is a record of severe trial, and, in the hands of a less able and resolute ruler than Phillip, disastrous results might well have ensued. The government had bidden him to aim at making the colony self-supporting, and he was expected to obtain, by tillage and other means, within two years of landing, about half the supply of food needed by the settlers. One of the first steps taken by Phillip towards this end was a division of his numbers. On March 5th, 1788, within a month of his inaugural address, he despatched Lieutenant King and Lieutenant Ball with fifteen convicts, nine officers and soldiers, a surgeon, and two free labourers, to an island discovered by Captain Cook in 1774. Norfolk Island, famous for its noble pines, which often exceed a height of two hundred feet, is a.small and picturesque spot about midway between New Caledonia and New Zealand. Its fertility, partly shown by a dense and wide-spread growth of native flax, had been greatly praised by its discoverer, and it was hoped that the free labourers, who were skilled in flax-dressing, might teach the convicts to turn the plant to profitable use. A few weeks later, on a good report made by Lieutenant Ball, a larger party was sent to the island, and abundant crops were raised from the soil. This agricultural prosperity was not, at the outset, the lot of those who remained in New South Wales. Some land was taken 156 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. up at a spot called Rosehill, at the head of a river flowing down to Sydney, fourteen miles away. The town which there arose is known as " Parramatta", from native words meaning "head of the water", and comes next, in point of age, to Sydney. The first harvest ever reaped in Australia was there gathered in at the close of 1789, and two years later about one thousand acres were under tillage around the two settlements. Before that better time was reached, the colonists in and near Sydney had been more than once threatened with starvation. The farming, at first, was of the rudest kind, and the convicts gave incessant trouble. Many could scarcely be forced to work even in the menacing presence of armed soldiers. Their implements of labour were wilfully broken, or hidden away for avoidance of the labour absolutely needed to wrest food from the soil. The weekly allowance of provisions was wilfully wasted or devoured too fast, and then came piteous appeals to the governor, and frequent robberies of provisions from the stores. Nothing but the strong arm of military force, directed by the firm will of Governor Phillip, could have staved off ruin in these earlier times. A few horned cattle, including two bulls and half a dozen cows, with a horse and three mares, some sheep, goats, and pigs, and a number of fowls, had been brought out, but the sheep and cattle were nearly all killed for food, and the prospect of future stock would have vanished, but for the happy neglect of a convict herdsman who allowed a bull and two or three cows to stray into the " bush", where they soon were lost. A few years later, their descendants were found as a fine herd of sixty feeding in the meadows of the Hawkesbury river, flowing into the sea about fourteen miles to the north of Port Jackson. In March, 1790, the stock of provisions had fallen so low that nearly three hundred convicts, with two companies of marines, under Major Ross as Lieutenant-governor, were sent to Norfolk Island, where it was hoped that an abundant supply of food was being furnished from the soil. The Sirius frigate conveyed this party, but was wrecked on a reef near the island, with the loss of many stores, including the personal effects of the passengers and crew, who were all saved in a half-drowned condition. They came ashore at Norfolk Island only to learn that there, too, misfortune had befallen the settlers. A recent hurricane had ruined the granaries and the crops, and had been followed by a flood which AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. 157 swept off all that the winds had spared. Luckless, indeed, were these first Australian colonists under the rule of the excellent man who could control himself and the people in his charge, but could not deal with the forces of nature. Before this time, the Guardian transport, bringing supplies, had been in collision with an iceberg, and had thrown overboard a large quantity of food. The Sirius, sent to the Cape of Good Hope, and the Supply, despatched to Batavia, had returned with provisions that only sufficed for a few weeks' consumption. Governor and officers, alike with the soldiers, free settlers, and convicts, were forced for a time to exist on rations barely sufficient for the support of life. Meanwhile, the government at home, unaware of the serious state of affairs, were making free use of the new opening for the criminal class. In June, 1790, a vessel arrived in Sydney Cove with more than two hundred female prisoners, and the first detach- ment of a body of troops called the New South Wales Corps, raised in 1789 as the io2iid Regiment of the Line. The officers and men were not of the highest class in character, as convict- guarding was considered a somewhat degrading duty, and the new colony, at present, held forth in Great Britain no attractions for either military men or civilians. Other vessels with convicts arrived, after voyages marked by large mortality among the prisoners, due to overcrowding and to the lack of fresh provisions and pure water, aggravated, in at least one instance, by cruel treat- ment at the captain's hands. By degrees, at one point, the prospect brightened, and the fear of failing food was ended in 1791 by the arrival of vessels with ample stores, and by the growing success of the tillage on the lands near Sydney and Parramatta. Criminals were still poured in from the home country, and the " Second Fleet", which arrived in September, 1791, brought about fifteen hundred convicts, nearly all of whom were men. Two hundred people had been buried at sea, and those who landed were in a shocking state of bodily weakness. The energies of Phillip, whose health was failing, as his pale pinched features painfully proved, were taxed to the utmost in dealing with the various elements of trouble. The convicts were the cause of incessant care. Now they stole away to the woods, and either died of starvation or in conflict with the natives, whom they had often provoked, or returned, with the looks of living 158 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. skeletons, to seek mercy and food from the governor's hands. Others, again, stole boats in the cove and tried to escape to the Dutch in Java, and one adventurous party of forty or fifty men, in their blank ignorance of geography, set off with the intent of walking to China. A few years later, the whitened bones of these miserable creatures were found in the bush not far from the settle- ment. Towards the close of Governor Phillip's five years' tenure of office, some bolder spirits from the British Isles came forth to the new colony as free emigrants, encouraged by the promise of gifts of land. A number of these, in 1792, received grants of about one hundred acres at a place called Liberty Plains, near Sydney. At the same time, the policy of granting land to well-conducted and promising convicts was adopted as a means of social regeneration for the penal element. The first gift of freedom, with a piece of land at Parramatta, was bestowed on a convict in 1790, and before the governor's departure for England in December, 1792, nearly three thousand acres had been awarded to free immigrants, and about fifteen hundred to emancipated men, who received therewith a gift of rations for eighteen months, with implements and stock for their new career. Captain Phillip retired with a well-earned pension, and died at Bath more than twenty years later, leaving behind him an honoured name. After the departure of Captain Phillip, the colony inaugurated by him became subject to troubles arising from misgovernment of a noxious character. The rule of the settlements fell into the hands of Major Grose, as senior officer of the New South Wales Corps, a second detachment of which reached Sydney at the time when Phillip was sailing for home. This body of military police succeeded in earning an evil repute for violent and unscrupulous behaviour, and their commander appears to have been worthy of his men. Major Grose, having official charge as Lieutenant- governor, was succeeding to the control of a system in which, amidst many serious troubles, good order had been established and maintained. That system was, to a large extent, dependent upon the military power, and the new ruler seems to have been led astray by his exclusive regard for the military element. In defiance of the instructions which he had brought from home, large grants of land were made to the officers, and they were allowed to AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. 159 have round them a needless number of convict-servants, to whom, under what is called a " truck system" of the most pernicious kind, wages were paid in ardent spirits instead of in cash. The employer derived much profit from these transactions, and the efforts which the late governor had made to debar the convicts from the use of a large original cause of their crimes, were now succeeded by direct temptations, furnished to, or rather forced upon, their victims by the very men in authority, who thus subverted discipline and de- stroyed all hope of reformation. The convict portion of the settlers were abandoned to all the debauchery of intoxicating liquors, which were not only imported by the officers from Great Britain and from nearer sources, but were eagerly thrust into the colonial market, with unprincipled greed for wealth, by the merchants of our Indian possessions. In December, 1794, Grose was succeeded by his colleague, Captain Paterson, of the same military corps, and he, for the few months of his official supremacy, permitted the same evils to endure. The home government, however, had at length obtained knowledge of the grossly demoralized condition of the colony, and their resolve to suppress the traffic in strong liquor was followed by the appointment of a new ruler. A further supply of free emigrants had reached New South Wales in 1793, and the tillage of the soil was thus extended in grants of land accompanied by gifts of needful stores until the reaping of the fruits of toil. The new governor, Captain Hunter, who had returned to England after the loss of his ship, the Sirius, assumed a five years' tenure of power in September, 1795. He was a just and honest man, of virtuous life and kindly disposition, but he was not, it seems, gifted with the strong will of Governor Phillip, and, in spite of his righteous intentions and efforts, the evil traffic was not much lessened. The colony, however, began to make real and marked progress in agricultural affairs, due to the arrival, in 1 796 and 1 798, of fresh bodies of free settlers, to whom convicts were assigned as labourers. Hunter had himself brought out a number of these useful emigrants from the old country, and the foundation of the towns of Windsor and Richmond, on and near the river Hawkes- bury, soon followed the breaking up of soil in that quarter. Before the close of the century, New South Wales had been fairly launched on her great career, and the coming source of her l6o OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. principal and most enduring wealth had been discovered in the production of wool. The length of the voyage made it difficult to land sheep at Sydney even alive, much less in a healthy condition, and many attempts ended in failure. Manufacturers at home were clamouring for wool, the production of which was decreasing in England, as pasture-farms were turned into arable land under the rising price of wheat. The greatest gratitude is due to the efforts of a very sagacious, able, and enterprising man, John Macarthur, founder of Australasian pastoral industry. Macarthur went to Sydney in 1791 as captain in the New South Wales Corps. He soon resigned his commission in disgust, and, while his late brother- o o officers were amassing wealth by the illicit sale and the distillation of rum, he turned his thoughts to sheep as a likely source of legitimate gain. The fine pastures of the land had caught his eye, and his first aim was to improve the breed of the fleece-bearers. Having taken up a grant of land at Parramatta, he obtained some ewes and lambs from Bengal, but their wool was poor in quality and colour. In 1794, a cross was made with some Irish sheep procured from the captain of a merchant -vessel, and Macarthur noted an improvement in the fleeces. The great object was to produce a really fine wool for the British spinners and weavers, now obtaining the material for the best broad-cloths solely from the flock-masters of Saxony and Spain, who possessed, in limited numbers, the finest sheep for wool in the world, of the breed known as Spanish merino. In 1797, Macarthur obtained some pure merinos from the Cape of Good Hope, derived from the famous Escurial flock, specimens of which had been presented by the Spanish king to the Dutch government. A marked and rapid im- provement in the wool was the result, and it was clearly shown that a brilliant future in this direction was opening for settlers in the southern hemisphere. Macarthur was soon possessed of some thousands of sheep, and, to pass for a brief space, on this important subject, into the present century, we may record that in 1801 he took to England fleeces of so fine a quality as to prove to the British woollen manufacturers that they need no longer be dependent on Saxony and Spain for their best material. During this visit, the enlightened and public-spirited colonist was allowed to purchase, from George the Third's farm at Kew, some rams and an ewe, of the best merino breed, sent from Spain AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. l6l as a present to the British " farmer-king ". They were tended with extreme care, and their safe arrival at Sydney, in good condition, finally secured the development of what was to become one of the greatest industries of the world. An application to the Privy Council in London, and the support of the British workers in wool induced Lord Camden, then in charge of colonial affairs, to send a despatch, at the close of 1804, to Governor King, which obtained for Macarthur a grant of ten thousand acres of land, still known as the Camden estate, about forty miles south-west of Sydney. The close of the eighteenth century saw the colony of twelve years' history containing from six to seven thousand souls. Other occupations than tillage and sheep-farming were beginning to gain ground. The Australasian harbours became the seat of a flourish- ing whale-fishery in the southern seas, and, for years before the arrival of any large number of free immigrants, this was the chief occupation of mariners in those waters. A whale in the act of spouting is included in the arms of Sydney and Melbourne, and the shores of Tasmania, New Zealand, and southern and western Australia were the resort of British, colonial, and American fishers. In 1795 a brewery, established at Parramatta, began to tempt settlers to the consumption of good ale in place of bad spirits, and this was the commencement of an industry which now produces beer equal even to that issuing from the vats of Burton- on-Trent. EXPLORATION OF THE CONTINENT AND SURVEY OF THE COASTS. In these early times of Australian settlement, little was done in the way of exploring the interior of the vast continent. In 1793, some officers of the New South Wales corps made a vain attempt to cross the barrier called the Blue Mountains, and the only person known, in that age, to accomplish the feat was a convict who had lived long among the blacks, and who made his way, in 1 799, as far as the Lachlan river. Before the close of the century, Lieutenant Bowen travelled as far as Jervis Bay, a fine harbour about one hundred miles south of Sydney, and Port Stephens, eighty miles to the north-east, was also surveyed. VOL. I. 11 1 62 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. The first Europeans who ever landed in the region which now forms the colony of Victoria were the crew of the Sydney Cove, wrecked on Furneaux Island, north of Van Diemen's Land. A large party of the crew started in boats, hoping to reach Sydney by a coasting-voyage, but they were cast ashore in a storm near Cape Howe, the south-eastern extremity of New South Wales. The place of their landing was more than three hundred miles, as the crow flies, from Sydney, and the road lay through a region of dense bush. Their stock of provisions was soon exhausted, and little food or fresh water could be found on their way. Many- dropped down and died from hunger and fatigue, and most of the survivors were murdered by natives when they were but thirty miles from the longed-for refuge. Two or three arrived at Port Jackson, with their raiment in rags, their frames wasted to mere skin and bones, and so weak that they were carried like infants on board the boat which conveyed them to Sydney Cove. Mr. Clarke, the ship's supercargo, was one of these survivors, and, on his recovery, he gave an interesting account of the large tract of country which, under circumstances so tragical, he had been enabled to observe. Within the thirty years that elapsed between Cook's arrival in Botany Bay and the close of the eighteenth century, very much was done towards completing the world's knowledge of Austral- asian coasts. The first discovery and the early history of Tas- mania belong to a later section of this work, but we may here observe that Captain Furneaux, Cook's second in command, on his second voyage round the world, sailed along the coast of Tasmania in the belief that it formed part of the mainland of Australia, and regarded the straits as a deep indentation. Captain George Van- couver, of the royal navy, whose name has acquired enduring renown as that of a fine British colonial possession, and who was a comrade of Cook on his third great voyage, discovered King George's Sound, in Western Australia, in 1791. The two navigators whose names will ever be connected with this period of Australian discovery were George Bass and Matthew Flinders. Bass, born in 1770, son of a Lincolnshire farmer, became surgeon to the Reliance, which in 1795 brought out Governor Hunter to Sydney. Flinders, one of our greatest seamen, was also a native of Lincolnshire, four years younger AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. 163 than Bass, whom he accompanied as midshipman on board the Reliance. There were never two young men of more admirable character, compounded of modesty, kindliness, daring, and en- thusiasm. Devoted friends, they had resolved by joint endeavours to win fame in the exploration of unknown regions. Flinders had lately heard the roar of guns in battle at Lord Howe's victory of "the glorious First of June", 1794, when he was serving on board the Bellerophon. His future career was to be of a more peaceful, but yet of a very adventurous and chequered kind. A month after their arrival at Sydney Cove, the two comrades bought a boat eight feet long, which they named the Tom Thumb, and, taking a boy on board to complete her crew, they sailed out between the Heads to the open Pacific. Tossed like a cork on the ocean waves, they steered into Botany Bay, and made an accurate map of its shores and streams. With this first-fruits of their adventurous toil they won from the governor a leave of absence which enabled them to start on a new and somewhat longer expedition. Nearly eight hundred miles of coast to the south of Port Jackson was marked on the charts of the day as " unknown ", and they were fully resolved to clear up some of this mystery. In the same tiny craft, they went on their way, and soon had their boat upset on the shore. The powder for their guns was wetted by the sea, and they spread it out on rocks to dry in the sun. A large body of natives gathered round with menacing air, but Flinders, knowing something of native tastes, gained time and amused the blacks by clipping their beards with a pair of scissors. When the powder was ready, the muskets were charged, and they were allowed to put off without molestation. During the trip, currents carried them away to the south, and much peril was incurred from storms. The boy had to bale, while Bass held the sail, as they scudded with the wind, and Flinders steered their course with an oar. Returning to Sydney, after other dangers off rocky shores, they brought with them the means of accurately mapping between thirty and forty miles of coast. It was then that they learnt how Mr. Clarke, of the Sydney Cove, had already supplied information as to much of the coast-line which they had started to examine. Flinders was now compelled to go with his ship to Norfolk Island, and Bass was sent out by the governor in charge of a whale- 164 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. boat with six men, supplied with provisions to last some time. In this craft the young surgeon, during a voyage of eleven weeks, made many important discoveries, and secured a lasting place for his name on the maps. Shoalhaven Bay and River were entered. Jervis Bay, one hundred miles south of Sydney, was added to the charts, with the noble haven of Twofold Bay, good for anchorage, and safe from all winds save the east. Thirty miles further brought him to Cape Howe, and, steering along the Ninety-mile Beach, Bass discovered and marked down the great headland called Wilson's Promontory, the most southerly point of the Australian continent, forming part of a huge granitic mass. A continued voyage to the westward proved that Van Diemen's Land was no part of Australia, and the water which divides them has since been known as Bass Strait. Six hundred miles of Australian coast were explored before the return to Sydney. Flinders, on his arrival from duty at Norfolk Island, was engaged in making careful surveys of the islands and coast to the north of Tasmania. The geographical achievements of Bass and Flinders were not lost upon Governor Hunter. In 1798 he supplied them with a small sloop, and accorded three months' leave of absence for further exploration. They sailed all round Van Diemen's Land, discovering the river Tamar, named after the beautiful Devonshire and Cornish river, with its estuary, Port Dalrymple. Flinders made the most exact and beautiful charts of all the coast-line, and the party returned to Sydney with a rich harvest of geographical research. From this point we lose sight of Bass, who, according to some accounts, returned to England in 1799, and afterwards continued to serve in the navy; while others assert that he engaged in a con- traband trade with Spanish America, where he is supposed to have been captured by the giiarda-costas, and to have died a prisoner, toiling in the silver mines. In any case, he here vanishes from the view, though not from the memory of mankind. Flinders remained constant to his useful labours, and in 1799 carefully surveyed, in the sloop which had carried him round Tasmania, the Australian coast northwards from Sydney to Hervey Bay, in what is now Queensland. He had now attained the naval rank of lieutenant, and, when he returned to London, in 1800, the publica- AUSTRALASIA NEW SOUTH WALES. 165 tion of his Australasian charts obtained for him high praise, and, from the Government, a practical recognition in the form of an independent command. In 1801 he left the British shores as head of an expedition for the express purpose of further explora- tion of the Australian coasts, commanding the Investigator, and furnished with papers from the French Government, with which his country was then at war, to secure him from molestation. His scene of action was now on the south coast, where he discovered the fine Kangaroo Island, named from the large number of those animals which were seen leaping amongst the scrub, and Spencer Gulf, on the mainland opposite. In April, 1802, at Encounter Bay, near the mouth of the Murray River, Flinders fell in with the French ships Gtographe and Natu- raliste, under the command of M. Baudin, who had been despatched by Napoleon on a voyage of Australian exploration. The French- men found that, on the southern coast, Flinders had anticipated all their intended researches in discoveries which were afterwards claimed by the French. The French and English explorers met again, a few months later, at Port Jackson, where the foreign crews, suffering from scurvy, were treated with extreme kindness by the Sydney settlers. It is well to remember these facts in view of the subsequent fate of the great Australasian navigator. Before this second meet- ing with the French, Flinders had taken the eastern and northern coasts in hand, surveying the Great Barrier Reef, the passage through Torres Straits, and the Gulf of Carpentaria. After a visit to Timor for fresh provisions, he sailed down the western coast, and arrived at Sydney in June, 1803, winning the honour of being the first man to circumnavigate Australia. He then sailed for England, with his valuable charts and journals, in a store-ship which was soon wrecked on a coral-reef. The papers were saved, and the dis- coverer returned to Sydney in an open boat, to start again for home in a vessel which, proving leaky and ill-found, was forced to put in at Mauritius, then in French possession. The governor, M. de Caen, made Flinders a prisoner, and deprived him of his papers, on the pretence that the safe - conduct of Napoleon only applied to the Investigator, on which Flinders had left England. At this juncture M. Baudin called at Mauritius, but any efforts which he might have made for the release of the gallant Englishman were prevented by l66 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. his own death. The charts were sent to France, and were pub- lished there under the names of Frenchmen. Flinders remained a prisoner until 1810, when Mauritius was captured by a British ex- pedition, and at last he reached England to find that his countrymen were already in possession of the knowledge which he had hoped to be the first to communicate. The truth, however, was soon brought to light, and the real discoverer sat down to write the account of his explorations, with most accurate maps and extracts from his log-book. His constitution had been broken by years of toil and exposure, with shipwreck and severe privation as interludes, followed by a lengthy, harsh, and wrongful imprisonment. The constant labour of four years in preparing his great work, A Voyage to Terra Aiistralis, completed the process of slaying the author. There is nothing more touching in the whole history of travel and its literary records than the closing scene of this true British hero, Matthew Flinders. He never saw the book, in its finished form, which had cost him his poor remains of life. As the last sheets of the three volumes were issuing from the press, his wife and daughter were in tears over his bed of death, and he drew his last breath on July igth, 1814, the very day on which the work was published. If real merit always earned due recognition, the remains of this great maritime discoverer, devoted to his work for the work's own sake, asking and receiving no earthly reward save the power of toiling on for mankind, would assuredly lie, among countless inferior men, within the walls of Westminster Abbey. His name will exist as long as Australia is found upon the maps, in Flinders counties of New South Wales and South Australia; in a watering-place about sixty miles south-east of Melbourne; in Flinders Bay, between Capes Leeuwin and Beaufort, discovered by him in 1801 ; in the Flinders Group, off the coast of Queensland; in Flinders Island, off South Australia; in another and larger Flinders Island at the eastern side of Bass Strait; in the two Flinders Points of Tasmania and Victoria; in the Flinders Range, reaching hun- dreds of miles to the north of Spencer Gulf; and in Flinders River, flowing into the Gulf of Carpentaria. These are the monuments which keep his name ever before the men of Australasia, who have not failed to accord substantial recognition to the posterity of the man who, beyond all others, drew the veil from their coast-line. It is an agreeable duty to record that the granddaughter of Flinders CANADA EARLY HISTORY. l6/ has been receiving for nearly half a century a pension of two hundred pounds granted by the governments of Victoria and New South Wales. CHAPTER V. CANADA EARLY HISTORY (1534-1713). First efforts by the French to colonize Canada Jacques Cartier De la Roche's attempt to form a settlement Pontgrave' and Chauvin Champlain, the founder of French Canada The Sieur de Monts and De Poutrincourt Colony of Acadie Beginning of Quebec The Algonquins, Iroquois, and other Indian tribes Their savage raids on the settlers Arrival of the Jesuits Richelieu's policy towards Canada The " Hundred Associates" Quebec surrendered to the English, and basely restored by Charles I. Able rule of Governor Champlain Indian outrages on the missionaries Colbert's able administration Marquis de Tracy and Governor de Courcelles Military operations against the Iroquois Encouragements for emigration from France Ravages of disease and drunkenness among the Indians Governor de Frontenac La Salle's expeditions to the west Massacre of Lachine French attacks on English territory English expeditions against Montreal and Quebec Continua- tion of the frontier warfare Failure of English attempts for the conquest of Canada. The rise of the existing British colonial dominion in North America was mainly based, not on settlement or colonization in the true sense, but on conquest from another European power, which had acquired a prior possession of territory on and near the great river which reaches the Atlantic just fifty degrees north of the equator. Around the mouth of another and greater river, falling into the Gulf of Mexico just twenty degrees further south, our great European rivals had also set their feet as claimants of a vast and indefinite region to the north and west of that commanding point. We shall see that the struggle ending in victory for Great Britain was provoked by French attempts to connect, to our detriment, their possessions on the northern river and the great adjacent lakes with the southern lands claimed for Louis the Fourteenth in 1682 by one of the greatest French explorers in North America. This was Robert Cavalier, Sieur de La Salle, a native of Rouen, and a settler in Canada, who, descending the Ohio in hope of reaching the Pacific, passed into the Mississippi, reached the mouth, and named the country " Louisiana ". Apart from the visits of the Northmen, five hundred years before Columbus, the mainland of North Ame- 168 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. rica, as we have seen, was first reached by European navigators at the close of the fifteenth century. In 1498, the Cabots of Bristol saw Labrador, the country named in 1501 by a Portuguese navigator, Gaspard Cortereal, who sailed from Lisbon with two ships, and called the country between Newfoundland and Hudson Strait Terra Laborador, or labourers' land, from a cargo of natives whom he carried off as slaves. The attention of Francis the First of France was called to the wealth which was being won from fisheries in that part of the New World, and he resolved that his brother - kings of Portugal and Spain should not, as he exclaimed, " divide all America between them, without allowing me any share". He accordingly sent forth, in 1534, a bold seaman of St. Malo, Jacques Cartier, who sailed in the month of April with two vessels of about sixty tons each, carry- ing one hundred and twenty men. Detained by ice off Newfound- land, he passed through the Strait of Belle Isle, saw the Magdalen Islands, rich in berries, birds, and blossoms, named a fine bay " Des Chaleurs", from the heat which the voyagers felt on a sunny July day, and finally landed, south of a great estuary, at the rocky Cape Gaspe. A wooden cross was erected, with a shield bearing the fleur-de-lis, and an inscription claiming the land for the French monarch. The natives, by signs, made known to him the existence of a large river flowing north-east from the interior, and he passed onwards until he saw the land on either side. The season was advancing, and the French voyagers returned, carrying with them, as willing visitors to Europe, the two sons of an Indian chief. Francis the First was much pleased with Cartier's success, and supplied him, for the next year's voyage, with three ships of larger size, better fitted out and manned. Some young French nobles were on board, when, after hearing mass in the cathedral of St. Malo, and receiving the bishop's blessing, the expedition went forth in the last days of May, 1535, with instructions, as stated in the royal commission, to " form settlements in the country and to open traffic with the native tribes". Stormy weather retarded the arrival of the voyagers at the mouth of the great river until the middle of July. It was on August loth, the festival of St. Lawrence, that Cartier bestowed on a small bay the saint's name which afterwards passed to the river and to the great gulf into which it flows. As he sailed up the estuary, through a dark ravine near a river on the left CANADA EARLY HISTORY. 169 bank, and past high jutting cliffs, he came to an island covered with wild grapes, where he was welcomed by a native chief, one of the Algonquin tribe, with a large body of followers. The French leader now determined to pass the winter in the new-found land, and on September i4th he cast anchor at the mouth of another river on the left bank, above which rose a massive lofty hill. The river now Sears the name of St. Charles. At the foot of the heights stood the little Indian town of Stadacona, on the site of the future Quebec. Passing upwards with the boats, as the navigation, from sand-banks and other obstacles, grew difficult for the ships, Cartier and his comrades beheld on each hand the rich-hued leafage of the far-reaching forest, and on October 2nd they arrived at a Huron Indian town called Hochelaga, above which rose a great woody hill. The Frenchman named this height Mont Royal, which became in due time the designation "Montreal" for the colonial city. A most friendly reception from the natives, who supplied abun- dant fish, and maize from the fields around their strongly-stockaded town, was followed by a feast, and by the first Christian service ever held in those regions. The natives appeared to regard their white visitors as people of supernatural powers, and brought their sick and maimed and blind for healing. Cartier read a lesson from the Gospels, and, with the sign of the cross, prayed for the bodies and souls of his hosts. The Indians looked on in friendly amaze- ment, and then received, with a better understanding, presents of beads and toys and knives. The discoverer of Canada for such was Jacques Cartier had a noble prospect of water and wood from the summit of Mont Royal, and he learned from his Indian friends something of the existence, to the west and south, of mighty lakes and rivers, and of interminable lands, rich in game, and rarely or never trodden by the foot of man. A few days later, the French- men returned to their Algonquin friends at Stadacona, near which they erected a stockade, armed with cannon, around their ships. In his resolve to winter on American ground, Cartier had not duly reckoned with the severities of the Canadian climate, and, in the lack of proper clothing and provision, much suffering and many deaths ensued from attacks of scurvy. In the spring of 1536, when the melting ice allowed the ships to move, the French returned to Europe, taking with them ten of OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. the Algonquin chiefs who had been decoyed on board. This per- fidious return for many kindnesses received had for its object the display to the French king of some living tokens that success had been again achieved. The effect upon the native mind was disas- trous, and Cartier's act is believed to have been the origin of hostile feelings towards European visitors. If it was intended to restore them to their native forests, the purpose was frustrated by the death of the whole number before Cartier's next voyage to Canada. It was in 1541 that he again went from Europe to America, now in command of five ships. A Picardy noble, the Sieur de Rober- val, had been appointed Viceroy of " New France", and Cartier, as his deputy, preceded him with a body of settlers. His appearance, in August, at Stadacona, without any of the Indian chiefs, was unwelcome to their brethren, and Cartier found it necessary to fortify a position at the point called Cap Rouge, some miles above Quebec, and to await reinforcements, for which two of his five vessels were sent back to France. In 1542, after another wretched winter, Cartier himself, hearing nothing from Roberval, started for Europe, and met his superior, with three ships and a large body of male and female colonists, off the coast of Newfoundland. He declined to turn back with Roberval, who landed at Cap Rouge, passed a winter made terrible by cold, famine, and disease, causing the deaths of over sixty per- sons, and unrelieved now by friendly aid from the Indians. The settlers brought out by the Sieur were chiefly convicts, and needed the sternest treatment for the maintenance of due order. In the summer of 1543, Cartier was again sent out to fetch home Roberval, and, after a third winter passed there, he left the country in May, 1544, conveying back to France the surviving settlers, who had wholly failed in attempts to explore, to trade, or to till the soil. At this point, the discoverer of Canada vanishes from history, after arriving at St. Malo. De Roberval, in 1549, sailed with another private colonizing expedition, but not a vessel of the little fleet, nor a man on board, was ever again heard of. Thus ended the first French efforts to colonize Canada. Half a century glides away, during which French fishermen would be found on or near Canadian shores, and, at some points on the St. Lawrence, a trade in furs and skins was carried on with the natives by Frenchmen who did not settle in the country. The CANADA EARLY HISTORY. I/ 1 attention of English navigators and colonizers was drawn, as we have seen, to other parts of the Atlantic sea-board. The fisheries of Newfoundland were a source of vast profit to British " adven- turers ", and the experience of Cartier did not recommend the climate of Canada. Efforts at finding the " north-west passage " drew off some of our boldest spirits, taking Frobisher and Davis, Hudson and Baffin, on lines removed from the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and from the territory claimed as " La Nouvelle France". Raleigh's thoughts, in his exploring moods, were full of Virginia and Guiana, and, in the conflict with Spain for freedom, faith, and national existence, Englishmen of later Elizabethan days had abun- dant work to prevent them from seeking to enter the New World by the gateway which France, for so many years, seemed to have left open. At last, under Henry the Fourth, in 1598, France again paid heed to her trans-Atlantic claims. A Breton noble, the Marquis de la Roche, received a commission as " Viceroy of Canada, Acadie, and other territories ", which was taken to include the whole nor- thern part of the North American continent, with sole rights of trade in fur. The marquis took an ignoble view of his enterprise, and filled a ship with a cargo of convicts. Forty poor creatures were landed on the sand-hills of Sable Island, near the coast of Acadie (afterwards Nova Scotia), where they remained for five years, living a savage life, and subsisting on fish and on wild cattle, the descendants of stock left there by an early French explorer. In 1603 twelve survivors, clad in skins, were rescued by a French vessel. De la Roche, driven back to France by a westerly gale, died a ruined man, after many years' imprisonment. In 1599, a merchant of St. Malo, named Pontgrave, and Chauvin, a naval officer of Rouen, received from Henry the Fourth the rights forfeited by De la Roche, and undertook, in return for a monopoly of the Canadian fur-trade, to establish a colony of five hundred persons. Two vessels left France in the spring of 1600, and a trading-post was formed at Tadousac, near the ravine of the river Saguenay. This attempt also ended in failure. Some of the French fur-traders perished from the severe cold, and the rest were dependent for food on the Indians. Chauvin died during his third attempt at a French colony in Canada, but was not left long without a successor. 1/2 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. The trade in furs which had arisen with the Indian trappers and hunters was one of great profit to the European purchasers, and De Chastes, the governor of Dieppe, brought the matter before the notice of some wealthy merchants. The hour and the man had at last arrived, when Samuel de Champlain was induced to join the enterprise. This able, honest, and energetic man, whose name lives in that of the beautiful lake which he discovered, was the real founder of French Canada, the father of her colonial exis- tence. For more than thirty years his personal history is almost identical with that of the colony which he set upon a firm basis. A native of the old province of Saintonge, born in 1567 at Brouage, on the Bay of Biscay, Champlain was, from his early years, inured to the sea, and in 1603, when he started on his first voyage across the Atlantic to Canada, he held a position in the royal marine. He had fought as a soldier under his sovereign, Henry of Navarre, in the wars of the League, and it is almost certain that he was a Huguenot or French Protestant. His character was composed of a mixture of romantic enterprise with religious enthusiasm and chivalrous courage. An ardent explorer and keen observer, he left behind him writings which describe in lively terms some of the scenes of his adventurous career in colonial affairs. Pontgrave and Champlain, sailing with two small vessels, and passing up the St. Lawrence, found nothing whatever left of the trading-post at Tadousac, or the Indian town of Stadacona; nothing but ruins at the fort of Cap Rouge, and not a trace of the Indian town of Hochelaga. On their return to France they found that de Chastes was dead. Champlain, however, who had partly explored the rivers Saguenay and Richelieu, won the king's favour by displaying a map of his travels. The enterprise was renewed under the auspices of a rich Hu- guenot noble, the Sieur de Monts, high in favour with Henry, who appointed him viceroy of La Cadie or Acadie, specified as the region extending from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree of north latitude. This country corresponds with Nova Scotia and some of the adjacent continental territory. The patentee, de Monts, received a monopoly of the fur-trade and powers as supreme ruler, with permission to exercise and allow his own Calvinistic faith, but to cause the Roman Catholic religion to be preached among the natives. CANADA KARLY HISTORY. 173 In March, 1604, de Monts, Champlain, and Pontgrave sailed from Le Havre with the largest expedition that had yet left the French shores for America. The colony included persons of very diverse station and character. There were gentlemen of good birth and criminals from jails; soldiers and artisans, Calvinist preachers and Catholic priests. After exploring the Grande Baye Franchise (afterwards Bay of Fundy), where a noble named de Poutrincourt received a grant of land, which became the site of Port Royal, the voyagers, on June 24th, St. John Baptist's day, entered a harbour since called by his name. A severe winter was passed on the bleak and barren island of St. Croix, where nearly forty of the settlers died of scurvy, and the spring saw de Monts remove to Port Royal, from which he explored the coasts for some distance to the south. During the terrible sufferings from cold which froze the very wine in the casks, Champlain had been the life and soul of his desponding fellow-countrymen. Their hearts were cheered in the early summer of 1605 by the arrival of Pontgrave and de Poutrincourt with sup- plies from France. The foundations of a town were laid in store- houses and barracks, workshops and dwellings, a chapel and a governor's house. A mission to the heathen natives of the land, with the support of Mary de Medicis, was started by a Jesuit Father named Biart, and matins and vespers were regularly sung round a cross erected in the centre of the hamlet called St. Sauveur. The colony in Acadie was beginning to prosper, and the settlers could live by the fruits of their toil, when the winter of 1606 arrived. De Monts had been compelled to return to France, where enemies were plotting against his interests, and in 1607 a vessel arrived with news that his charter had been revoked, and an order that the settlement should be abandoned. Champlain and all the colonists returned to France, and thus ended the first serious French attempt to settle in North America. In full prospect of success, jealousy at home and court intrigues had brought the enterprise to a sudden and untimely end. Three years later, Baron de Poutrincourt returned to the scene, armed with new powers from Henry the Fourth, and received a warm welcome from the Indian chiefs, whose people had done no harm to the buildings of the little town, nor to any of their contents. The death of the French king by Ravaillac's hand made Jesuit influence paramount at court, and the revived colony was seriously 1/4 UR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. troubled by quarrels between the civil and religious powers. Anarchy and famine were threatening the settlers, when destruction from a new quarter swooped down upon Port Royal. A Captain Argall, from Virginia, who was little more than a British piratical adventurer, attacked a settlement founded by the Jesuits, who had now left their countrymen, on an island in an inlet on the coast of Maine, which is known to this day as " Frenchman's Bay ". A single broadside swept off the Frenchmen who had manned their ship, and the place was plundered and reduced to ruin. Some of the prisoners were turned adrift in a boat; the rest were carried away to Virginia, where the governor threatened to hang them for invasion of British territory. This sorry exploit of international greed was perpetrated in 1613. In the following year, Argall came down upon Port Royal, plundered the houses of all their goods, even to the very locks upon the doors, and razed the fort level with the ground. De Poutrincourt's efforts to colonize Acadie were, on this blow, finally abandoned in despair, and in 1615 he found a soldier's grave in his native land. From Acadie our narrative wanders away to a new scene of action on the great St. Lawrence. Champlain, in 1608, returned to America, with Pontgrave as his companion, both of them in the service of de Monts. On July 3rd, near the spot where, about seventy years before, Cartier had passed the winter months, Cham- plain laid the foundation of Quebec. He describes the name as the Indian term for a strait, applied to the narrows of the river where the promontory stands which he then saw covered with creeping vines, and crowned by walnut-trees of stately growth. The wooden fort of his erection was on the site of the existing market-place in the lower town. The career of Canada had now fairly begun, and her founder soon had troubles to face. A plot for his murder, provoked by the needful sternness of his rule, and punished by the hanging of its leader and the despatch of his fellows in chains to France, left the great French pioneer of colonial rule with less than thirty men at his command. The scurvy, in the winter, carried off all of these save eight. The spring of 1609 brought new colonists and sup- plies from France, and Champlain set himself zealously to work. His efforts at exploration brought him into contact with the powerful Algonquins, one of the three North American tribes of CANADA EARLY HISTORY. 175 whom we hear most in early Canadian history, which at one period chiefly consists in a narrative of continual warfare between the natives and the European colonists who were striving to make their way to the great western prairie-region. The two others are the Hurons and the Iroquois. These native tribes, devoted to the chase, and thus acquiring exceptional endurance and activity of frame, were regularly formed into subdivisions, villages, or bands, the whole being subject to a sachem or civil chief, aided by councillors chosen from the foremost warriors, and ruling, as- he best could, a fiercely democratic people. The local system was that of clans, connected in blood through female descent, and bearing emblems or crests called "Totems", which often exhibited the form of some wild animal, the bear or the beaver, the otter or the wolf, regarded with superstitious reverence, and secured against killing, as being the common ancestor of the clan. If the " totem" were a plant, the prohibition would then be directed against eating. The members of the same clan could not intermarry, and were all bound together by the principle of vendetta or blood-feud. Craft and cruelty were com- mon to all the natives of North America, who numbered, it has been reckoned, but two or three hundred thousand in the whole vast region lying between Hudson's Bay and the basin of the Mississippi. The Algonquins, amounting to nearly one hundred thousand, ranged over a great region from Hudson's Bay to South Carolina, and from Cape Gaspe, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, to the river Des Moines in Iowa. Their sub-tribes included the Mic- macs of Nova Scotia; the Abenakis of Maine; the Pequods of New England; the Shawnees of Kentucky and Tennessee; the Miamis, along the Ohio to Lake Michigan; the Ojibways, near Lake Superior; and the Sioux on the prairies east of the Missis- sippi. The Hurons or Wyandots dwelt in the peninsula which lies between Lakes Erie, Ontario, and Huron, and may have num- bered twenty thousand. The Iroquois, or Five Nations, are the Indians most familiar to the student of that period of North American history which deals with the struggles between the British and the French settlers. They included the divisions called Senecas and Mo- hawks, and roamed over the land lying between the upper waters 1/6 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. of the Ohio, Delaware, and Susquehannah, and the shores of Lake Ontario. The Iroquois have been regarded, with good reason, as the bravest and most cruel of Indian tribes, waging war on all sides, both against foreign settlers and natives, and earning their successes by a combination of courage and disciplined arrange- ment. Their position in the country which now forms the state of New York gave them a great advantage in moving by lakes and rivers to the parts where they wished to deal their blows. The Hiawatha of Longfellow presents their chief points of character. The energetic spirit of this master-tribe of North America was displayed alike in the conflict with man and in the hunting of wild animals; in their hours of leisure, devoted to gambling, hard drinking, and dancing; in the careful tillage of large tracts of maize, and in the fact that their victorious achievements were those of warriors who at no time exceeded the number of four thousand. It was in an expedition with the Algonquins against their ancient foes, the Iroquois, that the French explorer dis- covered Lake Champlain. The European muskets, in a fight near Lake George, by its later name, routed the Iroquois in sudden dismay, but the victory was one for which the Canadian French were destined to pay a heavy price. The defeated tribe, for a century and a half, were the deadly foes of their European assailants, and, in the ambush of their irregular warfare, and in the stealthy murder of outlying settlers, they wreaked a manifold vengeance for every warrior that fell in the battle. In the spring of 1610, an attack on their entrenchments at the mouth of the Richelieu ended in a second defeat for the Iroquois, but the struggle was hard, and Champlain was wounded by an arrow in the neck. For many years from this date, Champlain was the animating spirit of the French colony. More than twenty times in all he crossed the Atlantic in the interests of his charge, and, through his courage, fidelity, and zeal, he enjoyed the confidence of successive nobles named as Viceroys by Louis the Thirteenth. These titular governors remained in France, and left their deputy free in his exercise of actual rule. In 1611, he selected the island of Mont- real as the site for a future city, by erecting a fort for the protec- tion of the fur-trade at the point where the Ottawa joins the St. Lawrence. The island called St. Helen's commemorates the name CANADA EARLY HISTORY. 177 of Champlain's newly-wedded wife. Religious duty towards the natives was not forgotten, and in 1615, through his personal inter- vention in France, a new body of settlers was accompanied by three Recollet friars, the first of the devoted missionaries who play so large a part in the early history of Canada. One took his place at Tadousac, another at Three Rivers, and a third at Quebec, where, on June 25th, mass was first said in a Canadian church. Eager for exploration, Champlain, in the same year, accom- panied by some of his Huron friends, was the first European that ever gazed on the waters of Lakes Huron and Ontario. His most westerly point was Lake St. Clair; and he reached Quebec in July, 1616, after taking part in another attack on the Iroquois. Their strongly stockaded town was assailed in vain, and the Algonquins retired, carrying their French ally, disabled by two wounds in the leg. He now devoted his time and thoughts to the advance of his little colony. Quebec, having then but wooden walls, was strengthened by a fort of stone in the lower town, and Champlain began to erect, on the higher ground, the castle of St. Louis, which became the abode of Canadian governors until its destruction by fire in 1834. Little encouragement came from home in the form of new settlers aiming at tillage, and the Iroquois, in 1620, made the first of the invasions which, in coming years, were so often to harass the French in Canada. Their attacks were at present repulsed by the aid of muskets and cannon. In 1621, the departure of many of the traders in fur, who were hampered by interlopers from France, reduced the number of colonists to less than fifty. In 1625, Henri de Levis, Due de Ventadour, became Canadian viceroy. This nobleman had lately exchanged the luxuries of court life for the severities of a monastic order, and was fired with zeal for the spread of the Christian faith in the New World. With this view, he sent out some Jesuit fathers to Canada. This religious body, the Society of Jesus, so renowned in the ecclesias- tical and in much of the political history of the modern world, had been founded, about ninety years before, by the noble ex-soldier of Spain, Ignatius Loyola, aided by his countrymen Lainez, Francis Xavier, and Bobadilla. These foremost champions of the Church of Rome, the Jesuit order, were soon distinguished by their subtleness of policy, their vehemence of zeal, their exactness of VOL. I. 12 178 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. discipline; by self-denial, by intense and stubborn devotion to a single end, and by the utmost versatility and skill in their choice of means. Debarred from promotion to high rank in the church, and freed from all temptations towards the visible prizes of worldly ambition, the Jesuit aimed at unseen strongholds of an inner realm in controlling the minds and the souls, in winning the opinions and the feelings of men. The pulpit, the press, the confessional, the school, these were the battlefields of Jesuit warfare. Science, literature, learning, art, were all pressed into the service of orthodox religion. In the world of Europe, as they waged their contest amongst heretical peoples, their fearless courage defied the terrors of spies and penal laws, of racks and dungeons, of gibbets and blocks. In every land, under every disguise, their work was done. In missionary effort, they took, in exact truth, the world for their province. The distant regions of China and Japan, India and Tibet, and the Philippine Isles, of the eastern hemisphere; Brazil and Paraguay and California, in the new-found west; Abys- sinia, and Kaffirland, and the Guinea coast, of African climes, were all within the range of Jesuit travel. Their endeavours to convert the heathen were greatly aided by sound judgment and by worldly wisdom. As they wandered through the regions laid open to European enterprise by maritime discovery, among divers nations and peoples and tongues, they were careful to tend the bodies as well as to strive to win the souls of those to whom, with enthusiasm guided by knowledge and light, they made their appeals. They sought to civilize the pagan for his life in this world of weariness and pain, as well as to fit him for the happiness and glory of a future state. Their skill in botany and medicine, their acquaintance with the arts of tillage, carpentry, and building, all contributed to the attainment of the main object of their lives. Nor was it distant lands alone that received benefit from' the labours of the Jesuits. They largely added to the store of European knowledge in languages and science, in ethnology and exploration. The alkaloid quinine, priceless as a tonic and a specific remedy for certain fevers, was formerly known as Jesuits' Bark, being first brought to Rome from the forests of Peru, and distributed thenceforth among the missionary stations of the order. Among all explorers of North America, the Jesuit fathers, CANADA EARLY HISTORY. 179 undaunted in all dangers, untired by any toils, were the most successful and renowned. One of their number, Claude Allouez, made his way to the regions lying north of Lake Superior, and, on his return to Quebec, first gave knowledge of the vast land of prairie lying to the west. Marquette, launched on the Wisconsin in a birch-bark canoe, paddled down the river till he reached a greater stream, passed along until it received the waters of the great Missouri, and continuing his course beyond the mouth of the \V abash or Ohio, arrived at the Arkansas, first revealing that the mighty Mississippi had a southward course towards the Gulf of Mexico which afterwards, as we have seen, was attained by his countryman, also of Jesuit training, Cavalier de la Salle. The one thing in which the Jesuits failed in North America was as regards helping forward the work of colonization. The Indians, in some cases, were won for the Christian faith, but the whole system of the church, as then administered in France, was opposed to political equality and progress, and advance was hin- dered by the strife which arose between the priestly element and the more liberal and enlightened of the French governors. The fatal policy adopted in 1685, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes alienated and banished a large part of the best industrial skill and intellectual resource of France, had its counterpart in Canadian rule, and rendered the French trans-Atlantic colonies yearly less capable of coping with the swiftly advancing British settlements in New England and on other parts of the Atlantic coast. Before the close of the seventeenth century, the colonists of Canada were outnumbered by their British neighbours in the proportion of about twenty to one, and the failure of France to secure for herself a trans-Atlantic empire was thus largely due to the sheer want of population to hold in sufficient force the land which she claimed. In 1627, the great statesman, Cardinal Richelieu, was the virtual ruler of France, as minister of Louis the Thirteenth. By his advice an important change was now made in the machinery for governing Canada. All charters were annulled, and the country was placed in the hands of a body called the " Company of the Hundred Associates". Their rights extended from Hudson's Bay to Florida, and theirs was the monopoly of all trade, with the great exception of that arising from the whale and cod fisheries. Com- 1 80 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. merce and religion were combined in the objects of the new scheme, which bound the Associates, within the space of fifteen years, to bring from France and plant colonists to the number of five thou- sand, with due provision for their spiritual wants. The cardinal and Champlain, with many wealthy merchants and distinguished nobles, were members of the " Hundred Associates", among whom the character, experience, and performances of the founder of French Canada naturally gave him a foremost place. The one thing wanting for permanent success was a readiness among large numbers of the French people to follow their colonial and religious pioneers from the towns and fields of sunny France to the banks of the St. Lawrence. This they persistently declined to do, and, without this, no patronage, however distinguished, no views or purposes, however enlightened or benevolent, could possibly win success for a colonial enterprise. The right man, however, was retained at the head of affairs when, on the abolition of the vice- royalty, Champlain was appointed Governor of Canada. It is im- portant to observe that a State Church was now fully established, in the technical sense, and that all Huguenots, the very salt of the earth for real colonization, were banished from the country. The new departure had scarcely been made, when British hos- tility dealt a severe blow. In 1628, Charles the First declared war against France, and Buckingham made his imbecile attempt to relieve the Huguenots besieged in La Rochelle. A French Pro- testant refugee, Sir David Kirke, was intrusted with a fleet for operations in the St. Lawrence, and sailed for those waters with a dozen British ships. From Tadousac he despatched a message to Champlain, demanding the surrender of Quebec. That chivalrous and stout-hearted man was hard pressed for food and devoid of means to resist so large a force, but his answer was a bold defiance to the foe. The position was one of the utmost anxiety for the French. The first fleet of the Associates was due from France, consisting of eighteen vessels, heavily laden with cannon, ammu- nition, and provisions for Quebec. The messengers of Kirke, with their demand for surrender, had been well entertained with the best at command, but the French were really limited to half a pound of bread per day, and the magazine held only fifty pounds of powder. Life or death seemed to depend on the arrival of the fleet. Fortune declared against the French, when Kirke, who was CANADA EARLY HISTORY. l8l cruising in the river and biding his time, heard that the ships had appeared off Cape Gaspe. On July i8th a running fight gave him possession of all save one, and, after removing the cargoes and burning most of the vessels, he returned to England with prisoners and plunder. Hard times had come for the people of the colony, who, by the spring of 1629, were searching the woods for edible roots. Champlain, according to his w r ont, played a hero's part in enduring hardship and inspiring hope, but the government at home could not or would not send supplies, and the arrival of three British men-of-war, at the end of July, alone saved the people from death by starvation. Quebec was given up with its garri- son of sixteen haggard men; the townsfolk, about one hundred souls, were glad to share with them the food furnished by the victors. For three years from this date the British flag flew from the Castle of St. Louis, where a brother of Kirke resided as governor. Champlain, taken to England as a prisoner of war, and then restored to France, was again able to work for her colonial interests. Finding that peace between the two countries had been made in Europe at the time when Quebec was surrendered to Kirke, he induced the French government to demand the return of its colo- nial possession on this technical ground. Charles the First, who now was ruling England as an absolute monarch, yielded to the request, and in 1632, by the Treaty of St. Germain - en - Laye, Canada was restored to France. Champlain was, of course, re- placed as governor, and went forth, in March, 1633, on his twelfth voyage beyond the Atlantic, with three ships, bearing two hundred settlers and large supplies of goods for trade, provisions, and war- like stores. His work for Canada was, as it proved, nearly done. In 1634 he erected forts at Three Rivers and at the mouth of the Richelieu, for the protection of the fur-trade, and as barriers against the inroads of the implacable Iroquois, and directed his utmost efforts to the advance of the colony and the spread of the faith among the native tribes. On Christmas-day, 1635, after a long illness, which reduced him to the last extremity of weakness, Champlain, first and greatest of his country's Canadian rulers, high- souled, pure in life, just, merciful, laborious, disinterested, a bold and successful explorer, passed from the world in which he had played not merely a notable, but a noble part. 182 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. We may here inquire how it was that England, once in posses- sion of Quebec, surrendered the post, after three years' tenure, which she was finally to acquire by conquest after the lapse of more than a century and a quarter. There can be no doubt that the keen discernment of Richelieu, when he placed the colony on its new basis, under the Hundred Associates, had marked Canada as a region worthy of retention by his country, from the wealth of its fisheries, specially valuable as a nursery for seamen, from the trade in furs, and from the existence, in that region, of vast supplies of timber. On these grounds the conquest made by Kirke should have been of at least equal value in the eyes of the English government. Why was so promising a territory, fairly won in time of war, so unwisely and tamely abandoned? The answer is plain. The trans- action was but one instance of the base betrayal of the national interests and honour at the hands of the Stuart kings who strove to exercise arbitrary power over a free and high-spirited people. There is documentary evidence, in the shape of a letter in Charles the First's own hand, which proves that the English king simply sold back to France the nation's new acquisition. Charles had lately made reckless and unprovoked war upon his wife's native country, and had disastrously and ignominiously failed in the attempt to relieve La Rochelle. Much money had been spent, and the king was at issue with Parliament on the subject of "supplies" for the service of the crown. The secret of his conduct with regard to the cession of Quebec was only revealed in 1884, when Mr. Brymner, the Archivist of the Dominion of Canada, had dis- covered the king's letter in the Harleian Collection at the British Museum. The document is addressed to Sir Isaac Wake, ambas- sador to France, and is dated June I2th, 1631. It is a fact that at this time only half of the marriage-portion of Henrietta Maria had yet been paid over. One-half had been paid in London on the queen's arrival after the proxy-marriage, which took place in Paris on June i3th, 1625. The remainder was due in June, 1626, but had never been received by Charles. Wake was directed to urge payment of the money on the ground that Quebec should be restored to France. The affair thus became a mere matter of bargain, and no other reason for the act has been or can be given. The place could have been held with the greatest ease against any force which Richelieu was likely to despatch for its recovery by CANADA EARLY HISTORY. 183 arms. The national strength was bartered away in order to put money in the pocket of Charles the First. We know little or nothing of the history of Quebec during the three years of its occupation by England, but we learn from a report addressed to the king that the fort was armed with cannon and furnished with supplies of food for eighteen months, and with all kinds of tools needed for the construction of other works. The holders of Quebec declare themselves to be in a position to with- stand an attacking force of ten thousand men, and that they "doe not care what French or any other can doe". The time, however, was not yet come for the development of the vast resources of Canada, and English colonization was, through the action of an English monarch, to remain for many a year shut in by the Alle- ghanies. The extension of British territory was thus made to follow, as we have seen, the run of the Atlantic sea-board, from Massachusetts to New Hampshire and Rhode Island, and from Virginia to the south. The French held the waterways giving access to the five great lakes, and the spirit of adventure in New England was thus turned in the direction of maritime enterprise against their French neighbours, with results to be hereafter seen. The value of Champlain to the French colony in Canada was strikingly demonstrated by the languor which followed his removal from the scene. The Hundred Associates had no ideas higher than those of mere merchants, eager to drive bargains with the Indian fur-hunters and to make profits in the trade. During the quarter of a century after the death of Champlain, little real progress was made. The Associates, who had undertaken to send over five thousand colonists in fifteen years, despatched less than one thou- sand in more than double that period of time. Champlain had left behind him, in 1635, about two hundred and fifty Europeans. Barely a hundred were added during the next five years, and in 1662, when the charter of the Associates was annulled, the French population had not reached two thousand, few of whom had arrived there through the Company's action. In temporal matters the duties of government were grossly neglected. Kingsford, the latest historian of French Canada, in a work of the utmost research and value, declares that " there was no protection to life or property. The husbandman who sowed his seed could not count on his life to reap it; the wife who saw her husband 184 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. depart in the morning to his work was not certain that he would return to partake of the meal she was preparing." Champlain had made it one of his chief objects to erect forts, not only as material defences, but as visible signs of the power of France, which should impress the native mind with an image of the strength beyond the seas that was ready to protect her sons on the banks of the St. Lawrence and amid the clearings of Canadian woods. It was with this view that he had fortified the island now called He Richelieu, about fifty miles above Quebec, and, a few months before his death had made a strong post at Three Rivers. In spiritual affairs, at this time, great zeal was shown on the part of the mother-country. Within twelve years of Champlain's death more than forty Jesuit missionaries went out among the Huron Indians, and many emigrants from France arrived for reli- gious work, including some ladies of rank and fortune. A stone convent arose at Quebec in 1642, on the site now occupied by the Ursuline nuns, and the devotion of French women to Christian labours was shown in their nursing the victims of small-pox, which had seized the natives in their loathsome huts. The Duchesse d'Aiguillon, a niece of Cardinal Richelieu, founded a hospital for the natives far up the country, and the nurses for this first Hotel Dieu of Canada were young, well-born ladies from a hospital at Dieppe. The Marquis de Sillery, a wealthy Knight of Malta, who had devoted himself and all his riches to the service of the Church, founded a mission at the little cove still bearing his name, a few miles above Quebec. In 1642, the town of Montreal, on the site before chosen by Champlain, owed its foundation to missionary enterprise. A large sum of money was raised in France, where the annual " Relations", or reports of religious progress among the Indians, were arousing much enthusiasm, and a new settlement was made on the island in the St. Lawrence, under the name of Ville Marie de Montreal. The place was then an outpost of great peril, unconnected with the profitable fur-trade, and entirely due to zeal for the conversion of souls. The governor was a brave and devout soldier, the Sieur de Maisonneuve, who himself felled the first tree at the clearing of the ground, and worked with spade and mattock at the trench round the little fort. The arm of flesh, however, was needed by these Christian pioneers, and the missionaries were soon involved in trouble with CANADA EARLY HISTORY. 185 the fierce Iroquois, who were beginning to lose their dread of fire- arms, and had even obtained muskets from Dutch traders on the river Hudson. In 1648, a mission-station among the Hurons on the shores of Lake Simcoe was destroyed by fire, and the Jesuit father died a dreadful death. The fort erected by Montmagny, Champlain's successor as governor of Canada, at the mouth of the river Richelieu, was attacked by seven hundred warriors, who advanced to the very loopholes of the stockade, fired their guns through them, and were only repulsed by desperate efforts. Ever on the watch for the colonial hunter, fisherman, or farmer, they made life a burden even to those who dwelt within range of the cannon mounted at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal. The allies of the French, the Algonquins and Hurons, were constantly harassed by their implacable foes, the Iroquois, in whose lodges many a French scalp hung alongside those of Indian victims. Two of the most famous Jesuits, Brebeuf and Lallemand, were murdered by tortures spread over many hours. Amidst these terrors, the missionaries still made their way inland, and by the year 1660 they had mapped the outlines of Lakes Erie and Superior, and had viewed the waters of Lake Michigan. Another Jesuit, named Jogues, lived as a prisoner among the Mohawks, escaped and returned to France, went back to the scene of his labours, and was murdered, in 1644, by Indians of the same tribe. In spite of all opposition, some thousands of Indians were converted to the Chris- tian faith, but this success only aroused the keener hatred of the Iroquois, who attacked the villages of the Christianized natives, slew the people by hundreds, and for ten years, from 1650 to 1660, established a reign of terror in the valley of the St. Lawrence. In no long space of time, the Huron friends of the colonists were almost swept away by the Iroquois, and in 1660 those deter- mined savages formed a plan for the utter destruction of the whole colony. Twelve hundred warriors marched to attack by turns the three military posts of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec. The heroic devotion of some settlers at Montreal saved the French from ruin. Dulac des Ormeaux, a young man of twenty-two, went forth with sixteen friends, after they had made their wills, confessed, received the sacrament, and taken a solemn farewell. Their pur- pose was to sacrifice their lives, if need were, in meeting the enemy half-way. At the Long Sault rapid, on the Ottawa river, they were 1 86 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. joined by forty Christian Hurons and a few Algonquin friends, and the party then manned an old redoubt, which was little more than a breastwork of logs. The defence was improved by a facing of sods, with loopholes left for musketry, and there they received the attack of the enemy's vanguard, composed of two hundred men. Five days and nights the post was held against incessant assaults, by defenders hourly weakened through hunger, thirst, and want of sleep. When more Iroquois appeared, the Hurons went over to the foe, and for three days longer twenty heroes held out against seven hundred savages. A breach was made at last, when but four defenders remained alive, three of whom were mortally wounded, and were at once burnt by the victors. The sole survivor was carried off to die under torture. All the treacherous Hurons were killed but five, who carried the news to the French settlements. The desperate defence of the men who had fallen so far daunted the foe that they retired to prepare new plans of extermination. In 1659, the Abbe de Laval, a member of the house of Mont- morency, arrived from France, to become, some years later, the first bishop in Canada. He now held the post of vicar-apostolic, and was a man of the greatest piety and zeal, wholly devoted to the interests of the church and of the Jesuit order. His influence was not, in some respects, beneficial to the progress of the colony, which was soon distracted by quarrels between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, and it became plain that a change in the mode of government was needed. In one point, at least, the Abbe and the missionaries had right on their side. The fur-traders had long been wont to pay for skins with the brandy which was mere destruc- tion to the natives. The Jesuits waged constant war against this evil, but could not obtain the assistance of the governor, and Laval returned to France in order to appeal to the young king, Louis the Fourteenth, who had lately assumed the reins of power. In conse- quence, mainly, of Laval's intervention, the power of the Hundred Associates came to an end early in 1663, and " New France" was made a royal province. Canada thus entered on a new and more prosperous stage of her career, the first sign of which was a striking increase of her military power against her native foes, the Iroquois. The interests of the colony were now, in fact, under the charge of one of the greatest men that France ever produced, Jean Baptiste Colbert, CANADA EARLY HISTORY. l8/ who, as chief minister of the French monarch, had charge at once of the finances, the commerce, the agriculture, the marine, and the public works of his country. He was one of the most enlightened and far-sighted of all statesmen, one of the most inventive, sagacious, and capable of all administrators. Born at Rheims in 1619, he entered, in 1651, the service of Mazarin, who bequeathed him, ten years later, to Louis, with the dying words, ' I owe you, Sire, all that I possess, but I repay you in some degree in giving you Col- bert ". Louis the Fourteenth, with all his faults, had a keen eye for a great man, and he quickly found his advantage in the new minister. His financial reforms were such that, in twenty-two years, the net revenue was increased threefold, mainly through the sharp measures taken with the " farmers" of the taxes. The whole system of administration was organized anew, and the effects were quickly seen in tillage and trade, in roads and canals, in colonies and legal codes, in sciences and arts, in arsenals and seamen and men-of-war. He it was who furnished Louis with the force that enabled him to meet the fleets of England on the sea, and almost to dominate Europe on land. The ultimate failure, part of which the great man lived to behold, was due to the extravagance of a luxurious and vicious court, and to the wars of ambition waged by the sovereign. The heart and mind of Colbert were, amidst his countless and incessant cares, largely devoted to colonial development, and proofs of this were given alike in East and West in America and India, and on the African coasts. It was not long before Canada felt the presence of a new pilot at the helm of French affairs. The new governor was M. de Mezy, assisted by a council composed of him- self, Laval, the royal intendant, and four others, the latter appointed by the governor and the bishop, and holding office for a year. The governor directed military affairs as the king's representative. The intendant was the legal official, also controlling the finances, and issuing ordinances on various matters of social and commercial life, with the force of law. The elements of evil at work in the new system proved to be disputes, arising from ill-defined limits of power between the governor and the intendant, and between the governor and the bishop, supported by the Jesuits. A new body called the " Company of the West " had a monopoly of trade, in return for which they were to defray the expenses of civil govern- ment and of the religious system, strictly confined to the teaching 1 88 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. of the Catholic faith. In the end, this commercial monopoly had evil effects, but the measures taken by Colbert had immediate results in securing the safety and the progress of Canada. The intendant, Talon, was a man of ambitious views for the colony, guided by sound sense, and he directed the attention of new-comers specially to tillage, in order to make the settlement wholly independent of extraneous support. In 1665, eight hundred emigrants arrived from France, and this considerable body was accompanied by a large accession of military strength. Due provision for colonial progress was made in the despatch from France of horses, sheep, horned cattle, and imple- ments of agriculture. Canada was no longer to be left devoid of resources either for the acquirement of wealth by the cultivation of the soil, or for her own defence against external foes. A military officer of experience and skill, the Marquis de Tracy, appeared upon the scene as the king's lieutenant-general and viceroy of all the French possessions in America. He brought with him four companies of the regiment styled Carignan-Salieres, which had won renown on Hungarian fields of battle against the Turks. It was a striking and a stirring sight for the people of Quebec when these fine troops, part of a total force of twelve hundred men, with glit- tering equipments, amid pealing trumpets and the beat of drums, marched up to the citadel. The soldiers had been raised in Savoy under the Prince of Carignan, and were now commanded by M. de Salieres as colonel. To this day the names of towns and counties along the river Richelieu Varennes and Berthier, Lavaltrie and Vercheres commemorate the former officers of the regiment, stationed through that district to command, against the Iroquois, the approaches to Montreal. A new governor, M. de Courcelles, had now, in September, 1665, superseded de Mezy, through the influence of Laval. The arrival of the troops and the fresh settlers had more than doubled the scanty French population, by raising it to four thousand. De Tracy at once resolved on aggressive measures against the native foe, the heretofore indomitable Iroquois. Three forts were at once erected on the river Richelieu, the water-way by which, in their birch-bark canoes, the enemy obtained access to Canada. Of these, the works at Chambly and Saurel received the names of the officers in command. Four companies of troops were sent to Three CANADA EARLY HISTORY. 189 Rivers, as the base of operations, with a hundred Canadian militia, and some Indian allies. De Salieres had command of a detachment stationed at Montreal, and, as the season was far advanced, and the approaches were now barred against the enemy, the colonists could rest in peace within reach of the fortified and garrisoned works. It was in the depth of winter that the governor, De Courcelles, marched to attack the Mohawks, a tribe of the Iroquois, in their own abodes. On January Qth, 1666, he left Quebec with one hun- dred men of the royal regiment, each carrying the usual accoutre- ments, with a blanket, a pair of snow-shoes, and twenty pounds of biscuit. The road lay at first up the frozen St. Lawrence, with a sharp wind blowing that chilled the marchers to the bone. At Three Rivers he was joined by more troops and some militia, the latter being duly provided with moccasins of deer-skin or other hide, over thick woollen wraps, called nippes, placed round the stockings, against the intense cold. The soldiers, fresh from France, had neither experience of Canadian wintry weather, nor the same dress for resisting it, and suffered much both from the low temperature and from the lack of practice in moving on show-shoes. At the forts on the Richelieu, de Courcelles added more men to his command, and a body of troops joined him from Montreal, by a road sixteen miles in length, the first of its kind constructed in Canada, leading to the fort at Chambly. The marching column now consisted of six hundred, after the despatch to Three Rivers of the men who had succumbed to the cold and fatigue. On quitting Fort St. Therese, the last post on the Richelieu, the route against the Mohawks lay through a region wholly unknown to the invaders. The expected Algonquin guides had not appeared. De Courcelles soon found that he was trespassing on the territory lately ceded by the Dutch to the English at New York, when he arrived, on February 2Oth, at the village of Corlaer, afterwards Schenectady, on the Mohawk river. He had missed his road to the haunts of the Iroquois, and, as the enemy were now aware of his approach, and no surprise could be effected, the prudent course lay in retreat. The French governor had found, to his disgust, that the British held the country that he had expected to find in the hands of the Dutch, and grumbled that "the king of England did grasp all America", as his words are reported by a chronicler and ear-witness. Sixty men were missing on arrival at the French OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. forts, and the other brave men who had set the example of such expeditions, to be often repeated during the next hundred years, arrived at Quebec in a worn-out condition, after a journey of more than eight hundred miles. During the retreat, the Iroquois had waylaid their enemies, and a French detachment fell into an ambush, with the loss of nearly twenty men in wounded and slain. The Mohawks were, however, so far impressed by the intrepid advance of their enemy, that the tribes of the " Five Nations", when the spring had opened the waters to their canoes, sent an embassy to Quebec. In July, 1666, peace was made, but De Tracy had no faith in the sincerity of the Indians, and news at this time arrived of an attack made upon a party of young officers from one of the Richelieu forts. Two were killed, and four were made prisoners. The chiefs at Quebec were at once arrested, and De Tracy prepared for a signal act of punishment and intimidation. The veteran soldier, nearly seventy years of age, organized, with Talon's aid, a powerful expedition, composed of thirteen hundred men, including Indian allies, Canadian militia, and six hundred of the Carignan regiment, eager to avenge the wrongs of their comrades. On October 3rd a start was made, and three hundred boats carried the force along the Richelieu, and Lake Champlain, to Lake St. Sacrament, afterwards Lake George. Then came a march of nearly seventy miles through bush, along a narrow trail, hampered by fallen trees, thick brushwood, and decaying stumps. Swampy and rocky ground were also traversed, but over and through all the troops, wearied and short of food, continued to drag the two small field-pieces which formed their sole artillery. At one point, the hungry men gladly came upon a fine grove of chestnut trees, covered, in the autumn time, with nuts well-ripened. A com- plete surprise of the enemy's villages could not be effected, as some lurking Iroquois had seen De Tracy's Algonquin scouts. The troops were formed in columns of attack, but four villages in suc- cession were found deserted by the foe, who had left behind them, in hasty retreat, a welcome supply of food. The French were about to retrace their steps, when an Algonquin woman, who accompanied the scouts, came forward to tell of the existence of another Iroquois town. She had suffered much in girlhood as a prisoner in their hands, and she was allowed to show the way at De Courcelles' side. The place was soon reached, to be found also CANADA EARLY HISTORY. IQI abandoned, save by a single infirm old man. The collection of houses, some of a hundred and twenty feet in length, for the lodgment of several families, was surrounded by a triple stockade, twenty feet high, flanked with four bastions. There were magazines of stones for hurling at assailants, and large vessels filled with water for the quenching of fire applied to the palisade. Large quantities of maize were found in granaries underground, with beans and Indian fruits, forming provision which, if the means of transport had been at hand, would have fed all the French colonists for months. All the arrangements of this chief village, including utensils obtained from the Dutch, displayed a higher order of social life than had yet been observed amongst Indian tribes. The Te Deum was sung, the cross was erected, and the whole country of the Mohawks was claimed by De Tracy for Louis the Four- teenth. The troops carried off all the provisions that could be thus removed, and, in all the villages, the rest of the food was spoilt or destroyed. Everything was then given to the flames, and hundreds of the hostile Indians are said to have perished from famine during the next winter. This great blow broke, for a time, the power of the Iroquois. They were forced to understand that the French in the valley of the St. Lawrence were no longer a feeble folk, to be preyed upon and murdered at will; that the route to their territory was barred by well-appointed forts; that the road to their own country was known, and that severe punishment would promptly follow outrages perpetrated upon the subjects of the French king. The returning expedition was received at Quebec with exultant joy, and a treaty was made which, for nearly a score of years, gave repose from Indian foes to the long-troubled colony. After settling the civil government on a firmer basis, De Tracy, in 1667, handed over the charge of affairs to M. de Courcelles, and returned to France. At the request of the Mohawks, some Jesuit missionaries went to live among the tribe, and it is believed that from this time the cruelty of the Indians, as displayed against captured foes, was sensibly lessened. De Courcelles remained in Canada as Governor until 1672, exercising supreme authority in the council, and in disputes which might occur between the settlers and the Seigneurs who held rights under the crown. His authority extended over all ecclesiastics and all other persons of every class, 192 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Talon, the Intendant, being the administrator of civil and judicial affairs. Such prosperity now ensued as was possible under a system that gave no play to the individual and independent efforts which were bringing swift and sure success to the British colonies lying to the south. One evil that arose was the greed of gain which caused officials to engage in trade by methods that spread a moral taint throughout the community. In outward material develop- ment the country made advance, largely through Talon's efforts to promote tillage, and the trade in timber, fish, and furs, with some re- gard also paid to shipbuilding and manufactures. Exploration was extended towards H udson's Bay and the great lakes. The population was increased by the special measures undertaken for that end. On the conclusion of peace with the Mohawks, most of the royal troops returned to France, but four hundred disbanded officers and men remained in the colony, settled on grants of land, and were a valuable element for the cultivation of the soil and for frontier- defence. The policy of emigration was conducted in a most practical way for the growth of population. Between 1665 and 1670 cargoes of young women of good character were regularly shipped as wives for settlers, and were, as a rule, immediately married. In 1669, we find Colbert writing to Talon, "The king sends 150 girls to be married, 6 companies of 50 men, 30 officers or gentlemen, 200 other persons". In 1670, the minister writes to De Courcelles, " Encourage early marriage, so that by the multi- plication of children the colony may have the means of increase". In the same year, Talon reports to the king, "165 girls arrived, 30 do not remain unmarried; 150 to 200 more asked for". Dowries in the shape of stock for a little farm were given to the maidens; bounties were offered for early marriages and for the largest families; fines and certain civil restrictions were imposed on men who remained unmarried. The result of these paternal proceedings is seen in Talon's letter to Colbert in 1671, " Between 600 and 700 children born; inexpedient to send out girls next year". In 1669, six companies of infantry, numbering two thousand men, arrived from France as settlers. Officers were forbidden to return to the old country, on pain of the king's displeasure, and those who settled received rewards of money. Ladies also emigrated to become the wives of officers and of other settlers of the higher class. CANADA EARLY HISTORY. 193 The modified feudal system of holding land in Canada at this period of her history divided the country into large blocks, granted to seigneurs, who were, as a rule, military officers, or men of noble birth. Due fealty was paid to the king, or to the governor, as his deputy, and when any land was sold, a fifth of the purchase-money passed to the treasury. The feudal lord administered justice and kept public order within his demesne, and was also required to erect, if need were, a block-house for frontier-defence, and to pro- vide the settlers with a corn-mill. Land-grants lay much along the St. Lawrence and the Richelieu, with a narrow frontage to the river, and extension far back. Subdivision by inheritance reduced farms to mere strips of land, some of which still remain in the same old French families. Feudal dues were paid to the seigneur in produce, labour for certain days in the year, toll for grinding corn at his mill, tithe on fish caught, and one-twelfth of the purchase- money for lands sold. This system of tenure was not wholly abolished until after the middle of the nineteenth century. The efforts of Talon for the improvement of trade were hampered by the restrictions of the "West India Company", and the rules for promoting marriage were evaded by large numbers of the young men, whose adventurous spirit drove them to the forests, where they became coureurs de bois or "wood-rangers", living as nomads on the shores of the great lakes. The com- mercial monopoly of the Company, in its exclusive right of importa- tion, could settle the price of needful foreign supplies, as well as of the furs and fish which the country produced, and in 1671 Talon compelled the cessation of the restrictions on free importa- tion and purchase of furs, granting, as compensation for the loss of the skin-trade, a duty on buffalo-robes and beaver-skins. Efforts were still made by the pious dwellers in Canada and by their friends in France to spread religion among the natives, but the oft-repeated experience of missionary-toil was not wanting to the Jesuit fathers. The non-religious spread the vices and maladies of Europe faster than the priests could impart the virtues of Christianity and civilization. Drunkenness and small-pox made havoc with the Indians. At Sillery nearly the whole body of fifteen hundred Indians perished from the scourge, then unsoftened by the skill of modern science. Tadousac and Three Rivers, the annual resort of native dealers in furs, were, for a time, deserted. VOL. I. 13 IQ4 UR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. In spite of all difficulties, it is claimed for Talon that when he and De Courcelles returned to France in 1672, the cultivation of hemp had begun in Canada, with the manufacture of soap and cloth, the working of tanneries, the making of potash, and the brewing of beer, and the building of ships at Quebec. The new governor was a man of great note in Canadian history Louis de Buade, Count de Frontenac. On his arrival the popula- tion of the colony amounted to nearly seven thousand. De Fronte- nac, a soldier who had served his country with distinction in the Dutch wars, was a man of masterful character, who found himself, in maintaining what he held to be his rightful authority and position, constantly at issue both with his colleague, the royal Intendant, and with the Jesuits. Brave, energetic, able, courteous, dignified in demeanour, speech, and written utterance, he won the confidence of the colonists and the respect of the Indians. His cruel mode of warfare in massacre and devastation, directed both against his British neighbours and his Indian foes, did not arise from any natural tendency, but was, unhappily, only too much in accordance with the spirit of the school in which he was reared, and was often dictated by deliberate policy. In his first term of government he used slight resources, with little help from France, to great advan- tage against enemies all around him, and firmly maintained, within the limits of his colonial rule, the cause of law, justice, and order. It was his lot to be called to administer a system of absolute rule involving restrictions on civil freedom at every turn on departure from place to place within the colony, and outside its borders; on family arrangements, domestic service, the prices of bread and wine, and many other points. He did all that could be done in such a position, and upheld the honour of his country, at great odds against himself, in struggles both with British and with native antagonists. De Frontenac was a man who, like many other rulers, was valued to the full when his place of action knew him no more. His first term of office was marked by bold explorations, and it was then that Louis Joliet, the first native French Canadian of distinction, and Father Marquette, sailed for more than a thousand miles down the Mississippi. Marquette died at his work among the Miami Indians; Joliet, after journeying overland to Hudson's Bay, and exploring the coasts of Labrador, received the island of CANADA EARLY HISTORY. 195 Anticosti as a grant, and there died in the first year of the eighteenth century. In 1674 De Frontenac, applying at home for troops, was told that he must drill the settlers, and train them to war, as his sole reliance for the defence of the colony. Louis the Fourteenth, at war with Holland, could send no men to Canada. One of the governor's first acts was to establish a trading-post and fort, long called by his own name, at the north-east corner of Lake Ontario, where now stands the town of Kingston. The main objects in view were to check British interference with the fur-trade, and to stop one mode of ingress for the Iroquois. The merchants of Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec were uneasy as to the profits of their trade in furs, which the new post would, to a large degree, intercept. Frontenac, however, compelled these very men to supply a number of troops and canoes for the enterprise in hand, and made his way up the rapids and amid the maze of the Thousand Islands, with a great flotilla, to meet the Iroquois deputies whom he had summoned. They were received by him with military pomp and the roll of drums, amongst a bril- liant staff, and the savages were quickly won by the imposing and yet attractive demeanour of the new governor. Addressing them as "children", he referred to French power, pointed to his cannon, reminded them of the value of his friendship, recommended the Christian religion, and bestowed presents of guns and tobacco for the "braves", of prunes and raisins for their squaws and children, and a hearty feast for them all. In ten days' time, to the astonish- ment of the natives, the fort was nearly finished, with trench and palisade, and, leaving a garrison behind, Frontenac returned to Montreal, holding now the key of the great lakes. La Salle undertook to defray the cost, and received in return the seigneury of " Fort Frontenac ", with the privilege of trade, and the posses- sion of adjacent lands. His profits were such that the wooden erection was replaced by stone, and four small decked vessels, the first ever seen on Lake Ontario, were soon afloat for the protection of the trade. In 1678 La Salle, with an Italian officer, De Tonti; a Recollet friar, Father Hennepin; and the Sieur de La Motte, sailed from Fort Frontenac in a ten-ton vessel, along the northern shore of Ontario, to the Niagara river, and saw the mighty falls in the depth of winter. The little ship was afterwards wrecked on the 196 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. lake, but another and larger one was built above the Falls, and Lake Erie was reached in August, 1679. After escaping a violent storm on Lake Huron the vessel was freighted with furs for a return voyage to Niagara, while La Salle and most of his comrades awaited her return. She was never seen again, and must have foundered in a gale. In March, 1680, La Salle, with five com- panions, started back by land, through snow-spread woods, a thousand miles to Fort Frontenac, in order to procure equipments for a vessel building for him on a lake in the Illinois country. After dreadful sufferings La Salle alone arrived at Fort Frontenac, leaving his comrades behind at Fort Niagara to recruit their wasted strength. The needful supplies and men for his expedition were obtained at Montreal, and the intrepid explorer again set out westwards. He arrived at the lake to find that the town of seven or eight thousand people, near which his vessel lay upon the stocks, had been sacked and burnt by the Iroquois, who had now almost annihilated the Hurons and other tribes, and were seeking new conquests. For this end five hundred warriors had come through the forests, from the lakes in the centre of what is now the state of New York, to the prairies of the Illinois. The women and children, as well as the men, were butchered, and the graves were rifled of the dead for burning. We must here leave the great explorer of the West thus far on the course which, as already related, took him to the Gulf of Mexico. In 1 68 1 the retirement of Colbert from office left Frontenac without a strong support against Bishop de Laval, the Jesuits, the Intendant Duchesnan, a mere tool of the prelate, and the council, against all of whom he had been engaged in conflict. In the following year he and Duchesnan were both recalled. The new governor was a naval officer of good service, M. de la Barre, but he was devoid of his predecessor's energetic promptitude. The English colonists at this time outnumbered the French tenfold, and were doing their utmost to divert the trade in furs from Quebec and Montreal to Albany and New York. The governor of New York, Colonel Dongan, was striving to rouse the Iroquois against the French, but the shrewd savages, though they divined the rising power of the British, were not inclined to help either side to a supremacy which might prove fatal to the native powers, and, in the seeming caprices of alternate support and opposition, CANADA EARLY HISTORY. 197 they really strove to hold the balance between the two nations whom they had reason to dread. La Barre obtained two hundred troops from France, and, in 1684, set out from Montreal with a force of about one thousand men. His object was to punish the Iroquois for attacks on the French forts in the west, but privation and disease wasted his force, and he 'was obliged to accept terms dictated by the enemy. His return to Quebec was quickly followed by recall to France. In 1685 the Marquis de Denonville, a brilliant cavalry officer, went out as governor of Canada, and soon adopted vigorous measures against the old foe. Furnished with six hundred royal troops he marched to Fort Frontenac, and, after the perfidious step of seizing fifty Iroquois chiefs at a conference, he took the field from Montreal in June, 1687, at the head of nearly two thousand men. The Seneca Indians were defeated with great loss, their country ravaged and their villages burned, with vast stores of food. The fort of La Salle at the Niagara was restored and manned, and fortified posts were made at several other points, to bar out both the British and the Iroquois. The attack upon the Senecas brought into the field, inflamed with the utmost wrath, the forces of the " Five Nations". Fort Niagara was entered and destroyed, when the garrison, greatly reduced by sickness, had abandoned the place. The Iroquois swarmed along the frontier, lurked near every settlement, and burned some houses close to Montreal. In 1688 above a thousand colonists were killed by Indians, and the same number perished from scurvy and small-pox. Negotiations for peace were begun by the French, but they failed through the crafty treachery of a Huron, who wished for war between the French and the Iroquois. In August, 1689, came the dreadful massacre of Lachine, when twelve hundred warriors landed near Montreal by night, surrounded the village, and at daybreak butchered some hundreds of settlers, men, women, and children alike, two hundred perishing in the flames of the burning houses, and as many more being carried off for torture. For two months the savages ravaged the country around Montreal. The colony, by a succession of fearful blows, was brought near to ruin, when Fort Frontenac was abandoned and blown up, and the French hold on North America was once more reduced to the posts at Quebec, Three Rivers, and Montreal. 198 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. It was time for a change of rulers to be made when De Fron- tenac, during this disastrous year, arrived for his second term of rule. He came at a critical time in the history of French Canada. The colony numbered less than eleven thousand, and New England alone contained a population at least eight times larger. War was existing between the two countries in Europe, and De Frontenac brought with him instructions from Louis the Fourteenth to seize Albany, on the Hudson river, and to attack New York, then having but a few hundreds of inhabitants. The old soldier and proconsul, now approaching his seventieth year, devoted to his country's cause, and endowed, as we have seen, with high capacity and a resolute will, was just the man for the emergency. He carried back with him the Iroquois chiefs who had been treacherously seized by Denonville; and after having gained their good-will during the voyage, he dismissed them to their old homes with the hope of thus regaining the alliance of their people. His first step was to assail the nearest British colonies. The Abenaki Indians, who were French allies, attacked some New England posts, and slew some two hundred persons. In February, 1690, an united French and Indian force issued from Montreal, made a march of more than twenty days through snow-blocked woods, over morasses and streams, and fell upon Corlaer (Schenec- tady), the English frontier-town, on the river Mohawk, north-west of Albany. Through a gross want of caution and vigilance on the part of its inhabitants, the place was surprised at midnight and set on fire, while over sixty men, women, and children were butchered in their beds or in wild efforts to escape the tomahawk and sword. A few made their way to Albany, and about thirty were taken prisoners. It is pleasant to record that an English pursuit from Albany, aided by a party of Mohawks, slew twenty-five of the blood-stained invaders, and chased the rest to the gates of Mon- treal. Two other English settlements, at Salmon Falls and Fort Loyal (now Portland, in the state of Maine), belonging to New Hampshire, were surprised by other French and Indian parties, with the burning of all the buildings, and the death and capture of some scores of people. The Iroquois, seeking revenge for the wrongs of their British allies, ravaged the French frontier, and much loss was caused at outposts and solitary villages. In May the colonists of New England met at New York to CANADA EARLY HISTORY. 1 99 concert measures for retaliation on the French. No less an enter- prise was undertaken than the conquest of Canada, by a military force directed against Montreal by way of the Hudson valley and Lake Champlain, under General Winthrop, while a powerful squad- ron, commanded by Sir William Phipps, was to sail for Quebec. Both attempts ended in failure. Winthrop's men were attacked in camp near Lake Champlain by an outbreak of small-pox, and a lack of canoes and provisions forced his retreat to Albany. A small party made their way to La Prairie, near Montreal, and returned after the slaughter and capture of some Canadians. De Frontenac made vigorous preparations for the defence of Quebec by new works, and in October, 1690, after a defiant reply to Phipps' sum- mons for an immediate surrender, he repulsed his attacks both by land and water. The guns of the fortifications were of too heavy metal for the ship artillery, and the assailants on shore were driven back by the fire of a much superior force, composed of three thou- sand men, commanded by skilful officers. The British ships were severely treated by the weather on their return, and after the wreck of several vessels they arrived at Boston with the discredit of utter failure. The exultant French struck a medal for their success, and erected a church to " Notre Dame de la Victoire ", still to be seen in the lower town of Quebec. The frontier war continued with its usual atrocities. French privateers were daring enough to cut out ships in the harbour of Boston. The French and the English, as they hounded on their Indian allies to their savage warfare, disgraced themselves by offer- ing large rewards for scalps. In 1693 a British naval expedition, aiming at the French American possessions, was secretly fitted out in the dockyards at home. Repulsed with severe loss in an attack on Martinique, the crews brought away with them the scourge of yellow-fever, which destroyed on the voyage to Boston, and after arrival there, two-thirds of the five thousand sailors and marines. The projected attack on Quebec was abandoned, and Canada was again safe from British assaults. De Frontenac maintained with energy the struggle against the Iroquois, rebuilding the western fort at Frontenac abandoned by Denonville, and severely repulsing an Indian attack on Montreal. In civil affairs he strongly asserted himself against the political pre- tensions of the Bishop and the Jesuits, who were supported by the 2OO OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Intendant, M. de Champigny. In 1696, when he was in his seventy- sixth year, the gallant old governor, with snowy hair, but his eyes still bright with the fire of the spirit that burned within, was carried on a litter at the head of a strong force marching against the Iro- quois. The savages fired their town and fled, and the destruction of stores of grain and other food left many of them to starve during the next winter. In the same year a strong English work at Pema- quid, on the coast of the territory now forming the state of Maine, was taken by a French-Canadian squadron under d'Iberville. The Treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, left France with a strong position in America, as mistress of the posts on Hudson's Bay, to be hereafter mentioned, of the country from Maine to Labrador, and of the valleys of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi. The Indians of the west had been partly overcome, and De Frontenac had recovered the French hold upon the great lakes. The work of the governor was nearly done, one of his last official acts being the assertion, against Lord Bellomont, the new governor of Massa- chusetts and New York, of French claims to the allegiance of the really independent Iroquois. This letter was dated on September 2 ist, 1698, and the writer died about two months afterwards. He had saved New France, on the verge of ruin, and he was buried in the Recollet Church at Quebec amid general marks of sorrow and high esteem. In 1699 the Chevalier de Callieres, commandant of Montreal, succeeded De Frontenac as governor. In September, 1700, peace was concluded between the French and the Iroquois, and the treaty was observed for several years. A fort was erected, to secure the upper lakes, on the site of Detroit, and the new governor was soon engaged in preparations to take his colonial part in the War of the Spanish Succession, declared in Europe on May 4th, 1702. A year later he died, and was succeeded by the Marquis de Vaudreuil, com- mandant of Montreal, who had served in the country since 1687. The cruel warfare on the frontiers was now resumed. In the winter of 1703, a French and Indian force burned the town of Deerfield in Massachusetts, slew nearly fifty of the people, and dragged off more than a hundred as prisoners to Canada. In 1708 a border-raid of French and Indian troops was marked by the atrocities perpetrated at Haverhill, near the Merrimac, again in Massachusetts. The place was a cluster of cottages and log-huts CANADA EARLY HISTORY. 2OI amid primeval forest. A small chapel rose in the middle of the settlement, and in the last days of August the Indian corn was ripening in a little clearing from the woods. At daybreak came the whoop of war and the crack of guns. The minister Wolfe (a name to be hereafter known to Canadian Frenchmen) was beaten to death; his wife's skull was split by an Indian tomahawk, and another savage dashed out the baby's brains against a stone. The place, after further slaughter, was left in smoking ruins, but the retiring foe were severely handled by some of the neighbouring farmers who started in pursuit. The colonists of New England henceforth waged a deadly war against the French and their Indian friends, offering rewards for Indian scalps, and forming parties to hunt down their enemies like beasts of prey. It was at this time that the more adventurous and hardy of the British settlers became the backwoodsmen of legendary story and romance, truly described, however, as rivalling the best of the Indians in knowledge of guerilla warfare and in crafty skill at tracking and circumventing their foes. By sea, the colonists waged an incessant and unsparing contest against every French settlement on or within easy reach of the coasts. In 1709, another plan for the conquest of Canada was formed in New England, and help from the mother-country was sought. Before that could arrive, Colonel Nicholson, Governor of Virginia, with fifteen hundred men raised from his own colony, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and the New England settlements, marched against Montreal. His route lay by Lake Champlain, and his force was increased by a body of Iroquois. De Vaudreuil prepared for a stout defence, but the British expedition failed without any fighting, the camp at Lake George being attacked by sickness, and the non-arrival of expected help from England compelling a retreat. In the following year, Nicholson, as will be seen, was successfully engaged elsewhere against the French. He then went to England, and ur^ed with effect a serious effort for o o the conquest of Canada. In June, 1711, a powerful fleet, composed of fifteen men-of-war and nearly fifty transports and store-ships, with seven British regiments, and two battalions of the Massachusetts militia, sailed from Boston to attack Quebec, while two thousand men from other colonies went overland, again commanded by Nicholson, on the 202 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. road to Montreal. The troops from England included some of Marlborough's men who had won triumphs over the French at Blenheim and Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet, but there was no Marlborough in command of this expedition. The curse of court-influence ruined the whole enterprise. The military force was intrusted to a General Hill, brother of Mrs. Masham, the favourite of Queen Anne. Sir Hovenden Walker, a man wholly devoid of merit, had charge of the fleet. On August 22nd, from careless navigation during a fog, eight of the transports went ashore upon some reefs in the St. Lawrence, and were broken up with the loss of many sailors and nearly a thousand troops. Walker, after this disaster, in which the drowned men belonged mainly to the splendid British regiments, calmly accepted the misfortune, made no further effort, turned tail, and sailed home, alleging that the loss of part had saved all the rest, since arrival at Quebec would, he declared, in the absence of stores, "have left ten or twelve thousand men to perish of cold and hunger". Nicholson and his men, on hearing of Walker's retreat, returned home after reaching Lake George. Thus ended a disgraceful display of cowardice and imbecile mismanagement, which has received scanty notice from English historians. The enterprise had been undertaken with the utmost deliberation. When Nicholson went home from his government to advise the invasion, five Iroquois chiefs, in a court-costume, had been presented to the queen. Handing to her, as pledges of their fidelity, belts of wampum, composed of thin shells, about an inch in length, used as money by the Indians, they engaged that their fellows should fight along with the English for the conquest of Canada. The brilliant St. John, Lord Bolingbroke, had devised the plan, but, unfortunately for the due organization of the expedi- tion, and for the choice of commanders, the minister, Godolphin, was at this time removed from office to make way for Harley. General Hill, known as "honest Jack Hill", was a jovial man whom the great Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, had taken in hand as a boy and put to school. He then became, through her influence, aide-de-camp to Marlborough, who "always said", the Duchess affirms, "that Jack Hill was good for nothing". Mrs. Masham, in spite of the duke's earnest remonstrance with the queen, procured her brother's rise to the rank of brigadier, followed CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 2O3 by his selection for the command of the troops sent to Canada, where he agreed with Walker, after the shipwrecks, in abandoning all attempts to carry out the project. After the failure, Hill became Governor of Dunkirk, Lieutenant of the Tower, and a Privy Councillor, while his colleague Walker, who published a foolish, ill-written vindication of his own conduct, was struck off the navy- list, and deprived of his half-pay. The history of this transaction forms a striking contrast to that which will meet us nearly half a century later. French Canada had now received a new lease of life, and De Vaudreuil, the governor, turned his attention to the strengthening of her defences for any future struggle, and to extending the line of western forts towards the valley of the Mississippi. The colony now contained somewhat more than eighteen thousand people. The Peace of Utrecht, signed on March i3th, 1713, gave to Great Britain the final and full possession of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and the Hudson's Bay territory, the history of which colonies we will trace in a succeeding chapter. CHAPTER VI. CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN (1713-1763). Condition of Canada under De Vaudreuil and De Beauharnois Beginning of the great conflict Louisbourg taken by the British, and afterwards exchanged The Ohio Company and Mr. George Washington General Braddock's unfortunate expedition against Fort Duquesne Able services of Sir William Johnson Arrival of De Montcalm Capture of Oswego by the French Futile British expedition against Quebec Fort William Henry surrenders to the French Massacre by the Indians -Pitt's resolution to expel the French from Canada Early career of General Wolfe Louisbourg again taken by the British Failure of British attack on Ticonderoga Forts Frontenac and Duquesne captured The British government and the colonists resolve to attack Quebec Fort Niagara captured Siege and final surrender of Quebec Wolfe and Montcalm mortally wounded Effort of the French to recover Quebec Montreal surrenders to the British Canada ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Paris. We now come to deal with the struggle between two great European rivals for the possession of power in North America. In that view, we continue the history of French Canada in 1713, remembering that the British colonies, at that date, are still, and are to remain for sixty years, though with many ominous rumblings 2O4 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. of discontent, ever growing louder, outwardly loyal to the mother- country, Great Britain. During the remaining twelve years of De Vaudreuil's government of Canada, ending only with his death in 1725, the country remained at peace, and the population rose to the number of about thirty thousand. Industries were developed in the making of woollen and linen cloth, salt, and iron. The taste for horses, as instruments both of use and amusement, which is still so marked among the French-Canadians, led to the intro- duction of the sleigh for winter-locomotion, in place of the snow- shoe. At Quebec arose the building of ships, which was afterwards so greatly extended in that town. The fur-trade grew to a great extent, and there was a large commerce in the export, to France and to her West Indian islands, of timber, tar, pork, and flour, in exchange for the manufactures of the home-country, and the sugar, molasses, and rum of the tropical settlements in the Gulf of Mexico. The Intendant exercised his minute and searching arbitrary power in almost all the affairs of life, over the customs- duties and the coin, the streets and roads, sanitary measures, such as were then known, the sale of liquor, the exercise of trades, and countless minor affairs. This paternal system of rule had important effects in checking the growth of that self-reliance and independent spirit which, with some mischiefs, are fostered by popular government. Under the rule of Louis the Fourteenth, who died in 1715, Canada had been furnished with institutions devoid of all vitality, and her prosperity was poor indeed compared with that which would have come under a system of religious toleration, along with schools for the young, a representative assembly, a sound method of land-tenure, in place of feudality, and an extension of tillage, as in the British colonies, instead of a chief devotion to the fur-trade. In 1722 we find an able Jesuit missionary, Pere Charlevoix, comparing French- Canadians and their capital with the New Englanders. Quebec, with a population of seven thousand, is described as having a society largely composed of an agreeable military element, and much more brilliant than that of Boston. He admits that the English " better knew how to accumulate wealth, but the French had the more elegant manner of spending it". This epigrammatic utterance explains to a large degree the failure of France as a colonizing power. CANADA to illustrate the History 1503-1801 CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 2O5 De Vaudreuil was succeeded as governor of Canada by the Marquis de Beauharnois, who was in power from 1725 to 1746. These years, with the exception of the last three, were a time of nominal peace, save in Acadia, where, as we shall see, the struggle for possession between the colonists of the two great European nations was carried on. The foreign policy of France was at this time directed by the pacific Cardinal Fleury, and, for nearly all the above period, Sir Robert Walpole, equally averse to war, was at the head of affairs in Great Britain. The French in Canada numbered, in 1726, about thirty thousand, and the people began to push forward to the west, establishing a fort, and trade-relations with the Sioux Indians, on the upper waters of the Mississippi. The British governor of New York, Burnet, a son of William the Third's friend, the famous Bishop of Salisbury, made a counter- movement to the French position of advantage at Fort Niagara, by erecting a strong post at Oswego, on Lake Ontario. His object was to direct the fur-trade with the Indians, by way of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers, towards New York. Beauharnois retorted by strengthening the works at Fort Niagara, and by the erection of Fort Frederick, at Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, near the British frontier. In these acts of jealousy concerning trade we have the fore- shadowing of the great conflict, arising in petty warfare between the settlers of two great nations, and assuming large proportions when the home-government, long neglectful of the issues involved, gave serious attention to colonial affairs in North America. It was clear already that the French were striving to keep the British to the coast, and to secure for themselves the sole command of the great west. The French meanwhile, outnumbered by the English in the proportion of about twenty to one, neglected tillage for the fur-trade, which was so attractive to those who loved exploration, and to the restless spirits who have been already mentioned as coureurs de bois. From the latter class sprang, through inter- marriage with native girls, a number of half-breeds that formed for a long period a considerable element in Canadian population. The advance of the French westwards naturally caused collision with Indian tribes, and there was much sanguinary warfare with the Foxes, the Sakis, and other bodies of savages, against whom the best allies of the Europeans were, in the end, the imported 2O6 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. scourges of strong drink and small-pox. In 1732, more than six hundred French-Canadians died of this disease in and around Montreal and Quebec. It was about this time that the minerals of Canada began to be noticed in the working of bog-iron ore found at Three Rivers, and the discovery of good copper near Lake Superior. The outbreak, in 1743, of European war between Great Britain and France was coincident, as we shall see, with colonial conflicts. The neglect to define, in the Treaty of Utrecht, a boundary-line between British Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and French Acadia, afterwards New Brunswick, was one source of trouble, but the main cause lay in the pretensions of the French, backed by overt action, to claim as their own the whole basin of the Mississippi as well as of the St. Lawrence. Their right lay, as they asserted, in the discovery of new regions, and in charters granted by French sovereigns by Louis the Fourteenth, in 1712, and, in 1716, by the ministers of his young successor, to John Law's famous Mississippi Company, which, however, came to an end within the space of four years. The British colonies, having, to some extent, diversity of interests, and being ruled by separate governments, were placed at a disadvantage through the lack of united spirit and action. It was in 1745 that the New England colonies, with assistance from the home-country, at last made a determined and successful effort against the chief French stronghold adjacent to their coasts. This was the fortress of Louisbourg, in Cape Breton Island, whose privateers preyed, with disastrous effect, upon the growing com- merce of the British in those waters. Shirley, the energetic and enterprising Governor of Massachusetts, appointed to his office in 1740, resolved, in 1745, to make an effort for the capture of the French basis of operations. Four thousand troops, raised in New England, were placed under the command of Mr. William Pepperell, a native of the colonies descended from a Devonshire family. He was a colonel of militia, occupied during peace in mercantile affairs. Shirley had learned, from certain English prisoners returned from Louisbourg, that the French garrison was ill-disciplined and discontented. An element of religious enthusi- asm had part in the expedition. George Whitefield, the Methodist preacher, was at that time stirring New England by his eloquence, and he furnished, on request, a motto for one of the regimental CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 2O7 flags, in the words Nil desperandum, Christo duce. The Puritan soldiers who went forth against the French were, in their own eyes, engaged in a warfare against the " image-worship " of the Catholics. The approaches to Louisbourg by sea were well known to many of the mariners of Massachusetts, and good hopes of success were aroused. The fortress was placed at the eastern side of the island, on a point of land which commanded the harbour lying to the north and east. The works were more than thirty feet in height, surrounded by a ditch of eighty feet in width, and mounted with over one hundred and seventy cannon and mortars. The harbour was further protected by an island-battery of thirty heavy guns, and the land-side of the fortress was defended by a tract of low marshy ground which could be swept by shot from the enemy's ramparts. The men of Massachusetts are, to this day, justly proud of their sires who, in the existing condition of the colony as regarded warlike resources, could even conceive the idea of attack- ing such a formidable stronghold. In truth, however, the New England colonists were forced to the enterprise. Their fisheries and their commerce were at stake; their lives and property on the seaboard were ever open to attack and destruction. The represen- tations made by Shirley to the government at home were not without effect, and in January, 1745, orders were despatched to the naval officer on the West Indian station, Commodore Warren, to sail with his fleet to the scene of action, and co-operate with the troops. The colony of New York furnished supplies of provisions, with a battery of ten eighteen -pounder guns. The colonies supplied a fleet of transports, with thirteen armed brigs and sloops, and this part of the armament started for Gabarus Bay, to the south of Louisbourg, in the last week of March, without awaiting the arrival of Warren. The ships were detained, at that early part of the season, for some weeks by the thick ice found off Cape Canso, at the eastern point of Nova Scotia. A landing was there made, and the time of delay was well employed in drilling the militia, and in rebuilding and arming a small fort which had been destroyed by the French. At the end of April, when the sea was clear, Warren arrived with four men-of-war, and was afterwards joined by six others from England and Newfoundland, with which fleet of ten sail, carrying from forty to sixty guns each, he cruised 2O8 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. oft" Louisbourg to intercept supplies and to prevent intelligence from reaching the fortress. The French garrison consisted of six hundred regulars and one thousand colonial militia. Their com- mander, Duchambon, was devoid alike of energy and skill, a circumstance much in favour of assailants who, however zealous, knew nothing of scientific siege. On April 3Oth, a landing was made on the shore beyond the harbour, to the north-east of the fortress, the invaders charging through the surf and driving off the French. The first success obtained was the ignition of some warehouses filled with turpentine, pitch, and tar, the suffocating smoke of which drove off the garrison of a battery mounting thirty heavy guns. The enemy spiked the cannon, but the touch-holes were redrilled by the English, and a destructive fire was opened on the foe. The landing of the British artillery and stores was the severe work of fourteen days, and on fourteen nights afterwards the siege-guns and ammunition were being dragged by the sailors on sledges over the marshy ground, to be placed in battery on the landward (westward) or weaker side of the fortress. On May iSth, the French ship Le Vigilant of 64 guns, laden with military stores much needed by the garrison, was captured by the British fleet, in view of the besiegers' camp. Two days later, the British were repulsed in a boat attack on the island- battery at the centre of the harbour entrance, but the bombardment was maintained with vigour, and the island-battery was silenced by fire from the northern shore. By the middle of June the fortress was becoming indefensible. Many of the guns were dismounted, works were destroyed, the town was utterly ruined. On June 1 7th, after seven weeks' siege, the French commandant surren- dered on the usual honourable terms; the garrison, after the loss of about 300 men, being conveyed to France on British ships. It is impossible not to quote, from Kingsford, the able historian of Canada, the "grace before meat" uttered by Mr. Moody, a regimental chaplain, on occasion of a banquet to the officers of the expedition. His sermons, like those of many Puritan preachers, were extremely lengthy, and the guests had some reason to dread his use of the opportunity now afforded. He was an aged man, selected to say grace as the uncle of Mrs. Pepperell, wife of the victorious commander who was presiding at the feast. The singularity and shortness of the utterance took all hearers by CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 2OQ surprise, and caused its preservation : " Good Lord, we have so many things to thank Thee for that time will be infinitely too short to do it. We must, therefore, leave it for the work of eternity. Bless our food and fellowship upon this joyful occasion, for the sake of Christ our Lord. Amen ". The non-combatants, numbering over two thousand people, were taken to France along with the troops. The news of this great success, the capture of Louisbourg, was received at Boston with exultant joy. The tidings arrived at one in the morning of July 3rd, and the citizens were awoke, at the early dawn of a midsummer day, by the peals of bells that were ringing around. The success of the men of Massachusetts was not ended even with the capture of the fortress. The French colours were craftily kept flying on the ramparts, and three richly- laden vessels from the Eastern seas were decoyed into harbour and taken, with cargoes worth more than half-a-million pounds sterling. The account of the exploit was also greatly welcome in London, and brought promotion to the men in command. Warren became rear-admiral of the blue. Pepperell was made a baronet, and both he and Shirley, receiving commissions as colonels in the line, were allowed to raise regiments for service in the royal forces. The governor of Massachusetts enrolled the men who formed the 5Oth Regiment, now the Queen's Own or Royal West Kent, whose colours, with the inscription, Quo Fas et Gloria ducunt, were thereafter to be seen on the Peninsular fields of Corunna and Vittoria; waving in front of the Sikhs at Aliwal and Sobraon; torn with shot at Alma and at Inkerman; victorious over mutineers and rebels at Lucknow. Pepperell's recruits were the origin of the 5ist Regiment, the King's Own or Yorkshire Light Infantry, whose flags, with the injunction, Cede nullis, were seen at Minden and Salamanca, Vittoria and Waterloo, with Roberts in Afghanistan, and at the completion of the British possession of Burma. In May, 1746, the new acquisition was garrisoned by the two regiments raised by Pepperell and Shirley, and by two other regiments brought from Gibraltar. The fisheries and the trade of the British colonies were, for the time, secured, and our country- men, so far as their exertions could avail them, had become supreme on the North Atlantic. It seems certain also that, from VOL. I. 14 2IO OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. this time forward, the men of New England were animated by that consciousness of strength which caused them, in the next generation, to assume so bold an attitude against the mother- country. The loss of Louisbourg caused dismay and indignation in France. The government, intent to recover both Cape Breton and Nova Scotia, fitted out a powerful fleet of about forty ships of war at La Rochelle, and placed more than three thousand troops on board the transports. It was an armada which was expected not only to effect the retrieval of losses, but to inflict condign punishment on the audacious New Englanders by the capture or destruction of Boston, and by the ravaging of the coast settle- ments. The expedition was placed under the command of the Due d'Anville, and sailed from France towards the end of June, 1746. The enterprise ended in total failure. The squadron was delayed by foul weather in crossing the Atlantic, and then, at the beginning of September, the ships were dispersed by a severe storm off Sable Island, on the east of Nova Scotia. Some were wrecked on the reefs; two, driven back to the coast of France, were taken by British cruisers. Many hundreds of men perished on shipboard from disease; D'Anville died of apoplexy, and the Marquis de la Jonquiere, who was going out as the new governor of Canada, ordered the remnant of the fleet to return to France. The Canadian French who had been dispatched to co-operate with their countrymen by the overland route to Nova Scotia, effected nothing beyond successful attacks upon the British posts at Sara- toga and other frontier points, with the usual cruel raids upon isolated and defenceless settlers. The British losses of this character, largely due to the neglect of the New York authorities, were partly avenged by our Iroquois allies. Early in 1747, however, w r hile the snow lay deep on the ground, a Canadian force effected a brilliant surprise of a body of Massa- chusetts troops stationed at Grand Pre in Nova Scotia. About five hundred officers and men were quartered among the people, under the command of Colonel Noble. In spite of warnings from friendly Acadians, little precaution was taken. At three o'clock in the morning of February iith, while it was yet dark, and a fierce storm of snow was raging, a body of about 250 French, aided by sixty Indians, all of whom had marched, with wonderful hardihood, CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 211 for seventeen days in the depth of winter, burst upon the place, and caught the men of Massachusetts in their beds. Colonel Noble was killed early in the fight, and, with the loss of but twenty men, the enemy killed and wounded about one hundred and forty Englishmen, and carried away nearly sixty prisoners. The rest of the New England troops were in a stone-built house, which could not be forced open or fired, and this body might have greatly damaged the exhausted Canadians in their retreat, but for the want of snow-shoes, without which it was impossible to keep pace with men duly equipped for winter travel. The French government, undeterred by the disastrous fate of D'Anville's expedition, prepared two squadrons to act against the British West Indies, and in Canadian waters, but both were defeated off Cape Finisterre by Admirals Anson and Warren, with the loss of six French men-of-war, six large Indiamen, several transports, great store of arms, accoutrements, and money, and the unlucky De la Jonquiere, who was again attempting to reach Canada and take up his duties as governor, but was now carried prisoner to England. The rule of Canada was, in June, 1747, intrusted to M. de la Galissonniere, and, in the following year, the war was brought to a temporary close by the Treaty of Aix-la- Chapelle. The New England colonies were disgusted and dis- mayed by the restoration of Louisbourg to France, in exchange for Madras, which had been taken from Britain by the French and their native allies in the Carnatic. The public opinion of Great Britain regarded the retrocession of the Cape Breton fortress as a sacrifice of the national honour, but the truth was that this country had been drawn into a continental war with which her interests were little concerned. In that war her troops had been, in the main, unsuccessful, and the government were eager for peace on any endurable terms. Louisbourg was not destined to remain much longer a menace to British subjects in North America. The British and French colonists regarded the peace as nothing but a truce which delayed an inevitable and decisive struggle. The new French governor, a bold and sagacious man, had ambitious views for his country's future in North America, and did not fail to assert them against British claims. In March, 1 749, a charter was granted by George the Second to an " Ohio Company", formed in Virginia, with a large assignment of land in 212 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. that river-basin. The company intended to establish a settlement at the junction of the rivers Alleghany and Monongahela, and a battalion of troops was raised under the command of a man whom Carlyle calls " a steady-going-, considerate, close-mouthed, young gentleman ". The name of this personage was Mr. George Washington, of Virginia. La Galissonniere, getting wind of this Ohio project, sent an officer with 300 men to occupy the region by burying plates of lead up and down, claiming the whole of the land, " from the farthest ridge, whence water trickled towards the Ohio", for France; by nailing the Bourbon lilies, in metallic form, to the forest trees; by forbidding the Indians to trade with the English, and calling upon the governor of Pennsylvania to prevent intrusion into French territory. It was well for Great Britain that a certain man named William Pitt was making his way at this season in political affairs. La Jonquiere, released from England at the peace, superseded Galissonniere as governor, but he and his intendant, Bigot, were men of evil repute, the former for the meanest avarice and the most miserly habits, the latter for gross extortion and dishonesty, combined with a profligate and wasteful mode of life worthy of a courtier of the fifteenth Louis. A better prospect for the French-Canadians came with the arrival at Quebec, in July, 1752, of M. Duquesne as ruler. He came out with instructions from his government to make a firm stand against British movements towards the west. The agents of the Ohio Company had begun to erect a fort at the junction of the two rivers forming the Ohio, when, in February, 1754, a French commander, with five hundred men, appeared and took the place. They then completed the work under the name of Fort Duquesne. The French governor had established a post at Presqu'ile (now Erie) on Lake Erie; a work called Fort le Boeuf, on the site of Waterford; and a third, Fort Venango, southwards, on French Creek. The most active and observant of the British colonial governors did not fail to direct the attention of the home- government to these menacing preparations. Shirley of Massa- chusetts, and Dinwiddie of Virginia, induced the " Lords of Trade " in London to send out a circular letter to the American colonies, recommending the adoption of a joint policy of defensive and offensive action. Governor Dinwiddie employed the services of young Mr. Washington, who erected a work called Fort CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 213 Necessity, and strove in vain, with an inferior force, to resist the French encroachments. In July, 1754, he was obliged to surrender on honourable terms, he and his men being allowed to return to Virginia. The French were, for the moment, victorious on the Ohio. At the close of this year, two regiments of the line were ordered from England, under the command of General Braddock, a name of sinister sound in the history of those times. In January, 1755, the 44th and 48th Regiments, each five hundred strong, took ship at Cork for Virginia, with the purpose of "protecting the trade of the English possessions, as one of the sources of national wealth". The French government responded by the dispatch of three thousand men, on board of eighteen ships of war, most of which arrived safely at Louisbourg or Quebec. The two countries were on the eve of the great struggle known as the Seven Years' War, but no declaration of hostilities had been formally made. There were five chief objects in view of the British colonists and the home-government. In the first place, Fort Duquesne was the key to the region lying west of the Alleghany Mountains, and, so long as that post was held by the French, Virginia and Pennsyl- vania were exposed to the attacks of them and their Indian allies. The possession of Louisbourg was a constant threat, as we have seen, to New England, and gave to the French the control of the Newfoundland fisheries. The forts of Crown Point and Ticon- deroga, on Lakes Champlain and George, covered the road to Canada, and afforded to the enemy a base for operations against New York and other colonies. Fort Niagara, lying between Lakes Erie and Ontario, commanded the trade in furs with the Indians of the upper lakes and the north-west. The fortress of Quebec was the stronghold which commanded the St. Lawrence, and mainly decided the possession of Canada. The government in Great Britain had made an unwise choice in appointing Braddock to the chief command in North America. The Duke of Cumberland, himself a general not renowned for the victorious issue of his campaigns, save against Highland rebels, believed in the capacity of Braddock, who was, in 1755, over sixty years of age, with forty-five years of service. This luckless man's character has been harshly treated by Franklin and other writers, and justice demands abatement of some of their strictures. The 214 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. British general's plan of operations, formed in council with Shirley, Dinwiddie, and other colonial governors, was comprehensive and intelligent. The doings of the colonial troops against the French in Nova Scotia will be afterwards recorded. Apart from that province, a body of Mohawk Indians was to be enrolled by William Johnson, a colonist of New York province, who had married the sister of a famous Mchawk chief, known in border- warfare by the English name of Joseph Brant. Johnson's skill in dealing with the natives was remarkable in a British subject, and he was adopted into the Mohawk tribe, becoming one of their great sachems or chiefs. His presence on the frontier was a bulwark of strength for the cause of his countrymen. He was now appointed to lead the forces against Crown Point, on Lake Cham- plain. Governor Shirley was to advance against Fort Niagara. Braddock himself undertook the task of mastering the Ohio valley and the road to the north-west. The first step towards this achievement would be the reduction of Fort Duquesne. All these operations were to be simultaneous, with a view to the distraction of the French forces in various directions. Brad- dock's fault was one which has often betrayed the commanders of regular troops in campaigns against an enemy wholly or partly composed of natives skilled in guerilla warfare. He was over- confident, and, being warned both by Franklin and by Washington of the dexterity and prowess of the Indian warriors, he expressed, along with some contempt for the " raw American militia ", a perfect reliance upon "the king's regulars and disciplined troops". The British general was, however, ill-supported by the colonial authorities, especially those of Pennsylvania and Maryland, who withheld supplies of food, and failed to furnish the Indian rein- forcements who would have been invaluable as scouts. At this time, the Governor of Canada, in succession to Duquesne, was the Marquis de Vaudreuil, a native of Quebec, and son of the former ruler. The veteran troops recently arrived from France were commanded by Baron Dieskau, an officer of distinguished service under Marshal Saxe, one of the foremost generals of that age, victorious over the British and their allies at Fontenoy and Laufeldt. Washington, commanding some companies of Virginian militia, was on Braddock's staff. Early in June, 1755, the British force of about two thousand CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 21$ three hundred men started from Fort Cumberland, on the River Potomac, for a march of 1 20 miles, through a rocky and woody country, to Fort Duquesne. A hundred pioneers cleared away the forest for the advance, during which the troops encountered great toil, and had to protect a train of artillery and baggage, straggling over several miles of ground. A few men were picked up by the French and Indians who hovered around, but no serious attack was made for many days. The French commander at Fort Duquesne, M. de Contrecceur, had no hope of making a successful defence, when one of his captains, M. de Beaujeu, proposed to waylay the invaders in the woods, with a strong party of Indians and a few French. A force of about 640 Indians, with 159 French- Canadians, and 70 regular troops, was put under his command, and he sallied forth to execute the plan which he had formed. On June 9th, Bracldock, who had pressed forward with the lighter artillery and baggage, and a force of nearly fifteen hundred of his best men, was within eight miles of Fort Duquesne, when heavy firing was heard in front, on ground covered with dense forest and thick bushes, and intersected by ravines. An incessant fire, from unseen marksmen, was poured into the column, and confusion soon prevailed. The front, both flanks, and rear were assailed. Many officers had fallen, as they strove to extricate their men, and form a front this way or that; and Braddock, after having five horses shot under him, and giving the order for retreat which was absolutely needful, received a shot in the lungs, and fell to the ground. He bade those around him to let him die where he lay, but was placed on a fresh horse and taken off the field. He expired four days later, on the retreat to Fort Cumberland. This terrible affair, in the space of two hours, cost the British 26 officers and 430 soldiers killed, and 37 officers and 380 rank and file wounded. All was lost except the clothes worn by the survivors, 26 officers and 557 soldiers of the advance-column. All the cannon, baggage, and stores, with the military chest containing ,25,000, became the prize of the victors. Washington, with the colonial troops, who displayed both steadiness and skill in the encounter, was in the thick of the fighting, but escaped unhurt. One evil result of this disaster was the renewal of the savage border-warfare, in which the tomahawk and torch wrought fearful havoc amongst the outlying settlers of Virginia and Pennsylvania. 2l6 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. A military consequence was the failure of the expedition sent against Fort Niagara. The militia, dispirited by the news con- cerning Braddock, deserted their colours; the Iroquois turned against the British cause, and Shirley, the commander, after leaving a strong garrison at Oswego, was obliged to retire again to Albany. The honour of our arms, discredited for once in a defeat of regular troops, was somewhat retrieved by Johnson at the head of the colonial militia. In July, 1755, mor e than six thousand men, chiefly from Massachusetts, with contingents from New York, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, were assembled at Albany. Colonel Lyman led the troops for forty miles up the Hudson, and there erected Fort Edward as a base for future operations. At the end of August, Johnson joined the force, which was wholly untrained, save in the use of firearms. Only one regiment was in uniform, and all the men, in lieu of bayonets, carried tomahawks in their belts. The expedition then in part advanced to Lac du Sacrament, which now received its name of Lake George. Near the southern point, Fort William Henry was constructed, and preparations were made for an advance on the strong French position at Crown Point, on Lake Champlain. Meanwhile, Baron Dieskau, despatched from Quebec against the British fort at Oswego, was diverted by De Vaudreuil to meet the invaders. He advanced to the place called Carillon, afterwards Ticonderoga, nine miles south of Crown Point. There a column was formed, consisting of about 200 French regulars, 700 Cana- dians, and 600 Indians, for the purpose of surprising Fort Edward, where Dieskau's scouts had led him to believe that only five hundred men lay. On September 8th, Johnson detached a thousand men to intercept the enemy, but, marching without pre- cautions, they fell into an ambush prepared by Dieskau, and were roughly handled, driven back in flight, and hotly pursued. Johnson made ready his men for defence, showing great skill in barricading his camp with waggons and boats placed ort their sides, in addition to a screen of felled trees in front. Some cannon were in position to sweep the road. Dieskau advanced bravely to the attack with his handful of regular troops, expecting to be supported by the Canadian militia and the Indians, but these irregulars dispersed themselves into the bush, whence they maintained a fire on the CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. British. The New Englanders, who were expert marksmen, behaved with the utmost steadiness, and, after a fight of four hours, the attack was severely repulsed. Dieskau, disabled by three shots, was taken prisoner; Johnson was also wounded and carried from the field. The chief loss of the French was in their regular troops, who were almost destroyed; and the British government, professing to regard the event as a counterpoise to Braddock's disaster, somewhat magnified its importance in bestow- ing upon Johnson a baronetcy, along with a grant of five thousand pounds. He was to prove afterwards, through his ability and determination, of valuable service during the war. At the close of J 755> tn e French held a very strong position in the command of the Ohio valley, in the possession of Forts Frontenac, Niagara, and Toronto, on or near Lake Ontario, and of Crown Point and Ticonderoga, on Lake Champlain. During the winter, much suffering was caused by the scarcity of food, due to the suspension of trade and tillage in time of war. An important event occurred in the arrival from France, in the spring of 1756, of the Marquis de Montcalm as commander of the Canadian forces. He reached Quebec in May, along with a fleet conveying two battalions of royal troops, and large, much-needed supplies of provisions and warlike stores. Montcalm, a man now in his forty-sixth year, had won, in long military service, a high reputation for courage and skill, and he was now to be ably seconded by the Chevalier de Levis, an officer of twenty years' service, who had fought at Dettingen in 1743, and was also marked by his sound training in war, energy, and courage. De Vaudreuil, the governor, had already provided work for his military assistants, in the resolve, if it were possible, to possess himself of Oswego, and thus obtain the complete command of Lake Ontario, and, at the same time, to keep a firm hold of Lake Champlain and to acquire full possession of Lake George. The strength of France in North America lay in the skill of her officers, in the presence of three thousand regular troops in Canada proper, and of nearly half that number at Louisbourg, with two thousand well-trained men of the marine corps. The militia were excellent for guerilla warfare, and distinguished by endurance, patience, and courage in that form of service. The Indians, save the tribes won over by Johnson, were devoted to French interests. 2l8 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. a result due to the tact and forbearance long displayed in French dealings with the natives. The Indians were also impressed, through Braddock's defeat, with a belief in British incapacity to con- tend with success against the French and their native allies. The British government, on their part, sent out, as commander of all the troops in America, the Earl of Loudon, a painstaking man of small ability and despondent nature, quite unfitted for the work in hand. Montcalm was not long in making his presence felt by his foes. While the colonial governors, in council at New York, were planning attacks on the chief French positions, the Frenchman was laying his plans against Oswego. Prior to his appearance in the field, a British success was obtained by Colonel Bradstreet, who had seen service in the first capture of Louisbourg, and had then become a captain in Sir William Pepperell's new regiment. This officer was sent in June with a large supply of provisions and other stores for Oswego. After delivering his charge in safety, he was attacked on his return by seven hundred French and Indians from Fort Frontenac, but he repulsed them with severe loss, and made his way back to Albany. Montcalm, after strengthening the works at Ticonderoga, and placing De Levis there in command of three thousand men, of whom half were regular troops, gathered at Fort Frontenac a force for special service. On August 4th, he set out with three thousand royal troops, militia, and Indians, for Oswego. The British forts had been neglected, and were feebly garrisoned by a few hundred raw recruits of Pepperell's regiment, and a thousand colonial militia. No guard was kept, and at mid- night on the loth, the formidable French force landed near the place. Two days later a formal siege was begun, and one of the forts, quite untenable against heavy cannon, was promptly aban- doned by the British. The commandant, Colonel Mercer, was shot dead on the I4th, the chief artillery officer was also killed, and the spirit of the garrison thereupon succumbed. The surrender of Oswego gave the French over 1600 prisoners, including 120 women and children. The great booty taken comprised seven armed ships, two hundred bateaux or barges, more than a hundred cannon, and a large supply of provisions, with the military chest containing nearly twenty thousand pounds. Five flags were placed in the churches at Montreal, where they remained until they fell again, by conquest, into British hands. CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 2 19 This reverse, disgraceful to the British colonial authorities, who had ample forces at their disposal, greatly raised the reputation of Montcalm, and caused the abandonment, on the part of his spiritless opponents, of all the intended expeditions against French posts. A man was clearly wanted to bring new energy into the colonial war, and, happily for Great Britain, he was not long in appearing. In November, 1756, the feeble, ignorant, and selfish Duke of Newcastle ceased to be prime minister, and in June, 1757, with the same man as nominal head, William Pitt, as secretary of state, assumed the real power in controlling affairs. During the winter which followed the capture of Oswego, where all the works were utterly destroyed, the French and Indians ravaged the British frontiers, and burnt four armed vessels, hundreds of boats, and large stores of supplies, almost under the guns of Fort William Henry. A gallant defence of the fort, with a feeble garrison, by Major Eyre, against a powerful force, some- what retrieved the diminished credit of British arms. Early in 1757, a strong armament left England, to co-operate with the colonial forces in an attack on Quebec. There were fifteen sail of the line and some frigates, under an admiral named Holbourne, escorting fifty transports carrying more than six thousand troops under a General Hopson. The expedition, one with which Pitt had nothing to do, arrived at Halifax early in July, and broke up in the autumn without producing any effect except a general impression of the imbecile mismanagement of British naval and military affairs. In August, Loudon sailed off to New York, with most of the regiments, leaving some to garrison Halifax, and other points in Nova Scotia. Holbourne, with his, men-of-war, went to Louisbourg, thought the French fleet there too strong to attack, and returned to Halifax. Reinforced from England, the admiral resorted again to Louisbourg, and challenged the French, but could not tempt them out of range of the fortress guns. The British fleet was then severely treated by a storm. Eleven vessels were dismasted; hundreds of cannon were heaved overboard; a frigate was wrecked, with the loss of many lives; and the squadron was scattered, in a crippled state, to New York, Halifax, and England. The patience of the British public at home was destined to be severely tried, not only by this ignominious failure, but by another 220 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. French success due to the skill and energy of Montcalm. Fort William Henry, at the southern end of Lake George, was garri- soned by six companies of the 35th Regiment, under Colonel Monroe. Webb, the commander at Fort Edward, on the east bank of the Hudson, nearer to the British frontier, heard that French troops were being massed at Ticonderoga, and despatched a reinforcement of one thousand men, mostly provincial troops, with four guns, to the threatened post. On July i8th, 1757, Montcalm arrived at Ticonderoga, and assumed command of the troops. A British force of 300 men, moving in boats up Lake George, fell into an ambush of Indians in canoes, and was dis- persed with the loss of two-thirds of the number by killing, drowning, or capture. This disaster was due solely to the want of due order and precaution. On July 28th, De Levis, Montcalm's second in command, advanced in charge of nearly 3000 men, followed by his chief with a second and larger force. On August 3rd, Fort William Henry was summoned to surrender, but Monroe declared that he would hold the post while he had life, and at the same time sent off pressing messages to General Webb, who lay at Fort Edward, fifteen miles distant, with nearly two thousand men. The French had with them 36 cannon and 4 mortars, and, though the walls of the British fort were thirty feet thick, composed of timber filled in with gravel and stones, the works could not resist heavy guns in a regular siege. The real weakness of the British position lay in the fact that the country had been stripped of forces for Loudon's expedition to Halifax, and it was impossible for Webb to march, in the face of De Levis's powerful body of men, to the relief of his colleague at Fort William Henry. There could be only one end to Montcalm's attack. Trenches were opened on August 5th, and a severe fire was maintained from the French heavy guns, howitzers or shell-guns, and mortars. The fire was steadily returned from the fort until many of the guns had burst and the two mortars were useless. The ammunition was nearly spent, and more than 350 men were killed and wounded. On August Qth an honourable capitulation was made, and over two thousand British soldiers, with their arms and colours, marched out, not as prisoners of war in the strict sense, but on the undertaking not to serve against the French for eighteen months to come. CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 221 In explanation of the tragical scene which ensued, it must be observed that the British had no ammunition, and only the sur- vivors of the 35th Regiment were armed with bayonets. There were nearly two thousand Indians present with the victors, and the savages, after plundering the fort, were eager for blood, prisoners, and the seizure of the personal effects which the surren- dered troops were carrying off, according to agreement, to Fort Edward. The savages forced their way into the hospital, and murdered and scalped the wounded, who were in charge of a French surgeon. The departing column was assailed by Indians drunk with the rum found within the fort. Women and children were seized before the faces of the French escort, and many were killed. Fifty of the troops, by De Levis's account, were murdered, and numbers were plundered of their dress and accoutrements. The mulattoes, negroes, and Indians in the British ranks were at once killed and scalped, and all the efforts of De Levis and Mont- calm, with other French officers, were insufficient to allay the tumult. Some hundreds of fugitives, in a half-naked state, arrived at Fort Edward, followed by four hundred more men, under the protection of a strong French escort. Of the personal humanity of Montcalm there can be no doubt, but it does not appear why the weapons of his three thousand regular troops were not ruthlessly employed to save the Europeans from his Indian allies. His position was a difficult one: the use of extreme force against his native assistants would have had serious results for French interests. The fault lay in the employment, on both sides, of the services of those whom, in the interests of civilization, both nations should have combined to keep down with an iron hand. Fort William Henry was razed to the ground, and the guns and stores, with provisions enough to feed 6000 men for six weeks, were taken to Montreal. The news of this disaster made the British colonists of the north fear for the safety of New York, and the succession of failures excited great indignation at home. A splendid fleet, and an army of twenty thousand men in all, regulars and colonial militia, had effected less than nothing, and Great Britain was shown forth to the world as likely to succumb, on the North American continent, to the superior skill and energy of her historical European foe. The hour was, however, but the dark- 222 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. ness before dawn. A noble patriot was in power, whose mission it was, not only to " bid Britain hurl defiance at her foes ", but to choose the right men to do the serious work that lay before them; to fire the whole kingdom with the ardour of his soul; to breathe into every officer and man a portion of his own brave, lofty, and commanding spirit; to teach commanders to risk everything in order to win; to make his name a terror to the fops and intriguers of Versailles; to secure complete victory for his country on the scene of her late discredits and discomfitures. \Yilliam Pitt the elder, in a word, had resolved to annihilate the French power in America. Their resources in Canada, during the winter of 1757-58, were at a very low ebb. Lack of due tillage had brought scarcity of food. Soldiers and citizens alike were on a short allowance of horse-flesh and bread. In April, 1758, the bread ration had sunk to a daily two ounces. Hundreds of the Acadian refugees died of sheer hunger. France, the mother-country, was exhausted by war and by the vilest civil administration that ever showed the way to armed revolution. The British cruisers swept the seas, and cut off the food-laden vessels sailing from France to Canada. While Montcalm and De Levis were planning an advance upon Albany, Pitt was preparing for an attack upon Louisbourg. Lord Loudon was recalled from America, and Major-General Amherst received the command-in-chief. He was now forty-two years of age, and had served at Dettingen, Fontenoy, and other continental battles, earning the confidence of his superiors by ability and coolness. A man who had been but two years a colonel was thus made to supersede all the generals on the army- roll. The brigadier-generals appointed to serve under Amherst were Law- rence, Wentworth, and Wolfe. James Wolfe, a native of Wester- ham, near Sevenoaks, was the son of a colonel who had served with distinction under Marlborough. His mother, Henrietta Thompson, came of a Yorkshire family of good position. James, the elder of two sons, entered his father's regiment of marines before he had completed his fifteenth year. He had little school- learning, but the constant weakness of his health never stayed his efforts for self-improvement. He studied his profession with the utmost care, and, in the improved drill of his light infantry, which excited the admiration of good judges, he acknowledged his debt to hints obtained from the reading of Xenophon's tactics against CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 223 the Armenian mountaineers. Wolfe fought at Dettingen, at Culloden, and again in the continental warfare, and became com- mander of the 2Oth Regiment of the line in 1749. He soon made his mark as an officer equally attentive to military efficiency and to the physical and moral welfare of his men, and such young men of rank as the Duke of Richmond and the Marquis of Blandford sought commissions under Wolfe as their immediate chief. When o the battle of Minden was fought on August ist, 1759, Wolfe was beyond the Atlantic, but the splendid conduct of the regiment on that day was justly attributed to the admirable training of their former colonel. In his appointment to a command in the American expedition, he was receiving, as one yet only in his thirty-second year, the opportunity of winning imperishable fame. Pitt was resolved not to fail for lack of sufficient force. The American colonies were requested to furnish 20,000 men, and more than i 2,000 regular troops were placed on board the trans- ports, escorted by a fleet of twenty-three sail of the line, and eighteen frigates. The ships were under the command of Admiral Boscawen, now forty-seven years of age, who bore, from one of the ships which he had commanded, the honourable nickname of " Old Dreadnought ", and had done good service under Anson and other admirals. The fortress of Louisbourg has been already described, in connection with the successful British siege of 1745. The works, nearly two miles in circuit, now mounted more than 400 guns and mortars, the fire of which was supported by five ships of the line and seven frigates, carrying nearly 550 guns and 3000 seamen. The garrison consisted of about 3500 men, including three battalions of royal troops, two companies of artillery, and a disciplined force of French Canadians. The commandant was the Chevalier de Drucour, and the works had been lately restored from an almost ruinous condition. The British armament sailed from St. Helen's, on the east coast of the Isle of Wight, towards the end of February, 1758, but, after a brief stay at Halifax, did not appear before Louisbourg until the first days of June. On the 8th, with some loss from the surf and the French fire, a landing was made to the west of the fortress, and a regular siege was soon begun. The place was attacked on all sides by land batteries and the guns of the fleet, 224 UR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. though entrance to the harbour was hampered by the sinking of five ships. The operations were distinguished by the perfect harmony prevailing between the two services, officers and men alike displaying the utmost zeal and patience. Every sortie was repulsed, and on July i6th, the British troops stormed some heights, armed with four batteries, to the west of the town. Three of the French men-of-war were burned: the works were shattered by bombardment. On the early morning of the 26th, two French vessels were captured in the harbour by British boat parties, and the fine fleet of the enemy had ceased to exist. The place had become incapable of defence, and on July 27th the renowned fortress of Louisbourg, and with it the island of Cape Breton, came, by surrender, into British hands. Two years later, the works were demolished, and the place which once threatened the very existence of Boston and the welfare of the New England colonies became a deserted ruin. Halifax was henceforth the naval and military stronghold of the north-east American coast. The trophies of the British success consisted of more than two hundred cannon, vast quantities of stores, and eleven standards. The captured flags were first presented to the king, and then placed in St. Paul's Cathedral. The townspeople of Louisbourg were conveyed to France: five thousand soldiers and sailors went to England as prisoners of war. The plan of campaign included attacks on the other chief French posts, Ticonderoga, Fort Frontenac, and Fort Duquesne. After the surrender of Louisbourg, Wolfe and other commanders had been sent to attack the Acadian settlements at Miramichi, the Bay of Chaleurs, Gaspe, and other points, and the ravages per- petrated on the British frontier by the Indian allies of the enemy and by the Canadian militia were sternly avenged in the burning of villages, the expulsion of hundreds of French subjects from their homes, and the destruction of vast stores of grain and fish which might have been used for the victualling of Quebec. o o <~ In the other operations of the campaign of 1757, the French were to obtain a last success but one against the British arms in North America. Early in July, General Abercrombie advanced against Ticonderoga from Albany, at the head of the largest army which had ever been gathered in America. The force consisted of more than six thousand troops of the line, including the 42nd CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 22$ Regiment, or Royal Highlanders, since renowned as the " Black Watch", with nearly as many of the -New England and New York militia. Abercrombie was a stubborn and intelligent, but hardly a skilful and circumspect commander, and he failed entirely to understand the nature of the stronghold which he was about to assail. Hence came his fatal mistake of marching without a due provision of artillery. It was by means of his cannon that Mont- calm had won the day at Oswego and at Fort William Henry, which were far inferior in strength to the French position at Ticonderoga, on the south-western shore of Lake Champlain, where Montcalm himself was in command of 3500 men, nearly all royal troops. As Abercrombie proceeded, his advance-guard, under General Bradstreet, came upon a French party of 300 men, most of whom were slain or captured, but the British army had to deplore the loss of the brave young Lord Howe, who was shot dead at the first fire. This officer, who commanded the 55th Regiment, was of the same age and character as Wolfe, upright, chivalrous, courteous to all ranks, devoted to duty and to the study of the military art. His name is, to this day, remembered with high esteem in New England, and the men of Massachusetts honoured themselves by placing, in the south aisle of the nave of Westminster Abbey, a memorial tablet which records their sense <( of his services and military virtues, and of the affection their officers and soldiers bore to his command ". The death of this young hero spread a gloom throughout the force, and was of evil omen for what was to come. On July yth, the British troops arrived at Ticonderoga, and found themselves in front of entrenchments protected by a six-gun battery, and by a mass of felled trees placed with the branches outward, in row after row behind each other, making an abattis of the most formidable character. A few heavy guns would soon have made the ground untenable by its defenders from the showers of splinters driven inwards by the balls, and infantry could then have made their way. Without this preparatory work, it was mere suicide for troops to attempt to storm under a heavy con- tinuous fire from sheltered musketeers. Montcalm had just been joined by De Levis with 400 men, and they both awaited attack with just confidence in their position. On the morning of July 8th, under a burning sun, the British regulars were formed into VOL. I. 15 226 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. three columns of assault, and rushed upon their fate with a gallantry that has never been surpassed in war. Entangled in a labyrinth of branches, they strove, amid a shower of lead, to pull away the trees. The active Highlanders, in many cases, succeeded in cutting a way with their heavy claymores, or two-handed, double-edged swords, or in clambering over the obstacles, but it was only to die, in combats of single men against a score, on the ramparts in the rear of the trees. Montcalm exposed his person with the utmost daring, and the defenders lost nearly four hundred men. The attacks, however, had never the least chance of success, and, after a display of desperate courage for more than four hours, the shattered columns were withdrawn, with a loss of close upon two thousand men. The 42nd Regiment had gone into action with nearly eleven hundred men, of whom five hundred were left behind. This defeat, which occurred nineteen days before the capture of Louisbourg, caused much grief in Great Britain for the loss of brave men, but it was felt that the event could have no serious effect upon the general issue. The disaster was soon to be retrieved in other quarters. Brad- street, a capable and energetic man, proposed to Abercrombie an attack upon Fort Frontenac, on the north-east shore of Lake Ontario, and his superior, eager for any chance of a success, intrusted him with three thousand men for the enterprise. The French, by a strange neglect, had left this important post with a garrison of less than two hundred men. Bradstreet, crossing the lake in boats from Oswego, invested the fort, and forced a sur- render after a brief bombardment. The loss to the French was very serious. Fort Frontenac, with seven armed vessels, was burned. Sixty guns were taken, and the destruction of large stores of food and ammunition greatly crippled the enemy in supplying their chain of posts in the valley of the Ohio. The French naval supremacy on Lake Ontario was ended, and a French writer of the time describes the destruction of Fort Frontenac as more hurtful to the colony of Canada than the loss of a battle. During these events, much loss on both sides occurred in the petty warfare of attacks on stragglers and convoys. The border-districts of Pennsylvania and Maryland had been devastated by the Canadians and Indians, and the attention of Pitt was directed towards efforts for the mastery of the valley of the CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 22/ Ohio. For this end, the main achievement would be the capture of Fort Duquesne, the name of which had an evil sound in connec- tion with Braddock's disastrous expedition. The enterprise was committed to Brigadier Forbes, a man too little known in his country's history. A native of Fifeshire, now in his sixty-fourth year, John Forbes, after forty years' service, had become in 1750 colonel of the Scots Greys. He shared, seven years later, as colonel of the lyth Foot, in Holbourne and Hopson's abortive expedition against Louisbourg, and had remained on duty in the colonies. Forbes was a man of rare gifts both as a diplomatist and a soldier, and at this time, though he was fast sinking under a mortal disease, he showed undiminished zeal, judgment, and resolu- tion in the discharge of his duty. For an advance upon Fort Duquesne, it was needful to march two hundred miles through uninhabited territory, and to provide stores for three months to feed six thousand men, of whom the greater part were provincial troops, the regulars consisting mainly of 13 companies of Highlanders. Forbes was carried in a litter across the Alleghanies, and then, selecting a different route from that followed by Braddock, he caused the construction of a new road through the wilderness to a point within striking distance of the French position. The young Colonel Washington was in charge of a Virginian regiment, and his men assisted in making the new road. The work was long and toilsome, and, though the expedition had been projected in the spring, the autumn was far advanced before the end in view was reached. One misadventure occurred in the middle of September through the indiscretion of Colonel Bouquet, one of Forbes' officers sent in advance. Major Grant was detached, with about 800 men, including 300 High- landers, to reconnoitre the fort, and endeavour to cause a sortie which should end in a British ambuscade. The result was a con- fused conflict, in which 1500 French and Indians cut up their enemy with the loss of nearly 300 men, and the capture of Grant and nine other officers. The position of the French was, however, most precarious. The destruction of Fort Frontenac, on which De Ligneris, the commandant at Duquesne, was dependent for his supplies, had left the garrison almost without food, and the Indians were transferring their allegiance to the British. In the middle of October, Forbes, still many miles from Duquesne, was prostrate 228 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. with sickness, and had to be carried on a hurdle suspended between two led horses. The brave and devoted Scot needed absolute rest, and freedom from all care, in order to have a chance of recovery, but he never faltered in his purpose of destroying the fortress whence hostile bands had issued to devastate the British frontier, and so cause much of the reclaimed forest to relapse into wilderness. On November i8th, the general resolved on a rush for the object in his view. Three columns were formed of 2500 picked men, with Washington in command on the right, Forbes, still on his hurdle, in the centre, and Bouquet on the left. There were regular flanking parties, and every precaution was taken against surprise. By the evening of the 23rd, the troops had arrived within twelve miles of their destined prey, and the Indian scouts reported that thick smoke was ascending in the distance. At early morning on the 25th, the British found Fort Duquesne a blackened ruin, abandoned in despair by the French, after blowing up most of the works. The French had ceased to rule in the Ohio valley, and, in honour of the great minister, the name of Duquesne was changed to Fort Pitt, on the site of the now great and flourishing town of Pittsburg, a centre of railway and river communication, and the chief seat of the American iron, steel, and glass industry. The victor, Forbes, returned in the depth of winter, reaching Philadelphia in the middle of January, and dying on March loth, 1759, in that chief town of the colony which he had for ever freed from all dread of hostile inroads. No monument was ever erected to his memory, either in Christ Church, Philadelphia, where his remains lie buried,, or in any other place in the empire which he served. It is the more incumbent on the historian of these events to lay a grateful wreath of honour on a hero's grave. The new garrison of Fort Pitt visited the scene of Braddock's disaster three years before, and beheld the whitening bones of the dead, which now were buried in a common grave, amid the gloom of the wintry forest-scene. The grief of the son of Sir Peter Halket, the remains of whose father and brother, lying close together under the leaves, were recognized through certain relics of their dress, was the only special tribute that could be paid to any of the victims. These two had been seen to fall side by side on the fatal day, and were now wrapped in a Highland plaid and laid in one tomb. The changes wrought by time are strikingly CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 22Q displayed upon the stage of that tragic event. The banks of the Monongahela are bright with gardens, orchards, corn-fields, and villas. The victories of peace have wholly effaced the memorials of war, and a railroad takes the cars in swift passage over the Around where the musket and the tomahawk were most effective o in the work of slaughter. When the year 1 759 opened, it was clear that the tide of success had turned, and that the period of French dominion in America was drawing to a close. Canada was falling into a desperate con- dition. Montcalm's appeals to the government at home for men, money, and supplies were almost fruitless, in the exhausted condi- tion of France, and the colonists were left to make a final effort in their own defence. A levy en -masse of all the males from sixteen years of age to sixty produced less than fifteen thousand effective men, who could be supported by only a few weak regiments of royal troops. The British Parliament, on the other hand, under the influence of Pitt, voted twelve millions of money for the support of the struggle, and there were on American soil more than fifty thousand well-appointed troops, of whom one-quarter were furnished by Massachusetts and Connecticut. The colonists were resolved to strike a blow to the heart of the enemy by the capture of Quebec, and Pitt was equally determined to assist them. The plan of campaign included the reduction of all the western forts, beyond Pittsburg and towards Lake Erie, and the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. In June, General Amherst succeeded Abercrombie in the chief American command, and lost no time in taking the field. The work before him was that of driving the French from Lake Cham- plain, and thus securing the frontier of New York. On July 2Oth he left Fort Edward, on the Hudson river, conducting a force of nearly 12,000 men, including eight regiments of the line. No resistance could be made to their progress, and on the 23rd it was found that the formidable entrenchments at Ticonderoga, the scene o ' of Abercrombie's sanguinary repulse, had been abandoned by the enemy, who were aware of the British strength, and of the fact that the present force was possessed of adequate artillery. Fort Carillon, however, was still held by the French, and it was at once assailed by regular batteries. On the night of the 26th, the work was abandoned by its defenders, after being mined and set on fire. The 230 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. explosion and conflagration half-destroyed the place, the garrison escaping by their armed sloops on Lake Champlain. An immediate advance was made to Crown Point, and that fort also was abandoned and destroyed. This last post was restored in a stronger form, and gave to the British a firm hold on the lake. In the course of the autumn, armed vessels and rafts, constructed by Amherst, destroyed some of the French craft. As winter came on, Amherst returned to Albany, leaving strong garrisons at Ticonderoga and Crown Point. During the same summer, a heavy blow was dealt at French power in the west. Their Fort Niagara, strongly defended both by garrison and guns, commanded the passage from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, and was a constant menace to Oswego, which the British designed to re-establish. The man selected for the attack on Niagara was Brigadier Prideaux, in command of two regiments of the line, with about 2500 New York militia, assisted by Indians under Sir William Johnson. Prideaux marched from Schenectady, on the Mohawk river, at the end of May, and, on arrival at Oswego, left an officer there with a thousand men, to rebuild the fort with timber to be cut in the neighbouring woods. An entrenchment was made, with a barricade composed of tiers of casks filled with flour and pork, until the new works should provide some defence. An attack of Canadian militia and Indians was repulsed, and this was the last blow ever struck by the French on Lake Ontario. On July ist, Prideaux quitted Oswego, for a march of seventy miles, along the southern coast of Lake Ontario, to Fort Niagara, which was defended by a garrison of about 500 men, royal troops and colonials, under Captain Pouchot, an able and experienced officer, of the regiment of Beam. The lake-side of the work had bastions, with guns en barbette for firing over the parapet from a bank of earth placed in the rear; on the land-side the fort was more strongly constructed of casks filled with earth. The place was invested by Prideaux, and batteries were erected, the fire of which soon proved serious for the French. On July 2Oth, the British commander was killed by the splinter of a shell which burst on leaving the muzzle of one of his own guns, and the siege came into the hands of Johnson, who directed affairs with his usual vigour. Pouchot had summoned to his aid soldiers from the Ohio forts, and a body of 1200 men, with Indian allies, hastened to the relief of CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 23! the beleaguered fort. Johnson was on his guard, and formed a plan for intercepting them on the march. By attacks in front and flank, after an hour's fierce conflict, the enemy were completely beaten, with the loss of hundreds in killed and wounded, and the capture of nine officers, including D'Aubry, the commander. The war-whoop of the Indians had no longer any terrors for the British grenadiers, who stood in firm ranks, steady as on parade, and swept away the foe with successive volleys. The Iroquois gathered by Johnson wrought havoc among the foe scattered by the bayonet- charges of the regular troops, and this last battle for the control of the lakes, the Ohio valley, and the western region brought with it the inevitable fall of Fort Niagara. On July 26th the garrison surrendered with the honours of war, and all the western forts held by the French were speedily captured by Colonel Bouquet, with the single exception of Detroit. Our narrative now turns to the key of French power in North America, the town and fortress of Quebec. Montcalm, in the absence of substantial aid from France, had no hope of maintaining the French position in Canada, but at his sovereign's request he consented to remain and to do his utmost against enormous odds. All possible preparations were made for the defence of the capital. The town of Quebec is so placed on a peninsula in the river St. Lawrence that it directly faces the voyager who ascends the stream. The river is divided, on approaching the town, by the large He d'Orleans, lying almost in the centre of the waterway. To the north of the town, the river St. Charles, with a winding course, and with one great loop, enters the St. Lawrence. To the south of Quebec, the mainland projects, west of Point Levis, so as to approach the town, on its eastern side, within less than a mile. On the northern shore, the Beauport Shoal, left dry at low water, extends for about eight miles, from the mouth of the St. Charles to the little river Montmorency, ending its course with the famous Falls, nearly three hundred feet in depth. The whole of this ground on the north was occupied by the French troops, with intrenchrnents and batteries facing the river to the south, near to Quebec, and looking landwards lower down to the east, where the river-side, above Beauport Shoal, is protected by lofty and precipitous cliffs. De Vaudreuil, the governor, had charge of the encampment on the west, near to the St. Charles; Montcalm 232 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. was in the centre, at the little village of Beauport; De Levis held the east, facing the western end of He d'Orleans, and protected, on his left, by the river Montmorency. Fire-ships and rafts were prepared by the French, with a floating battery for heavy guns, as guns were then, from eighteen-pounders to twenty-four. The garrison consisted of thirteen thousand men of every age, by no means all efficient troops, but including five royal regiments. The few French ships of war were sent up the river, the crews being landed to aid the defence, chiefly in the way of working the guns. The preparations made by Pitt for the great enterprise were of the most formidable kind. The chief command of the military force was intrusted, as all the world knows, to Wolfe, who had returned to England, and, by the usage of the time, was again a simple regimental colonel. His health was bad, and it was at Bath, where he was drinking the waters, that the hero, doomed to death and to lasting fame, received the great minister's letter which summoned him to London with the offer of the command, and the local rank of major-general, subordinate to Amherst as commander-in-chief of the forces in America. The young officer had just become engaged for marriage with Katharine Lowther, niece of Sir James Lowther, first Lord Lonsdale. The death of her accepted lover was to leave her to attain the highest rank as Duchess of Bolton. The officers chosen by Wolfe as his brigadiers were the Hon. Robert Monckton, the Hon. George Townshend, and the Hon. James Murray. Monckton had served for some years in America, having taken Fort Beausejour, in Nova Scotia, and been present as colonel of the second battalion of the 6oth Regiment, or Royal Americans, afterwards the Royal Rifle Corps, at the siege of Louisbourg. He was a man of great ability, and gave a hearty support to his chief throughout the campaign. Townshend, afterwards Marquis, was a man of mainly social note, and rendered little service in the siege of Quebec. Murray enjoyed the highest esteem of Wolfe for bravery and skill, and had served with Monckton at the taking of Louisbourg. He was soon to become the first governor-general of Canada. The army consisted of about eight thousand men, including the 1 5th Regiment, which fought in Marlborough's four battles; the 28th, which had been present on the glorious day of Ramillies; the 35th, the 47th, and the 48th, all bearing "Louisbourg" on VIEW OF THE TOWN AND FORTRESS OF QUEBEC, A.D. 1759. In this illustration there is an accurate presentment of the town and fortress of Quebec in the year 1759, when France and Britain were struggling for supremacy in North America. A bold, rocky peninsula juts out into the river St. Lawrence, on the shore of which lies the town, while the massive citadel crowns the height. Some distance above Quebec is an inlet known as Wolfe's Cove, where a British force, under the general of that name, landed during the early morning, scaled the cliffs, and defeated the French army which sought to oppose its advance upon the fortress. As the result of this success the garrison of Quebec found itself in a help- less position, and surrendered on the i8th September, 1759. In this fashion, therefore, the Gibraltar of North America came into the possession of Great Britain. (7) CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 233 their colours; the 43rd, whose first title to fame was about to be won; the second and third battalions of the 6oth Regiment, and the 78th, or Simon Fraser's Highlanders. To these were added some companies of the Louisbourg Grenadiers, some hundreds of " Rangers ", over three hundred of the Royal Artillery, and a body of engineers. The fleet was of overwhelming strength, numbering 22 ships of the line of battle, and as many more frigates and smaller ships of war. The right man was selected for command in AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD to jjliistraie tiie Operations of WOLFE & MONTCALM 1759. one who has been, to a large extent, unjustly treated in the scant remembrance of posterity. It is owing to the number of great reputations won in later years by British seamen that Admiral Saunders has been well-nigh forgotten. His whole life was spent on active service; on every occasion he showed eminent ability; and of his work at Quebec no higher eulogy can be pronounced than that he proved himself in all ways a worthy colleague of Wolfe. Throughout the operations his professional skill, his regard for duty, his loyal and hearty aid to the military chief, were never found wanting in the hour of trial. A subordinate of o Anson's, as lieutenant of the Centurion, when he started on the four-years' voyage round the world, Saunders ended his career as Admiral of the Fleet, and lies, fitly enough, in Westminster Abbey, 234 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. near to the monument of General Wolfe. Among the officers on board the fleet were John Jervis, who became Earl St. Vincent, and James Cook, known in the southern seas. A squadron under Admiral Durell was sent on ahead to secure the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and to intercept possible French supplies, and Saunders, with the prevision of a man who would succeed by avoiding the disgraceful blunders of previous expeditions, wrote to the governor of New York for a supply of pilots knowing every current, shoal, and rock in the river which the fleet was to ascend. The advance-fleet arrived at Halifax in the last days of April, 1759, and was, even then, delayed by the yet unmelted ice. The arrival of Durell in the St. Lawrence early in June prevented the French from obstructing approach to Quebec by the construction of batteries on the islands below the He d'Orleans, but he was only in time to capture two vessels of the transport-fleet from France. His presence, as the forerunner of a larger force, caused much alarm at Quebec, while the British seamen were engaged in sounding and surveying, as a preparation for the coming of Saunders with the main body of the armament. The coast of Newfoundland, with the snow still lying upon the hills, was sighted on June 2nd, and the 23rd saw the vessels at the lie aux Coudres, thirty-six miles below the He d'Orleans. Signal-fires from height to height carried the tidings to Quebec, as the ships slowly and carefully made their way upwards, in the rear of boats sounding ahead, and marking out the channel with coloured flags. On June 27th a landing was made on lie d'Orleans, twenty miles in length and six in its greatest breadth; it was found to be wholly deserted by the people. On the night of the 28th, the enemy made their first attempt against the British in sending down seven fire-ships for the destruc- tion of three frigates lying in advance, and of sixty transports off the island. The total failure of this movement excited from the British sailors shouts of laughter and cheers which were heard at Quebec. The boats of the frigates towed away one to the shore seven miles below. Two caught fire as they left Quebec, one exploded when the match was lighted, three only made their way to the island, where they went ashore and did no harm. The admiral, Saunders, warned by some damage from a violent storm, anchored his ships in the basin of Quebec, to the north of Point CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 235 Levis, and, by his advice, Wolfe caused Monckton to occupy with three regiments the southern shore near the Point, facing the town. Batteries were erected there, and on the western front of the He d'Orleans, and a firm hold was thus taken on the southern side of the St. Lawrence. The British general had issued a proclamation assuring civilians of protection for property and person, with freedom of religion, provided they took no part in the war. The people, however, were induced by their priests to resist in every way those who came, it was declared, as foes of their religion and their race, and the savage warfare usual in the contests of the past was seen in full play. Stragglers were cut off, the wounded were murdered, the dead were mutilated, and Wolfe, after vain remonstrance, was driven to retaliate by burning the villages above and below Quebec. His attention was soon drawn to the French position on the north shore, and on July 8th a landing was effected by Townshend's brigade to the east of the Montmorency. Four days later, the French wholly failed in a night-attack by boats on the British at Point Levis. The defenders were warned by some premature shots, and a panic and flight were caused by the mere alarm of " cavalry ". On July 1 2th the batteries at Point Levis opened fire on Quebec, and the bombardment thence and from the guns of the fleet, maintained at intervals for the next two months, laid most of both upper and lower towns in ruins. The cathedral and chief buildings were shattered; churches, convents, and hundreds of the best houses were destroyed by incendiary bombs. This, however, was not the capture of Quebec. The citadel, on its towering rock, with massive ramparts that bristled with guns, rose frowning in unconquerable strength, beyond the reach of shot or shell from the heaviest cannon known in that age. Amidst the daily roar of the cannon aimed at the town, Wolfe had been striving to deal with the foe encamped on the northern shore. After losses had been incurred, from Indian parties lying in the woods, by troops sent out to discover places to ford the Montmorency, an attack was made on the French lines to the west of that river, where De Levis was in command. On the evening of July 3ist, after some hours' bombardment of the French redoubt on the shore near the Montmorency Falls, from the Centurion frigate, and 236 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. a hot cannonade on the French lines from the British batteries-- east of that river, thirteen companies of grenadiers, with 200 of the 6oth Regiment, were landed at the foot of the cliff on the west of the falls. The movement was to be supported by Monckton's brigade, coming on in another flotilla of boats, and by Townshend's force, crossing the ford below the falls, which was passable at low tide. The grenadiers took the redoubt at a rush, and should there have remained to await the arrival of their comrades. Either from the rash impulse caused by a first success, or by a mistaken order, the troops went forward to ascend the heights crowned by the French intrenchments and batteries. The enemy were mustered there in great force, with three thousand men for immediate defence, and double the number reserved in the rear. No courage could stand against the crushing fire coming from above, and the men slipped down the banks of clay on the side of the hill. A violent storm burst on those who regained the redoubt; their ammunition was ruined; all unity of action with the other troops had been spoiled by a hasty move- ment, and Wolfe, who was in command at this point, could do nothing but cover, with his steady reserves, the re-embarkation of the defeated grenadiers. Nearly five hundred officers and men had fallen in this disastrous affair. The spirit of the garrison and townsmen of Quebec was not much elated by this success, which followed close upon the tidings of the loss of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and was succeeded, in a few days, by news of the surrender of Fort Niagara. The advancing season caused anxiety to Wolfe, since the lapse of a few weeks must cause the retirement of the fleet, on pain of being blockaded by the ice. There was much sickness among the troops, and, in spite of raids upon the colonial cattle, rations of beef were becoming a luxury. It is remarkable that no aid was furnished to the enterprise from the large and well-supplied armies of Amherst at Crown Point and of Johnson at Niagara. The military work and the soldier's fame, to be done and acquired before Quebec, were, on the British side, to be Wolfe's alone. His attention was turned, after the failure near the Montmorency Falls, to the employment of his men against the enemy above Quebec. Wolfe's object, in the first instance, seems to have been that of not suffering the spirit of the troops to sink through inactivity,. CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 237 rather than the attainment of any decisive issue. The French ships lay above the town, near the Richelieu rapids, and Admiral Holmes was sent up to make an attack on them. The matter ended, however, in the landing of a large body of men, under Brigadier Murray, at Saint Antoine on the south bank of the St. Lawrence, and the devastation of the adjacent country. Towards the end of August, anxiety and toil, with the season's heat, had thrown Wolfe into a fever, and he called his three brigadiers into council. He had resolved that the end of Sep- tember was the furthest possible limit of time for operations involving the stay of the fleet, and early action was absolutely needed if success was to be obtained in the present year. The decision reached was for a landing in force above the town, in the hope of drawing Montcalm, hitherto strictly defensive in his tactics with the main force, to a battle involving the fate of Quebec. On September 3rd, the British camp east of the Montmorency was abandoned, and the whole of the troops were gathered at He d'Orleans and Point Levis. The British fleet was then kept moving about, accompanied by many boats with troops, up and down the river above Quebec, distracting the French commanders with doubts as to the point to be chosen for a landing. The guns from Point Levis were still kept thundering across at the town, and a large French force on the northern shore was harassed by the need of following the movements of the hostile craft. By September 6th, the bulk of the army and many of the fleet were above Quebec, and Wolfe had selected his place of attack. At this critical time, the army had just been greatly depressed by the tidings that their general was again confined to his quarters by illness. His heroic spirit lorded it over the weakness of his bodily frame, and, with his future at stake, and with probable failure as certain ruin to a promising career, he rose from his bed to complete the arrangements for the work in hand. On the I2th of September, the men were employed in cleaning their arms, and each soldier received two days' rations, with an extra allowance of rum and water for the prospective work by night. At early morning on the I3th, under a moonless sky, the ships, with troops on board, dropped down the river on the ebbing tide, with thirty barges containing sixteen hundred men. The oars were muffled, and not a man spake a word, as the large boats crept along the 238 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. northern shore. Wolfe had issued his last order of the day, calling on "a determined body of soldiers, inured to war" to do all that their country expected "against five weak French battalions, mingled with disorderly peasantry". On the evening of 'the I2th, a demonstration in force had been made to the east of Quebec, off the Beauport shoals. The ships of the line came as near to the shore as safety allowed, and boats full of soldiers, sailors, and marines quitted their sides as if for a landing. When darkness came on, the remaining detachments at He d'Orle'ans and Point Levis were taken on board the ships to the rendezvous up the river. The general, with a presentiment of his coming end, had sent for his old schoolfellow, John Jervis, then commanding a vessel of the fleet. To him was handed Miss Lowther's portrait, a miniature painting, for transmission to her in case of need. The will of Wolfe had been prepared, leaving his plate to his staunch naval colleague, Saunders, and his camp-equipage to loyal Brigadier Monckton. The books and papers were committed to Colonel Guy Carleton, known in Canadian history as Lord Dorchester. About three miles above Quebec, at an inlet since known as Wolfe's Cove, a path led up a precipitous height, with bushes scattered to right and left. The French had not dreamed that an army could ascend at such a place, and the top of the cliff, where a climber would come on the ground above the town called 7 he Plains of Abraham, was guarded only by an outpost of one hundred men. The first to mount were the Highlanders, and their leader, Captain M 'Donald, gave the correct countersign, " La France ", learned from a deserter, to the sentry's challenge. The scanty guard was thus surprised and overpowered, and the rest of the troops made the ascent. A single field-piece, with its ammuni- tion, was by great exertion dragged up the cliff". \Vith the rising of the sun, about 3700 British troops were ranked in order, with their right towards the town, under Monckton's command. Murray had the centre, and Townshend the left, with Wolfe observing the whole position. The French army in the Beauport lines, below the town, had been kept on the alert throughout the night, in weary expectation of attempts to land. Montcalm had remained there until one o'clock on the morning of the 1 3th, the fatal day, and it was between six and seven that, at De Vaudreuil's quarters, nearer to the town, he heard the astounding news from the coming CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 239 scene of conflict. The bulk of his force, in a hurried march of six miles, was brought by the bridge across the St. Charles, and about nine o'clock his army, consisting of about seven thousand men, half of them worthless against good troops, was in some sort of order facing the British. A thousand Indians and Canadians were on the flanks, who, with the skirmishers in front, delivered a some- what galling fire. The one British cannon was beautifully served against two French guns, and the musketry fire was steadily returned. Nothing but immediate success could save Montcalm, for the British, each minute, were growing stronger. Their seamen were dragging guns and ammunition up the cliff, and many more troops could be landed from the ships. The French commander led a gallant attack on the centre and right of his foe, but his men became disordered from lack of discipline or want of room, and the British advanced with steady pace, reserving their fire, by Wolfe's special orders, until they arrived within forty yards. Two volleys, aimed from low-levelled muskets firmly held, tore to pieces the line of the foe, and a rush with the bayonet soon decided the day. At this moment, Wolfe, as he led the Louis- bourg grenadiers, with a handkerchief tied round a wrist that was wounded at the opening of the fight, was struck by a musket-ball in the breast. Staggering into an officer's arms, he begged him to hide the fact from the men, and was carried to a captured redoubt in the rear, where he heard the cry "They run! they run!" and learned that victory had been gained by his men. Giving orders for retreat to be cut off from the bridge over the river St. Charles, the conqueror of Canada turned on his side, and in a few minutes uttered his final words, "God be praised! I die in peace". He left his countrymen to mourn his death before he had completed his thirty-third year. The brief contest dealt hardly with other leaders than Wolfe. The aide-de-camp who carried the tidings of the general's fall to Monckton, found the brigadier himself laid low by a shot through the right of the breast. Montcalm received a mortal bullet- wound in the abdomen; his second in command was struck down, and taken prisoner, only to die on board ship; the next officer in rank was also slain. The whole battle did not last half-an-hour, costing the victors about 60 killed, and ten times the number wounded. The French, of whom 250, including 16 officers, became prisoners 240 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. on the field, suffered a loss of about 1200 in slain or disabled men. The enemy, pursued to the walls of the town, had many killed on the glacis and in the ditch, the Highlanders, with their broadswords, being specially effective. The British troops, now under the command of Townshend, then proceeded to intrench themselves on the ground which had been won, while the path up the cliff was widened and made more practicable, and tents, cannon, ammunition, and food were brought up from the ships. The French general, carried into Quebec, expired early in the morning after the battle. There was one personage engaged on the French side at Quebec to whom some notice is due. The troops nominally under the command of the governor, De Vaudreuil, were practically in charge of M. de Bougainville, who had come out to Canada in 1756 as chief aide to Montcalm, and had, after return to France, arrived with the reinforcements in May, 1759. It was he who had been detached, with 1 500 men, to watch the movements of the ships and boats above Quebec, and to follow them in their per- plexing shifts of position prior to the men's ascent to the field of battle. He was approaching the Plains of Abraham when he heard that all was lost, and the advance of the victors compelled him to retreat. This man of distinction, both in science and in practical life, entered the naval service of France in 1763, and from 1 766 to 1 769 was engaged in the first French circumnavigation of the globe. He served as admiral in the French war prior to the Revolution, and, on the outbreak of that political convulsion, he retired into private life as one devoted to scientific pursuits. Napoleon I. created him a senator and a member of the Legion of Honour, and he died in 181 1. Great preparations were being made for the siege of the town from the western side, and more than a hundred guns and mortars were soon in position. Their services, however, were not required. De Vaudreuil had already abandoned the lines at Beauport, and written to De Levis, who was now at Montreal, with a summons to assume command of the troops at Quebec. The commandant, de Ramezay, son of a former governor of Montreal, knew that nothing but capitulation could be thought of. The town was almost destitute of provisions; the troops were utterly disheartened. A council of fourteen officers, meeting on September I5th, voted, GENERAL WOLFE IS MORTALLY WOUNDED AS HE LEADS THE CHARGE ON THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM. At early morning on the i3th September, 1759, under a moonless sky, and with every precaution taken against detection, General Wolfe silently landed his forces above Quebec. Then the Highlanders led the way up the Heights of Abraham, and the French picket on the Plains above was promptly captured. The French army, however, hurried up to oppose the British advance, and when the sun rose the battle began. The Frenchmen charged, but were met with two musket volleys at close quarters. Then the gallant Wolfe called upon his men to give them the bayonet, and him- self led the charge of the Louisbourgh Grenadiers. Alas! just at that moment he was struck by a musket-ball; and when, a few minutes after- wards, he heard that the enemy were running, he exclaimed: "God be praised! I die in peace." W. H. OVEREND. GENERAL WOLFE IS MORTALLY WOUNDED AS HE LEADS THE CHARGE ON THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM. Vol. i. p. 239. CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 241 with one exception, for surrender, and the white flag was hoisted two days later. The honours of war were granted to the troops, who were to be landed in France : the persons and property of the inhabitants, and the exercise of religion, were to be unmolested. On the evening of September i8th, 1759, the Louisbourg grena- diers and some light infantry took charge of the gates, and the city and fortress of Quebec, the Gibraltar of North America, passed into the possession of Great Britain. The hungry towns- folk were amply fed from the stores of their conquerors. Brigadier Murray became acting-governor, and Admiral Saunders, after his excellent service throughout the operations which had obtained so glorious an issue of war, sailed with his fleet, save two frigates, for home. The troops in the French lines at Beauport had retreated, under De Vaudreuil, to Jacques Cartier, where they were met by De Levis, who, unaware of the real state of affairs, vainly urged the governor to advance and endeavour to rescue the town. De Levis went forward within 13 miles of Quebec, and then retired to Jacques Cartier and intrenched his forces. De Bougainville was posted at Point aux Trembles, above Quebec, and De Vaudreuil took charge of affairs at Montreal. The news of success was received in Great Britain with a joy much tempered by sorrow for the price paid in the death of the good, chivalrous, devoted, and very able commander, who forfeited his life, in his country's cause, in the moment of a brilliant success attained by a stroke of daring that combined genius of a high order with a moral courage and decision of character worthy of the greatest man in history. Wolfe's name lives for ever in the memory of his countrymen, the poorest of whom wore a scrap of mourning for the man whose victory came with startling effect upon the public mind which the previous events of the siege had prepared for a failure. The young hero's body was laid by his father's side in the vaults of Greenwich church. It was by a unanimous vote of the House of Commons that the memorial was placed in Westminster Abbey. The declaration of Pitt that Wolfe, " with a handful of men, had added an empire to English rule", was a semi-prophetic utterance to which events were to furnish a speedy fulfilment. Nor must a tribute be lacking to the memory of the gallant and noble-minded Montcalm, a man skilled in war, and a patriot of incorruptible spirit at a time when the civil servants of VOL. I. 16 242 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. the French crown were preying upon the resources of the colony with the utmost baseness and greed. His remains were buried in the garden of the Ursuline Convent at Quebec, where the enemy had already prepared his grave in an excavation made by the burst- ing of a shell from one of the British batteries at Point Levis. His skull is preserved in the chaplain's parlour at the Convent. The spot where Wolfe died in the redoubt was marked by a monument in 1835, erected by the governor-general, Lord Aylmer. This memorial was, in course of time, destroyed by tourists who chipped off pieces to carry away. In 1849 its remains were replaced by a column erected at the cost of the officers of the army in Canada, bearing the former inscription Here died Wolfe victorious. Turning to Montcalm, we find that Lord Aylmer, also in 1835, placed a slab to his memory in the Ursuline Convent, with the words: " Honneur a Montcalm: le destin en lui dtrobant \ la Victoire Ua recompense" par Une Mort Glorieuse. With a most appro- priate conjunction of two great names, a public subscription in the province of Quebec caused the erection, in 1827, of an obelisk, in the public garden overlooking the river, to the memory of both gallant men who, by an event very rare in the history of war, perished in the same battle as leaders of contending armies. The pillar, sixty-five feet in height, bears the inscription: Wolfe . . . Montcalm. Mortem Virtus Communem Famam Historia \ Monumentum Posteritas Dedit. \ , which, in almost literal transla- tion, means, Valour gave union in death: Fame History awards: A monument posterity {Here gratefully] accords. The death of Montcalm gave De Levis the chief position in Canada, and he displayed much ability and energy in meeting the difficulties of what the capture of Quebec had rendered a desperate condition of affairs. The Indian allies of France began to waver in their friendship and support. There was severe distress alike among the French troops and civilians from lack of supplies of food. Nor were the conquerors of Quebec without their troubles. The winter of 1759-60 was intensely cold, and it was needful to procure food and fuel by foraging conducted to a distance of many miles from the town. The garrison of seven thousand men, under General Murray, lost nearly half its effective strength by death, by disease, and by cold which disabled the hands and feet. Meanwhile, the brave French commander was planning no CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 243 smaller an enterprise than the recapture of Quebec. Troops and supplies were gathered at Montreal, and when the middle of April, 1760, saw the navigation opened, a force of 7000 men, including 3000 Canadian militia, was ready to take the field. Vessels loaded with stores, artillery, and ammunition, and escorted by two frigates, started down the St. Lawrence, and the soldiers under De Levis made their way partly by land. Special prayers had been offered at the Cathedral, and both the national and the religious feelings of the soldiers had been diligently stirred against the successful heretics who held the hateful doctrines of Luther and Calvin. A French force of one thousand men was repulsed near Point Levis early in March, and Murray took measures to fortify the Plains of Abraham, when he heard of the extensive preparations of the foe. In the last week of April, Murray was daily expecting the arrival of his anta- gonist, and on the 27th he retired from Saint Foy within the walls of the town, in presence of a great and increasing hostile force. Prudence would have dictated a defence of the works, an attack upon which would have certainly ended in severe disaster for the French assailants. Murray, however, as the successor in command of the victorious Wolfe, and justly relying on the courage of his men, heeded too little his inferiority of numbers. On the early morning of April 28th he marched out with but three thousand men, massed in two columns, with a few field-guns, to attack De Levis. A desperate fight of nearly two hours' duration ended in the retreat of the British, outflanked and overcome by superior forces. They were not pursued by the foe, but left six cannon behind them, with nearly three hundred men killed, and about thrice that number disabled. The victorious French, ten thousand strong, lost about one-fifth of their numbers. De Levis then entrenched his men before the ramparts of Quebec, and began a kind of siege, vigorously met by Murray with the fire of more than a hundred heavy guns. A letter was dis- patched to Amherst at Halifax, detailing the position of affairs. Both parties were eagerly looking for help in the shape of a naval squadron, when on May gth, a vessel of war appeared rounding Point Levis. Loud cheers from the British hailed the running-up of the glorious Union Jack to the peak of the Lowestoft frigate, freshly come from England. A few days later, the arrival of Admiral Lord Colville's fleet caused the hasty retreat of De Levis, 244 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. with the abandonment of his siege-train and baggage. The two French frigates lying off the town were pursued up the river, run aground, and taken. The Lowestoft was lost, ten leagues above Quebec, on some uncharted rocks in the middle of the St. Law- rence. The retirement of the French leader to Montreal with a dispirited and fast melting army left Quebec finally, without further menace, in British hands, and was the sign of the swiftly-approach- ing close of all French dominion in North America. During the winter and early spring, Amherst, the commander- in-chief, had followed the instructions of Pitt in preparing for the complete effacement of French power. Three different British armies converged upon Montreal. Colonel Haviland, with three thousand men, went from Crown Point, by Lake Champlain and the river Richelieu, ousting the enemy from lie aux Noix, and then marching to the south side of the St. Lawrence, facing the town. Murray ascended the river from Quebec. Amherst, with ten thou- sand men, and a body of Indians under Sir William Johnson, proceeded from Albany, on the Hudson, by way of the Mohawk and Oswego rivers, and Lake Ontario, for a descent of the St. Lawrence upon the last stronghold of French rule. Amherst started on August loth, 1760, and on the 25th captured the strong French fort near La Presentation (afterwards, Ogdensburg), below the Thousand Islands on the St. Lawrence, after a brisk defence, ending in the surrender of Pouchot, the brave holder of Fort Niagara in the previous year. After the loss of some dozens of boats and men in the Cedars and Cascade rapids, with many guns and stores, on September 4th, the general, two days later, landed his men at Lachine, eight miles above Montreal. Murray, leaving Quebec on July i4th with over two thousand picked men, and escorted up the St. Lawrence by gun-boats and frigates, arrived on August 24th at Contrecceur, eighteen miles below Montreal. Haviland, quitting Crown Point on August i6th, took lie aux Noix by surrender on the 28th, and early in September was on the south shore of the great river, within four hours' march of the object of all the movements of the troops. The position of the French was hopeless. On September 8th sixteen thousand men were on or close to the island of Montreal, menacing a weak place defended by little more than two thousand disheartened troops. In spite of objections made by De Levis, the CANADA TILL CESSION TO BRITAIN. 245 Marquis de Vaudreuil, Governor of Canada, at once surrendered, with the honours of war, to overwhelming force, and signed articles of capitulation which provided that all the regular French troops in Canada, four thousand men, should become prisoners of war for conveyance to France, not to serve again during the struggle; that the militia should disperse to their homes; that the exercise of reli- gion should be free; and that the Canadians should become subjects of the British crown. A census taken by Amherst found the population of the colony just exceeding 76,000. A month later, on October 25th, 1760, George the Third came to the throne. Amherst soon returned to New York, after making due arrange- ments for the government of the new province. For nearly four years, until October, 1764, a system of rule prevailed which has become known as le regne militaire, a designation which tends to disguise the fact that the government was conducted entirely in accordance with the old French laws and customs of the colony, and with the earnest desire to promote the welfare and contentment of the conquered people. Justice was administered by military officers, but the courts had nothing military about them save the name. The French captains of militia, retaining authority in their own parishes, decided civil questions, with an appeal to the British commander of the district, and, further, to the governor with a council of captains. Criminal matters were decided by military law. The governor was assisted in his administration of affairs by a council of field-officers. General Gage became governor of Montreal and district; Brigadier Burton at Three Rivers; and Murray continued in authority at Quebec. Apart from the differences of nationality, language, and religious faith, and from the natural feeling as regards rulers imposed by force of arms, the Canadians had the strongest reasons for satis- faction with the change of masters. A despotic mediaeval form of government was superseded by a free modern system which pro- vided the blessings of local self-government, Habeas Corpus, and trial by jury, to be followed, in due season, by education and free- dom of the press in place of gross ignorance and harsh repression; by freedom of trade replacing monopoly; by the restriction of feudal power in the seigneur over the serf. A host of extortionate officials was deported to France along with the conquered troops, and the ces- sation of international warfare ended, with one brief exception, the 246 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. frontier-feuds, and the Indian massacres and devastations, which had for so long a period brought terror and ruin to the tillers of the soil. In May, 1763, Governor Gage was able to announce the cession of Canada to Great Britain by the Treaty of Paris, and, a few months later, he replaced Amherst at New York, being succeeded at Montreal by Burton, whom Haldimand replaced at Three Rivers. CHAPTER VII. CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE (1763-1801). War with the Indians Pontiac the Ottawa chief Major Gladwin's gallant defence of Fort Detroit Indian cunning and cruelty British forts captured Colonel Bouquet's expedition to relieve Fort Pitt Sir William Johnson's negotiations with the Indians Submission of Pontiac and the tribes The French Canadians under the new rule General Murray becomes governor Able administration of his successor, Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester Quebec Act of 1774 The country threatened by the revolted American colonists Surrender of St. John's Quebec besieged by the Americans Loyalty of the Canadians Province of Ontario created and colonized Constitutional Act of 1791 Upper and Lower Canada formed Their constitution defined Slavery prohibited Characteristics of the French Canadian. The change of masters in Canada brought with it one last great Indian war, arising from the attachment of native tribes to the French who were compelled to acknowledge the supremacy of Great Britain. The traders and missionaries of the defeated European power had, as we have seen, been successful in winning the adhesion of most of the Indian tribes, and many of the savages were resolved that, if their old friends were to go, no other Euro- peans should rule in their stead. The land must be cleared of "those dogs dressed in red", and a leader was found in Pontiac, a bold and skilful chieftain of the Ottawas. When Major Rogers, with two hundred of his " Rangers", went from Montreal, after the capitulation, to receive the submission of the French commanders at the western forts, the Indian potentate gave him a haughty recep- tion, and insisted on being treated with due deference as a condition of allowing the troops to remain in his country. This remarkable man has been represented as the chief organizer of a wide-spread conspiracy for the extermination of the British conquerors, but he was rather an instrument in the hands of the French traders on CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 247 the Mississippi who were eager to divert the fur-trade of the lakes to the great western river, and to make New Orleans the outlet for the profitable traffic which they sought to keep in French hands. For this end, it was needful to destroy the garrisons at the forts which protected the trade on the great lakes, and so to deter British enterprise from using Canada and the adjacent colonies to the south as starting-points of a commercial rivalry in furs. At this time, Montreal was almost the western limit of European settlement. No French Canadian was to be found in what is now the province of Ontario. Six hundred miles of navigation up the St. Lawrence and through Lakes Ontario and Erie was needful to reach the settlement at Detroit, where a few hundreds of people were, for five months of the year, cut off from all communications with civilization except by means of snow-shoes. Chains of military posts connected Canada and the State of New York with the west. Fort William Augustus was at the head of the rapids on the St. Lawrence; Oswego, as we have seen, lay on the southern shore of Lake Ontario. Fort Niagara, with two smaller posts, maintained the connection between lakes Ontario and Erie. Fort Pitt, formerly Duquesne, lying at the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela rivers which form the Ohio, was connected with the north by Forts Presqu'ile, on the southern shore of Lake Erie, Le Bceuf, and Venango (or Mac- hault). Fort Miami lay near the south-west corner of Lake Erie, and other posts lay on the river Wabash. Fort Detroit, on the river joining Lake Saint Claire to Lake Erie, was a strong post connected with the scattered settlement mentioned above. Out- lying posts were found on or near Lake Michigan. The French, in 1 763, still held Fort Vincennes, on the Wabash, and Fort Chartres, on the Mississippi. These posts, of which Fort Chartres was a strong stone work, mounting twenty cannon and capable of holding a garrison of three hundred men, were the head-quarters of the conspiracy which roused the Indians to hostility against the British. The only man on the side of the conquerors of Canada who had ever succeeded, as we have seen, in conciliating the Indians was Sir William Johnson. In 1761, he conferred at Detroit with the chiefs of the Ottawa confederacy, and had some success in 248 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. winning their goodwill. The natives in other quarters missed the courteous treatment and the welcome presents which they had been wont to receive from the French. The cold and haughty British commandants treated the chiefs and their tribes as of small account, and withheld the military honours, the flattering words, the showy bribes of medals and orders, and the lavish hospitality with which the French had welcomed Indian leaders who visited their forts. The traders on the Mississippi, aided by the persua- sive tongues of the missionaries, spread reports that the British, in the occupation of the old military posts and the erection of new ones, were intent on the extirpation of the natives. The slanderous fable won a wide belief, and its effect was seen in a great confederacy which included the Senecas, Miamis, Wyan- dots, Shawnees, Delawares, and other tribes spread over the country from Niagara and the Alleghanies to Lake Superior and the Mississippi. Sir William Johnson sent warnings both to the Lords of Trade at home, and to the authorities at Albany and New York, but his words were treated with the ignorant neglect which, in British affairs, has too often been the precursor of disastrous events. The Indians were also encouraged to rise against the British by an absurd fiction, uttered with the utmost confidence by their French friends, that an army and fleet would soon arrive in the St. Lawrence and recover Canada from the hands of her new possessors. The plot was being matured for two years before its outbreak into action on May gth, 1763. Major Gladwin, the brave, able, and prudent commander at Fort Detroit, had discerned the coming danger, and had dispatched warnings to his comrades at Forts Pitt, Presqu'ile, and elsewhere. Gladwin, as a lieutenant in the 48th Regiment, had been wounded in Braddock's defeat of 1755; he was present at the capitulation of Montreal five years later, and he was now to win fame by a gallant defence during the longest siege in the annals of Indian warfare against European foes. On May rst, Pontiac, who is described as prone to take offence, and as a man of vindictive character, presented himself at Fort Detroit, with forty of his fellow Ottawas, and proposed that he and other chiefs should perform their dance as a token of peace and friendship. They were admitted for this purpose, and then took their leave. Gladwin had received a friendly warning of what was CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 249 to come, and was quite prepared for Pontiac's arrival a few days later. The chief, with fifty warriors, paid another visit, each man carrying- beneath his blanket a loaded musket with barrel short- ened by filing off the top for readier concealment. They were again admitted within the fort, only to find the garrison, about 1 20 men of the 39th Regiment, drawn up in arms on parade, as if for drilling. The disconcerted plotter contrived to make a friendly speech, and was allowed to retire, after a calm reply from Glad- win, and the bestowal of some presents. The British commander knew the full extent of the danger involved in a combined Indian war, and he did not choose to provoke an immediate outbreak by the seizure of Pontiac in the commission of detected treachery. He may have hoped that the failure to surprise one of the chief British posts would be a damper to the whole undertaking. On May gth, however, during a church-festival, Pontiac came again with a large number of Ottawas, and found the front gate of the fort closed against him. On his demand for admittance, o * permission was granted to himself and a few chiefs, but to none of their followers. Pontiac went away in a rage, and his men outside, starting from ambush, with loud yells, rushed to a neighbouring house, slew and scalped an Englishwoman and her family, and seized and murdered two officers, Sir Robert Danvers and Lieu- tenant Robinson, who were on duty above Detroit. A regular siege of Fort Detroit began at the dawn of the next day, hundreds of savages surrounding the place and maintaining a continual fire from the cover of barns, fences, and bush. A six hours' fight ended in a repulse of the assailants, who then resorted to a blockade of five months' duration, enlivened by renewals of attack by fusillade. Gladwin, the commandant, had provisions in store for only three weeks, but supplies were obtained from friendly French settlers, and he and his men were resolved to defend the post to the death. The attack on Detroit was the signal for assaults on the other western posts. Sandusky, on an arm of Lake Erie, a block-house with an inclosure, was seized by Indians on a pretence of friendly conference. The few men in garrison were murdered. The com- mandant was carried a prisoner to the Indian camp before Detroit, where he was beaten by the squaws and children, compelled to dance and sing for their diversion, and only saved from death by 250 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. torture through the affection which he inspired in an elderly Indian widow, who claimed him as a substitute for her deceased mate. From her embraces Paulli managed, in time, to escape to Gladwin within the fort. Fort Saint Joseph, on the river of that name, was surprised, with the murder of nearly all the garrison of fourteen men. On June 2yth Fort Miami, with a dozen men, was taken, when Holmes, the officer in charge, had been lured forth on pretence of his help as an amateur doctor being needed by a sick Indian woman. He was shot dead through the treachery of a young squaw acting the part of his Delilah. Misfortune dogged the steps of the British at every turn. Lieutenant Cuyler, of the Queen's Rangers, with nearly a hundred men, was in charge of ten bateaux, or barges, conveying stores from Fort Schlosser, above Niagara Falls, for Detroit and other western forts. On the northern shore of Lake Erie, he was attacked by a large force of ambushed Indians. A panic ensued, and he was driven back to whence he came with the loss of nearly all the boats and supplies, and three-fifths of his men. Of these, fifty became prisoners, and, being conducted to Pontiac's camp before Detroit, they were mostly killed by burning, after the most atrocious tortures and mutilation. It was on May 3Oth that the beleaguered garrison saw with joy the approach up the river of the expected boats, only to find that the vessels were in the hands of foes, with the British escort as captives on board. A cunning stratagem was employed in the surprise of the important post called Michillimackinac, a fort on Lake Michigan. The Indians of the vicinity were Ojibeways and Ottawas. The garrison was under the command of Captain Etherington, a man who had lived on friendly terms with the natives, and had no reason to apprehend hostility. On June 4th, the officers and men were invited by some Ojibeway chiefs to witness a game of La Crosse between two teams of native players. The fort gates were left open, and the soldiers were mostly on the ground outside as spectators. The squaws, in their blankets, strolled in and out, hiding the weapons of the men, their brothers and husbands, who were engaged in play. The ball was driven up near to the fort, and the rush of the players, with eager cries, was suddenly changed to an attack on the troops with the whoop of war, the savages wielding with dire effect the tomahawks handed to them by the CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 251 women. Etherington and Lieutenant Leslie were made prisoners, another subaltern and twenty men were killed. Some of the British captives were rescued by friendly Ottawas. The chief booty taken by the Indians was fifty barrels of gunpowder. Fort Presqu'ile, with a small garrison, was surrendered, on threats of massacre for continued defence, to an Indian force of Pontiac's from Detroit. Fort Le Bceuf was set in flames after the men had escaped to the woods. Venango was utterly destroyed by fire, without a man left alive to tell the tale. The British traders were everywhere attacked, and Fort Ligonier, between Bedford and the Ohio, was assailed by parties who were beaten off. The works at Fort Pitt were efficiently repaired by the commandant, Captain Ecuyer, who, on July 26th, refused in the boldest terms a summons to surrender to a body of Delawares, threatening to blow to atoms any Indian who dared to appear in hostile guise before the post. There alone, and at Detroit, the honour of the British flag was well supported. The Indians, elated by the capture of so many forts, resumed the savage frontier-warfare, wasting the borders of Virginia and Pennsylvania by the burning of homesteads, the slaughter and scalping of the males, and the carrying of women and children into slavery. Hundreds of lives were lost in this last paroxysm of Indian cruelty and rage, and the surviving settlers hurried to the eastern towns for safety. General Amherst, at New York, after long neglect of warnings received from Gladwin and Sir William Johnson, was forced by the logic of disastrous facts to recognize the serious danger of the time. The first duty was the relief of Fort Detroit. An expedi- tion of nearly 300 men was placed under the command of Captain Dalzell, an aide-de-camp of Amherst, and a young officer of good repute and promise. The force left Fort Schlosser, near Niagara, in a number of barges, and, coasting the southern shore of Lake Erie, arrived on July 26th at Sandusky. Two days later, during a thick fog, they were in the river Detroit, and the 2Qth saw them safe at the fort. A night-sortie on Pontiac's camp was suggested by Dalzell, and Gladwin, with a reluctant assent, placed the troops under that brave man's command. The senior officer had little faith in the chance of outwitting the Indian besiegers. At half- past two in the morning of July 3ist, a picked body of two hundred and fifty men quitted the fort for a march of over two 2$2 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. miles to the enemy's position. Their every step was watched by Indian scouts, and it is said that the plan had been betrayed to Pontiac by French Canadians within the works. At two miles from the fort a severe fire was opened at a spot, still known as " Bloody Run", where a narrow bridge then crossed a stream. Confusion ensued in the British ranks; Dalzell was killed after brave and skilful efforts to secure a retreat, and the detachment reached the fort at eight o'clock with the loss of over sixty men killed and wounded. The siege, conducted by more than a thousand Indians, was continued during August and September, but no serious assault was attempted. Events in other quarters, to be soon related, had shaken the confidence of Pontiac's followers, and the intervention of French officers on the Mis- sissippi, hinting at the uselessness of further efforts against the British, caused the chief, at the end of October, to send a letter of submission to Gladwin. That officer replied in cautious terms, referring the matter to his superior, Amherst, and the blockade of Fort Detroit, as winter approached, ended with the dispersal of the Indians to their homes. Gladwin then prepared himself for future defence, in case of need, with the persuasion that lasting peace with the Indians could only be secured by the use of stern measures of chastisement and repression. We now turn to events connected with Fort Pitt. The gallant commander, Ecuyer, of Swiss origin, had a garrison of over three hundred men when he was attacked, at the end of May, 1763, by some hundreds of Indians who burrowed in the river-banks, and kept up a constant fire which did no serious harm. In June, an expedition of relief was dispatched by Amherst from Philadelphia, under the command of Colonel Bouquet. The force comprised about 400 Highlanders of the 42nd and yyth Regiments, with a small number of provincials from Virginia. On July 25th he arrived at Bedford, after a most toilsome march over the Alle- ghanies and through the wilderness, with a heavy baggage-train of stores, and sheep and cattle for the supply of his troops. Deserted farms, where the fields were waving with ripened grain, proved the terror caused by the Indian war, and the troops, as they advanced, learnt the capture or destruction of Forts Presqu'ile, Le Boeuf, and Venango, which left more foemen free to oppose their progress to the rescue of Fort Pitt. CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 253 At Fort Ligonier, fifty-five miles from the beleaguered post, the waggons and stores were left behind, and Bouquet pressed forward, taking some hundreds of pack-horses laden with flour. He was well acquainted with the road, from the part which he had played, four years previously, in the expedition led by Forbes, and this knowledge of every dangerous spot, suited for ambush and surprise, was of signal service to him in his perilous undertaking. On August 5th, amidst intense heat, with mosquitoes swarming in the bush, and when the troops, at one o'clock after noon, had already marched seventeen miles since the morning's start, the advance-guard was briskly attacked near a creek called Bushy Run, twenty-six miles from Fort Pitt. Two companies of the 42nd drove the Indians from their ambuscade, and then the front and both flanks were assailed by large numbers of Shawnees and Delawares. A desperate conflict ensued, in which the British troops displayed the most noble resolution, endurance, and valour. The enemy, driven off at this point and that with the bayonet, constantly reappeared, and reinforcements, arriving from the besiegers of Fort Pitt, enabled them to surround the column on all sides. After seven hours of incessant strife, the hard-pressed Britons formed in a circular phalanx round a space which contained the wounded, protected from chance shots by the bags of flour, with the horses of the convoy as a further barrier. The brief darkness of the summer night gave a respite, during which the soldiers lay beside their weapons. Sixty men and officers had fallen, and at daylight the troops, harassed by the want of water, which Bouquet, in his dispatch to Arnherst, describes as " much more intolerable than the enemy's fire ", were again forced to stand and face hosts of furious foes. The value of discipline and of the steady self-reliance and mutual trust of civilized troops was never more finely displayed than in this arduous struggle, at great odds of numerical force, with savages fighting on ground selected as the best arena for the employment of their special modes of warfare. Hour after hour, as the sun rose higher in the heavens towards noon, the weaned British, half-wild with thirst, kept an unbroken front to the foe, repelling with the bayonet many a wild rush, and steadily replying to the fire from the woods. A clever device of Bouquet's at last brought relief to men who appeared doomed to destruction from the mere iteration of attacks ever repulsed and 254 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. ever renewed. No courage could cope with the exhaustion due to interminable strife with enemies who could not be wearied into withdrawal, or forced from the field. Two companies were recalled from the outer circle towards the centre, as if beginning a move- ment of retreat. The Indians, giving an exultant yell, rushed forward in a mass, with a heavy fire. They were firmly met, and, in the midst of the new conflict, their flank was assailed by the nimble Highlanders who had retired, and made a compass unseen to a point fit for a sudden and effective charge. The savages were taken wholly by surprise. They broke and fled, receiving on the open ground the close fire of two other companies moved forward in support, and pursued with the bayonet by men as swift-footed and active as themselves. The battle was won. Water was soon obtained at Bushy Run, where a camp was formed for the special protection of the wounded men. The total loss amounted to 115, of whom 50, with three officers, were killed. The expedition reached Fort Pitt on August iith, after a victory memorable both as the issue of the last great conflict with the Indians during British rule, and for the decisive effect wrought upon the minds and hearts of our uncivilised foes. The siege of the fort had been already raised, and the tribes there engaged never recovered from the blow inflicted by Bouquet and his men. A few weeks after this success, the careless marching of some British troops near Fort Niagara permitted a surprise by a large body of Seneca Indians, in which nearly ninety officers and men were killed. In November, 1763, Amherst took his departure for England, transferring the North American command to General Gage. In the same month, a storm on Lake Erie wrecked some bateaux on their way to Detroit, with the loss of seventy officers and men. The new commander-in-chief took measures, in accordance with Amherst's advice and with instructions from home, for the estab- lishment of a lasting peace with the Indians. The northern colonies, still loyal to the British crown, but often strangely back- ward in taking a due part in efforts for their own welfare, were called upon to furnish militia. In April, 1764, a body of two thousand men, under the command of Colonel Bradstreet, was ready to march from Albany for Detroit, with a view to chastise the Indians in that quarter, and to re-establish the garrisons at the CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 255 forts on and beyond Lake Erie. Bradstreet's force included the i /th Regiment, four companies of the 8oth, 1000 militia from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, 50 men of the Royal Artillery, and ten light field-guns. A contingent of 300 French Canadians, new subjects of the British sovereign, was added with the reason- able view of destroying the illusive belief, entertained by many of the Indians, that France was likely to resume possession of Canada. A second expedition, under Bouquet, was organized at Fort Pitt, for the main purpose of reducing the hostile Indians of the Ohio valley. At the same time, Sir William Johnson was employed in negotiations which were likely to prove quite as effective, in his hands, as any use of armed force. In July, this able man, so well acquainted with the Indian mind, met more than two thousand natives at Niagara. There were warrior- deputies from many tribes of the west Hurons and Ottawas, Chippewas, Foxes, and Sakis, with delegates even from Lake Superior and Hudson's Bay. Of these, the Hurons were the chief, and in July and August treaties of peace were made with them and the other tribes, including some of the Seneca Indians. The Shawnees and Delawares held aloof. Pontiac sent a mes- senger expressing his desire for peace. Johnson, in his report to the Lords of Trade, strongly urged the conciliation of the Indians by a policy of generous treatment, including the bestowal of the periodical gifts to which they had been accustomed in their dealings with the French. It was not until the close of the conference that Bradstreet's force, on August 6th, commenced their journey, and, embarking on Lake Erie, reached Presqu'ile on the i2th. There Bradstreet was met by a number of Shawnees and Delawares, and with these men, in the absence of authority on either side, he was entrapped into making a truce which debarred him from using force for nearly a month. The two tribes were those who had just declined to meet Sir William Johnson, and the brethren of these self-made deputies were at that moment engaged in murdering helpless British settlers on the borders of Pennsylvania. The arrangement was promptly disavowed by General Gage and Bouquet, and Bradstreet was ordered to proceed to Sandusky, and there attack the tribes who had not made terms with Johnson. He allowed 256 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. himself again to be cajoled by the Indians, but he did perform the service of relieving the garrison at Detroit, and enabling the soldiers to return for rest to the civilized world, after fifteen months of anxious service, including five of continuous siege. He then returned from his inglorious expedition, which will be found in strong contrast with the proceedings of the gallant and able Bouquet. That officer put aside the tricks and evasions of Indian deputies by a plain threat of war without quarter, to be averted only by complete, unconditional, and immediate submission. This resolute tone had its due effect on some of the tribes, but others held out or strove for delay, and on October 3rd the troops under Bouquet inarched out of Fort Pitt. The column consisted of 500 men from the 42nd Highlanders, the 6oth Royal Americans, and the 77th or Montgomery's Highlanders, most of whom had been present in the previous year at Bushy Run, and of about 1000 Pennsylvanian and Virginian militia and volunteers. The route lay through a region hitherto untraversed save by the Indians and a few fur-traders, and the trail was familiar to none but the commander's Indian guides. Supplies of food needed to be carried on pack-horses and mules, and the advance, as a precaution against surprise, was preceded by three scouting parties, in the centre and to right and left. The soldiers marched in readiness to form at short notice a hollow square, in which each company already knew its place, and could form with speed round the baggage, tents, oxen, sheep, and pack-animals placed in the middle of the marching column. Strict silence on the march was enjoined, and every man w r as to keep at two yards' distance from the one preceding him. On a halt, all were to face outwards, in instant readiness to meet attack. The prudence of these arrangements was proved, on the fourth day of march, by the statement of a British prisoner who had escaped from the clutches of the Indians. This man declared that the natives whom he had lately quitted had been reconnoitring the force, and had been deterred from attack, not merely by its numbers, but by the perfect order and discipline which they observed to prevail. On the twelfth day, Bouquet and his men, after passing through a splendid rolling country, having valleys and hills clothed with noble trees, and richly watered by brooks and rivers, were at nearly a hundred miles from Fort Pitt. They had arrived without CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. opposition near to the villages of the Mingoes, the Shawnees, and the Delavvares. A few days' rest was granted, during which two men sent out by Bouquet arrived with news that the Delawares were anxious to submit. The commander made arrangements to meet their chiefs on a clear spot of his own choice, free from all chance of surprise, with his troops drawn up in imposing array. Chiefs of the Senecas and Delawares presented themselves with the wampum-belts that, in Indian affairs, were the indispensable guarantee of peaceful intentions, and a further proof of sincerity was given in the present surrender of eighteen prisoners. Bouquet, in reply, declared his intention of not leaving the country until every condition made prior to a treaty had been fulfilled, and he appointed a place, forty miles distant, in the very centre of their villages, where they were to deliver up every English and French man, woman, and child, with all negroes, held in captivity among the tribes, or incorporated with them by adoption, marriage, or any other means. The firmness of his demeanour, backed by irre- sistible force, achieved the end in view. Hundreds of white captives were given up for restoration to their friends, and were welcomed in the British settlements with many an affecting scene. Bouquet returned to Fort Pitt on November 28th, and in January, 1765, his valuable service in procuring a stable peace with the Indians received an unanimous vote of thanks from the General Assembly of Pennsylvania. The vile home-administration headed by George Grenville, a man " whose public acts may be classed under two heads, outrages on the liberty of the people, and outrages on the dignity of the crown", deemed Bouquet worthy of no higher reward than promotion to the rank of brigadier. The Virginian house of burgesses voted to this distinguished soldier an honour like to that paid by the Pennsylvanian legislature. The frontiers of these two leading states had been by him secured against the molestation so long suffered from the Indians. Pontiac, discredited with the natives by his utter failure in the siege of Detroit, vainly strove for some time to stir further hostility to the British power, and in August, 1765, he felt compelled to make a complete and final submission. The Indian war incited and en- couraged by the French, which had begun with the attack on Detroit, ended on October loth, 1765, after two years and a half duration, with the surrender of Fort Chartres, on the Mississippi. VOL. I. 17 258 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. The flag of France then and there vanished, as the symbol of rule, from the western continent, save for her brief tenure, at a later period, of Louisiana. The conquest of Canada by Great Britain was the dawn of political education for the French Canadians. They were hence- forth to be treated as free men, not as feudal vassals, subject to the personal and financial exactions of impressment for service without pay, the forced labour of corvfos, and other inci- dents of seigneurial rule. The backward condition of the country in the means of mental enlightenment is proved by the fact that, prior to British rule, Canada had no printing-press. This bulwark of free institutions was first introduced in 1764, and on June 2ist, the pioneers of Canadian journalism, William Brown and Thomas Gilmore, of Philadelphia, issued the first number of the still-existing Quebec Gazette. From the first, the new rulers had dealt on new principles with those confided to their charge. The people were treated as reasonable beings by the publication, in the French tongue, of the duties which they were required to perform, and of events which were held to concern them as subjects of a British sovereign. The death of George II., the summons to take the oath of allegiance to his successor, the marriage of George III., the birth of the Prince of Wales, the conclusion of the treaty of peace, had all been duly proclaimed, and the French were thus admitted to a knowledge of these and other political events which were occurring in distant quarters of the globe throughout the empire, instead of being narrowed, in their mental horizon, to the transac- tions of their own parishes and their own households. The grand blessing to the cultivator of the soil was the advent of peace, and that time for the resumption of profitable labour was heralded by changes which first aroused the French Canadians of the rural districts to the conscious possession of a new independence in their social life. The trade-monopolies were also abolished, and restric- tions on the dealings in furs were removed. In August, i 764, came the actual establishment of the new rule, when General Murray assumed his duties as "captain-general and governor of the province of Quebec ". A royal proclamation had promised the establishment of a representative assembly, and of courts of judicature for civil and criminal affairs " as near as may be according to the law of England, with liberty to appeal to the CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 259 Privy Council". It was many years before the first of these pledges was redeemed, but the prospect of government under English law caused a steady flow of immigration from the neighbouring colonies of North America, and from the mother-country. Many military settlers were attracted by liberal grants of land, according to the rank of the holders, from private soldiers up to field-officers, on payment of a small quit-rent, or annual tax, after ten years' occupation. The " new subjects ", or French Canadians, soon began to com- plain of their position as regarded the " old subjects " or British set- tlers. About five hundred half-pay officers, merchants, and disbanded soldiers formed at first a dominant minority, engrossing public offices, and excluding from power, under the law existing in Great Britain and Ireland, all holders of the Roman Catholic faith. The privilege of trial by jury made law more expensive, and inconven- ience was found in processes being conducted in a foreign language. The pride of the seigneurs, or old French gentry, shrank from the submission of causes concerning gentlemen to the arbitrament of juries which might and often did include peasants and artisans. The small dominant minority, for their parts, rendered unintended honour to General Murray by jealous complaints of the equitable treatment by which he sought to conciliate the French Canadians in restraining the action of mercenary and corrupt place-holders and place-hunters among the British section. He was, however, upheld by the authorities at home against petitions for his recall. An important royal provision, which did much to secure the colony, in time to come, from Indian troubles, forbade all grants of land within the fixed bounds of the Indian territory, and all private purchase of territory from the Indians themselves. The natives were thus guarded against the greed of settlers and of land-specu- lators, and the principle of imperial control in this matter has been acted on down to the present day, and is still enforced in the north- west of the Dominion. In the autumn of 1766, Murray was succeeded in the governor- ship by Sir Guy Carleton. The future career of the former high- minded and distinguished man was to include a noble, though unavailing, defence of Minorca, in 1781-2, against an overwhelming French and Spanish force, during which he rejected, with defiance and indignation, the Due de Crillon's offer of 100,000, with a 26O OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. general's commission in the French or Spanish service, for a betrayal of his trust by a premature surrender of the fortress, St. Philip's castle, at Port Mahon. The new governor, Sir Guy Carleton, who afterwards became Lord Dorchester, has a reputation of the highest rank in Canadian history. His character, during a long and chequered public career, was without a stain, or even a semblance of reason for reproach. His military merits are far transcended by those which belong to a ruler marked by moderation, ability, and justice, and by the unobtrusive work which develops the resources of a country, and applies with effect the laws which are intended to secure personal freedom and to maintain the rights of property. The public life which exercises the strongest influence on human happiness and prosperity is not always conducive to the personal distinction acquired by successful and striking achievements in war, and it is owing to this fact that the fame of Guy, Lord Dorchester, has been somewhat obscured by that of some far inferior men. As a subaltern in the 72nd Foot, Carleton, son of General Sir Guy Carleton, of county Down, did gallant service in Germany during the War of the Austrian Succession, and became a trusted friend of Wolfe, under whom he acted as quartermaster-general during the siege of Quebec. He was also the chief officer of engineers, in default of suitable men in that branch, and was wounded on the memorable 1 3th of September, which saw the glorious death of his beloved commander. After fighting with Murray against De Levis in April, 1760, Carleton took part in the expedition against Belleisle, on the French coast, and was severely wounded, in 1762, at the siege of Havanna. Soon after assuming office in October, 1766, Carleton, in reply to addresses, declared his intention of making no class- distinctions, " the one difference being between good men and bad". He took from the first a high tone towards recalcitrant members of the Council, and stated that he should not only apply for advice in special cases to such members of the Council as were best qualified to inform him, but also ask the opinion of persons of good judgment and character outside that body. In respect of the administration of justice, the complaints of French Canadians caused the governor to introduce an important change. A judicious compromise allowed the old French laws and procedures to prevail in civil cases which dealt with property CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 261 and inheritance, while criminal matters were decided under British forms and with jury-trial. It was Carleton's strong conviction, expressed to the Secretary of State, Lord Hillsborough, that, in order to remove secret feelings of attachment to France and to reconcile the new subjects to British rule, the French Canadians should not be excluded from all public employment, and that in this and other ways it should be made expedient for them to become and remain devoted to the new order of things. A report of his on Canadian manufactures in 1769 makes known to us a large growth of flax, made up into coarse linen, and some working in wool, with a general estimate that one-third of the population, numbering about ninety thousand, wore clothes of home manufac- ture. There were a few tanneries, producing an inferior leather, and the forges of Saint Maurice made much bar-iron, from which edged tools, axes, and tomahawks were manufactured. In August, 1770, the governor returned to England for four years, to find Lord North in power as chief minister. During his absence, a Swiss Protestant named Cramahe, senior member of the Council, was lieutenant-governor. He was a man of good ability and character, who maintained order in the colony during an uneventful period. In February, 1774, a petition from some French Canadians was presented to George III., in which they acknowledged the kindly treatment which they had met with since the conquest, but desired to receive complete restoration of their ancient laws, privileges, and customs, with the full rights of British subjects, including a share in civil and military employment. Partly in consequence of this, but rather from the long-felt need of a definite form of government for Canada, the Quebec Act of 1774 was passed. This measure was carried in the face of a very strong opposition from some leading members of both Houses, including Burke and Lord Chatham, and from the Corporation of London. The province of Quebec, or Canada, was now made to include the whole country west of Pennsylvania and Virginia; southwards, from Lake Erie to the banks of the Ohio, until that river joined the Mississippi; northwards, to the boundary of the lands held under the charter of the Hudson's Bay Company; and eastwards, to the coast, including the territories and islands lately attached to Newfoundland. Free exercise of their religion, without civil 262 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. disabilities, was secured to the Roman Catholics, or French Canadians, with the payment of the dues and tithes, by members of their own church, to the Catholic clergy. The French law known as " The Custom of Paris " was henceforth to be the civil law concerning property. The English law was established for criminal matters. The property of religious orders was specially excepted from the provision which secured all classes in full possession of their landed and personal estates. The exclusion of juries from all civil cases, and the subjection of civil rights to the operation of a foreign code of law, was greatly resented by the small British minority, and the king and government were accused of seeking safety for the Crown's Canadian possessions, by undue favour to the new subjects, in face of the now formidable discon- tent of the old American colonies. A legislative council, not to exceed twenty-three members, and to be composed of at least seventeen, was appointed to frame legal ordinances, without the power of levying taxes beyond the local and municipal payments. The council was to be appointed by the Crown, and its ordinances were subject to the approval of the king in council. Such, for seventeen years, was the form of government in the great new colony of North America. The representative assembly promised in 1763 was still withheld, in accordance with the terms of the royal proclamation, which made the grant of this body subject to such time "as the state and circumstances of the colonies will admit". The concessions to French Canadian feeling in the Quebec Act of 1774 have been generally, and, perhaps, with some justice, regarded as due to a desire for securing the sympathy and aid of men devoted to monarchy and to the Roman Catholic faith, against the republican spirit of the mainly Protestant colonies about to break into open revolt. However that may be, we shall soon see that the Canadian colonists did remain faithful to the British crown. In September, 1774, Carleton resumed his duties as governor of Canada, and was soon called upon to face a serious condition of affairs in intrigues directed from the neighbouring colonies, followed by armed attack. On May ist, 1775, the Quebec Act came into operation, and, within a few weeks, news arrived at Montreal, where the governor was awaiting events, that forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point, on Lake Champlain, had been CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 263 seized by the troops of the revolted colonies. At this critical moment, Canada was almost destitute of the means of defence, the province not containing as many as a thousand regular troops, or having at disposal a single armed vessel. It was well for the British crown that the helm of rule was in such hands as those of Sir Guy Carleton. To the energy and wisdom of his measures, and to the calm courage and self-devotion which he himself possessed, and, in no small degree, inspired in those around him, the safety of Canada was due when the storm of war began to beat upon her ill-guarded frontier. In 1774, the "General Congress" of the American colonies issued an "Address to the inhabitants of the Province of Quebec", caP.ing upon the French Canadians to join their confederation in resistance to the tyranny of the home government. The address pointed out that the conquered people had not received, under their established form of government, the rights of British subjects, in tiie withholding of representative government, with the power of self-taxation; of trial by jury in all cases; of the personal freedom secured by Habeas Corpus', and in being subject to the powsr of the governor and council, conferred by the Quebec Act, to vary the existing laws by the issue of ordinances. There was much quotation from the Frenchmen's "countryman, the immortal Moitesquieu", and it was averred that the legislative, executive, and judicial powers in Canada were all, in fact, " moved by the noes of a minister". The Canadians did not respond to this appeal, declining to attsnd secret conferences, and declaring that their oath not to bear ams against the British bound them to remain neutral. Most of the very small Canadian minority, the English-speaking population, were on the side of the revolted colonists. The prospect of reutrality among the French Canadians was welcome to the congress, and an invasion of Canada was planned. Carleton in vain called on the French Canadians to serve as volunteers, but raised some troops, both British and French, under the old militia Act, and Sir William Johnson induced some hundreds of Indians to serve. The danger was serious. Montreal, with but a hundred regular soldiers in garrison, contained many disaffected people, and most of the troops at Quebec had been dispatched to meet invasion of the province by way of Lake Champlain. No help could be 264 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. obtained from General Gage at Boston, and the government at home wholly failed to understand the importance of maintaining a strong hold on the country newly conquered from France. A thousand men were marching, in September, against Montreal, under Colonel Montgomery, but they were held in check at Fort Saint John's, on the river Richelieu, by about five hundred British regulars. In the same month, a small force under Colonel Allen was defeated at Montreal by Carleton, and Allen went to England as a rebel prisoner. The siege of Saint John's was vigorously carried on by Montgomery, a brave Irishman, and the place was stoutly defended by Major Preston. As winter approached, hcw- ever, the disgraceful surrender of Chambly furnished Montgomery with a fresh supply of cannon, powder, and provisions, and enabled him to continue the blockade of Saint John's, where the people were already on half-rations, and were looking for help from Carleton. The governor made an earnest attempt to raise the siege with a body of militia, and a few regulars and Indians. On October 3Oth, his effort to land on the south shore of the St. Lawrence, near Longueil, was repulsed by the sharp fire of Vermont troops under Colonel Seth Warner, and Saint John's, after a violent cannonade, and when food and ammunition had almost failed, was forced to surrender on November 3rd. Nearly seven hundred men, including militia, thus became prisoners of war to the Congress troops, and Canada was left almost devoid of regular defence. Montgomery's march on Montreal compelled the departure of Carleton, with General Prescott, the staff, and the few soldiers in garrison, and the town was, on November i3th, occupied by :he enemy. The governor contrived to reach Quebec, while Prescott, intercepted by some American troops, went as a prisoner :o Chambly. The capital of Canada was at this time threatened by Colonel Benedict Arnold, the officer who was to become infamous, at a later day, by his attempt to betray West Point to the British troops the enterprise which involved the tragic and cruel fate of Major Andre. Arnold was in command of about 1 100 men, chiefly from New England, with some companies of riflemen from Virginia and Pennsylvania. By way of the Kennebec, the wilderness, the Chau- diere, and the St. Lawrence, he arrived on November 8th, after severe toil for the men, at Point Levis, opposite Quebec. His force CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 265 was now reduced to about 800, and he found that all boats had been removed from his side of the river and from He d'Orleans. Cramahe, the lieutenant-governor of Quebec, had done what was possible to strengthen the defences, and Colonel Maclean had just arrived with some new levies, but the whole number of soldiers was less than three hundred men. Two war-ships were at Quebec, and a council of war resolved to keep the vessels during the winter, to land the crews for the reinforcement of the garrison, and to defend the place to the last extremity. An embargo was also laid on some merchantmen in port about to sail, and their crews were enrolled among the defenders. About 350 volunteers, British and French Canadians, answered an appeal to take up arms. On November I4th, Arnold and his men crossed the river in canoes made for the purpose, and ascended the cliff by the historical pathway at Wolfe's Cove. His demand for a surrender was treated with contempt, and, being without artillery and almost destitute of ammunition, he could not risk an assault, and retired to Pointe-aux-Trembles, 20 miles west of Quebec, and awaited the junction of Montgomery's forces. When Carleton arrived at Quebec on November 2Oth, the city and fortress were the only part of Canada that remained under British rule. The governor took prompt and vigorous measures. All suspected persons were driven from the town, the entire population of which was then about five thousand. The garrison, with provisions for eight months, amounted in all to about 1800 men, who were now to hold the place during a fourth siege in its history. The possession of Quebec during the winter was of vital importance to the British hold on Canada, and would determine the future mastery of the whole country. On December 4th, Arnold and Montgomery, with twelve hundred men, advanced to the siege, and encamped in the snow before the walls. Carleton paid no heed to any messages. The poor artillery of the foe was a mere mockery to those who manned the ramparts of Quebec, and the besiegers were wasted by cold and consequent disease, with the additional scourge of small-pox. On December 3ist, at four in the morning, while a snow-storm raged, Montgomery, at the head of five hundred men, tried an assault of the lower town, where a battery and block-house defended the western approach. The garrison were on the alert, and a 266 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. volley of grape, killing Montgomery and two other officers, with a few men, at once swept away for the revolted colonists the hope of mastering Canada. The assailants retreated, leaving the bodies of their comrades to be covered with a thickening shroud of snow. The road taken by Montgomery had been from Wolfe's Cove along the narrow pass between the heights and the river, now known as Champlain Street. His body was afterwards taken to a small log-house in St. Louis Street, which is now an Indian curiosity shop, and one of the Quebec sights for strangers. It was buried at the foot of Citadel Hill, but afterwards removed to New York. Montgomery was one of the most gallant soldiers of the Revolutionary War, and his fall was fatal to the whole enter- prise. Arnold, at the same time, with six hundred men, came from the opposite direction, round by the part now known as St. Roch's suburbs, below the ramparts, with the intention of meeting Mont- gomery at the foot of Mountain Hill, and joining in an assault of the upper town. This plan also met with utter failure. The first barriers were carried at a rush, but the alarm-bells and the drums soon brought up the garrison, and a fight in the narrow streets, amid darkness and snow, ended in the assailants being surrounded on all sides, with a pitiless fire of musketry raining on them from the houses. Four hundred men laid down their arms, and Arnold was left, with a greatly diminished force, daily wasting from privation and disease, to continue a perfectly useless siege. An attack on his lines by French Canadians was repulsed, but this could not affect the issue, and the feelings of the habitans, or main body of the French people outside Quebec, were sorely offended by the harsh conduct of the invaders. The New England militia, in their Protestant bigotry, were the objects of religious aversion to the simple and devoted Catholics, and the produce of the people was taken in exchange for worthless " bills of credit ". The ranks of the besiegers were reinforced to the number of two thousand men, and in April, 1776, the American Congress ordered the raising of a strong force, with abundant supplies of stores, for the conquest of Canada. The effort came too late. General Thomas, of Massachusetts, arrived before Quebec on May ist, and found so deplorable a state of things in the besiegers' camp, from sickness and lack of supplies, that he resolved to retire at once to Three Rivers. On the following day, British ships CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 267 arrived in the harbour, and the Quebec garrison, with a thousand men under arms, made a fierce sortie on the American camp. The besiegers fled in haste, leaving guns, their few stores, and all the sick, to the care of the victors. Thus ended the last attempt on the stately fortress of Quebec. During this time Franklin and other commissioners had arrived at Montreal, urging the Canadians to join the revolt. A Jesuit named John Carroll, afterwards Archbishop of Baltimore, used his influence with the Canadian clergy, but all was in vain. The Canadians would not stir without the help of a large force, and good pay, in hard cash, for their services. Above Montreal, at Cedar Rapids, an American force was defeated by the British, and, on the following day, another body of invaders, at the same place, was surprised by the Indians and French Canadians. In June, an army of nearly 10,000 men, under General Burgoyne, arrived at Quebec, and General Frazer, marching at once to Three Rivers, attacked and routed 1500 American militia. The whole of the invaders were soon glad to quit the country, and Carleton then took steps to clear the enemy from Lake Champlain. A fleet of twenty ships, with many transports, was constructed, partly with materials brought out from England, and was conveyed with great toil to the shores of the lake. On October igth, the American flotilla, under Arnold, was utterly defeated near Crown Point, the vessels that were not captured by the British being beached and fired by the discomfited enemy. The events of the American revolutionary war have been dealt with in previous pages of this history. Carleton had resigned his commission when General Burgoyne, who afterwards laid down his arms at Saratoga, had been placed in command over himself, and he was succeeded in the governorship of Canada by General Haldimand, a man of Swiss extraction, who maintained a very stern and unpopular sway. There were many both French and British sympathizers with the revolted colonists, and Haldimand, in his zeal to repress all disaffection, indulged in arbitrary arrests and imprisonments, for some of which the British government, after actions at law, was compelled to pay damages. By the Treaty of Versailles, in 1783, Canada lost the fine country lying between the Ohio and the Mississippi, the boundary between her territory and that of the new " United States" being fixed by the 268 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence, the 45th parallel of north latitude, " the highlands dividing the waters falling into the Atlantic from those emptying themselves into the St. Lawrence", and the river St. Croix. Serious disputes were afterwards occasioned by the vagueness of the words which applied to the watershed of the Atlantic and the St. Lawrence. The Americans also received rights of fishing in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the bank and coasts of Newfoundland, and of landing to cure the fish taken. Thus arose the perplexing and annoying " fishery-question " which has not ceased to harass the negotiators of Great Britain, Canada, and the United States. In the history of Nova Scotia, we shall see the settlement, after the Peace of Versailles, of the people known as " United Empire Loyalists". The just claims of these supporters of the British monarchy now caused the creation in Canada of the new province of Ontario. To the west of the river Ottawa lay a rich and extensive territory which, at the close of the Revolutionary War, had scarcely begun to be settled. The great region inclosed by the lakes and the St. Lawrence had less than two thousand European dwellers, gathered round the fortified posts on the rivers St. Lawrence, Niagara, and St. Clair. With a view to separating the Loyalist refugees from the old French population, the home authorities caused Haldimand, the Governor of Canada, to have surveys made along the upper course of the St. Lawrence, on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, and on the rivers Niagara and St. Clair. During the year 1784 about ten thousand new colonists were planted in w y hat was soon to become officially known as Upper Canada or Ontario, on grants of land awarded in the proportions of from 5000 acres for a field-officer to 200 for a private soldier. A large vote of public money supplied food, implements, and clothing in liberal measure to those who were thus started on a new career, and immigrants from Great Britain were also attracted to the new province by good allotments of land. Large numbers of disbanded officers and soldiers, with civilians who were quitting the United States as British loyalists, thus became the pioneers of civilization and the founders of a new colony. In 1785, Governor Haldimand was recalled, and in the CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 269 following year Sir Guy Carleton, under his new title as Lord Dorchester, became governor-general and commander-in-chief of British North America. In 1788, the newly-settled territory was divided into four districts, each provided with a judge and sheriff, and justice was administered in Courts of Common Pleas. The new settlers soon gave great additional force to a movement among the British Canadians for the repeal of the Quebec Act of 1774. They had strong objections to the existing French law, and they yearned for the enjoyment of the constitutional rights, in representative government, which belonged to their countrymen in the maritime provinces, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The government at home, at this time directed by William Pitt, accord- ingly made a full inquiry, by means of special committees, into the existing state of Canadian affairs. Commerce, agriculture, educa- tion, the militia, the law courts and the administration of justice, were exhaustively treated by commissions working under the presidency of Lord Dorchester. It appeared to Pitt needful to guard against the danger of further colonial rebellion by the continued existence of separate provinces, containing populations mainly of different nationalities, religions, languages, and feelings. A French province would, it was believed, be a check upon the aspirations for independence which might be indulged by the British. The British province would be ready, it was supposed, to act against possible French attempts at revolt from their recent conquerors. This miserable policy of securing practical loyalty, not by affection, but by jealous counterpoise and check, belonged to an age which had formed no idea of colonies which should remain loyally subject to the British crown, in possession of their own representative system and executive government. Pitt's plan, however, in limiting the areas of provincial action, and creating separate provinces, did in a sense originate a future federal form of rule. The Constitutional Act of 1791 divided Canada into two provinces separated by a line drawn from a point on Lake St. Francis, a little west of Montreal, to Point Fortune, on the Ottawa, and thence along the course of that river. The official names of the two territories were Upper and Lower Canada, with reference to their positions on the course of the St. Lawrence; the former province (afterwards Ontario) was also popularly known as 2/0 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Canada West. The whole of the country at this time contained about 150,000 people, of whom less than one-seventh were found in Upper Canada. Each province had its own governor, and a Parliament of two Houses, a Legislative Assembly elected by the people, and a Legislative Council nominated by the Crown. The governor had the power of summoning, proroguing, and dissolving the Houses "whenever he deemed such a course expedient", but Parliament was to be convoked at least once in every twelve months, and the elected Assembly, unless it were dissolved by the governor, was chosen for a term of four years' existence. The governor could give or withhold the royal assent in regard to bills passed by the Houses, with a power reserved to the Crown of disallowing, within two years after their receipt by the Secretary of State, any bills to which the royal assent had thus been given. Only subjects of the Crown by birth, naturalization, or conquest could be members of the Legislative Assembly, and all Legislative Councillors, clergymen of the Churches of England or Rome, and ministers of any other religious profession, were ineligible for that body. The Assembly could raise by taxation a revenue for roads, bridges, schools, and other public objects, but the British Parlia- ment alone could impose, levy, and collect customs-duties for the regulation of trade between the two provinces or between either of them and any other part of the king's dominions, or any foreign country. The appropriation of moneys so levied was, however, left to the Legislature of each province. The control of all naviga- tion and trade lay with the British Parliament. For the support of a Protestant clergy an allotment of Crown-lands was made in each province to the extent of one-seventh of the value of such lands. The assignment of these " Clergy Reserves", as the lands were called, became in aftertime the cause of much trouble and discontent. The governors were empowered to erect and endow parsonages, and to present incumbents, subject to the spiritual and ecclesiastical rights of the Bishop of Nova Scotia. We must here notice the important provision of the Act concerning the tenure of land in the new province, or ' Upper Canada. The old, or seigneurial, system of land-holding, which was retained after the conquest, was ill-suited to the British immigrant, who wished to be the absolute owner in freehold of his farm-lands and buildings, and specially objected to making feudal CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 2/1 payments to a Catholic seigneur, or lord of the soil. The new law, therefore, enacted that all lands in Upper Canada, and in Lower Canada, at the desire of the grantee, should be henceforth assigned "in free and common socage", a virtually freehold tenure dependent on the performance of some certain, definite, and honourable service. The Legislative Council was to consist, in Upper Canada, of not fewer than seven, and in Lower Canada, of at least fifteen members, appointed by the Crown for life. For the election of members to the Legislative Assembly each province was to be divided into districts or counties, with limits fixed by the governor, and from these districts, and from certain cities or towns, at least sixteen members in Upper Canada, and not fewer than fifty in the French province, were to be chosen under defined franchises. The county-members were elected by owners of land to the net annual value of forty shillings, and the borough-members by free- holders to the annual value of five pounds, or tenants of houses at the annual rent of ten pounds and upwards. Such was the constitution under which Canada existed for half a century, ending in 1841. One of its chief provisions, the nomination of the Legislative Council by the Crown, was strongly opposed in the House of Commons by Charles James Fox, as inconsistent with popular rights. After the inauguration, in 1792, of the new form of rule, an Executive Council came into existence, composed of judges and other salaried officials, acting as private advisers of the governor, holding seats, as a rule, in the Legisla- tive Council, and not responsible either to the governor or to the Legislative Assembly. Their influence and action gave rise to much popular jealousy and discontent. In Lower Canada, the first Legislative Assembly, meeting at Quebec in December, 1792, contained 15 British members out of fifty, and it was decided that debates should be conducted, and that the Journals of the House and other official documents should be printed, in both languages, English and French. The first Lieu- tenant-governor of Upper Canada was Mr. Simcoe, who had sat in the British House of Commons, and had commanded a royal regiment during the Revolutionary War. He proved himself to be an energetic, wise, and honourable man, with a real concern for the welfare of the province. The seat of government was placed 2/2 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. at Newark, a village at the mouth of the Niagara river, and the first session of Parliament, lasting five weeks from September i 7th, 1792, saw the passing of bills which established English civil law and trial by jury, and introduced methods for the easy recovery of small debts, and plans for the erection of court-houses and prisons in each of the four districts of the province. The Newark Gazette inaugurated the newspaper-press of Upper Canada. Kingston, at the north-east corner of Lake Ontario, founded on the site once occupied by Fort Frontenac, became the chief naval and military station, and in 1797 the seat of government was removed from Newark to York, afterwards the flourishing city of Toronto, on the north-west coast of the same great inland water. The removal of Governor Simcoe, in 1 796, to the charge of San Domingo was a misfortune for Upper Canada, in causing the lapse or the retardation of sound and vigorous schemes which he had formed for the promotion of the fisheries, agriculture, and other means of colonial development. It is interesting to note, as a sign of the condition of Upper Canada at this period, the offer of rewards for the heads of bears and wolves. The close of the eighteenth century saw the new colony rapidly progressing in population, trade, and wealth won through labour directed to the natural resources of the region. Many immigrants from Ireland were sent thither by the troubles of 1 798, and a brisk commerce arose with Albany and New York by way of the lakes and rivers, as the rapids of the St. Lawrence hampered communication with Montreal and Quebec. The introduction of slaves into the province was forbidden, and a limit was placed on the duration of servitude for those who were held as property by masters. In 1797, Lord Dorchester, after many years' valuable service rendered to Canada, resigned his post as governor-general, and returned to England after receiving from those whom he had ruled many warm expressions of regretful esteem. He was succeeded in his office by General Prescott, an able and courteous man of firm and kindly character, under whose administration the commerce of the country had a rapid growth, and the defences of Quebec received a great accession of strength. Passing for a moment into the nineteenth century, we may record that a decision of Chief Justice Osgoode of Montreal, in 1803, rendered slavery illegal in Lower Canada, and the few slaves surviving from the old French dominion CANADA UNDER BRITISH RULE. 273 were thereby emancipated. From that day forward Canada had the glory of affording a place of refuge, an asylum of freedom, for slaves who escaped from bondage in the southern states of the American Union. Thus was the great British colony in North America fairly started on her career. The most important fact in her political and social system was the existence, through conquest, of two European nationalities side by side. The British and Protestant element of the people was vastly outnumbered by the Catholic French, and the diversities of race and religious faith were, as we have seen, fully recognized in the Constitutional Act of 1 791. The French dream of forming a great empire beyond the Atlantic had faded away, and the combined feudal and ecclesiastical sway inaugurated and fostered by the court of Versailles had been superseded by a system of rule in which personal, political, commercial, and religious freedom was to be the main agent in developing a vigorous and flourishing national life. The French Canadian was then, as he remains, a most picturesque and interesting portion of the new community. With him, feudalism slowly died away, but in all other points of social character and life the French colonists have con- tinued to display an innate and strong conservative tone. Neither in politics nor in religion were these sturdy colonists affected by the vast changes wrought in the country of their forefathers by the first and greatest French Revolution. Their devoted attachment to the Catholic faith and to monarchical rule made a gulf between them and the Jacobins of Paris and the other great towns of France, and to this day a marked diversity exists between the Frenchmen of Canada and of the valley of the Seine. The existing loyalty of the French Canadians to the British Crown had its origin in the worldly-wise rather than generous policy which caused British rulers, on the revolt of the American colonies, to use the most considerate and kindly methods of government with those who had so recently been forced into allegiance to hereditary foes. The issue was good both for rulers and ruled. The French Canadians stood firm amid temptations to rebel, and they came, in due season, to enjoy in return a liberty in all ways as complete, as secure, and as much to be desired, as any that republics provide for their citizens. The French of Canada are also a solitary example of real French success in colonial life, and their position at this moment is a 18 2/4 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. vindication of the aspirations and efforts of Cartier and La Salle, of Richelieu and Colbert. The superior energy and resources, for a trans-Atlantic struggle, of the great European enemy of France did, indeed, reduce to a very limited scale the magnificent plans of the explorers and statesmen who hoped to see their country supreme in the whole vast region from the Lakes to the Gulf, and from the Ohio and Mississippi to the Pacific shores. The people whose ancestors were subdued by the genius of Wolfe and by the valour of his men form a very attractive and valuable relic of a state of things which has passed away. Their conquered progenitors quickly settled down into a quiet and contented life in the village and the town, in clearings by river and lake, and amid forest- wilds, while Europe was convulsed by the longest, most destructive, and most costly war of modern days. CHAPTER VIII. NEWFOUNDLAND NOVA SCOTIA NEW BRUNSWICK PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. Discovery of Newfoundland Visits of English and foreign voyagers Customs regulating the fisheries^The English flag planted on its coast Importance of the cod-fishery Neglect of mining and agriculture Attempts to colonize by the English Lord Baltimore's colony Wise rule of Sir David Kirke Claims of the French to part of the island Contests with the French Newfoundland finally ceded to Britain Captain Osborn its first regular governor St. John's seized by the French, but recaptured After-history of the island Nova Scotia or Acadia A Scottish settle- ment at Port Royal The country restored to France Strife among the French settlers Cromwell's expedition to Port Royal Joint occupation by English and French Acadia ceded to France Contests between the English and French settlers Sir William Phipps' expedition against Port Royal The place surrenders to a British force The colony becomes a British possession Difficulties with the French inhabitants Governorship of Paul Mascarene Arrival of English emigrants Difficulties with the Acadians Their expatriation Representative government established The colonies of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. Newfoundland takes a just pride in ranking herself as the oldest of the British colonies. The island, according to the best evidence now attainable, was discovered in the summer of 1497, either on May 6th, Saint John Evangelist's day, or on June 24th, the day assigned in the calendar to Saint John Baptist. In either case, we have here the source of the name afterwards given to the chief NEWFOUNDLAND. 275 town. The discoverer was, as we have seen, either John Cabot or Sebastian Cabot, one of his sons, it being uncertain whether or not the father accompanied his son on this and some succeeding voyages. John Cabot, the Italian form of whose name was Cabotto or Gabota, appears to have been by birth a Genoese, who became a citizen of Venice, and settled about 1472 at the flourishing port of Bristol. He was an enterprising merchant, and a good geographer for that age, and his aims included both the obtaining of fish from the coasts of North America, so as to share in the Icelandic trade to Italy, and arrival at the East by a new route, for the purpose of getting spices in the wondrous country called "Cipango", or, by Marco Polo, "Zipangu", afterwards altered to "Japan". This region at that time was regarded as a place of the greatest wealth in spices, gems, and gold, and had great charms for explorers in that epoch of the world's awakening to the existence of new lands beyond the seas. It was a haunt of fish and fogs, instead of mines of gems and gold, that was to be reached by the Cabots. The news of the discovery made by Columbus was a great incitement to these adventurous spirits, and they gladly received from Henry the Seventh a patent conferring certain privi- leges, on condition of the king's sharing profits which might accrue, and empowering them to go forth on a voyage of discovery and colonization. In the spring of 1497, Sebastian Cabot, with or without his father, sailed from Bristol in the Mathew, on the way to " Zipangu". The voyagers really reached the coast of Labrador, and were thus the first discoverers, in that age, of the continent of North America, fourteen months before Columbus, in his third voyage, arrived at the mainland. They may have planted the English flag on the coast, and, two days later, they sighted the region afterwards called Newfoundland. It is useless now to strive to ascertain the part of the coast first seen. Sebastian returned with his ship to Bristol, after sailing for some hundreds of miles down the American shore, and in Henry the Seventh's " Privy Purse expenses" we have the entry, under "August loth, 1497", "To him that found the new Isle, ^10". In justice, the name of Cabot would have been bestowed on some large part of the North American mainland, but the place of Sebastian's burial is unknown, nor has he any memorial on the map save the name recently given, by the Newfoundland 2/6 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Legislature, to a group of barren islands lying on the east coast. The fishermen of Europe were soon to discover that the seas around the new-found region were an inexhaustible mine of wealth, far transcending all that comes from natural deposits of gold or precious stones. The name of " Bacalaos", or, land of codfish, was soon bestowed on the island, surviving in Bacalhao Island of Notre Dame Bay. The natives are described by an old writer as clad in skins of bear, marten, and sable, living on flesh, fish, and other things, all eaten raw, white in complexion, and worshipping the sun, and moon, and many idols. The subsequent voyages of Sebastian Cabot were chiefly in search of the "north-west passage" to eastern Asia, and do not concern the present narrative. In 1501, Caspar de Cortereal, a Portuguese navigator, being sent forth to find a westward route to India, visited Newfoundland and some adjacent parts. Little heed, for nearly a hundred years, was paid by England to the island which had been discovered for an English king, and the cod-fishery was largely carried on by mariners from Portugal, France, and Spain, before English vessels, in any great number, appeared in those waters. In 1517, about fifty ships from those European countries were engaged in the industry, supplying a grateful addition to the Lenten fare of those who faithfully observed the injunctions of the Church. It was under Henry the Eighth that English voyagers again arrived at Newfoundland. An expedition, supported by Wolsey, and com- posed of two ships under the command of Captain Rut, sailed forth "to seek out the land of the great Cham", a title bestowed on the ruler of Tartary. Albert de Prado, a Canon of St. Paul's, was on board, for the purpose of making report to the cardinal and the king. One of the ships was sunk in a storm ; the other, carry- ing De Prado and Rut, reached St. John's Harbour, Newfoundland, where they found lying for the fishery eleven Norman, one Breton, and two Portuguese vessels. This occurred in 1527. Nine years later, two ships, fitted out at the expense of Mr. Hore, a London merchant, sailed from Gravesend, and reached the great island, where the crews were nearly starved to death, and were saved only in the last extremity by the coming of a well-found French vessel. In 1542, Roberval, the Picard noble whom we have seen as Viceroy of "New France", thought that he NEWFOUNDLAND. 277 had found on the coast of Newfoundland gold and diamonds in substances which proved to be iron-pyrites and glittering quartz. The development of the fisheries was such that in 1578 there were four hundred European vessels engaged, including 150 French, and 200 English, Spanish, and Portuguese. According to this informant, Hakluyt, only forty or fifty of the number were English, but our masterful countrymen are declared to have then been "commonly lords of the harbours where they fish", and to have "helped themselves to boat-loads of salt and such", in payment for protecting the other European vessels against "rovers" of the sea. It is curious to note the customary law existing among the New- foundland fishers of those times. Whatsoever ship first arrived from England, Wales, or Berwick in the spring, her captain became "fishing-admiral" for the season, and exercised authority in dis- putes as a governor. The English merchants showed much jealousy as to the profits of the cod-fishing, and, in their desire for monopoly, they checked attempts at settlement by procuring Orders in Council which forbade anyone to dwell within six miles of the coast, and compelled the captains of fishing-ships to leave none of their crew behind on sailing for the English shores. In the later days of Elizabeth, Newfoundland was, at last, formally occupied for the British Crown. The gallant Sir Humphrey Gilbert, elder half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, was a native of Dartmouth, and educated at Eton and Oxford. Intended for law, he chose arms as his tools, and fought with good success against rebels in Ireland, and for the Protestant cause in the Netherlands. After losing his own and his wife's fortune, in a fruitless western voyage with Raleigh, he sailed from Plymouth in June, 1583, and, under a charter granted by Elizabeth five years before, for the discovery and occupation of "heathen lands not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people", he went ashore in Newfoundland, and, receiving feudal symbols of turf and twig, raising the English flag, and erecting a wooden pillar, with the English arms engraved on lead, he assumed possession of St. John's and the neighbouring coast for 200 leagues. Various pro- clamations were made in the queen's name, and then the little squadron, now composed of three vessels left out of five, sailed away to the south. The fate of Sir Humphrey is an oft-told tale. The largest of the ships was lost off Cape Breton, and the leader, 278 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. with the Golden Hind, steered for home, himself on board the Squirrel, a tiny craft of but ten tons burden. The master of the Golden Hind, Captain Hayes, tells us that "on Monday, September 9th, the Squirrel was near cast away, yet at that time recovered ". A heavy sea was running, as Gilbert sat astern, book in hand, and he called out to his comrades of the other ship to " be of good heart ", since " we are as near to heaven by sea as by land ". These were the hero's last-recorded words. On that same night, the men on board the Hind saw the lights on the Sqitirrel suddenly vanish, as she was "devoured and swallowed up by the sea". Under James the First, Sir Francis Bacon was a patentee with John Guy, a Bristol merchant, in 1610, and other "adventurers", in an attempt to form a settlement at Conception Bay, but the enter- prise came to nought. Five years later, the English Admiralty appointed Captain. Whitburne, of Exmouth, who was one of Gilbert's comrades, to hold courts at the island for the people who went to fish. The "banks" and the coasts at this time were the resort of about three hundred English vessels, and the industry, as a whole, had become one of vast importance. Whitburne waxes enthusiastic in his praises of Newfoundland, declaring that the region produces " all that the world can yield to the sustentation of man ". Wholesome air, abundant fish, fresh and sweet water, are the matters that he specifies. It is remarkable, however, that to this day the island has not been largely tilled, nor even fully explored. The one great and most profitable industry drew men away from attempts at mining and agriculture. The land had, as will be seen, its periods of strife, on its rocky coasts and in its countless bays and creeks, from the days when the French and English began to contest the mastery of the eastern part of North America. The position of Newfoundland made it in those days of great value, in commanding the entrance of the St. Lawrence, and in being flanked by the seas which, in the hardy fishermen, nurtured and trained sailors for the home and colonial navies. At last, in 1624, a regular attempt was made for the coloniza- tion of Newfoundland. Sir George Calvert, afterwards Lord Baltimore, received from James the First a patent granting him the southern part of the island, and proceeding thither with the needful equipment, he established himself in the peninsula called Avalon. The name was taken from the earthly paradise of Celtic NEWFOUNDLAND. 279 mythology, a mysterious green islet in the region of the setting sun, where the magical apples grew, and Arthur and other heroes rested happy after death. Calvert built a mansion for himself and household at a place called Feryland, about forty miles from Cape Race, and, erecting granaries and other needful buildings, with a fort for protection, he embraced the life of a true colonist. The settlement was, however, exposed to French attacks, one of which failed in 1627, and the people of some small settlements of Puritans were hostile to Lord Baltimore because he was a Catholic. These were the causes of his subsequent migration to the colony which he founded, as we have seen, by the name of Maryland. In 1629 he had already written to Charles the First that the climate and the Puritans combined were trying the patience of his followers and himself, and it was in the autumn of that year that they left the island. Eight years later, Sir David Kirke succeeded Lord Balti- more as the king's grantee, and during the Civil War he offered to provide there a refuge for his sovereign. The Commonwealth deprived Kirke of his property on the ground that "Charles Stuart's" grant was null and void. Kirke died, still a devoted Royalist, in 1656. The period of his possession and rule were, upon the whole, a time of great prosperity for the British fisheries, which were protected from piracy, with a revenue derived from a tax levied on the use of the apparatus called "the stages", which was employed to dry the fish. The heirs of Kirke were victims of the ingratitude of a Stuart king. Two of Kirke's younger brothers bore arms for Charles the First in the Civil War, one being killed in a cavalry-fight at Edgehill, and the other, at a later time, knighted for his valour. At the Restoration, the deceased Sir David Kirke's property was claimed by Lord Baltimore, son of the original grantee, and, this claim being recognized, the Kirke family lost the estate. They then justly claimed the payment of sums expended by their father on forts in Nova Scotia and elsewhere, and in the improvement of the "plantations" and trade. The money had been guaranteed by the Treaty of Saint Germain-en- Laye, in 1632, and reached the formidable amount, in those days, of sixty thousand pounds. Not a penny of this was received through the sovereign who was devoted mainly to two objects, his own pleasures and the friendship of Louis the Fourteenth, the person responsible for the execution of the terms of the treaty. 28O OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. We find that in 1674 the British fisheries were employing nearly three hundred ships and more than ten thousand seamen. Twelve years before this, the French had made their appearance in Newfoundland, by arriving at Placentia on the south coast, where M. Dumont claimed possession for France, and established a post for the protection of her fisheries. We have here the sinister origin of the French claims in Newfoundland, which have lone eiven such trouble to colonial and British ministers. The o o apathy of Charles the Second was a prelude to the betrayal of British interests in the Treaty of Utrecht by the government of Queen Anne, and, half a century later, by Lord Bute. The progress of the colony was greatly retarded, during the eighteenth century, by contests between those who wished to settle for tillage, as true colonists, and the dominant merchants and fishermen, who were intent upon nothing but the capture and sale of cod. At one time the government forbade all " plantations", and, when this absolute decree was relaxed in 1696, the whole number of residents was restricted to one thousand. The authori- ties in England regarded Newfoundland as a training-place for seamen to furnish the navy, and emigration for agricultural pur- poses was persistently discouraged. The "fishing-admirals" who have been referred to above were expressly recognized in an Act of William and Mary, and these ignorant men, who were mere agents of the capitalists in England investing money in the fisheries, exercised a tyrannical sway over the residents. The colonists were also greatly troubled by attacks from the French of Acadia, Canada, and Cape Breton, and, during the war between William the Third and Louis the Fourteenth, they made deter- mined attempts at the conquest of the island. The English, for their part, assailed the French settlement at Placentia in 1692, but failed to oust their rivals, and a French naval force from Europe was repulsed by our people in 1694. In the spring of 1697, the French commander, d'Iberville, dispatched from Quebec by De Frontenac, appeared off the south coast of Newfoundland, where some privateers from Placentia had already burnt, after a fierce fight, an English man-of-war, and had taken thirty fishing-ships. St. John's was now captured, burnt, and left in ruins. The little settlements were ravaged, with the slaughter of many fishermen, and the prospects of Newfoundland were very dark, when the NEWFOUNDLAND. 2 8l Treaty of Ryswick brought a brief period of peace. The sove- reignty of the island remained in our hands, but the French retained possession of Placentia and some other points on the south coast. The shores of the country became again the scene of petty con- flicts during the great war of Queen Anne's reign. The struggle had its alternations of success. Early in the war, a British squadron drove out all the French save from Placentia. The enemy, in their turn, with privateers from St. Malo and other ports, harassed the English on the coasts, and made two failures in attacks on St. John's. In 1708, St. John's was again attacked and taken by surprise, and the French were practically masters of the island until five years later. Then the Treaty of Utrecht finally conceded Newfoundland to British sovereignty, including Placentia, but the unfortunate i3th Article of that famous arrangement opened a source of continual dispute and difficulty. The French fishermen were thereby per- mitted to catch fish, and to dry them on land in that part of the coast which lies between Cape Bonavista and Cape Riche, taking the line round the northern point of the island. British settle- ments were also excluded from that part of the country, and thus it came to pass that the best lands in the west of the island remained untilled, and no profit could be made from the metallic treasures lying beneath the soil. In order to complete this subject, we pass to the Treaty of Paris concluded in 1763. In that diplomatic instrument, the British government, then headed by Lord Bute, most unwisely conceded to France the possession of the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. The true policy was, in the triumphant position which had been won by British arms, not to extend, but to annul, the rights granted by the Treaty of Utrecht. In the Treaty of Versailles, which ended in 1783 the great war that had cost Britain her American colonies on the mainland south of Canada, the welfare of New- foundland and the honour of the country were again neglected. The boundaries of the coast on which the French might catch and dry their fish were made to extend from Cape St. John on the east to Cape Raye on the west, and they were also secured in " freedom from interruption by the competition of the British ", a provision which has been by them interpreted to- mean British exclusion from the use of the soil adjacent to that part of the coast. The colonists 282 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. were, at the same time, under this treaty, removed from the settle- ments which had been made on the part of the coast reserved for the French fisheries. In 1728, for the first time, a regular governor, Captain Osborn, was sent out to Newfoundland, where he soon had trouble with the capitalists who controlled the fisheries, and with their agents, the " admirals " who have been already mentioned as exercising a some- what arbitrary rule. When the governor appointed magistrates with jurisdiction in affairs unconnected with the fisheries, the "admirals" and their supporters claimed that the Act of William and Mary ousted the Order in Council which set up civil authorities, but the home-government did not admit this view, and, after con- tests spread over more than fifty years, the civil powers named by the Crown were in full exercise of their legitimate jurisdiction. In 1750, the first assize-court was established: up to that time, all persons charged with felony had been sent to the mother-country for trial. The settlers derived, as may well be supposed, a pleasant feeling of security from the transfer of Canada to British possession, by events which have been already narrated. The French, however, made a fierce attempt on Newfoundland before the conclusion of the Seven Years' War. In May, 1762, a squadron composed of two seventy-fours and two frigates, carrying fifteen hundred troops, sailed from Brest for the region of the cod- fishers. Sir Edward Hawke, with seven ships of the line, was detached in pursuit, but he failed to encounter the enemy, who landed, on June 24th, at a bay twenty miles to the south of St. John's. The garrison of the capital, which consisted of a bare sixty men, through the gross neglect of the home-government, were taken by surprise, and became prisoners of war, along with the crew of a war-sloop in the harbour. The place was seized, with all the merchant-ships and supplies, and the captors at once pro- ceeded to work at the fortifications, with a view to a permanent hold on their prize. A convoy of merchantmen from England was due, and would have entered St. John's harbour to become a further prey, but for the vigilance of Captain Douglas, who was cruising in those waters, and, hearing of the French arrival, took measures to intercept and warn the British vessels. The news reached Halifax, and Lord Colville, without delay, sailed with his squadron for Newfoundland, where he was joined, in September, by some NOVA SCOTIA. 283 eight hundred regulars and a force of provincial troops under Colonel Amherst. The enemy strove to oppose their landing at a point seven miles to the north of St. John's, but our men made their way towards that harbour and stormed a hill commanding the town. The port was then blockaded by Lord Colville, but the weather came to the relief of the foe. A heavy gale off shore drove away the British ships, and the hostile vessels, escaping in a thick fog, obtained too great a start for successful pursuit. Amherst attacked the town with heavy guns, and, on the third day, brought the garrison to terms. A frigate from France, with large supplies of food and military stores, was captured near the island by a British cruiser, and, in a possession of three months, causing severe loss and privation to the people, the French had made their last serious endeavour at the mastery of the island. A census taken in 1763 found the whole population a little exceeding thirteen thousand. The governor, at this time, received an accession of dignity and power, when, with the additional title of " commander-in-chief ", he had jurisdiction and control over Labrador, Anticosti, and the Magdalen Isles. In the year follow- ing, Newfoundland was placed fully under Crown-rule, as one of the royal " plantations ", and this change was marked by the appointment of a collector of customs. The old fishery-interest viewed these matters with great disgust, not lessened by the Act of 1775, which further remedied the abuses based on the statute of William and Mary. During the war of American Independence, the island suffered much under loss of trade. In 1785, religious needs were recognized by the inclusion of Newfoundland in the diocese of the Bishop of Nova Scotia. During the war of the French Revolution, the republicans sent a force against the island, but St. John's was found too strong for attack, and the expedition ended in some plundering and burning at the Bay of Bulls. The close of the eighteenth century found the colony under the rule of Admiral Waldegrave, a man described as humane and enlightened to a high degree, and devoted wholly to the improvement and welfare of the people. The history of Nova Scotia or Acadia, which has been traced down to the year 1614, was of a very chequered character. We saw that at that period the French settlement of Port Royal was ruined by an attack made from Virginia. A few years later, the 284 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. task of colonization was taken up by an enterprising Scottish knight, Sir William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Stirling, who received from James the First a charter bestowing the whole of the peninsula which included the Cape Gaspe district, New Brunswick, and " Nova Scotia ", a name then first used in place of the French " Acadie ". At this time, the French had, to a slight extent, resumed possession, but a small Scottish settlement was formed, and a fort was built at Port Royal, near the former French town. In 1625, Charles the First confirmed his father's grant to Alex- ander, and established a new order of petty nobility called the "Knights-Baronets of Nova-Scotia", composed of one hundred and fifty members, who were to receive grants of land, on condition of planting emigrants thereon. The scheme came to nothing, owing to arrangements made in Europe between England and France, which restored the country to the latter power in 1632, under the Treaty of Saint Germain-en-Laye. M. de Charnisay arrived from France with forty families, who settled at Port Royal, and the few Scots who had remained were, in one generation, absorbed in the French population. The country was divided into three provinces, each under a proprietary governor, obtaining a revenue from the fur-trade and fisheries. De Razilly, the commandant, took the southern district, and, with the building of a fort and a residence for himself as ruler, made a settlement on the beautiful and convenient harbour of La Heve, in the south-east. Charnisay and De la Tour had the rest of the land, and, on the death of Razilly, the Sieur de Fronsac became commandant and chief ruler. Bitter strife, amounting to civil war, arose between De la Tour and Charnisay, during which the former's wife, whose name is still venerated in Nova Scotia, won renown by her heroic defence of her husband's fort, leading her troops sword in hand, like an Acadian Jeanne Dare. In the end De Charnisay was victorious, but he died in 1650, and, four years later, the French were dispossessed by an expedition sent out by Cromwell at the request of the New England colonists, who had long suffered from the depredations of Acadian privateers. Once more the British flag floated at Port Royal, and the country was held by a joint-occupation of English and French until 1667. In that year, the whole of " Acadia", in its extended sense, was ceded to France by the Treaty of Breda. For many years there NOVA SCOTIA. 285 was petty strife between the British and the French settlers, who quarrelled about the fish and the furs, intrigued with the Indians, and took part in the contests ever waging between their countrymen of Canada, on the one part, and of New England and New York, on the other. The French occupation lasted for forty-three years, but the colony made little progress, and in 1686 there were fewer than a thousand people, and not a thousand acres brought under tillage, the chief occupation being that of the fisheries, combined with piratical attacks on the commerce of New England. The war in Europe between Louis XIV. of France and William the Third would have involved in any case the settlers beyond the Atlantic, but they needed no stimulus to hostile movements. The men of New England and of New York were provoked by the treacherous and cruel attacks of Frenchmen and Indians, and in 1690 Sir William Phipps was sent from Massachusetts to attack Port Royal. This brave man and skilful mariner, who had risen by sheer merit from the position of a farm-labourer, had a frigate and two sloops of war, with some smaller craft, carrying nearly three hundred seamen and four hundred colonial militia. The capital of Nova Scotia could not be defended, and the place was given up, to be subjected to a plundering which violated, with or without the British leader's consent, the terms of capitulation. The people were compelled to swear allegiance to the British sove- reigns, and the territory was formally, under a charter, incorporated with Massachusetts, greatly to the annoyance of the colonial govern- ment, who wished for no fresh burdens. They desired \Villiam the Third to garrison Port Royal with regular troops, but a French expedition arrived at this juncture to relieve their minds of all responsibility by the recapture of the town. The Treaty of Ryswick, in 1697, formally restored Acadia to the French possession which had not really ceased, save for a brief space at the capital, Port Royal. During the War of the Spanish Succession the colonists of New England, in 1 704 and i 706-7, harassed the French Acadians, and, at the latter time, failed in a siege of Port Royal. The French governor was now a veteran named De Subercase, who had long served his country with fidelity and courage in Canada under De Vaudreuil and De Frontenac. This last French ruler of Acadia assumed power in October, 1705, and at once devoted his attention to the needs of the colony, which was in a grievous 286 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. condition from poverty and from the lack of all means of defence against the people of New England. Like other French governors in America, he was also troubled by priestly meddling with temporal affairs. He was destined to be charged with the final struggle for French retention of the colony. The men of Massachusetts had resolved to make an end, if they could, of the dangerous presence of the privateers lurking in the inlets of the Bay of Fundy, or seek- ing refuge under the guns of Port Royal, and preying upon the fast-growing trade of Boston. Some damage had been done to property during the invasion made in 1 707, but the lack of skill in the officers, and of discipline in the men, had caused the expedition to withdraw before the energetic defence made by the French commander. In 1710, however, the British government took the matter in hand, and a strong armament, under Colonel Nicholson, went forth from Boston. The ships carried a regiment of marines from England, and four regiments of the colonial militia, clothed and armed at the expense of the crown. Four men-of-war and a bomb-vessel accompanied the fleet of transports which appeared before Port Royal. The place was ill-armed, and had a garrison of only three hundred and fifty men, discontented from want of proper supplies. The invading force was landed to the north and south of the town, and a brief bombardment, with the repulse of a sortie, compelled a surrender, after a week's siege, on honourable terms. The French troops marched out with drums beating and colours flying, to be conveyed to France on British vessels. The name of " Port Royal " was changed to "Annapolis", in honour of the queen. The people at Port Royal and "within cannon-shot of the fort" were, by the fifth clause of the capitulation, to remain upon their estates, in secure possession of all their property, for the space of two years, unless they desired to leave the country before that lapse of time, and they were, thereafter, either to quit the country or to swear allegiance to the sovereign of Great Britain. It is important to remember this condition, in view of coming events. Thus did the colony of Nova Scotia finally come to the British crown, its possession being confirmed, three years later, by the Treaty of Utrecht. Henceforth, the French made the stronghold of their power, in that part of America, at Cape Breton, where they built and fortified the town of Louisbourg, to NOVA SCOTIA. 287 which many of their colonists from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland resorted as a place of safe abode. We have seen that the new settlement became a fresh peril to New England, worse than that which had existed at Port Royal. The " Acadians" who remained in Nova Scotia proved to be troublesome subjects to their British rulers. They numbered less than eighteen hundred, and had no patriotic regret for the loss of their French political ties, but they were very ignorant, very litigious, and very submissive to the priests who taught them that the British were atheists or worse, and that recognition of their rule meant the destruction of their own religious faith. In some parts of the country, small parties of British troops were attacked and a general spirit of disaffection and sullen hostility was mani- fested. In 1715, after the accession of George the First, the oath of allegiance was tendered to the French population, but they generally refused either to take the oath or quit the country, and the British government, with rare moderation, allowed the matter to rest, in the hope that time would work a change in " Acadian " feeling, or that a new generation would be more reasonable under just and generous treatment. In 1720, the oath of allegiance was again proposed, and again declined, but in submissive terms which promised to refrain from all practical hostility to their de facto rulers. The people were, in fact, under the influence of a religious terrorism, and British abstinence from the adoption of strong measures was largely due to indifference. The priests in the country were political agents and incendiaries, and the government at home, under George the First, failed to furnish a garrison of sufficient strength to exercise a just and needful degree of coercive power. The politicians in England at that day failed to see, or did not care to recognize the fact, that a strong government in Nova Scotia would have promoted prosperity by attracting settlers from New England to the rich pastures and the valuable mines. Year after year passed away, while the French, at Louisbourg, were constantly extending and perfecting their fortifications, under the direction and with the aid of a government in Europe which foresaw the value of such a stronghold in operations of re-conquest. In 1726, some of the French in Nova Scotia took the oath of allegiance at Annapolis, but it was still refused in other parts of the country. The people in no way contributed to the expenses of 2 88 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. government, though they did not fail, in the absence of all law courts, to harass the council for decisions in their endless disputes. British ministers Stanhope, Walpole, Pelham, Newcastle all neglected American affairs, and so provided work for the coming man, William Pitt the elder. The best period of Xova Scotian history in that age was the time which included the tenure of power by Paul Mascarene as acting-governor. This distinguished Nova Scotian, who has left a record of early British days at Port Royal (Annapolis), was born of a Huguenot family that quitted France after the Revocation, in 1685, of the Edict of Nantes. He entered the British army, and rapidly rose through the exercise of high ability and spotless integrity. As captain, he was in charge of the first guard mounted at Port Royal Fort, after its surrender in 1710. He rendered good service during the initial difficulties of British possession, and under the nominal governorship of Richard Philipps, who was in England for long periods, Mascarene became ruler as lieutenant- governor in 1736. The peace of the community was preserved, and while the government at home disregarded colonial matters, a vigilant eye was kept upon perils from within and from without. A time of trial came with the outbreak, in 1 744, of the war of the Austrian Succession. A Catholic missionary, Joseph le Loutre, who had been sent out to work among the Micmac Indians of Acadia, proved to be a thoroughly false, unscrupulous, and cowardly intriguer against British rule, a man who first led the French inhabitants into mischief by spiritual terrors, and then abandoned them in the day of trial. Outward attack had its origin in the French stronghold at Cape Breton. When news of the declaration of war reached Annapolis in June, 1744, Mascarene put the fort in a defensible condition, being aided therein by some of the French Acadians both with material and with labour. An attack upon the workers was made by some Indians, believed to be instigated by Le Loutre, but they were beaten off, and the scanty garrison of one hundred men received a timely re-inforcement of about half that number, including some officers. At the end of August, an invading force of nearly eight hundred troops, chiefly militia and Indians, arrived from Louisbourg. Its operations were those of mere petty warfare, of so constant recurrence in the North American history of those and of earlier days, and were devoid of military NOVA SCOTIA. 289 combination and skill. The invaders had no cannon, and could not inflict any damage on the works, but their superior numbers enabled them to harass the defenders by frequent night attacks. The garrison were worn by want of sleep, and the French com- mander sent a letter demanding a surrender, with the assurance that he expected the arrival of three powerful men-of-war, with additional troops, and an intimation that he already had men enough for a successful assault. Mascarene, in reply, declined to consider the question of surrender until he saw the French ships in the bay. Most of his own officers desired a capitulation, but he managed to persuade them that the Frenchman's aim was to create division and discontent. A truce which had been made for the purpose of considering offered terms was ended amidst the hearty cheers of the men, and Mascarene's courage, energy, and tact sent all with renewed spirit to the defence of the works. The French leader's plan had thoroughly failed, and he soon abandoned the enterprise and returned to Louisbourg. The popularity of Mascarene's rule was proved at this time by the declaration of the French settled away from Annapolis, in reply to agents from Cape Breton who required aid against the British, that "they lived under a mild and tranquil government, and had good reason to be faithful thereto ". This favourable state of feeling was soon to be changed by the spiritual menaces and the misrepresentations as to temporal affairs diligently used by Le Loutre and other missionaries. The safety of Nova Scotia for its British possessors was for the time secured by our capture of Louis- bourg, in a series of events which have been related. The French Acadians showed a renewed spirit of hostility by refusing, with their own pecuniary loss, to supply provisions to the British garrison in Cape Breton Island. The British ministry, at the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1 748, displayed the fatuity so common among our rulers in the eighteenth century by restoring to the French the stronghold of Louisbourg, so lately obtained at the cost of British lives and treasure, and a standing menace, in French hands, to British colonists in North America. The attention of the mother-country was, however, drawn by this very act to the position and the needs of Nova Scotia. The retrocession of Cape Breton Island, and the consequent exposure of our possessions to fresh attack, rendered necessary the creation of a counterpoise, VOL. I. 19 2QO OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. in the Acadian peninsula, to the strong position held by France in the neighbouring island. The fortress of Louisbourg was evacuated by the British troops in July, 1749. A few days later, an important event occurred in Nova Scotia. Colonel the Hon. Edward Cornwallis, who had been appointed governor, arrived at Chebucto, on the east coast, with more than two thousand five hundred emigrants, who were chiefly soldiers and sailors, discharged from the service in consequence of the peace, and artificers of good character and skill in their various callings. Parliament had voted forty thousand pounds for the expenses of the enterprise. The new settlers received a free passage, with provisions for the voyage; allowance of food for a year after landing; arms, ammunition, household utensils and tools for tillage; with free grants of land for settlement under civil rule, in enjoyment of all the rights then possessed by British colonists. The name of " Chebucto " was changed to " Halifax ", in honour of the peer who was then president of the Board of Trade and Plantations. Cornwallis, who was assisted by a new council, formed a good opinion of the capabilities of the country which he was charged to rule. His address to the French Acadians reminded them of the good treatment received by them at British hands, in the quiet possession of their property and the free exercise of their religion; gently reproached them with their hostile demeanour; and, promising them a full amnesty, called on them to assist the new settlers, to take the oath of allegiance, and in all respects to conform to their actual position as British subjects. The French settlements were at Annapolis, Grand Pre, Mines (now Horton), Truro, and other points found along the Bay of Fundy from Annapolis to the basin of Mines. There were some others to the northwards, and the Micmac Indians, a tribe of the Algonquins, a few thousand of whom are still found in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and New Brunswick, were scattered across the country from near Halifax to the Bay of Fundy. The French population, at this time, numbered over twelve thousand, but within the next few years about one-fourth of these were induced by their priests and by French agents to leave their lands, and to resort to He Saint Jean (afterwards Prince Edward's Island), and to Cape Breton colony. The Acadians demurred to taking the NOVA SCOTIA. 291 oath of allegiance, and were then required, by proclamation, to do so before October 26th, or to forfeit their possessions and rights in the province. In reply, the Acadian deputies professed to be in mortal fear of the " savages " if they became full British subjects, and refused to take the oath, except with an exemption from bearing arms against the enemies of Great Britain. They also stated that the French population objected to the coming of the English to live among them. Cornwallis declined to admit any conditions; warned them against deceivers; pointed out that it is not an oath of allegiance which makes men subjects of a king, but that, being so already, they were required to furnish a sacred bond of fidelity; and that it was only from regard to their position and their inexperience that the government condescended to reason with them at all. He ended by demanding the services of fifty men to assist the new settlers in building houses for protection against the coming winter. The French population then resorted to a series of outrages on the British settlers and troops. In these proceedings, they were encouraged by emissaries both from France and from Canada, where the authorities regarded with extreme jealousy the new establishment at Halifax, as giving to Great Britain a firm hold on Nova Scotia, enabling her people to block approach by land from Canada to Cape Breton, and supplying her with a check on Louisbourg. The chief difficulty with which Cornwallis had to deal lay in the extreme ignorance of the Acadians. There were no schools and few books, and an intellectual condition which made the French settlers ready victims of the political priests who worked both with religious and temporal weapons of terrorism. Le Loutre was at Louisbourg, spreading false stories to the prejudice of the British rulers in Nova Scotia, and resolving, as he avowed, to go thither and stir up the Micmacs to war. The Indians were supplied with powder and bullets, with the full knowledge and approval of the French government at home, and the missionaries were ordered to incite the natives to robbery and murder. Twenty Englishmen were seized at Canso, and an English vessel was captured. Then two British craft were attacked with the loss of three lives; four of the new settlers were killed near Halifax while they were cutting wood for the saw-mill. Cornwallis and the 2Q2 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. council properly declined to dignify the Indians by declaring war, and, treating them as a mere " banditti of ruffians", they offered a reward of ten guineas for any Micmac alive or dead, or for his scalp. A company of volunteers was formed, provided with snow- shoes, and the woods round the new capital were scoured. Some of the French, daunted by this firm conduct, then came forward and helped to construct a road from the sea to the town. As the Indian outrages continued, the men at Halifax were formed into a o militia, and a regular guard was posted at night. Through all these matters, Cornwallis acted with the firmness and moderation proper to his position. On the frontier, where the peninsula joins the mainland, French Canadian troops were driven off in 1750 by a British force under Colonel Lawrence, an able and energetic officer, who built a fort and barracks at Chignecto, where Howe, a member of the council, was placed in command. He was a kindly and courteous man, who was winning his way to a peaceful settlement with the Indians when he was shot dead from ambush in advancing from the fort to meet a flag of truce. This foul act of treachery was perpetrated by some of the savages, incited by Le Loutre. The French officers, of course, regarded his conduct with horror and indignation, and Cornwallis described it as an instance of barbarity and treachery without a parallel in history. In 1751, people were killed and carried off by Indians near Halifax, Le Loutre paying a reward for every English scalp. In 1752, Cornwallis, on resigning his office, returned to England, leaving Nova Scotia as a colony firmly established, not indeed in the acceptance of British rule by the Acadians, but with a capital of four thousand people at Halifax, and with the country secured, in a military sense, by forts erected at Mines, Windsor, and Chignecto. It was a point of gross neglect on the part of the British government and the Church, but, as we have seen, quite consonant with the moral and religious condition of England at that period, that there was no religious instruction for the colonists, and no clergyman, save the regimental chaplains, was sent out to Nova Scotia. This disregard of duty was in marked and painful con- trast to what has been related concerning the care of French Catholics for the spiritual welfare both of their own countrymen and of the natives in America. As late as 1782, we find a NOVA SCOTIA. 293 Methodist preacher who visited Halifax strongly remarking on the wickedness of the town, and the mockery with which his ministra- tions were received. It is quite in accordance with the lack of zeal for the saving of souls that an order existed forbidding any Catholic to become a new settler, and restricting to Protestants all transfer of landed property. Colonel Hopson, the successor of Cornwallis, used every means to conciliate both the Indians and the French Acadians, but it became clear that the latter, constantly worked on by the mission- aries and by emissaries from Canada and from Cape Breton, would not settle down as loyal and contented subjects under British rule. In November, 1753, Colonel the Hon. Charles Lawrence became virtual ruler, with appointment as lieutenant-governor in the following year. He was, as we have seen, a man of ability and resolution, and, until his death in 1760, he strove to promote the welfare of the colony. A body of two thousand Germans had settled, in 1753, at Lunenburg, near Halifax, and the town of Dartmouth had also been founded. The year 1755 is the one marked in Nova Scotian history by the expatriation, or forcible removal, of about seven thousand of the French population, or nearly three-quarters of the whole number of " Acadians", in the old sense. Few historical transac- tions have been more misunderstood and misrepresented than this. It has been denounced as a piece of wanton and tyrannical cruelty exercised against an innocent, simple, virtuous, and prosperous community, living a life worthy of the Golden Age among the meadows of Grand Pre, fenced from the sea by dykes of their own construction, and kept in comfort by abundant cattle, crops of grain, and orchard-fruits. The aid of poetry has been used in their behalf, and most readers have formed their conception of the people and of their treatment by their British rulers from Long- fellow's Evangeline, which has invested the story with a glamour of romance, amidst much true as well as picturesque description of "thatched roofs with dormer windows and projecting gables", vanes on chimneys, gilded by the evening-sun, and " matrons and maids in snow-white caps and in kirtles Scarlet and blue and green, with distaffs spinning the golden Flax for the gossiping looms". Hexameters, however, are not, in this case, history, nor is the pathos of poetry the same as prosaic fact. The Acadians, after 294 UR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. forty years of pleading, plain threatening, and forbearance un- equalled in history, chose to commit political suicide. Their presence, as passive opponents of British rule, often turned into the active tools of French intrigue, was a positive danger to the very existence of Nova Scotia as a British colony. The day of final and desperate struggle for ascendency in North America had arrived, and a British governor who had acted otherwise than Lawrence, in expelling the hostile element from the land which he ruled, would have betrayed his duty to his sovereign and his country. Those who complain of the removal of the Acadians forget that some thousands, with great loss and ultimate suffering, had already passed into exile from Nova Scotia under the persua- sions or threats of Le Loutre and other French agents. Those o Acadians who showed a desire to become fully reconciled to British rule by taking the unconditional oath of allegiance were J O O menaced with the tomahawks of the savage Micmacs. The British rulers, in their conduct, are defended by the unassailable reason of self-preservation, and the fate of the exiles was due, not to the sins of Lawrence and the council, but to those of their own countrymen, who deceived them and betrayed them to ruin from sheer hatred and jealousy of the British conquerors of Nova Scotia. One of the avowed defenders of this "innocent" people admits " continued and frequent violations of their professed neutrality" in the struggle between French and British in North America, and allows that " three hundred of them had been found in arms against the British". With this admission we pass from the region of needless further argument to that of narration, and proceed to record the circumstances of the somewhat tragical event. The first step taken by Lawrence was to place himself in a position to enforce any order that might be issued by the government. The safety of Nova Scotia, as a British possession, was in 1754 very precarious. It was certain that the French in Canada and Cape Breton Island would attack the country at the first opportunity, and, in the absence of a British fleet, there was no means of resisting a powerful armament sent from Louisbourg or Quebec. One point of danger was the French fort at Beausejour, on the isthmus con- necting peninsular Acadia with the continental portion which was later called New Brunswick. A large hostile force of Acadians NOVA SCOTIA. 295 could quickly be gathered there, and swoop down upon the feeble garrisons at Fort Lawrence, Annapolis, and other points. Halifax might be invested by the foe, and forced to surrender from want of supplies, and, Nova Scotia once recovered by France, the people of New England would be again exposed to incessant danger and loss. Shirley, the active and able governor of Massachusetts, took the matter in hand with vigour, and assembled at Boston a force of two thousand men, with a fleet of transports, and three frigates. In May, 1755, the expedition sailed, and anchored on June ist twelve miles from Beausejour. The fort there was ill-armed, and at this time had a garrison of but one hundred and fifty men. The New England troops, marching to the attack, quickly routed four hundred French and Indians who strove to bar the road, and the siege was begun by the planting of artillery within seven hundred feet of the works. The bombardment and the reply were both at first equally feeble, but the non-arrival of help from Louisbourg, and the bursting of shells within the fort compelled a surrender on honourable terms. This success was followed by the surrender of Fort Gaspereau on Bay Verte, and the French were thus driven from the threatening position which they had long held in the north of Nova Scotia. The garrison at Beausejour had included Le Loutre, who, after talking of burying himself under the ruins of the walls, fled in disguise before the surrender, was received at Quebec with con- tempt both from the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and died many years afterwards in France in utter obscurity. A remark- able episode of his ignoble career occurred at Jersey. The ship on which he sailed from Quebec for France was captured by an English frigate, and Le Loutre, fearing punishment for his evil deeds against the British, took the name of Duprez. He was sent to Jersey Castle, where he remained as a prisoner of war until the peace of 1763. One day he was recognized by a soldier on guard, who had served with the British troops in America, and identified Le Loutre as having ordered him to be scalped. It was with difficulty that the man could be restrained from bayoneting the Frenchman on the spot, and so determined was the spirit of vengeance that he displayed, that he was transferred to another post of duty. After the capture of Beausejour, and with the successful force 296 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. at hand, Lawrence was able to deal with the recalcitrant Acadians. Their deputies were summoned before the council, and a last demand was made for the taking of the unconditional oath of allegiance, on pain of quitting the country in case of refusal. In every case the deputies declined to take the oath, and the govern- ment at once provided transports for the removal of the main body of French Acadians. At Annapolis, Grand Pre, and other points, the people were gathered in by bodies of soldiers, and informed by the officer in command that their lands, tenements, cattle, and stock were forfeited to the crown, with all other effects, except money and household goods, which they were at liberty to convey on board ship so far as room sufficed. Little or no resistance was attempted, and the people were marched on board the vessels, every effort being made to perform a painful duty with the utmost possible humanity. At one place it was needful to burn a large number of houses in order to enforce the order of expulsion. Over six thousand persons in all were removed, nearly one-third of whom were taken from the village of Grand Pre, the scene of Longfellow's poem. The exiles were landed on the coasts of the British colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia, some being thence sent over to England, and the rest gradually absorbed among the colonial population. Besides those who were deported, there were many Acadians that made their way to Quebec, where they received poor treatment from those who had encouraged them to refuse submission to British rule. Some died of want, and, on the whole, a large amount of misery arose from the expatriation caused, on a just review of the facts, by the ignorance, obstinacy, and per- versity of victims led astray by selfish intriguers, and taught to maintain an unrelenting enmity to the British authority which, for more than forty years, had extended to a conquered people a for- bearance alike unequalled and undeserved. Three years after this event, when the feeling caused by the removal of most of the Acadians had somewhat subsided among the remaining French population, it was deemed proper to establish a representative form of government which should lend the authority of popular sanction to the proceedings of the governor and council. The first Assembly that was ever held within the limits of the Dominion of Canada consisted of twenty-two members, elected by the people. They met in NOVA SCOTIA. 297 the court-house at Halifax, in October, 1758. The Anglican Church was the legal form of religion, with perfect toleration for all other sects. Emigration was encouraged by liberal grants of land, which, in the course of 1759, drew nearly nine hundred settlers from New England and from Ireland. The safety of Nova Scotia was fully assured by the conquest of Canada, as already related, but the joy of the British colonists was damped by the death of the excellent Governor Lawrence, who expired from the effects of a cold caught at the ball which he gave to celebrate the capture of Montreal. When the power of France in North America had come to an end, there were many French settlers, out- side Canada proper, that took the oath of allegiance to George the Third, and a source of trouble was removed when the Micmac Indians of Nova Scotia made a treaty of peace at Halifax, solemnly burying the hatchet in presence of the governor, council, and high officials. The province now enjoyed a rapid increase of population and prosperity, through the establishment of peace and order, along with a steady flow of immigration. During the disputes of the adjacent colonies with the home-country concerning the Stamp Act and the other matters which led, as we have seen, to the Revolu- tionary War, the people of Massachusetts in vain strove for support from the colonists of Nova Scotia, who remained, with rare exceptions, loyal to Great Britain throughout the unhappy struggle, in spite of the consequent loss of trade and of mischief done to the coast-settlements by the attacks of privateers. The Micmac Indians gave signs of joining the revolted colonists, but were kept faithful by diplomacy which included feasting, flattery, and the bestowal of gifts. A great impetus was given to the progress of Nova Scotia at the close, in 1783, of the Revolutionary War. The colonists in the new " United States" who had remained faithful to Great Britain were a source of anxiety to both countries. There were many thousands of " Loyalists", who, in many cases at the cost of the rupture of family-ties between brother and brother, father and son, as well as of many friendships, had remained faithful to the old flag. When the cause of that flag was lost, they were treated with due consideration by the victors, after much suffering from insult and suspicion, and sometimes from open violence, during the war. Large numbers, including many men of high character, position, 298 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. and ability, felt it impossible to become citizens of the Republic. The government of Great Britain made it a duty to provide for their future welfare on American soil, and they were invited to emigrate to Canada and the adjacent colonies on the eastern sea- board. The "United Empire Loyalists" received above three millions of money from the British Parliament by way of indemnity for the loss of estates, and in aid of emigration, and above thirty thousand people sought new homes from all parts of the States, but mainly from New England and New York. It is supposed that about twenty thousand of these settled in Nova Scotia, including in that term the continental territory to the north-west. Several thousand settled near Halifax and on the Bay of Fundy, at the mouth of the St. John river, where they founded the town of St. John, which was long called Parrtown, in honour of Governor Parr, who then ruled the colony. It was in May, 1783, that these refugees came to find new homes on the site of the present city of St. John. The place was then covered with pines and spruce-firs, and nothing else was to be seen but a block-house, a few fishermen's huts, a sprinkling of other houses and stores for fish and fur, and the blackened ruins of Fort Frederick, taken and burnt during the war by assailants from the revolted colonies. Here they began to live on grants of land, and their arrival was the cause of the foundation of New Brunswick as a separate colony. They desired to send a member to represent them in the Nova Scotian Assembly at Halifax, but the governor was unable, under his powers, to grant this request, and they accord- ingly petitioned the Crown for a separate establishment. The high character and intelligence of the five thousand new settlers caused a ready assent, and in 1784 New Brunswick, deriving her name from the reigning dynasty of Great Britain, was started on her career. The colony already had, as settlers on the upper course of the St. John and on the eastern coast, many of the expelled Acadians, as well as emigrants from Scotland who, in 1764, settled on the river Miramichi. Many of the Loyalist emigrants from the States settled at Annapolis, in Nova Scotia, and to them also the town of Shel- burne, on the south coast, owes its rise, with a name derived from the British statesman, the Earl of Shelburne, who became the first Marquis of Lansdowne. His descendant, a century later (1883), was made governor-general of the Dominion of Canada. NOVA SCOTIA. 299 During the great war with France at the close of the eighteenth century, Halifax was a naval and military post of high importance, and became the residence of many persons of distinction from the mother-country, who gave a conservative and aristocratic tone to the colony, and, by the free expenditure of money incident to their position, caused much commercial advance. Edward, Duke of Kent, who became, many years later, father of Queen Victoria, held the post of commander-in-chief from 1794 to 1799, and acquired much well-earned popularity by his excellent conduct and his bounteous hospitality. The democratic aspirations of the body of colonists, who now amounted to over fifty thousand, were repressed by the governor, backed by the council, but there was no breach of the public peace, and Nova Scotia continued in the path of steady progress through industry. In New Brunswick, the first governor was Colonel Carleton, a brother of Lord Dorchester. He had commanded a regiment during the Revolutionary War, and was justly popular with the " Loyalist" population of whom, in November, 1784, he assumed the rule. A council of twelve members assisted in executive and legislative duties, and there was a popular House of Assembly, composed of twenty-six representatives. The first council included several men of high distinction among the new colonists, as Ludlow, formerly chief judge at New York, three other judges who had served as colonels in the war, James Putnam, one of the ablest lawyers on that side of the Atlantic, and men formerly great land- owners, who had lost all for the sake of adherence to the cause of the mother-country. In 1788, the seat of government was removed from St. John, which was for many years the only incorporated " city " in British North America, to the present capital, Fredericton, situated about ninety miles up the St. John river. The place was selected as being more central, as less exposed to hostile attacks, and less subject to the democratic influences which might arise in a prosperous and populous commercial town. The new colony did not, however, escape conflict on constitu- tional points between the aristocratic governor and council and the popular assembly. One dispute arose on the question of pay- ment for public service to members of the House. That body had voted the modest sum of seven-and-sixpence per day, during the session, to each of the representatives. The governor and council 300 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. vetoed this, as unworthy of the Assembly, and thus came a struggle, quite in the old-country fashion, on a money-bill, or question of revenue. The Assembly, like the House of Commons in Stuart days, maintained its right to control the appropriation of supplies, and resorted to the device of " tacking " this particular vote to the bill for the general expenses of administration. It is amusing to observe Britons, in the very inception of a new colonial parliament, mimicking, in earnest and sturdy fashion, the precise methods by which their sires beyond the sea had held their rights against those who would fain have ruled with absolute sway. Such men as these were they who, at a later day, caused British governments, in their dealings with British colonies, to abandon in despair the old colonial system, and to leave full rights of self-government to new com- munities of British people in all quarters of the globe. The Assembly of New Brunswick had to contend, not only with the governor and council on the spot, but with the secretary of state in London, who, on appeal to his decision, condemned their conduct in " tacking ". The people's representatives maintained their atti- tude, and for three years, from 1796 to 1799, passed no money-bills at all. The difficulty was at last removed, again in the true British fashion which has so well served British interests, by concessions on both sides. The Assembly voted all the money which the council wanted for general purposes, and the council agreed to the pocket-money for the members. In this auspicious state of affairs, with the excellent Colonel Carleton, in a tenure of office for nearly twenty years, governing the province with admirable skill, we leave New Brunswick at the close of the eighteenth century. Trade was in rapid growth. In 1778, British enterprise and capital had been drawn to the vast supply of fine timber growing on the banks of the St. John and Miramichi. Three years later, the beginning of a great commerce in " lumber " or sawn timber was followed by the launching, at St. John, of the first of a great fleet of ships that bore the colours of New Brunswick. The noble pines of her forests furnished masts to many of the magnificent vessels which, in line of battle, under Nelson and Collingwood, Howe and Duncan, and many a sea-captain, were to raise the renown of the British navy to the highest point. Prince Edward Island was discovered by the Cabots at the close of the fifteenth century, but no claim to its possession was PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. 301 then set up by the English crown. Early in the eighteenth century, it was occupied by French subjects, Acadians from Cape Breton, as the He St. Jean. They were attracted by the fertile soil, and other Acadians had gone thither on the cession, in 1713, of Nova Scotia to Great Britain by the Peace of Utrecht. Many of the Acadians expelled in 1755 swelled the number of settlers, and in 1 763 the island finally came into British possession, when the popu- lation somewhat exceeded four thousand souls. There was a fair growth of wheat, and the settlers then possessed about ten thousand horned cattle. When the British troops, under Lord Rollo, took possession in 1758, they found the French governor's house adorned by the scalps of Nova Scotian colonists, and of British troops taken as stragglers from Nova Scotian garrisons by the Micmac Indians, and by some of the " peaceful and innocent " Acadians who, in the disguise of savages, had shared in their raids. A fort for defence was erected, and the island was attached to the government of Nova Scotia, but was made a separate province in 1768. The population had then been greatly reduced by emigration to that part of the mainland which afterwards became New Brunswick. Many of the settlers in the island were at first former officers of the army and navy, dwelling on lands granted by the " Lords of Trade and Plantations ". These persons mostly sold their estates, and the land thus came into the hands of a few proprietors, chiefly absentees. A governor was appointed in 1770, and a first parlia- ment was held at Charlottetown, the capital, three years later. The representative assembly had eighteen members, and there was the usual executive and legislative council. The new colony had its external and internal troubles. In 1775 the little capital was plundered by two American cruisers, and several officials were carried off, but were soon restored, with the other booty, by Washington. There were difficulties concern- ing the non-payment of quit-rents for lands, on which the govern- ment chiefly relied for revenue, and many estates were sold, in a time of war and of consequent uncertainty for the investment of capital, at almost nominal prices. Forfeited lands, to a large acreage, came into the possession of the governor and his friends, but these were restored, by the home-government, to former owners on the payment of expenses. The governor, Captain Patterson, then defied the colonial authorities in London, twice 3O2 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. dissolved the popular assembly, and, in i 786, with a House packed by his supporters, he confirmed the forced sales which had been disallowed. He was promptly recalled, but maintained his ground for six months, with ignoble persistence, against his successor, Colonel Fanning. A peremptory order from home then withdrew him into obscurity, and the land question was finally set at rest by the return of the estates to the original proprietors. The colony grew but slowly in numbers, and the only other noteworthy circumstance in the eighteenth century is the change of name from Island of St. John to Prince Edward Island, in compliment to the Duke of Kent, whose life at Halifax was noticed above. CHAPTER IX. HUDSON'S BAY AND THE GREAT NORTH-WEST. Early history of Hudson's Bay territory The Hudson's Bay Company Rupert's Land- Troubles with the French traders Claims by France to the territory Assigned to Britain at the Peace of Versailles Exploration of the Great North-western regions The Verendryes Their important discoveries Sir Alexander Mackenzie He crosses the Rocky Mountains and reaches the Pacific Ocean. "Hudson's Bay Territory" was the former name of a vast, vague region lying north and north-west of Canada proper, and now, under various titles, included in the Dominion of Canada. The English have the plainest claim to priority of discovery and settlement in that part of North America. The great inland sea, Hudson's Bay, has its name from the distinguished navigator, Henry Hudson, who first sailed on its waters in 1610, and took possession of the bay and straits by authority of James the First. Two years later, Sir Thomas Button erected a cross at the mouth of a river entering the Bay on the west, and, claiming the region for England, called the place Port Nelson, after the commander of his ship. In 1631, Captain Luke Fox, exploring under orders from Charles the First, visited Hudson's Bay, and restored the cross at Port Nelson, which he found to have been defaced and mutilated, either by the action of the weather or by the hands of natives. In 1667, Captain Zachariah (or Zachary) Gilham (or Gillam) entered the Bay, and erected Fort Charles at the mouth HUDSON'S BAY AND THE GREAT NORTH-WEST. 303 of a river named by him after Prince Rupert, cousin of the English sovereign: the modern names of these are Fort Rupert and River Nemiskau. Gillam appears to have done some trade in furs with the natives, and from this source came the famous " Hudson's Bay Company". Prince Rupert and his friends subscribed a capital of ,10,500, and obtained a charter from Charles the Second, incor- porating them as the " Governor and Company of Merchant Adventurers trading to Hudson Bay". The associates hereby received the grant of an undefined territory " from Lake Superior westwards ", with exclusive rights of trade. This vast region, named " Rupert's Land", appears to have been taken to include all the lands discovered, or to be discovered, within the entrance of Hudson Strait, or, as otherwise explained, all territory whose waters drained into the Bay or Strait. The commercial object was mainly that of importing into Great Britain furs and skins obtained from the Indians by barter, and the erection of armed posts, for the protection of the European traders, shortly followed. Fort Rupert was erected on the east side of the Bay; Fort Hayes on the west coast, at the entrance of Moose River; and Fort Albany at some distance to the north, at the mouth of Albany River. The Company's agents and servants were soon involved in trouble with French traders who claimed the same region under a grant made long before, by Louis the Thirteenth, to the "Company of New France". In 1680, Captain Draper was sent to the Nelson River for the purpose of starting a trade in furs, but, two years later, two French vessels drove away the Company's ship, and ended their project of establishing a "factory" at Port Nelson. After other aggressive acts, a French force from Montreal, com- manded by De Troyes and D'Iberville, captured in the summer of 1686 all the British trading posts and forts on the shores of the Bay. This conduct appears to have been dictated by a policy wider and deeper than a mere desire to obtain commercial advan- tages. The French seem to have held that their position in Canada was endangered by a British hold on Hudson's Bay to the north of their dominion, at the same time that Massachusetts was encroaching on Acadia to the east, and New York, on the south, was claiming possession of the southern shore of Lake Ontario. The two countries in Europe were at peace, but this fact was 304 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. regarded by the assailants as simply affording them an opportunity for surprise. Fort Hayes was taken on the evening of June igth, while its four eight-pounder guns were unloaded, and after its garrison of fifteen men had resisted for two hours, in their block- house of logs, the fire of nearly six times their number. A few days later, a British vessel moored in front of Fort Rupert was boarded and seized while nearly all the crew were asleep below, and the fort itself, with its feeble garrison, of whom five out of fifteen were killed or disabled, was soon in French hands. In the last days of August, the invaders arrived with an armed vessel in front of Fort Albany, containing a garrison of thirty men. No defence was possible against a great superiority j.n cannon and troops, and the French, for more than twenty years, became virtual masters on most of Hudson's Bay. The French king, Louis the Fourteenth, having long enjoyed the subservience of England under Charles the Second, had rightly judged that no retaliation need be feared from his brother and successor, James. The seizure of territory on Hudson's Bay had been made by France but three months before a treaty of neutrality and amity was signed in London, providing that "the domain each power held in America should be maintained in its full extent ". The "domain" of France now included the Hudson's Bay territory, and, a few days after the treaty was concluded, the released British prisoners of Forts Hayes, Rupert, and Albany brought the news to London. The tidings was received with great indignation. The Company was now an important body, distinguished by its loyalty to the Crown, and a petition was at once presented to James, bearing amongst other signatures that of " Governor Churchill ", the man who was to become the first Duke of Maryborough. The document referred to the " Piraticall manner" in which the French had "taken and totally despoiled the Petitioners of three of their Forts and Factories, three of their ships, Fifty Thousand Beaver Skinns, and a great quantity of Provisions, Stores and Merchandizes laid in for many Yeares Trade". The king was placed in an awkward position. He depended on Louis for support in his schemes of ruling England independently of parliaments, and of establishing the Roman Catholic religion. On the other hand, it was most desirable not to offend, by neglect of just complaints, the powerful mercantile HUDSON'S BAY AND THE GREAT NORTH-WEST. 305 interest of the city of London. Cromwell would have at once demanded justice and reparation in a tone that would have brought speedy satisfaction for those who had been wronged. What James the Second did was to submit the case to a conference of five commissioners, including the artful and heartless Sunderland, the Scottish Earl of Middleton, and Sydney, Earl of Godolphin, on the English side, with the French ambassador Barillon and his colleague Bonrepaux, acting for the French. It was not till December, 1687, that a report was made, with the result of leaving the French in possession of Hudson's Bay. A year later, James the Second was a dethroned exile. The accession of William the Third brought war with France, and for some years affairs in Europe prevented any active assertion of British rights in the disputed region of North America. In 1693 an expedition recovered the three forts, but at the close of 1695 they were again in French possession, along with Fort York, a strong work of recent erection. In 1696, two British men-of-war regained possession of every post on the Bay, but the holders were not long left undisturbed. In the next year, a strong naval force arrived from France, and joined at Newfoundland the brave and able D'Iberville, who had been sent out by De Frontenac, the governor of Canada, for the uprooting of British settlements in every quarter. In July he started for Hudson's Bay with four men-of-war, but one of the vessels was crushed in the ice, and, as the rest were detached by the weather, the French commander, early in September, found himself near Fort York with only his own 5o-gun ship, Le Pelican. Three British vessels soon appeared in the offing, and D'Iberville boldly advanced to the attack. One of the ships was the Hampshire, of fifty guns: it is now unknown whether her consorts were men-of-war or armed merchantmen. In any case, the Hampshire speedily sank. As the French state, she was ruined by a single broadside, an effect which every naval man knows to be impossible for the guns of that period to produce on a vessel of her size and scantling. The sea was very rough, and it is most likely that the Hampshire succumbed by capsizing through a sudden squall. No boat could be lowered, and every man on board went down. One of the other British ships surrendered, and the other escaped to tell the tale. Two days later, the Pelican and her prize were driven ashore, with some loss VOL. I. 20 306 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. of life among the crews, but the arrival of the other ships of the French squadron decided the possession of Fort York. After three days' bombardment, the place was given up with the honours of war. The Treaty of Ryswick, signed in September, 1697, left Fort Albany alone in British possession, but the Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, again made the Hudson Bay Company masters of the whole coast, and the French flag disappeared from those waters until the war which ended in 1783. In 1782, some French ships under the famous and ill-fated La Perouse, whom we saw in the Pacific at Botany Bay, captured Forts York and Churchill, to be shortly restored at the Peace of Versailles. The Company, at this date, had increased their capital and extended their operations by the erection of many new stations for the trade in furs. The explora- tions to the north-west will be shortly dealt with, and we may here refer to the formidable opposition started in 1783 by the North- west Fur Company established at Montreal. This energetic body, in its commercial warfare with the old monopoly, aroused feeling which was vented in contests between traders, servants, and agents on both sides, not without loss of property and life. The vast region of lakes, rivers, and woods, long sacred to the beaver, buffalo, moose, wolf, bear, and other creatures hunted as beasts of prey or as objects of value for skin and fur, was by degrees opened up in the adventurous and arduous toils of both British and French explorers. Trappers, voyageurs, and coureurs de dots, scurrying on snow-shoes in the wintry woods, or paddling along the numberless streams and lakes in the light canoes which could be carried on the back over the portages connecting the different waters, made their way, greatly daring in the greed for gain, from point to point of the huge domain. The hardiest men of both sides of the Atlantic were engaged in the work of gathering, trading in, and storing furs. The Hebrides and Orkneys sent forth their sons, and Frenchmen of Canada, Indians of divers tribes, half-breeds, and adventurers from every clime, were to be found at the widely-scattered posts of the Company. By a regular tariff of barter, the skins of the beaver, the marten, the musk-rat, and the valuable silver-fox were obtained from the natives who trapped them or hunted them down. The great names in the exploration of the north-western HUDSON'S BAY AND THE GREAT NORTH-WEST. 307 regions are those of the French Les Verendryes, father and sons, and of the Scottish trader and traveller, Sir Alexander Mackenzie. The elder La Verendrye, a man of nearly fifty years, was in 1728 in command, under De Beauharnois, as Governor of Canada, at Fort Nepigon, on Lake Superior. He had heard from the Indians of great lakes to the north, and he applied to Beauharnois for permission and help to establish French influence on the inland waters afterwards known as Lake of the Woods and Lake Winni- peg. His avowed object was to secure the territory beforehand against the English, who had not yet passed far inland from the shores of Hudson's Bay. In June, 1732, with non-official counten- ance from his friend, the governor, and in connection with a company of Montreal merchants, the explorer started with two of his sons, his nephew, some Indians, and a Jesuit missionary, Father Messaiger. By canoe-route and portage, along Rainy Lake and River, the travellers reached the inland sea called by their leader Lac des Bois, on the west shore of which they erected Fort St. Charles. After wintering there, the explorer was delayed by want of funds for needful supplies, and in 1734 he returned to Montreal, after sending forward his eldest son to construct Fort Maurepas at the point where the river Winnipeg enters the lake of that name. Between June, 1735, and the spring of 1743, with various adventures and mishaps, La Verendrye and his sons made many important geographical discoveries. In 1736, the eldest son, a missionary named Pere Auneau, and a party of men, were attacked and all massacred by Sioux Indians. In 1738, the elder La Verendrye entered the Red River by canoe from Lake Winnipeg, and thence, by the Assiniboine and by portage, he arrived at Lake Manitoba, but was soon forced to make a long halt by severe illness. In the course of 1739, a younger son of the French traveller passed up Lake Winnipegosis and pressed on by land towards the Saskatchewan. In 1740, the father returned to Canada, and was received with distinction at Quebec by the governor. In the autumn of the following year he was again at Fort St. Charles, whence he reached Fort de la Reine, on the Assiniboine, and thence dispatched one of his sons to the upper part of Lake Winnipeg, where the river Saskatchewan discharges its waters. In the course of 1742, the Chevalier de la Verendrye 308 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. and one of his brothers reached the upper waters of the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers, but there is no good evidence to show that they ever arrived, as has been asserted by modern writers, at the foot of, or even within sight of, the Rocky Mountains. The geographical achievements of the La Verendrye family are notable enough when they include, as we have shown, the exploration, if not the first discovery, of Lakes Winnipeg and Manitoba, of the rivers Assiniboine and Saskatchewan, and of a vast extent of country many hundreds of miles west and north of Lake Superior. For British explorers, a free course was opened, so far as French opposition was concerned, by the sequel of Wolfe's exploit in 1759. Ten years after that date, Samuel Hearne started from Prince of Wales Fort, on Hudson's Bay, for the north and west. He was a servant of the Company, despatched by them for the discovery of copper mines. In the course of four years' travel, ending in 1772, Hearne reached the Great Slave Lake, called by him " Lake Athapuscon ", and, making his way to the Arctic Ocean, there discovered the mouth of the Copper-mine river, and proved the existence of the straits to the north of the American continent. Alexander Mackenzie, a native of the Highlands, went out to Canada to enter the service of the North-west Fur Com- pany. He was a born explorer, endued with an inquiring mind and an adventurous spirit, with a healthy and very hardy frame. His eager desire was to make a new route across the great conti- nent to the western ocean. During the earlier years of his sojourn in the wilds, he was engaged on and around Lake Superior, and his qualities rapidly gained him a leadership among the boldest souls of his comrades. The dangers and discomforts of the waters and the woods, from the fierce and cunning native, from heat and cold, from hunger and thirst, were to Mackenzie matters of enjoy- ment and ease. A ruler of men, he was successful in swaying the spirits of his followers, in subduing their fears, appeasing their dis- contents, and stirring faint hearts and weary bodies to new hopes and efforts towards the goal. Such was the man that in 1 789 left Fort Chepewyan, a fur-traders' post on the south side of the Lake of the Hills, now called Lake Athabasca. On June 3rd, he started in a birch-bark canoe, and, following the Slave River into the Great Slave Lake, went northwards by the river that bears his name until, in the latest days of July, he reached the point where HUDSON'S BAY AND THE GREAT NORTH-WEST. 309 its waters enter the Polar Sea. On September i2th he was back at the fort with the four canoes that made the expedition, after a journey of more than two thousand miles. The determined and practical character of this great traveller was now made manifest in another line. From lack of scientific lore, he had failed, in his journey towards the Arctic Ocean, to know his exact position on the globe. He started for London, and there remained until he had gained the requisite mathematical knowledge, and then returned to Canada eager for fresh geo- graphical fame. In the autumn of 1792, we find Mackenzie again at Fort Chepewyan, now with his face and his purpose turned towards the west. On October loth, he began the new journey, and passing down the Elk into the Peace River, he wintered at a place called Deer Mountain from November ist till May 9th, 1793. His party was composed of seven picked men, including two French voyageurs of the former expedition, besides two Indians. One of the party, Francois Beaulieu, died nearly eighty years afterwards, in 1872, at the age of nearly a hundred. The Rocky Mountains, with their summits covered with snow, came in view to the south-west on May 1 7th, and, after great difficulty and toil in crossing the range, the Pacific Ocean was reached near the mouth of what is now called Simpson's River, in British Columbia. This issue of the labours of Mackenzie and his men was attained on July 22nd, as recorded by themselves on a rock by the shore in huge letters of vermilion mixed with melted grease. On August 24th the hardy and daring travellers were again at their starting- point in Peace River. Mackenzie had thus surpassed all previous travellers in North America by reaching both the Arctic and Pacific Oceans along routes which had before been wholly unknown to white men. 310 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. CHAPTER X. COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. Geographical division and history of the islands Barbados Its flourishing condition in early times Introduction of negro labour into the island Enterprising spirit of the Barbadians The Bermudas or Somers' Islands Leeward Islands St. Kitts Nevis Antigua Montserrat Dominica Virgin Islands Windward Islands Tobago St. Lucia Grenada and the Grenadines St. Vincent The Bahamas British Honduras or Belize Trinidad Jamaica. The groups of islands called the West Indies were first discovered, as all the world knows, by the Spaniards under the leadership of the Genoese navigator, Christopher Columbus. The title bestowed by the great mariner bears witness, of course, to his belief that he had, when he landed in the Bahamas, reached a portion of the Indian territory in Asia. Geological investigation makes it probable that, in early ages, the great archipelago which sweeps in a grand curve from North to South America, inclosing the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, was continuous land with the two great masses. In the year after their discovery, the West Indies received the existing name of Antilles, applied to the whole of the islands save the Bahamas. The name was given by the historian, Peter Martyr d'Anghera, a native of Italy who was well received at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella, and became in due time Bishop of Jamaica. His work entitled De Orbe Novo, published in 1516, contained the first account of the discovery, or re-discovery, of America, and the word "Antilles" has reference to a supposed island, or submerged continent, in those regions, marked on very early charts as Antiglia. The Greater Antilles are Cuba, Jamaica. Hayti, and Porto Rico, the other islands being known as the Lesser Antilles. The northern isles of the Lesser Antilles, including Antigua, are called the Leeward Islands, from their lying, for the most part, more to the west, and thus farther from the source of the north- east trade, the prevailing wind of the West Indies. The native or aboriginal population of the islands consisted of a race of American Indians named Caribs, long since exterminated, or expelled from those shores, with few exceptions, to the neighbouring coasts of the mainland of Central and South America. At an early date, the lack of labour for the production of sugar, COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 311 tobacco, and other special growths of the West Indies caused the importation of the negro-slaves whose descendants still form so large a part of the population. The tropical climate and the fertility of soil were, from the first, attractive to Spaniards as natives of the warm region of southern Europe and as the pos- sessors of dominion on this side of the Atlantic at a time when monopoly and aggrandisement were becoming, in the new states- system of Europe, the supreme objects of desire and effort. The rapid rise of Spain to predominance in Europe was followed by as swift and remarkable a decline to inferior rank, and after less than a century of her supremacy among the nations, the English, French, and Dutch, in our Stuart age, began to appear as settlers in the sunny islands fringing the east of the great inter-continental sea. The history will show that the struggle for possession of the Lesser Antilles was at last mainly one between the chief European rivals and maritime powers, Great Britain and France. In the vast development of our colonial empire during the nineteenth century the importance and interest of the West Indian Isles have in a great degree declined, but their history has its phases of sentiment and romance, as well as its serious and stirring records of combat and of commerce, of lengthy and hot debate in parliament at home, succeeded by legislation most momentous for all who were concerned. West India sugar is a phrase that, at the close of the eighteenth century, was of the highest commercial and political import in the cities of London and Bristol. Havana cigars, the most valuable product of the " Queen of the Antilles ", have ever been the highest form of the " noxious " weed denounced by e5 * James the First. Jamaica rum cannot be named without raising the view of British tars, bare to the waist, and begrimed with the smoke of exploded powder, working between decks, with dire effect upon French, Dutch, or Spanish foes, the shotted guns of the towering ship in line of battle, or the lively frigate in chase or duel. The negro slave combines, as a subject of thought and discourse, the opposite elements of tragedy and comedy, of the deepest feeling and the broadest fun. The freeing of the negro in the West Indian Isles under British sway was a grand national act of repentance and reparation for a wrong which, to our shame, had its origin with the commercial greed of an Englishman in the Elizabethan age. 312 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. The heroes of our most adventurous time come before us in the mention of the "Spanish Main", or the Caribbean Sea and its coasts, where the "sea-dogs" of Elizabeth harassed the foes of their land and their faith, and showed in themselves a curious mingling of patriot and pirate, as Puritans plundering for plunder's sake, and yet doing all "in the name of the Lord". The seas of that region, alive with sharks, have been reddened with the blood of many a victim to the seaman's greatest foe in tropical climes. West Indian waters had an evil name in the seventeenth and early in the eighteenth century for the wretches who flew the black flag at the main, and, themselves the offscouring of every people, boarded and sacked the peaceful trade-ship, and made all her crew " walk the plank " into the sea. The stories of the time are rife with accounts of pirates' bodies hung in chains at Kingston and other West Indian ports, of treasure buried in secret spots by the captains of piratical craft, and of the " buccaneers " who, up to the close of the seventeenth century, waged war against the Spanish monopoly of trade. These renowned adventurers from every European maritime people had their strongholds in the Caribbean seas, first at Tortuga in 1630, and a generation later at Jamaica, and formed a confederacy of men full of courage and skill in their hazardous calling, of hatred for the Spaniard, and of cruelty for those who resisted their will. The greatest of the leaders of men in this wild and lawless career were the terrible Frenchmen, Montbars and Peter of Dieppe, and the Welshman, Henry Morgan, a man of distinguished valour and ability, who was knighted by Charles the Second, and became deputy-governor of Jamaica. The worst of the buccaneers, and the degenerate successors of the more chivalrous and gallant of the number, were the men that, as mere pirates, were hated and hunted down by all honest mariners. Barbados is, socially and historically, the most English of all our West Indian colonies. From the date of its first occupation by our settlers, early in the seventeenth century, the island has never changed hands, and, bearing once the name " Little England", it was, prior to the detrimental influence of the Navigation Act, and the competition of Jamaica, one of the richest, most populous, and most industrious regions in the world. The date of discovery is unknown, but the name (derived from " Los Barbados ", banyans COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 313 or "bearded" fig-trees) points to Portuguese navigators as the first European visitors who noted that feature of its luxuriant vegetation. It was in 1605 that the crew of the English ship Olive touched there, and took nominal possession by carving on a tree the words " James, King of England, and of this island ". The place was almost devoid of native inhabitants, a fact attributed to the ruthless cruelty of the Spanish in the West Indies. In 1625 Sir William Courteen, a London merchant, sent out a small party of settlers, who landed on the west coast and erected some buildings, with defences, called by them James' Town. Two years later Charles I. granted "all the Caribbee Isles" to the Earl of Carlisle, who appointed a governor, and turned his new possession to profitable use by the sale of some ten thousand acres of land to London merchants. These men of capital and enterprise lost no time, for in 1628 more than sixty settlers, under their auspices, landed on the shore of Carlisle Bay, and founded Bridgetown, the present capital, by the erection of timber-dwellings, and the construction of a bridge spanning the river which crossed the ground. The fertile soil was soon producing cotton, indigo, and tobacco, with the sugar-cane (a native of southern Asia) as a plant from which those earlier Barbadians merely brewed a rude form of rum. The prosperity of the island began when a Dutch- man, arriving from Brazil, brought to the planters the process of boiling down the juice of the canes when they were fully ripe. The making of sugar was soon the staple industry, creating great and rapid wealth, and establishing in full force the labour of negro- slaves. It was in 1645 tnat: ^ ie blacks from Africa were introduced. The heat of the climate was such as to unfit Europeans for field- work, and the negro was stronger, in a muscular sense, than the native race of the West Indies. It has been urged that the first motive for the employment of negroes was the humane purpose of saving the weak from toil under tropical suns, but the history of England in the seventeenth and earlier part of the eighteenth centuries informs us that large numbers of whites, guilty of political, religious, or social offence to the ruling powers, were dispatched from the British Isles to forced labour in the " plantations ". It must be remembered that this term includes the colonies in North America, where the climate was well suited to the labour of 314 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Europeans; but in the middle of the seventeenth century, under the " Cromwellian Settlement" in Ireland, we find thousands of women, girls, and boys sent out as slaves to Jamaica and Barbados, and the Bristol merchants had regular agents who treated with the Irish government for slaves to work in the sugar-fields. A brisk trade in sugar was soon being carried on with Bristol, and large supplies of English goods were sent out thence and from the port of London. Within twenty years from the introduction of the sugar manufacture the island, no larger than the Isle of Wight, contained 50,000 people, and the planters were making enormous fortunes. At an early date in the history of Barbados, the English settlers found themselves living under the political conditions which pre- vailed at home. In 1645 the island was already divided into i r parishes, each sending two representatives to a General Assembly. The Civil War then raging in Great Britain promoted the pros- perity of our then chief West Indian possession by the emigration of many Royalists of ample means, who also gave a decided tone to the politics of the Barbadian planters. In 1649, when the Com- monwealth was proclaimed in England, Lord W r illoughby, the governor, declared his unchanged allegiance to monarchy, as represented by the young king, Charles II. The notice taken of this attitude by the republican rulers of the British Isles proves the importance of the position held by Barbados. Sir George Ayscue (or Ayscough) was sent out in 1651 with a force that took possession of the island, and the Commonwealth officer banished Lord Willoughby, when he persisted in refusal to recognize the new government at home. No harm ensued to the people or their property, and a charter of 1652 confirmed their constitutional system of rule, including the right of self-taxation. Ten years later, as a consequence of the Restoration, Willoughby returned, not only as governor, but as proprietor of the island, under con- veyance from Lord Carlisle, son of the first grantee. Certain claims on the settlers were then made by the heirs of the Carlisles, and, to the great discontent of the people, a duty of 4*^ per cent on all exports was imposed. In 1663 Charles II. caused the dissolution of proprietary rule, and assumed sovereign rights over Barbados, with a regular revenue for himself and his heirs, amount- ing in 1684 to about ^7000 per annum. The export duties, in COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 315 spite of all remonstrances, continued to be paid until the beginning of Victoria's reign. The general history of the island, apart from the rivalry of Jamaica in sugar and rum, and until the commercially disastrous abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century, has been one of almost uneventful, unchecked, and uniform prosperity. A census taken in 1684 showed a white population of 20,000, with more than double that number of negroes. The Barbadians from time to time displayed an enterprising spirit which could not rest satisfied with the limits of their own territory. Soon after the Restoration some of the planters went in arms, and expelled the French for a time from the island of St. Lucia. In 1665 we see them founding a new settlement in Carolina. In 1690 General Codrington, with a force from Barbados, drove out the French from the island of St. Kitts. The same gentleman, a native of the island, showed a truly patriotic and philanthropic spirit in bequeathing his two estates of land, sugar-works, negroes, and cattle to the Society for the Pro- pagation of the Gospel, for the foundation of a college. The pro- perty thus left in 1710 was, afterwards turned to most profitable use in the education of clergymen for service in the West Indies. Among the incidents of Barbadian history prior to the present century we may note that in 1778, when Great Britain was at war with France, and with the revolted colonies of North America, the people of the island, from loss of trade and the interruption of communication, were severely distressed, and received a grant in relief from parliament. The victory of Rodney over the Count de Grasse in 1782 saved Barbados, along with Jamaica and other West India Islands, from capture by the French. In that same year the ravages wrought by a fearful hurricane were such as to need, in partial relief, the grant of ,80,000 from the House of Commons. The Bermudas or Somers Islands, not strictly of the "West Indies", are almost as old a British possession as Barbados, and in date of settlement rank before that island. The first and official name is taken from that of the Spanish navigator Juan Bermudes, who first sighted them in 1515. The second title is derived from Sir George Somers, a native of Lyme Regis. His ship, the Sea Venture, which also bore Sir Thomas Gates, was wrecked on an island of the group in 1609, as she sailed for Virginia, then lately colonized from England. The stormy waters of that 3l6 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. region of the North Atlantic, if not the actual incident of the wreck, caused the well-known allusion in Shakespeare's Tempest (Act i. scene 2) to the "still-vex'd (i.e. constantly tormented) Bermoothes". The play was first produced in 161 1, and we find similar references in other writers of the time. Thus Webster, in the Duchess of Malfi (Act iii. scene 2), makes one of his characters declare that he "would sooner swim to the Bermootha's on Two politicians' rotten bladders", and Fletcher, in Women Pleased (\K.\. i. scene 2), writes of "purchas- ing that egg-shell, To victual out a witch for the Burmoothes". From Stow's Annals we learn that the islands had an evil name as being " said and supposed to bee inchanted and inhabited with witches, and deuills, which grew by reason of accustomed monstrous Thunder, storme, and tempest, neere vnto those Hands, also for that the whole coast is so wonderous dangerous, of Rockes. that o J * few can approach them, but with vnspeakable hazard of shipwrack". We shall see hereafter that the "dreadful coast of the Bermodes", as Stow calls it in the same passage, has not deterred modern visitors. Sir George was, at the time of his mishap, the admiral of a fleet sent out by the South Virginia Company of London. The other eight vessels reached their destination, while Somers took posses- sion of the group in the name of James I., and in the following year the shipwrecked persons built a small vessel, and made their way to the Virginian settlement at James Town. The islands were yet destined to prove fatal to Somers. He found the Virginian colonists suffering from lack of food, and in search thereof he made a voyage to the islands where the sunken reef on which his ship had been driven still bears the name of Sea Venture Flat. There were herds of wild pigs descended from animals put ashore by some previous voyagers, and in November, 1611, we find that he "dyed of a surfeit in eating of a pig". The evil reputation of the group which had been libelled by the writers of the age vanished at the touch of personal experience, and Captain Matthew Somers, nephew of the admiral, conveyed to England a faithful and fair report concerning the picturesque, healthful, and to some extent fertile islands. The Virginia Company, under an extension of their charter granted by the Crown, annexed the group to their territory on the mainland, and soon disposed of their new posses- sion to another body of " adventurers " or speculators, entitled " The Company of the City of London for the Plantation of the COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 317 Somers' Islands ". For many years the islands bore the name thus attached, until the justice of history recognized the claim of the first discoverer. The soil was found suitable for the orowth o of tobacco, and as early as the year 1621, James I., no lover of "the weed", and a monarch desirous to avoid offence to Spain in her Cuba trade, issued a proclamation limiting the export from Virginia and the Bermudas. It may be of interest to mention, in this age of smokers, that the herb was introduced into England about 1585, and that the taste for it grew so rapidly that tobacco shops in London soon became as common as taverns. In 1620 the value of the annual imports was estimated at ,120,000, and the royal proclamation concerning Virginia and the Bermudas named nearly half that sum as the limit for value exported from these new British colonies. The product became a good source of revenue in the heavy duty which was imposed, and was soon appropriated as a Crown monopoly. A representative form of government was established before the end of James I.'s reign, but the charter of the company in London was annulled in 1684, and governors were henceforth appointed by the Crown. The inhabitants of the Bermudas rank amongst those happy communities who have little or no history. Devoted to the tillage of the soil and to peaceful trade, they knew naught by experience of the horrors of war. They were largely engaged in maritime pursuits, for which they built, from the cedar of their islands, many small vessels up to 300 tons burden, sailing to the West Indies, Demerara, the United States, and the British colonies in North America. At a later period a carrying trade arose in salt fish from Newfoundland for the church fasts of Italy and Portugal, with return cargoes of the port wine well suited for consumption by the dwellers in that bleak and foggy region. The more enterprising traders would sail to Ascension or Madeira, and there trans-ship, from the stately vessels of the Indian fleet, the teas of China, the silks and drugs of India, and other Eastern produce for sale in the ports on the American coast. Not wholly exempt from the tro- pical storms which superstition laid to the charge of " witches and devils", the islands were, in October, 1780, ravaged by a fearful hurricane. The close of the eighteenth century, a time of war with France and Spain, gave Bermuda a new value as a naval station, defended by the dangerous reefs that surround the shores, and by 318 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. the intricate channel which requires, for access to land, most skilful and careful pilotage. Of the group known as the Leeward Islands, Dominica, Mont- serrat, St. Kitts, Antigua, and some of the Virgin Isles, were discovered in 1493 by Columbus. The British possession of nearly all the islands now held by us in this part of the archipelago dates from the seventeenth century, and, apart from Dominica, they have been from the time of settlement under a common form of rule. The grant of "all the Caribee Isles" to the Earl of Carlisle by Charles I., as delivered above with respect to Barbados, included the islands now under review, and under William and Mary the colonists were provided with a legislature which passed measures that are still, in some instances, in beneficial action. One statute, dealing with methods of settling estate in land, showed the wisdom of the colonial debaters in effecting a reform which the home country did not obtain until nearly the beginning of Victoria's reign. One of the last Acts of the General Assembly before its virtual extinction in 1 798 was a statute which greatly bettered the condition of the slaves. The enlightenment as well as the humanity of the Leeward Islands' legislators was displayed in the same year by measures for freedom of trade and for Catholic emancipation from political disabilities. Neither of these Acts was allowed by the home government, still lagging far in the rear of its subjects in the West Indies. To St. Kitts, as the centre to which the rest owed their colon- ization, the place of honour is due in the ensuing record. St. Kitts, thus commonly named for " St. Christopher", was called by the natives "the fertile island", and received its designation from Columbus probably in honour of his patron saint. He found there a dense population of Caribs, who long remained possessors of their homes and lands. The history of the island, after the first establishment of Europeans, was chequered by conflicts between the English and French. The first attempt at European settle- ment was made in 1623 by Mr. Thomas Warner, but his first crops were ruined by a violent storm, and he then applied for help from the patentee, the Earl of Carlisle. The appointment of Warner as " King's Lieutenant" over St. Kitts, Nevis, Barbados, and Mont- serrat sent him back to the island in 1625 as the founder of a permanent colony. On the day of his landing a small body of COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 319 Frenchmen also came ashore, and the European rivals found it well to combine against the common and more numerous foe, the Caribs. In May, 1627, a league was made, by the terms of which the English took the central part, while the French settled down at the two ends of the island. Two years later, a Spanish attack wrought much damage to the new-comers, but a stream of West Indian emigration set in from Europe, and French and English colonists rapidly spread to the neighbouring islands. In a few years' time the terms of the league were broken through jealousies which led to violence and bloodshed, and the outbreak of war between the nations in Europe led to the surrender of the English at St. Kitts in 1666. The Treaty of Breda, in the following year, restored the English settlers to the possession of their lands, and for more than twenty years the two parties lived at peace. The accession of William III. to the British throne in 1689, and the subsequent outbreak of war with France, brought new trouble to the English settlers. The French planters were in greater force, and our people were forced to flee or perish. In 1690 General Codrington came to the rescue from Barbados, and, with a powerful body of militia at his command, drove out the French, deporting nearly a thousand to other islands, and taking sole possession for his countrymen. The Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 restored the French to their former share of St. Christopher's, but in 1702, when the War of the Spanish Succession began, they were ousted again by their English foes, and the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 gave the island wholly into English hands. In the great European war which arose when France embraced the cause of our revolted colonies in North America, the British navy was for a time overmatched by the united maritime forces of France, Holland, and Spain, and St. Kitts again fell for a time into French possession, but was recovered after Rodney's grand achievement against the Comte de Grasse in the spring of 1782. Nevis, noted for its hurricanes and earthquakes, which have wrought at times great destruction of property and life, had an evil name in the slavery days, as one of the chief West Indian markets for the sale of "black ivory". It was named by Columbus from a snow-capped mountain near Barcelona. Its first settlers came from Thomas Warner's party of colonists at St. Kitts in 1628, and apart from two French invasions, at times of European 320 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. war between the rival nations, the island has remained uncontested in British hands. About the beginning of the eighteenth century Nevis was maintaining a population of 20,000, or above half as many more than its actual inhabitants. Antigua, on its discovery by Columbus, was named by him after Santa Maria la Antigua, an old church in Seville. A few Caribs, of warlike and cannibal tastes, were the sole population, and the island, which is poorly supplied with water, was left un- noticed by Europeans for nearly a century and a half. The grant to Lord Carlisle in 1627 led to the arrival of a few English settlers, five years later, from St. Kitts. In 1663 Charles II. bestowed the island by patent on Lord Willoughby, who sent out a large number of colonists. They soon suffered much from French interference. An expedition from Martinique took possession early in 1667, but the Treaty of Breda restored it in the same year to British occu- pation, in which it has ever since remained, amid all the changes that occurred to neighbouring islands during our lengthy maritime contests with France and Spain. The trade, from time to time, was exposed to the attacks of pirates and privateers, and the planters may have suffered loss from occasional raids. The rich soil soon produced wealth in sugar, with its extracts, molasses and rum, and the history of the island has been mainly one of uneventful pro- sperity, chequered by the damage due to hurricanes and earthquakes, of which this island has had her full share. In 1706 an insurrection, caused by the tyrannical conduct of the governor, Colonel Parke, ended in his violent death, but the home government granted a full pardon to all who were engaged in the outbreak. Montserrat, the gem of the Lesser Antilles for salubrity of climate and beauty of scenery, was named by Columbus " Mon- serrado", from the saw-like outline of its pinnacles. In these he saw a resemblance to the Catalonian mountain of that name, on which stands the famous Benedictine abbey where Ignatius Loyola was living when he planned the institution of the Society of Jesus. Colonized by the English from St. Kitts in 1632, it was captured in 1664 by the French, who laid heavy imposts on the British settlers; four years later, under the Treaty of Breda, it was left in our hands, in which it has since remained, save for an occupation by the French for two years prior to the Treaty of Versailles concluded in 1783. In 1668 the people, by royal charter, received COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 32! a legislative council and assembly, which bodies, with various changes of form and system, directed local affairs down to a recent date. The name of Dominica was assigned by its great discoverer from the fact of his arrival on its shores on Sunday (Dies Dominica, in the Latin calendar), November 3rd, 1493, while he was sailing between Martinique and Guadeloupe. The island was included in the grant made by Charles I. to Lord Carlisle, but it was long left without colonists, and several attempts at occupation were thwarted by the French in those waters. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, declared Dominica and some other islands to be neutral ground for European nations, and left to the occupation of the aboriginal Caribs. Within a few years, however, a number of French planters were found in possession. An English attack in 1756 was successful, and our right by conquest was confirmed seven years later under the Treaty of Paris. French jealousy was aroused, and the Dominican landowners invited aid from their countrymen at Martinique, though they had been left undisturbed in 1 763, on becoming subjects of the British crown, and undertak- ing to pay a small quit-rent for their estates. The hostility of feeling between the two nations in matters of colonial possession and trade, both in the East and West Indies, has been referred to in previous pages of this work. It was a spirit which ever disregarded the existence of peace between the Powers in Europe, and aimed only at aggrandisement on the scenes of rivalry in other quarters of the world. It was therefore certain that, on the outbreak of war in 1778, the French in the West Indies would assail the British islands. A man of exceptional ability and energy had become, in 1768, governor of the French island of Guadeloupe, and afterwards commander-in-chief of all the French forces in the West Indies. This was Francois Claude Amour, Marquis de Bouille, a fiery native of Auvergne, who had done distinguished service in Germany during the Seven Years' War, and was to become famous for courage and decision in his command at Metz when the throne of Louis XVI. was tottering to its fall. Carlyle alludes to his " swift, sharp operation on the English Leeward Islands" at this epoch, and describes him as "a quick, choleric, sharply discerning, stubbornly endeavouring man . with valour, nay, headlong audacity . . . with military VOL. T. 21 322 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. tiger-spring, clutching Nevis and Montserrat from the English ". Such was he who now made his presence strongly feh by the British in the West Indies. A powerful naval and military expe- dition was prepared at Martinique, and in September, 1778, after a stout resistance, Dominica fell into the power of De Bouille. A harsh governor was appointed, and there was much distress among the people from the utter failure of trade. Tobago, St. Kitts, Nevis and other islands were also conquered, but Dominica, with some others, was restored to Great Britain in the treaty of 1783. Of the Virgin Islands, a group numbering about fifty, some thirty-two belong to Great Britain, the chief of these being Tortola, Virgin Gorda, and Anegada. The name, assigned by Columbus in 1493, has reference to St. Ursula and her legendary pious maidens of martyr memory at Cologne. Some islets of the archi- pelago were first colonized in 1666 by British settlers from Anguilla, who took the place of buccaneers that had infested the seas in that part of the Antilles. The colonists, in 1773, were furnished with a separate civil government and courts of law, and their history has been throughout one of peace, obscurity, and honest toil, resulting in no wealth beyond the comforts of a life devoted to rude tillage, pasturage, and fishing. Of the Windward group, Barbados has been already noticed, and Trinidad, as also a separate colony, finds its own place else- where. Tobago, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Grenada, and the Grena- dines present a record diversified by frequent interchanges of possession during the West Indian conflicts of the two great European rivals. The island of Tobago, the name of which has been connected with the free use of tobacco by its earliest known inhabitants, the Caribs, was entitled ''Assumption" by Columbus in 1498, when he arrived there on his third voyage, ending in his discovery of the mainland of South America. Some English mariners, in 1580, found the place void of all dwellers, probably owing to Spanish extermination of the natives, and planted there the flag of the great Tudor queen. In 1608 James I. formally claimed the sovereignty, but some time elapsed before any attempt at settlement was made. In the last year of his reign a party of Barbadians reached the island, but they were unable to cope with the Caribs who had now made it their abode, and only a few escaped to tell the tale of COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 323 failure. In 1632 a Dutch company despatched some hundreds of settlers from Zealand, who occupied the place as "New Walcheren". The Spaniards and Caribs, in two years' time, came in force from Trinidad, and expelled or slew all the European intruders. In 1641 Charles I. made a grant of Tobago to James, Duke of Courland, a province on the south-east Baltic coast. The new possessor thereupon dispatched a number of his own people as colonists, and they were joined, in 1654, by a fresh body of Dutchmen, who at first made a friendly division of the territory with the Courlanders. The new-comers, however, with the greed of their race in that age, were not content with a partial possession, and in 1658 rose upon the Poles and drove them out. The early days of Tobago were a time of singular unrest, for in 1662, when the Dutch company resigned their claim, probably under threats from the aggressive Louis XIV., that monarch created a certain Cornelius Lampsis " Baron of Tobago", and made him proprietor under the French crown. In 1664 Charles II., then hostile to the Dutch, made a new grant of the much-contested territory to the Duke of Courland, but the Hollanders disdained to recognize his title, and, as English history disgracefully proves, our sovereign was then in no condition to enforce his claims. The growing maritime power of the French monarch, at war with Holland in 1677, enabled him to intervene with effect, and his fleet, defeating a Dutch squadron in those waters, caused the restoration of Tobago to the Duke of Courland, only to be sold by him, in 1681, to a London company of merchants. The island, by arrangement between the three chief countries, Great Britain, France, and Holland, was then declared to be neutral ground, where all Europeans might live as colonists or carry on trade, but no nation was to plant a garrison or attempt an exclusive tenure. At last, in 1763, the Treaty of Paris formally ceded Tobago to Great Britain. The "government of Grenada" was then established under the Great Seal, and included the rule of Dominica, St. Vincent, and the newly - ceded territory, with Grenada and its dependency, the Grenadines. The troubles of Tobago were not yet over. In 1781 the Marquis de Bouille, noticed above as the captor of Dominica, took possession of the island after a brave defence by its British inhabitants, and the Treaty of Versailles, two years later, sur- 324 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. rendered the place to France. In April, 1793, during the long war caused by the French Revolution, a British squadron in the West Indies, under Admiral Lefroy, with a body of troops under General Cuyler, retook the island, which again became French by the short-lived Peace of Amiens in 1802. To make an end of a somewhat tedious tale, Tobago was again seized by a British force in 1803, and was finally ceded to our possession by the treaty concluded in 1814. The history of St. Lucia, in its varied character, closely resembles that of Tobago. This loveliest and largest of the Wind- ward Isles proper was constantly regarded in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well worthy of warlike efforts to conquer and retain. Discovered by Columbus in June, 1502, when he was prosecuting his fourth voyage, the island was then peopled by Caribs, who remained in possession until 1639, when some English settlers arrived, only to be destroyed or driven out in the next year by the natives. France had already claimed dominion, in a grant made by Louis XIII., in 1635, to two French gentlemen, MM. de 1'Olive and Duplessis. French settlers from Martinique were the next persons that undertook to colonize, while the French monarch still claimed the sovereignty, and granted the island in 1642 to a West Indian company, who sold it to two private gentlemen. The English claim, from the first, rested on priority of settlement: the French put forward the original grant made by their sovereign. The Caribs fiercely struggled against French possession, but a treaty between the natives and the foreign intruders was concluded in 1660. The next trouble arose from the English of Barbados, who came under the command of Mr. \Varner, son of the governor at St. Kitts, and, after a severe contest with the French holders, they became masters of St. Lucia in 1665. Two years later the Treaty of Breda restored it to the French, and in 1674 it was formally subjected to the French crown as a dependency of Martinique. Soon after the Peace of Utrecht, we find St. Lucia a^ain made o a matter of contention between the two powers. The Regent d'Orleans, ruling in the minority of Louis XV., made a grant of the island to a French noble, and George I. retorted by the same step in favour of the Duke of Montagu. Some English colonists were settled there, when a body of troops in 1723 arrived from COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 325 Martinique and forced them away. The two governments then agreed to consider St. Lucia neutral ground. The outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession in 1744 led to another seizure by the French, but the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, four years later, made neutrality again the political condition of the much disputed territory. The Seven Years' War, beginning in 1756, gave the French government occasion to erect works of defence, and to pro- vide a garrison, as sole possessors. Then the British arms were called into service, and a naval expedition under Admiral Rodney, commander-in-chief on the Leeward Islands station, with troops commanded by General Monckton, the distinguished colleague of Wolfe at Quebec, captured the island, along with Grenada and Martinique. The Treaty of Paris, concluded by the Bute ministry in 1 763, has already been denounced in these pages for its imbecile arrangements in connection with North American affairs. In truth, no diplomatic instrument in our modern history is more disgraceful than that treaty, for the weakness displayed in surrendering terri- torial prizes of war obtained by British skill and valour. The cession of St. Lucia to France was now perpetrated in defiance of the fact that Lord Chatham, who had lately raised Great Britain to the height of fame, had positively refused its surrender in pre- vious negotiations. Rodney also, a man of the highest ability and the soundest judgment, had formed a strong opinion of the value of St. Lucia to our dominion in the West Indies, but he in vain urged its retention. The French accordingly remained in posses- sion until 1778, when, after a severe contest, British tars and troops again proved victorious. The great victory of Rodney and Hood in 1782 had given Great Britain a complete mastery in the region of the Leeward Islands, and yet, at the Peace of Versailles, in the following year, the island was again ceded to the French crown. The outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1793 caused a renewal of hostilities by sea and land in the West Indies, and in April of the following year St. Lucia was once more in our hands. In 1796, our government was compelled to take action against insurrectionary movements in some of the West Indian islands which contained a French population sympathizing with the revolu- tionary change of French affairs in Europe. Formidable risings in St. Lucia and St. Vincent caused the despatch of a powerful naval and military armament under Admiral Christian and Sir Ralph 326 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Abercrombie. It needed the operations of a month, from the last week of April until nearly the end of May, before the republicans, aided by revolted slaves, and fighting with great determination and severe loss to both sides, were finally subdued. Sir John Moore for a short time became governor of the island. Even then the contests which had so long hindered progress and prosperity at St. Lucia were not at an end. The Peace of Amiens, with a fatuity almost incredible, restored the island to French possession, and the outbreak of hostilities which followed that brief suspension saw the final transfer to British rule, after a surrender to forces under General Greenfield of the territory which had cost this country, through the folly of her ministers, so much vain expenditure of life and treasure. The population had been greatly diminished both in foreign and in civil war, the latter of which was due to the French Revolution, and many a year was to pass before a return of prosperity. The mode of government up to, and long after, the beginning of the nineteenth century, was in accordance with French law. Grenada, another of the Windward Islands, discovered by Columbus on his third voyage, in 1498, and by him named "Ascension", was at that time, and long remained, the abode of ferocious man-eating Caribs. The French were the first Euro- peans who sought to disturb the native occupation, but the intending settlers who went thither in 1638, under a leader named Poincy, were beaten off by the aborigines, who were attracted to this island, as it seems, in large numbers, by the fertile soil. Grenada had been included, in 1627, in Charles I.'s grant of "the Carib isles" to the Earl of Carlisle, but no attempt at English settlement was made. In 1650, Du Parquet, the French governor of Martinique, bought Grenada from a trading company, and prepared an expedition for the purpose of obtaining possession of his property. A body of 200 men accompanied Du Parquet, who is said to have at first appeased the savages by the bestowal of knives and toys, and even to have gained the cession of sovereignty from the resident chief in return for knives, hatchets, and glass beads, aided by the potent persuasion of some bottles of choice brandy. The governor of Martinique then returned to his post, leaving a kinsman, Le Compte, in charge of Grenada. Dissensions soon arose between the natives and the new pos- COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 327 w *^ / sessors, and a body of three hundred men was despatched from Martinique with orders to make short work of all who gave trouble. An internecine struggle was soon afoot, in which the Caribs, quickly beaten in the open field by the superior weapons and skill of their civilized foes, resorted to guerilla warfare, and to the slaughter of every Frenchman who fell into their hands. The contest could have but one termination, and that involved a scene most tragic and pitiful. As their numbers were reduced, the Caribs were forced away to the northern end of the island, where they found themselves caught between advancing irresistible foes and the edge of a tall cliff that overlooked the sea. A final and desperate rally took place, in which the natives were diminished to some forty men, and these survivors, preferring death to submis- sion, leapt down into the sea, to be mangled on the rocks or stifled by the waves. The summit of the cliff to this day bears the name Le Morne des Sauleurs, or " Leapers' Hill". The conquerors were soon at issue among themselves, and Du Parquet, in disgust at the expense of maintaining order, sold the island, in 1657, to the Comte de Cerillac. The ruler appointed by the new proprietor of Grenada was a brutal tyrant, whom his countrymen tried, condemned, and shot. A few years later, the island was sold to the French West Indian Company, and, on the annulling of their charter in 1674, it fell to the possession of the French crown. The vicissitudes and troubles of the territory had been such, that in 1700 there were but 251 European dwellers, with about double the number of negroes, employed in the culture of indigo, sugar, and tobacco. The planters were hampered in the pursuit of wealth by the exactions of the tax-farmers, to whose tender mercies, too well known to their countrymen in Europe, they were committed by the ruinous fiscal system of French rule before the Revolution. In 1762, as we have seen, the island was captured, along with St. Lucia and Martinique, by the armament under Rodney and Monckton, and in the following year, by the Treaty of Paris, Grenada was formally ceded to Great Britain. The produce in sugar and indigo had at that time become very large and valuable. An important case arose in constitutional law when the government imposed a duty of 4^ per cent upon all the exports of the new acquisition, and, in the end, abolition of the impost came by judgment of Lord Mansfield against the Crown. 328 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. A political contest was also occasioned by the terms on which a representative legislature, in 1765, was granted by Great Britain to Grenada. The new subjects, or French planters, adherents of the Catholic Church, then received political rights which were withheld from British-born inhabitants of the same faith. Great discontent was thereby caused, which had evil results for the favoured French at a later day. In 1779, another transfer of possession took place. The war of the American revolution was at its height, when the Comte d'Estaing arrived off the coast, in the summer season, with a powerful fleet, carrying a military force of 3000 men. It was impossible for the British to offer any effective resistance. The governor, Sir George Macartney (afterwards Governor of Madras, and, as Lord Macartney, the first British envoy ever sent to China), took a brave personal part in the defence made by a garrison composed of a company of the 48th foot, 300 militia, and 150 seamen. They were overpowered by the numbers of the foe, and were obliged to capitulate, after inflicting on the besiegers a loss of nearly 400 men. The new rulers of Grenada displayed much harshness and injustice towards the British inhabitants, but the French government interfered in their behalf, and the peace of 1783 finally placed the island under the rule of Great Britain. The political trouble was revived, however, when the Catholic French received their former exclusive privileges, and a struggle arose between the British and French parties, ending, after seven years, in the latter being deprived of all their powers as sharers in the government. The revolutionary movement which has been referred to in the history of St. Lucia had dire effects in Grenada. In March, 1795, the anarchists caused an insurrection, and the island became the scene of bloodshed accompanied by cruelties disgraceful to men who claimed to be civilized beings. The two towns of Grenville and Gonyave, or Charlotte Town, at opposite ends of Grenada, were the chief places implicated in the tragedies which took place. The British rulers were wanting in the needful firmness and judgment in forming and applying plans of repression, and, outside the capital, the whole island for more than a year was in the hands of insurgents displaying all the ferocity of the worst of brigands. The plantations were laid waste, the houses burnt, the loyalists COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 329 murdered on every side. The two parties, actuated by the utmost fury of political and religious or, on one side, anti-religious hostility, waged a war without quarter. The governor, and the Hon. Alexander Campbell, a leading colonist of much ability, were taken prisoners by the rebels and conducted to their mountain- camp. In April, 1795, after the failure of a weak attempt on that stronghold, they and nearly 50 other British subjects, including some of the chief planters and merchants, were deliberately shot. The ministry at home was slow to send relief, and it was not till June, 1796, that a strong force under Sir Ralph Abercrombie landed on the shores of Grenada and began to restore order. That brave and able Scot was no man for half-measures or ill-done work. Within ten days of his landing, the rebels had been hunted down in every fastness of the hills, and from that time the island of Grenada has enjoyed the blessings of peace. The Grenadines, a cluster of small islands, have always followed the fortunes of their neighbours, Grenada and St. Vincent. The history of St. Vincent in some respects resembles that of her sister-islands in the Windward group, but she was more closely concerned than any of those with the aboriginal race, or Caribs. At the time of her discovery by Columbus in January, 1498, aborigines of the lighter or yellow variety were found in posses- sion, and they remained undisturbed for nearly two centuries, while the island was granted, in 1627, to Lord Carlisle, declared neutral ground in 1660, and, in 1672, given by Charles II., in titular possession, to Lord Willoughby. No attempt at European settlement was made during all this period, the English and French governments having arranged, it seems, to leave Dominica and St. Vincent to the Caribs, on their abandoning all claims to other islands. In 1675, savages of the black race of Caribs, if indeed they were Caribs, were found upon the island. English and French colonists landed at this time, and, in 1722, George I. made a grant of the territory to the Duke of Montagu. About twenty years later, there were nearly a thousand white inhabitants, and about thrice the number of negro slaves, whose labours raised tropical produce to the annual value of over ,60,000. In 1748, St. Vincent was declared "neutral" by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, but the outbreak of the Seven Years' War caused its possession to be contested between France and Great Britain, 33O OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. and, in 1762, the island was taken by forces under General Monckton, and ceded to British rule by the Treaty of Paris in the following year. In 1773 the Caribs dwelling there, after a display of rebellion for several years, received the grant of an extensive district, on condition of laying down their arms and acknowledging the rule of the British sovereign. Six years later, as we have seen, St. Vincent was taken possession of by the French under the Comte d'Estaing. In 1780, the island was ravaged by the most violent hurricane ever recorded in the history of the West Indies. Three years later St. Vincent was restored to British rule by the Treaty of Versailles. Her history then, for many years, runs parallel to that of Grenada. The returning prosperity due to peace was rudely interrupted, after the outbreak of the French Revolution, by the Caribs and by French anarchists. The country was overrun by native and European savages; the plantations were made desolate; the houses burnt, and many of the British colonists murdered. After a terrible time of violence and disorder, the expedition headed by Sir Ralph Abercrombie restored peace to the island in 1796. The British government then adopted the wise and necessary measure of removing the Caribs from St. Vincent, and in March, 1797, a fleet of transports conveyed away the natives, to the number of over 5000, to the island of Rattan, in the Bay of Honduras. The British colonists were thereafter left to the peaceable possession and tillage of the soil, under the rule of a governor, a council, and a representative assembly. The extensive group called Bahamas are of the highest interest in connection with Columbus' discovery of the West Indies. At one of these islands, that called by the natives " Guanahari ", by him " San Salvador ", he first planted his foot within the New World. The island was long identified with Cat Island, or San Salvador, but recent researches have made it more probable that the great navigator's first place of landing was Watling Island, at a little distance to the east. On his arrival in October, 1492, he found natives in possession, who believed him and his followers to be angelic visitors from another sphere; but the Europeans only remained a few hours, and then sailed away to other and more important discoveries. The unhappy aborigines had soon bitter cause to regret that COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 33! the people from beyond the seas had become aware of their existence. In his first letter to the Catholic sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus, amongst many other high-flown promises of wealth to be gathered on the scene of his discovery, had given hope of abundance of slaves for the uses of European masters. The hint was acted on, and, by some of the worst cruelty and wickedness due to the presence of Spaniards in the West Indies, the Bahamas were, in course of time, stripped of all their native population. Greed for gold, in working the mines of the first European conquerors in the New World, caused rapid mortality, through hardship and ill-usage, among the natives employed at San Domingo and elsewhere. The Spaniards then resorted for fresh supplies of labour to the people of the Bahamas. The kid- nappers, with cruel craft, worked on the superstition of the natives by promises to convey them to the " happy islands " where, as they believed, their dead relatives and ancestors dwelt in bliss; and they were induced to believe that those regions lay within a few days' sail. About 50,000 people were thus entrapped on board the ships, and the greater number were conveyed to San Domingo, and set to the toil in which so many thousands had already perished. Many, in despair, refused to eat, and fled away to die in secret places. Others, making their way to the northern coast of the island of their captivity, stood inhaling the breeze which they thought was blowing from their former home, and stretched out arms of longing for the wives and children left behind. The most part died deaths of lingering torture, from overwork, whipping, and unfit or in- sufficient food. For many a year the Bahamas remained all devoid of human dwellers, as the few males, and the women and children, left there by the Spanish stealers of human flesh, made their way for safety to other regions. The group was almost forgotten in Europe when Queen Elizabeth, in 1578, conveyed the islands by charter to Sir Humphrey Gilbert. No attempt, however, at settlement was made until after the colonization of Virginia. About 1632 some British settlers arrived, but they were soon destroyed or driven out by the Spaniards. In 1646 a good number of colonists landed from the Bermudas, and the islands began to attract attention from lawless adventurers as a convenient haunt for pouncing on Spanish galleons, for the profits to be gained by plundering wrecks, 332 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. and, in general, for irregular maritime gains. Grants of the island of New Providence, of others among the group, and of the Bahamas as a whole, were made by Charles II. to various proprietors or proprietary bodies, and in 1671 a governor was appointed. There was, however, no law or order established, and New Providence, one of the chief islands, began to be a resort of pirates and bucaneers. Spanish jealousy was aroused by the presence of their hereditary foes, the British, and the settlement at New Providence was laid waste in 1682. We hear of so-called "go- vernors" being, from time to time, made prisoners by the people whom they endeavoured to rule, and, in 1 702, one of these officials, a scoundrel named Elias Hasket, was expelled by the people with ignominious treatment. In 1704, the British settlers at New Providence, left by their new ruler, Mr. Lightwood, wholly without defence in a garrison for the fort, were attacked by the French and Spaniards. The fort was blown up, the town was plundered, and all the chief people were carried off to Havannah as prisoners of war. The Spaniards, in another descent, utterly wrecked what had been left unharmed or unseized in the former raid, and the island of New Providence remained desolate for some years. Then came a new "governor", a Mr. Birch, appointed by the " Lords Proprietors", who were not aware, as it seems, that there was nobody to govern. The new ruler found himself alone among the ruins of the town, and, after camping out for a few days in the woods, wisely took notice to quit from the mosquitos. The island was then left to the occasional visits or temporary occupation of pirates, Spaniards, and bucaneers. One of these adventurers, John Tench, or " Blackbeard ", was a name of terror to mariners on the American coast-line from Nassau to Boston, and on the Atlantic waters between the Bahamas and Great Britain. This bold pirate was the king of the whole group and adjacent seas, until his death in a sea-fight, in 1718, off the coast of North Carolina. About that time the government of George I. was requested to take measures for the establishment of order, and British rulers then took firm possession. Respectable settlers, many of German origin, arrived in New Providence, and that and other islands received new vegetable stock in the shape of cocoa-nut palms, pine-apples, and other valuable plants and trees. In 1781, the Spaniards, then at war with Great Britain, captured COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 333 New Providence, but they were soon driven out, and the islands were confirmed as a British possession by the Peace of Versailles in 1783. The country in Central America known as Honduras has its name from the Spanish word for " depths ", owing to the difficulty Columbus had in anchoring off the coast. His discovery of this region was made in 1502, when he was engaged on his fourth voyage. The land lying round the Bay of Honduras was visited by Pinzon, a Spanish explorer, in 1509, and by Cortez in 1519, when he was on his way to Mexico. It is likely that, early in the 1 7th century, British bucaneers from the West Indian islands resorted to this coast, and the second designation of British Honduras is said to be the Spanish corruption of the name of Wallis or Wallace, one of these adventurers who preyed on commerce in those waters, and sought safety from the Spanish cruisers in the many creeks or inlets of the Bay of Honduras. The fine trees producing the valuable timber called logwood and mahogany seem to have first attracted lawful trade, and about 1638 some settlers began to colonize the district now in British possession. The obscurity of the early history is shown in the fact that some accounts make Wallis one of these timber traders, and describe him as founder of the British colony. The Spanish were jealous of the profits made, but the new-comers and their successors held their ground against many occasional attacks, and the region was a kind of informal, permissive, British settlement, ruled by magistrates annually chosen at public meeting. These officials were invested with executive and judicial powers, and the laws of the community were resolutions carried at public meetings of the citizens. An impulse to British settlement near the mouth of the Belize river had been given by the conquest of Jamaica, in 1655, and, a few years after that event, wood-cutters arrived from the new colony, and the demand for the special timber of Honduras in the European markets brought many competitors in a lucrative trade. In 1765, Vice-admiral Sir William Burnaby was sent out from England to visit the settlement, in order to secure the interests of the com- munity under the Treaty of Paris. He drew up a code of local regulations, which continued in force until 1840, and soon after the Treaty of Versailles (1783), an executive officer, called " Superin- 334 UR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. tendent ", was regularly named by the home government. British Honduras long remained, in a sense, a dependency oPJamaica for protection and supervision, but the people, under the "constitution" granted by George III. through Sir William Burnaby, retained their powers of legislation at public meeting, and of choosing magistrates by free and open vote. The hostility of Spain had needed constant vigilance, and in 1779-81 we find Horatio Nelson, as commander of the brig Badger, and then as post-captain, in charge of the Hinchinbrook, engaged on the coasts of British and of Spanish Honduras, where his health suffered severely from the effects of the climate. In 1786, by a treaty with Spain, Great Britain agreed to withdraw from certain settlements to the south, on what was known as the " Mosquito coast ", on condition of our people in British Honduras being permitted to cut mahogany as well as logwood, and of our not erecting fortifications in the country. This weak and ill-judged concession was a sort of admission of Spanish control which soon caused serious trouble. The British colonists were subjected to constant hostile threats and demonstrations. In 1797, Colonel Barrow arrived from home as "Superintendent", invested with full civil and military powers, and he took prompt measures for the defence of the capital, Belize. This activity, well backed by that of the community, had its reward in September, 1798, when the Spaniards came in great force. A fleet of 14 sail of the line appeared off the harbour of Belize, and met with a most determined resistance. A severe conflict, of two days' duration, known as the " battle of St. George's Cay " (or islet), ended in the victorious repulse of the foe, finally and fully securing British possession of the territory by right of conquest. The fine island of Trinidad, discovered by Columbus, on his third voyage, in July, 1498, received its name, according to one account, in pursuance of a vow made by him, under severe stress of weather, that the first new land sighted should be called in honour of the Trinity. Some authorities, however, give Trinity Sunday, 1496, as the date of discovery. The territory was claimed by Columbus for the Spanish crown, and a governor was appointed in 1532, but it was many years before the Spaniards were in firm possession against hostile attacks. About 1584 the town of San Jose (St. Joseph), which remained the capital for more than two COLONIAL POSSESSIONS IN THE WEST INDIES. 335 centuries, was founded by a Spanish governor, but the place was scarcely finished when, in 1595, Sir Walter Raleigh burnt it. During the iyth century the island was ravaged several times by the Dutch and the French. Early in the i8th century cocoa was becoming an extensive and valuable article of tillage and trade, but in 1725 a mysterious blight attacked the plantations, and stayed prosperity for Trinidad during more than half acentury. The Spanish government were then induced to make an extraordinary effort for her revival, when an intelligent French planter from Grenada, M. de St. Laurent, who had visited the island and noted its wonderful fertility, made strong representations to the officials at Madrid, and sought permission to carry out his scheme of immigration. In 1783, he obtained a royal proclamation admitting foreign settlers to the island, provided they were of the Catholic faith. Don Jose Maria Chacon, who proved to be the last Spanish governor of Trinidad, was appointed to carry out the new measure, and under his auspices a large number of colonists arrived from the French West Indies, with great additions after the events due to the outbreak of the French Revolution. In 1789 the population amounted to over 10,000, by a tenfold increase in the space of five years; and to the movement inaugurated through the energy and wisdom of M. de St. Laurent, is due the fact that so large a French element of race is found in a colony which was never a possession of the French crown. The British right is due to conquest pure and simple. In February, 1797, at a time of war with Spain, a powerful expedition sailed from Martinique, then in our possession, and the head- quarters of British power in the Lesser Antilles. Four line-of- battle ships, a 64-gun ship, two frigates, and five sloops of war, under Rear-admiral Harvey, carried nearly 7000 troops com- manded by Sir Ralph Abercrombie, fresh from the reduction of the insurgents at St. Lucia and St. Vincent. The Spaniards, helpless aeainst so formidable an armament, set fire to their own fleet of o four sail of the line and a frigate, all of which perished in the flames, save a 74-gun ship, captured by the British boats. A few shots fired between the forts and the hostile vessels were followed by a capitulation to overwhelming force. Colonel Picton, after- wards to become the famous Peninsular and Waterloo warrior, was appointed by Abercrombie to be the first British governor of 336 OUR EMPIRE AT HOME AND ABROAD. Trinidad, and for six years the colony derived much benefit from his firmness in a post of difficulty and risk. The Treaty of Amiens, in 1802, finally ceded the island to Great Britain. The island of Jamaica, which has always been the chief British possession in the West Indies, derives its name from an aboriginal term Xaymaca, signifying " land of springs ". Discovered by Columbus, in May, 1494, and by him styled St. Jago, after the patron saint of Spain, it was not again visited by Europeans, so far as is known, for about nine years. In 1503, the great Genoese navigator was engaged on his fourth voyage of exploration, when the state of his ships compelled him to put in at Jamaica, where he remained for nearly eighteen months, until the close of the follow- ing year. END OF VOL. I. SOME WORKS SUPPLIED BY THE GRESHAM PUBLISHING CO. LONDON: 25 FARRINGDON AVENUE GLASGOW: 130 BATH STREET A LIBRA RY IN ITSELF. THE POPULAR ENCYCLOPEDIA. NEW ISSUE, REVISED. A GENERAL DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE, BIOGRAPHY, AND HISTORY. EDITED BY CHARLES ANNANDALE, M.A., LL.D., Editor of Ogilvie's "Imperial Dictionary of the English Language." Profusely illustrated with Engravings. To be completed in Fourteen handsome Volumes, super-royal Sro, bound in rich cloth, red eJgcs, at /-?r. each. 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NEW EDITION, REVISED AND GREATLY AUGMENTED. Ogilvie's Imperial Dictionary of the English Language A COMPLETE ENCYCLOPEDIC LEXICON, LITERARY, ETYMOLOGICAL, SCIENTIFIC, TECHNOLOGICAL, AND PRONOUNCING. EDITED BY CHARLES ANNANDALE, M.A., LL.D. The work is illustrated by above three thousand engravings on wood, besides a series of finely engraved and coloured plates. This edition of the IMPERIAL DICTIONARY is beautifully printed on paper of imperial size, specially made for the Work. // will be issued in eight Divisional- Volumes, bound in cloth, with a fine design on side, at los. each volume,- also in 20 Divisions, paper cover, at js. each. DISTINCTIVE POINTS. I. It is the latest revised dictionary, and has a supplement of many thousand new words. II. It contains more words, exclusive of compound and obsolete words, than any other English dictionary. III. The pronunciation is explained on a plan which is simplicity itself. IV. 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The Gresham Publishing Company. To be published in 22 parts, super-royal 8vo, 2s. each; or 6 volumes, cloth elegant, olivine edges, qs. each. The British Empire in the Nineteenth Century ITS PROGRESS AND EXPANSION AT HOME AND ABROAD. COMPRISING A DESCRIPTION AND HISTORY OF THE BRITISH COLONIES AND DEPENDENCIES. BY EDGAR SANDERSON, M.A. (CANTAB.), Author of " History of the British Empire ", " Outlines of the World's History", &c. &c. Beautifully illustrated throughout with full-page drawings by GORDON BROWNE, R.I., W. H. MAR- GETSON, W. H. OVEREND, W. S. STAGEY, W. L. WYLLIE, A.R.A., ENOCH WARD, R. CATON WOODVILLE, R.I., &c. &C. An entertaining narrative of the gradual expansion of the British Empire, and its position at the present day. Invalu- able to the scholar, the trader, those who have kin beyond the sea, the general reader, and even the younger members of the family, and must prove of the deepest interest from beginning to end, written as it is in a vivid and vigorous style. During the nineteenth century vast improvements have been accomplished in the material, moral, and social condition of Great Britain. This progress is set forth in chapters upon such subjects as manufactures, ship-building, engineering; the postal and telegraph systems ; sanitary and temperance reforms; the army and navy ; popular sports and amusements ; education, science, literature, and art. It is the main purpose of this work to put before every Briton information with regard to the history, extent, and resources of our vast colonial empire, and special care has been taken to set it forth in a bright, readable, entertaining manner, all the thrilling incidents and brave deeds in our struggle to extend the empire receiving picturesque treatment. The Modern Cyclopedia OF UNIVERSAL INFORMATION. A Handy-book of Reference on all subjects and for all readers. Edited by CHARLES ANNANDALE, M.A., LL.D., Editor of "Ogilvie's Imperial Dictionary", &c. With many Pictorial Illustrations and a series of Maps and Plates. THE MODERN CYCLOPEDIA has been designed as a handy-book of reference for all readers. It presents its information in concise and tersely-written articles, comprised in eight compact volumes, issued at a very moderate price. It is thus well adapted for everyday use and ready reference, and will be specially valuable to those who, through the pressure of their daily occupations, can spare little time to acquire information on the many topics with which they desire to become better acquainted. THE MODERN CYCLOPEDIA, while by no means neglecting things that belong to ancient times, devotes its strength mainly to matters which pertain to the present day and to the modern world. THE MODERN CYCLOPEDIA is fully abreast of the times on the wide range of subjects upon which it touches, the best and most recent authorities, British and Foreign, having been consulted in compiling the articles. It furnishes information on all classes of subjects literary, historical, biographical, mercantile, political, geographical, technical, and scientific. THE MODERN CYCLOPEDIA is of handy size, convenient for reference, and moderate in price; it consists of 8 compact volumes, square 8vo, of 512 pages each, bound in ricli cloth, coloured edges, price 6s. each volume; or in fine leather binding (Library style), 8.r. dti. a volume. To be completed in 14 parts, super-royal 8vo, at 2s. each; or in 4 divisions, cloth, at 9-r. each ; forming one handsome volume. The Household Physician A FAMILY GUIDE TO THE PRESERVATION OF HEALTH AND TO THE DOMESTIC TREATMENT OF AILMENTS AND DISEASE. By J. M'GREGOR-ROBERTSON, M.H., C.M. (Hon.). With an Introduction by Professor M'KENDRICK, M.D., LL.D., K.R.S., Glasgow University. Illustrated by about 400 figures in the text, and a series of 19 Engraved Plates, many of them printed in colours. This work is written in the simplest possible language, and includes full information on the conditions of health, and on the ordinary means, as regards food, clothing, exercise, &c., by which health may be maintained in the infant as well as in the full-grown person. The book treats of the human body in health, and the various changes produced by disease. On Hygiene, or the conditions of health as regards food, drink, clothing, exercise, &c., and the rules to be observed for the promotion of health, both of individuals and communities. An explanation of the nature and mode of action of drugs and other remedial agents. On methods of dealing with Accidents and Emergencies, and on various ailments requiring surgical treatment. Also a chapter on Sick-nursing, and an Appendix containing recipes for Invalid Cookery and medical Prescriptions. The Gresham Publishing Company. THE HENRY IRVING SHAKESPEARE. SUBSCRIPTION EDITION. The Works of Shakespeare. EDITED BY HENRY IRVING AND FRANK A. MARSHALL. With a General Introduction and Life of Shakespeare by Professor EDWARD DOWDEN, and nearly six hundred Illustrations from designs by GORDON BROWNE and other Artists To be completed in 25 parts, super-royal 8vo, 3-r. each ; or 8 volumes, cloth elegant, ioj. 6d. each, with gilt edges, Us. 6d. each. The universal popularity of the works of our GREAT DKAMATIST has induced the publishers to issue a sumptuous edition, of such comprehensive excellence that it is fitted at once to meet the requirements of the general reader, the lover of fine books, and the student of Shakespeare. This important edition in many respects has never been surpassed. *** Every subscriber for this edition of Shakespeare's Works will be presented, on the completion of his copy of the book, with an impression of the admirable PORTRAIT OF HENRY IRVING AS HAMLET, from the painting by EDWIN LONG, R. A., executed in Photogravure in the most finished manner by Boussod Valadon et Cie. (Goupil), of Paris. The size of the engraved surface is 19% X 13^ inches, and with margin suitable for framing 27 X 20 inches. " On the care -with which the text itself of the plays has been prepared we have nothing but praise to bestow. . . . The general result of this care and labour is, however, so good that we must congratulate all concerned in it: and in particular we must congratulate the publishers of the work on one especial feature which could hardly fail to ensure its success as a popular edition it is profusely illustrated by Mr. Gordon Browne, whose charming designs, executed in facsimile, give it an artistic value superior, in our judgment, to any illustrated edition of Shakespeare with which we are acquainted '." The Athenasum. " This handsomely printed edition aims at being popular and practical. Add to these advantages Mr. Gordon Brmunes illustrations, and enough has been said to recommend an edition which will win public recognition by its unique and serviceable qualities." The Spectator. In 17 parts, extra demy 8vo, at 2s. each; or 5 volumes, cloth elegant, gilt edges, at 8s. 6