1497-1763.]

France.

49

to colonize, were capable of adapting themselves to new conditions; they had the capacity to carry their ideas with them across the seas, and they readily France. assimilated with the aborigines. While freely intermarrying with the natives, unlike the Spaniards they rather improved the savage stock than were degraded by it. They had the faculty of making the red barbarian a boon companion, and of inducing him to serve them and fight for them; indeed, since their colonizing enterprises were based on the fur-trade, their opposition to the advance of English agricultural possession was, like that of the Indians, fundamental. The French and the savages were therefore united in a common cause against a common foe.

The Breton and Norman merchant-seamen who went out to Newfoundland and carried on fisheries and the fur-trade paved the way for the future throng of emigrants. As colonizers the French worked quietly and persistently, and would have succeeded, had not their enterprises been ruined by their unfortunate political and ecclesiastical policy and the mismanagement of their rulers. Louis XIV. was capricious and extravagant. His court was a nest of intrigue, corruption, peculation, jealousies, and dissensions. The Huguenots, who represented the industrial classes, began the French colonization of America; but we have seen how sadly their government neglected them in Florida. Finally, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) resulted in driving them from home, and they were eager to join their lot with that of their countrymen in Canada, priest-rule prescribed their deliberate exclusion from the colonies, — which they could have made a New France in fact, and thus forced them to contribute their strength to the rival English settlements farther down the coast. The government was in some respects over

liberal to its North American colonies, it aided them financially to an extent unknown elsewhere; but they were not self-governed, and the king continually interfered with the commercial companies, which in a large measure controlled the colonies, so that a favor granted through corrupt influences to-day might to-morrow be revoked by counter-influences equally corrupt. Paternalism, centralization, bureaucratic government, official rottenness, instability of system, religious exclusiveness, and a vicious system of land-tenure were the prime causes of the ruin of New France; although we must not forget that the centre of its power had been planted in an inhospitable climate, and that its far-reaching water-system tempted the inhabitants into the forests and cultivated the fur-trade at the expense of agriculture, thereby placing the province at a disadvantage from the start.

Holland.

21. Dutch and Swedish Policy.

The burden of over-population with which Spain, France, and Portugal were troubled, and to relieve the pressure of which was one of the motives of their colonizing efforts, was not felt by Holland; for despite the fact that she sustained a more dense population than any other European State, her citizens were prosperous. They were not stirred, like neighboring peoples, by the impulse of emigration. Preeminently a trading nation, Holland sought commerce rather than extension of empire. Long the chief carrier of Europe before striking into a broader field, she followed in the steps of the Portuguese, and by the opening of the seventeenth century took rank as a colonizing power. Her most fruitful labors were in the East rather than in the West. It was in the attempt to find the northwest passage to India that Hudson discovered the river which bears his name. With the Dutch, though

1609-1664.]

Holland and Sweden.

51

religious reformers, religion was secondary to trade. So long as trade was good, they were patient under insult and outrage. Individually they made but little impress upon the community. Commerce was chiefly conducted through large chartered companies, minutely managed in Holland. Dutch colonies declined because their commercial system was non-progressive and unsound; they appear to have been unable to rise out of the trader state. Yet we must not forget that Holland was of small size and had overbearing, jealous neighbors; her long and heroic struggle with Spain tended greatly to delay her efforts to trade in and colonize the New World.

The Swedish colony on the Delaware was planned by authority of Gustavus Adolphus on broad, liberal principles; he hoped it would become “the jewel Sweden. of his kingdom." But while it throve for a time and gave much promise of endurance, the Dutch soon overpowered it. Had the Swedish monarch lived to carry out the design, doubtless he would have proved that Scandinavians could successfully maintain an independent province in the New World. Like the Germans, however, they have in later years been in the main content to colonize as the subjects of foreign governments.

22. English Policy.

England remains the only country which planted populous colonies within the present United States and re tained them long after they were planted. Her England. insular position and fine harbors have given her a race of sailors; her climate has proved favorable for rearing a hardy people, who, secure in their boundaries and not necessarily entangled in Continental affairs, have been left free to develop and to push independent enterprises. As regards American exploration, the fact that

England is the westernmost State in Europe had at first much to do with her pre-eminence. Until the close of the sixteenth century England's resources were slender, and her government was not desirous of incurring the hostility of stronger European neighbors by poaching too freely on their colonial preserves. Cabot went out at his own cost. Drake's operations, while adding to the glory of England, and directly favored by Queen Elizabeth, were continually endangering her with Spain. But in the face of all discouragements, the sixteenth century was a notable training period for English sea-rovers. The records of the age are aglow with the deeds of the Cabots, Frobisher, Davis, Drake, Cavendish, Gilbert, Raleigh, Grenville, and their like, who, while invariably failing in their persistent efforts at colonization, were charting the American coast-line, making the New World familiar to their countrymen, and striking out shorter paths across the Atlantic. At first outstripped by other European nations, England was becoming one of the principal maritime powers when the seventeenth century began. Spain, weakened by the defection of the Netherlands, and still further humiliated by the defeat of the Armada (1588), was by this time showing evidences of decay, and France was the growing rival in the West.

The English
trading
spirit.

English occupation in North America, like the French, began with the fishermen who, following in Cabot's wake, early sought the banks of Newfoundland. They were courageous, businesslike men, who soon supplemented their calling as fishermen with a profitable native trade in peltries. The trading spirit has always been deeply implanted in the Teutonic races; when England had gathered sufficient strength to make it discreet to assert herself, we find that her reachings out for wider territory took the shape of commercial enterprise. The romantic adven

1500-1700.]

English Character.

53

turers of the age of Elizabeth, as much freebooters as explorers, were now succeeded by prosaic trading companies, which undertook to plant colonies along the Atlantic coast. In doing this they were impelled in part by a desire to relieve England from some of her surplus population; but in the main the colonies were to serve as trading and supply stations.

aid.

In aiding these corporations, which succeeded after a fashion in planting colonies, but failed for the most part Scanty State in reaping profits, the State expected increased revenue rather than the spread of European civilization. In England, State assistance to such undertakings was always slight and uncertain; the strength of the early colonies lay in the wealth and persistence of their promoters.

English impulse to emigration.

23. Character of English Emigrants.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were full of trouble for the English people. Religious restlessness was succeeded by revolution and civil war, while crude and oppressive economic conditions induced lawless disturbance and disaster. Colonizing schemes were readily taken up in such times of unrest. At first the notion prevailed that the colonies might profitably be utilized for clearing the mother-country of jail-birds and paupers, although with these went out many who were worthy pioneers. It remained for the Plymouth planting to demonstrate that only the honest and thrifty can work out the salvation of a wilderness. America attracted the attention alike of traders and settlers because its soil was supposed to be rich, because the climate was temperate and not unlike that of England, because there was plenty of room, and because the unknown land attracted the adventurous.