prolific as it was in civil war and revolution at home, was above all things distinguished by the growth and expansion of England's first colonial empire in North America. Herein can be seen the vitality and energy of the people of whom we are the descendants, and whose political birthright we now enjoy with the fullest measure of freedom. During the tyrannical government of Charles I., the disorder and uncertainty of the Commonwealth under Cromwell, and the persecution and proscription of the Restoration under Charles II., thousands of Englishmen and Englishwomen fled from their land to seek for liberty and safety in the wilds of North America, and these were the pioneers of that great development of emigration and colonization which paved the way for the establishment of a greater Britain in the new world. And here one general remark must be made as to the character of these momentous movements to which is mainly owing the stability and success of the early colonies of America. These colonies were founded by private enterprise, not with the assistance, but only with the official sanction of the Crown. This will be best understood by a brief reference to examples.

In the year 1606, the year in which Torres passed through the straits, which now bear his name, and sighted the Australian coast, two companies were formed for the purpose of colonizing America— the London Company and the Plymouth Company. To the London Company was assigned by King James I. South Virginia, which extended from Cape Fear to the Potomac River; to the Plymouth Company was granted North Virginia, which extended from the Hudson River to Newfoundland. The country between the Hudson and Potomac was declared neutral territory. This division of Virginia, North and South, included nearly the whole of the eastern fringe of North America, but that divisional nomenclature was not long maintained. The London Company was the first in the field, and began the work of colonization in a practical manner, though at first with limited success. It was followed by the Plymouth Company, which also proceeded to distribute grants of land to actual settlers. The title of each of these companies was a charter from the Crown. The charter of the London Company contained provision for the creation of governing councils; one in London, appointed by the King, having power to appoint a colonial council, endowed with the absolute power of Government. The soil was vested in the Company by grant from the Crown. There was no mention made of representative assemblies in either charter, but each contained a clause somewhat similar to that of Raleigh's first patent, to the effect that "all British subjects who shall go and inhabit within the said colony and plantation, and their children and posterity, which shall happen to be born within the limit thereof, shall have and enjoy all the liberties, franchises, and immunities of free denizens and natural subjects within any of our dominions, to all intents and purposes, as if they had been abiding and born within their own realms of England. or in any of our other dominions." This contained the germ from which afterwards sprang the system of representative self-government in the American colonies. In none of the charters, with the exception of that of Jamaica, to which allusion will presently be made,

was there an express grant of representative government, but the right was asserted as inherent to and necessarily a part of those liberties, franchises, and immunities granted in the charters.

In 1607 Thomas Gates and Company sent out, under the leadership of Christopher Newport, three ships containing 105 emigrants, who were landed at Chesapeake Bay; and on the 13th May of that year the Commonwealth of Virginia was established by the building of Jamestown on the James River, which was so named in honour of the King. This party consisted of gentlemen of fortune, labourers, and other persons of no occupation, and without families, who were picked up in London. The friendly Indians sold them land and provisions, and they struggled along, clearing the wilderness and attempting to cultivate the soil. Owing to misgovernment and internal dissensions the infant colony was several times on the verge of starvation and dissolution. In 1609 the London Company superseded Gates' Company in the management of the colony and sent out Captain John Smith, who by his prudence and good counsel saved the struggling community from destruction. It was next reinforced by fresh arrivals from England under the direction of Lord Delaware. By this time the permanent establishment of the new settlement was assured. Gradually a liberal element began to prevail in the management of the London Company, and in 1619 the first representative assembly came into existence. In the quaint language of an old chronicle, "a House of Burgesses broke out in that year." The charter of James I. contained no provision for the creation of such an institution as "a House of Burgesses; "nevertheless that House was legally acknowledged by the Government of the mother country as being in strict accordance with the principles of Sir Walter Raleigh's patent, and with the general scope of the clause of the Company's charter.

In the same year which saw the forerunner and type of all American assemblies, convicts were sent out to the colonies from England, and negro slaves were introduced by the Dutch. The element of convictism and slavery did not spread to any very large extent in the early history of America, but they afterwards became the plague spot of England's colonial empire. The practice of negro slavery and the transportation of convicts was first introduced by the Portuguese and the Spaniards. And the system was too readily followed by other nations.

In 1624, the London Company surrendered its charter to the Crown, but the House of Burgesses elected by the people survived the surrender of the charter, and maintained the power of legislation and taxation, subject to the veto of the Governor. We have referred to the preliminary history of Virginia at some length, because it was the earliest settled, and the largest, richest, and most populous of all the original thirteen states. It was affectionately called the "old Dominion," and also the "mother of Presidents," because four out of five Presidents who ruled the Republic up to the year 1824 were natives of Virginia. It was the birthplace of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, and Patrick Henry, who became the leaders of the revolution.

Before passing from Virginia, reference should be made to four other colonies adjacent to it which were carved out of the original grant of territory to the London Company. In 1623, Sir George Calvert, afterwards the first Lord Baltimore, received a grant of land forming part of Virginia from Charles I. for the purpose of forming a proprietary colony. It was called Maryland by way of compliment to Queen Henrietta Maria. The first Lord Baltimore died before the letters patent were sealed, but the second Lord Baltimore carried out the scheme in 1632. The Baltimores were Roman Catholics, and Maryland was settled by Catholic gentry and others belonging to that Church, who were driven from England during the fierce persecutions of these times. Maryland became the "land of sanctuary," and claimed the proud distinction of being a refuge for the toleration of all religious denominations. Its form of administration was by a Governor having a patent right to veto acts of the legislature, which consisted of an Upper House nominated by him, and a Lower House elected by the people. The colony, according to the patent, belonged to the proprietors, who nominated an administrative council and granted governmental privileges, for which they received certain consideration.

In 1662 the southern part of Virginia was granted as a proprietary colony to Lord Clarendon and others by Charles II. under the name of "Carolina." Its early population consisted for the most part of emigrants from Virginia. The young colony obtained a representative assembly in 1667, but its form of government was similar to that of the proprietary colony of Maryland. However, in 1717 the proprietors surrendered their patent to the Crown, and Carolina became a royal colony by purchase. In 1729, Carolina was divided into two separate and independent districts, North and South Carolina, which afterwards became two of the most important states of the union.

Georgia, which was organised into a colony in 1732, was the fifth distinct settlement carved out of the Virginia foundation.

Passing now to the northern group of colonies which were formed out of the territory assigned to the Plymouth Company, we find a record of progress and cultivation of the soil proceeding in the teeth of trials and obstacles as extraordinary as those experienced in the history of Virginia and its offshoots in the south. Under the direction and with the license of the Plymouth Company, a settlement was, during the year 1620, formed at Massachusetts Bay by the famous and heroic "Pilgrim Fathers," who were compelled to leave England on account of the persecution to which they were subjected for their non-conformity to the Church of England. The sailed from Southampton for America to the number of 102 persons, in the Mayflower, a little vessel of 160 tons burden, and landed on 21st December, 1620, at a place which they named New Plymouth, where they long had a desperate struggle for existence owing to the coldness of the climate, the poverty of their circumstances, and attacks by the Indians. They were afterwards joined by a society of Puritans, who also sought refuge there from the ecclesiastical policy of Charles I. Massachusetts became the centre and leader of four important colonies which in a few years sprang into existence in the North, between the Hudson

River and Newfoundland. They were known as the New England Colonies, New England being the designation applied to the whole of that region by Captain John Smith, who explored the coast in the year 1614.

Settlers went to the south of Massachusetts, and formed the colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, which received separate charters from the Crown. A fishing village to the north of Massachusetts, established under a grant of land to one John Mason, became the nucleus of the colony of New Hampshire.

Such were the four important plantations formed out of New England, the territory of the Plymouth Company. The Plymouth Company finally surrendered its charter, and Massachusetts received an independent charter from Charles I. in 1629, whilst Connecticut and Rhode Island received separate charters from Charles II. in 1662. These were the famous New England colonies, in which there was a larger measure of political freedom and local self-government than in any of the North American plantations. They were chartered colonies, in which the sovereign parted with his rights and prerogatives either wholly or in part to the settlers, who elected their own representative assemblies, having the power of legislation without appeal to the Crown, there being no royal governor or royal agent within the colonies. They elected their own governors, as well as their Parliamentary representatives in the Upper and Lower Houses. The Home Government did not interfere with them in any way. They were, in fact, simple democracies, if not veritable republics, the highest achievement in the way of political organisation, and the nearest approach to independent states attained by any of the thirteen colonies before the revolution. The only terms and conditions under which these colonies held their charters of colonization were, first, allegiance to the Crown, and, secondly, that one-fifth of the gold and silver found within their jurisdiction should be paid to the King. In the year 1665, only 40 years after the foundation of Massachusetts, and 100 years before the Declaration of Independence, we find the people of that settlement asserting that they did not regard themselves as subject to England, and maintaining that as long as they paid onefifth of all the gold and silver according to the terms of their charter "they were not obliged to the king, but by civility." These advanced ideas of colonial independence and autonomy received a startling development and a determined assertion during the subsequent conflict with England, for it was in Massachusetts that the battles of Lexington and Bunker's Hill were fought.

We have now referred to two groups of colonies, that of Virginia and that of Massachusetts, which are described as the original foundations of British colonization in North America. There remains a third group, which grew up in the neutral zone between the Potomac and the Hudson rivers, between Virginia and New England. Whilst settlement was proceeding in the vast country to the north and the south, this central territory was explored by the Dutch, who established a trading station at Manhattan, the site of the present city of New York. The Dutch Government assigned this locality to the Dutch West India Company. It was named New Netherlands, and the town

soon

which sprang into existence at the mouth of the Hudson, a river discovered by Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch, was called New Amsterdam. The Dutch, however, had a very precarious title and tenure of this country, and they were cleared out of North America. After the restoration of Charles II. in 1660, England and Holland went to war, and a fatal blow was struck at the colonial possessions of the Dutch. An English fleet under Colonel Nichols proceeded to New Amsterdam and conquered it, driving out the Dutch, and converting it into an English settlement. It was granted as a proprietary colony by Charles II. to his brother, the Duke of York, after whom it received the name of New York. The Duke granted a part of the territory of New York to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, who formed out of it the colony of New Jersey.

In 1681, the square tract of country to the west of New Jersey was granted by Charles II. to William Penn, the celebrated English Quaker and philanthropist, in satisfaction of a monetary claim against the Crown. Here arose another proprietary colony under the neverto-be-forgotten name of Pennsylvania. Penn had been unjustly persecuted for his religious faith; and his great desire was to establish a home for himself and his co-religionists in the distant wilderness of the west where they might enjoy religious and political liberty; where they might preach and practice according to their convictions in peace and quietness. Penn planned and named the great city of Philadelphia, and framed a liberal constitution for the young settlement, which became what Maryland was to the Catholics, and New England to the Puritans-a refuge and a sanctuary for the persecuted brethren, hunted out of their native land. Penn alsopurchased from the Duke of York a small strip of New York territory which was added to Pennsylvania until the revolution, when it was erected into a separate State called Delaware.

CLASSIFICATION OF THE ORIGINAL COLONIES.-Having sketched the thirteen original provinces of North America we are now in a position. to consider generally their peculiar distribution and classification. First, as regards their location; the southern group consisted of fiveVirginia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia; the northern group consisted of four-Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Rhode Island; the central group consisted of fourNew York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

The political constitutions, or forms of government of these colonies comprised three classes. First came the royalist colony of Virginia, which was always subject to the influence of the Crown more than in any other, even from the first, when the Executive Government was vested in a prerogative-created Council. Virginia became a thoroughly royalist colony in 1620, when the London # Company decided to surrender its charter to the Crown. So New York, which began as a proprietary colony, was converted into a royalist colony when its proprietor, the Duke of York, became King as James II. Virginia may be regarded as the type and model of modern colonies, in which representative and responsible government.