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Preface
“In the history of the
world,” says Bancroft, “many pages are devoted to commemorate the men
who have besieged cities, subdued provinces, or overthrown empires: in
the eye of reason and of truth, a colony is a better offering than a
victory.” In no field of enterprise have the courage, perseverance, and
humanity of our countrymen been more conspicuously or honourably
displayed than in thd planting and rearing of our colonies. It has been
said that the Anglo-Saxon race has a peculiar aptitude for the work of
colonization; and, certainly, the success with which it has accommodated
itself to changes of climate, gained the confidence and attachment of
the natives, and developed the resources of virgin lands, confirms the
idea. The behaviour of our countrymen towards the aborigines of the
various countries in which they have settled has not been free from
cruelty and deceit; but, on the whole, we must admit that it redounds to
their credit, especially when we reflect on the provocations which they
received, and the liability to misconception on both sides. Our first
attempts at colonization were accompanied by the most formidable
difficulties and the most overwhelming disasters; but the brave and
steadfast spirit of the “planters” did not quail before accumulated
calamities. “The ice,” said one true-hearted Englishman struggling in a
frail bark through a sea of crashing icebergs—“the ice is strong, but
God is stronger.” Such was the mood in which the early settlers faced
their work. Famine, pestilence, raging elements, treacherous savages,
and jealous rivals were strong to harass and destroy; but the Lord their
God, in whom they had in their rough wayward hearts an intensely earnest
and practical faith, was stronger still to deliver them from evil, and
to crown with success those enterprises which they had undertaken,—not
from a mere lust of gold, but in no mean measure for the glory of His
name and the advancement of His kingdom among the heathen. Nor did they
trust in vain. There were few of the pioneers of that great plantation
work who could not match Increase Mather’s “Catalogue of Remarkable
Providences,” in the story of their own eventful lives.
This little volume is not
a systematic history. It is merely a series of sketches, intended to
illustrate British colonization in some of its social and romantic
aspects. It does not trench on questions of politics or economy,—it
avoids statistics. It does not treat of all of our colonies. It traces
the career only of those which bear a sort of representative character,
and only up to the point when the growing plantation subsides into a
settled province. The events herein recorded are deeply interesting in
themselves, and become still more so when they are connected with the
prosperity of our empire and the spread of civilization and
Christianity. They also possess another interest for the reflective
reader. It has been remarked that it is a peculiarity of a great and
conquering people, that they find themselves at the same time, though in
different regions, in all the various stages through which societies
must pass between their birth and their destruction. Thus, in
Vancouver’s Island and Columbia the British people may be said to be in
toothless infancy; in Australia, in early youth; in Canada, in all the
vigour of manhood ; and in Great Britain, in robust middle age. A
general survey of our colonial annals may thus be as useful as a course
of universal history, and may serve to illustrate, in a striking manner,
the causes of the stability or decay of commonwealths.
J. H. F.
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