Complete Works of Edmund Burke

by Edmund Burke

  The alarms we are under at the news of any petty armament in the West-Indies, is a demonstrative proof of the weakness of our condition there; which is, however, so far from rousing us to seek any proper remedy, that there are not wanting of the people of that country, many who would use a thousand pretences to prevent our taking the only possible means of securing their own possessions from danger; as the majority of men will always be found ready to prefer some present gain to their future and more permanent interests. But the apparent and dangerous progress of the French ought, methinks, to rouse us from our long inaction, and to animate us to enterprise some regulations, in a strain of policy far superior to any thing I have ventured to hint, for the interest of the commerce, and the honour of the counsels of the British nation.

  PART VII. British North America.

  CHAP. I.

  IT is somewhat difficult to ascertain the bounds of the English property in North America, to the northern and Western sides; for to the Northward, it should seem, that we might extend our claims quite to the pole itself, nor does any nation seem inclined to dispute the property of this Northermost country with us. France has by the treaty of Utrecht, ceded to us Hudson’s bay, the streights of Hudson, and all the country bordering upon that bay and those streights. If we should chuse to take our stand upon the Northern extremity of New Britain, or Terra de Labrador, and look to the South, we have a territory extending in that aspect from the 60th to the 31st degree of North latitude, and consequently more than seventeen hundred miles long in a direct line. This country is, all the way, washed by the Atlantic ocean on the East; to the South it has the small remains of the Spanish Florida; but to the Westward, our bounds are disputed by our enemies, and do not seem well agreed upon amongst ourselves. They who govern themselves by the charters to our colonies, run their jurisdiction quite across the continent to the South-Sea; others contract our rights to the hither ranks of the Missisippi, and take four of the great lakes into our dominions. But upon what grounds they have fixed upon that river as a barrier, other than that rivers or mountains seem to be a species of natural boundaries, I cannot determine. Others (upon the same grounds, I suppose,) have contracted us within limits yet narrower; they make the Apalachian mountains, the lake Ontario, and the river St. Laurence, the most Westerly frontier of our rights in America. The French agreeing, in some respects, with these latter, (or the latter rather agreeing with the French, whose maps they have for a long time servilely and shamefully copied,) have made the mountains hem us in from their Southern commencement, to about the 44th degree of North latitude, or thereabouts, where this long chain terminates; then they draw a line slanting to the North-East, by which they cut off a great part of the provinces of New-York, New England, and Nova Scotia, and leave our bounds at such a distance from the river St. Laurence, as they judge convenient.

  This distribution, and the military dispositions which the French have made to support it, form the principal cause of the quarrel which now subsists between the two kingdoms; and it is the issue of this quarrel, which must instruct future geographers in adjusting the boundaries of the two nations. For the present, I shall only mention what we have settled, without offering any opinion of my own concerning our bounds. Our rights in Nova Scotia have been already ascertained and established in a clear and cogent manner; but with regard to our claims in the Ohio and Missisippi, the rashness of some writers in a matter which is a public concern, seems to me very blameable. Some of them timidly or ignorantly drawing our territories into a very inconvenient narrowness; whilst others have madly claimed all North America from sea to sea; some would give us very narrow bounds, whilst others will hear of no bounds at all.

  Posterity will perhaps think it unaccountable, that in a matter of such importance we could have been so thoughtless as to leave on our back such a nation as France, without determining, in any manner, even sufficiently clear to settle our own demands, what part of the country was our own right, or what we determined to leave to the discretion of our neighbours; or that wholly intent upon settling the sea coast, we have never cast an eye into the country, to discover the necessity of making a barrier against them, with a proper force; which formerly did not need to have been a very great one, nor to be maintained at any great expence. That cheap and timely caution would have saved us thousands of lives and millions of money; but the hour is now passed.

  In the ensuing discourse, I think it better neither to consider our settlements directly in the order of the time of their establishment, nor of their advantage to the mother country, but as they lie near one another, North and South from New England to Carolina; reserving for the end the new settlements on the Northern and Southern extremities, those of Nova Scotia and Georgia, and the unsettled countries about Hudson’s bay.

  CHAP. II.

  WE derive our rights in America from the discovery of Sebastian Cabot, who first made the Northern continent in 1497. The fact is sufficiently certain to establish a right to our settlements in North America: but the particulars are not known distinctly enough to encourage me to enter into a detail of his voyage. The country was in general called Newfoundland, a name which is now appropriated solely to an island upon it’s coast. It was a long time before we made any attempt to settle this country; though in this point we were no more backward than our neighbours, who probably did not abstain so long out of respect to our prior discovery. Sir Walter Raleigh shewed the way, by planting a colony in the Southern part, which he called Virginia. However, the spirit of colonization was not yet fully raised. Men lived at ease in their own country, and the new settlement of Virginia, though dressed up in all the showy colours which eloquence could bestow upon it, gave adventurers but little encouragement. The affairs of North America were in the hands of an exclusive company, and they prospered accordingly.

  Things remained in this condition until the latter end of the reign of James the first. From the commencement of the reformation in England, two parties of protestants subsisted amongst us; the first had chosen gradually and almost imperceptibly to recede from the church of Rome; softening the lines, rather than erasing the figure, they made but very little alteration in the appearances of things. And the people seeing the exterior so little altered, hardly perceived the great changes they had made in the doctrines of their religion. The other party of a warmer temper, had more zeal and less policy. Several of them had fled from the persecution in queen Mary’s days; and they returned in those of queen Elizabeth with minds sufficiently heated by resentment of their sufferings, and by the perpetual disputations which had exercised them all the while they were abroad. Abroad they learned an aversion to the episcopal order, and to religious ceremonies of every sort; they were impregnated with an high spirit of liberty, and had a strong tendency to the republican form of government. Queen Elizabeth had enough of the blood of Harry the eighth, to make her impatient of an opposition to her will, especially in matters of religion, in which she had an high opinion of her own knowledge. She advised with this party but very little in the alterations which she thought proper to make; and disliking the notions, which they seemed to entertain in politics, she kept them down during the whole course of her reign with an uniform and inflexible severity.

  However, the party was far enough from being destroyed. The merit of their sufferings, the affected plainness of their dress, the gravity of their deportment, the use of scripture phrases upon the most ordinary occasions, and even their names, which had something striking and venerable, as being borrowed from the old testament, or having a sort of affected relation to religious matters, gained them a general esteem amongst sober people of ordinary understandings. This party was very numerous; and their zeal made them yet more considerable than their numbers. They were commonly called puritans.

  When king James came to the throne, he had a very fair opportunity of pacifying matters; or at worst he might have left them in the condition he found them; but it happened quite otherwise. The unkingly disputation at Hampton-court di
d more to encourage the puritans to persevere in their opinions, by the notice which was taken of them, than all king James’s logic, as a scholar, backed with all his power as a king, could do to suppress that party. They were persecuted, but not destroyed; they were exasperated, and yet left powerful: and a severity was exercised towards them, which at once exposed the weakness and the ill intentions of the government.

  In this state things continued until the accession of Charles, when they were far from mending. This prince, endowed with many great virtues, had very few amiable qualities. As grave as the puritans themselves, he could never engage the licentious part of the world in his favour; and that gravity being turned against the puritans, made him but the more odious to them. He gave himself up entirely to the church and churchmen; and he finished his ill conduct in this respect, by conferring the first ecclesiastical dignity of the kingdom, and a great sway in temporal affairs, upon doctor Laud. Hardly fit to direct a college, he was called to govern a kingdom. He was one of those indiscreet men of good intentions, who are the people in the world that make the worst figure in politics. This man thought he did good service to religion by a scrupulous enquiry into the manner in which the ministers every where conformed to the regulations of the former reigns. He deprived great numbers for nonconformity. Not satisfied with this, in which perhaps he was justifiable enough, if he had managed prudently, he made new regulations, and introduced on a people already abhorrent of the most necessary ceremonies, ceremonies of a new kind, of a most useless nature, and such as were even ridiculous, if the serious consequences which attended them may not intitle them to be considered as matters of importance.

  Several great men, disgusted at the proceedings of the court, and entertaining very rearsonable apprehensions for the public liberty, to make themselves popular, attached themselves to the popular notions of religion, and affected to maintain them with great zeal. Others became puritans through principle. And now their affairs put on a respectable appearance; in proportion as they became of consequence their sufferings seemed to be more and more grievous; the severities of Laud had raised not terror as formerly, but a sort of indignant hatred; and they became every day further and further from listening to the least terms of agreement with surplices, organs, common-prayer, or table at the West end of the church. As they who are serious about trifles, are serious indeed, their lives began to grow miserable to several on account of these ceremonies; and rather than be obliged to submit to them, there was no part of the world to which they would not have fled with chearfulness.

  Early in the reign of king James a number of persons of this persuasion had sought refuge in Holland; in which, though a country of the greatest religious freedom in the world, they did not find themselves better satisfied than they had been in England. There they were tolerated indeed, but watched; their zeal began to have dangerous languors for want of opposition; and being without power or consequence, they grew tired of the indolent security of their sanctuary; they chose to remove to a place where they should see no superior; and therefore they sent an agent to England, who agreed with the council of Plymouth for a tract of land in America, within their jurisdiction, to settle in, after they had obtained from the king a privilege to do so. The Plymouth council was a company, who by their charter had not only all the coast of North America from Nova Scotia to the Southern parts of Carolina, (the whole country being then distinguished by the names of South and North Virginia) as a scene for their exclusive trade; but they had the entire property of the soil besides.

  This colony established itself at a place which they called New Plymouth. They were but few in number; they landed in a bad season; and they were not at all supported but from their private funds. The winter was premature, and terribly cold. The country was all covered with wood, and afforded very little for the refreshment, of persons sickly with such a voyage, or for sustenance of an infant people. Near half of them perished by the scurvy, by want, and the severity of the climate; but they who survived, not dispirited with their losses, nor with the hardships they were still to endure, supported by the vigour which was then the character of Englishmen, and by the satisfaction of finding themselves out of the reach of the spiritual arm, they reduced this savage country to yield them a tolerable livelihood, and by degrees a comfortable subsistence.

  This little establishment was made in the year 1621. Several of their brethren in England labouring under the same difficulties, took the same methods of escaping from them. The colony of puritans insensibly increased; but as yet they had not extended themselves much beyond New Plymouth. It was in the year 1629, that the colony began to flourish in such a manner, that they soon became a considerable people. By the close of the ensuing year they had built four towns, Salem, Dorchester, Charles-town, and Boston which has since become the capital of New-England. That enthusiasm which was reversing every thing at home, and which is so dangerous in every settled community, proved of admirable service here. It became a principle of life and vigour, that enabled them to conquer all the difficulties of a savage country. Their exact and sober manners proved a substitute for a proper subordination, and regular form of government, which they had for some time wanted, and the want of which in such a country had otherwise been felt very severely.

  And now, not only they who found themselves uneasy at home upon a religious account, but several on account of the then profitable trade of furs and skins, and for the sake of the fishery, were invited to settle in New England. But this colony received it’s principal assistance from the discontent of several great men of the puritan party, who were it’s protectors, and who entertained a design of setling amongst them in New England, if they should fail in the measures they were pursuing for establishing the liberty, and reforming the religion of their mother country. They sollicited grants in New England, and were at a great expence in settling them. Amongst these patentees, we see the lords Brooke, Say and Seale, the Pelhams, the Hampdens, and the Pyms; the names which afterwards appeared with so much eclat upon a greater stage. It was said that sir Matthew Boynton, sir William Constable, sir Arthur Haslerig, and Oliver Cromwell were actually upon the point of embarking for New England; when archbishop Laud, unwilling that so many objects of his hatred should be removed out of the reach of his power, applied for, and obtained an order from the court to put a stop to these transportations; and thus he kept forcibly from venting itself that virulent humour which he lived to see the destruction of himself, his order, his religion, his master, and the constitution of his country. However, he was not able to prevail so far as to hinder New England from receiving vast reinforcements, as well of the clergy who were deprived of their livings, or not admitted to them for nonconformity, as of such of the laity who adhered to their opinions.

  CHAP. III.

  THE part of New England called Massachuset’s Bay, had now settlements very thick all along the sea shore. Some slips from these were planted in the province of Main and New Hampshire, being torn from the original stock by the religious violence, which was the chief characteristic of the first settlers in New England. The patentees we last mentioned, principally settled upon the river Connecticut, and established a separate and independent government there: some persons having before that fixed themselves upon the borders of this river, who fled from the tyranny arising from the religious differences which were moulded into the first principles of the Plymouth and Massachuset’s colonies.

  For a considerable time the people of New England had hardly any that deserved the name of a regular form of government. The court took very little care of them. By their charter they were empowered to establish such an order, and to make such laws as they pleased, provided they were not contrary to the laws of England. A point not easily settled, neither was there any means appointed for settling it. As they who composed the new colonies were generally persons of a contracted way of thinking, and most violent enthusiasts, they imitated the Jewish polity in almost all respects; and adopted the books of Moses as the law of t
he land. The first laws which they made were grounded upon them, and were therefore very ill suited to the customs, genius, or circumstances of that country, and of those times; for which reason they have since fallen into difuse.

  As to religion, it was, as I have said, the puritan. In England this could hardly be considered as a formed sect at the time of their emigration, since several who had received episcopal ordination were reckoned to belong to it. But as soon as they found themselves at liberty in America, they fell into a way very little different from the independent mode. Every parish was sovereign within itself. Synods indeed were occasionally called, but they served only to prepare and digest matters, which were to receive their sanction from the approbation of the several churches. The synods could exercise no branch of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, either as to doctrine or to discipline. They had no power of excommunication. They could only refuse to hold communion with those whose principles and practices they disliked. The magistrates assisted in those synods, not only to hear, but to deliberate and determine. From such a form as this, great religious freedom might, one would have imagined, be well expected. But the truth is, they had no idea at all of such a freedom. The very doctrine of any sort of toleration was so odious to the greater part, that one of the first persecutions set up here was against a small party which arose amongst themselves, who were hardy enough to maintain, that the civil magistrate had no lawful power to use compulsory measures in affairs of religion. After harrassing these people by all the vexatious ways imaginable, they obliged them to fly out of their jurisdiction. These emigrants settled themselves to the Southward, near Cape Cod, where they formed a new government upon their own principles, and built a town, which they called Providence. This has since made the fourth and smallest, but not the worst inhabited of the New England governments, called Rhode Island, from an island of that name which forms a part of it. As a persecution gave rise to the first settlement of New England, so a subsequent persecution in this colony gave rise to new colonies, and this facilitated the spreading of the people over the country.