Western Europe-a struggle that was to last with comparatively brief intermissions till well into the nineteenth century. The continental wars in which England was engaged after the deposition of James II. were rendered necessary to some extent by the tremendous power of France under Louis XIV. William III. saw it was inevitable for the interests of England that Louis XIV, should be checked, and the war of the Spanish Succession (1702-13) was carried on with the object of preventing that king from joining the resources of Spain to those of his own kingdom. For if he had done so, two disastrous results would have happened. The Stuarts would by his help have been restored to the English throne, and the struggle against absolute monarchy and religious tyranny would unfortunately have been fought over again. Secondly, the growth of English commerce and colonies would have been checked, if not utterly annihilated. Here the real point of contention between England and France was the New World. The Spanish Succession, remote as it seemed, concerned Englishmen, because France threatened by her close alliance and influence with Spain to enter into the Spanish monopoly of the New World and to keep England out of it.1 Hence the most practical results of the war were seen in the acquisition of colonial power. We were not only preserved from the Stuarts, but also, when the war was finally over in 1713, found ourselves in possession of Gibraltar, now one of the keys of our Indian Empire, and of the Hudson's Bay Territory, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia (then called Acadia) the foundations of our present Canadian dominion. England was also allowed by Spain the monopoly of the trade in negroes with Spanish colonies, and to send one ship a year to the South Seas. concerned, was a commercial success, though we had to pay rather heavily for it, and were involved in further difficulties in America afterwards.

3

The war, as far as we were

1 Seeley, Expansion of England, pp. 32 and 33.

Ib.

This is known as the "Assiento" contract (Art. 12 of the Treaty of 1713). The English had the monopoly of the slave trade for 30 years, but practically till war broke out again in 1739. The contract was renewed for 4 years in 1748, but not at the Peace of 1763.

T

§ 176. English Colonies.

It will be seen that by this time (1713) England had definitely entered the field as a colonial power, and was anxious to extend her colonial possessions. She had not shown any great desire for them in earlier years; in fact, we have already remarked that she was then, as she always has been, the last to enter upon a colonising career. But now England was fired by the example of other nations. The motives, however, for our early schemes of colonisation were rather mixed. It certainly cannot be said that our colonies were a natural "expansion" of the mother country, and the use of this term, expansion, is apt to be misleading; for England was certainly by no means overpopulated in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. In fact, it was then even complained that colonies would drain away population which we could ill afford to spare. There can be little doubt that one of the main causes of colonial enterprise, especially in its earlier stages, was the desire to gain some share of the gold and silver which Spain had obtained so freely. This, indeed, is a frequent inducement to open up and to take possession of new countries, as has been exemplified in our own time both in Australia and South Africa. Often, however, those who go out to seek gold find something better and more lasting in the natural resources of the country; and it is upon these alone that a really stable colony can be founded. The dream of finding Eldorados passed away after a few futile attempts, and men began to realise that America and the Indies-both East and West-offered enormous facilities for a profitable trade. The profits of trade were undoubtedly the real motives of nearly all our subsequent colonial enterprises, with the exception

1 The use of this word seems to me almost the only fault of Prof. Seeley's admirable lectures. It implies a kind of growth which really never took place till late in the nineteenth century.

2 See Britannia Languens (1680), p. 173.

3 Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, Bk. IV. ch. vii. (Vol. II. p. 143, Clarendon Press edn.); and Capt. J. Smith, History of Virginia, iii. 3 (Works, 407), mentions how this hope of gold animated the first settlers in Virginia. So, too, Sir Walter Raleigh hoped to find gold in Guiana, and Frobisher's expedition of 1577 was entirely to seek for gold. Craik, British Commerce, i. 246, 254.

of those which proceeded (as in the case of some of the North American colonies) from the desire to find a country where men could practise freely the varied forms of a new religion. Later on, when these profits were seen to be considerable, the home Government began to formulate a definite scheme of colonial policy, in the supposed interests of the mother country; and there seems to have been at one time a clearly-defined scheme in the heads of politicians to raise up a number of agricultural dependencies which would exchange their useful products for the numerous manufactures which were now becoming so predominant at home. This scheme approximated more nearly to the relations of England and her colonies-which are all new and hardly yet fully developed countries—in the present day. Such a trading connection is a natural and nearly inevitable state of things, and is almost sure to constitute the normal relationship of colony and parent nation. But in the eighteenth century England very nearly broke off this relationship by ill-judged political action, while in the present day her newer colonies are rather foolishly attempting to do the same without having the excuse of political or economic ignorance to shield them, an ignorance which it might have been hoped that the War of American Independence and other subsequent events would have helped to dispel.

3

But leaving the motives for the foundation of colonies, we may notice their remarkable growth in the seventeenth century, and pass on to consider the vast struggle in which that growth involved England.

§ 177. Further Wars with France and Spain. All the wars in which England now engaged had some commercial or colonial object in view. People had yet to

1 See all Adam Smith's chapter, Wealth of Nations, Bk. IV. ch. vii.; also the very valuable essay on Colonies and Colony Trade in M'Culloch's Dictionary of Commerce, edn. 1844.

M'Culloch, Dictionary of Commerce (8.v. Colonies), p. 318, edn. 1844, says this is untrue, at least at first. 3 See below, pp. 364-370.

See the author's British Commerce and Colonies, ch. iv. This being a history of industry, the subject of our colonies can only be very briefly referred to. Besides the American colonies (p. 295, note) England now had several of the West Indian islands and factories on the Gold Coast.

than that of her neigh

learn that the best way to extend a nation's trade is to promote general peace; but, in default of that, it seemed well to provoke a general war. Mistaken as England's policy was, it was no more so bours, for all believed, as many do still, in the sole market theory, and England was compelled to fight against other nations who wished to have a monopoly of trade and colonisation. Moreover, England was provoked into war by the secret "Family Compact" between the related rulers of France and Spain, by which Philip V. of Spain agreed to take away the South American trade from England, and give it to his nephew, Louis XV. of France.1 The result was a system of annoyance to English vessels trading in the South Seas, culminating in the mutilation of an English captain, one Jenkins, and war was declared openly in 1739. This war merged into the war of the Austrian Succession, which lasted for eight years (1740-48), a matter with which England was in no way directly concerned, but which afforded a good excuse to renew the struggle against the commercial growth of France as well as Spain. We did not gain much by it, except the final annihilation of the hopes of the Stuarts, and a small increase of British power upon the high seas, but yet it was undoubtedly necessary to check the power of France.

After a few years, however, we entered upon another war, the Seven Years' War (1756-63), in which England and Prussia fought side by side against the rest of Europe, and attacked France in particular in all parts of the world. The war was largely caused by the quarrels of the French and English colonists in America, and of the rival French and English companies in India. We cannot here go into the details of it. It is sufficient to say that, after a bad beginning, we won various victories by sea and land, and at 1 Its main object was the ruin of the maritime supremacy of Britain. Green, History, iv. 153.

2 This story is sometimes declared mythical (e.g., by Seeley, Expansion, p. 21), but seems to rest on some foundation.

3 Cf. Green, History, iv. 155.

4 Green, History, iv. 175-189; Lecky, History, ii. 443, iii. 44.

Seeley, Expansion, p. 27, points out how many of these conflicts took place when England and France were nominally at peace.

at the close (1763) found ourselves, by the Treaty of Paris, in possession of Canada, Florida, and all the French possessions east of the Mississippi, except New Orleans; and we had also gained the upper hand in India. England held now almost undisputed sway over the seas, and our trade grew by leaps and bounds.

Now, the whole of this series of wars is connected together by a necessary cause, and that is the growing commercial and industrial power of England. This growth was a cause of the English attempt to take a place among other commercial nations, such as the Dutch and Portuguese, and this attempt in turn necessitated an attack upon the monopoly of Spain and the rival power of France. The successful issue of these wars again caused industry and trade to advance more prosperously than ever, till at length, both politically and industrially, England rose to the front rank of European nations. It has also been well pointed

out, that in the three wars between 1740 and 1783, the struggle as between England and France was more especially for the New World. In the first war the issue was fairly joined; in the second France suffered a fatal fall; in the third, by assisting the American States, she took a signal revenge.1 "This is the grand chapter in the history of Greater Britain, for it is the first great struggle in which the (British) Empire fights as a whole, the colonies and settlements outside Europe being here not merely dragged in the wake of the mother country, but actually taking the lead." 2 To the history of these colonial dependencies we must now devote a few words, beginning first with India.

§ 178. The Struggle for India.

Since the founding of Surat and the acquisition of Bombay, the East India Company had also founded two forts or stations, which have since become most important cities, namely, Fort St George, now Madras, and Fort William, now Calcutta. They had become powerful, and

1 Seeley, Expansion, p. 31.

3

2 Ib., p. 31.

* Macpherson, History of European Commerce with India, p. 125.