The American Colonies Previous to the Declaration of Independence
(The Arnold Prize Essay, read in the Theatre at Oxford, June 9, 1869.) By , B. A., of Baliol College. “ Westward the course of Empire takes its way.” Rivingtons : London, Oxford, and Cambridge.
NOTHING does more to stimulate international sympathy than to have a foreigner write the biographies of our great-grandfathers. We, at least, are bound to think that “ it’s a good text,” as old Dr. Beecher used to say, in his hearty manner, at the beginning of a sermon. And in this case, the sermon is really worthy of the text, for without being brilliant, it is in the highest degree candid, careful, and appreciative.
The plan of the book is well and briefly stated in the Introduction : —
“ I propose in this essay to examine a few of the most remarkable in that course of events by which a wilderness, inhabited only by savages and wild beasts, was changed in less than two hundred years into the home of one of the greatest of the civilized powers of the world. For this purpose I propose, first, to glance briefly and in outline at that movement which changed the sober, homely Englishman of the earliest Tudor reigns into the enterprising, versatile Elizabethan Englishman, and which moulded the gentry, yeomanry, and merchants of the sixteenth century into a race of navigators and explorers, the boldest and most adventurous that the world has ever seen. I propose, then, to trace fully the growth of the several colonies, to illustrate their social and political life, their manners, religion, and laws ; to pass in review the most striking incidents and the most eminent characters in their history ; to consider their relations to the savage inhabitants whom they drove out, and to the colonists of other civilized nations with whom they came in contact; lastly, to examine the principal causes which gradually alienated and finally rent them asunder from their mother country, and bound them together in one independent empire.”
The candor of Mr. Doyle’s mind is well shown in his remarks on the character of the American Puritan as distinct from the English type. It is pleasant to find a countryman of Matthew Arnold writing this, for instance: —
“ If we would see English Puritanism in its best form, we must study it in the early fathers of New England. The idea that a Puritan was a tasteless misanthrope is of course absurd. The greatest epic and the greatest allegory in the English language are a sufficient answer to that charge. But it cannot be denied than the Puritan in England too often acquired the morose fanaticism which his enemies represented as natural to him. To live in danger of being ‘harried out of the land,’ and having their ears grubbed out by the hangman’s knife, is not calculated to make men gentle or loving to the world around them. In New England all this was different. There the Puritan was no longer a bondman in Egypt ; he had reached the Promised Land. The dark past was separated from him by a vast ocean, the bright future was what he had to live for. In England we have almost lost sight of the domestic and civil life of the Puritan, we know him only as a preacher, or a soldier ; if we would contemplate him as a citizen we must turn to America.” (p. 76.) And he quotes admiringly the well-known saying of John Higginson, that “ New England was originally a plantation religious, not a plantation of trade ;. . . . and if any make religion as twelve and the world as thirteen, such an one hath not the spirit of a true New England man.”
When the author comes to the more difficult narrative of the opening events of the Revolution, the same spirit of perfect candor is shown. “The Americans,” he says, “ were asserting and recovering freedom, if not for themselves, for their children’s children.” He thinks that the success of the royal arms in America would have brought the greatest danger to English liberty, and quotes Burke and Chatham for similar opinion. “To such a pass,” he frankly says, “ had misgovernment brought England, that our only hope lay in the incapacity of her commanders and the courage of her foes.” (pp. 186, 187.) The key to the whole struggle lay in this, he thinks, that it was both “ a democratic and a conservative revolution.” And he finally declares that, “ as a step in the progress of the human race, the American rebellion was in advance of any movement that had gone before it.” (p. 218.)
Yet the book is written without a tinge of flattery or sycophancy ; it is only pervaded by that perfectly manly spirit of fair play which we once loved to associate with the English mind. This “ Prize Essay ” really deserves republication, for there is no American book that covers so satisfactorily the precise ground here comprised. The only thing to be regretted is that the author suffered from the drawback, almost inevitable in a foreign country, of not possessing the latest special authorities upon many points he treats. Not to speak of less important memoirs or monographs, he writes of the French and Indian wars without alluding to Parkman, of the siege of Boston without citing Frothingham, and of the witchcraft delusion without a reference to Upham. Yet so completely have these writers, each in his special department, superseded the authorities whom Mr. Doyle cites, that it is as if an American were to write about the reign of Henry VIII. without having read Froude. It is remarkable, in view of this want of recent authorities, that we note so few errors of detail.