Chapter II: Origin Of The Anglo-Americans--Part II


The English Government was not dissatisfied with an emigration which
removed the elements of fresh discord and of further revolutions. On the
contrary, everything was done to encourage it, and great exertions were
made to mitigate the hardships of those who sought a shelter from the
rigor of their country's laws on the soil of America. It seemed as
if New England was a region given up to the dreams of fancy and the
unrestrained experiments of innovators.

The English colonies (and this is one of the main causes of their
prosperity) have always enjoyed more internal freedom and more political
independence than the colonies of other nations; but this principle of
liberty was nowhere more extensively applied than in the States of New
England.

It was generally allowed at that period that the territories of the
New World belonged to that European nation which had been the first to
discover them. Nearly the whole coast of North America thus became a
British possession towards the end of the sixteenth century. The means
used by the English Government to people these new domains were of
several kinds; the King sometimes appointed a governor of his own
choice, who ruled a portion of the New World in the name and under the
immediate orders of the Crown; *j this is the colonial system adopted by
other countries of Europe. Sometimes grants of certain tracts were made
by the Crown to an individual or to a company, *k in which case all the
civil and political power fell into the hands of one or more persons,