| |
| 1. | A new element in the government of England was the determination of George the Third to be an active political force. |
|
| 2. | As often happens during a war, some parts of the country prospered, notwithstanding the constant loss. |
|
| 3. | Besides paid white laborers, there was everywhere a class of white servants bound without wages for a term of years, and a more miserable class of Negro slaves. |
|
| 4. | Each colony became accustomed to planting new settlements and to claiming new boundaries. |
|
| 5. | Earlier than local governments in their development, and always superior to them in powers, were the colonial governments. |
|
| 6. | England and France were rivals, not only on the continent, but in the West Indies, in India, and in Europe. |
|
| 7. | Everywhere among the English-speaking race criminal justice was rude, and punishments were barbarous; but the tendency was to do away with special privileges and legal exemptions. |
|
| 8. | Few characters in history are indispensable. |
|
| 9. | Foreseeing the struggle, the French began to construct a chain of forts connecting the St. Lawrence settlements with the Mississippi. |
|
| 10. | From William of Orange to William Pitt the younger there was but one man without whom English history must have taken a different turn, and that was William Pitt the elder. |
|
| 11. | In 1763 the English were the most powerful nation in the world. |
|
| 12. | In any event, colonization and the grant of lands were provincial matters. |
|
| 13. | In appearance the labor system of all the colonies was the same. |
|
| 14. | In comparison with other men of their time, the Americans were distinguished by the possession of new political and social ideas, which were destined to be the foundation of the American commonwealth. |
|
| 15. | In each colony in 1750 were to be found two sets of governing organizations, - the local and the general. |
|
| 16. | In government as well as in trade a new era came to the colonies in 1763. |
|
| 17. | In some of the middle colonies the towns and counties were both active and had a relation with each other which was the forerunner of the present system of local government in the Western States. |
|
| 18. | Many attempts had been made by colonial legislatures to cut off or to tax the importation of slaves. |
|
| 19. | More emphasis was thus thrown upon the local governments than in England. |
|
| 20. | New England fisheries and trade were little affected except when, in 1758, Loudoun shut up the ports by a brief embargo. |
|
| 21. | New Englanders were settled in compact little communities; they liked to live near the church, and where they could unite for protection from enemies. |
|
| 22. | On March 10, 1764, preliminary resolutions passed the House of Commons looking towards the Stamp Act. |
|
| 23. | One of the strongest and most persistent elements in national development has been that inheritance of political traditions and usages which the new settlers brought with them. |
|
| 24. | So far as the individual colonies were concerned, their boundaries were established for them by English grants. |
|
| 25. | The English common law was accepted in all the colonies, but it was modified everywhere by statutes, according to the need of each colony. |
|
| 26. | The Stuart sovereigns of England steadily attempted to strengthen their power, and the resistance to that effort caused an immense growth of Parliamentary influence. |
|
| 27. | The colonies had little occasion to feel or to resent direct royal prerogative. |
|
| 28. | The county was also organized in New England, but took on chiefly judicial and military functions, and speedily abandoned local administration. |
|
| 29. | The growth of constitutional government, as we now understand it, was promoted by the establishment of two different sets of machinery for making laws and carrying on government. |
|
| 30. | The old charters of Massachusetts, Virginia, and the Carolinas had given title to strips of territory extending from the Atlantic westward to the Pacific. |
|
| 31. | The participation of the people in their own government was the more significant, because the colonies actually had what England only seemed to have, - three departments of government. |
|
| 32. | The people on both sides of the water were accustomed to an orderly government, in which laws were made and administered with regularity and dignity. |
|
| 33. | The residence of the Plymouth settlers in the Netherlands, and the later conquest of the Dutch colonies, had brought the Americans into contact with the singularly wise and free institutions of the Dutch. |
|
| 34. | To some degree the colonial conception of government had been affected by the English Commonwealth of 1649, and the English Revolution of 1688. |
|
| 35. | Washington's defeat in 1754 was followed by active military preparations on both sides. |
|