that they either fail us altogether or show their worst limitations and defects within the period of which we are speaking. The simple fact of the case is that we have in print scarcely an approximation to a satisfactory treatment of American his tory in the early eighteenth century. This being true, we may surmise that the history of the colonial revolt may not have been quite so satisfactorily written as Lord Acton thinks; for it is hard to understand how, if our knowledge and treatment of the previous seventy years are so imperfect, all the elements in the Revolution at its close could be thrown by the historian into proper relief. It is open to one who is skeptically inclined to believe that this has not been done, and that it will be impossible—as it has been impossible in the past-to write a satisfactory history of the Revolution till the half century and more which preceded it shall have been thoroughly investigated.

But more than this may truthfully be said. It is true that a vast literature upon the colonial period exists and that meritorious efforts have been made to deal with certain parts and phases of the subject. The historical societies of the country have devoted their attention chiefly to this portion of the field of American history. The writers of histories of the commonwealths have expended their efforts upon it. Biographies exist in considerable abundance. Local histories have been issued in large numbers from the presses of the Northern and Middle States. There have been editors and collectors of documents and sources and materials of all kinds. There has been no lack of zeal or labor. Some critical acumen has been shown in the treatment of the material immediately at hand. In some instances cooperative effort has been enlisted on a large scale for the elucidation of the entire period or of portions of it. At least four historians of large acquirements and abilities have traversed the period or are in process of traversing it. Still another, by his genius and industry, has thrown a flood of light on the relations between the colonies and new France. Foreign as well as American historians have borne an honorable part in the work.

But when all has been said which it is possible for a just or generous critic to say in approval of the work accomplished, or of the spirit of those who have devoted themselves to it, it still, I think, remains true that the colonial period of Ameri can history is not well understood. The reader of the books

written upon it will find himself contemplating a multitude of events, many of them petty, none apparently of very great importance, some occurring on one side of the Atlantic and some on the other, and between them all he will often fail to discern any clear connection. Those events which occurred on this side of the ocean he will find distributed among about twenty colonies, all of which are treated as if their organization and the trend of events within them were much the same. The history of each colony is often treated as isolated or connected only with that of its immediate neighbors; that they all played a part in a common development, and just what that development was, are facts which have never been clearly brought out. The history of the colonies outside of New England has been very imperfectly treated, and New England ideas have too much dominated the views taken of conditions existing within them. In short, until recent years the old-fashioned general history has held the field to the exclusion of everything better, a type of history which has become antiquated. The State history still is of that character. It stands somewhere between annals and well-digested historical composition, usually nearer the former than the latter. Its author has, as a rule, failed to distinguish between the really important and the insignificant facts and forces with which he has had to deal. Petty local details have often, if not usually, occupied a position on his pages of prominence equal to the leading world movements in which his colony bore a humble share. Little power of selection or of logical criticism has been shown in his treatment of his material. Intense local patriotism usually existed in his mind, but of satisfactory knowledge of the history of the world in general, of the relation in which his subject stood to it, of the history even of colonization, he has shown little knowledge. Of training in the collecting, sifting, arrangement and presentation of historical materials he, as a rule, has had none. With such work as this, worthy and useful though it has been in its day, we can no longer be content. In the interest of American history in general the greatest need to-day is the critical investigation and exposition of the colonial period as a whole and with a view to the ascertainment of its position in the general history of the world. Besides the much more extensive printing of the documentary sources, we need in the treatment of this period correct general ideas and an abundance of them. The material which is accessible and that HIST 985

which can be made so should be fused together, so that the meaning which it contains may be revealed. This can be done by keeping in mind what the essential nature of this period is.

In the study of the first two centuries of our existence we have to do with the history of special jurisdictions and of their relations to the sovereign power from which they sprang and by which they were in a measure controlled. As it is at the same time a period of origins, it is remotely analogous in character to the old Germanic Empire, to France under the Capetian line of kings when the crown and the feudatories were in conflict; still more remotely to England in the later Saxon period, when the central power was struggling against centrif ugal tendencies. In treating of the history of anyone of these periods it would be absurd to fix attention exclusively upon either the feudatories or the power which claimed and was trying to assert sovereignty over them. Both should receive that share of attention which accords with their importance in the system. The same is true of the history of our colonial period. It was a period of attempted empire building, and the imperial, as well as the colonial, side of the subject should be properly and fairly treated.

How, then, may one deal with the colonies in order to show the significance of their development? The answer to this is clear, that they should be treated comparatively in groups, classified according to the internal political organization of the colonies. The grouping of the colonies according to location, into northern, middle, and southern, arises largely from economic considerations and throws little light on the fundamental tendencies of the period. It causes more confusion than it removes. Only when the classification is based on political forms will the relation of the colonies to the great questions of independence and imperial control-the deepest issues of the period-be revea'ed. Two of these forms, the corporate, or New England type of colony, and the royal province, tended to become permanent; the proprietary province was in its essential nature transitional, and in any event must have passed away. As soon as the tendencies within the system toward independence triumphed, the colonies organized themselves as self-governing commonwealths, substantially, that is, in harmony with the form of the corporate colony. Had the opposite tendency, that toward rigid imperial control, prevailed, the royal province would have become the sole form of colonial

government, and the provinces would in some way have been combined into a system under a central colonial government. So far as the internal organization of the colonies is concerned, the most striking fact in the history of the first half of the eighteenth century is the development of the royal province as a form of colonial government. During that period, or a little before it, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, both the Carolinas, and ultimately Georgia, became organized according to that plan; while Maryland was, as to government, a royal province from 1690 to 1715, and the governmental powers of William Penn were suspended during 1693 and 1694. To these facts are to be added, as indicative of the tendencies of the time, the proposals for the recall of all the charters which were repeatedly made in Parliament, and the declarations favorable to this which were uniformly made by the board of trade and by many of the administrative officials in the colonies. A movement so general as this must indicate and proceed from a deep seated tendency. It resulted from the breakdown of the proprietary governments, both for colonial and imperial purposes, and from the need which the imperial officials felt of securing a well-ordered executive system within the colonies themselves. The moment either a corporation or a proprietary province was transformed into a royal province, the king secured within the colony in question a governor, a council, a surveyor general, receiver-general, attorney-general, a secretary, and usually a chief justice, besides other subordi nate officials, who were appointed directly or indirectly by himself. The gain thus for the purposes of imperial adminis tration was most important. The royal province, for the reason that it had a royal executive system, was the only form of colonial government which was fitted for the attainment of imperial objects and ends. Its development on so large a scale affords the strongest proof that the administration of colonial affairs, in spite of the neglect of Walpole and the inefficiency of Newcastle, tended to become more systematic and continIts character as an institution, its relation to the home. government, even its external history, has never yet been the subject of anything like systematic study, though it is safe to say that there is no subject within the entire field of American history that is more worthy of attention.

I would treat the royal provinces comparatively and from the institutional standpoint, with reference also to the general

political and social conditions both in the colonies and in Europe which helped to condition their existence. I would study the origin and transmission of power within them, the organi zation and powers of the executive and legislature, and the relations between the two as they unfolded through the entire history of the provinces. That constitutes the central thread of their history. In the light of that I would study the fiscal, judicial, military, and ecclesiastical systems of the provinces, their local government and their social development, all of these, not only for the purpose of showing what they were in themselves, but how they contributed to the life of the provinces in its totality. The political and constitutional side of the subject, it seems to me, should be given the first place, because it is only through law and political institutions that social forces become in the large sense operative. The directions which these forces take are also largely determined by the political framework within which they act. They are ever modifying institutions, but it is by acting on and through them. The process of experimentation and change which we call development can be clearly revealed and the meaning inherent in such process brought out only by reference to the action and reaction constantly going on between the conservative and progressive tendencies in society, both of these acting upon and around established institutions. Guided by this thought, the special investigation of each one of the royal provinces should be looked upon as only preparatory to the use of the information thus obtained in a broad generalization which shall include all the provinces of the class. When that has been satisfactorily made, and not till then, can we begin to draw conclusions which shall be based upon adequate knowledge as to the relative strength of political tendencies within the colonies during the first half of the eighteenth century.

On the one side it has been asserted that the main tendency in our colonial history was toward independence; on the other, that nothing was further from the intention of the colonists than independence. There is truth in both contentions, but which contains the larger and deeper truth remains yet to be determined. Before that question can be answered, we must know, indeed, not only what the royal province was in the widest sense, but what the tendencies were under the other forms of colonial government-the corporation and the proprietary province-and in what direction they all moved on