A half-century of conflict. France and England in North America. Part ...

1700-1750.] BRITISH PROVINCES. 45they touch the Mississippi, or even cross it andstretch indefinitely towards the Pacific. Thesepatches are theprolongation ofBritish provinces, and the westwardtheir boundary lines represents theirseveral claims to vast interior tracts, founded onancient grants, but not made good by occupation, orvindicated by any exertion of power.These English communities took littlethought ofthe region beyond the AUeghanies. Each lived alife of its own, shut within its own limits, not dreamingof a future collective greatness to which the possessionof the West would be a necessary condition.No conscious community of aims and interests heldthem together, nor was there any authority capableof uniting their forces and turning them to a commonobject. Some of the servants of the Crown hadurged the necessity of joining them all under a strongcentral government, as the only means of makingthem loyal subjects and arresting the encroachmentsof France ;but the scheme was plainly impracticable.Each province remained in jealous isolation, busiedwith its own work, growing instrength, in the capacityof self-rule and the spiritof independence, andstubbornly resisting all exercise of authority fromwithout.If the English-speaking populations flowedwestward, it was in obedience to natural laws, forthe King did not aid the movement, the royal governorshad no authority to do so, and the colonialassemblies were too much engrossed with immediatelocal interests. The power of these colonies was