apidly decayed. On one point, however,
the mother country claimed and exacted the obedience of the colonists to
the imperial law. In her commercial code she would not permit the
slightest relaxation in their favor, whatever the peculiar circumstances
of their condition might be. This short-sighted and unjust restriction
was borne, partly because it could not be resisted, and partly because
at that early time the practical evil was but lightly felt. Although the
principle of representation was seldom specified in the earlier
charters, the colonists in all cases assumed it as a matter of right:
they held that their privileges as Englishmen accompanied them wherever
they went, and this was generally admitted as a principle of colonial
policy.

In the seventeenth century England adopted the system of transportation
to the American colonies. The felons were, however, too limited in
numbers to make any serious inroad upon the morals or tranquillity of
the settlers. Many of the convicts were men sentenced for political
crimes, but free from any social taint; the laboring population,
therefore, did not regard them with contempt, nor shrink from their
society. It may be held, therefore, that this partial and peculiar
system of transportation introduced no distinct element into the
constitution of the American nation.

The British colonization in the New World differed essentially from any
before attempted by the nations of modern Europe, and has led to
results of immeasurable importance to mankind. Even the magnificent
empire of India sinks into insignificance, in its bearings upon the
general interests of the world, by comparison with the Anglo-Saxon
empire in America. The success of each, however, is unexampled in
history.

In the great military and mercantile colony of the East an enormous
native population is ruled by a dominant race, whose number amounts to
less than a four-thousandth part of its own, but whose superiority in
war and civil government is at present so decided as to reduce any
efforts of opposition to the mere outbursts of hopeless petulance. In
that golden land, however, even the Anglo-Saxon race can not increase
and multiply; the children of English parents degenerate or perish under
its fatal sun. No permanent settlement or infusion of blood takes place.
Neither have we effected any serious change in the manners or customs of
the East Indians; on the other hand, we have rather assimilated ours to
their