ad government. The disputes between the
British Government and the colonists were certainly the circumstances
which determined the disruption, but the forces which impelled the
colonists to action were those subconscious impulses which Nature has
planted deep in the human mind as part of her evolutionary machinery.

THE SAXON SETTLEMENT OF BRITAIN

The colonization of North America, which took place in the full light of
history, gives us the means of understanding the Saxon colonization of
England, which otherwise lies obscure in the twilight of our written
records. In both cases we have to deal with a spontaneous or popular
movement. One was across the wide Atlantic, the other across an almost
land-locked sea. Both commenced by the formation of a fringe of true
settlement wherein inherited tribal traditions and organizations were
nursed and strengthened; in both cases the original fringe was fed by a
stream of immigrants continuing over several centuries. The chief
difference between the two movements lies in this: the American
colonists encountered a people who were so physically unlike themselves
as to raise a racial frontier, whereas the Saxon people pushed their way
into a land inhabited by people of their own stock. The progeny of the
captured British native could be reared so as to become a true Saxon.
The Saxon colonization, as it spread over the land, engulfed--when it
did not exterminate--the natives and their tribal organizations in their
agricultural village communities. The Saxon settlement of England held
and prospered because it was a true colonization.

THE PLANTATION AND COLONIZATION OF IRELAND

In Ireland we have an opportunity of contrasting the results of an
artificial or forced settlement with those of a natural or spontaneous
colonization. Elizabeth, James, and Cromwell settled their colonists on
Irish tribal lands, thus exposing them to the full force of the clannish
or tribal spirit which then animated the natives of Ireland. The
consequence was that the progeny of the British colonists, as it grew
up, absorbed the Irish tribal spirit, for this spirit, being more
primitive and more easily understood than a sense of nationality, always
makes a dominant appeal to the young mind. The blood which English
statesmen of the seventeenth century poured into Ireland to quench its
national flame only served to feed it. It was otherwise in the
north-east of Ireland--particularly in Down and Antrim. Th