e empire into an economic
unit, of which England should be the administrative and distributing
centre. So far the English policy did not differ in kind from the
contemporary colonial policy of other countries, though it left to the
colonies a greater freedom of trade (for example, in the
'non-enumerated articles') than was ever allowed by Spain or France, or
by the two great trading companies which controlled the foreign
possessions of Holland.

But there is one respect in which the authors of this system differed
very widely from the colonial statesmen of other countries. Though they
were anxious to organise and consolidate the empire on the basis of a
trade system, they had no desire or intention of altering its
self-governing character, or of discouraging the growth of a healthy
diversity of type and method. Every one of the new colonies of this
period was provided with the accustomed machinery of representative
government: in the case of Carolina, the philosopher, John Locke, was
invited to draw up a model constitution, and although his scheme was
quite unworkable, the fact that he was asked to make it affords a
striking proof of the seriousness with which the problems of colonial
government were regarded. In several of the West Indian settlements
self-governing institutions were organised during these years. In the
Frame of Government which Penn set forth on the foundation of
Pennsylvania, in 1682, he laid it down that 'any government is free
where the laws rule, and where the people are a party to these rules,'
and on this basis proceeded to organise his system. According to this
definition all the English colonies were free, and they were almost the
only free communities in the world. And though it is true that there
was an almost unceasing conflict between the government and the New
England colonies, no one who studies the story of these quarrels can
fail to see that the demands of the New Englanders were often
unreasonable and inconsistent with the maintenance of imperial unity,
while the home government was extremely patient and moderate. Above
all, almost the most marked feature of the colonial policy of Charles
II. was the uniform insistence upon complete religious toleration in
the colonies. Every new charter contained a clause securing this vital
condition.

It has long been our habit to condemn the old colonial system as it was
defined in this period, and to attribute to it the disruption of the
empire