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Colonies

MPIRE building and colonization, each according to its requirements, call for appropriate leadership. At the forefront of imperial enterprise we see the soldier of courage and martial design: a Genghis Khan sweeping with his hordes over Mongolia and China; an Akbar overcoming India's millions; a Cortez cheering his soldiers to the fray amid the flames of Montezuma's capital. In the vanguard of colonization, essentially a civilian undertaking, we find the administrator with a vision and a mind for business affairs: a Baltimore and a Penn raising capital, calling for tenants, and attempting to build states by the sheer strength of individual resources; a Gates, a Wingfield, and a Winthrop associating themselves with mercantile corporations to accomplish purposes beyond the power of any single promoter; a Carver and a Bradford giving direction and inspiration to a little band of Pilgrims breaking the stubborn soil of Plymouth.

In the nature of things, daring leaders fearing no risk of

fortune had to break the way before judicious merchants would invest their capital in dubious speculations beyond the unknown sea. If among the forerunners who first caught glimpses of England's unique mission and feared not the hazards of adventure, one must be taken by way of illustration, the choice may very well fall upon Walter Raleigh, son of a country gentleman, knighted for service by Queen Elizabeth.

For the great undertaking in colonization, Raleigh's temper and early experience fitted him in a peculiar fashion. Alive to all the important interests of his age, he was fascinated by the multiplying tales of exploration and discovery. Humble geographers were among his friends. The sea dogs, Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, had respect for him; he was of their kind. In red scenes of battle, he had showed his daring, helping the Dutch to defy the rule of Spain and England's gallant sailors to send the Armada to the bottom of the ocean. Given to brooding upon high enterprise, he pondered upon the destinies of nations, sketching in fact during his later years a grand plan for a philosophic history of the world. Such was the first architect of English colonial fortune who saw in his dreams the American wilderness subdued by the people of his native land.

Unshaken by the fate of his brave half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who, returning from one of his voyages of exploration, had perished in a storm, exclaiming as tradition has it, "we are as near to heaven by sea as by land," Sir Walter Raleigh determined to plant under mild skies on southern shores the beginning of a second England. Cautious at first, he sent out at his own expense a scouting expedition under Amadas and Barlowe who brought back reports of a paradise along the Carolina coast. Then Sir Walter sought the help of his sovereign and secured from Elizabeth a wine monopoly yielding him revenues for experimentation, supplementing a grant of land in America that promised to make him a feudal lord over a princely

realm. Twice from his own purse thus recruited and once with the help of merchant capitalists, he attempted to estab lish a permanent agricultural settlement in America, not overlooking the possibility of finding precious metals.

Misfortune of every kind dogged the steps of his ad venture, however, and at last, broken in estate, Raleigh was compelled to accept the verdict of failure. The empire of which he dreamed was to be built by other hands in other ways. The treasuries of gold which his captains sought were not to be found until, in the sweat of their brow, American colonists had cut and tramped their way across three thousand miles of forest, plain, desert, and mountain to the far end of the continent. Instead of precious metals Raleigh's men discovered a more secure foundation for a state had they but known it-the lowly tobacco leaf and the humble potato. The pungent weed was to furnish a currency no less certain than gold and afford the staple crop for baronial estates where wealth and leisure nourished a governing class capable of waging to a victorious end a dramatic contest with the descendants of the Raleighs, Leicesters, and Burleighs of the Elizabethan age. The plain prose of economy in the long run is stranger than the romance of fiction.

Though Raleigh failed, his experiments taught valuable lessons and his spirit fired contemporaries with emulative desire. If nothing more, he had proved that successful colonization was, in the beginning at least, beyond the strength and resources of any individual. The amount of capital and the diversity of talent demanded made it of necessity a coöperative undertaking, at all events until the first difficulties were resolved and the path was blazed. Thus it came about that the earliest permanent settlements were made by commercial corporations.

Four American colonies owed their inception to trading

companies two of English origin, a third under DutchWalloon patronage, and a fourth under Swedish direction. It was the London Company chartered in 1606 that led the way by founding Virginia; it was the Massachusetts Bay Company incorporated in 1629 that saved the little Plymouth fellowship from destruction and started New England on its course. In a fierce quest for trade, the Dutch West India Company, established in 1621, laid in New Netherland the basis of a colony upon which the English fortythree years later erected the province of New York. Not to be outdone by Holland and England, the king of Sweden called into being a West India Company of his own and commissioned it to break ground for a Swedish state on the banks of the Delaware.

In a certain sense Georgia may also be included among the "Company" colonies. If the avowed purpose of its principal promoter, James Oglethorpe, was philanthropicthe establishment of an asylum for poor debtors—the legal instrument for the realization of that design was a charter granted by George II in 1732, uniting the sponsors of the enterprise in "one body politic and corporate," known as the "Trustees for establishing the colony of Georgia in America." In form of government and in methods of financing, the Georgia concern did not differ materially from the trading Company. So it may be said that the corporation of capitalists-the instrument employed in commercial undertakings-was the agency which planted the first successful colonies and molded their early polity in church and state and economy.

Now the commercial corporation for colonization, whether it sprang from the sole motive of profit-making or from mixed incentives, such as the prosecution of trade and the spread of religious propaganda, was in reality a kind of autonomous state. Like the state, it could endure indefinitely as long as its charter lasted; its members might die but, by the continuous election of successors, the corporation went on. Like the state, it had a constitution, a

charter issued by the Crown, which formed a superior law binding constituents and officers.

Like the state, it had a territorial basis—a grant of land often greater in area than a score of European principalities. It was a little democracy in itself, for its stockholders admitted new members to the suffrage, elected their own officers, and made by-laws. It exercised many functions of a sovereign government: it could make assessments, coin money, regulate trade, dispose of corporate property, collect taxes, manage a treasury, and provide for defense. Thus every essential element long afterward found in the government of the American state appeared in the chartered corporation that started English civilization in America.

Moreover, that other great arm of the English state, the Church, usually formed an integral part of these corporate enterprises. As a matter of zeal in some instances and of form in others, colonial companies were generally charged with the duty of "propagating the Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God"-to use the language of the first Virginia charter. Either in fact or in theory to conciliate high powers in England, this meant the faith of the Anglican Church established by law. In the Virginia colony, there was no doubt about the injunction: the Company made the creed of that Church the strict rule of the plantation. The first legislature assembled on the soil of America, the Virginia House of Burgesses, enacted that "all persons whatsoever upon the Sabbath days shall frequent divine service and sermons, both forenoon and afternoon."

Such was the nature of the agency created by James I in 1606 when he issued the first charter to the London Company commissioning it to establish the colony of Virginia. Among the men whose enthusiasm called the corporation