The character of most nations in their colonial dependencies is in an
inverse ratio of excellence to their character at home. The best people in
the mother-country will generally be the worst in the colonies; the worst
at home will be the best abroad. Or, perhaps, I may state it less
offensively thus:--The colonists of a well governed-country will
degenerate; those of an ill-governed country will improve. I am now
considering the natural tendency of such colonists if left to themselves;
of course, a direct act of the legislature of the mother-country will break
in upon this. Where this tendency is exemplified, the cause is obvious. In
countries well governed and happily conditioned, none, or very few, but
those who are desperate through vice or folly, or who are mere trading
adventurers, will be willing to leave their homes and settle in another
hemisphere; and of those who do go, the best and worthiest are always
striving to acquire the means of leaving the colony, and of returning to
their native land. In ill-governed and ill-conditioned countries, on the
contrary, the most respectable of the people are willing and anxious to
emigrate for the chance of greater security and enlarged freedom; and if
they succeed in obtaining these blessings in almost any degree, they have
little inducement, on the average, to wish to abandon their second and
better country. Hence, in the former case, the colonists consider
themselves as mere strangers, sojourners, birds of passage, and shift to
live from hand to mouth, with little regard to lasting improvement of the
place of their temporary commerce; whilst, in the latter case, men feel
attached to a community to which they are individually indebted for
otherwise unattainable benefits, and for the most part learn to regard it
as their abode, and to make themselves as happy and comfortable in it as
possible. I believe that the internal condition and character of the
English and French West India islands of the last century amply verified
this distinction; the Dutch colonists most certainly did, and have always
done.
Analogous to this, though not founded on precisely the same principle, is
the fact that the severest naval discipline is always found in the ships of
the freest nations, and the most lax discipline in the ships of the most
oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of the Americans is the sharpest;
then that of the English;[1] then that of the French (I speak as it used to
be); and on board a Spanish ship, there is no discipline at all.
At Genoa, the word "Liberty" is, or used to be, engraved on the chains of
the galley-slaves, and the doors of the dungeons.
[Footnote 1:
This expression needs explanation. It _looks_ as if Mr. Coleridge rated the
degree of liberty enjoyed by the English, _after_ that of the citizens of
the United States; but he meant no such thing. His meaning was, that the
form of government of the latter was more democratic, and formally assigned
more power to each individual. The Americans, as a nation, had no better
friend in England than Coleridge; he contemplated their growth with
interest, and prophesied highly of their destiny, whether under their
present or other governments. But he well knew their besetting faults and
their peculiar difficulties, and was most deliberately of opinion that the
English had, for 130 years last past, possessed a measure of individual
freedom and social dignity which had never been equalled, much less
surpassed, in any other country ancient or modern. There is a passage in
Mr. Coleridge's latest publication (Church and State}, which clearly
expresses his opinion upon this subject: "It has been frequently and truly
observed that in England, where the ground-plan, the skeleton, as it were,
of the government is a monarchy, at once buttressed and limited by the
aristocracy (the assertions of its popular character finding a better
support in the harangues and theories of popular men, than in state
documents, and the records of clear history), afar greater degree of
liberty is, and long has been, enjoyed, than ever existed in, the
ostensibly freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths of ancient or
modern times; greater, indeed, and with a more decisive predominance of the
spirit of freedom, than the wisest and most philanthropic statesmen of
antiquity, or than the great commonwealth's men,--the stars of that narrow
interspace of blue sky between the black clouds of the first and second
Charles's reigns--believed compatible, the one with the safety of the
state, the other with the interests of morality. Yes! for little less than
a century and a half, Englishmen have, collectively and individually, lived
and acted with fewer restraints on their free-agency, than the citizens of
any known republic, past or present." (p. 120.) Upon which he subjoins the
following note: "It will be thought, perhaps, that the United States of
North America should have been excepted. But the identity of stock,
language, customs, manners, and laws scarcely allows us to consider this an
exception, even though it were quite certain both that it is and that it
will continue such. It was at all events a remark worth remembering, which
I once heard from a traveller (a prejudiced one, I must admit), that where
every man may take, liberties, there is little liberty for any man; or,
that where every man takes liberties, no man can enjoy any." (p. 121.) See
also a passage to the like effect in the _Friend_, vol. i. p. 129--ED.]
August 15. 1831.