Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/85

 CHAPTER II. THE ENGLISH COLONIES. (17001763.) GOVERNMENT AND SOCIETY. FROM the beginning of the eighteenth century we may regard the American colonies, if not as a homogeneous community, yet as an organic body bound together by certain principles of administration. There was indeed wide diversity arising from difference of origin, of religious beliefs, and even more of industrial conditions. Against these there were, over and above the connexion with Great Britain, two influences making for unity. Each colony, as we have seen, had a constitution modelled on that of the mother-country; and thus each was of necessity familiar with the same political methods, and imbued in some measure with the same political principles. Moreover the flowing tide of French aggression was forcing the colonists, albeit reluctantly, to face the problem of common action. In one respect the British colonial empire was paying heavily for the heedlessness of its rulers at an earlier day. We have already seen how the carelessness with which land had been granted and provinces laid out a carelessness no doubt in some measure inevitable in the case of an imperfectly known and often impenetrable country had led to territorial disputes between colonies. A large volume might be compiled from the pamphlets and the correspondence in which are embodied the disputes between Virginia and her neighbours North Carolina and Maryland, between Maryland and Pennsylvania, between New York and Connecticut. These disputes usually had their origin in the refusal of settlers occupying the debatable ground to accept the jurisdiction of the colony which claimed them. Unfortunately the dispute almost always arose in newly-settled and isolated districts, where effective control was most needed and where dispute meant violence. By 1700 the whole territory continuously occupied or at least claimed by the British settlements reached from the St Croix to the Savannah, along a coast-line, in places deeply indented, of about a thousand miles. In theory each colony had the Atlantic for its eastern CH. II.