in the eighteenth century. But the judgment is not a fair one;
it is due to those Whig prejudices by which so much of the modern
history of England has been distorted. The colonial policy of
Shaftesbury and his colleagues was incomparably more enlightened than
that of any contemporary government. It was an interesting
experiment--the first, perhaps, in modern history--in the
reconciliation of unity and freedom. And it was undeniably successful:
under it the English colonies grew and throve in a very striking way.
Everything, indeed, goes to show that this system was well designed for
the needs of a group of colonies which were still in a state of
weakness, still gravely under-peopled and undeveloped. Evil results
only began to show themselves in the next age, when the colonies were
growing stronger and more independent, and when the self-complacent
Whigs, instead of revising the system to meet new conditions, actually
enlarged and emphasised its most objectionable features.

(c) The Conflict of French and English, 1713-1763

While France and England were defining and developing their sharply
contrasted imperial systems, the Dutch had fallen into the background,
content with the rich dominion which they had already acquired; and the
Spanish and Portuguese empires had both fallen into stagnation. New
competitors, indeed, now began to press into the field: the wildly
exaggerated notions of the wealth to be made from colonial ventures
which led to the frenzied speculations of the early eighteenth century,
John Law's schemes, and the South Sea Bubble, induced other powers to
try to obtain a share of this wealth; and Austria, Brandenburg, and
Denmark made fitful endeavours to become colonising powers. But the
enterprises of these states were never of serious importance. The
future of the non-European world seemed to depend mainly upon France
and England; and it was yet to be determined which of the two systems,
centralised autocracy enforcing uniformity, or self-government
encouraging variety of type, would prove the more successful and would
play the greater part. Two bodies of ideas so sharply contrasted were
bound to come into conflict. In the two great wars between England and
Louis XIV. (1688-1713), though the questions at issue were primarily
European, the conflict inevitably spread to the colonial field; and in
the result France was forced to cede in 1713 the province of Acadia
(which had twice before been in Engli