
THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH 
COLONIZATION. 
By REV. W. 8S. MATTHEWS, B.A. 28th March, 1905. 

The Lecturer said :—A British Colony had been defined in a 
statute as ‘any part of the Queen’s Dominions outside the 
British Isles and British India.’’ There was a time not very long 
ago when a British Colony was called a Dependency, and it was 
looked upon as a commodity existing for the sole benefit of the 
Mother Country. This policy led to the disastrous disruption of 
the British Empire, when the thirteen American Colonies seceded. 
Ever since then some people had been asking—what is the use of 
British Colonies ? and we have been told that Colonies are like 
ripe fruit, which only stick to the tree until they are ripe, and 
then fall off. The present day idea was set forth by Seeley in the 
‘* Hxpansion of England.” The British Empire is the expansion 
of our small country, it is greater Britaim—that part of the world 
which has received a sort of official recognition on our pennies, 
sixpences, shillings and sovereigns, when Edward VII is called 
‘‘ King by the grace of God of all the Britains.” These Colonies 
form a magnificent Empire, of which we are very proud, But 
the Anglo-Saxons had not always had a genius for colonization. 
Until the end of the Fifteenth Century the Englishman seemed 
the least likely of any to be a colonizer, He is described as being 
particularly fond of his own fireside, and never wandering away 
from the sight of his own homestead. The trade that existed at 
that time was not carried in British ships—it was passive 
rather than active, and depended on the visits of other people to 
trade with us, rather than our enterprising visits to other nations. 
But England wakened up at the Renaissance and the expansion 
of England is the way in which the Renaissance spirit showed 
itself in this country. The British people had the genius for 
Colonization. Having command of the sea, and a surplus 
population, nothing was more natural than that the surplus pop- 
ulation should be carried across the seas, the British Fleet should 
protect them, and establish the British Empire, about which 
Mr. Chamberlain said the other day that Britain seemed to have 
blundered into the best places in the world, and meant to keep them, 
