48 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



failed, and the southern settlement, which afterwards mono- 

 polized the title of Virginia, succeeded. New efforts were 

 made to colonize New England by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, 

 who was a kinsman of Sir W. Ralegh and a Somersetshire 

 man. Then this artificial symmetry broke down. In 1621 

 New Scotland was detached from what was then regarded as 

 New England, and was vested in Sir William Alexander, and 

 its colonists, if any, were Scotch. In the same year the region 

 dedicated by statesmen to West Englanders, mixed perhaps 

 with a few hunted Papists, was occupied by the Pilgrim 

 Fathers, who were uncompromising Puritans from East 

 England. The colonization of North America (1607-21) 

 was meant to go two ways — West Englanders to the north 

 and East Englanders to the south, and began to go many 

 ways, one of which was the very opposite of what was 

 intended. The colonizing instinct proved too complex to 

 flow in its two appointed artificial channels. 

 {2)0/ a While clear geographical plans were becoming confused 



European ^nd improved, confused ideas about colonization were be- 

 under- coming defined and degraded. Bodin and Sully were 

 populatton, Frenchmen, but their theory that men were the only strength 

 manent and source of wealth, and that want of men was the chief 

 colomza-^ danger to a state, began to infect English philosophers. It 

 citizensivas is hardly too much to say that the word ' over-population ' 

 ^"' disappeared from Enghsh literature from 1630 to 1798. Not 



over-population but depopulation was the statesman's bugbear; 

 and both theorists and statesmen unanimously condemned 

 the export of good citizens, except for definite military 

 commercial or philanthropic necessities. Thus the charter 

 of Virginia was revoked by the first Stuarts, because the realm 

 was being depopulated ; ^ and writers of that time approved 

 only of the export of * all the beggars . . ., all delinquents 

 for matters which deserve not hanging, to the plantations '? 



^ John Doyle, The English in America, 1882, p. 241. 



2 H. Robinson, EngloncTs Safety in Trade's Encrease, 1641. 



