BRITISH AMERICAN COLONIEs.’ 15

transacted, where they were not to be found. With- out living in European luxury, they secured all the substantial and comfortable enjoyments of life, with many of its elegancies and refinements.

They in reality became a rich and flourishing peo- ple; and if ever any country might have been con— sidered the seat of human felicity, British North America, previously to the sad story of colonial oppression, must unquestionably have deserved the appellation.

’ England fostered and protected her colonies with

parental solicitude, and only secured in return the exclusive right of their trade. Spain and Portugal not only claimed the commerce of their colonies, but, governing them with despotic tyranny, seized the greatest share of their riches for the benefit of the crown, or for the purpose of upholding the splendour of a church, whose terrible power, aided by the super- stition of the age, kept the human mind in servile degradation, and the personal liberty of man under rigorous control. ' Holland and France sold the commercial property of their colonies to trading companies ; who, in order to make the most of their privileges, took all the advantages that the spirit of monopoly could devise. They not only fixed the value of the articles they sold to the colonists, but they also established the lowest prices for the produce of their lands, and prevented them from growing any more than could be disposed of at an unreasonable profit in Europe.

The British colonies did not experience such un—