the Colony under the supervision of the Board of Trade and Privy Council, for twenty-one years. To the Board of Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, throughout the whole period from 1695 to 1750, were referred all colonial questions except some of those arising in the administration of Crown Colonies, which were under the direct control of the King through a Secretary of State. The Board reported the facts and its conclusions to the Committee of the Privy Council for Plantation Affairs. and they determined the matter and reported to the King, who, though of course at liberty to accept or reject their conclusions, did as matter of fact accept them in practically every instance.

The Colonies sent their Agents to present the considerations growing out of the local circumstances and conditions at the hearings before the Board of Trade and Plantations and before the Committee of the Privy Council for Plantation Affairs. The practice of keeping an "Agent" permanently at the English Court seems to have been originated about the year 1670, by the Province of Virginia. From that time forward, this practice seems to have been quite commonly adopted by the Colonies. An "Agent," in the nature of things, fulfilled in part the functions of a public and diplomatic representative of his Colony, and in part the functions of an attorney-at-law for the Colony before the Administrative Tribunals having in charge the dispositions of colonial affairs to be made by England as the Imperial State.

Thus had grown up a complete system of Imperial administration, under which the relations with the dependencies (that is, the affairs of the Empire) were separated from the affairs of the Realm, and placed in the hands of Imperial Councils, composed of experts in finance and economics and of high administrative officials of the Realm, before which, as before High Administrative Courts, or Tribunals of International Arbitration, the

Colonies could come, in one sense as suitors, but in another sense as distinct political personalities, or States, having rights which were to be ascertained and declared according to principles to which they had consented.

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CHAPTER VI

IMPERIAL NOMENCLATURE, 1625-1750

S the system of administration of the Colonies became more and more fixed along certain lines, the nomenclature became fixed accordingly. The name colony" was the generic name for any distinct region and community in America, controlled by the English inhabitants and independent of all external power except the power of the State of England or Great Britain. It was a name which, from its origin, conveyed no necessary implication that the community called by that name had any political status whatever. Settlements were called "colonies" equally when they were little more than farms or factories, and when they had arrived at an organization so complete that they resembled half-sovereign States.

Sir George Cornewall Lewis, in his Essay on the Government of Dependencies, published in 1841, says of the word "colony":

The colonia were settlements of Roman citizens in Italy, who occupied a conquered town, divided the whole or a large part of the lands belonging to its citizens among themselves, and became the coloni or cultivators of the lands thus appropriated.

Colonia was formed from colonus; and colonus was formed from colo, and signified a cultivator. Colonia had also the sense of a farm. Compare the modern word "plantation," which means both a farm and a settlement. The idea of cultivation, and not of military occupation, was therefore contained in the word colonia.

The word colonia was, however, used in the Latin language, and the word "colony" in the English, to signify not only a community located in a region for the purpose of developing and cultivating it and its inhabitants, but also to signify a community which had been detached from the body of a State, and was, by reason of this fact, related to the State not only by ties of race and kindred, but also politically or semi-politically. The Oxford Dictionary says of this use of the word "colony":

The Roman writers used the word colonia to translate the Greek anonía,—literally "people from home,"—that is, a body of emigrants who settled abroad as an independent selfgoverned óls or State, unconnected with the unτрónoλis (metropolis) or mother-city, save by religious ties.

The word "plantation" had this same double meaning of a settlement of planters and a settlement planted by a State. Thus Lord Bacon, in his Essay on Plantations, said:

Plantations are amongst ancient, primitive and heroical works. When the world was young, it begat more children; but now it is old, it begets fewer: For I may justly account new Plantations to be the children of Kingdoms . . . Planting of countries is like planting of woods; for you must make account to lose about twenty years' profit, and expect your recompense in the end . . . The people wherewith you plant ought to be gardeners, ploughmen, laborers, smiths, carpenters, joiners, fishermen, fowlers, with some few apothecaries, surgeons, cooks, and bakers.

The use of the word "colony" to describe every form of political community external to a State and constitutionally related to it probably arose from the practice of regarding the natives of the State who emigrated, and their associates and descendants, as alone constituting the political community. This conception still prevails to

some extent, especially in France, the native and foreign populations of dependent regions being regarded as so many individuals without status as members of a political community. Thus, M. Arthur Girault, in his Principes de Colonisation et Législation Coloniale, says:

One perceives, upon examination, a double civilizing action on the part of those who emigrate for colonizing purposes, exercised at the same time towards the material resources and towards the people of the region.

First, towards the material resources. The emigrants improve the harbors, build roads, clear and cultivate the soil, exploit the mineral wealth-in a word, utilize all the resources which the native inhabitants have drawn on only to a partial

extent.

Secondly, towards the people of the region. Efforts are made to raise the natives to our civilization, to put an end to barbarous customs. Missionaries try to convert them to the religious beliefs prevailing among civilized peoples. Commercial agents, in quest of new markets for their products, engender new wants among them.

It is this civilizing action, this double culture of the soil and its inhabitants, which constitutes the work of colonization properly so-called. Moreover this sense corresponds to the original etymology of the word, "colonize" being from the same root as colere, to cultivate.

There is thus implied in the name "colony," as applied to inhabited regions acquired by cession, conquest, or occupation, a social and economic superiority, on the part of the dominant State, over the related and dependent communities. Political superiority, however, by no means necessarily implies social and economic superiority. A community which, in the beginning of the relationship, is socially and economically inferior to the dominant State, may, with the passage of time, come to equal or surpass the dominant State in civilization,