Governor of Canada would become virtually Commanderin-Chief, or constant and inextricable disputes would arise between him and the commanding officers of your British troops."[1] The opinion of Shelburne for the time carried the day and the idea of the great military colony was abandoned.[2]
American historians have seen in the policy thus pursued a deliberate intention of closing the West for ever against further emigration, from the fear that remote colonies would claim the independence which their position would favour. The statesmen of the eighteenth century have follies enough to answer for without charging them with this error in addition. However impossible it was in practice to dam up the ever advancing tide of the English race, it was equally impossible in theory openly to avow the intention of dispossessing the still powerful Indian nations,[3] which were bound to England by numerous Conventions, and were regarded for the most part as the subjects of George III., equally entitled with the inhabitants of Boston or even of London to the protection of his government.[4] To adjust the relations between savage and civilized man during the period of the struggle which can have but one result, is a task as difficult as it is thankless, but American Presidents have not been accused of attempting to prevent further colonization of their continent, because they have from time to time issued proclamations ascertaining and attempting to protect the ever retiring bounds of the Indian reservations.[5]
To the last question contained in the despatch of the Secretary of State—that which related to colonial taxation—the Board of Trade sent the following answer:
- ↑ Shelburne to Egremont, August 5th, 1763.
- ↑ Egremont to Hillsborough, September 19th, 1763.
- ↑ At the time of the controversy between Lord Shelburne and Lord Egremont the great Indian war led by Pontiac was raging.
- ↑ See Franklin's paper on the Settlement on the Ohio, 1770; Works, v. 465.
- ↑ "The intervention of the Home Government to prevent the spoliation of the Indian remains a most noble monument of British national justice, and is acted upon to this day in Canada." Kingsford, History of Canada, where the text of the Proclamation of 1763 will be found. Vol. v. pp. 127-142. See also C. W. Alvord, Genesis of the Proclamation of 1763, where the whole subject is very fully discussed; O. M. Dickerson, American Colonial Government, 1696-1765, 285 et seq.; and Great Britain and the Illinois Country, 1763-1774, by Clarence E. Carter.
