BOOKS.
BRITAIN ACROSS THE SEAS—AMERICA.; MR. BRADLEY has had a very difficult task to perform in writing "A History and Description of the British Empire in America." The book is intended to be a standard account, from the first beginnings to the present day, not only of Canada and Newfoundland, but also of all the other British possessions on the land and in the waters of the New World, including the West Indies and even the Falkland Islands. The writer is conscious of the difficulty of dealing adequately in moderate space with so wide a subject, and his preface largely disarms criticism of unavoidable omissions and of treatment " with a broader brush than precise history is accustomed to use."
With this reservation he has been successful in producing a comprehensive and valuable book. That a book from his pen would be interesting and well written goes without saying and in dealing with Canada he is handling a subject on which he is an expert and has written much and well. This part of the book—by far the larger part—is a masterly summary of the past history and the present conditions of the Dominion possessing one special and conspicuous merit. This merit consists in his having, as will be gathered from the preface- put in their right place incidents or chapters in Anglo American history which until a few years ago had been so overlooked or minimized as to vitiate the whole perspective The Whig view, which was for generations the received view in this country, of the relations between England and the present United States in war and peace was, to put it bluntly, that all the wrong was on the side of the English and all the right on the side of the Americans. Canada and Canadian history suffered from this distortion of the truth. Mr. Lecky in his history of the eighteenth century did much to create a saner estimate of the past, and American historians of the modern school are so much at pains to do justice to England that it seems ungracious to labour the British side of the case. But the fact remains that, if a general historica sketch of the British Empire in America is to be a, true sketch, much must be made of certain events and certain men of whom comparatively little has been made in the past. Such events, as is pointed out in the preface, are the episode of the United Empire Loyalists and again the second war with the United States, the war• of 1812. Such a man was Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester. Mr. Bradley gives full space, but by no means too much, to the Loyalists ; and after reference to Acadia and Wyoming, he writes, using the broad brush but with excusable bitterness : "But the tragedy of the American Loyalists dwarfs these things into insignificance, and yet in the Mother Country it is almost forgotten; nay, it is absolutely for- gotten" (p. 166). Where would Canada stand to-day if it had not been for the coming of the Loyalists into Ontario and the Maritime Provinces P And where is there to be found a finer story of suffering patriotism P "British Canada was not founded by ordinary wilderness winners or by the mere humdrum industry of persons from England or Scot- land intent on bettering their condition" (p. 183). It was founded by the United Empire Loyalists. Yet from the Whig point of view they were on the wrong side, and there- fore were more or less dropped out of history.
The Loyalists were in large measure the heroes of the war of 1812, and the war of 1812 was the aftermath of the War of Independence. Bnt it was a war in which both England and the United States were half-hearted, and which neither nation cared to keep in mind. It has therefore, like the Loyalists, been largely consigned to oblivion, remembered, if at all, rather by the'• futile naval duels" (p. 247), which Mr. Bradley rightly dismisses in a few words, or by the burning of Washington and the battle of New Orleans, which were
• Britain Across the Seas—America: A History and Description of the British Empire in America. By Arthur Granville Bradley. London : Published by the National Society. [12s. 6d. net.] remote from Canada, than by the fact that it was essentially the national war of Canada, which went far towards making the Canadian nation. Mr. Bradley puts this war in its right place, and he shows sound historical judgment in emphasizing that it was mainly a war of Upper or British Canada. The skirmish of Chateauguay was of value as evidence that " the French and English had fought side by side against a com- mon enemy for their common country" (p. 247); but, taking the war as a whole, the French Canadians played little part in it. Not the least notable result of the war was that it gave to Upper Canada historical landmarks of men and places to set against the absorbing historical interest of the Province of Quebec. It was while Lord Dorchester was Governor of Canada for the second time, and at his instance, that a mark of hono:ir• was ordered bythe Council at Quebec to be put upon the families who had adhered to the unity of the Empire, whence dates the title of United Empire Loyalists. Of all the great names in British overseas history none is greater than that of Lord Dorchester; and yet, as Mr. Bradley, who has written has biography, tells us, " the very name of Dorchester is unknown to the average Briton" (p. 208). He served England at her worst time and on the scene of her misfortunes with high nobility of character and conspicuous success. He saved Canada, and had he been trusted by Ministers at home and been given full powers, the War of Independence might conceivably have had another issue, for he alone on the British side had a personality which might have made headway against Washington. In spite of this, possibly because of this—for from the Whig standpoint he should have been a failure—his name is hardly known in this country except to those who value Canadian history as it should be, and it is to be hoped some day will be, valued.
Mr. Bradley's introductory chapter is very good, eh° win; that the English were not really a sea-going people prior to the sixteenth century; and that, as Mr. Doyle has pointed out in the first volume of the English in America, the era of British colonization was quite distinct from the era of British maritime adventure, whereas in the case of Spain the period of exploration and settlement coincided. Mr. Bradley, too, does justice to the British colonial policy of the past, based on the necessity of making provision for the cost of Imperial defence, and to the Navigation Acts. He reminds us—and we need reminding at the present time—that at the time of the War• of Independence the Ulster Protestants in America were, from memory of English policy in Ireland, "to a man against the Crown " (p. 129); while, to make two references to Canada at the present day, he points out well how the agricultural development of the North-West promoted the commercial development of Ontario, and he explains very lucidly the position of the French Canadians in the British Empire. "The French Canadian's attachment to the Crown is irrevocably provided for him by circumstances; he has, in short, no alternative " (p. 346). He might have found space in his closely packed book to mention the great Count Frontenac, as he mentions the fort called by Frontenac's name ; and similarly on pp. 186-7, when referring to the Six Nation Indians in con- nexion with the War of Independence, while be speaks of Brantford, he makes no notice of the famous Mohawk leader•, Joseph Brant, from whom that place derives its name, and who played as conspicuous a part in the War of Independence as Tecumseh played in the war of 1812. On p. 300 Stoney Point is written for Stoney Creek. On the same page respon- sible government in Nova Scotia is made to date from 1846, whereas, on p. 173, 1840 is given as the date ; and on p. 343 the population of Montreal is much understated at 300,000.
Outside Canada the book is open to more criticism, even when allowance is made for want of space. Newfoundland receives rather scanty treatment. For instance, John Guy, the Bristol merchant, who formed the first permanent settle- ment in Newfoundland, is omitted, although the tercentenary of his settlement was celebrated last year. Recent treaty arrangements with the French and the great arbitration with the United States at the Hague last year, both of vital import- ance to Newfoundland, seem to pass unnoticed. But it is in dealing with the West Indies that Mr. Bradley can most be criticized, largely, it is true, because it is impossible to give an accurate account of the West Indies without going into details, and general statements are therefore misleading. For instance, on p. 384, we read that of all the West Indian islands and provinces "Jamaica and Barbados stand out absolutely by themselves, not merely because all the rest are more or less replicas of one or the other, but because they hare been by far the most important, populous, and productive." This statement would have been more or less true in the eighteenth century before we had acquired Trinidad and British Guiana, but it is not true now. Trinidad and British Guiana are not replicas either of Jamaica or of Barbados, and it is many years since Barbados has been more important than either Trinidad or British Guiana. On pp. 416-7 Tobago and Trinidad are together linked geogra- phically to the Windward Islands, though " having altogether another story." On pp. 421-2 the two islands are more correctly differentiated from each other, Tobago being rightly called " the most southerly of the Windward Islands " ; but the plain fact is not stated that Tobago was both geographi- cally and politically one of the Windward Islands, but has for some time past been politically incorporated with Trinidad as one of the wards of the United Colony of Trinidad and Tobago. On p. 418 we have the general statement that a clear majority of the "white population of these Wind- ward Islands were French." This is not true of St. Vincent or Tobago. The arrangement is sometimes faulty, as on pp. 433-7, where we are taken from British Honduras to the Bermudas, then to the Falkland Islands, then back to the Bahamas, and here is a sentence, on p. 394, which seems to have been hastily written : "But the other kind of proprietor, who bore none of the burden and heat of the day, and merely regarded his unseen territory—lightly bestowed on him, perhaps, for favours possibly question- able—as a milch cow, the whole proceeding was anomalous." There are various rather notable omissions. For instance, the Virgin Islands are not mentioned by name on p. 413, though they form one o' the presidencies or political units of the Leeward Islands Federation, which Barbuda does not. Nor does there seem to be any mention of the Turks and Caicos Islands, although the name of a smaller dependency of Jamaica, viz., the Cayman islands, finds a place (p. 413). Trinidad, whose population is much understated at nearly 200,000, seeing that in 1901 it had over 255,000, is not credited with its notable mineral resources, the pitch lake and oil. Nothing appears to be said of the new birth of cotton in the smaller islands, which has largely regenerated them, and which they owe to the Imperial Department of Agriculture and its late head, Sir Daniel Morris. In connexion with the Falkland Islands, South Georgia might have been mentioned as of some importance for the whale fisheries of the Far South. But the moat conspicuous omission, in view of the general scope of the volume, is that no reference seems to be made to the growing relations between Canada and the West Indies, emphasized as they have been by the recent Royal Commission to consider the subject, of which two members of the late Dominion Government were mem- bers. On the whole it must be said that Mr. Bradley is not nearly so much at home in the West Indies as he is in Canada; but none the less the broad brush is very effective in his sketch of earlier West Indian history and ill the contrast which he draws between the West Indian plartter of the past and the North American colonist.
The book is admirably printed, and the maps and illus- trations are both useful and ornamental,
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