The Title-Deeds To The Estate Are, As I Have Said, Good Ones, But
There Is One Singular And Ominous Flaw In Their Provisions.
The
ocean has marked three boundaries to it, but the fourth is
undefined.
There is no word of the 'Hinterland;' for neither the
term nor the idea had then been thought of. Had Great Britain
bought those vast regions which extended beyond the settlements? Or
were the discontented Dutch at liberty to pass onwards and found
fresh nations to bar the path of the Anglo-Celtic colonists? In
that question lay the germ of all the trouble to come. An American
would realise the point at issue if he could conceive that after
the founding of the United States the Dutch inhabitants of the
State of New York had trekked to the westward and established fresh
communities under a new flag. Then, when the American population
overtook these western States, they would be face to face with the
problem which this country has had to solve. If they found these
new States fiercely anti-American and extremely unprogressive, they
would experience that aggravation of their difficulties with which
our statesmen have had to deal.
At the time of their transference to the British flag the
colonists - Dutch, French, and German - numbered some thirty
thousand. They were slaveholders, and the slaves were about as
numerous as themselves. The prospect of complete amalgamation
between the British and the original settlers would have seemed to
be a good one, since they were of much the same stock, and their
creeds could only be distinguished by their varying degrees of
bigotry and intolerance.
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