character of its small feudalised society, which enabled it to
hold its own for so long against the superior numbers but laxer
organisation of its English neighbours. A despotic central power,
a feudal organisation, and an entire dependence upon the will of
the King of France and upon his support, form, therefore, the
second group of characteristics which marked the French colonies.
They were colonies in the strictest sense, all the more because
they reproduced the main features of the home system.

Nothing could have differed more profoundly from this system than
the methods which the English were contemporaneously applying,
without plan or clearly defined aim, and guided only by immediate
practical needs, and by the rooted traditions of a self-governing
people. Their enterprises received from the home government little
direct assistance, but they throve better without it; and if there
was little assistance, there was also little interference. In the
East the English East India Company had to yield to the Dutch the
monopoly of the Malayan trade, and bitterly complained of the lack
of government support; but it succeeded in establishing several
modest factories on the coast of India, and was on the whole
prosperous. But it was in the West that the distinctive work of
the English was achieved during this period, by the establishment
of a series of colonies unlike any other European settlements
which had yet been instituted. Their distinctive feature was self-
government, to which they owed their steadily increasing
prosperity. No other European colonies were thus managed on the
principle of autonomy. Indeed, these English settlements were in
1650 the only self-governing lands in the world, apart from
England herself, the United Provinces, and Switzerland.