Excerpt from English Colonies in America, Vol. 5: The Colonies Under the House of Hanover As was said at the end of the work which precedes this, the accession of George I. forms a convenient landmark in colonial history. The more closely one studies history the more fully is the conviction borne in on one that all divisions into epochs and the like have in their nature something arbitrary. Communities do not undergo sudden changes any more than individuals do. As soon as minute inquiry begins, vestiges of the past, anticipations of the future, meet one at every turn. Yet with the community, as with the individual, the predominance of certain leading characteristics at successive stages of growth gives enough distinctness to serve as a basis for a convenient, though not a scientific, arrangement of facts. Speaking roughly, we may say that for the whole body of English-speaking colonies on the Atlantic the end of the seventeenth century was the point at which the era of formation ended and the era of fruition and repose began. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.