It is difficult to compare Spain and Great Britain as regards their respective colonial policies in America, for their possessions differed in kind. Spain owned dependencies rather than colonies, Great Britain owned colonies rather than dependencies. Spanish America was the result of conquest: English America, not including Canada, was the result of settlement. But, so far as a comparison can be instituted, it will probably not be seriously contended that the British colonies suffered more grievously at the hands of the mother country than did the colonial possessions of Spain. The main charge brought against England was that she neglected her colonies and left them to themselves. Whether the charge was true or not--as to which there is more to be said--neglect is not oppression; and within limits the kindest and wisest policy towards colonies, which are colonies in the true sense, is to leave them alone. ‘The wise neglect of Walpole and Newcastle,’ writes Mr. Lecky, ‘was eminently conducive to colonial interests.’[18] [Sidenote: Absence of system in British colonial policy in North America.] The real, ultimate reasons why England held her North American colonies, which now form the United States of America, for a shorter time than Spain retained her Central and South American possessions were two: first, that the English colonies were in a better position than the Spanish dependencies to assert their independence; secondly, that--largely because she owned dependencies rather than colonies--Spain was more systematic than England in her dealings with her colonial possessions. These two reasons are in truth one and the same, looked at from different sides. The English colonies were able to assert their independence, because they had on the whole always been more or less independent. They had always been more or less independent, because the mother country had never adopted any definite system of colonial administration. The Spanish system was not good--quite the contrary; but it was a system, and those who lived under it were accustomed to restrictions and to rules imposed by the home government. Similarly in Canada, under French rule, there was a system, kindlier and better than that of Spain, but one which had the gravest defects, which stunted growth and precluded freedom: yet there it was, clear and definite; the colonists of New France had grown up under it; they knew where they were in relation to the mother country; it had never occurred to them to try and make headway against the King of France and his regulations. Widely different was the case of the English colonies in North America. All these settlements started under some form of grant or charter, derived ultimately from the Crown: the Crown from time to time interfered and made a show of its supremacy; but there was no system of any sort or kind, and communities grew up, which in practice had never been governed from home but governed themselves.