The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910 Part 7

Bacon, Drummond, Lawrence and their men occupied the abandoned town, in which some of them owned houses, and burned it to the ground. The act was deliberate; the town records were first removed; and the men who had most to lose by the conflagration were the first to set the torch.

Jamestown at that time contained hardly twenty buildings all told; but it was the first settlement of the Dominion, and sentiment would fain have preserved it. A mossy ruin, draped in vines, is all that remains of it now. The ascertainable causes of its destruction seem inadequate; yet the circ.u.mstances show that it could not have been done in mere wantonness. Civilized warfare permits the destruction of the enemy's property; but the enemy had retreated, and the expectation was that he would never return. That Bacon had reasons, his previous record justifies us in believing; but what they were is matter of conjecture.

As it is, the burning of Jamestown is the only pa.s.sage in his brief and gallant career which can be construed as a blemish upon it.

Unfortunately, it was, also, all but the final one.

He pursued Berkeley, and the army of the latter, instead of fighting, marched over to him with a unanimity which left the governor almost without a companion in his chagrin. The whole of Virginia was now in Bacon's hand; he had no foes; he was called Deliverer; he had never met reverse; he was a man of intellect, judgment and honor, and he was in the prime of his youth; in such a country, beloved, and supported by such a people, what might he not have hoped to achieve? Men like him are rare; in a country just emerging into political consciousness, he was doubly precious. There was no one to take his place; the return of Berkeley meant all that was imaginable of evil; and yet Bacon was to die, and Berkeley was to return.

In the trenches before Jamestown, Bacon had contracted the seeds of a fever which now, in the hour of his triumph, overcame him. After a short struggle he succ.u.mbed; and his men, fearing, apparently, that the ghoulish revenge of the old governor might subject his remains to insult, sunk his body in the river; and none know where lie the bones of the first American patriot who died in arms against oppression. His worth is proved by the confusion and disorganization which ensued upon his death. Cheeseman, Hansford, Wilford and Drummond could not make head against disaster. On the governor's side, Robert Beverly developed the qualities of a leader, and a series of small engagements left the patriots at his mercy. Berkeley was re-established in his place; and then began the season of his revenge.

His victims were the gentlemen of Virginia; the flower of the province.

He had no mercy; his sole thought was to add insult to the bitterness of death. He would not spare their lives; he would not shoot them; they must perish on the gallows, not as soldiers, but as rebels. When a young wife pleaded for her gallant husband, declaring that it was she who persuaded him to join the patriotic movement, Berkeley denied her prayer with coa.r.s.e brutality. When Drummond was brought before him, he a.s.sured him of his pleasure in their meeting: "You shall be hanged in half an hour." One can see that mean, flushed countenance, ravaged by time and intemperance, with bloodshot eyes, gloating over the despair of his foes, and searching for means to torture their minds while destroying their bodies. Trial by jury was not quick or sure enough for Berkeley; he condemned them by court-martial and the noose was round their necks at once. Their families were stripped of their property and sent adrift to subsist on charity. In his bloodthirstiness, he never forgot his pecuniary advantage, and his thievish fingers grasped all the valuables that his murderous instincts brought within his power.

But the spectacle is too revolting for contemplation.

"He would have hanged half the country if we had let him alone," was the remark of a member of the a.s.sembly. It was voted that the execution should cease; more than two-score men had already been strangled for defending their homes and resisting oppression. Even Charles in London was annoyed when he heard of the wasteful malignity of "the old fool,"

and sent word of his disapproval and displeasure. A successor was sent over to supersede him; but he at first refused to go at the king's command, though he had ever used the king's name as the warrant for his crimes. He had sold powder and shot to the Indians to kill his own people with; he had appropriated the substance of widows and orphans whom he had made such; he had punished by public whipping all who were reported to have spoken against him; he forbade the printing-press; but all had been done "for the King". And now he resisted the authority of the king himself. But Charles, for once, was determined, and Berkeley, under the disgrace of severe reprimand, was forced to go. The joy bells clashed out the people's delight as the s.h.i.+p which carried him dropped down the harbor, and the firing of guns was like an antic.i.p.ation of our celebration of Independence Day. He stood on the p.o.o.p, in the beauty of the morning, shaking out curses from his trembling hands, in helpless hatred of the fair land and gallant people that he had done his utmost to make miserable. In England, the king would have none of him, and he met with nothing but rebuffs and condemnation on all sides. The power which he had misused was forever gone; he was old, and shattered in const.i.tution; he was disgraced, flouted, friendless and alone. He died soon after his arrival, of mortification; he had lived only to do evil, and to withhold him from it was to take his life away.

It is not the function of the historian to condemn. Berkeley was by birth and training an aristocrat and a cavalier, and he was a creature of his age and station. He had been taught to believe that the patrician is of another flesh and blood than the plebeian; that authority can be enforced only by tyranny; that the only right is that of birth, and of the strongest. He was early placed in a position where every personal indulgence was made easy to him, where there was none to call in question his authority, and where there was temptation to a.s.sert authority by oppression, and by arrogating absolute license to act as the whim prompted, and to lay hands on whatever he coveted. Add to these conditions a nature congenitally without generous instincts, a narrow brain, and a sensual temperament, and we have gone far to account for the phenomenon which Berkeley finally, in his approaching senility, presented. He was the type of the worst traits that caused England ultimately to forfeit America; the concentration of whatever is opposite to popular liberties. His deeds must be execrated; but we cannot put him beyond the pale of human nature, or deny that under different circ.u.mstances he would have been a better man. We may admit, too, that, in the wisdom of Providence, he was placed where, by doing so much mischief, he was involuntarily the cause of more good than he could ever willingly have accomplished. He taught the people how to hate despotism, and how to struggle against it. He wrought a mutual understanding and sympathy between the upper and lower orders; he led them to define to their own minds what things are indispensable to the existence of true democracy. These are some of the uses which he, and such as he, in their own despite subserved. He and the young Bacon were mortal foes; but he, by opposing Bacon, and murdering his friends, aided the cause for which they laid down their lives.

After his departure there ensued a period of ten years or more, during which the pressure upon Virginia seemed rather to grow heavier than to lighten. The acts of Bacon's a.s.sembly were repealed; all the former abuses were restored; the public purse was shamelessly robbed; the suffrage was restricted; the church was restored to power. In 1677 the Dominion became the property of one Culpepper, who had the t.i.tle of governor for life; and the restraints, such as they were, of its existence as a royal colony were removed. But Culpepper's course was so corrupt as to necessitate his removal, and in 1684 the king resumed his sway. James II. reached the English throne the following year, and his persecutions of his enemies in England gave good citizens to America.

But the Virginians, who could be wronged and oppressed, but never crushed, protested against the arbitrary use of the king's prerogative; they were punished for their temerity, but rose more determined from the struggle. No man could be sent to Virginia who was strong enough to destroy its resolve for liberty.

And now the English Revolution was at hand; and we are to inquire what influence the new dispensation was to have on the awakening national spirit of the American colonies.

CHAPTER SEVENTH

QUAKER, YANKEE, AND KING

The American principle, simple in that its perfection is human liberty, is of complex make. It is the sum of the ways in which a man may legitimately be free. But neither Pilgrims, Puritans, New Amsterdamers, Virginians, Carolinians nor Marylanders were free in all ways. Even the Providence people had their limitations. It is not meant, merely, that the old world still kept a grip on them: their several systems were intrinsically incomplete. Some of them put religious liberty in the first place; others, political; but each had its inconsistency, or its shortcoming. None had gone quite to the root of the matter. What was that root?--or, let us say, the mother lode, of which these were efferent veins?

The Pilgrims and Puritans, heretics in Episcopalian England, had escaped from their persecution, but had banished heretics in their turn. Tranquil Lord Baltimore having laid the burden of his doubts at the foot of G.o.d's vicegerent on earth, had sought no further, and was indifferent as to what other poor mortals might choose to think they thought about the unknown things. Roger Williams' charity, based on the dogma of free conscience, drew the line only at atheists. The other colonists, since their salient contention was on the lower ground of civil emanc.i.p.ation and self-direction, are not presently considered.

But, to the a.s.sembly of religious radicals, there enters a plain Man in Leather Breeches, and sees fetters on the limbs of all of them. "Does thee call it freedom, Friend Winthrop," says he, "to fear contact with such as believe otherwise than thee does? Can truth fear aught? And fear, is it not bondage? As for thee, George Calvert, thee has delivered up thine immortal soul into the keeping of a man no different from what thee thyself is, so to escape the anxious seat; but the dead also are free of anxiety, and thy bondage is most like unto death. Thee calls thy colony folk free, because thee lets them believe what they list; but they do but follow what their fathers taught them, who got it from theirs; which is to be in bondage to the past. And here is friend Roger, who makes private conscience free; but what is private conscience but the private reasonings whereby a man convinceth himself?

and how shall he call his conviction the truth, since all truth is one, but the testimony of no man's private conscience is the same as another's? Nay, how does thee know that the atheist, whom thee excludes, is further from the truth than thee thyself is? Truly, I hear the clanking of the chains on ye all; but if ye will accept the Inner Light, then indeed shall ye know what freedom is!"

This Man in Leather Breeches, who also wears his hat in the king's presence, is otherwise known as George Fox, the Leicesters.h.i.+re weaver's son, the Quaker. In his youth he was much troubled in spirit concerning mankind, their nature and destiny, and the purpose of G.o.d concerning them. He wandered in lonely places, and fasted, and was afflicted; he sought help and light from all, but there was none could enlighten him.

But at last light came to him, even out of the bosom of his own darkness; and he saw that human learning is but vanity, since within a man's self, will he but look for it, abides a great Inner Light, which changeth not, and is the same in all; being, indeed, the presence of the Spirit of G.o.d in His creature, a constant guide and revelation, withheld from none, uniting and equalizing all; for what, in comparison with G.o.d, are the distinctions of rank and wealth, or of learning?--Seek ye first the Kingdom of G.o.d and His righteousness, and these things shall be added unto you. In the lowest of men, not less than in such as are called greatest, burns this lamp of Divine Truth, and it shall s.h.i.+ne for the hind as brightly as for the prince. In its rays, the trappings of royalty are rags, jewels are dust and ashes, the lore of science, folly; the disputes of philosophers, the crackling of thorns under the pot. By the Inner Light alone can men be free and equal, true sons of G.o.d, heirs of a liberty which can never be taken away, since bars confine not the spirit, nor do tortures or death of the body afflict it. So said George Fox and his followers; and their lives bore witness to their words.

The Society of Friends took its rise not from a discovery--for Fox himself held the Demon of Socrates, and similar traditional phenomena, to be identical with the Inner Light, or voice of the Spirit--but rather in the recognition of the universality of something which had heretofore been regarded as exceptional and extraordinary. In the Seventeenth Century there was a general revolt of the oppressed against oppression, declaring itself in all phases of the outer and inner life; of these, there must needs be one interior to all the rest, and Quakerism seems to have been it. It was a revolution within revolutions; it saw in the man's own self the only tyrant who could really enslave him; and by bringing him into the direct presence of G.o.d, it showed him the way to the only real emanc.i.p.ation. Historically, it was the vital element in all other emanc.i.p.ating movements; it was their logical antecedent: the hidden spring feeding all their rivers with the water of life. It enables us to a.n.a.lyze them and gauge their values; it is their measure and plummet. And this, not because it is the final or the highest word justifying the ways of G.o.d to man--for it has not proved to be so: but because it indicated, once for all, in what direction the real solution of the riddle of man was to be sought: a riddle never to be fully solved, but forever approximately guessed.

Quakerism has not maintained its relative position in religious thought; but it was the finest perception of its day, and in the turmoil of the time it fulfilled its purpose. Probably its best effect was the development it gave to the humbler element of society--to the yeomen and laborers; affording them the needed justification for the various demands for recognition that they were urging. Puritanism banished Quakers, and even hanged them; but the Quaker was the Puritan's spiritual father, although he knew it not. And therefore the Quaker, who was among the last to appear in America as a settler in virgin soil, had a right thereto prior to any one of the others. There must be a soul before there can be a body.

On the other hand, a soul without a body is not adapted to life in this world; and an America peopled exclusively by Quakers would have been unsatisfactory. It is a prevailing tendency of man, having hit upon a truth, to begin to theorize upon it, and, as the phrase is, run it into the ground. Quakers would not fight, would not take an oath, would not baptize, or wear mourning, or flatter the senses with pictures and statues. A Quaker would resist evil and violence only by enlightening them. He would not be taxed for measures or objects which he did not approve. He could see but one way of reforming the world, and thought that G.o.d was equally circ.u.mscribed in His methods. But though the leaven may make bread wholesome, we cannot subsist on leaven alone. The essence of Americanism may be in a Quaker, but he is far from being a complete American, and therefore he was fain to take his place only as a n.o.ble ingredient in that wonderful mixture. By degrees, the singularities which distinguished him were softened; his thee and thy yielded to the common forms of speech; his drab suit altered its cut and hue; his hat came off occasionally; his women abated the rigor of their poke bonnets; he was able to say to the enemy of his country, "Friend, thee is standing just where I am going to shoot." The disintegration of his individuality set free the good that was in him to permeate surrounding society; his fellow flowers in the garden were more beautiful and fragrant for his sake.

When persecution of Quakers was at its worst, they became almost dehumanized, attaching more value to their willingness to endure ill-usage than to the spiritual principle for avouching which they were ill-used. Many persons--such is the oddity of human nature--were drawn to the sect for love of the persecution; and gave way to extravagances such as Fox would have been the first to denounce. But when toleration began, these excesses ceased, and they bethought themselves to make a home in the wilderness of their own. There was room enough. George Fox returned from his pilgrimage to the Atlantic colonies in 1674, with good accounts of the resources of the new country; and the owner of New Jersey sold half of it to John Fenwick for a thousand pounds; and the next year the latter went there with many Friends, and picked out a pleasant spot on the east bank of the Delaware for the first settlement, to which he gave the name of Salem. It was at this juncture that William Penn became, with two others, a.s.signs of the proprietor of the colony, and thus took the first step toward a.s.suming full responsibility for it. He did not, however, personally visit America till seven years later.

Penn was the son of an English admiral: not the kind of timber, therefore, out of which one would have supposed a great apostle of non-resistance could be made. He was brought up to the use of ample wealth, and his training and education were aristocratic. After leaving Oxford, he made the grand tour, and came home a finished young man of the world, with the pleasures and rewards of life before him. He had good brains and solid qualities, and the old admiral had high hopes of him. No doubt he would have made a very good figure in the English world of fas.h.i.+on; but destiny had another career marked out for him.

The plain Man with the Leather Breeches got hold of him; and all the objurgations, threats, and even the act of disinheritance of the admiral were powerless to extricate him from that grasp. Penn had found something which seemed to him more precious than rubies, and he was quite as resolute as the old hero of the Navy. Penn could endure the beating and the being turned into the streets, but he could not stop his ears and eyes to the voice and light of G.o.d in his soul. He did not care to conquer another Jamaica, but he pa.s.sionately desired to minister to the spiritual good of his fellow creatures. He was of a sociable and cheerful disposition; he could disarm his adversary in a duel; he could take charge of the family estates, and qualify himself for the law; the king was ready to smile upon him; but all worldly ambitions died away in him when he heard Thomas Lee testify of the faith that overcomes the world. Nothing less than that would satisfy Penn. In 1666, when he was two and twenty, he made acquaintance with the inside of a jail on account of his conscientious perversities; but the only effect of the experience was to make him perceive that he had thereby become "his own freeman." When he got out, his friends cut him and society made game of him; finally, he was lodged in the Tower, which, he informed Charles II., seemed to him "the worst argument in the world." They let him out in less than a year, but in less than a year more he was again arrested and put on trial. The jury, after having been starved for two days and heartily cursed by the judge, brought him in not guilty; upon which the judge, with a fine sense of humor, fined them all heavily and sent him back to prison. But this was too much for the admiral, who paid his fines and got him out; and, being then on his death-bed, surrendered at discretion, restoring to him the inheritance, and observing, not without a pensive satisfaction, that he and his friends would end by "making an end of the priests."

A six months' term in Newgate was still in store for Penn; but after that they gave up this method of reforming him. He spent the next years in exhorting Parliament and reproving princes all over Europe; and in the midst of these labors he met one of the best and most beautiful women in England; she had suitors by the score, but she loved William Penn, and they were married. She was the wife of his mind and soul as well as of his bed and board. He was now doubly fortified against the world, and doubly bound to his career of human benevolence. His studies and meditations had made him a profound philosopher and an able statesman; and in all ways he was prepared to begin the great work of his life.

Meanwhile, the Quakers in the new world were building up the framework of their state. They decreed to put the power in the people, and all the articles of their const.i.tution embody the utmost degree of freedom, with constant opportunities for the electors to revise or renew their judgments. When the agent of the Duke of York levied customs on s.h.i.+ps going to New Jersey, the act drew from the colonists a remarkable protest, which was supported by the courts. They had planted in the wilderness, they said, in order, among other things, to escape arbitrary taxation; if they could not make their own laws in a land which they had bought, not from the Duke, but from the natives, they had lost instead of gaining liberty by leaving England. Taxes levied upon planting left them nothing to call their own, and foreshadowed a despotic government in England, when the Duke should come to the throne. The future James II. gave up his claim, and in 1680 signed an indenture to that effect. Later, at the advice of Penn, they so amended their const.i.tution as to give them power to elect their own governor. A charter was drawn up by Penn and confirmed in 1681, and he became proprietor. No man ever a.s.sumed such a trust with less of personal ambition or desire for gain than he. "You shall be governed by laws of your own making," said he; "I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person." He had already made inroads on his estate by fighting the cause of his brethren in England in the courts; but when a speculator offered him six thousand pounds down and an annual income for the monopoly of Indian trade, he declined it; the trade belonged to his people. He was ardently desirous to benefit his colony by putting in operation among them the schemes which his wisdom had evolved; but he would not override their own wishes; they should be secured even from his power to do them good; for, as liberty without obedience is confusion, so is obedience without liberty slavery. Instead therefore of imposing his designs upon them, he submitted them for their free consideration. Pennsylvania now occupied its present boundaries, with the addition of Delaware; and western New Jersey ceased to be the nominal home of the Friends in America. In 1682, Penn embarked for the Delaware. He had founded a free colony for all mankind, believing that G.o.d is in every conscience; and he was now going to witness and superintend the working of his "holy experiment."

On October 29th he was received at Newcastle by a crowd of mixed nationality, and the Duke of York's agent formally delivered up the province to him. The journey up the Delaware was continued in an open boat, and the site of Philadelphia was reached in the first week of November. There a meeting of delegates from the inhabitants was held and the rules which were to govern them were reviewed and ratified.

Among these it was stipulated that every Christian sect was eligible to office, that murder only was a capital crime, that marriage was a civil contract, that convict prisons should be workhouses, that all who paid duties should be electors, and that there should be no poor rates or t.i.thes. Then Penn proceeded to lay out the city of Philadelphia, where they "might improve an innocent course of life on a virgin Elysian sh.o.r.e." It was here that the Declaration of Independence was signed ninety-three years afterward.

In March, before the leaves had budded on the tall trees whose colonnades were as yet the only habitation for the emigrants, the latter set to work to settle their const.i.tution. "Amend, alter or add as you please," was the recommendation with which Penn submitted it to them--the work of his ripest wisdom and loving good-will. To the governor and council it a.s.signed the suggestion of all laws; these suggestions were then to be submitted by the a.s.sembly to the body of the people, who thus became the direct law-makers. To Penn was given the power to negative the doings of the council, he being responsible for all legislation; but he could originate and enforce nothing. He would accept no revenues; and, indeed, except in the way of helpfulness and counsel, never in any way imposed himself upon his people. He was the proprietor; but in all practical respects, Pennsylvania was a representative democracy. That they should be free and happy was his sole desire.

In its relations with the Indians, the colony was singularly fortunate; the doctrine of non-resistance succeeded best where least might have been expected from it. All lands were purchased, conferences being held and deeds signed; and the red men were given thoroughly to understand that nothing but mutual good was intended. They took to the new idea kindly; the law of retaliation had been the principle of their lives. .h.i.therto; but if a man did good to them, and dealt honestly by them, should not they retaliate by manifesting the same integrity and good-will? At one time it was reported that a band of Indians had a.s.sembled on the border with the design of avenging some grievance with a ma.s.sacre. Six unarmed Quakers started at once for the scene of trouble, and the Indians subsided. It has long been admitted that it takes two sides to make a fight; but this was an indication that it needs resistance to make a ma.s.sacre. Penn, who was fond of visiting the Indians in their wigwams, and sharing their hospitality, formed an excellent opinion of them. He discoursed to them of their rights as men, and of their privileges as immortal souls; and they conceded to him his claim to peaceful possession of his province. Not less remarkable was the fate of witchcraft in Pennsylvania. The Swedes and Finns believed in witches, upon the authority of their native traditions; and a woman of their race having acted in a violent and unaccountable manner, they put her on her trial for witchcraft. Both Swedes and Quakers composed the jury; there were no hysterics; the matter was dispa.s.sionately canva.s.sed; impressions and prejudices were not accepted as evidence; and in the end the verdict was that though she was guilty of being called a witch, a witch she nevertheless was not. The distinction was so well taken that no more witch trials or panics occurred. This was in 1684, eight years before the disasters in New England. But newspapers did not exist in those days, and public opinion was undeveloped.

The colony, receiving a world-wide advertis.e.m.e.nt by dint of the excellence of its inst.i.tutions and the singularity of its principles, became a magnet to draw to itself the "good and oppressed" of all Europe. There were a good many of them; and within a couple of years from the time when Philadelphia meant blaze-marks on trees and three or four cottages, it had grown to be a real town of six hundred houses.

The colony altogether mustered eight thousand people. With justifiable confidence, therefore, that all was well, and would stay so, Penn, with many loving words for his people, returned to England to continue the defense of the afflicted there. A dispute as to the right boundaries of Delaware and Maryland was also to be determined; but it proved to be a lingering negotiation, chiefly noteworthy on account of its leading to the fixing of the line by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, which afterward became the recognized boundary between the States where slaves might be owned and those where they might not. The line was surveyed, finally, in 1767.

Penn being gone, the people applied themselves to experimenting with their const.i.tution. A const.i.tution which is devised to secure liberty to the subject, including liberty to modify or change it, is as nearly unchangeable as any mortal structure can be. The inhabitants of Pennsylvania had never known before what it was to be free, and they naturally wished to test the new gift or quality in every way open to them. Not having the trained brain and unselfish wisdom that belonged to Penn, of which the const.i.tution was the offspring, they thought that they could improve its provisions. But the more earnestly they labored to this end, the more surely were they brought to the confession that he had known how to make them free better than they themselves did.

When they resolved against taxes, they found themselves without revenue; when they refused to discipline a debtor, they found that credit was no longer to be had. They fussed and fretted to their hearts' content, and no great harm came of it, because the const.i.tution was always awaiting them with forgiveness when they had tired themselves with abusing it. The only important matter that came to judgment was the slavery question; Penn himself had slaves, though he came to doubt the righteousness of the practice, and liberated them in his will--or would have done so, had the injunction been carried out by his heirs. Slaves in Pennsylvania were to serve as such for fourteen years, and then become adscripts of the soil--that is to say, they were permitted to become the same thing under another name. Penn ultimately conceived the ambition to vindicate the presence of the Inner Light in the negroes' souls; but he met with small success--even less than with the Indians. The problem of the negro was not to be solved in that way, or at that time. No doubt, if a negro slave could be made to feel that the mere circ.u.mstance of external bondage was nothing, so long as his inner man was untrammeled, it would add greatly to the convenience both of himself and his master. But the theory did not seem to carry weight so long as the practice accompanied it; and the world, even of Pennsylvania, was not quite ready to abolish negro slavery in 1687.

Of the thirteen colonies, twelve had now had their beginning, and Georgia, the home of poor debtors, shed little or no fresh light upon the formation of the American principle. The Revolution of 1688, which put William of Orange on the English throne, was now at hand; but before examining its effect upon the American settlements we must cast a glance at the transactions of the previous dozen years in the New England division.

The theory of the English government regarding the American colonies had always been, that they were her property. The people who emigrated had been English subjects, and--to adapt the Latin proverb--Coelum, non Regem, mutant, qui trans mare currunt. Moreover, the English, as was the custom of the age, a.s.serted jurisdiction over all land first seen and claimed by mariners flying their flag; and though Spain and France might claim America with quite as much right as England, yet the latter would not acknowledge their pretensions. A country, then, occupied by English subjects, and owned by England, could not reasonably a.s.sert its private independence.

Such was England's position, from which she never fully receded until compelled to do so by force of arms. But the colonists looked at the matter from a different point of view. They held the right of owners.h.i.+p by discovery to be unsubstantial; it was a mere sentiment--a matter of national pride and prestige--not to be valued when it came in conflict with the natural right conveyed by actual emigration and settlement.

The man who transferred himself, with his family and property, to a virgin country. Intending to make his permanent home there, should not be subject to arbitrary interference from any one; his vital interests and welfare were involved; he should be ruled by authority appointed by himself; should pay only such taxes as he himself levied for the expenses of his establishment; and should enjoy the profits of whatever products he raised and whatever commerce he carried on. He had withdrawn himself from partic.i.p.ation in the advantages of home civilization, and had voluntarily faced a life of struggle and peril in the wilderness, precisely because he had counted these things as nothing in comparison with the gain of controlling his own affairs; but if, nevertheless, the mother country insisted on managing them, or in any way controlling him, then all enterprise became vain, all his sacrifices had been fruitless, and he was in all ways worse off than before he took steps to better himself. An Englishman living in England might rightly be taxed for the protection to life and property and the enjoyment of privileges which she afforded him, and which he, through a representative parliament, created; but England gave no protection to her colonies, and the colonists were not represented in her parliament; neither had the English government been put to any expense or trouble in bringing those colonies into existence; to tax them, therefore, was an act of despotism; it deprived them of the right which all Englishmen possessed to the fruits of their own labor; it robbed them of values for which no equivalent had been yielded; and thus, from freemen, made them slaves. Not less unjustifiable, for the same reasons, was interference with colonial governments, and with religious liberties of all kinds.

England could not categorically refute these arguments; but she could reply that her granting of a charter to the colonies had implied some hold upon them, including a first lien upon commercial products; while so far as governmental jurisdiction was concerned, it might be considered an open question whether the colonies were capable of adequately governing themselves, and she was therefore warranted, in the interests of order, in exercising that function herself. But the reply was a weak one; and when the colonists rejoined that the charter, if it had any practical significance at all, merely gave expression to a friendly interest in the adventure, as a parent might give a son a letter hoping that he would do well; and that the question of government was not an open one, inasmuch as the orderliness and efficiency of their inst.i.tutions were visible and undeniable:--it was left to England only to say that, once an English subject, always an English subject, and that when she commanded the colonies must comply.

As a matter of fact, she avoided as much as possible putting this ultimatum in precise words; and the colonies were at least as reluctant to oppose a definite defiance. Diplomacy labors long before acknowledging a finality. There was on both sides a deeply-rooted determination to prevail; but an open rupture was shunned. Furthermore, a strong sentiment of loyalty existed in the colonies, which sentimentally and sometimes practically injured the logic of their att.i.tude. They acknowledged the English king to be theirs; they addressed him in deferential and submissive terms; they wished, in some sense, to keep hold of their mother's hand, and yet they protested against the maternal prerogative. Their status was anomalous; and it is easy to say that they should have declared their purpose, from the first, to be an independent nation in the full sense of the world. But the logical and the natural are often at variance. Liberty is not necessarily attainable only through political independence. The colonists, if they wished to be another England in miniature, had not contemplated becoming a people foreign to England, in the sense that France or Spain was. They loved the English flag, in spite of the cross which Endicott disowned; they were proud of the English history which was also theirs. Why should they sever themselves from these? It was not until English injustice and selfishness, long endured, became at last unendurable, that the resolve to live truly independent, or to die, fired the muskets of Lexington and Concord.

The most galling of the measures which weighed upon New England was that called the Navigation Acts. These were pa.s.sed in the interests of the English trading cla.s.s, and by their influence. In their original form, in 1661, they had involved no serious injury to the colonies, and had, moreover, been so slackly enforced that they were almost a dead letter. But after Charles II. came to the throne, they a.s.sumed a more virulent aspect. They forbade the importation into the colonies of any merchandise, except in English bottoms, captained by Englishmen, thus excluding from American ports every cargo not owned by British merchants. On the other hand, they decreed that no American produce should find its way into other than English hands, except such things as the English did not want, or could buy to better advantage elsewhere; and even these could be disposed of at no ports nearer England than the Mediterranean. Next, by an extension of the Acts, the inhabitants of one colony were forbidden to deal with those of another except on payment of duties intended to be prohibitory. And finally, the colonists were enjoined not to manufacture even for their private consumption, much less for export, any goods which English manufacturers produced. They could do nothing but grow crops, and the only reason that anything whatever was permitted to go from the colonies to foreign ports, was in order that the former might thus get money with which to pay for the forced importations from England. The result of such a policy was, of course, that money was put into the pockets of English shopkeepers, but all other Englishmen gained nothing, and the colonists lost the amount of the shopkeepers' profit, as well as the incidental and incalculable advantages of free enterprise.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Quaker in the Stocks]

These laws pressed most severely on Ma.s.sachusetts, because her s.h.i.+pping exceeded that of all the other colonies, and the smuggling which their geographical peculiarities made easy to them was impossible for her.

Besides, manufacturing was never followed by the southern colonies, and their chief products, tobacco and cotton, not being grown elsewhere, could be sold at almost as good a profit in England as anywhere else.

But if Ma.s.sachusetts was the chief object of these oppressive measures, she was also more inflexible than the other colonies in insisting upon her rights. The motto of the Rattlesnake flag carried at the beginning of the Revolution--"Don't tread on Me"--expressed the temper of her people from an early period in her history. We shall shortly see how resolutely and courageously she fought her battle against hopeless odds. Meanwhile, we may inquire how and why the other colonies of the New England confederation fared better at the hands of the mother country.

One of the most agreeable figures in our colonial history is the son of that John Winthrop who brought the first colonists to Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, on June 22, 1630. He had been born at Groton, in England, in 1606, and was therefore fifty-six years old when he returned to that country as agent for Connecticut, and obtained its charter from Charles. He had been educated at Dublin, and before emigrating to the colonies had been a soldier in the French wars, and had traveled, on the Continent. After landing at Boston, he had helped his father in his duties, and had then founded the town of Ipswich in Ma.s.sachusetts. None was more ardent than he in the work of preparing a home for the exiles in the wilderness; he added his own fortune to that of his father, and thought no effort too great. In him the elements were so kindly mixed that his heart was as warm and his mind as liberal as his energy was tireless; it was as if a Roger Williams had been mingled with an elder Winthrop; enthusiasm and charity were tempered with judgment and discretion. The love of creating means of happiness for others was his ruling motive, and he was gifted with the ability to carry it out; he felt that New England was his true home, because there he had fullest opportunity for his self-appointed work. It is almost an effort for men of this age to conceive of a nature so pure as this, and a character so blameless; we search the records for some weakness or deformity. But all witnesses testify of him with one voice; and it may be borne in mind that the spirit of Puritanism at that epoch was mighty in the individual as in the community, purging the soul of many self-indulgent vices which the laxity and skepticism of our time encourage; and when, in addition, there is a nation to be made on principles so lofty as those which Puritanism contemplated, one can imagine that there would be little s.p.a.ce for the development of the lower instincts, or the unworthier ambitions. When all is said, however, Winthrop the Younger still remains a surprising and rare type; and it is an added pleasure to know that in all that he undertook he was successful (he never undertook anything for himself), and that he was most happy in a loving wife and in his children. It was a rounded life, such as a romancer hardly dares to draw; yet there may be many not less lovely, only less conspicuously placed.

When there was need for a man to go to England and plead before the king for Connecticut--of which, for fourteen consecutive years thereafter, he was annually elected governor--who but Winthrop could be selected? He went with all the prayers of the colony for his good fortune; and it was of good omen that he met there, in the council for the colonies appointed by the king, Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon and Lord Chancellor, then in the prime of his career, and two years younger than Winthrop; and William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele, who was in the eightieth and final year of his useful and honorable career, and who, in 1632, had obtained a patent for land on the Connecticut river. Through his influence the interest of the Lord Chamberlain was secured, and Clarendon himself was cordial for the charter. With such support, the way was easy, and the doc.u.ment was executed in April of 1662. It gave the colonists all the powers of an independent government. There was no reservation whatever; their acts were not subject even to royal inspection. Nevertheless, Charles, by effecting the amalgamation of New Haven with Hartford, not altogether with the consent of the former, arbitrarily set aside the provision of the federation compact which forbade union between any of its members except with the consent of all; and thereby he a.s.serted his jurisdiction (if he chose to exercise it) over all the colonies. He could give gracious gifts, but on the understanding that they were of grace, not obligation. In the oppression of Ma.s.sachusetts, this served as an unfortunate precedent.

Nor must it be forgotten that the happiness of Connecticut was in part due to the fact that, as a matter of high policy, it was desired to conciliate her at Ma.s.sachusetts's expense. Ma.s.sachusetts was much the strongest of the colonies; her tendency to disaffection was known in England; and it seemed expedient to place her in a position isolated from her sisters. Were all of them equally wronged, their union against the oppressor was inevitable. Connecticut and Rhode Island could be of small present value to England from the commercial standpoint, and their heartfelt loyalty seemed cheaply purchased by suffering that value to acc.u.mulate. Charles could be lavish and reckless, and he was const.i.tutionally "good-humored"--that is, he liked to have things go smoothly, and if anybody suffered, wished the fact to be kept out of his sight. But he was incapable of generosity, in the sense of voluntarily sacrificing any selfish interest for a n.o.ble end; and if he patted Connecticut on the back, it was only in order that she might view with toleration his highway robbery of her sister.

All this, however, need not dash our satisfaction at the advantages which Connecticut enjoyed, and the good they did her. The climate and physical nature of the country required an active and wholesome life in the inhabitants, while yet the conditions were not so severe as to discourage them. They were of a rustic, hardy, industrious temper, of virtuous and G.o.dly life, and animated by the consciousness of being well treated. They lived and labored on their farms, and there were not so many of them that the farms crowded upon one another, though the population increased rapidly. Each of them delighted in the cultivation of his private "conscience"; and, in the absence of wars and oppressions, they argued one with another on points of theology, fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute. They were far from indifferent to learning, but they liked nothing quite so well as manhood and integrity. The Connecticut Yankee impressed his character on American history, and wherever in our country there has been evidence of pluck, enterprise and native intelligence, it has generally been found that a son of Connecticut was not far off. They were not averse from journeying over the earth, and many of them had the pioneer spirit, and left their place of birth to establish a miniature Connecticut elsewhere; their descendants will be found as far west as Oregon, and their whalers knew the paths of the Pacific as well as they did the channels of Long Island Sound. Tolerant, st.u.r.dy, pious, shrewd, prudent and brave, they formed the best known type of the characteristic New Englander, as represented by the national figure of Uncle Sam. They were sociable and inquisitive, yet they knew how to keep their own counsel; and the latch-string hung out all over the colony, in testimony at once of their honesty and their hospitality. Few things came to them from the outer world, and few went out from them; they were industrially as well as politically independent. They were economical in both their private and their public habits; no money was to be made in politics, partly because every one was from his youth up trained in political procedure; every town was a republic in little.

The town meeting was open to all citizens, and each could have his say in it, and many an acute suggestion and shrewd criticism came from humble lips. It is in such town meetings that the legislators were trained who then, and ever since, have become leading figures in the statesmans.h.i.+p of the country. In England, a hereditary aristocracy were educated to govern the nation; in the colonies, a nation was educated to govern itself. Our system was the sounder and the safer of the two.

But the professional politician was then unthought of; he came as the result of several conditions incident to our national development; he has perhaps already touched his apogee, and is beginning to disappear.