Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

CHAPTER VI.

THE OLD THIRTEEN COLONIES.

NEWCASTLE'S ADMIN

ISTRATION.

1754.

IN 1754, David Hume, who had discovered the 1754. hollowness of the prevailing systems of thought in Europe, yet without offering any better substitute in philosophy than a selfish ideal skepticism, or hoping for any other euthanasia to the British constitution than its absorption in monarchy, said of America, in words which he never need have erased, and in a spirit which he never disavowed: "The seeds of many a noble state have been sown in climates kept desolate by the wild manners of the ancient inhabitants, and an asylum is secured in that solitary world for liberty and science." The thirteen American colonies, of which the union was projected, contained, at that day, about one million one hundred and sixty-five thousand white inhabitants, and two hundred sixty-three thousand negroes: in all, one million four hundred and twenty-eight thousand souls. The board of trade reckoned a few thousands more; and some, on revising their judgment, stated the amount at less.

Of persons of European ancestry, perhaps fifty thousand dwelt in New Hampshire, two hundred and seven thousand in Massachusetts, thirty-five thousand in Rhode Island, and one hundred and thirty-three thousand in Connecticut; in New England, therefore, four hundred and twenty-five thousand souls.

Of the middle colonies, New York may have had eightyfive thousand; New Jersey, seventy-three thousand; Pennsylvania, with Delaware, one hundred and ninety-five thousand; Maryland, one hundred and four thousand in all, not far from four hundred and fifty-seven thousand.

For the southern provinces, where the mild climate invited emigrants into the interior, where the crown lands were often occupied on mere warrants of surveys or even without warrants, - there was room for glaring mistakes in the enumerations. To Virginia may be assigned one hundred and sixty-eight thousand white inhabitants; to North Carolina, scarcely less than seventy thousand; to South Carolina, forty thousand; to Georgia, not more than five thousand; to the whole country south of the Potomac, two hundred and eighty-three thousand.

The white population of any one of five, or perhaps even of six, of the American provinces, was greater, singly, than that of all Canada; and the aggregate in America exceeded that in Canada fourteen-fold.

Of persons of African lineage the home was chiefly determined by climate. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine may have had six thousand negroes; Rhode Island, four thousand five hundred; Connecticut, three thousand five hundred all New England, therefore, about fourteen thousand.

New York alone had not far from eleven thousand; New Jersey, about half that number; Pennsylvania, with Delaware, eleven thousand; Maryland, forty-four thousand: the central colonies, collectively, seventy-one thousand.

In Virginia, there were not less than one hundred and sixteen thousand; in North Carolina, perhaps more than twenty thousand; in South Carolina, full forty thousand; in Georgia, about two thousand: so that the country south of the Potomac may have had one hundred and seventyeight thousand.

Of the southern group, Georgia, the asylum of misfortune, had been languishing under a corporation whose benefits had not equalled the benevolence of its designs. The council of its trustees had granted no legislative rights to those whom they assumed to protect, but, meeting at a London tavern, by their own power imposed taxes on its Indian trade. Industry was disheartened by the entail of freeholds; summer, extending through months not its own, engendered pestilent vapors from the lowlands, as they were

opened to the sun; American silk, it is true, was admitted into London duty free, but the wants of the wilderness left no leisure to feed the silk-worm and reel its thread; nor had the cultivator learned to gather the down of the cotton plant; the indigent, for whom charity had proposed a refuge, murmured at an exile that had sorrows of its own; the few men of substance withdrew to Carolina. In December, 1751, the trustees unanimously desired to surrender their charter; and, with the approbation of Murray, all authority for two years emanated from the king alone. In 1754, when the first royal governor with a royal council entered upon office, a legislative assembly convened under the sanction of his commission. The crown instituted the courts, and appointed executive officers and judges, with fixed salaries paid by England; but the people, through its representative body, and the precedence of older colonies, gained vigor in its infancy to restrain every form of delegated authority.

In

The fiery people of South Carolina had increased their power by every method of encroachment on the executive; but they did not excite English jealousy by competing with English industry, or engaging largely in illicit trade; and British legislation was ever lenient to their interests. favor of rice, the laws of navigation were mitigated; the planting of indigo, like the production of naval stores, was cherished by a bounty from the British exchequer; and they thought it in return no hardship to receive through England even foreign manufactures, which, by the system of partial drawbacks, came to them burdened with a tax, yet at a less cost than to the consumer in the metropolis. They had desired, and had obtained, the presence of troops to intimidate the wild tribes on their frontiers and to over

awe their slaves. The people were yeomen, owing the king small quit-rents, which could never be rigorously exacted; a title to portions of the royal domain was granted on easy terms; and who would disturb the adventurer that, at his own will, built his cabin and pastured his herds in savannas and forests which had never been owned in severalty? The slave-merchant supplied laborers on credit. Free from excessive taxation, protected by soldiers in Brit

ish pay, the frugal planter enjoyed the undivided returns of his enterprise, and might double his capital in three or four years. The love for rural life prevailed universally; the thrifty mechanic abandoned his workshop, the merchant the risks of the sea, to plant estates of their own.

North Carolina, with nearly twice as many white inhabitants as its southern neighbor, had not one considerable village. Its swamps near the sea produced rice; its alluvial lands teemed with maize; free labor, little aided by negroes, busily drew turpentine and tar from the pines of its white, sandy plains; a hardy and rapidly increasing people lay scattered among its fertile uplands. There, through the boundless wilderness, hardy emigrants, careless of the strifes of Europe, ignorant of deceit, free from tithes, answerable to no master, fearlessly occupied lands that seemed without an owner. Their swine had the range of the forest; the greenwood was the pasture of their untold herds. Their young men trolled along the brooks that abounded in fish, and took their sleep under the forest tree; or trapped the beaver; or, with gun and pouch, lay in wait for the deer, as it slaked its thirst at the running stream; or, in small parties, roved the spurs of the Alleghanies, in quest of marketable skins. When Arthur Dobbs, the royal governor, an author of some repute, insisted on introducing the king's prerogative, the legislature did not scruple to leave the government unprovided for. When he attempted to establish the Anglican church, they were ready to welcome the institution of public worship, if their own vestries might choose their ministers. When he sought to collect quit-rents from a people who were nearly all tenants of the king, they deferred indefinitely the adjustment of the rent-roll.

For the Carolinas and for Virginia, as well as other royal governments, the king, under his sign manual, appointed the governor and the council; these constituted a court of chancery; the provincial judges, selected by the king or the royal governor, held office at the royal pleasure; for the courts of vice-admiralty, the lords of the admiralty named a judge, register, and marshal; the commissioners of the customs appointed the comptrollers and the collectors, of whom

one was stationed at each considerable harbor; the justices and the militia officers were named by the governor in council. The freeholders elected but one branch of the legislature; and here, as in every royal government, the council formed another. In Virginia, there was less strife than elsewhere between the executive and the assembly: partly because the king had a permanent revenue from quit-rents and perpetual grants; partly because the governor resided in England, and was careful that his deputy should not hazard his sinecure by controversy. In consequence, the council, by its weight of personal character, gained unusual influence. The church of England was supported by legislative authority, and the plebeian sects were as yet proscribed; but the great extent of the parishes prevented unity of public worship. Bedford, when in office, had favored the appointment of an Anglican bishop in America; but, as his decisive opinion and the importunities of Sherlock and Secker had not prevailed, the benefices were filled by priests ordained in England, and for the most part of English birth, too often ill-educated and licentious men. The province had not one large town; the scattered mode of life made free schools not easily practicable. Sometimes the sons of wealthy planters repaired to Europe; here and there a man of great learning, some Scottish loyalist, some exile around whom misfortune spread a mystery, sought safety and gave instruction in Virginia. The country within tide-water was divided among planters, who, in the culture of tobacco, were favored by British legislation. Insulated on their large estates, they were cordially hospitable. In the quiet of their solitary life, unaided by an active press, they learned from nature what others caught from philosophy,

- to reason

boldly, to bound their freedom of mind only by self-circumscribed limits. They were philosophers after the pattern of Montaigne, without having heard of him. The horse was their pride; the county courts, their holidays; the racecourse, their delight. On permitting the increase of negro slavery, opinions were nearly equally divided; but England kept slave-marts open at every court-house, as far, at least, as the South-west Mountain: partly to enrich her slave

« ZurückWeiter »