History of the United States Volume I Part 17

[1720]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Seal of the Proprietors of Carolina.]

Locke drew up for the province a minute feudal const.i.tution, but it was too c.u.mbersome to work. Rule by the proprietaries proved radically bad.

They were ignorant, callous to wrongs done by their governors, and indifferent to everything save their own profits. Many of the settlers too were turbulent and criminals, fugitives from the justice of other colonies. The difficulty was aggravated by Indian and Spanish wars, by negro slavery, so profitable for rice culture, especially in South Carolina, by strife between dissenters and churchmen, by the question of revenue, and by that of representation.

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Locke.]

[1730-1752]

A proprietary party and a larger popular party were continually at feud, not seldom with arms, support of the Church allying itself mainly with the former, dissent with the latter, Zealots for the Church wished to exclude dissenters from the a.s.sembly. Their opponents would keep Huguenot immigrants, whom the favor of the proprietaries rendered unwelcome, entirely from the franchise. The popular party pa.s.sed laws for electing representatives in every county instead of at Charleston alone, and for revenue tariffs to pay the debt entailed by war. The proprietaries vetoed both. They even favored the pirates who harried the coast. Civil commotions were frequent and growth slow. Interference by the Crown was therefore most happy. From the time the Carolinas pa.s.sed into royal hands, 1729, remarkable prosperity attended them both.

a.s.suming charge of Carolina, the Crown reserved to itself the Spanish frontier, and here, in 1732, it settled Oglethorpe, the able and unselfish founder of Georgia, under the auspices of an organization in form much like a mercantile company, but benevolent in aim, whose main purpose was to open a home for the thousands of Englishmen who were in prison for debt. Many Scotch and many Austrians also came. Full civil liberty was promised to all, religious liberty to all but papists.

Political strife was warm here, too, particularly respecting the admission of rum and slaves. Government by the corporators, though well-meaning, was ill-informed and a failure, and would have been ruinous to the colony but for Oglethorpe's genius and exertions. To the advantage of all, therefore, on the lapse of the charter in 1752, Georgia, like the Carolinas, a.s.sumed the status of a royal colony.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Savannah, from a Print of 1741.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: James Oglethorpe.]

CHAPTER VI.

GOVERNMENTAL INSt.i.tUTIONS IN THE COLONIES

[1750]

The political life, habits, and forms familiar to our fathers were such as their peculiar surroundings and experience had developed out of English originals. This process and its results form an interesting study.

The political unit at the South was the parish; in the North it was the town. Jury trial prevailed in all the colonies. Local self-government was vigorous everywhere, yet the most so in the North. The town regulated its affairs, such as the schools, police, roads, the public lands, the poor, and in Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut also religion, at first by pure ma.s.s meetings where each citizen represented himself and which were both legislative and judicial in function, then by combining these meetings in various ways with the agency of selectmen. Where and so soon as a colony came to embrace several towns, representative machinery was set in motion and a colonial legislature formed, having two chambers nearly everywhere, like Parliament. The county, with the same character as at present, was inst.i.tuted later than the oldest towns and parishes, but itself subsequently became, in thinly settled parts, the unit of governmental organization and political action, being divided into towns or parishes only gradually. Voting was subject to a property qualification, in some colonies to a religious one also; but no n.o.bility of blood or t.i.tle got foothold.

The relation of the colonial governments to England is a far more perplexing matter. From the preceding chapters it appears that we may distinguish the colonies, if we come down to about 1750, as either (1) self-governing or charter colonies, in which liberty was most complete and subjection to England little more than nominal; and (2) non-self-governing, ruled, theoretically at any rate, in considerable measure from outside themselves. Rhode Island and Connecticut made up the former cla.s.s. Of the latter there were two groups, the royal or provincial, including New Hampshire, Ma.s.sachusetts; New York, New Jersey, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and the proprietary, viz., Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware.

Yet we are to bear in mind that many important const.i.tutional and governmental changes had occurred by 1750. Ma.s.sachusetts, as we have seen, had ceased to be self-governing as at first, yet it retained a charter which conferred large liberty. All the provincial colonies began as proprietary, and all the proprietary were for a time provincial.

Under Andros, New England stretched from the St. Croix to Delaware Bay.

After 1689 the tendency in all parts of the country was strong toward civil freedom, which, favored by the changes and apathy of proprietaries and the ignorance and quarrels of the English ministry, gradually rendered the other colonies in effect about as well off in this respect as Rhode Island and Connecticut.

But unfortunately the legal limits and meaning of this freedom were never determined. Had they been, our Revolution need not have come.

Monarchs continually attempted to stretch hither the royal prerogative, but how far this was legal was not then, and never can be, decided. The const.i.tutional scope of a monarch's prerogative in England itself was one of the great questions of the seventeenth century, and remained serious and unsettled through the eighteenth. Applied to America the problem became angrier still, partly because giving a charter--and the colonies were all founded on such gift--was an act of prerogative.

English lawyers never doubted that acts of Parliament were valid in the colonies. The colonists opposed both the king's and the Parliament's pretensions, and held their own legislatures to be coordinate with the Houses at Westminster. They claimed as rights the protection of habeas corpus, freedom from taxation without their consent, and all the Great Charter's guarantees. It was the habit of English theorizing on the subject to allow them these, if at all, as of grace. Repudiating the pretence that they were represented in Parliament, they likewise denied all wish to be so, but desired to have colonial legislatures recognized as concurrent with the English--each colony joined to the mother-country by a sort of personal union, or through some such tie as exists between England and her colonies to-day. Ma.s.sachusetts theorists used as a valid a.n.a.logy the relation of ancient Normandy to the French kings. Though no longer venturing to do so at home, monarchs freely vetoed legislation in all the colonies except Rhode Island and Connecticut. It was held that even these colonies were after all somehow subject to England's oversight.

On the subject of taxation there was continual dispute, misunderstanding, recrimination. The colonies did not object to providing for their own defence. They were willing to do this under English direction if asked, not commanded. Direct taxation for England's behoof was never once consented to by America, and till late never thought of by England. The English navigation laws, however, though amounting to taxation of America in aid of England, and continually evaded as unjust, were allowed by the colonies' legislative acts, and never seriously objected to in any formal way.

CHAPTER VII.

SOCIAL CULTURE IN COLONIAL TIMES

[1750]

American society rose out of mere unt.i.tled humanity; monarchy, guilds, priests, and all aristocracy of a feudal nature having been left behind in Europe. The year 1700 found in all the American colonies together some 300,000 people. They were distributed about as follows: New England had 115,000; New York, 30,000; New Jersey, 15,000; Pennsylvania and Delaware, 20,000; Maryland, 35,000; Virginia, 70,000; the Carolina country, 15,000. Perhaps 50,000 were negro slaves, of whom, say, 10,000 were held north of Mason and Dixon's line. What is now New York City had, in 1697, 4,302 inhabitants.

Pa.s.sing on to 1754, we find the white population of New England increased to 425,000; that of the middle colonies, including Maryland, to 457,000; that of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, to 283,000.

Ma.s.sachusetts alone now had 207,000; Rhode Island, 35,000; Connecticut, 133,000; New York State (1756), 83,744. There were now not far from 263,000 negroes, of whom 14,000 lived in New England, 4,500 in Rhode Island. The total population of the thirteen colonies amounted to nearly a million and a half. At this time Philadelphia about equalled Boston in size, each having 25,000 inhabitants. At the Revolution Boston had grown to be the larger. New York, with from 15,000 to 18,000, const.i.tuted the centre of trade and of politics. The city and county of New York together numbered 13,046 inhabitants in 1756; 21,862 in 1771; 23,614 in 1786. The whole State, in 1771 had 146,144. Connecticut, in 1774, had 197,856. There are said to have been, so late as 1763, woods where the New York City Hall now stands.

From North to South the population decreased in density, but it increased in heterogeneity and non-English elements, and in illiteracy.

The South had also the stronger aristocratic feeling. Slaves, as the above figures show, were far more numerous in that section. Their condition was also worse there.

A large proportion of the white population everywhere was of Saxon-Teutonic blood. The colonial leaders, and many others, at least in the North, were men who would have been eminent in England itself. Not a few New England theologians and lawyers were peers to the ablest of their time. Numbers of the common people read, reflected, debated. While profoundly religious, the colonists, being nearly all Protestants, were bold and progressive thinkers in every line, prizing discussion, preferring to settle questions by rational methods rather than through authority and tradition. We have observed that there are exceptions to this rule, like the treatment of Roger Williams, but they were exceptions. The colonists possessed in eminent degree energy, determination, power of patient endurance and sacrifice. Their political genius, too, was striking in itself, and it becomes surprising if one compares Germany, in the unspeakable distraction of the Thirty Years'

War, with America at the same period, 1618-1648, successfully solving by patience and debate the very problems which were Germany's despair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.]

In all the southern colonies the English Church was established, a majority of the people its members, its clergy supported by t.i.thes and glebe. William and Mary secured it a sort of establishment also in New York and Maryland. Yet at no moment of the colonial period was there a bishop in America. No church building was consecrated with episcopal rites, no resident of America taken into orders without going to London.

[footnote: See, for these facts, The Century for May, 1888.] Even in Virginia, till a very late colonial period, the clergy retained many Puritan forms. Some would not read the Common Prayer. For more than a hundred years the surplice was apparently unknown there, sacraments administered without the proper ornaments and vessels, parts of the liturgy omitted, marriages, baptisms, churchings, and funerals solemnized in private houses. In some parishes, so late as 1724, the communion was partaken sitting. Excellent as were many of the clergymen, there were some who never preached, and not a few even bore an ill name.

It was worst in Maryland, and "bad as a Maryland parson" became a proverb. The yearly salary in the best Virginia parishes was tobacco of about 100 pounds value.

The Carolina clergy at first formed a superior cla.s.s, as nearly all the early ministers were men carefully selected and sent out from England by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Here there was special interest in the religious welfare of the slaves. All Over the South the Church ministers owed much to compet.i.tion with those of sects, especially those of the Presbyterians, to which body belonged many of the Scotch and Irish immigrants after 1700. Dissent was dominant everywhere at the North. A vast majority of the people even in New York were dissenters, though the Episcopal clergy there successfully resisted all efforts against the Church tax, notwithstanding the fact that the same injustice in Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut oppressed their brethren in those colonies. The New York clergy also fought every sort of liberal law, as to enable dissenting bodies of Christians to hold property. It was in good degree this att.i.tude of theirs that filled the country, Virginia too, with such hatred of bishops.

But this spirit was fully matched by that of the Independent ministers in New England. Their dissent was aggressive, persecuting, puritanical.

Meeting-houses were cold, sermons long and dry, music vocal only.

Religious teaching and the laws it procured, foolishly a.s.sumed to regulate all the acts of life. Extravagance was denounced and fined. In 1750, the Ma.s.sachusetts a.s.sembly forbade theatres as "likely to encourage immorality and impiety." Rhode Island took similar action in 1762.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.]

The ministers of Boston viewed bishops almost as emissaries of the devil. Herein in fact lay the primary, some have thought the deepest and most potent cause of the Revolution, since kings and the bishops of London incessantly sought to establish Anglicanism in Ma.s.sachusetts, and English politicians deemed it outrageous that conformists should be denied any of that colony's privileges. For some time, under William and Mary's charter, in this province where Congregationalism had till now had everything its own way, only Church clergymen could celebrate marriage. In New York and Maryland, too, hostility to the establishment greatly stimulated disloyalty. This was true even in Anglican Virginia, where the Church found it no easier to keep power than it was in Ma.s.sachusetts to get power, and where the clergy were unpopular, concerned more for t.i.thes than for souls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Costume about the Middle of the Seventeenth Century.]

Colleges were founded early in several colonies. Harvard dates from 1638; William and Mary, in Virginia, from 1693; Yale, from 1701; the College of New Jersey, from 1746, its old Na.s.sau Hall, built in 1756 and named in honor of William III. of the House of Na.s.sau, being then the largest structure in British America. The University of Pennsylvania dates from 1753; King's College, now Columbia, from 1754; Rhode Island College, now Brown University, from 1764. Educational facilities in general varied greatly with sections, being miserable in the southern colonies, fair in the central, excellent in the northern. In Virginia, during the period now under our survey, schools were almost unknown. In Maryland, from 1728, a free school was established by law in each county. These were the only such schools in the South before 1770.

Philadelphia and New York had good schools by 1700; rural Pennsylvania none of any sort till 1750, then only the poorest. A few New York and New Jersey towns of New England origin had free schools before the Revolution. Many Southern planters sent their sons to school in England.

In popular education New England led not only the continent but the world, there being a school-house, often several, in each town. Every native adult in Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut was able to read and write. In this matter Rhode Island was far behind its next neighbors.

Newspapers were distributed much as schools were. The first printing-press was set up at Cambridge in 1639. The first newspaper, Publick Occurrences Foreign and Domestic, was started in Boston in 1690. The first permanent newspaper, the Boston News Letter, began in 1704, and it had a Boston and a Philadelphia rival in 1719. The Maryland Gazette was started at Annapolis in 1727, a weekly at Williamsburg, Va., in 1736. In 1740 there were eleven newspapers in all in the colonies; one each in New York, South Carolina, and Virginia (from 1736), three in Pennsylvania, one of them German, and five in Boston. The Connecticut Gazette was started at New Haven in 1755; The Summary, at New London in 1758. The Rhode Island Gazette was begun by James Franklin, September 27, 1732, but was not permanent. The Providence Gazette and Country Journal put forth its first issue October 20, 1762. In 1775, Salem, Newburyport, and Portsmouth had each its newspaper. The first daily in the country, the Pennsylvania Packet, began in 1784.

[Ill.u.s.tration: James Logan.]

Other literature of American origin flourished in New England nearly alone. It consisted of sermons, social and political tracts, poetry, history, and memoirs. The clergy were the chief but not the sole authors. Of readers, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston had many.

Much reading matter came from England. Charleston enjoyed a public library from 1700. About 1750 there were several others. That left to Philadelphia in 1751, by James Logan, comprised 4,000 volumes.

William and Mary had established a postal system for America, placing Thomas Neale, Esquire, at its head. The service hardly became a system till 1738. In ordinary weather a post-rider would receive the Philadelphia mail at the Susquehannah River on Sat.u.r.day evening, be at Annapolis on Monday, reach the Potomac Tuesday night, on Wednesday arrive at New Post, near Fredericksburg, and by Sat.u.r.day evening at Williamsburg, whence, once a month, the mail went still farther south, to Edenton, N. C. Thus a letter was just a week in transit between Philadelphia and the capital of Virginia. In New England, from here to New York, and between New York and Philadelphia, despatch was much better.

[Ill.u.s.tration: King William.]