ATTEMPT TO RETURN TO SPECIE PAYMENTS.--CHANGES IN THE REQUIREMENTS
OF CITIZENSHIP.--NEW COUNTIES AND TOWNS FORMED.--FRENCH AND
INDIAN WAR.--WARD AND HOPKINS CONTEST.--ESTABLISHMENT OF
NEWSPAPERS.
The war was almost over, although privateers still endangered maritime
commerce. First an armistice was agreed upon for four months and then
peace was signed at Aix la Chapelle, on the 30th of April, 1748. It
was a welcome peace although the war had brought lessons with it which
were never forgotten. The men who had fought at Louisburg were looked
upon as veterans, and when the final struggle came brought experience
to the service of the revolting colonies. Parliament, well aware of
the readiness with which the colonies had contributed to the support
of the war both by men and by money, made them a grant of eight
hundred thousand pounds as an indemnity. Rhode Island's share for the
expedition against Cape Breton was six thousand three hundred and
twenty-two pounds twelve shillings and tenpence; for the expedition
against Canada, ten thousand one hundred and forty-four pounds nine
shillings and sixpence. But deductions were afterwards made in a
caviling spirit which excited bitter feelings. Still more irritating
to colonial pride was the article restoring to France her conquered
territories, for among them was Louisburg. Of the right of search,
the original cause of the war, no mention was made, a precedent not
forgotten in the war of 1812. Now was the time to heal the wound which
paper money had inflicted upon the commerce of the country. Hutchinson,
an aspiring young statesman of Massachusetts, formed a plan for sinking
the paper money and restoring specie payment by means of this grant.
Massachusetts after a long discussion, wisely adopted Hutchinson's
plan. Rhode Island and Connecticut rejected it. Rhode Island presently
felt the consequences of her error by the loss of her West India trade.
The records of the labors of peace again fill the schedules.
Charlestown was divided into two towns and the name of Richmond given
to the portion north of Pawcatuck river. The communications between the
different parts of the Colony were carefully watched over. There were
already nineteen ferries when peace returned, and of these thirteen
served to keep up the connection with the seat of government.
The year before the peace the first public library in the Colony, the
Redwood Library, was founded. It was fruit of the good tree planted by
Berkeley. In 1754 Providence followed the noble example and founded
the Providence Library Association. In the following year we find
another attempt to enforce a moral law by legislative enactment. The
act against swearing was revised, and a fine of five shillings or three
hours in the stocks imposed as a penalty for every offence.
The increase of population called for a revision of the statute of
legal residence. "New comers were required to give a month's notice of
intention to become residents, after which if they remained one year
without being warned to leave they were admitted as lawful inhabitants
of the town." A freehold estate of thirty pounds sterling also gave a
legal residence. "Apprentices having served their time in any town,
might elect their residence there, or return to the place of their
birth. Paupers not having acquired a legal settlement might be removed
by the councils on complaint of the overseer of the poor, to the place
of their last legal residence or to that of their birth." So careful
was the watch kept over the conditions and privileges of citizenship.
The Board of Trade called for a new census. "The population was found
to consist of thirty-four thousand one hundred and twenty-eight souls,
of whom twenty-nine thousand seven hundred and fifty were whites, the
remainder blacks and Indians. Newport contained forty-six hundred and
forty souls, Providence thirty-four hundred and fifty-two."
The lottery had taken a strong hold upon the innate love of chance.
The two first lotteries had been applied to public improvements. The
third was formed for the relief of an insolvent debtor. Henceforth
we meet it as a common relief in business misfortunes and a natural
assistant in new enterprises.
The winter of 1748-49 was made memorable in Rhode Island annals by the
death of John Callender, her first historian and pastor of the First
Baptist Church in Newport. Among the public works of the year which the
growing commerce of the Colony called for, was a light-house at the
south end of Conanicut, still known as Beaver Tail Light.
Depreciation began to make itself deeply felt as the interests of
English commerce became more and more interwoven with those of colonial
commerce. Their raw products were the only articles that the colonies
could give in exchange for English manufactures. Their West India trade
was their only source of coin. Colonial bills out of the colonies
were worthless. The subject was brought before the House of Commons,
which called for a full and accurate statement of the condition of the
currency. A committee was appointed by the Assembly to prepare the
statement, and Partridge the colonial agent directed to present and
support it. By this report it was shown that three hundred and twelve
thousand three hundred pounds in bills of credit, emitted to supply
the treasury since May, 1710, of which one hundred and seventy-seven
thousand had been burned at various times and one hundred and
thirty-five thousand pounds were still outstanding, amounting in all in
sterling money to about thirty-six thousand pounds.
An interesting incident of this year was the organization of a Moravian
mission.
The statute book records several new criminal statutes. It is an
illustration of domestic relations that the first divorce was granted
by the Assembly in 1754--more than a hundred years after the foundation
of the Colony. And it may be taken as proof of the feelings of the
Colony towards England, that a large number of English statutes were
transferred to the colonial statute book. New precautions against
fire were taken in Newport by the formation of firewards, and a fire
engine was sent for from England. Providence soon followed the example.
Another step was taken towards a satisfactory distribution of the
territory by forming East and West Greenwich, Coventry and Warwick into
a new county under the name of Kent County, with East Greenwich for its
county town. The new county was required to build a court house at its
own expense, which was partly done by lottery. Four years later another
town was formed from Providence County and incorporated under the name
of Cranston. In spite of the increased depreciation of the currency the
Colony continued to grow in numbers and strength. Seventeen hundred
and fifty-two was made memorable both in England and her colonies by
the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. Henceforth the new year begins
on the first of January instead of the twenty-fifth of March.
But the great event of the year was the decision of the lawsuit for the
possession of the glebe lands in Narragansett, a suit of nearly thirty
years standing, and which after passing through many phases was decided
in favor of the Congregationalists against the Episcopalians, upon
the ground that "by the Rhode Island charter all denominations were
orthodox, and that a majority of the grantors when the deed took effect
were Presbyterians or Congregationalists."
Meanwhile paper money was doing its bad work. The calendar of private
petitions bears sad witness to the evil. Bankruptcy became frequent,
and among the bankrupts of those days of gloom was Joseph Whipple, the
Deputy-Governor, who, surrendering all his property to his creditors
was relieved by a special act of insolvency. The spirit of enterprise
though dulled, was not crushed.
The first recorded patent was granted in 1753. Parliament had passed
an act to encourage the making of potash in the colonies, and Moses
Lopez took out a patent for making it for ten years by a process known
only to himself. The next year a similar patent was granted to James
Rogers for the manufacture of pearl-ash. The industrial instinct
which was to receive in the sequel so great a development, was already
girding itself up for the trial. The spirit of association, also,
was awakening. A society of sea-captains was incorporated for mutual
assistance under the name of the Fellowship Club. From this grew the
Newport Marine Society.
A new war was at hand, a war known to our childhood as the old French
war, and the last waged by France and England for the dominion of North
America. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had left the door wide open for
new claims, and these soon led to a new war. Here again Rhode Island
displayed great energy, sending Stephen Hopkins and Martin Howard,
Jr., to represent her as Commissioners at the Albany Congress of 1754,
in which Franklin brought forward his plan for developing by union
the resources of the colonies, she took promptly the steps necessary
for her own defence and complied cheerfully with the requisitions of
the English commanders. In this as in former wars she sent out her
privateers to harass the enemy's commerce. But her part in the contest
was a limited one. Her troops went as contingents not as armies. She
had no generals to give their names to great victories, and when peace
returned her soldiers and sailors returned cheerfully to the duties and
avocations of common life.
The annexation of the eastern towns in 1757 marks an important period
in the history of Rhode Island. With two unfriendly neighbors on each
side she had been compelled to contend inch by inch for her territory.
All the obstacles which impede development had accumulated in her path.
All the dangers which menace the existence of feeble colonies had
beset her. She had faced them all, she had overcome them all. A great
principle lay at the root of her civilization, and humanity itself was
inseparably connected with her success.
From the annexation of the eastern towns in 1757 to the peace of Paris
in 1763, all the leading events were more or less connected with the
war. Privateering took the place of commerce. Taxes were levied to
build and arm forts and raise and equip soldiers, not to erect churches
and court houses and libraries and schools.
The war was lingering but decisive. It gave England one brilliant
victory and one illustrious name--the Heights of Abraham, and Wolf--to
the colonies the lesson so valuable a few years later that English
troops might be driven where colonists held their ground, and the name
of Washington. Recorded in European history as the seven years war, for
the colonies it was a war of nine years, hostilities having begun two
years before war was declared. Nowhere is man's place in history more
distinctly marked than in this war, which till the right man came was a
succession of blunders and defeats. With William Pitt came victory.
While the war was still confined to the colonies a large number of
French residents had been thrown into jail as prisoners of war. What
was their legal position? The question was brought before the Assembly
by a petition for release, which was so far granted as to authorize
their transportation to some neutral port, and so far rejected as to
still subject them to the laws of war.
We have seen how watchful the home government was to enforce the laws
of trade. But with all its watchfulness smuggling still prevailed in
every colony. New orders came from the King directing the Assembly to
"pass effectual laws for prohibiting all trade and commerce with the
French, and for preventing the exportation of provisions of all kinds
to any of their islands or colonies." The Assembly passed the necessary
acts. But too many and too powerful interests were involved to admit of
their rigorous execution.
To this period belongs the bitterest party contest in the annals of
Rhode Island, generally known as the Ward and Hopkins contest. Samuel
Ward and Stephen Hopkins were the foremost Rhode Islanders of their
time; both men of self-acquired culture and both illustrious by public
services. Hopkins was the elder of the two, being born at Scituate on
the 7th of March, 1717. Ward was his junior by eighteen years. Both
were farmers and merchants, and both sincerely devoted to the interests
of their native Colony. But as to what those interests were they
differed widely, and their difference soon took the form of town and
country parties. Newport was the leading town of the Colony, not only
in commercial enterprise but in intellectual culture. Berkeley had not
left his foot-prints there in vain. This seat of Rhode Island culture
was best represented by Samuel Ward. The name of Hopkins stood for the
country. The distribution of taxes was one of the questions at issue.
Paper money was another. By degrees all questions of public policy were
classed under the one or the other of these two leading names. There
were sharp contests at the polls, painful severings of social ties and
all the bitterness which partisanship gives to political discussion. At
last the aid of the law was invoked and Hopkins sued Ward for slander.
It is a singular illustration of the altered relations between Rhode
Island and Massachusetts that in order to obtain an impartial jury the
trial should have taken place at Worcester. Ward was acquitted and
Hopkins condemned to pay the costs. In a few years the party contest
gave way to the graver contest of the Revolution wherein the two
leaders took their seats side by side in Congress Hall.
Among the events of domestic interest which belong to this period was
the burning of the Providence Court House--not so much for the loss of
the building as for that of the Providence Library which was kept in
one of its rooms. The want of a public library was keenly felt, and
when a lottery was granted for rebuilding the court house, half of its
proceeds were set apart for the library. Rhode Island already felt the
importance of libraries and schools. She will persevere in this course
till it secures her a comprehensive school system and an admirable
university.
The theatre found less favor, although its founder, David Douglass,
brought with him the recommendation of the Governor and Council of
Virginia. His first application for a licence in Newport failed; a
second was more successful; and this pioneer of the American stage drew
for a while good houses. He moved to Providence and built a permanent
theatre. Many came from Boston to seek an enjoyment which they could
not find at home. But the current soon turned. The Bostonians met with
a cold reception, and the short-lived pleasure was condemned as a
nuisance.
A newspaper was a want more generally acknowledged. Hitherto there
had been none in the Colony. But in the summer of 1758 the _Newport
Mercury_ was established, and has held its ground with varying fortunes
to our own day. Four years later William Goddard established in
Providence the _Providence Gazette and Country Journal_. Among its
first contributors was Governor Hopkins, who began for it his "Account
of Providence," but called to other subjects by the excitement of the
times he never went beyond the first chapter. Enough, however, was
published to call out several insulting letters from Massachusetts.
Times were daily becoming more and more critical. The Board of Trade
insisted upon the rigorous enforcement of the navigation act. The
colonial governments passed the necessary laws but could not enforce
them. It was then that writs of assistance were first called for, and
from this call arose that trial so celebrated in colonial annals, the
first mutterings of the tempest which was at hand. James Otis became a
familiar name throughout the colonies.
For thirty-four years the Quaker diplomatist, Richard Partridge, had
faithfully and skillfully served Rhode Island as her agent in London.
In 1759 mindful to the last of the interests of the Colony, he wrote on
his death bed to recommend a brother Quaker, Joseph Sherwood, for his
successor.
In this same year freemasonry was introduced, a charter was granted by
the Assembly with permission to raise twenty-four hundred dollars by
lottery for building a hall in Newport.
We have seen how early attention was called to the subject of fires. In
1759 the immediate action at fires was placed under the direction of
five presidents of firewards, three of whom were elected at annual town
meetings with authority to blow up buildings if necessary in order "to
stop the progress of the flames." These details though minute, serve to
show how far our fathers carried their ideas of the powers and duties
of government.
The increase of population called for a new division of territory.
In 1757 Westerly was divided and its northern portion incorporated
under the name of Hopkinton, a choice of name which shows that in that
legislature the Hopkins party was in the majority. Two years later the
new town of Johnston was formed out of Providence and named after the
attorney-general.