on the western shore of the Hudson; whatever the Dutch had refused to
do, they did. The Governor and Council were to be balanced by the
people's representatives; no more arbitrary taxation; citizens might
think and pray as best pleased them; land tenure was made easy, and
seventy-five acres was the bounty for each emigrant imported, negroes
included. By such inducements the wilderness of New Jersey, assigned to
Berkeley and Carteret, was peopled by Scots, New Englanders and
Quakers. Settlement proceeded rapidly, and in 1668 a colonial
legislature met in the town named after Elizabeth Carteret. There were
so many Puritans in the assembly, and their arguments were so
convincing, that New Jersey law bore a strong family resemblance to
that of New England. This had its effect, when, in 1670, the rent
question came up for settlement. The Puritans contended that the
Indians held from Noah, and as they were lawful heirs of the Indians,
they declined to pay rents to the English proprietors. There was no
means of compelling them to do so, and they had their way. The Yankees
were already going ahead.
Manhattan did not get treated quite so well. The Governor had
everything his own way, the council being his creatures, and the
justices his appointees. The people were permitted no voice in affairs,
and might as well have had Stuyvesant back again. After Nicolls had
strutted his term, Lord Lovelace came, and outdid him. His idea of how
to govern was formulated in his instructions to an agent: "Lay such
taxes," said he, "as may give them liberty for no thought but how to
discharge them." Lord Lovelace was an epigrammatist; but in the end he
had to pay for his wit. He attempted to levy a tax for defense, and was
met with refusal; the towns of Long Island had not one cent either for
tribute or defense; his lordship swore at them heartily, but they
heeded him not; and he found himself in the shoes of the ousted Dutch
Governor in an another sense than he desired. And then was poetical
justice made complete; for who should appear before the helpless forts
but Evertsen with a Dutch fleet! New York, New Jersey and Delaware
surrendered to him almost with enthusiasm, and the work of England
seemed to be all undone.
But larger events were to control the lesser. France and England
combined in an iniquitous conspiracy to destroy the Dutch Republic, and
swooped down upon the coast with two hundred thousand men. The story
has often been told how the Dutch, tenfold outnumbered, desperately and
gloriously defended themselves. They finally swept the English from the
seas, and patroled the Channel with a broom at the masthead. By the
terms of the treaty of peace which Charles was obliged by his own
parliament to make, all conquests were mutually restored, and New York
consequently reverted to England. West Jersey was bought by the
Quakers; the eastern half of the province was restored to the rule of
Carteret. The Atlantic coast, from Canada down to Florida,
continuously, was English ground, and so remained until, a century
later, the transplanted spirit of liberty, born in England, threw down
the gauntlet to the spirit of English tyranny, and won independence for
the United States.
When we remember that the Dutch maintained their government in the new
world for little more than fifty years, it is surprising how deep a
mark they made there. It is partly because their story lends itself to
picturesque and graphic treatment; it is so rich in character and
color, and telling in incident. Then, too, it has a beginning, middle
and end, which is what historians as well as romancers love. But most
of all, perhaps, their brief chronicles as a distinct political
phenomenon illustrate the profound problem of self-government in
mankind. The Netherlander had proved, before any of them came hither,
with what inflexible courage they could resent foreign tyranny; and the
municipalities, as well as the nation, had grasped the principles of
independence. But it was not until they erected their little
commonwealth amid the forests of the Hudson that they awakened to the
conception that every man should bear his part in the government of
all. To attain this, it was necessary to break through a crust of
conservatism almost as stubborn as that of Spain. The authority of
their upper classes had never been questioned; the idea had never been
entertained that a citizen in humble life could claim any right to
influence the conditions under which his life should be carried on.
That innate and inalienable right of the individual to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, which Jefferson asserted, and which has
become an axiom to every American school-boy, does not appear, upon
investigation, to be either inalienable or innate. The history of
mankind shows that it has been constantly alienated from them; and if
we pass in review the population of the world, from the oldest to
contemporary times, and from savages tribes to the most highly
civilized nations, we find the plebeian bowing before the patrician,
the poor man serving the wealthy. The conception of human equality
before the law is not a congenital endowment, but an accomplishment,
arduously acquired and easily forfeited. The first impulse of weakness
in the presence of strength is to bow down before it; it is the impulse
of the animal, and of the unspiritual, the unregenerate nature in man.
The ability to recognize the solidarity of man, and therefore the
equality of spiritual manhood, involves an uplifting of the mind, an
illumination of the soul, which can be regarded as the result of
nothing less than a revelation. It is not developed from below--it is
received from above; it is a divine whisper in the ear of fallen man,
transfiguring him, and opening before him the way of life. It
postulates no loss of humility; it does not disturb the truth that some
must serve and some must direct; that some shall have charge over many
things, and some over but few. It does not supersede the outward order
of society. But it affirms that to no man or body of men, no matter how
highly endowed by nature or circumstance with intellect, position or
riches, shall be accorded the right to dispose arbitrarily of the lives
and welfare of the masses. Not elsewhere than in the hands of the
entire community shall be lodged the reins of government. The
administration shall be with the chosen ones whose training and
qualifications fit them for that function; but the principles on which
their administration is conducted shall be determined by the will and
vote of all.
This is not lightly to be believed or understood; Peter Stuyvesant
voiced the unenlightened thought when he said that, should the rabble
rule, order and honesty must be overthrown. This is the inevitable
conclusion of materialistic logic. Like produces like; evil, evil;
ignorance, ignorance. Only by inspired faith will the experiment be
tried of trusting the Creator to manifest His purposes, not by the
conscious wisdom of any man or men, but through the unconscious,
organic tendency, mental and moral, of universal man. We may call it
"the tendency, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness"; or we may
analyze it into the resultant of innumerable forces, taking a direction
independent of them all; or we may say simply that it is the Divine
method of leading us upward; it is all one. Universal suffrage is an
act of faith; and, faithfully carried out, it brings political and
religious emancipation to the people. How far it has been carried out
in this country is a question we shall have to answer hereafter; we may
say here that our forefathers realized its value, and gave to us in our
Constitution the mechanism whereby to practice it. To it they added the
memory of their courage and their sacrifices in its behalf; and more
than this was not theirs to give.
The English Puritans received their revelation in one way; the Dutch
traders and farmers in another; but it was the same revelation. To
neither could it be imparted in Europe, but only in the virgin
solitudes of an untrodden continent. There man, already civilized, was
enabled to perceive the inefficiency and distortion of his
civilization, and to grasp the cure. Hudson, an Englishman, but at the
moment in Dutch service, opened the gates to the Netherlanders, and
thus enabled their emigrants to perfect the work of emancipation which
had been brought to the highest stage it could reach at home. They were
opposed by the directors in Amsterdam, by their own governors and
patroons, and by the errors which immemorial usage had ingrained in
them as individuals. They overcame these forces, not by their own
strength, nor by any violent act of revolution, but by the slow,
irresistible energy of natural law, with which, as with a gravitative
force, they had placed themselves in harmony. Thus they exemplified one
of the several ways in which freedom comes to man, and took their place
as a component element in the limitless cosmopolitanism of our
population.
Their subsequent history shows that nothing truly valuable is lost in
democracy. The high behavior and dignified manners which belonged to
their patroons may be observed among their descendants in contemporary
New York; the men whose ancestors controlled a thousand tenants have
not lost the powers of handling large matters in a large spirit; but
they exercise it now for worthier ends than of old. Similarly, the
Dutch stolidity which amuses us in the chronicles, reappears to-day in
the form of steadiness and judgment; the obstinacy of headstrong Peter,
as self-confidence and perseverance; the physical grossness of the old
burghers, as constitutional vigor. Many of their customs too have come
down to us; their heavy afternoon teas are recalled in our informal
receptions; their New Year's Day sociability in our calls, their
Christmas celebrations in our festival of Santa Claus. Much of our
domestic architecture reflects their influence: the gabled fronts, the
tiled fireplaces, the high "stoops," and the custom of sitting on them
in summer evenings. In general it is seen that the effect of democratic
institutions is to save the grain and reject the chaff, because
criticism becomes more close and punctual, abuses and license are not
chartered, and the individual is bereft of artificial supports and
disguises, and must appear more nearly as God made him.
[Illustration: Trepanning Men to be Sent to the Colonies]
CHAPTER FIFTH
LIBERTY, SLAVERY, AND TYRANNY
We left the colony at Jamestown emerging from thick darkness and much
tribulation toward the light. Some distance was still to be traversed
before full light and easement were attained; but fortune, upon the
whole, was kinder to Virginia than to most of the other settlements;
and though clouds gathered darkly now and then, and storms threatened,
and here and there a bolt fell, yet deliverance came beyond
expectation. Something Virginia suffered from Royal governors,
something from the Indians, something too from the imprudence and
wrong-headedness of her own people. But her story is full of stirring
and instructive passages. It tells how a community chiefly of
aristocratic constitution and sympathies, whose loyalty to the English
throne was deep and ardent, and whose type of life was patrician,
nevertheless were won insensibly and inevitably to espouse the
principles of democracy. It shows how, with honest men, a king may be
loved, and the system which he stands for reverenced and defended,
while yet the lovers and apologists choose and maintain a wholly
different system for themselves. The House of Stuart had none but
friends in Virginia; when the son of Charles the First was a fugitive,
Virginia offered him a home; and the follies and frailties of his
father, and the grotesque chicaneries of his grandfather, could not
alienate the colonists' affection. Yet, from the moment their Great
Charter was given them, they never ceased to defend the liberties which
it bestowed against every kingly effort to curtail or destroy them; and
on at least one occasion they fairly usurped the royal prerogative.
They presented, in short, the striking anomaly of a people
acknowledging a monarch and at the same time claiming the fullest
measure of political liberty till then enjoyed by any community in
modern history. They themselves perceived no inconsistency in their
attitude; but to us it is patent, and its meaning is that the sentiment
of a tradition may be cherished and survive long after intelligence and
experience have caused the thing itself to be consigned to the
rubbish-heap of the past.
So long as Sir Thomas Smythe occupied the president's chair of the
London Company, there could be no hope of substantial prosperity for
the Jamestown emigrants. He was a selfish and conceited satrap,
incapable of enlightened thought or beneficent action, who knew no
other way to magnify his own importance than by suffocating the rights
and insulting the self-respect of others. He had a protégé in Argall, a
disorderly ruffian who was made deputy-governor of the colony in 1617.
His administration was that of a freebooter; but the feeble and
dwindling colony had neither power nor spirit to do more than send a
complaint to London. Lord Delaware had in the meantime sailed for
Virginia, but died on the trip; Argall was, however, dismissed, and Sir
George Yeardley substituted for him--a man of gracious manners and
generous nature, but somewhat lacking in the force and firmness that
should build up a state. He had behind him the best men in the company
if not in all England: Sir Edward Sandys, the Earl of Southampton, and
Nicolas Ferrar. Smythe had had resignation forced upon him, and with
him the evil influences in the management retired to the background.
Sandys was triumphantly elected governor and treasurer, with Ferrar as
corporation counsel; Southampton was a powerful supporter. They were
all young men, all royalists, and all unselfishly devoted to the cause
of human liberty and welfare. Virginia never had better or more urgent
friends.
Yeardley, on his arrival, found distress and discouragement, and hardly
one man remaining in the place of twenty. The colonists had been robbed
both by process of law and without; they had been killed and had died
of disease; they had deserted and been deported; they had been denied
lands of their own, or the benefit of their own labor; and they had
been permitted no part in the management of their own affairs. The
rumor of these injuries and disabilities had got abroad, and no
recruits for the colony had been obtainable; the Indians were
ill-disposed, and the houses poor and few. Women too were lamentably
scanty, and the people had no root in the country, and no thought but
to leave it. Like the emigrants to the Klondike gold-fields in our own
day, they had designed only to better their fortunes and then depart.
The former hope was gone; the latter was all that was left.
Yeardley's business, in the premises, was agreeable and congenial; he
had a letter from the company providing for the abatement of past evils
and abuses, and the establishment of justice, security and happiness.
He sent messengers far and wide, summoning a general meeting to hear
his news and confer together for the common weal.
Hardly venturing to believe that any good thing could be in store for
them, the burgesses and others assembled, and crowded into the place of
meeting. Twenty-two delegates from the eleven plantations were there,
clad in their dingy and dilapidated raiment, and wide-brimmed hats;
most of them with swords at their sides, and some with rusty muskets in
their hands. Their cheeks were lank and their faces sunburned; their
bearing was listless, yet marked with some touch of curiosity and
expectation. There were among them some well-filled brows and strong
features, announcing men of ability and thoughtfulness, though they had
lacked the opportunity and the cue for action. Their long days on the
plantations, and their uneasy nights in the summer heats, had given
them abundant leisure to think over their grievances and misfortunes,
and to dream of possible reforms and innovations. But of what profit
was it? Their governors had no thought but to fill their own pockets,
the council was powerless or treacherous, and everything was slipping
away.
It was in the depths of summer--the 30th of July, 1619. More than a
year was yet to pass before the "Mayflower" would enter the wintry
shelter of Plymouth harbor. In the latitude of Jamestown the
temperature was almost tropical at this season, and exhausting to body
and spirit. The room in which they met, in the governor's house in
Jamestown, was hardly spacious enough for their accommodation: four
unadorned walls, with a ceiling that could be touched by an upraised
hand. It had none of the aspect of a hall of legislature, much less of
one in which was to take place an event so large and memorable as the
birth of liberty in a new world. But the delegates thronged in, and
were greeted at their entrance by Yeardley, who stood at a table near
the upper end of the room, with a secretary beside him and a clergyman
of the Church of England on his other hand. The colonists looked at his
urbane and conciliating countenance, and glanced at the document he
held in his hand, and wondered what would be the issue. Nothing of
moment, doubtless; still, they could scarcely be much worse off than
they were; and the new governor certainly had the air of having
something important to communicate. They took their places, leaning
against the walls, or standing with their hands clasped over the
muzzles of their muskets, or supporting one foot upon a bench; and the
gaze of all was concentrated on the governor. As he opened the paper, a
silence fell upon the assembly.
Such, we may imagine, were the surroundings and circumstances of this
famous gathering, the transactions of which fill so bright a page in
the annals of the early colonies. The governor asked the clergyman for
a blessing, and when the prayer was done suggested the choosing of a
chairman, or speaker. The choice fell upon John Pory, a member of the
former council. Then the governor read his letter from the company in
London.
The letter, in few words, opened the door to every reform which could
make the colony free, prosperous and happy, and declared all past
wrongs at an end. It merely outlined the scope of the improvements,
leaving it to the colonists themselves to fill in the details. "Those
cruel laws were abrogated, and they were to be governed by those free
laws under which his majesty's subjects in England lived." An annual
grand assembly, consisting of the governor and council and two
burgesses from each plantation, chosen by the people, was to be held;
and at these assemblies they were to frame whatever laws they deemed
proper for their welfare. These concessions were of the more value and
effect, because they were advocated in England by men who had only the
good of the colony at heart, and possessed power to enforce their will.
It seemed almost too good to be true: it was like the sun rising after
the long arctic night. Those sad faces flushed, and the moody eyes
kindled. The burgesses straightened their backs and lifted their heads;
they looked at one another, and felt that they were once more men.
There was a murmur of joy and congratulation; and thanks were uttered
to God, and to the Company, for what had been done. And forthwith they
set to work with life and energy, and with a judgment and foresight
which were hardly to have been looked for in legislators so untried, to
construct the platform of enactments upon which the commonwealth of
Virginia was henceforth to stand.
From the body of the delegates, two committees were selected to devise
the new laws and provisions, while the governor and the rest reviewed
the laws already in existence, to determine what part of them, if any,
was suitable for continuance. Among the articles agreed upon were
regulations relating to distribution and tenure of land, which replaced
all former patents and privileges, and set all holders on an equal
footing: the recognition of the Church of England as governing the mode
of worship in Virginia, with a good salary for clergymen and an
injunction that all and sundry were to appear at church every Sunday,
and bring their weapons with them--thus insuring Heaven a fair hearing,
while at the same time making provision against the insecurity of
carnal things. The wives of the planters as well as their husbands were
capacitated to own land, because, in a new world, a woman might turn
out to be as efficient as the man. This sounds almost prophetic; but it
was probably intended to operate on the cultivation of the silkworm.
Plantations of the mulberry had been ordered, and culture of the cocoon
was an industry fitting to the gentler sex, who were the more likely to
succeed in it on account of their known partiality for the product. On
the other hand, excess in apparel was kept within bounds by a tax. The
planting of vines was also ordered; but as a matter of fact the
manufacture of neither wine nor silk was destined to succeed in the
colony; tobacco and cotton were to be its staples, but the latter had
not at this epoch been attempted. Order and propriety among the
colonists were assured by penalties on gaming, drunkenness, and sloth;
and the better to guard against the proverbial wiles of Satan, a
university was sketched out, and direction was given that such children
of the heathen as showed indications of latent talent should be caught,
tamed and instructed, and employed as missionaries among their tribes.
Finally, a fixed price of three shillings for the best quality of
tobacco, and eighteen pence for inferior brands, was appointed; thus
giving the colony a currency which had the double merit of being a
sound medium for traffic, and an agreeable consolation and incense when
the labors of the day were past.
It was a good day's work; and the assembly dissolved with the
conviction that their time had never before been passed to such
advantage. Yeardley, knowing the disposition of the managers in London,
opposed no objection to the immediate practical enforcement of the new
enactments; and indeed Sandys, when he had an opportunity of examining
the digest, expressed the opinion that it had been "well and
judiciously formed." The colonists, for their part, dismissed all
anxieties and shadows from their minds, and fell to putting in crops
and putting up dwellings as men will who have a stake in their country,
and feel that they can live in it. Their confidence was not misplaced;
within a year from this time the number of the colonists had been more
than doubled, and all troubles seemed at an end.
So long, however, as James I. disgraced the throne of England, popular
liberties could never be quite sure of immunity; and during the five or
six years that he still had to live, he did his best to disturb the
felicity of his Virginian subjects. He was unable to do anything very
serious, and what he did do, was in contravention of law. He got Sandys
out of the presidency; but Southampton was immediately put in his
place; he tried to get away the patent which he himself had issued, and
finally did so; but the colony kept its laws and its freedom, though
the Throne thenceforward appointed the governors. He put a heavy tax on
tobacco, which he professed to regard as an invention of the enemy; and
he countenanced an attempt by Lord Warwick, in behalf of Argall, to
continue martial law in the colony instead of allowing trial by Jury;
but in this he was defeated. He sent out two commissioners to Virginia
to discover pretexts for harassing it, and took the matter out of the
hands of Parliament; but the Virginians maintained themselves until
death stepped in and put a final stop to his majesty's industry, and
Charles I. came to the throne.