their constitution. A constitution 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 constitution 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 constitution
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 circumstance 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, asserted 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 assert 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 ownership
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 participation 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 institutions 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
attitude. 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 passed in the interests of
the English trading class, 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 assumed 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.
[Illustration: A Quaker in the Stocks]
These laws pressed most severely on Massachusetts, because her shipping
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 Massachusetts 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 Massachusetts
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 Massachusetts. 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
space 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 document 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 asserted 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 Massachusetts, 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 Massachusetts's expense. Massachusetts 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 accumulate. Charles could be lavish and reckless, and he was
constitutionally "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 noble 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 godly 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, sturdy, 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
statesmanship 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.
The nation has awakened to a realization that its interests are not
safe in his hands.
Calvinism prevailed in the colony, as in Massachusetts; but there were
many of the colonists who did not attend at the meeting-house on the
Sabbath, not because they were irreligious or vicious, but either
because they lived far from the rendezvous, or because they did not
find it a matter of private conscience with them to sit in a pew and
listen to a sermon. Moreover, it was the rule among Calvinists that no
one could join in the Communion service who had not "experienced
religion"; and many excellent persons might entertain conscientious
doubts whether this mysterious subjective phenomenon had taken place in
them. Pending enlightenment on that point, they would naturally prefer
not to sit beside their more favored brethren during the long period of
prayer and discourse, only to be obliged to walk out when the vital
stage of the proceedings was reached. But it was also the law that only
children of communicants should receive baptism; and since not to be
baptized was in the religious opinion of the day to court eternal
destruction, it will easily be understood that non-communicating
parents were rendered very uneasy. What could they do? One cannot get
religion by an act of will; but not to get it was to imperil not only
their own spiritual welfare, but that of their innocent offspring as
well; they were damned to all posterity. The matter came up before the
general court of Connecticut, and in 1657 a synod composed of ministers
of that colony and of Massachusetts--New Haven and Plymouth declining
to participate--sat upon the question, and softened the hard fate of
the petitioners so far as to permit the baptism of the children of
unbaptized persons who engaged to rear them in the fear of the Lord.
This "half-way covenant," as it came to be termed, did not suit the
scruples of Calvinists of the stricter sort; but it gave comfort to a
great many deserving folk, and probably did harm to no human soul, here
or hereafter.
Short are the annals of a happy people; until the Revolutionary days
began, there is little to tell of Connecticut. The collegiate school
which half a generation later grew into the college taking its name
from its chief benefactor, Elihu Yale, had its early days in the
village at the mouth of the Connecticut river, named, after Lord Saye
and Sele, Saybrook. The institution of learning called after the pious
and erudite son of the English butcher of Southwark, founded on the
banks of the river Charles near Boston, had come into existence more
than sixty years before; but Yale followed less than forty years after
the granting of the Connecticut charter. New England people never lost
any time about securing the means of education.
The boundaries of Rhode Island were the occasion of some trouble;
though one might have supposed that since the area which they inclosed
was so small, no one would have been at the pains to dispute them. But
in the end, Roger Williams obtained the little he had asked for in this
regard, while as to liberties, his charter made his community at least
as well off as was Connecticut. Their aspiration to be allowed to prove
that the best civil results may be coincident with complete religious
freedom, was realized. Charles gave them everything; liberty for a
people who thought more of God than of their breakfasts, and whose
habitation was too small for its representation on the map to be seen
without a magnifying glass, could not be a dangerous gift. The charter
was delivered in 1663 to John Clarke, agent in England for the colony,
and was taken to Rhode Island by the admirable Baxter in November of
that year. All the two thousand or more inhabitants of the colony met
together to receive the precious gift; Baxter, placed on high, read it
out to them with his best voice and delivery, and then held it up so
that all might behold the handsomely engrossed parchment, and the
sacred seal of his dread majesty King Charles. What a picture of
democratic and childlike simplicity! With how devout and earnest an
exultation did the people murmur their thanks and applause! The crowd
in their conical hats and dark cloaks, the chill November sky, the gray
ripples of Narragansett Bay, the background of forest trees, of which
only the oaks and walnuts still retained the red and yellow remnants of
their autumn splendor; the quaint little ship at anchor, with its
bearded crew agape along the rail; and Baxter the center of all eyes,
holding up the charter with a sort of holy enthusiasm! Such a scene
could be but once; and time has brought about his revenges. With what
demeanor would the throng at the fashionable watering place greet a
messenger from the English sovereign to-day! John Clarke, the
Bedfordshire doctor, to whose fidelity and persistent care the colony
owed much, fully participated in the contagion of goodness which marked
the New England emigrants of the period. He served his fellow colonists
all his life, and at his death left them all he had; and it seems
strange that he should have been one of the founders of aristocratic
Newport, and its earliest pastor. But it is not the only instance of
the unexpected use to which we sometimes put the bequests of our
ancestors.