All places that the eye of heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens:
Think not the king did banish thee:
But thou the king.--Richard II
An ancestor of Marmaduke Temple had, about one hundred and twenty years
before the commencement of our tale, come to the colony of Pennsylvania,
a friend and co-religionist of its great patron. Old Marmaduke, for this
formidable prenomen was a kind of appellative to the race, brought with
him, to that asylum of the persecuted an abundance of the good things
of this life. He became the master of many thousands of acres of
uninhabited territory, and the supporter of many a score of dependents.
He lived greatly respected for his piety, and not a little distinguished
as a sectary; was intrusted by his associates with many important
political stations; and died just in time to escape the knowledge of his
own poverty. It was his lot to share the fortune of most of those
who brought wealth with them into the new settlements of the middle
colonies.
The consequence of an emigrant into these provinces was generally to be
ascertained by the number of his white servants or dependents, and the
nature of the public situations that he held. Taking this rule as a
guide, the ancestor of our Judge must have been a man of no little note.
It is, however, a subject of curious inquiry at the present day, to look
into the brief records of that early period, and observe how regular,
and with few exceptions how inevitable, were the gradations, on the one
hand, of the masters to poverty, and on the other, of their servants to
wealth. Accustomed to ease, and unequal to the struggles incident to an
infant society, the affluent emigrant was barely enabled to maintain
his own rank by the weight of his personal superiority and acquirements;
but, the moment that his head was laid in the grave, his indolent and
comparatively uneducated offspring were compelled to yield precedency to
the more active energies of a class whose exertions had been stimulated
by necessity. This is a very common course of things, even in the
present state of the Union; but it was peculiarly the fortunes of the
two extremes of society, in the peaceful and unenterprising colonies of
Pennsylvania and New Jersey,
The posterity of Marmaduke did not escape the common lot of those who
depend rather on their hereditary possessions than on their own powers;
and in the third generation they had descended to a point below which,
in this happy country, it is barely possible for honesty, intellect
and sobriety to fall. The same pride of family that had, by its
self-satisfied indolence, conduced to aid their fail, now became a
principle to stimulate them to endeavor to rise again. The feeling, from
being morbid, was changed to a healthful and active desire to emulate
the character, the condition, and, peradventure, the wealth of their
ancestors also. It was the father of our new acquaintance, the Judge,
who first began to reascend in the scale of society; and in this
undertaking he was not a little assisted by a marriage, which aided in
furnishing the means of educating his only son in a rather better manner
than the low state of the common schools of Pennsylvania could promise;
or than had been the practice in the family for the two or three
preceding generations.
At the school where the reviving prosperity of his father was enabled
to maintain him, young Marmaduke formed an intimacy with a youth whose
years were about equal to his own. This was a fortunate connection for
our Judge, and paved the way to most of his future elevation in life.
There was not only great wealth but high court interest among the
connections of Edward Effingham. They were one of the few families then
resident in the colonies who thought it a degradation to its members
to descend to the pursuits of commerce; and who never emerged from the
privacy of domestic life unless to preside in the councils of the colony
or to bear arms in her defense. The latter had from youth been the only
employment of Edward's father. Military rank under the crown of Great
Britain was attained with much longer probation, and by much more
toilsome services, sixty years ago than at the present time. Years were
passed without murmuring, in the sub ordinate grades of the service;
and those soldiers who were stationed in the colonies felt, when they
obtained the command of a company, that they were entitled to receive
the greatest deference from the peaceful occupants of the soil. Any one
of our readers who has occasion to cross the Niagara may easily observe
not only the self importance, but the real estimation enjoyed by the hum
blest representative of the crown, even in that polar region of royal
sunshine. Such, and at no very distant period, was the respect paid to
the military in these States, where now, happily, no symbol of war is
ever seen, unless at the free and tearless voice of their people. When,
therefore, the father of Marmaduke's friend, after forty years'
service, retired with the rank of major, maintaining in his domestic
establishment a comparative splendor, he be came a man of the first
consideration in his native colony which was that of New York. He had
served with fidelity and courage, and having been, according to the
custom of the provinces, intrusted with commands much superior to those
to which he was entitled by rank, with reputation also. When Major
Effingham yielded to the claims of age, he retired with dignity,
refusing his half-pay or any other compensation for services that he
felt he could no longer perform.
The ministry proffered various civil offices which yielded not only
honor but profit; but he declined them all, with the chivalrous
independence and loyalty that had marked his character through life.
The veteran soon caused this set of patriotic disinterestedness to be
followed by another of private munificence, that, however little it
accorded with prudence, was in perfect conformity with the simple
integrity of his own views.
The friend of Marmaduke was his only child; and to this son, on his
marriage with a lady to whom the father was particularly partial, the
Major gave a complete conveyance of his whole estate, consisting of
money in the funds, a town and country residence, sundry valuable farms
in the old parts of the colony, and large tracts of wild land in the
new--in this manner throwing himself upon the filial piety of his
child for his own future maintenance. Major Effingham, in declining the
liberal offers of the British ministry, had subjected himself to the
suspicion of having attained his dotage, by all those who throng the
avenues to court patronage, even in the remotest corners of that vast
empire; but, when he thus voluntarily stripped himself of his great
personal wealth, the remainder of the community seemed instinctively to
adopt the conclusion also that he had reached a second childhood.
This may explain the fact of his importance rapidly declining; and, if
privacy was his object, the veteran had soon a free indulgence of his
wishes. Whatever views the world might entertain of this act of the
Major, to himself and to his child it seemed no more than a natural
gift by a father of those immunities which he could no longer enjoy or
improve, to a son, who was formed, both by nature and education, to
do both. The younger Effingham did not object to the amount of the
donation; for he felt that while his parent reserved a moral control
over his actions, he was relieving himself of a fatiguing burden: such,
indeed, was the confidence existing between them, that to neither did it
seem anything more than removing money from one pocket to another.
One of the first acts of the young man, on coming into possession
of his wealth, was to seek his early friend, with a view to offer any
assistance that it was now in his power to bestow.
The death of Marmaduke's father, and the consequent division of his
small estate, rendered such an offer extremely acceptable to the
young Pennsylvanian; he felt his own powers, and saw, not only the
excellences, but the foibles in the character of his friend. Effingham
was by nature indolent, confiding, and at times impetuous and
indiscreet; but Marmaduke was uniformly equable, penetrating, and full
of activity and enterprise. To the latter therefore, the assistance, or
rather connection that was proffered to him, seemed to produce a mutual
advantage. It was cheerfully accepted, and the arrangement of its
conditions was easily completed. A mercantile house was established
in the metropolis of Pennsylvania, with the avails of Mr. Effingham's
personal property; all, or nearly all, of which was put into the
possession of Temple, who was the only ostensible proprietor in
the concern, while, in secret, the other was entitled to an equal
participation in the profits. This connection was thus kept private for
two reasons, one of which, in the freedom of their intercourse, was
frankly avowed to Marmaduke, while the other continued profoundly hid
in the bosom of his friend, The last was nothing more than pride. To
the descend ant of a line of soldiers, commerce, even in that indirect
manner, seemed a degrading pursuit; but an insuperable obstacle to the
disclosure existed in the prejudices of his father.
We have already said that Major Effingham had served as a soldier with
reputation. On one occasion, while in command on the western frontier
of Pennsylvania against a league of the French and Indians, not only his
glory, but the safety of himself and his troops were jeoparded by the
peaceful policy of that colony. To the soldier, this was an unpardonable
offence. He was fighting in their defense--he knew that the mild
principles of this little nation of practical Christians would be
disregarded by their subtle and malignant enemies; and he felt the
in jury the more deeply because he saw that the avowed object of the
colonists, in withholding their succors, would only have a tendency to
expose his command, without preserving the peace. The soldier succeeded,
after a desperate conflict, in extricating himself, with a handful of
his men, from their murderous enemy; but he never for gave the people
who had exposed him to a danger which they left him to combat alone. It
was in vain to tell him that they had no agency in his being placed on
their frontier at all; it was evidently for their benefit that he had
been so placed, and it was their “religious duty,” so the Major always
expressed it, “it was their religions duty to have supported him.”
At no time was the old soldier an admirer of the peaceful disciples of
Fox. Their disciplined habits, both of mind and body, had endowed them
with great physical perfection; and the eye of the veteran was apt to
scan the fair proportions and athletic frames of the colonists with
a look that seemed to utter volumes of contempt for their moral
imbecility, He was also a little addicted to the expression of a
belief that, where there was so great an observance of the externals of
religion, there could not be much of the substance. It is not our task
to explain what is or what ought to be the substance of Christianity,
but merely to record in this place the opinions of Major Effingham.
Knowing the sentiments of the father in relation to this people, it was
no wonder that the son hesitated to avow his connection with, nay, even
his dependence on the integrity of, a Quaker.
It has been said that Marmaduke deduced his origin from the
contemporaries and friends of Penn. His father had married without
the pale of the church to which he belonged, and had, in this manner,
forfeited some of the privileges of his offspring. Still, as young
Marmaduke was educated in a colony and society where even the ordinary
intercourse between friends was tinctured with the aspect of this
mild religion, his habits and language were some what marked by its
peculiarities. His own marriage at a future day with a lady without not
only the pale, but the influence, of this sect of religionists, had a
tendency, it is true, to weaken his early impressions; still he
retained them in some degree to the hour of his death, and was observed
uniformly, when much interested or agitated, to speak in the language of
his youth. But this is anticipating our tale.
When Marmaduke first became the partner of young Effingham, he was quite
the Quaker in externals; and it was too dangerous an experiment for
the son to think of encountering the prejudices of the father on this
subject. The connection, therefore, remained a profound secret to all
but those who were interested in it.
For a few years Marmaduke directed the commercial operations of his
house with a prudence and sagacity that afforded rich returns. He
married the lady we have mentioned, who was the mother of Elizabeth, and
the visits of his friend were becoming more frequent. There was a speedy
prospect of removing the veil from their intercourse, as its advantages
became each hour more apparent to Mr. Effingham, when the troubles that
preceded the war of the Revolution extended themselves to an alarming
degree.
Educated in the most dependent loyalty, Mr. Effingham had, from the
commencement of the disputes between the colonists and the crown, warmly
maintained what he believed to be the just prerogatives of his prince;
while, on the other hand, the clear head and independent mind of Temple
had induced him to espouse the cause of the people. Both might have
been influenced by early impressions; for, if the son of the loyal
and gallant soldier bowed in implicit obedience to the will of his
sovereign, the descendant of the persecuted followers of Penn looked
back with a little bitterness to the unmerited wrongs that had been
heaped upon his ancestors.
This difference in opinion had long been a subject of amicable dispute
between them: but, Latterly, the contest was getting to be too important
to admit of trivial discussions on the part of Marmaduke, whose acute
discernment was already catching faint glimmerings of the important
events that were in embryo. The sparks of dissension soon kindled into a
blaze; and the colonies, or rather, as they quickly declared themselves,
THE STATES, became a scene of strife and bloodshed for years.
A short time before the battle of Lexington, Mr. Effingham, already a
widower, transmitted to Marmaduke, for safe-keeping, all his valuable
effects and papers; and left the colony without his father. The war had,
however, scarcely commenced in earnest, when he reappeared in New York,
wearing the Livery of his king; and, in a short time, he took the
field at the head of a provincial corps. In the mean time Marmaduke had
completely committed himself in the cause, as it was then called, of the
rebel lion. Of course, all intercourse between the friends ceased--on
the part of Colonel Effingham it was unsought, and on that of Marmaduke
there was a cautious reserve. It soon became necessary for the latter to
abandon the capital of Philadelphia; but he had taken the precaution to
remove the whole of his effects beyond the reach of the royal forces,
including the papers of his friend also. There he continued serving his
country during the struggle, in various civil capacities, and always
with dignity and usefulness. While, however, he discharged his functions
with credit and fidelity, Marmaduke never seemed to lose sight of his
own interests; for, when the estates of the adherents of the crown fell
under the hammer, by the acts of confiscation, he appeared in New York,
and became the purchaser of extensive possessions at comparatively low
prices.
It is true that Marmaduke, by thus purchasing estates that had been
wrested by violence from others, rendered himself obnoxious to the
censures of that Sect which, at the same time that it discards its
children from a full participation in the family union, seems ever
unwilling to abandon them entirely to the world. But either his success,
or the frequency of the transgression in others, soon wiped off this
slight stain from his character; and, although there were a few
who, dissatisfied with their own fortunes, or conscious of their own
demerits, would make dark hints concerning the sudden prosperity of
the unportioned Quaker, yet his services, and possibly his wealth, soon
drove the recollection of these vague conjectures from men's minds. When
the war ended, and the independence of the States was acknowledged, Mr.
Temple turned his attention from the pursuit of commerce, which was then
fluctuating and uncertain, to the settlement of those tracts of land
which he had purchased. Aided by a good deal of money, and directed by
the suggestions of a strong and practical reason, his enterprise throve
to a degree that the climate and rugged face of the country which he
selected would seem to forbid. His property increased in a tenfold
ratio, and he was already ranked among the most wealthy and important
of his countrymen. To inherit this wealth he had but one child--the
daughter whom we have introduced to the reader, and whom he was now
conveying from school to preside over a household that had too long
wanted a mistress.
When the district in which his estates lay had become sufficiently
populous to be set off as a county, Mr. Temple had, according to
the custom of the new settlements, been selected to fill its highest
judicial station. This might make a Templar smile; but in addition
to the apology of necessity, there is ever a dignity in talents
and experience that is commonly sufficient, in any station, for the
protection of its possessor; and Marmaduke, more fortunate in his native
clearness of mind than the judge of King Charles, not only decided
right, but was generally able to give a very good reason for it. At all
events, such was the universal practice of the country and the times;
and Judge Temple, so far from ranking among the lowest of his judicial
contemporaries in the courts of the new counties, felt himself, and was
unanimously acknowledged to be, among the first.
We shall here close this brief explanation of the history and character
of some of our personages leaving them in future to speak and act for
themselves.