SCORPION

Chapter III SOCIAL AND POLITICAL PROGRESS

Colonial life, crowded as it was with hard and unremitting toil, left
scant leisure for the cultivation of the arts and sciences. There was
little money in private purses or public treasuries to be dedicated to
schools, libraries, and museums. Few there were with time to read long
and widely, and fewer still who could devote their lives to things that
delight the eye and the mind. And yet, poor and meager as the
intellectual life of the colonists may seem by way of comparison, heroic
efforts were made in every community to lift the people above the plane
of mere existence. After the first clearings were opened in the forests
those efforts were redoubled, and with lengthening years told upon the
thought and spirit of the land. The appearance, during the struggle with
England, of an extraordinary group of leaders familiar with history,
political philosophy, and the arts of war, government, and diplomacy
itself bore eloquent testimony to the high quality of the American
intellect. No one, not even the most critical, can run through the
writings of distinguished Americans scattered from Massachusetts to
Georgia--the Adamses, Ellsworth, the Morrises, the Livingstons,
Hamilton, Franklin, Washington, Madison, Marshall, Henry, the Randolphs,
and the Pinckneys--without coming to the conclusion that there was
something in American colonial life which fostered minds of depth and
power. Women surmounted even greater difficulties than the men in the
process of self-education, and their keen interest in public issues is
evident in many a record like the _Letters_ of Mrs. John Adams to her
husband during the Revolution; the writings of Mrs. Mercy Otis Warren,
the sister of James Otis, who measured her pen with the British
propagandists; and the patriot newspapers founded and managed by women.


THE LEADERSHIP OF THE CHURCHES

In the intellectual life of America, the churches assumed a rфle of high
importance. There were abundant reasons for this. In many of the
colonies--Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New England--the religious impulse
had been one of the impelling motives in stimulating immigration. In all
the colonies, the clergy, at least in the beginning, formed the only
class with any leisure to devote to matters of the spirit. They preached
on Sundays and taught school on week days. They led in the discussion of
local problems and in the formation of political opinion, so much of
which was concerned with the relation between church and state. They
wrote books and pamphlets. They filled most of the chairs in the
colleges; under clerical guidance, intellectual and spiritual, the
Americans received their formal education. In several of the provinces
the Anglican Church was established by law. In New England the Puritans
were supreme, notwithstanding the efforts of the crown to overbear their
authority. In the Middle colonies, particularly, the multiplication of
sects made the dominance of any single denomination impossible; and in
all of them there was a growing diversity of faith, which promised in
time a separation of church and state and freedom of opinion.

=The Church of England.=--Virginia was the stronghold of the English
system of church and state. The Anglican faith and worship were
prescribed by law, sustained by taxes imposed on all, and favored by the
governor, the provincial councilors, and the richest planters. "The
Established Church," says Lodge, "was one of the appendages of the
Virginia aristocracy. They controlled the vestries and the ministers,
and the parish church stood not infrequently on the estate of the
planter who built and managed it." As in England, Catholics and
Protestant Dissenters were at first laid under heavy disabilities. Only
slowly and on sufferance were they admitted to the province; but when
once they were even covertly tolerated, they pressed steadily in, until,
by the Revolution, they outnumbered the adherents of the established
order.

The Church was also sanctioned by law and supported by taxes in the
Carolinas after 1704, and in Georgia after that colony passed directly
under the crown in 1754--this in spite of the fact that the majority of
the inhabitants were Dissenters. Against the protests of the Catholics
it was likewise established in Maryland. In New York, too,
notwithstanding the resistance of the Dutch, the Established Church was
fostered by the provincial officials, and the Anglicans, embracing about
one-fifteenth of the population, exerted an influence all out of
proportion to their numbers.

Many factors helped to enhance the power of the English Church in the
colonies. It was supported by the British government and the official
class sent out to the provinces. Its bishops and archbishops in England
were appointed by the king, and its faith and service were set forth by
acts of Parliament. Having its seat of power in the English monarchy, it
could hold its clergy and missionaries loyal to the crown and so
counteract to some extent the independent spirit that was growing up in
America. The Church, always a strong bulwark of the state, therefore had
a political rфle to play here as in England. Able bishops and far-seeing
leaders firmly grasped this fact about the middle of the eighteenth
century and redoubled their efforts to augment the influence of the
Church in provincial affairs. Unhappily for their plans they failed to
calculate in advance the effect of their methods upon dissenting
Protestants, who still cherished memories of bitter religious conflicts
in the mother country.

=Puritanism in New England.=--If the established faith made for imperial
unity, the same could not be said of Puritanism. The Plymouth Pilgrims
had cast off all allegiance to the Anglican Church and established a
separate and independent congregation before they came to America. The
Puritans, essaying at first the task of reformers within the Church,
soon after their arrival in Massachusetts, likewise flung off their yoke
of union with the Anglicans. In each town a separate congregation was
organized, the male members choosing the pastor, the teachers, and the
other officers. They also composed the voters in the town meeting, where
secular matters were determined. The union of church and government was
thus complete, and uniformity of faith and life prescribed by law and
enforced by civil authorities; but this worked for local autonomy
instead of imperial unity.

The clergy became a powerful class, dominant through their learning and
their fearful denunciations of the faithless. They wrote the books for
the people to read--the famous Cotton Mather having three hundred and
eighty-three books and pamphlets to his credit. In coцperation with the
civil officers they enforced a strict observance of the Puritan
Sabbath--a day of rest that began at six o'clock on Saturday evening and
lasted until sunset on Sunday. All work, all trading, all amusement, and
all worldly conversation were absolutely prohibited during those hours.
A thoughtless maid servant who for some earthly reason smiled in church
was in danger of being banished as a vagabond. Robert Pike, a devout
Puritan, thinking the sun had gone to rest, ventured forth on horseback
one Sunday evening and was luckless enough to have a ray of light strike
him through a rift in the clouds. The next day he was brought into court
and fined for "his ungodly conduct." With persons accused of witchcraft
the Puritans were still more ruthless. When a mania of persecution swept
over Massachusetts in 1692, eighteen people were hanged, one was pressed
to death, many suffered imprisonment, and two died in jail.

Just about this time, however, there came a break in the uniformity of
Puritan rule. The crown and church in England had long looked upon it
with disfavor, and in 1684 King Charles II annulled the old charter of
the Massachusetts Bay Company. A new document issued seven years later
wrested from the Puritans of the colony the right to elect their own
governor and reserved the power of appointment to the king. It also
abolished the rule limiting the suffrage to church members, substituting
for it a simple property qualification. Thus a royal governor and an
official family, certain to be Episcopalian in faith and monarchist in
sympathies, were forced upon Massachusetts; and members of all religious
denominations, if they had the required amount of property, were
permitted to take part in elections. By this act in the name of the
crown, the Puritan monopoly was broken down in Massachusetts, and that
province was brought into line with Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New
Hampshire, where property, not religious faith, was the test for the
suffrage.

=Growth of Religious Toleration.=--Though neither the Anglicans of
Virginia nor the Puritans of Massachusetts believed in toleration for
other denominations, that principle was strictly applied in Rhode
Island. There, under the leadership of Roger Williams, liberty in
matters of conscience was established in the beginning. Maryland, by
granting in 1649 freedom to those who professed to believe in Jesus
Christ, opened its gates to all Christians; and Pennsylvania, true to
the tenets of the Friends, gave freedom of conscience to those "who
confess and acknowledge the one Almighty and Eternal God to be the
creator, upholder, and ruler of the World." By one circumstance or
another, the Middle colonies were thus early characterized by diversity
rather than uniformity of opinion. Dutch Protestants, Huguenots,
Quakers, Baptists, Presbyterians, New Lights, Moravians, Lutherans,
Catholics, and other denominations became too strongly intrenched and
too widely scattered to permit any one of them to rule, if it had
desired to do so. There were communities and indeed whole sections where
one or another church prevailed, but in no colony was a legislature
steadily controlled by a single group. Toleration encouraged diversity,
and diversity, in turn, worked for greater toleration.

The government and faith of the dissenting denominations conspired with
economic and political tendencies to draw America away from the English
state. Presbyterians, Quakers, Baptists, and Puritans had no hierarchy
of bishops and archbishops to bind them to the seat of power in London.
Neither did they look to that metropolis for guidance in interpreting
articles of faith. Local self-government in matters ecclesiastical
helped to train them for local self-government in matters political. The
spirit of independence which led Dissenters to revolt in the Old World,
nourished as it was amid favorable circumstances in the New World, made
them all the more zealous in the defense of every right against
authority imposed from without.


SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES

=Religion and Local Schools.=--One of the first cares of each Protestant
denomination was the education of the children in the faith. In this
work the Bible became the center of interest. The English version was
indeed the one book of the people. Farmers, shopkeepers, and artisans,
whose life had once been bounded by the daily routine of labor, found in
the Scriptures not only an inspiration to religious conduct, but also a
book of romance, travel, and history. "Legend and annal," says John
Richard Green, "war-song and psalm, state-roll and biography, the mighty
voices of prophets, the parables of Evangelists, stories of mission
journeys, of perils by sea and among the heathen, philosophic arguments,
apocalyptic visions, all were flung broadcast over minds unoccupied for
the most part by any rival learning.... As a mere literary monument, the
English version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the English
tongue." It was the King James version just from the press that the
Pilgrims brought across the sea with them.

For the authority of the Established Church was substituted the
authority of the Scriptures. The Puritans devised a catechism based upon
their interpretation of the Bible, and, very soon after their arrival in
America, they ordered all parents and masters of servants to be diligent
in seeing that their children and wards were taught to read religious
works and give answers to the religious questions. Massachusetts was
scarcely twenty years old before education of this character was
declared to be compulsory, and provision was made for public schools
where those not taught at home could receive instruction in reading and
writing.

[Illustration: A PAGE FROM A FAMOUS SCHOOLBOOK


     A In ADAM'S Fall
       We sinned all.

     B Heaven to find,
       The Bible Mind.

     C Christ crucify'd
       For sinners dy'd.

     D The Deluge drown'd
       The Earth around.

     E ELIJAH hid
       by Ravens fed.

     F The judgment made
       FELIX afraid.]



Outside of New England the idea of compulsory education was not regarded
with the same favor; but the whole land was nevertheless dotted with
little schools kept by "dames, itinerant teachers, or local parsons."
Whether we turn to the life of Franklin in the North or Washington in
the South, we read of tiny schoolhouses, where boys, and sometimes
girls, were taught to read and write. Where there were no schools,
fathers and mothers of the better kind gave their children the rudiments
of learning. Though illiteracy was widespread, there is evidence to show
that the diffusion of knowledge among the masses was making steady
progress all through the eighteenth century.

=Religion and Higher Learning.=--Religious motives entered into the
establishment of colleges as well as local schools. Harvard, founded in
1636, and Yale, opened in 1718, were intended primarily to train
"learned and godly ministers" for the Puritan churches of New England.
To the far North, Dartmouth, chartered in 1769, was designed first as a
mission to the Indians and then as a college for the sons of New England
farmers preparing to preach, teach, or practice law. The College of New
Jersey, organized in 1746 and removed to Princeton eleven years later,
was sustained by the Presbyterians. Two colleges looked to the
Established Church as their source of inspiration and support: William
and Mary, founded in Virginia in 1693, and King's College, now Columbia
University, chartered by King George II in 1754, on an appeal from the
New York Anglicans, alarmed at the growth of religious dissent and the
"republican tendencies" of the age. Two colleges revealed a drift away
from sectarianism. Brown, established in Rhode Island in 1764, and the
Philadelphia Academy, forerunner of the University of Pennsylvania,
organized by Benjamin Franklin, reflected the spirit of toleration by
giving representation on the board of trustees to several religious
sects. It was Franklin's idea that his college should prepare young men
to serve in public office as leaders of the people and ornaments to
their country.

=Self-education in America.=--Important as were these institutions of
learning, higher education was by no means confined within their walls.
Many well-to-do families sent their sons to Oxford or Cambridge in
England. Private tutoring in the home was common. In still more families
there were intelligent children who grew up in the great colonial school
of adversity and who trained themselves until, in every contest of mind
and wit, they could vie with the sons of Harvard or William and Mary or
any other college. Such, for example, was Benjamin Franklin, whose
charming autobiography, in addition to being an American classic, is a
fine record of self-education. His formal training in the classroom was
limited to a few years at a local school in Boston; but his
self-education continued throughout his life. He early manifested a zeal
for reading, and devoured, he tells us, his father's dry library on
theology, Bunyan's works, Defoe's writings, Plutarch's _Lives_, Locke's
_On the Human Understanding_, and innumerable volumes dealing with
secular subjects. His literary style, perhaps the best of his time,
Franklin acquired by the diligent and repeated analysis of the
_Spectator_. In a life crowded with labors, he found time to read widely
in natural science and to win single-handed recognition at the hands of
European savants for his discoveries in electricity. By his own efforts
he "attained an acquaintance" with Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish,
thus unconsciously preparing himself for the day when he was to speak
for all America at the court of the king of France.

Lesser lights than Franklin, educated by the same process, were found
all over colonial America. From this fruitful source of native ability,
self-educated, the American cause drew great strength in the trials of
the Revolution.


THE COLONIAL PRESS

=The Rise of the Newspaper.=--The evolution of American democracy into a
government by public opinion, enlightened by the open discussion of
political questions, was in no small measure aided by a free press. That
too, like education, was a matter of slow growth. A printing press was
brought to Massachusetts in 1639, but it was put in charge of an
official censor and limited to the publication of religious works. Forty
years elapsed before the first newspaper appeared, bearing the curious
title, _Public Occurrences Both Foreign and Domestic_, and it had not
been running very long before the government of Massachusetts suppressed
it for discussing a political question.

Publishing, indeed, seemed to be a precarious business; but in 1704
there came a second venture in journalism, _The Boston News-Letter_,
which proved to be a more lasting enterprise because it refrained from
criticizing the authorities. Still the public interest languished. When
Franklin's brother, James, began to issue his _New England Courant_
about 1720, his friends sought to dissuade him, saying that one
newspaper was enough for America. Nevertheless he continued it; and his
confidence in the future was rewarded. In nearly every colony a gazette
or chronicle appeared within the next thirty years or more. Benjamin
Franklin was able to record in 1771 that America had twenty-five
newspapers. Boston led with five. Philadelphia had three: two in English
and one in German.

=Censorship and Restraints on the Press.=--The idea of printing,
unlicensed by the government and uncontrolled by the church, was,
however, slow in taking form. The founders of the American colonies had
never known what it was to have the free and open publication of books,
pamphlets, broadsides, and newspapers. When the art of printing was
first discovered, the control of publishing was vested in clerical
authorities. After the establishment of the State Church in England in
the reign of Elizabeth, censorship of the press became a part of royal
prerogative. Printing was restricted to Oxford, Cambridge, and London;
and no one could publish anything without previous approval of the
official censor. When the Puritans were in power, the popular party,
with a zeal which rivaled that of the crown, sought, in turn, to silence
royalist and clerical writers by a vigorous censorship. After the
restoration of the monarchy, control of the press was once more placed
in royal hands, where it remained until 1695, when Parliament, by
failing to renew the licensing act, did away entirely with the official
censorship. By that time political parties were so powerful and so
active and printing presses were so numerous that official review of all
published matter became a sheer impossibility.

In America, likewise, some troublesome questions arose in connection
with freedom of the press. The Puritans of Massachusetts were no less
anxious than King Charles or the Archbishop of London to shut out from
the prying eyes of the people all literature "not mete for them to
read"; and so they established a system of official licensing for
presses, which lasted until 1755. In the other colonies where there was
more diversity of opinion and publishers could set up in business with
impunity, they were nevertheless constantly liable to arrest for
printing anything displeasing to the colonial governments. In 1721 the
editor of the _Mercury_ in Philadelphia was called before the
proprietary council and ordered to apologize for a political article,
and for a later offense of a similar character he was thrown into jail.
A still more famous case was that of Peter Zenger, a New York publisher,
who was arrested in 1735 for criticising the administration. Lawyers who
ventured to defend the unlucky editor were deprived of their licenses to
practice, and it became necessary to bring an attorney all the way from
Philadelphia. By this time the tension of feeling was high, and the
approbation of the public was forthcoming when the lawyer for the
defense exclaimed to the jury that the very cause of liberty itself, not
that of the poor printer, was on trial! The verdict for Zenger, when it
finally came, was the signal for an outburst of popular rejoicing.
Already the people of King George's province knew how precious a thing
is the freedom of the press.

Thanks to the schools, few and scattered as they were, and to the
vigilance of parents, a very large portion, perhaps nearly one-half, of
the colonists could read. Through the newspapers, pamphlets, and
almanacs that streamed from the types, the people could follow the
course of public events and grasp the significance of political
arguments. An American opinion was in the process of making--an
independent opinion nourished by the press and enriched by discussions
around the fireside and at the taverns. When the day of resistance to
British rule came, government by opinion was at hand. For every person
who could hear the voice of Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams, there were a
thousand who could see their appeals on the printed page. Men who had
spelled out their letters while poring over Franklin's _Poor Richard's
Almanac_ lived to read Thomas Paine's thrilling call to arms.


THE EVOLUTION IN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS

Two very distinct lines of development appeared in colonial politics.
The one, exalting royal rights and aristocratic privileges, was the
drift toward provincial government through royal officers appointed in
England. The other, leading toward democracy and self-government, was
the growth in the power of the popular legislative assembly. Each
movement gave impetus to the other, with increasing force during the
passing years, until at last the final collision between the two ideals
of government came in the war of independence.

=The Royal Provinces.=--Of the thirteen English colonies eight were
royal provinces in 1776, with governors appointed by the king. Virginia
passed under the direct rule of the crown in 1624, when the charter of
the London Company was annulled. The Massachusetts Bay corporation lost
its charter in 1684, and the new instrument granted seven years later
stripped the colonists of the right to choose their chief executive. In
the early decades of the eighteenth century both the Carolinas were
given the provincial instead of the proprietary form. New Hampshire,
severed from Massachusetts in 1679, and Georgia, surrendered by the
trustees in 1752, went into the hands of the crown. New York,
transferred to the Duke of York on its capture from the Dutch in 1664,
became a province when he took the title of James II in 1685. New
Jersey, after remaining for nearly forty years under proprietors, was
brought directly under the king in 1702. Maryland, Pennsylvania, and
Delaware, although they retained their proprietary character until the
Revolution, were in some respects like the royal colonies, for their
governors were as independent of popular choice as were the appointees
of King George. Only two colonies, Rhode Island and Connecticut,
retained full self-government on the eve of the Revolution. They alone
had governors and legislatures entirely of their own choosing.

The chief officer of the royal province was the governor, who enjoyed
high and important powers which he naturally sought to augment at every
turn. He enforced the laws and, usually with the consent of a council,
appointed the civil and military officers. He granted pardons and
reprieves; he was head of the highest court; he was commander-in-chief
of the militia; he levied troops for defense and enforced martial law in
time of invasion, war, and rebellion. In all the provinces, except
Massachusetts, he named the councilors who composed the upper house of
the legislature and was likely to choose those who favored his claims.
He summoned, adjourned, and dissolved the popular assembly, or the lower
house; he laid before it the projects of law desired by the crown; and
he vetoed measures which he thought objectionable. Here were in America
all the elements of royal prerogative against which Hampden had
protested and Cromwell had battled in England.

[Illustration: THE ROYAL GOVERNOR'S PALACE AT NEW BERNE]

The colonial governors were generally surrounded by a body of
office-seekers and hunters for land grants. Some of them were noblemen
of broken estates who had come to America to improve their fortunes. The
pretensions of this circle grated on colonial nerves, and privileges
granted to them, often at the expense of colonists, did much to deepen
popular antipathy to the British government. Favors extended to
adherents of the Established Church displeased Dissenters. The
reappearance of this formidable union of church and state, from which
they had fled, stirred anew the ancient wrath against that combination.

=The Colonial Assembly.=--Coincident with the drift toward
administration through royal governors was the second and opposite
tendency, namely, a steady growth in the practice of self-government.
The voters of England had long been accustomed to share in taxation and
law-making through representatives in Parliament, and the idea was early
introduced in America. Virginia was only twelve years old (1619) when
its first representative assembly appeared. As the towns of
Massachusetts multiplied and it became impossible for all the members of
the corporation to meet at one place, the representative idea was
adopted, in 1633. The river towns of Connecticut formed a representative
system under their "Fundamental Orders" of 1639, and the entire colony
was given a royal charter in 1662. Generosity, as well as practical
considerations, induced such proprietors as Lord Baltimore and William
Penn to invite their colonists to share in the government as soon as any
considerable settlements were made. Thus by one process or another every
one of the colonies secured a popular assembly.

It is true that in the provision for popular elections, the suffrage was
finally restricted to property owners or taxpayers, with a leaning
toward the freehold qualification. In Virginia, the rural voter had to
be a freeholder owning at least fifty acres of land, if there was no
house on it, or twenty-five acres with a house twenty-five feet square.
In Massachusetts, the voter for member of the assembly under the charter
of 1691 had to be a freeholder of an estate worth forty shillings a year
at least or of other property to the value of forty pounds sterling. In
Pennsylvania, the suffrage was granted to freeholders owning fifty acres
or more of land well seated, twelve acres cleared, and to other persons
worth at least fifty pounds in lawful money.

Restrictions like these undoubtedly excluded from the suffrage a very
considerable number of men, particularly the mechanics and artisans of
the towns, who were by no means content with their position.
Nevertheless, it was relatively easy for any man to acquire a small
freehold, so cheap and abundant was land; and in fact a large proportion
of the colonists were land owners. Thus the assemblies, in spite of the
limited suffrage, acquired a democratic tone.

The popular character of the assemblies increased as they became engaged
in battles with the royal and proprietary governors. When called upon by
the executive to make provision for the support of the administration,
the legislature took advantage of the opportunity to make terms in the
interest of the taxpayers. It made annual, not permanent, grants of
money to pay official salaries and then insisted upon electing a
treasurer to dole it out. Thus the colonists learned some of the
mysteries of public finance, as well as the management of rapacious
officials. The legislature also used its power over money grants to
force the governor to sign bills which he would otherwise have vetoed.

=Contests between Legislatures and Governors.=--As may be imagined, many
and bitter were the contests between the royal and proprietary governors
and the colonial assemblies. Franklin relates an amusing story of how
the Pennsylvania assembly held in one hand a bill for the executive to
sign and, in the other hand, the money to pay his salary. Then, with sly
humor, Franklin adds: "Do not, my courteous reader, take pet at our
proprietary constitution for these our bargain and sale proceedings in
legislation. It is a happy country where justice and what was your own
before can be had for ready money. It is another addition to the value
of money and of course another spur to industry. Every land is not so
blessed."

It must not be thought, however, that every governor got off as easily
as Franklin's tale implies. On the contrary, the legislatures, like
Cжsar, fed upon meat that made them great and steadily encroached upon
executive prerogatives as they tried out and found their strength. If
we may believe contemporary laments, the power of the crown in America
was diminishing when it was struck down altogether. In New York, the
friends of the governor complained in 1747 that "the inhabitants of
plantations are generally educated in republican principles; upon
republican principles all is conducted. Little more than a shadow of
royal authority remains in the Northern colonies." "Here," echoed the
governor of South Carolina, the following year, "levelling principles
prevail; the frame of the civil government is unhinged; a governor, if
he would be idolized, must betray his trust; the people have got their
whole administration in their hands; the election of the members of the
assembly is by ballot; not civil posts only, but all ecclesiastical
preferments, are in the disposal or election of the people."

Though baffled by the "levelling principles" of the colonial assemblies,
the governors did not give up the case as hopeless. Instead they evolved
a system of policy and action which they thought could bring the
obstinate provincials to terms. That system, traceable in their letters
to the government in London, consisted of three parts: (1) the royal
officers in the colonies were to be made independent of the legislatures
by taxes imposed by acts of Parliament; (2) a British standing army was
to be maintained in America; (3) the remaining colonial charters were to
be revoked and government by direct royal authority was to be enlarged.

Such a system seemed plausible enough to King George III and to many
ministers of the crown in London. With governors, courts, and an army
independent of the colonists, they imagined it would be easy to carry
out both royal orders and acts of Parliament. This reasoning seemed both
practical and logical. Nor was it founded on theory, for it came fresh
from the governors themselves. It was wanting in one respect only. It
failed to take account of the fact that the American people were growing
strong in the practice of self-government and could dispense with the
tutelage of the British ministry, no matter how excellent it might be or
how benevolent its intentions.


=References=

A.M. Earle, _Home Life in Colonial Days_.

A.L. Cross, _The Anglican Episcopate and the American Colonies_ (Harvard
Studies).

E.G. Dexter, _History of Education in the United States_.

C.A. Duniway, _Freedom of the Press in Massachusetts_.

Benjamin Franklin, _Autobiography_.

E.B. Greene, _The Provincial Governor_ (Harvard Studies).

A.E. McKinley, _The Suffrage Franchise in the Thirteen English Colonies_
(Pennsylvania University Studies).

M.C. Tyler, _History of American Literature during the Colonial Times_
(2 vols.).


=Questions=

1. Why is leisure necessary for the production of art and literature?
How may leisure be secured?

2. Explain the position of the church in colonial life.

3. Contrast the political rфles of Puritanism and the Established
Church.

4. How did diversity of opinion work for toleration?

5. Show the connection between religion and learning in colonial times.

6. Why is a "free press" such an important thing to American democracy?

7. Relate some of the troubles of early American publishers.

8. Give the undemocratic features of provincial government.

9. How did the colonial assemblies help to create an independent
American spirit, in spite of a restricted suffrage?

10. Explain the nature of the contests between the governors and the
legislatures.


=Research Topics=

=Religious and Intellectual Life.=--Lodge, _Short History of the English
Colonies_: (1) in New England, pp. 418-438, 465-475; (2) in Virginia,
pp. 54-61, 87-89; (3) in Pennsylvania, pp. 232-237, 253-257; (4) in New
York, pp. 316-321. Interesting source materials in Hart, _American
History Told by Contemporaries_, Vol. II, pp. 255-275, 276-290.

=The Government of a Royal Province, Virginia.=--Lodge, pp. 43-50.
Special Reference: E.B. Greene, _The Provincial Governor_ (Harvard
Studies).

=The Government of a Proprietary Colony, Pennsylvania.=--Lodge, pp.
230-232.

=Government in New England.=--Lodge, pp. 412-417.

=The Colonial Press.=--Special Reference: G.H. Payne, _History of
Journalism in the United States_ (1920).

=Colonial Life in General.=--John Fiske, _Old Virginia and Her
Neighbors_, Vol. II, pp. 174-269; Elson, _History of the United States_,
pp. 197-210.

=Colonial Government in General.=--Elson, pp. 210-216.




CHAPTER IV

THE DEVELOPMENT OF COLONIAL NATIONALISM


It is one of the well-known facts of history that a people loosely
united by domestic ties of a political and economic nature, even a
people torn by domestic strife, may be welded into a solid and compact
body by an attack from a foreign power. The imperative call to common
defense, the habit of sharing common burdens, the fusing force of common
service--these things, induced by the necessity of resisting outside
interference, act as an amalgam drawing together all elements, except,
perhaps, the most discordant. The presence of the enemy allays the most
virulent of quarrels, temporarily at least. "Politics," runs an old
saying, "stops at the water's edge."

This ancient political principle, so well understood in diplomatic
circles, applied nearly as well to the original thirteen American
colonies as to the countries of Europe. The necessity for common
defense, if not equally great, was certainly always pressing. Though it
has long been the practice to speak of the early settlements as founded
in "a wilderness," this was not actually the case. From the earliest
days of Jamestown on through the years, the American people were
confronted by dangers from without. All about their tiny settlements
were Indians, growing more and more hostile as the frontier advanced and
as sharp conflicts over land aroused angry passions. To the south and
west was the power of Spain, humiliated, it is true, by the disaster to
the Armada, but still presenting an imposing front to the British
empire. To the north and west were the French, ambitious, energetic,
imperial in temper, and prepared to contest on land and water the
advance of British dominion in America.


RELATIONS WITH THE INDIANS AND THE FRENCH

=Indian Affairs.=--It is difficult to make general statements about the
relations of the colonists to the Indians. The problem was presented in
different shape in different sections of America. It was not handled
according to any coherent or uniform plan by the British government,
which alone could speak for all the provinces at the same time. Neither
did the proprietors and the governors who succeeded one another, in an
irregular train, have the consistent policy or the matured experience
necessary for dealing wisely with Indian matters. As the difficulties
arose mainly on the frontiers, where the restless and pushing pioneers
were making their way with gun and ax, nearly everything that happened
was the result of chance rather than of calculation. A personal quarrel
between traders and an Indian, a jug of whisky, a keg of gunpowder, the
exchange of guns for furs, personal treachery, or a flash of bad temper
often set in motion destructive forces of the most terrible character.

On one side of the ledger may be set innumerable generous records--of
Squanto and Samoset teaching the Pilgrims the ways of the wilds; of
Roger Williams buying his lands from the friendly natives; or of William
Penn treating with them on his arrival in America. On the other side of
the ledger must be recorded many a cruel and bloody conflict as the
frontier rolled westward with deadly precision. The Pequots on the
Connecticut border, sensing their doom, fell upon the tiny settlements
with awful fury in 1637 only to meet with equally terrible punishment. A
generation later, King Philip, son of Massasoit, the friend of the
Pilgrims, called his tribesmen to a war of extermination which brought
the strength of all New England to the field and ended in his own
destruction. In New York, the relations with the Indians, especially
with the Algonquins and the Mohawks, were marked by periodic and
desperate wars. Virginia and her Southern neighbors suffered as did New
England. In 1622 Opecacano, a brother of Powhatan, the friend of the
Jamestown settlers, launched a general massacre; and in 1644 he
attempted a war of extermination. In 1675 the whole frontier was ablaze.
Nathaniel Bacon vainly attempted to stir the colonial governor to put up
an adequate defense and, failing in that plea, himself headed a revolt
and a successful expedition against the Indians. As the Virginia
outposts advanced into the Kentucky country, the strife with the natives
was transferred to that "dark and bloody ground"; while to the
southeast, a desperate struggle with the Tuscaroras called forth the
combined forces of the two Carolinas and Virginia.

[Illustration: _From an old print._

VIRGINIANS DEFENDING THEMSELVES AGAINST THE INDIANS]

From such horrors New Jersey and Delaware were saved on account of their
geographical location. Pennsylvania, consistently following a policy of
conciliation, was likewise spared until her western vanguard came into
full conflict with the allied French and Indians. Georgia, by clever
negotiations and treaties of alliance, managed to keep on fair terms
with her belligerent Cherokees and Creeks. But neither diplomacy nor
generosity could stay the inevitable conflict as the frontier advanced,
especially after the French soldiers enlisted the Indians in their
imperial enterprises. It was then that desultory fighting became general
warfare.

[Illustration: ENGLISH, FRENCH, AND SPANISH POSSESSIONS IN AMERICA,
1750]

=Early Relations with the French.=--During the first decades of French
exploration and settlement in the St. Lawrence country, the English
colonies, engrossed with their own problems, gave little or no thought
to their distant neighbors. Quebec, founded in 1608, and Montreal, in
1642, were too far away, too small in population, and too slight in
strength to be much of a menace to Boston, Hartford, or New York. It was
the statesmen in France and England, rather than the colonists in
America, who first grasped the significance of the slowly converging
empires in North America. It was the ambition of Louis XIV of France,
rather than the labors of Jesuit missionaries and French rangers, that
sounded the first note of colonial alarm.

Evidence of this lies in the fact that three conflicts between the
English and the French occurred before their advancing frontiers met on
the Pennsylvania border. King William's War (1689-1697), Queen Anne's
War (1701-1713), and King George's War (1744-1748) owed their origins
and their endings mainly to the intrigues and rivalries of European
powers, although they all involved the American colonies in struggles
with the French and their savage allies.

=The Clash in the Ohio Valley.=--The second of these wars had hardly
closed, however, before the English colonists themselves began to be
seriously alarmed about the rapidly expanding French dominion in the
West. Marquette and Joliet, who opened the Lake region, and La Salle,
who in 1682 had gone down the Mississippi to the Gulf, had been followed
by the builders of forts. In 1718, the French founded New Orleans, thus
taking possession of the gateway to the Mississippi as well as the St.
Lawrence. A few years later they built Fort Niagara; in 1731 they
occupied Crown Point; in 1749 they formally announced their dominion
over all the territory drained by the Ohio River. Having asserted this
lofty claim, they set out to make it good by constructing in the years
1752-1754 Fort Le Boeuf near Lake Erie, Fort Venango on the upper
waters of the Allegheny, and Fort Duquesne at the junction of the
streams forming the Ohio. Though they were warned by George Washington,
in the name of the governor of Virginia, to keep out of territory "so
notoriously known to be property of the crown of Great Britain," the
French showed no signs of relinquishing their pretensions.

[Illustration: _From an old print_

BRADDOCK'S RETREAT]

=The Final Phase--the French and Indian War.=--Thus it happened that the
shot which opened the Seven Years' War, known in America as the French
and Indian War, was fired in the wilds of Pennsylvania. There began the
conflict that spread to Europe and even Asia and finally involved
England and Prussia, on the one side, and France, Austria, Spain, and
minor powers on the other. On American soil, the defeat of Braddock in
1755 and Wolfe's exploit in capturing Quebec four years later were the
dramatic features. On the continent of Europe, England subsidized
Prussian arms to hold France at bay. In India, on the banks of the
Ganges, as on the banks of the St. Lawrence, British arms were
triumphant. Well could the historian write: "Conquests equaling in
rapidity and far surpassing in magnitude those of Cortes and Pizarro had
been achieved in the East." Well could the merchants of London declare
that under the administration of William Pitt, the imperial genius of
this world-wide conflict, commerce had been "united with and made to
flourish by war."

From the point of view of the British empire, the results of the war
were momentous. By the peace of 1763, Canada and the territory east of
the Mississippi, except New Orleans, passed under the British flag. The
remainder of the Louisiana territory was transferred to Spain and French
imperial ambitions on the American continent were laid to rest. In
exchange for Havana, which the British had seized during the war, Spain
ceded to King George the colony of Florida. Not without warrant did
Macaulay write in after years that Pitt "was the first Englishman of his
time; and he had made England the first country in the world."


THE EFFECTS OF WARFARE ON THE COLONIES

The various wars with the French and the Indians, trivial in detail as
they seem to-day, had a profound influence on colonial life and on the
destiny of America. Circumstances beyond the control of popular
assemblies, jealous of their individual powers, compelled coцperation
among them, grudging and stingy no doubt, but still coцperation. The
American people, more eager to be busy in their fields or at their
trades, were simply forced to raise and support armies, to learn the
arts of warfare, and to practice, if in a small theater, the science of
statecraft. These forces, all cumulative, drove the colonists, so
tenaciously provincial in their habits, in the direction of nationalism.

=The New England Confederation.=--It was in their efforts to deal with
the problems presented by the Indian and French menace that the
Americans took the first steps toward union. Though there were many
common ties among the settlers of New England, it required a deadly
fear of the Indians to produce in 1643 the New England Confederation,
composed of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven. The
colonies so united were bound together in "a firm and perpetual league
of friendship and amity for offense and defense, mutual service and
succor, upon all just occasions." They made provision for distributing
the burdens of wars among the members and provided for a congress of
commissioners from each colony to determine upon common policies. For
some twenty years the Confederation was active and it continued to hold
meetings until after the extinction of the Indian peril on the immediate
border.

Virginia, no less than Massachusetts, was aware of the importance of
intercolonial coцperation. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the
Old Dominion began treaties of commerce and amity with New York and the
colonies of New England. In 1684 delegates from Virginia met at Albany
with the agents of New York and Massachusetts to discuss problems of
mutual defense. A few years later the Old Dominion coцperated loyally
with the Carolinas in defending their borders against Indian forays.

=The Albany Plan of Union.=--An attempt at a general colonial union was
made in 1754. On the suggestion of the Lords of Trade in England, a
conference was held at Albany to consider Indian relations, to devise
measures of defense against the French, and to enter into "articles of
union and confederation for the general defense of his Majesty's
subjects and interests in North America as well in time of peace as of
war." New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York,
Pennsylvania, and Maryland were represented. After a long discussion, a
plan of union, drafted mainly, it seems, by Benjamin Franklin, was
adopted and sent to the colonies and the crown for approval. The
colonies, jealous of their individual rights, refused to accept the
scheme and the king disapproved it for the reason, Franklin said, that
it had "too much weight in the democratic part of the constitution."
Though the Albany union failed, the document is still worthy of study
because it forecast many of the perplexing problems that were not solved
until thirty-three years afterward, when another convention of which
also Franklin was a member drafted the Constitution of the United
States.

[Illustration: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN]

=The Military Education of the Colonists.=--The same wars that showed
the provincials the meaning of union likewise instructed them in the art
of defending their institutions. Particularly was this true of the last
French and Indian conflict, which stretched all the way from Maine to
the Carolinas and made heavy calls upon them all for troops. The answer,
it is admitted, was far from satisfactory to the British government and
the conduct of the militiamen was far from professional; but thousands
of Americans got a taste, a strong taste, of actual fighting in the
field. Men like George Washington and Daniel Morgan learned lessons that
were not forgotten in after years. They saw what American militiamen
could do under favorable circumstances and they watched British regulars
operating on American soil. "This whole transaction," shrewdly remarked
Franklin of Braddock's campaign, "gave us Americans the first suspicion
that our exalted ideas of the prowess of British regular troops had not
been well founded." It was no mere accident that the Virginia colonel
who drew his sword under the elm at Cambridge and took command of the
army of the Revolution was the brave officer who had "spurned the
whistle of bullets" at the memorable battle in western Pennsylvania.

=Financial Burdens and Commercial Disorder.=--While the provincials were
learning lessons in warfare they were also paying the bills. All the
conflicts were costly in treasure as in blood. King Philip's war left
New England weak and almost bankrupt. The French and Indian struggle was
especially expensive. The twenty-five thousand men put in the field by
the colonies were sustained only by huge outlays of money. Paper
currency streamed from the press and debts were accumulated. Commerce
was driven from its usual channels and prices were enhanced. When the
end came, both England and America were staggering under heavy
liabilities, and to make matters worse there was a fall of prices
accompanied by a commercial depression which extended over a period of
ten years. It was in the midst of this crisis that measures of taxation
had to be devised to pay the cost of the war, precipitating the quarrel
which led to American independence.

=The Expulsion of French Power from North America.=--The effects of the
defeat administered to France, as time proved, were difficult to
estimate. Some British statesmen regarded it as a happy circumstance
that the colonists, already restive under their administration, had no
foreign power at hand to aid them in case they struck for independence.
American leaders, on the other hand, now that the soldiers of King Louis
were driven from the continent, thought that they had no other country
to fear if they cast off British sovereignty. At all events, France,
though defeated, was not out of the sphere of American influence; for,
as events proved, it was the fortunate French alliance negotiated by
Franklin that assured the triumph of American arms in the War of the
Revolution.


COLONIAL RELATIONS WITH THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT

It was neither the Indian wars nor the French wars that finally brought
forth American nationality. That was the product of the long strife
with the mother country which culminated in union for the war of
independence. The forces that created this nation did not operate in the
colonies alone. The character of the English sovereigns, the course of
events in English domestic politics, and English measures of control
over the colonies--executive, legislative, and judicial--must all be
taken into account.

=The Last of the Stuarts.=--The struggles between Charles I (1625-49)
and the parliamentary party and the turmoil of the Puritan rйgime
(1649-60) so engrossed the attention of Englishmen at home that they had
little time to think of colonial policies or to interfere with colonial
affairs. The restoration of the monarchy in 1660, accompanied by
internal peace and the increasing power of the mercantile classes in the
House of Commons, changed all that. In the reign of Charles II
(1660-85), himself an easy-going person, the policy of regulating trade
by act of Parliament was developed into a closely knit system and
powerful agencies to supervise the colonies were created. At the same
time a system of stricter control over the dominions was ushered in by
the annulment of the old charter of Massachusetts which conferred so
much self-government on the Puritans.

Charles' successor, James II, a man of sterner stuff and jealous of his
authority in the colonies as well as at home, continued the policy thus
inaugurated and enlarged upon it. If he could have kept his throne, he
would have bent the Americans under a harsh rule or brought on in his
dominions a revolution like that which he precipitated at home in 1688.
He determined to unite the Northern colonies and introduce a more
efficient administration based on the pattern of the royal provinces. He
made a martinet, Sir Edmund Andros, governor of all New England, New
York, and New Jersey. The charter of Massachusetts, annulled in the last
days of his brother's reign, he continued to ignore, and that of
Connecticut would have been seized if it had not been spirited away and
hidden, according to tradition, in a hollow oak.

For several months, Andros gave the Northern colonies a taste of
ill-tempered despotism. He wrung quit rents from land owners not
accustomed to feudal dues; he abrogated titles to land where, in his
opinion, they were unlawful; he forced the Episcopal service upon the
Old South Church in Boston; and he denied the writ of _habeas corpus_ to
a preacher who denounced taxation without representation. In the middle
of his arbitrary course, however, his hand was stayed. The news came
that King James had been dethroned by his angry subjects, and the people
of Boston, kindling a fire on Beacon Hill, summoned the countryside to
dispose of Andros. The response was prompt and hearty. The hated
governor was arrested, imprisoned, and sent back across the sea under
guard.

The overthrow of James, followed by the accession of William and Mary
and by assured parliamentary supremacy, had an immediate effect in the
colonies. The new order was greeted with thanksgiving. Massachusetts was
given another charter which, though not so liberal as the first,
restored the spirit if not the entire letter of self-government. In the
other colonies where Andros had been operating, the old course of
affairs was resumed.

=The Indifference of the First Two Georges.=--On the death in 1714 of
Queen Anne, the successor of King William, the throne passed to a
Hanoverian prince who, though grateful for English honors and revenues,
was more interested in Hanover than in England. George I and George II,
whose combined reigns extended from 1714 to 1760, never even learned to
speak the English language, at least without an accent. The necessity of
taking thought about colonial affairs bored both of them so that the
stoutest defender of popular privileges in Boston or Charleston had no
ground to complain of the exercise of personal prerogatives by the king.
Moreover, during a large part of this period, the direction of affairs
was in the hands of an astute leader, Sir Robert Walpole, who betrayed
his somewhat cynical view of politics by adopting as his motto: "Let
sleeping dogs lie." He revealed his appreciation of popular sentiment
by exclaiming: "I will not be the minister to enforce taxes at the
expense of blood." Such kings and such ministers were not likely to
arouse the slumbering resistance of the thirteen colonies across the
sea.

=Control of the Crown over the Colonies.=--While no English ruler from
James II to George III ventured to interfere with colonial matters
personally, constant control over the colonies was exercised by royal
officers acting under the authority of the crown. Systematic supervision
began in 1660, when there was created by royal order a committee of the
king's council to meet on Mondays and Thursdays of each week to consider
petitions, memorials, and addresses respecting the plantations. In 1696
a regular board was established, known as the "Lords of Trade and
Plantations," which continued, until the American Revolution, to
scrutinize closely colonial business. The chief duties of the board were
to examine acts of colonial legislatures, to recommend measures to those
assemblies for adoption, and to hear memorials and petitions from the
colonies relative to their affairs.

The methods employed by this board were varied. All laws passed by
American legislatures came before it for review as a matter of routine.
If it found an act unsatisfactory, it recommended to the king the
exercise of his veto power, known as the royal disallowance. Any person
who believed his personal or property rights injured by a colonial law
could be heard by the board in person or by attorney; in such cases it
was the practice to hear at the same time the agent of the colony so
involved. The royal veto power over colonial legislation was not,
therefore, a formal affair, but was constantly employed on the
suggestion of a highly efficient agency of the crown. All this was in
addition to the powers exercised by the governors in the royal
provinces.

=Judicial Control.=--Supplementing this administrative control over the
colonies was a constant supervision by the English courts of law. The
king, by virtue of his inherent authority, claimed and exercised high
appellate powers over all judicial tribunals in the empire. The right
of appeal from local courts, expressly set forth in some charters, was,
on the eve of the Revolution, maintained in every colony. Any subject in
England or America, who, in the regular legal course, was aggrieved by
any act of a colonial legislature or any decision of a colonial court,
had the right, subject to certain regulations, to carry his case to the
king in council, forcing his opponent to follow him across the sea. In
the exercise of appellate power, the king in council acting as a court
could, and frequently did, declare acts of colonial legislatures duly
enacted and approved, null and void, on the ground that they were
contrary to English law.

=Imperial Control in Operation.=--Day after day, week after week, year
after year, the machinery for political and judicial control over
colonial affairs was in operation. At one time the British governors in
the colonies were ordered not to approve any colonial law imposing a
duty on European goods imported in English vessels. Again, when North
Carolina laid a tax on peddlers, the council objected to it as
"restrictive upon the trade and dispersion of English manufactures
throughout the continent." At other times, Indian trade was regulated in
the interests of the whole empire or grants of lands by a colonial
legislature were set aside. Virginia was forbidden to close her ports to
North Carolina lest there should be retaliation.

In short, foreign and intercolonial trade were subjected to a control
higher than that of the colony, foreshadowing a day when the
Constitution of the United States was to commit to Congress the power to
regulate interstate and foreign commerce and commerce with the Indians.
A superior judicial power, towering above that of the colonies, as the
Supreme Court at Washington now towers above the states, kept the
colonial legislatures within the metes and bounds of established law. In
the thousands of appeals, memorials, petitions, and complaints, and the
rulings and decisions upon them, were written the real history of
British imperial control over the American colonies.

So great was the business before the Lords of Trade that the colonies
had to keep skilled agents in London to protect their interests. As
common grievances against the operation of this machinery of control
arose, there appeared in each colony a considerable body of men, with
the merchants in the lead, who chafed at the restraints imposed on their
enterprise. Only a powerful blow was needed to weld these bodies into a
common mass nourishing the spirit of colonial nationalism. When to the
repeated minor irritations were added general and sweeping measures of
Parliament applying to every colony, the rebound came in the Revolution.

=Parliamentary Control over Colonial Affairs.=--As soon as Parliament
gained in power at the expense of the king, it reached out to bring the
American colonies under its sway as well. Between the execution of
Charles I and the accession of George III, there was enacted an immense
body of legislation regulating the shipping, trade, and manufactures of
America. All of it, based on the "mercantile" theory then prevalent in
all countries of Europe, was designed to control the overseas
plantations in such a way as to foster the commercial and business
interests of the mother country, where merchants and men of finance had
got the upper hand. According to this theory, the colonies of the
British empire should be confined to agriculture and the production of
raw materials, and forced to buy their manufactured goods of England.

_The Navigation Acts._--In the first rank among these measures of
British colonial policy must be placed the navigation laws framed for
the purpose of building up the British merchant marine and navy--arms so
essential in defending the colonies against the Spanish, Dutch, and
French. The beginning of this type of legislation was made in 1651 and
it was worked out into a system early in the reign of Charles II
(1660-85).

The Navigation Acts, in effect, gave a monopoly of colonial commerce to
British ships. No trade could be carried on between Great Britain and
her dominions save in vessels built and manned by British subjects. No
European goods could be brought to America save in the ships of the
country that produced them or in English ships. These laws, which were
almost fatal to Dutch shipping in America, fell with severity upon the
colonists, compelling them to pay higher freight rates. The adverse
effect, however, was short-lived, for the measures stimulated
shipbuilding in the colonies, where the abundance of raw materials gave
the master builders of America an advantage over those of the mother
country. Thus the colonists in the end profited from the restrictive
policy written into the Navigation Acts.

_The Acts against Manufactures._--The second group of laws was
deliberately aimed to prevent colonial industries from competing too
sharply with those of England. Among the earliest of these measures may
be counted the Woolen Act of 1699, forbidding the exportation of woolen
goods from the colonies and even the woolen trade between towns and
colonies. When Parliament learned, as the result of an inquiry, that New
England and New York were making thousands of hats a year and sending
large numbers annually to the Southern colonies and to Ireland, Spain,
and Portugal, it enacted in 1732 a law declaring that "no hats or felts,
dyed or undyed, finished or unfinished" should be "put upon any vessel
or laden upon any horse or cart with intent to export to any place
whatever." The effect of this measure upon the hat industry was almost
ruinous. A few years later a similar blow was given to the iron
industry. By an act of 1750, pig and bar iron from the colonies were
given free entry to England to encourage the production of the raw
material; but at the same time the law provided that "no mill or other
engine for slitting or rolling of iron, no plating forge to work with a
tilt hammer, and no furnace for making steel" should be built in the
colonies. As for those already built, they were declared public
nuisances and ordered closed. Thus three important economic interests of
the colonists, the woolen, hat, and iron industries, were laid under the
ban.

_The Trade Laws._--The third group of restrictive measures passed by the
British Parliament related to the sale of colonial produce. An act of
1663 required the colonies to export certain articles to Great Britain
or to her dominions alone; while sugar, tobacco, and ginger consigned to
the continent of Europe had to pass through a British port paying custom
duties and through a British merchant's hands paying the usual
commission. At first tobacco was the only one of the "enumerated
articles" which seriously concerned the American colonies, the rest
coming mainly from the British West Indies. In the course of time,
however, other commodities were added to the list of enumerated
articles, until by 1764 it embraced rice, naval stores, copper, furs,
hides, iron, lumber, and pearl ashes. This was not all. The colonies
were compelled to bring their European purchases back through English
ports, paying duties to the government and commissions to merchants
again.

_The Molasses Act._--Not content with laws enacted in the interest of
English merchants and manufacturers, Parliament sought to protect the
British West Indies against competition from their French and Dutch
neighbors. New England merchants had long carried on a lucrative trade
with the French islands in the West Indies and Dutch Guiana, where sugar
and molasses could be obtained in large quantities at low prices. Acting
on the protests of English planters in the Barbadoes and Jamaica,
Parliament, in 1733, passed the famous Molasses Act imposing duties on
sugar and molasses imported into the colonies from foreign
countries--rates which would have destroyed the American trade with the
French and Dutch if the law had been enforced. The duties, however, were
not collected. The molasses and sugar trade with the foreigners went on
merrily, smuggling taking the place of lawful traffic.

=Effect of the Laws in America.=--As compared with the strict monopoly
of her colonial trade which Spain consistently sought to maintain, the
policy of England was both moderate and liberal. Furthermore, the
restrictive laws were supplemented by many measures intended to be
favorable to colonial prosperity. The Navigation Acts, for example,
redounded to the advantage of American shipbuilders and the producers
of hemp, tar, lumber, and ship stores in general. Favors in British
ports were granted to colonial producers as against foreign competitors
and in some instances bounties were paid by England to encourage
colonial enterprise. Taken all in all, there is much justification in
the argument advanced by some modern scholars to the effect that the
colonists gained more than they lost by British trade and industrial
legislation. Certainly after the establishment of independence, when
free from these old restrictions, the Americans found themselves
handicapped by being treated as foreigners rather than favored traders
and the recipients of bounties in English markets.

Be that as it may, it appears that the colonists felt little irritation
against the mother country on account of the trade and navigation laws
enacted previous to the close of the French and Indian war. Relatively
few were engaged in the hat and iron industries as compared with those
in farming and planting, so that England's policy of restricting America
to agriculture did not conflict with the interests of the majority of
the inhabitants. The woolen industry was largely in the hands of women
and carried on in connection with their domestic duties, so that it was
not the sole support of any considerable number of people.

As a matter of fact, moreover, the restrictive laws, especially those
relating to trade, were not rigidly enforced. Cargoes of tobacco were
boldly sent to continental ports without even so much as a bow to the
English government, to which duties should have been paid. Sugar and
molasses from the French and Dutch colonies were shipped into New
England in spite of the law. Royal officers sometimes protested against
smuggling and sometimes connived at it; but at no time did they succeed
in stopping it. Taken all in all, very little was heard of "the galling
restraints of trade" until after the French war, when the British
government suddenly entered upon a new course.


SUMMARY OF THE COLONIAL PERIOD

In the period between the landing of the English at Jamestown, Virginia,
in 1607, and the close of the French and Indian war in 1763--a period of
a century and a half--a new nation was being prepared on this continent
to take its place among the powers of the earth. It was an epoch of
migration. Western Europe contributed emigrants of many races and
nationalities. The English led the way. Next to them in numerical
importance were the Scotch-Irish and the Germans. Into the melting pot
were also cast Dutch, Swedes, French, Jews, Welsh, and Irish. Thousands
of negroes were brought from Africa to till Southern fields or labor as
domestic servants in the North.

Why did they come? The reasons are various. Some of them, the Pilgrims
and Puritans of New England, the French Huguenots, Scotch-Irish and
Irish, and the Catholics of Maryland, fled from intolerant governments
that denied them the right to worship God according to the dictates of
their consciences. Thousands came to escape the bondage of poverty in
the Old World and to find free homes in America. Thousands, like the
negroes from Africa, were dragged here against their will. The lure of
adventure appealed to the restless and the lure of profits to the
enterprising merchants.

How did they come? In some cases religious brotherhoods banded together
and borrowed or furnished the funds necessary to pay the way. In other
cases great trading companies were organized to found colonies. Again it
was the wealthy proprietor, like Lord Baltimore or William Penn, who
undertook to plant settlements. Many immigrants were able to pay their
own way across the sea. Others bound themselves out for a term of years
in exchange for the cost of the passage. Negroes were brought on account
of the profits derived from their sale as slaves.

Whatever the motive for their coming, however, they managed to get
across the sea. The immigrants set to work with a will. They cut down
forests, built houses, and laid out fields. They founded churches,
schools, and colleges. They set up forges and workshops. They spun and
wove. They fashioned ships and sailed the seas. They bartered and
traded. Here and there on favorable harbors they established centers of
commerce--Boston, Providence, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and
Charleston. As soon as a firm foothold was secured on the shore line
they pressed westward until, by the close of the colonial period, they
were already on the crest of the Alleghanies.

Though they were widely scattered along a thousand miles of seacoast,
the colonists were united in spirit by many common ties. The major
portion of them were Protestants. The language, the law, and the
literature of England furnished the basis of national unity. Most of the
colonists were engaged in the same hard task; that of conquering a
wilderness. To ties of kinship and language were added ties created by
necessity. They had to unite in defense; first, against the Indians and
later against the French. They were all subjects of the same
sovereign--the king of England. The English Parliament made laws for
them and the English government supervised their local affairs, their
trade, and their manufactures. Common forces assailed them. Common
grievances vexed them. Common hopes inspired them.

Many of the things which tended to unite them likewise tended to throw
them into opposition to the British Crown and Parliament. Most of them
were freeholders; that is, farmers who owned their own land and tilled
it with their own hands. A free soil nourished the spirit of freedom.
The majority of them were Dissenters, critics, not friends, of the
Church of England, that stanch defender of the British monarchy. Each
colony in time developed its own legislature elected by the voters; it
grew accustomed to making laws and laying taxes for itself. Here was a
people learning self-reliance and self-government. The attempts to
strengthen the Church of England in America and the transformation of
colonies into royal provinces only fanned the spirit of independence
which they were designed to quench.

Nevertheless, the Americans owed much of their prosperity to the
assistance of the government that irritated them. It was the protection
of the British navy that prevented Holland, Spain, and France from
wiping out their settlements. Though their manufacture and trade were
controlled in the interests of the mother country, they also enjoyed
great advantages in her markets. Free trade existed nowhere upon the
earth; but the broad empire of Britain was open to American ships and
merchandise. It could be said, with good reason, that the disadvantages
which the colonists suffered through British regulation of their
industry and trade were more than offset by the privileges they enjoyed.
Still that is somewhat beside the point, for mere economic advantage is
not necessarily the determining factor in the fate of peoples. A
thousand circumstances had helped to develop on this continent a nation,
to inspire it with a passion for independence, and to prepare it for a
destiny greater than that of a prosperous dominion of the British
empire. The economists, who tried to prove by logic unassailable that
America would be richer under the British flag, could not change the
spirit of Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, or George
Washington.


=References=

G.L. Beer, _Origin of the British Colonial System_ and _The Old Colonial
System_.

A. Bradley, _The Fight for Canada in North America_.

C.M. Andrews, _Colonial Self-Government_ (American Nation Series).

H. Egerton, _Short History of British Colonial Policy_.

F. Parkman, _France and England in North America_ (12 vols.).

R. Thwaites, _France in America_ (American Nation Series).

J. Winsor, _The Mississippi Valley_ and _Cartier to Frontenac_.


=Questions=

1. How would you define "nationalism"?

2. Can you give any illustrations of the way that war promotes
nationalism?

3. Why was it impossible to establish and maintain a uniform policy in
dealing with the Indians?

4. What was the outcome of the final clash with the French?

5. Enumerate the five chief results of the wars with the French and the
Indians. Discuss each in detail.

6. Explain why it was that the character of the English king mattered to
the colonists.

7. Contrast England under the Stuarts with England under the
Hanoverians.

8. Explain how the English Crown, Courts, and Parliament controlled the
colonies.

9. Name the three important classes of English legislation affecting the
colonies. Explain each.

10. Do you think the English legislation was beneficial or injurious to
the colonies? Why?


=Research Topics=

=Rise of French Power in North America.=--Special reference: Francis
Parkman, _Struggle for a Continent_.

=The French and Indian Wars.=--Special reference: W.M. Sloane, _French
War and the Revolution_, Chaps. VI-IX. Parkman, _Montcalm and Wolfe_,
Vol. II, pp. 195-299. Elson, _History of the United States_, pp.
171-196.

=English Navigation Acts.=--Macdonald, _Documentary Source Book_, pp.
55, 72, 78, 90, 103. Coman, _Industrial History_, pp. 79-85.

=British Colonial Policy.=--Callender, _Economic History of the United
States_, pp. 102-108.

=The New England Confederation.=--Analyze the document in Macdonald,
_Source Book_, p. 45. Special reference: Fiske, _Beginnings of New
England_, pp. 140-198.

=The Administration of Andros.=--Fiske, _Beginnings_, pp. 242-278.

=Biographical Studies.=--William Pitt and Sir Robert Walpole. Consult
Green, _Short History of England_, on their policies, using the index.