6. 21. CHAP. was rich and strong; able to contest with all other planXII. tations about them;" "there is fear," said the mon1671. arch, "of their breaking from all dependence on this nation." "Some of the council proposed a menacing letter, which those who better understood the peevish and touchy humor of that colonie were utterly against. June After many days, it was concluded, "that, if any, it should be only a conciliating paper at first, or civil letter; for it was understood they were a people almost upon the very brink of renouncing any dependence upon the crown." "Information of the present face of things was desired," and Cartwright, one of the commissioners, was summoned before the council, to June give "a relation of that country;" but such was the picture that he drew, the council were more intimidated than ever, so that nothing was recommended Aug. beyond "a letter of amnesty. "By degrees, it was proposed to send a deputy to New England, under the pretext of adjusting boundaries, but "with secret instructions to inform the council of the condition of New England; and whether they were of such power as to be able to resist his majesty, and declare for themselves, as independent of the crown." Their strength was reported to be the cause "which of late years made them refractory."3 What need of many words? The king was taken up by "the childish, simple, and babyface," of a new favorite; and his traffic of the honor and independence of England to the king of France. The duke of Buckingham, now in mighty favor, was revelling with a luxurious and abandoned rout, having with him the impudent countess of Shrewsbury, and his band of fiddlers; and the discussions at the 3. 1 Evelyn, ii. 344. 2 Ibid. 345. 3 Ibid. 346; see, also, 358 XII. council about New England, were, for the present, as CHAP. fruitless as the inquiries how nutmegs and cinnamon might be naturalized in Jamaica. Massachusetts prospered by the neglect. "It is," said Sir Joshua Child, in his discourse on trade, "the 1670 most prejudicial plantation of Great Britain; the frugality, industry, and temperance of its people, and the happiness of their laws and institutions, promise them long life, and a wonderful increase of people, riches, and power." They enjoyed the blessings of selfgovernment and virtual independence. The villages of New England were already the traveller's admiration; the acts of navigation were not regarded; no custom-house was established. Massachusetts, which now stretched to the Kennebeck, possessed a widelyextended trade; acting as the carrier for nearly all the colonies, and sending its ships into the most various climes. Vessels from Spain and Italy, from France and Holland, might be seen in Boston harbor; commerce began to pour out wealth on the colonists. A generous nature employed wealth liberally; after the great fire in London, even the miserable in the mother country had received large contributions. It shows the character of the people, that the town of Portsmouth agreed for seven years to give sixty pounds a year to the college, which shared in the prosperity of Boston, and continued to afford "schismaticks to the church;" while the colony was reputed to abound in "rebels to the king." Villages extended; prosperity was universal. Beggary was unknown; theft was rare. If "strange new fashions" prevailed among "the younger sort of women," if" superfluous ribbons " were worn on their apparel, at least "musicians by trade, and dancing schools," were not fostered. It XII. CHAP. was still remembered that the people were led into the wilderness by Aaron, not less than by Moses; and, in spite of the increasing spirit of inquiry and toleration, it was resolved to retain the Congregational churches "in their purest and most athletick constitution." 1 Amidst the calmness of such prosperity, many of the patriarchs of the colony,-the hospitable, sincere, but 1667. persecuting Wilson; the uncompromising Davenport, 1670. ever zealous for Calvinism, and zealous for independence, who founded New Haven on a rock, and, having at first preached beneath the shade of a forest tree, now lived to behold the country full of convenient 1671. churches; the tolerant Willoughby, who had pleaded 1672. for the Baptists; the incorruptible Bellingham, precise in his manners, and rigid in his principles of independence ;—these, and others, the fathers of the people, lay down in peace, closing a career of virtue in the placid calmness of hope, and lamenting nothing so much as that their career was finished too soon for them to witness the fulness of New England's glory. This prosperity itself portended danger; for the increase of the English alarmed the race of red men, who could not change their habits, and who saw themselves deprived of their usual means of subsistence. It is difficult to form exact opinions on the population of the several colonies in this earlier period of their history; the colonial accounts are incomplete; and those which were furnished by emissaries from England are extravagantly false.2 Perhaps no great error will be committed, if we suppose the white population of New England, in 1675, to have been fifty-five thousand 1 Hutchinson, i. 251. 2 The account in Hutch. Coll. 484, has been very often repeated. It is worthless. The population and wealth of the country are described in hyperboles, that there may be the greater opportunity for obtaining revenues from the colonists. XII. souls. Of these, Plymouth may have contained not CHAP. much less than seven thousand; Connecticut nearly fourteen thousand; Massachusetts proper, more than 1675. twenty-two thousand; and Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, each perhaps four thousand. The settlements were chiefly agricultural communities, planted near the sea-side, and stretching along the ocean from New Haven to Pemaquid. The beaver trade, even more than traffic in lumber and fish, had produced the fine settlements beyond the Piscataqua ; yet in Maine, as in New Hampshire, there was "a great trade in deal boards." Most of the towns were insulated settlements near the sea, on rivers, which were employed to drive "the saw-mills," then described as a "late invention ;" and cultivation had not extended far into the interior. Haverhill, on the Merrimack, was a frontier town; from Connecticut, emigrants had ascended the river as far as the rich meadows of Deerfield and Northfield; but to the west, Berkshire was a wilderness; Westfield was the remotest plantation. Between the towns on Connecticut River, and the cluster of towns near Massachusetts Bay, Lancaster and Brookfield were the solitary settlements of Christians in the desert. The colonies, except Rhode Island, were united; the government of Massachusetts extended to the Kennebeck, and included more than half the population of New England; the confederacy of the colonies had also been renewed, in anticipation of dangers.' The number of the Indians of that day hardly exceeded forty-five or fifty thousand in all New England west of the St. Croix. Of these, ten thousand, it may 1 Hazard, ii. 511-528. XII. CHAP. be fifteen thousand,' dwelt in the territory of Maine; New Hampshire could hardly have contained four 1675. thousand; and Massachusetts, with Plymouth, never from the first peopled by many Indians, had not more than twelve thousand. In Connecticut and Rhode Island, never depopulated by wasting sickness among the natives, the Mohegans, the Narragansetts, the Pokanokets, and kindred tribes, had multiplied their villages round the sea-shore, the inlets, and the larger ponds, which increased their scanty supplies by furnishing abundance of fish. Thus, therefore, west of the Piscataqua, there were probably about fifty thousand whites, and not more than thirty-five thousand Indians; while east of the same stream, there were about four thousand whites, and less than fifteen thousand red men. A sincere attempt had been made to convert the natives, and win them to the regular industry of civilized life. The ministers of the early emigration were fired with a zeal as pure as it was fervent; they longed to redeem these "wrecks of humanity," by planting in their hearts the seeds of conscious virtue, and gathering them into permanent villages. No pains were spared to teach them to read and write; and, in a short time, a larger proportion of the Massachusetts Indians could do so, than recently of the inhabitants of Russia. Some of them spoke and wrote English tolerably well. Foremost among these early missionaries—the morning star of missionary enterprise was John Eliot, whose benevolence almost amounted to the inspiration of genius. An Indian grammar was a pledge of his earnestness; the pledge was redeemed by his preparing and publishing a trans 1 Williamson gives many more. I think 15,000 the largest safe estimate. |