some of whom are already executed, more are to be, and the others sent to the plantations." The courtiers round James II. clutched at the rich harvest which the rebellion promised. Jeffries heard of the scramble, and thus interposed: "I beseech your majesty that I may inform you that each prisoner will be worth ten pound, if not fifteen pound, apiece; and, sir, if your majesty orders these as you have already designed, persons that have not suffered in the service will run away with the booty." The convicts were in part persons of family and education, accustomed to elegance and ease. "Take all care," wrote the monarch, under the countersign of Sunderland, to the government in the colony, "take all care that they continue to serve for ten years at least, and that they be not permitted in any manner to redeem themselves, by money or otherwise, until that term be fully expired. Prepare a bill for the assembly of our colony, with such clauses as shall be requisite for this purpose." No Virginia legislature seconded such malice; and in December, 1689, the exiles were pardoned.

On another occasion, Jeffries exerted an opposite influence. Kidnapping had become common in Bristol; and not felons only, but young persons and others, were hurried across the Atlantic and sold for money. At Bristol, the mayor and justices would intimidate small rogues and pilferers, who, under the terror of being hanged, prayed for transportation as the only avenue to safety, and were then divided among the members of the court. The trade was exceedingly profitable-far more so than the slave-trade-and had been conducted for years. By accident it came to the knowledge of Jeffries, who delighted in a fair opportunity to rant. Finding that the aldermen, justices, and the mayor himself were concerned in this sort of man-stealing, he turned to the mayor, who was sitting on the bench, bravely arrayed in scarlet and furs, gave him every ill name which scolding eloquence could devise, and made him go down to the criminal's post at the bar, to plead for himself as a common rogue would have done. The prosecutions depended till the revolution, which made an amnesty; and the judicial kidnappers, retaining their gains, suffered nothing beyond disgrace and terror.

Virginia ceased for a season to be the favorite resort of voluntary emigrants. The presence of a frigate sharpened the zeal of the royal officers in enforcing the acts of navigation. A new tax in England on the consumption of tobacco was injurious to the producer. Culpepper and his council had arraigned a printer for publishing the laws, and ordered him to print nothing till the king's pleasure should be known; and Effingham received the instruction to allow no printingpress on any pretense whatever. The rule was continued under James II. The methods of despotism are monotonous.

To perfect the system, Effingham established a chancery court, in which he himself was chancellor. The councillors might advise, but were without a vote. An arbitrary table of fees followed of course. This is the period when royal authority was at its height in Virginia. The executive, the council, the judges, the sheriffs, the county commissioners, and local magistrates, were all appointed directly or indirectly by the crown. Virginia had no town-meetings, no village democracies, no free municipal institutions. The custom of a colonial assembly remained, but it was chosen under a restricted franchise; its clerk was ordered to be appointed by the governor; and its power was impaired by the permanent grant of revenue which it could not recall. The indulgence of liberty of conscience and the enfranchisement of papists were suspected in King James as a device to restore dominion "to popery."

In 1685, the first assembly convened after the accession of James II. questioned a part of his negative power. Former laws had been repealed; the king negatived the repeal, and revived the earlier law. The assembly obstinately refused to acknowledge this exercise of prerogative, and brought upon themselves a censure of their "unnecessary debates and contests touching the negative voice," "the disaffected and unquiet disposition of the members, and their irregular and tumultuous proceedings." In 1686, they were dissolved by royal proclamation. James Collins, in 1687, was imprisoned and loaded with irons for treasonable expressions. The servile council pledged to the king their lives and fortunes, but the feeling of personal independence, nourished by the manners

VOL. I.-32

of rural life, could never be repressed. In the assembly of April, 1688, the spirit of the burgesses was greater than ever, and an immediate dissolution of the body seemed to the council the only mode of counteracting their influence. But the governor, in a new country, without soldiers and without a citadel, was compelled to practice moderation. Tyranny was impossible; for it had no powerful instruments. When the prerogative was at its height, it was still too feeble to subdue the colony. Virginia was always "A LAND OF LIBERTY.”

Nor let the first tendencies to union pass unnoticed. In the bay of the Chesapeake, Smith had encountered warriors of the Five Nations; and others had fearlessly roamed to the shores of Massachusetts bay, and even invaded the soil of Maine. In 1667 the Mohawks committed ravages near Northampton, on Connecticut river; and the general court of Massachusetts addressed them a letter: "We never yet did any wrong to you, or any of yours," such was the language of the Puritan diplomatists, "neither will we take any from you, but will right our people according to justice." In 1677 Maryland invited Virginia to join with itself and with New York in a treaty of peace with the Seneca Indians, and in the month of August a conference was held with that tribe at Albany. In July, 1684, the governor of Virginia and of New York, and the agent of Massachusetts, met the sachems of the Five Nations at Albany, to strengthen and burnish the covenant-chain, and plant the tree of peace, of which the top should reach the sun, and the branches shelter the wide land. The treaty extended from the St. Croix to Albemarle. New York was the bond of New England and Virginia. The north and the south were united by the acquisition of NEW NETHERLAND.

CHAPTER XII

NEW NETHERLAND.

THE spirit of the age was present when the foundations of New York were laid. Every great European event affected the fortunes of America. Did a state prosper, it sought an increase of wealth by plantations in the west. Was a sect persecuted, it escaped to the New World. The Reformation, followed by collisions between English dissenters and the Anglican hierarchy, colonized New England; the Reformation, emancipating the Low Countries, led to settlements on the Hudson. The Netherlands divide with England the glory of having planted the first colonies in the United States; and they divide the glory of having set the example of public freedom. If England gave our fathers the idea of a popular representation, the United Provinces were their model of a federal union.

At the discovery of America, the Netherlands possessed the municipal institutions of the Roman world and the feudal liberties of the middle ages. The landed aristocracy, the hierarchy, and the municipalities exercised political franchises. The municipal officers, in part appointed by the sovereign, in part perpetuating themselves, had common interests with the industrious citizens, from whom they were selected; and the nobles, cherishing the feudal right of resisting arbitrary taxation, joined the citizens in defending national liberty against encroachments.

The urgencies of war, the Reformation, perhaps also the arrogance of power, often tempted Charles V. to violate the constitutions of the Netherlands. Philip II., on his accession in 1559, formed the purpose of subverting them, and found

coadjutors in the prelates. By increasing the number of bishops, who, in right of their office, had a voice in the states, he, in 1559, destroyed the balance of the constitution.

Thus the power of the sovereign sought to crush inherited privileges. Patriotism and hope animated the provinces; despotism and bigotry were on the side of Philip.

The contest in the Low Countries was one of the most memorable in the history of the human race. All classes were roused to opposition. The nobles framed a solemn petition; the common people broke in pieces the images that filled the churches. Despotism then seized possession of the courts, and invested a commission with absolute power over life and property; to overawe the burghers, the citadels were filled with mercenary soldiers; to strike terror into the nobility, Egmont and Horn were executed. Men fled; but whither? The village, the city, the court, the camp, were held by the tyrant; the fugitive had no asylum but the

ocean.

The establishment of subservient courts was followed by arbitrary taxation. But feudal liberty forbade taxation except by consent; and the levying of the tenth penny excited more commotion than the tribunal of blood. Merchant and landholder, citizen and peasant, Catholic and Protestant, were ripe for insurrection; and even with foreign troops Alba vainly attempted to enforce taxation without representation. Just then, on the first of April, 1572, a party of the fugitive "beggars" succeeded in gaining the harbor of Briel, the key of the North Provinces; and, in July of the same year, the states of Holland, creating the Prince of Orange their stadholder, prepared to levy money and troops. In 1575 Zealand joined with Holland in demanding for freedom some better safeguard than the word of Philip II., and in November of the following year nearly all the provinces united to drive foreign troops from their soil. "The spirit that animates them," said Sidney to Queen Elizabeth, "is the spirit of God, and is invincible."

The particular union of five northern provinces at Utrecht, in January, 1579, perfected the insurrection by forming the basis of a sovereignty; and, when their ablest chiefs were put