When the struggle for independence arrived, the son of Judith Manigault intrusted the vast fortune he had acquired to the country that had adopted his mother. The hall of the town of Boston, famed as "the cradle of liberty;" the treaty that gave to the United States peace with independence, and the Mississippi for a boundary; the name of the oldest college of Maine-bear witness to the public virtues of American descendants of the Huguenots.

To the emigrants from France, South Carolina conceded the privileges of citizenship so soon as it could be done by the act of the Carolinians themselves.

For the proprietary power was essentially weak. The company of courtiers, which became no more than a partnership of speculators in colonial lands, had not sufficient force to resist foreign violence or assert domestic authority. It could derive no strength but from the colonists or from the crown. But the colonists connected self-protection with the right of self-government; and the crown would not incur expense, except on a surrender of the jurisdiction. The proprietary government, having its organ in the council, could prolong its existence only by concessions, and was destined from its inherent weakness to be overthrown by the commons.

In 1670, the proprietaries acquiesced in a government which had little reference to the constitutions. The first governor sunk under the climate and the hardships of founding a colony. His successor, Sir John Yeamans, was a sordid calculator, bent only on acquiring a fortune. He encouraged expense, and enriched himself, without gaining respect or hatred. "It must be a bad soil," said his weary employers, "that will not maintain industrious men, or we must be very silly that would maintain the idle." If they continued their outlays, it was to foster vineyards and olive-groves; they refused supplies of cattle, and desired returns in compensation for their expenditures.

From 1674, the moderation and good sense of West preserved tranquillity for about nine years; but the lords, who had first purchased his services by the grant of all their merchandise and debts in Carolina, in the end dismissed him from office, on the charge that he favored the popular party.

The continued struggle with the proprietaries hastened the emancipation of the people from their rule; but the praise of having never been in the wrong cannot be awarded to the colonists. The latter claimed the right of weakening the neighboring Indian tribes by a partisan warfare, and a sale of the captives into West Indian bondage; their antagonists demanded that the treaty of peace with the red men should be preserved. Again, the proprietaries offered some favorable modifications of the constitutions; the colonists respected the modifications no more than the original laws. A rapid change of governors augmented the confusion. There was no harmony of interests between the lords paramount and their tenants, or of authority between the executive and the popular assembly. As in other colonies south of the Potomac, colonial legislation did not favor the collection of debts that had been contracted elsewhere; the proprietaries demanded a rigid conformity to the cruel method of the English courts. It had been usual to hold the polls for elections at Charleston only; as population extended, the proprietaries ordered an apportionment of the representation; but Carolina would not allow districts to be carved out and representation to be apportioned from abroad; and the useful reformation could not be adopted till it was demanded and effected by the people themselves.

England had always favored its merchants in the invasion of the Spanish commercial monopoly; had sometimes protected pirates, and Charles II. had knighted a freebooter. In Carolina, especially after Port Royal had been laid waste by the Spaniards, there were not wanting those who regarded the buccaneers as their natural allies against a common enemy, and thus opened one more dispute with the proprietaries.

When the commerce of South Carolina had so increased that a collector of plantation duties was appointed, a new struggle arose. The court of the proprietaries, careful not to offend the king, gave orders that the acts of navigation, although they were an infringement of the charter, should be enforced. The colonists, who had made themselves independent of the proprietaries in fact, esteemed themselves independent of parliament of right. Here, as everywhere, the acts were resisted as at war with natural equity.

The pregnant cause of dissensions in Carolina could not be removed till the question of powers should be definitively settled. The proprietaries were willing to believe that the cause existed in the want of dignity and character in the governor. That affairs might be more firmly established, James Colleton, a brother of a proprietary, was appointed governor, with the rank of landgrave and an endowment of forty-eight thousand acres of land; but when, in 1686, he met the colonial parliament which had been elected before his arrival, a majority refused to acknowledge the binding force of the constitutions. By a violent act of power, Colleton, like Cromwell in a similar instance, excluded the refractory members from the parliament. These, in their turn, protested against any measures which might be adopted by the remaining minority.

A new parliament, in 1687, was still more intractable; and the "standing laws" which they adopted were negatived by the court of the proprietaries. The strife between the parties extended to all their relations. When Colleton endeavored to collect quit-rents not only on cultivated fields, but on wild lauds, the assembly, imprisoning the secretary of the province and seizing the records, defied the governor and his patrons.

Colleton resolved on one last desperate effort, and, in 1689, pretending danger from Indians or Spaniards, called out the militia and declared martial law. The assembly had no doubt of its duty to protect the country against a military despotism. The English revolution of 1688 was therefore imitated on the banks of the Ashley and Cooper. In 1690, soon after William and Mary had been proclaimed, a meeting of the representatives of South Carolina disfranchised Colleton, and banished him from the province.

CHAPTER IX.

MARYLAND AFTER THE RESTORATION.

THE progress of Maryland under the proprietary government was tranquil and rapid. Its staple was tobacco. It was vainly attempted to create towns by statute; each plantation was a world within itself. Its laborers were in part white indented servants, whose term of service was limited by persevering legislation; in part negro slaves, whose importation was favored both by English cupidity and by provincial statutes. The appointing power to nearly every office in the counties as well as in the province was not with the people, and the judiciary was beyond their control; the taxes imposed by the county officers were burdensome alike from their amount and the manner of their levy.

At the restoration, the authority of Philip Calvert, the proprietary's deputy, was promptly and quietly recognised. Fendall, the former governor, who had obeyed the popular will as paramount to the authority of Baltimore, was convicted of treason. His punishment was mild; a wise clemency veiled the incipient strife between the people and their sovereign under a general amnesty; but Maryland was not placed beyond the influence of the ideas which that age of revolution had set in motion.

The administration of Maryland was marked by conciliation and humanity. To foster industry, to promote union, to cherish religious peace-these were the honest purposes of Lord Baltimore during his long supremacy. The persecuted and the unhappy thronged to his domains. The white laborer rose rapidly to the condition of a free proprietor; the female emigrant was sure to improve her condition. From France

came Huguenots; from Germany, from Holland, from Sweden, from Finland, it may be, though most rarely, from Piedmont, and even Bohemia, the children of misfortune sought protection under the tolerant sceptre of the Roman Catholic, and were made citizens with equal franchises. The people called Quakers met for religious worship publicly and without interruption; and with secret satisfaction George Fox relates that members of the legislature and the council, persons of quality, and justices of the peace, were present at a large and very heavenly meeting. Once the Indian "emperor," attended by his "kings," listened to his evening disAt a later day, the heir of the province came to an assembly of Quakers. But the refusal to perform military duty subjected them to fines and imprisonment; the refusal to take an oath sometimes involved a forfeiture of property; nor was it before 1688 that indulgence was fully

course.

conceded.

In 1662, Charles, the eldest son of the proprietary, came to reside in his patrimony. He visited the banks of the Delaware, and struggled to extend the limits of his jurisdiction. A duty was levied on the tonnage of every vessel that arrived. The Indian nations were pacified, and their rights, subordination, and commerce defined. By acts of compromise between Lord Baltimore and the representatives of the people, his power to raise taxes was precisely limited, and the mode of paying quit-rents established on terms favorable to the colony; while, on the other hand, a custom of two shillings a hogshead was levied on all exported tobacco, of which a moiety was appropriated to the defence of the government; the residue became conditionally the revenue of the proprietary.

The declining life of Cecilius Lord Baltimore, the father of Maryland, the tolerant legislator, was blessed with prosperity. The colony which he had planted in youth crowned his old age with its gratitude. A firm supporter of prerogative, a friend to the Stuarts, a member of the Roman church, he established an incipient equality among sects. His benevolent designs were the fruit of his personal character, his proprietary interests, and the necessity of his position. He died,