TRIBUTE LEVIED BY REGULATING COMMERCE.

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Hence permission was given to the planters of Carolina, and afterwards of Georgia, to ship their rice directly to any port in Europe south of Cape Finisterre. Hence special restrictions on colonial maritime enterprise; so that, when, in imitation of the French policy, the act of navigation was modified, and liberty granted for carrying sugar from the British sugar plantations directly to foreign markets, ships built and ships owned in the American plantations were excluded from the privilege. Hence, also, after two years' discussion, an act of parliament, recognizing the prosperity of "the sugar colonies in America as of the greatest consequence to the trade of England," imposed a duty of ninepence on every gallon of rum, sixpence on every gallon of molasses, and five shillings on every hundred weight of sugar, imported from foreign colonies into any of the British plantations.

Here was an act of the British parliament, to be executed by officers of royal appointment, levying a tax on consumption in America. In England, it was afterwards appealed to as a precedent; in America, the sixpence duty on molasses had all the effect of a prohibition. Even in case of forfeitures, nobody appeared to demand the third part given to the king for the colony. The act of parliament produced no revenue, and led only to clandestine importations, and appeared to be no more than a regulation of commerce, a new development of the colonial system. But here a new difficulty arose. The commercial dependence on the metropolis kept the colonies in debt to England, and created a demand for remittances; so that specie disappeared. America was left without a currency. In the hope of providing for the want, the provinces manufactured bills of credit, and instituted loan offices. The first emissions of provincial paper had their origin in the immediate necessities of government. In times of peace, provinces which had an empty treasury issued bills of credit, redeemable at a remote day, and put in circulation, by means of loans to citizens, at a low rate of

interest, on the mortgage of lands. The bills, in themselves almost worthless, from the remoteness of the day of payment, were made a lawful tender. The borrower, who received them, paid annual interest on his debt to the state; and this interest constituted a public revenue, obtained, it was boasted, without taxation. The scarcity of money was ever more and more complained of: "all the silver money was sent into Great Britain to make returns for what was owing there." Yet the system was imitated in every colony but Virginia.

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In Massachusetts, a struggle ensued for a new application of the credit system, by means of a land bank. The design was long resisted as a fraudulent undertaking," and was acknowledged as tending to give to the company "power and influence in all public concerns, more than belonged to them, more than they could make a good use of, and therefore unwarrantable;" yet, but for the interference of parliament, it would at last have been established.

The first effects of the unreal enlargement of the currency appeared beneficial; and men rejoiced in the seeming impulse given to trade. It was presently found that specie was repelled from the country by the system; that the paper furnished but a depreciated currency, fluctuating in value with every new emission; that, from the interest of debtors, there was between the colonies some rivalship in issues; that the increase of paper, far from remedying the scarcity of money, excited a thirst for new issues; that, as the party of debtors, if it prevailed in the legislature but once in ten years, could flood the country with bills of credit, men had an interest to remain in debt; that the income of widows and orphans, and all who had salaries or annuities, was ruinously affected by the fluctuations; that administrators were tempted to delay settlements of estates, as each year diminished the value of the inheritances which were to be paid; and, finally, that commerce was corrupted in its sources by the uncertainty attending the expressions of value in every contract.

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This uncertainty rapidly pervaded the country. 1738, the New England currency was worth but one hundred for five hundred; that of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, one hundred for one hundred and sixty or seventy, or two hundred; of South Carolina, one for eight; while of North Carolina-of all the states the least commercial in its character the paper was in London esteemed worth but one for fourteen, in the colony but one for ten. And yet the policy itself was not repudiated. The statesmen of England never proposed or desired to raise the domestic currency of the colonies to an equality with that of the great commercial world; and the system which Franklin had advocated found an apologist in Pownall, and was defended by Edmund Burke, except that Burke, instead of a currency of depreciated paper, proposed an emission of base coin.

Thus the great topic of variance between England and her continental colonies of America, lay in the mercantile system and its consequences. Controversies were also occurring in every part of the country.

Did the lumberers in Maine, on any land first purchased since the grant of the new charter of Massachusetts, cut some stately pine-tree into logs for the sawmill, the officer of the British crown came to measure its diameter, and to arraign them for a trespass in destroying a mast reserved for the English navy. The colonial legislatures hated the restriction, and parliament repeatedly interfered to extend and confirm the royal monopoly in the American forests.

The ministers of Massachusetts, by the hand of Cotton Mather, desire a synod, "to recover and establish the faith and order of the gospel" a reprimand from England forbids "the authoritative" meeting, as a bad precedent for dissenters.

The people of Massachusetts resolutely withheld a regular salary from the governor of royal appointment, but, by its legislature, voted, each year, such a grant as his good offices might seem to merit. Burnet is in

structed to insist on an established salary. The rustic patriots, firmly asserting every source of popular influence over the executive, scorned "to betray the great trust reposed in them by their principals." Burnet, dying, bequeathed the contest to Belcher, his successor. The general court still persevered in its stubbornness; and at last, as Belcher obtained leave of the crown to accept the annual grants, the controversy subsided, leaving victory to the strong will of Massachusetts.

At New York, the people and the governor are in collision. Cosby, imitating Andros in Massachusetts, insists on new surveys of lands and new grants, in lieu of the old. Complaint could be heard only through the press. A newspaper was established to defend the popular cause; and, in November, 1734, about a year after its establishment, its printer, John Peter Zenger, was imprisoned, on the charge of publishing false and seditious libels. The grand jury would find no bill against him, and the attorney-general filed an information. The counsel of Zenger took exceptions to the commissions of the judges, because they ran during pleasure, and because they had been granted without the consent of council. The court answered the objection by excluding those who offered it from the bar. At the trial, the publishing was confessed; but the aged Andrew Hamilton, a lawyer of Philadelphia, pleading for Zenger, justified the publication by asserting its truth. "You cannot be admitted," interrupted the chief justice, "to give the truth of a libel in evidence." Then," said Hamilton to the jury, we appeal to you for witnesses of the facts. The jury have a right to determine both the law and the fact, and they ought to do so." "The question before you," he added, " is not the cause of a poor printer, nor of New York alone; it is the best cause the cause of liberty. Every man who prefers freedom to a life of slavery, will bless and honor you as men who, by an impartial verdict, lay a noble foundation for securing to ourselves, our posterity, and our neighbors, that to which nature and the honor

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POPULAR POWER IN THE, COLONIES.

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of our country have given us a right-the liberty of opposing arbitrary power by speaking and writing truth." The jury gave their verdict, "Not guilty;" the people of the colonies exulted in the victory of freedom; Hamilton received of the common council of New York the franchises of the city for "his learned and generous defence of the rights of mankind." A patriot of the revolution esteemed this trial to have been the morning star of the American revolution. But it was not one light alone that ushered in the dawn of our independence: the stars of a whole constellation sang together for joy.

In Pennsylvania, there existed the fewest checks on the power of the people. "Popular zeal raged as high there as in any country; liberty and privileges were ever the cry." And Maryland was as restless as Pennsylvania. "One perplexity had succeeded another, as waves follow waves in the sea, while the settlement had still prospered and thriven at all times since its beginning." The result was inexplicable on the old theories of government. And Logan could not shake off distrust of the issue of the experiment.

Through the press, no one had been so active as Benjamin Franklin. "The judgment of a whole people," - such was the sentiment of Franklin, —“if unbiased by faction, undeluded by the tricks of designing men, is infallible;" and he asserted the common rights of mankind, by illustrating "eternal truths, that cannot be shaken even with the foundations of the world." Such was public opinion in Pennsylvania more than a century ago.

Virginia was still more in contrast with England. The eighteenth century was the age of commercial ambition; and Virginia relinquished its commerce to foreign factors, paid its taxes in tobacco, and, alone of all the colonies, alone of all civilized states, resisting the universal tendency of the age, had no debts, no banks, no bills of credit, no paper money.

Thus were the colonies forming a character of their