CHAP. ships of emigrants, and, upon the dark ground, drew VIII. a lively picture of the rapid advancement of fortune by colonial industry, of the abundance of game, the delights of unrestrained liberty; the pleasures to be derived from "angling and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea." The attention of the western company was excited; they began to form vast plans of colonization; Smith was appointed admiral of the country for life; and a renewal of the letters patent, with powers analogous to those possessed by the southern company, became an object of eager solicitation. 1618. But a new charter was not obtained without vigorous opposition. "Much difference there was betwixt the Londoners and the Westerlings," since each was striving to engross all the profits to be derived from America; while the interests of the nation were boldly sustained by others, who were desirous, that no monopoly should be conceded to either company. The remonstrances of the Virginia corporation3 and a transient regard for the rights of the country, could delay, but not defeat a measure, that was sustained by the personal favorites of the 1620. monarch. After two years' entreaty, the ambitious Nov. 3. adventurers gained every thing which they had solicited; and King James issued to forty of his subjects, some of them members of his household and his government, the most wealthy and powerful of 1 Smith's Generall Historie, v. ii. p. 201. 2 Smith, in iii. Mass. Hist. Collections, v. iii. p. 21; Hubbard, p. 84, 85; Gorges; Purchas, v. iv. p. 1830, 1831. 3 Stith's Virginia, p. 185; Hazard, v. i. p. 390. THE COUNCIL ESTABLISHED AT PLYMOUTH. 293 VIII. 1620. the English nobility, a patent,' which, in American CHAP. annals, and, even in the history of the world, has but one parallel. The adventurers and their successors were incorporated as "The Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering and governing New-England, in America." The territory, conferred on the patentees in absolute property, with unlimited jurisdiction, the sole powers of legislation, the appointment of all officers and all forms of government, extended, in breadth, from the fortieth to the forty-eighth degree of north latitude, and, in length, from the Atlantic to the Pacific; that is to say, nearly all the inhabited British possessions to the north of the United States, all New-England, New-York, half of New-Jersey, very nearly all Pennsylvania, and the whole of the country to the west of these states, comprising, and, at the time, believed to comprise,2 much more than a million of square miles, and capable of sustaining far more than two hundred millions of inhabitants, were, by a single signature of King James, given away to a corporation within the realm, composed of but forty individuals. The grant was absolute and exclusive; it conceded the land and islands; the rivers and the harbors; the mines and the fisheries. Without the leave of the council of Plymouth, not a ship might sail into a harbor from Newfoundland to the latitude of Philadelphia; not a 1 Trumbull's Connecticut, v. i. p. 546-567; Hazard, v. i. p. 103 -118; Baylies, v. i. p. 160-185. Compare Hubbard, c. xxx.; Chalmers, p. 81-85. 2 Smith, in iii. Mass. Hist. Coll. v. iii. p. 31, estimates the land at one million one hundred and twenty thousand square miles; a computation far below the truth. CHAP. skin might be purchased in the interior; not a fish VIII. might be caught on the coast; not an emigrant might 1620. tread the soil. No regard was shown for the liber ties of those, who might become inhabitants of the colony; they were to be ruled, without their own consent, by the corporation in England. The patent favored only the cupidity of the proprietors; and possessed all the worst features of a commercial monopoly. A royal proclamation was soon issued, enforcing its provisions; and a revenue was already considered certain from an onerous duty on all tunnage, employed in the American fisheries.1 The results, which grew out of the concession of this charter, form a new proof, if any were wanting, of that mysterious connexion of events, by which Providence leads to ends, that human councils had not conceived. The patent left the emigrants at the mercy of the unrestrained power of the corporation; and it was under concessions from that plenary power, confirmed, indeed, by the English monarch, that institutions, the most favorable to colonial liberty, were established. The patent yielded every thing to the avarice of the corporation; the very extent of the grant rendered it of little value. The jealousy of the English nation, incensed at the concession of vast monopolies by the exercise of the royal preroga1621. tive, immediately prompted the house of commons April 25. to question the validity of the grant ; and the French nation, whose traders had been annually sending 1 Smith, in iii. Mass. Hist. Coll. v. iii. p. 32; Smith's Generall Historie, v. ii. p. 263. 2 Chalmers, p. 100-102; Parliamentary Debates, 1620-1, v. i. p. 260. 318, 319. THE REFORMATION IN ENGLAND. 295 VIII. home rich freights of furs, while the English were CHAP. disputing about charters and commissions, derided the tardy action of the British monarch in bestowing lands and privileges, which their own sovereign, seventeen years before, had appropriated.1 The patent was designed to hasten plantations, in the belief that men would eagerly throng to the coast and put themselves under the protection of the council; and, in fact, adventurers were delayed through fear of infringing the rights of a powerful company. While the English monopolists were wrangling about their exclusive privileges, the first permanent colony on the soil of New-England was established without the knowledge of the corporation, and without the aid of King James. The Reformation in England, an event which had been long and gradually prepared among the people by the opinions and followers of Wickliffe, and in the government by increasing and successful resistance to the usurpations of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, was at length abruptly established during the reign and in conformity with the passions of a despotic monarch. The acknowledgement of the right of private judgment,3 far from being the cause of the separation from Rome was one of its latest fruits. Luther was more dogmatical than his opponents; though the deep philosophy, with which his mind 1 Smith, in iii. Mass. Historical Collections, v. iii. p. 20. 2 Ibid, p. 32; Smith's Generall Historie, v. ii. p. 263. 3 Under Edward VI. intolerance sanctioned by law. See Rymer, v. xv. p. 182. 250, under Elizabeth. CHAP. was imbued, repelled the use of violence to effect VIII. conversion in religion. He was wont to protest 1522. against propagating reform by persecution and mas sacres; and, with wise moderation, an admirable knowledge of human nature, a familiar and almost ludicrous quaintness of expression, he would deduce from his great principle of justification by faith alone the sublime doctrine of the freedom of conscience.1 1553. Yet Calvin, many years after, anxiously engaged in dispelling ancient superstitions, was still fearful of the results of sceptical reform, and, in his opinions on heresy and its punishment, shared the unhappy error of his time.2 In England, so far was the freedom of private inquiry from being recognized as a right, the means 1534. of forming a judgment on religious subjects was denied. A law3 which prohibited the sale of bound books imported from the continent, excluded the writings of the reformers, and insulated England from the defenders of the protestant cause. act of supremacy, which effectually severed the Nov. 4. 1 Nollem vi et cæde pro evangelio certari. Compare the passages from Luther's Seven Sermons, delivered in March, 1522, at Wittenberg, quoted in Planck's Geschichte des Protestantischen Lehrbegriffs, b. ii. p. 68-72. Summa summarum! Predigen will ichs, sagen will ichs, schreiben will ichs, aber zwingen, dringen mit Gewalt will ich niemand; denn der Glaube will willig, ungenöthigt und ohne Zwang angenommen werden. I have quoted these words, which are in harmony with Luther's doctrines and his works, as a reply to those, The who, like Turner, in his History, v. iii. p. 135, erroneously charge the great German reformer with favoring persecution. 2 Servetus was burned, October 27, 1553. 3 25. Henry VIII. c. xv.; Statutes of the Realm, folio, 1817, v. iii. p. 456. It purports to be a tariff law, made to protect "the expert in the craft of printing and binding" against foreign competition. 4 25. Henry VIII. c. xix. xx. xxi. Statutes v. iii. p. 460–471.; 26. Henry VIII. c. i. iii. xiii. Statutes, v. iii. p. 492, 493–499. 508, 509. |