網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

COLONY FROM BARBADOES.

137

XIII.

was granted; yet liberal terms were proposed; and CHAP. Sir John Yeamans, the son of a Cavalier, a needy baronet, who, to mend his fortune, had become a 1663. Barbadoes planter, was appointed governor, with a jurisdiction extending from Cape Fear to the St. Matheo. The country was called Clarendon. "Make things easy to the people of New England; from thence the greatest supplies are expected;" such were his instructions. Under an ample grant of liberties for the colony, he conducted, in the autumn of 1665, a band of emigrants from Barbadoes, and on the south bank of Cape Fear River laid the foundation of a town, which flourished so little, that its site is at this day a subject of dispute. Yet the colony, barren as were the plains around them, made some advances; it exported boards, and shingles, and staves, to Barbadoes. The little traffic was profitable, and was continued; emigration increased; the influence of the proprietaries fostered its growth; it absorbed the remains of the New England settlement; and it is said that, in 1666, the plantation already contained eight hundred souls. Many preferred it, as a place of residence, to Barbadoes, and Yeamans, who understood the nature of colonial trade, managed its affairs without reproach.2

Meantime the proprietaries, having obtained minute information respecting the coast, had learned to covet an extension of their domains; and, indifferent to the claims of Virginia, and in open contempt of the garrison of Spain at St. Augustine, the covetous Clarendon and his associates easily 1665. obtained from the king a new charter, which granted 13 to them, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, all

1 See Lawson's Map. Martin, i. 142, 143. 18

VOL. II.

2 Williamson, i. 100.

June

138

XIII.

1665.

SECOND CHARTER FOR CAROLINA.

CHAP. the land lying between twenty-nine degrees and thirty-six degrees thirty minutes, north latitude; a territory extending seven and a half degrees from north to south, and more than forty degrees from east to west; comprising all the territory of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, much of Florida and Missouri, nearly all of Texas, and a large portion of Mexico. The soil, and, under the limitation of a nominal allegiance, the sovereignty also, were theirs, with the power of legislation, subject to the consent of the future free men of the colony. The grant of privileges was ample, like those to Rhode Island and Connecticut. An express clause in the charter for Carolina opened the way for religious freedom; another held out to the proprietaries a hope of revenue from colonial customs, to be imposed in colonial ports by Carolina legislatures; another gave them the power of erecting cities and manors, counties and baronies, and of establishing orders of nobility, with other than English titles. It was evident that the founding of an empire was contemplated; for the power to levy troops, to erect fortifications, to make war by sea and land on their enemies, and to exercise martial law in cases of necessity, was not withheld. Every favor was extended to the proprietaries; nothing was neglected but the interests of the English sovereign and the rights of the colonists.'

Thus the most ample privileges and territories were conferred on the corporation of eight; had the lands been divided, each would have received a vast realm for his portion. Yet, when William Sayle, of the 1648. Summer Islands, who, long before, had attempted to

1 Carolina Charters, 4to. Reprinted often. Williamson, i. 230.

[ocr errors]

FORMATION OF CONSTITUTIONS FOR CAROLINA.

139

XIII.

plant a colony of Puritans from Virginia in the Baha- CHAP. ma Isles,1 returned from a later voyage of discovery, which had embraced the isles in the Gulf of Florida,2 1667. of these too, the "Eleutheria" of a former day, then almost a desert, comprising the land in America on which Columbus first kneeled, and including all the islands within a belt of five degrees, possession was solicited and obtained.

With the new charters the designs of the company 1668. expanded. The germs of colonies already existed; imagination encouraged in futurity every extravagant anticipation. It was deemed proper to establish a form of government commensurate in its dignity with the auspices of the colony and the vastness of the country; Clarendon was no longer in England; and Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, the most active and the most able of the corporators, was deputed to frame for the dawning states a perfect constitution, worthy to endure throughout all ages.

Shaftesbury was at this time in the full maturity of his powers; celebrated for eloquence, philosophic genius, and sagacity; high in power, and of aspiring ambition. Born to great hereditary wealth, the pupil of Prideaux had given his early years to the assiduous pursuit of knowledge; the intellectual part of his nature had from boyhood obtained the mastery over the love of indulgence and luxury. Connected with the great landed aristocracy of England, cradled in politics, and chosen a member of parliament at the age of nineteen, his long public career was checkered by the greatest varieties of success. It is a very common error of the incurious observer, to attribute frequent change to statesmen who have held the helm

1 Winthrop, ii. 334, 335.

2 Hewat's S. Carolina, i. 48.

140

XIII.

ASHLEY COOPER, EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.

1

CHAP. in seasons of vicissitudes; and Shaftesbury, whose political career merits severe reprobation, has been charged with repeated derelictions. But men of great mental power, though they may often change the instruments which they employ, change their principles and their purposes rarely. The party connections of Shaftesbury were affected by the revolutions of the times; but he has been falsely charged with political inconsistency. He often changed his associates, never his purposes; alike the enemy to absolute monarchy and to democratic influence, he resolutely connected his own aggrandizement with the privileges and interests of British commerce, of Protestant religious liberty, and of the landed aristocracy of England. In the Long Parliament, Shaftesbury acted with the people against absolute power; but, while Vane adhered to the parliament from love of popular rights, Shaftesbury adhered to it as the guardian of aristocratic liberty. Again, under Cromwell, Shaftesbury was still the opponent of arbitrary power. At the restoration, he would not tolerate an agreement with the king; such agreement, at that time, could not but have been democratic, and adverse to the privileges of the nobility; which, therefore, in the plenitude of the royal power, sought an ally against the people. When Charles II. showed a disposition to become, like Louis XIV., superior to the gentry as well as to the democracy, Shaftesbury immediately joined the party opposed to the ultra royalists, not as changing his principles, but from hostility to the supporters of prerogative. The party which he represented, the great

1 Constantia, fide, vix parem alibi invenias, superiorem certe nullibi. Locke's Epitaph on Shaftesbury. Locke, ix. 281.

2 Pepys, i. 219. But Dryden writes, "Restless, unfixed in principles and place." This is true of his party connections, not his principles.

66

ASHLEY COOPER, EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.

141

XIII.

aristocracy of wealth, had to sustain itself between CHAP. the people on one side, and the monarch on the other. The "nobility" was, in his view, the "rock" of English principles; "1 the power of the peerage, and of arbitrary monarchy, were "as two buckets, of which one goes down exactly as the other goes up." 2 In the people of England, as the depository of power and freedom, Shaftesbury had no confidence; his system protected wealth and privilege; and he desired to deposit the conservative principles of society in the exclusive custody of the favored classes. Cromwell had proposed, and Vane had advocated, a reform in parliament; Shaftesbury hardly showed a disposition to diminish the influence of the nobility over the lower house.3

Such were the political principles of Shaftesbury; and his personal character was analogous. He loved wealth without being a slave to avarice; and, though he would have made no scruple of "robbing the devil or the altar," he would not pervert the course of judgment, or be bribed into the abandonment of his convictions.5 If, as lord chancellor, he sometimes received a present, his judgment was never suspected of a bias. Quick to discern the right, and careless of precedents, usages, and bar-rules, he was prompt to render an equitable decision. Every body applauded but the lawyers; they censured the contempt of ancient forms; the diminished weight of authority, and the neglect of legal erudition; the historians, the

[blocks in formation]
« 上一頁繼續 »