RHODE ISLAND. 67 XI. dom of mind, was, from the first, the trophy of the CHAP. Baptists. What more shall we relate of Rhode Island in this 1664. early period? That it invented a new mode of voting, since each freeman was obliged to subscribe his name on the outside of his ballot? that, for a season, it divided its general assembly into two houses-a change 1665. which, near the close of the century, was permanently adopted? that it ordered the towns to pay the deputies three shillings a day for their legislative services? that it was importuned by Plymouth, and vexed by Connecticut, on the subject of boundaries? that, asking commercial immunities, it recounted to Clarendon the merits of its bay, "in very deed the most excellent in New England; having harbors safe for the biggest ships that ever sayled the sea, and open when others at the east and west are locked up with stony doors of ice"? It is a more interesting question, if the rights of conscience and the freedom of mind were strictly respected. The The There have not been wanting those who have charged Rhode Island with persecuting the Quakers. calumny has not even a plausible foundation. royal commissioners, in 1665, less charitable than the charter, required the oath of allegiance; the general assembly, scrupulous in its respect for the rights of conscience, would listen to no proposition except for an engagement of fidelity, and due obedience to the laws. To refuse the engagement was to forfeit the elective franchise. Could a milder course have been proposed? When, by experience, this engagement was found irksome to the Quakers, it was the next year repealed.1 1 Brinley, in Mass. Hist. Coll. v. 216-220; Holmes, i. 341. Compare, in reply, Eddy in Mass. Hist. Coll. 68 XI. VIRGINIA AND CHARLES II. CHAP. Once, indeed, Rhode Island was betrayed into inconsistency. There had been great difficulties in collecting taxes, and towns had refused to pay their rates. In 1671, the general assembly passed a law, inflicting a severe penalty on any one who should speak in town-meeting against the payment of the assessments. The law lost to its advocates their 1672. reëlection; in the next year, the magistrates were selected from the people called Quakers, and freedom of debate was restored. George Fox himself was present among his Friends, demanding a double diligence in "guards against oppression," and in the firm support "of the good of the people." The instruction of "all the people in their rights," he esteemed the creative power of good in the colony; and he adds,— for in his view Christianity established political equality, -“You are the unworthiest men upon the earth, if you do lose the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free in life and glory."1 1661. For Maryland, the restoration of the Stuarts was the restoration of its proprietary. Virginia possessed far stronger claims for favor than Rhode Island and ConApril necticut; and Sir William Berkeley himself embarked 30. for England as the agent of the colony. But Virginia was unhappy alike in the agent whom she selected and in the object of her pursuit. 1 The leading printed authorities for early Rhode Island history, are Callender's Century Sermon, Backus's History of the Baptists, and Knowles's Roger Williams. The Mass. Hist. Coll. contain many useful documents, too various to be specially cited. Our Rhode Island Historical Society has published three valuable volumes. Hopkins's History of Providence is not accurate; it is in the Mass. Hist. Coll. Compare, also,. Walsh's Appeal, Berkeley was eager 431, &c. Let me not forget to add the reprints from the Records, and the Commentaries of Henry Bull, of Newport. Besides printed works, I have large MS. materials, which I collected in part from the public offices in Rhode Island. I am especially indebted to William R. Staples, who, with singular liberality, intrusted to me the MS. collections which he has been gathering for years. Such kindness demands my gratitude. PRODIGALITY OF CHARLES II. 1 XI. 69 in the advancement of his own interests; and Virginia CHAP. desired relief from the pressure of the navigation act, which Charles II. had so recently ratified. Relief was impossible; for it was beyond the prerogative of the king, and lay only within the power of parliament. Virginia received no charter, nor any guaranty for her established constitution, except in the instructions to her governor. The confidence of loyalty was doomed to suffer heavy retribution; and to satisfy the greediness of favorite courtiers, Virginia was dismembered by 1669. lavish grants, till at last the whole colony was given away for a generation, as recklessly as a man would 1673. give away a life-estate in a farm. Meantime Sir William Berkeley made use of his presence in England for his own account, and set the example of narrowing the limits of the province for which he acted, by embarking with Clarendon and six 1663. other principal courtiers and statesmen of that day, in an immense speculation in lands. Berkeley, being about to return to America, was perhaps esteemed a convenient instrument. King Charles was caricatured in Holland, with a woman on each arm, and courtiers picking his pocket. This time they took whole provinces; the territory which they obtained, if divided among the eight, had given to each a tract as extensive as the kingdom of France. To complete the picture of the territorial changes made by Charles II., it remains to be added, that, having given away the whole south, he enfeoffed his brother with the country between Pemaquid and the St. 1664. Croix. The proprietary rights to New Hampshire and 1677. 1 Albany Records, xviii. 158. In reply, the Dutch W. I. C., July 15, 1662. “Gov. Berkeley has as yet effected very little in favor of the 70 XI. PRODIGALITY OF CHARLES II. CHAP. Maine were revived, with the intent to purchase them for the duke of Monmouth. The fine country from Connecticut River to Delaware Bay, tenanted by 1664. nearly ten thousand souls, in spite of the charter to Winthrop, and the possession of the Dutch, was, like part of Maine, given to the duke of York. The charter which secured a large and fertile province to 1681. William Penn, and thus invested philanthropy with executive power on the western bank of the Delaware, was a grant from Charles II. After Philip's war in 1679. New England, Mount Hope was hardly rescued from a courtier, then famous as the author of two indifferent comedies. The grant of Nova Scotia to Sir Thomas Temple was not revoked, while, with the inconsistency 1667. of ignorance, Acadia, with indefinite boundaries, was restored to the French. From the outer cape of Nova Scotia to Florida, with few exceptions, the tenure of every territory was changed. Nay, further, the trade with Africa, the link in the chain of universal commerce, that first bound Europe, Asia, and America, together, and united the Caucasian, the Malay, and the Ethiopian races in indissoluble bonds, was given away to an exclusive company, which alone had the right of planting on the African coast. The frozen zone itself was invaded, and Prince Rupert and his 1669. associates were endowed with a monopoly of Hudson's Bay and the adjacent territories. During the four first years of his actual reign, Charles II. gave away a large part of a continent. Had he possessed the means of continuing as lavish of his gifts, in the course of his reign he would have given away the world. CHAPTER XII. MASSACHUSETTS AND CHARLES II. XII. 1660. 27. Nov. 30. MASSACHUSETTS never enjoyed the favor of the CHAP. restored government. The virtual independence which had been exercised for the last twenty years, was too dear to be hastily relinquished. The news of the restoration, brought by the ships in which Goffe and Whalley were passengers, was received with skeptical July anxiety; and no notice was taken of the event. At the session of the general court in October, a motion for an address to the king did not succeed; affairs in England were still regarded as unsettled. At last it became certain that the hereditary family of kings had recovered its authority, and that swarms of enemies to the colony had gathered round the new government; a general court was convened, and addresses were prepared for the parliament and the monarch. These addresses have been censured as marked with Oriental adulation: the spirit that breathes through them is republican; the language of hyperbole was borrowed from the manners of the East, so familiar from the study of the Hebrew Scriptures. By advice of the great majority of elders, no judgment was expressed on the execution of Charles I., and "the grievous confusions" of the past. The colonists appealed to the 1 Ebeling, i. 954. Ebeling is rarely so uncharitable. 2 Hutch. Coll. 332. "It is doubted by the most," &c. Elders' Advice. Dec. 19. |