Penn prevailed upon the king to reinstate him in his proprietary rights. Fletcher at In Connecticut Fletcher had no better success. He visited Hartford in October, 1693, while the assembly was in session, and demanded that the military forces of the colony should be placed at his disposal, at the same time promising to retain Governor Treat in the immediate command over them as his lieutenant. These proposals were flatly refused, and the angry Fletcher wrote to the secretary of state in London: "The laws of England have no force in this colony... They set up for a free state." There is a tradition that one bright afternoon the train-bands of Hartford were drawn up before the place where the assembly was in session, and Fletcher ordered his secretary to read aloud his commission and instructions; whereupon the sturdy Captain Wadsworth, who had once hidden the charter of Connecticut in an oak-tree, ordered the drums to be beaten. A threatening gesture from Fletcher stopped the drummers, and the reading was begun again. Once more the drums resounded, and once more Fletcher silenced them. Then Wadsworth stepped up to the New York governor and declared that "he would make the sun shine through him" if he dared interfere again. And so the crestfallen Fletcher deemed it wise to retire from the scene.1 1 Trumbull's History of Connecticut, i. 393. I think it not unlikely that this story affords an illustration of one of the normal ways in which legends grow. When Andros came to Saybrook in 1675 and tried to read the duke's patent to Captain Bull and his officers, they foiled him by walking away, but the Hartford magistrates are said afterward to have told them it would have Such is the familiar tradition, but it rests on no good authority, and seems improbable. At all events Fletcher was baffled, and when the matter was referred to the privy council it was softened into an order that upon proper notice in war time Connecticut should furnish the governor of New York with 120 men. No wonder that an officer in Fletcher's position, wielding the forces of a weak colony against a formidable enemy, should fret at being unable to get control of the resources of his stronger neighbour; for in wealth and population Connecticut was at least twice as powerful as New York. Fletcher next appealed to Massachusetts for aid, but without success, for the Quebec affair of 1690 had overtaxed the extensive resources of that colony, and she found it, moreover, necessary to guard her eastern frontier. But in the Jerseys Fletcher fared better, for their men and money were placed at his disposal. In the double difficulty of obtaining adequate supplies from the legislature and securing concerted action among different colonies, we see the principal causes which led seventy years later to the Stamp Act. Because there was no continental power which could raise troops and levy taxes for continental purposes, the Causes leading toward the Stamp Act. been still better if they had drowned the reading with the noise of drums. (See above, p. 49.) Now for popular tradition to change Andros into Fletcher (one New York governor for another), Bull into Wadsworth (one Connecticut captain for another), and the hypothetical drumbeat into an actual drumbeat, would be the most natural thing in the world, exactly the sort of thing that popular tradition is always doing. British Parliament, with an entirely friendly purpose, undertook to perform the functions of such a continental power. The experience of those seventy years proved that a single head for the English colonies was an absolute necessity. Either Parliament must be that head, or the colonies must enter into a Federal Union; no third course was practicable. It was the conflict with France that taught this lesson, and therefore the calling of a Continental Congress at New York in 1690 by Jacob Leisler was an event of great interest and significance. Of the same order of importance was the Plan of Union presented by William Penn to the Lords of Trade in 1697. In order to accomplish by rational and constitutional means the ends which William III. was seeking when by a mere order in council he invested the governor of New York with arbitrary control over neighbouring colonies, Penn recommended a Federal for a Federal Union. As the earliest suggestion of so great a step in constructive statesmanship, his plan must always be interesting. It provided for a Congress of two deputies from each colony to meet once a year, and to have for chairman or president a king's commissioner especially appointed for the purpose. The place of meeting might be New York, as conveniently central, and also because the province was a military frontier and under a royal governor. For further convenience this governor might be the king's commissioner," after the manner of Scotland," and also commander-in-chief of the forces. The business of the Congress should be "to hear and adjust Penn's plan Union. all matters of complaint or difference between province and province. As, 1. where persons quit their own province and go to another, that they may avoid their just debts though they be able to pay them; 2. where offenders fly justice .; 3. to prevent or cure injuries in point of commerce; 4. to consider of ways and means to support the union and safety of these provinces against the public enemies. In which Congress the quotas of men and charges will be much easier and more equally set than it is possible for any establishment made here [i. e. in England] to do; for the provinces, knowing their own condition and one another's, can debate that matter with more freedom and satisfaction and better adjust and balance their affairs in all respects for their common safety."1 Such was the first simple outline of the scheme which was further developed in Franklin's Plan, in 1754, and again in the Articles of Confederation, until maturity was reached in our present Federal Constitution. When we fully understand that it was the failure to adopt such wise schemes as those of Penn and Franklin that ultimately led to the Stamp Act, we shall be the better prepared to comprehend the American Revolution and to deal with it in a fair and impartial spirit. 2 1 Preston, Documents Illustrative of American History, p. 147. 2 This is too large a subject to receive full treatment in the present volume. My next work in the present series will be devoted to the development of the English colonies from 1689 to 1765, under the pressure of the struggle with New France, and it will thus lead naturally to my volumes on the American Revolution. The golden age of piracy. The difficulties of Governor Fletcher were increased by the prevalence of piracy on the high seas. I have elsewhere shown how the seventeenth century came to be the golden age of piracy.1 As a sequel to the long maritime wars in which the Dutch and English put an end to the supremacy of Spain, came the age of buccaneers, when freebooters of all nations joined hands in plundering the Spanish coasts of America. Spaniards had come to be regarded by many people as the enemies of the human race, insomuch that it was hardly deemed criminal to rob and slay them, and thus buccaneering retained a slight flavour of respectability. The buccaneer, however, was not apt to be a person of tender conscience, and frequently developed into the fullfledged pirate, whose hand was against everybody without distinction of race, politics, or creed. Piracy throve greatly in the seventeenth century because maritime commerce expanded far more rapidly than the naval facilities for protecting it. Never before had so many ships been afloat and traversing long distances, loaded with cargoes of such immense value. Moreover the practice of privateering, whereby civilized nations sought to supply the deficiencies in their naval force, was extremely liable to degenerate into piracy. The abominable tariff and navigation acts also, by which commerce was stupidly hampered, aroused in mercantile communities a spirit of lawlessness which tolerated the vile pirate, very much as it aided and abetted the noble army of smugglers. If the pirate 1 Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, chap. xvi. |