some of whom are already executed, more are to be, and the others sent to the plantations." This is the language of the sovereign of our ancestors. The prisoners condemned to transportation were a salable commodity. Such was the demand for labor in America that convicts and laborers were regularly purchased and shipped to the colonies, where they were sold as indented servants. The courtiers round James II. exulted in the rich harvest which the rebellion promised, and begged of the monarch frequent gifts of their condemned countrymen. Jeffries heard of the scramble, and indignantly addressed the king: "I beseech your majesty that I may inform you that each prisoner will be worth ten pound, if not fifteen pound, apiece; and, sir, if your majesty orders these as you have already designed, persons that have not suffered in the service will run away with the booty." At length the spoils were distributed. The convicts were in part persons of family and education, accustomed to elegance and ease.

1685. Sept. 19.

"Take all care," wrote the monarch, under the counOct. 4. tersign of Sunderland, to the government in Vir

ginia, "take all care that they continue to serve for ten years at least, and that they be not permitted in any manner to redeem themselves, by money or otherwise, until that term be fully expired. Prepare a bill for the assembly of our colony, with such clauses as shall be requisite for this purpose." No Virginia legislature seconded such malice; and in December, 1689, the exiles were pardoned. Tyranny and injustice peopled America with men nurtured in suffering and adversity. The history of our colonization is the history of the crimes of Europe.

At

On another occasion, Jeffries exerted an opposite influence. Kidnapping had become common in Bristol; and not felons only, but young persons and others, were hurried across the Atlantic and sold for money. Bristol, the mayor and justices would intimidate small. rogues and pilferers, who, under the terror of being hanged, prayed for transportation as the only avenue to safety, and were then divided among the members of the court. The trade was exceedingly profitable, - far more so than the

slave-trade, and had been conducted for years. By accident it came to the knowledge of Jeffries, who delighted in a fair opportunity to rant. Finding that the aldermen, justices, and the mayor himself were concerned in this sort of man-stealing, he turned to the mayor, who was sitting on the bench, bravely arrayed in scarlet and furs, and gave him every ill name which scolding eloquence could devise. Nor would he desist till he made the scarlet chief magistrate of the city go down to the criminal's post at the bar, and plead for himself as a common rogue would have done. The prosecutions depended till the revolution, which made an amnesty; and the judicial kidnappers, retaining their gains, suffered nothing beyond disgrace and terror.

1685.

Virginia ceased for a season to be the favorite resort of voluntary emigrants. Men were attracted to the New World by the spirit of enterprise and the love of freedom. In Virginia, industry was depressed and the royal authority severe. The presence of a frigate had sharpened the zeal of the royal officers in enforcing the acts of navigation. The new tax in England, on the consumption of tobacco, was injurious to the producer. Culpepper and his council had arraigned a printer for publishing Feb 23. the laws, and ordered him to print nothing till the king's pleasure should be known. And Effingham was the bearer of the royal pleasure; having received the express instruction to allow no printing-press on any pretence whatever. The rule was continued under James II. The methods of despotism are monotonous.

1683.

To perfect the system, Effingham established a chancery court, in which he himself was chancellor. The councillors might advise, but were without a vote. An arbitrary table of fees followed of course. This is the period when royal authority was at its height in Virginia. The executive, the council, the judges, the sheriffs, the county commissioners, and local magistrates, were all appointed directly or indirectly by the crown. Virginia had no town-meetings, no village democracies, no free municipal institutions. The custom of a colonial assembly remained, but it was chosen under a restricted franchise; its most confidential officer

1686.

was ordered to be appointed by the governor, and Aug. 1. its power over the revenue was impaired by the permanent grant which it could not recall. The indulgence of liberty of conscience, and the enfranchisement of papists, were in themselves unexceptionable measures; they could bring no detriment to colonial liberties; yet toleration itself was suspected in King James, as a device to restore dominion "to popery." The year after Bacon's rebellion, when the royal commissioners forcibly seized the records of the assembly, the act had been voted "a violation of privilege," "an outrage never practised by the kings of England," and "never to be offered in future." When the records were again demanded, that this resolution might be expunged, Beverley, the clerk of the house, refused obedience to the lieutenant-governor and council, saying he might not do it without leave of the burgesses, his masters.

1678.

In 1685, the first assembly convened after the accession of James II. questioned a part of his negative power. Former laws had been repealed by the assembly; the king negatived the repeal, which necessarily revived the earlier law. It marks the determined spirit of the colonists, and their rapid tendency towards demanding self-government as a natural right, that the assembly obstinately refused to acknowledge this exercise of prerogative, and brought upon themselves, from King James, a censure of their "unnecessary debates and contests touching the negative voice," "the disaffected and unquiet disposition of the members,

1686.

Nov. 15.

April 4.

and their irregular and tumultuous proceedings." The assembly was dissolved by royal proclamation. James Collins was imprisoned and loaded with 1687. irons for treasonable expressions. The servile council pledged to the king their lives and fortunes, but the people were more intractable than ever. The indomitable spirit of personal independence, nourished by the manners of rural life, could never be repressed. Unlike ancient Rome, Virginia placed the defence of liberty not in municipal corporations, but in persons. The liberty of the individual was ever highly prized; and freedom sheltered itself in the collected energy of the public mind. Such

1688.

April.

was the character of the new assembly which was convened some months before the British revolution. The turbulent spirit of the burgesses was greater than ever, and an immediate dissolution of the body seemed to the council the only mode of counteracting their influence. But the awakened spirit of free discussion, banished from the hall of legislation, fled for refuge among the log houses and plantations that were sprinkled along the streams. The people ran to arms: general discontent threatened an insurrection. The governor, in a new country, without soldiers and without a citadel, was compelled to practise moderation. Tyranny was impossible; it had no powerful instruments. When the prerogative of the governor was at its height, he was still too feeble to oppress the colony. Virginia was always "A LAND OF LIBERTY.”

1667.

Nor let the first tendencies to union pass unnoticed. In the Bay of the Chesapeake, Smith had encountered warriors of the Five Nations; and others had fearlessly roamed to the shores of Massachusetts Bay, and even invaded the soil of Maine. Some years before Philip's war, the Mohawks committed ravages near Northampton, on Connecticut River; and the general court of Massachusetts addressed them a letter: "We never yet did any wrong to you, or any of yours," such was the language of the Puritan diplomatists, "neither will we take any from you, but will right our people according to justice." In 1677 Maryland invited Virginia to join with itself and with New York in a treaty of peace with the Seneca Indians, and in the month of August a conference was held with that tribe at Albany. In July, 1684, the governor of Virginia and of New York, and the agent of Massachusetts, met the sachems of the Five Nations at Albany, to strengthen and burnish the covenant-chain, and plant the tree of peace, of which the top should reach the sun, and the branches shelter the wide land. The treaty extended from the St. Croix to Albemarle. New York was the bond of New England and Virginia. The north and the south were united by the acquisition of NEW NETHERLAND.

CHAPTER XXII.

NEW NETHERLAND.

THE spirit of the age was present when the foundations of New York were laid. Every great European event affected the fortunes of America. Did a state prosper, it sought an increase of wealth by plantations in the west. Was a sect persecuted, it escaped to the New World. The Reformation, followed by collisions between English dissenters and the Anglican hierarchy, colonized New England; the Reformation, emancipating the Low Countries, led to settlements on the Hudson. The Netherlands divide with England the glory of having planted the first colonies in the United States; they also divide the glory of having set the example of public freedom. If England gave our fathers the idea of a popular representation, the united provinces were their model of a federal union.

At the discovery of America, the Netherlands possessed the municipal institutions which had survived the wreck of the Roman world and the feudal liberties of the middle ages. The landed aristocracy, the hierarchy, and the municipalities exercised political franchises. The municipal officers, in part appointed by the sovereign, in part perpetuating themselves, had common interests with the industrious citizens, from whom they were selected; and the nobles, cherishing the feudal right of resisting arbitrary. taxation, joined the citizens in defending national liberty against encroachments.

The urgencies of war, the Reformation, perhaps 1517 to also the arrogance of power, often tempted Charles V. 1559. to violate the constitutions of the Netherlands; Philip II., on his accession in 1559, formed the deliberate purpose of subverting them, and found a willing coad