XIII. the name of the oldest college bears witness to the CHAP wise liberality of a descendant of the Huguenots. The children of the Calvinists of France have reason to respect the memory of their ancestors.1 It has been usual to relate, that religious bigotry denied to the Huguenot emigrants immediate denization. If full hospitality was for a season withheld, the delay grew out of a controversy in which all Carolinians had a common interest, and the privileges of citizenship were conceded so soon as it could be done 1691 by Carolinians themselves. It had not yet been de- 1697 termined with whom the power of naturalizing foreigners resided, nor how Carolina should be governed. The great mass of the people were intent on framing their own institutions; and collisions with the lords proprietors long kept the government in confusion. For the proprietary power was essentially weak. The company of courtiers, which became no more than a partnership of speculators in colonial lands, had not sufficient force to resist foreign violence or assert domestic authority. It could derive no strength but from the colonists themselves, or from the crown. But the colonists connected self-protection with the right of self-government, and the crown would not incur expense, except on a surrender of the jurisdiction. Thus the proprietary government, having its organ in the council, could prolong its existence only by concessions, and was destined by its inherent weakness to Rulhière, Éclaircissements sur les Causes de la Révocation de l'Édit de Nantes, in the 5th vol. of his works, an important work on this subject. Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV. c. xxxvi. Ancillon, (himself a descendant of Huguenots,' Tableau, &c. tom. iv. c. xxiii. For XIII. CHAP. be overthrown by the popular party which was favored by the commons. The 1670. At first the proprietaries acquiesced in a government which had little reference to the constitutions. first governor had sunk under the climate and the hardships of founding a colony. His successor, Sir 1671. John Yeamans, was a sordid calculator, bent on acquiring a fortune. He encouraged his employers in expense, and enriched himself, without gaining respect or hatred. "It must be a bad soil," said his weary 1674. employers, "that will not maintain industrious men, or we must be very silly that would maintain the idle." If they continued their outlays, it was in hopes of seeing vineyards, and olive-groves, and plantations, established; they refused supplies of cattle, and desired returns in compensation for their expenditures. 1674 to 1683. The moderation and good sense of West were able to preserve tranquillity for about nine years; but the lords, who had first purchased his services by the grant of all their merchandise and debts in Carolina, in the end dismissed him from office, on the charge that he favored the popular party. The continued struggles with the proprietaries hastened the emancipation of the people from their rule; but the praise of having been always in the right cannot be awarded to the colonists. The latter claimed the right of weakening the neighboring Indian tribes by a partisan warfare, and a sale of the captives into West Indian bondage; their antagonists demanded that the treaty of peace with the natives should be preserved.' Again, the proprietaries offered some favorable modifications of the constitutions; the colonists respected the modifications no more than the 1 Archdale, 13, 14. Hewat, i. 78. Chalmers, 542, 543. XIII. original laws. A rapid change of governors aug- CHAP mented the confusion. There was no harmony of interests between the lords paramount and their tenants, or of authority between the executive and the popular assembly. As in all other colonies south of the Potomac, colonial legislation did not favor the collection of debts that had been contracted abroad; the proprietaries demanded a rigid conformity to the cruel and intolerant method of the English courts. It had been usual to hold the polls for elections at Charleston only; as population extended, the proprietaries ordered an apportionment of the representation; but Carolina would not allow districts to be carved out and representation to be apportioned from abroad; and the useful reformation could not be adopted till it was demanded and effected by the people themselves. England had always favored its merchants in the invasion of the Spanish commercial monopoly; had sometimes protected pirates; and Charles II. had conferred the honors of knighthood on a freebooter. The treaty of 1667 changed the relations of the pirate and the contraband trader. But men's habits do not change so easily; and in Carolina, especially after Portroyal had been laid waste by the Spaniards, there were not wanting those who regarded the buccaneers as their natural allies against a common enemy;1 and thus opened one more issue with the proprietaries. When the commerce of South Carolina had so 1685 increased that a collector of plantation-duties was appointed, a new struggle arose. The palatine court, careful not to offend the king, who, nevertheless, was not diverted from the design of annulling their charter by a process of law, gave orders that the acts of XIII. CHAP. navigation should be enforced. The colonists, who had made themselves independent of the proprietaries 1685 in fact, esteemed themselves independent of parliament of right. Here, as every where, the acts were indignantly resisted as at war with natural equity, here they were also hated as an infringement of the conditions of the charter, of which the validity was their motive to emigrate. The pregnant cause of dissensions in Carolina could not be removed, till the question of powers should be definitively settled. The proprietaries were willing to believe, that the cause existed in the want of dignity and character in the governor. That affairs might be more firmly established, James Colleton, a brother of a proprietary, was appointed governor, with the rank of landgrave and an endowment of forty-eight thousand acres of land; but neither his relationship, nor his rank, nor his reputation, nor his office, nor his acres, could procure for him obedience; because the actual relations between the contending parties were in 1686. no respect changed. When Colleton met the colonial parliament which had been elected before his arrival, a majority refused to acknowledge the binding force of the constitutions; by a violent act of power, Colleton, like Cromwell in a similar instance in English history, excluded the refractory members from the parliament. What could follow but a protest from the disfranchised members against any measures which might be adopted by the remaining minority? Nov. 1687. A new parliament was still more intractable; and the "standing laws" which they adopted were negatived by the palatine court. From questions of political liberty, the strife between the parties extended to all their relations. XIII. When Colleton endeavored to collect quit-rents, not CHAP only on cultivated fields, but on wild lands also, direct insubordination ensued; and the assembly, 1687 imprisoning the secretary of the province, and seizing the records, defied the governor and his patrons, and entered on a career of absolute opposition. Colleton resolved on one last desperate effort, and, 1689 pretending danger from Indians or Spaniards, called out the militia, and declared martial law. But who were to execute martial law? The militia were the people, and there were no other troops. Colleton was in a more hopeless condition than ever; for the assembly believed itself more than ever bound to protect the country against a military despotism. It was evident, the people were resolved on establishing a government agreeable to themselves. The English revolution of 1688 was therefore imitated on the banks of the Ashley and Cooper. Soon after William 1690 and Mary were proclaimed, a meeting of the representatives of South Carolina disfranchised Colleton, and banished him from the province. |