CHAP. to the world their gratitude "to the good providence XVII. of God, which had wonderfully supported their prede1689. cessors and themselves through more than ordinary difficulties and hardships."-"We take it to be our duty"— thus they continue-" to lay hold of our former gracious privileges, in our charter contained." And by a unanimous vote, the officers, whom Andros had displaced, were confirmed. But Walter Clarke wavered. For nine months there was no acknowledged chief magis1690. trate. The assembly, accepting Clarke's disclaimer, 26. elected Almy. Again excuse was made. Did no one dare to assume responsibility? All eyes turned to one of the old Antinomian exiles, the more than octogenarian, Henry Bull; and the fearless Quaker, true to the light within, employed the last glimmerings of life to restore the democratic charter of Rhode Island. Once more its free government is organized its seal is renewed; the symbol, an anchor; the motto, HOPE.

Feb.

Massachusetts rose in arms, and perfected its revolution without concert; "the amazing news did soon fly like lightning;" and the people of Connecticut spurned the government, which Andros had appointed, and which they had always feared it was a sin to obey. The charter, discolored, but not effaced, was taken May 9. from its hiding-place; an assembly was convened; and, in spite of the FINIS of Andros, new chapters were bein the records of freedom. Suffolk county, on Long gun Island, rejoined Connecticut.

New York also shared the impulse, but with less unanimity. "The Dutch plot" was matured by Jacob Leisler, a man of energy, but passionate and ill-educated, and not possessed of that happy natural sagacity which elicits a rule of action from its own instincts. But the common people among the Dutch, led by Leisler and

XVII.

his son-in-law Milborne, insisted on proclaiming the CHAP stadtholder king of England.

L

The

In New Jersey there was no insurrection. inhabitants were unwilling to invoke the interference of the proprietaries. There is no reason to doubt, that, in the several towns, officers were chosen, as before, by the inhabitants themselves, to regulate all local affairs; while the provincial government, as established by James II., fell with Andros. We have already seen 1689 that Maryland had also perfected a revolution, in which Protestant intolerance, as well as popular liberty, had acted its part. The passions of the Mohawks, also, are kindled by the certain prospect of an ally; they chant their loudest war-song, and prepare

to descend on Montreal.

Thus did a popular insurrection, beginning at Bosron, extend to the Chesapeake, and to the wilderness. This New England revolution "made a great noise in the world." Its object was Protestant liberty; and William and Mary, the Protestant sovereigns, were proclaimed with rejoicings such as America had never before known in its intercourse with England.

Could it be that America was deceived in her confidence; that she had but substituted the absolute sovereignty of parliament, which to her would prove the sovereignty of a commercial aristocracy, for the despotism of the Stuarts? Boston was the centre of the revolution which now spread to the Chesapeake; in less than a century, it would commence a revolution for humanity, and rouse a spirit of power to emancipate the world.

450

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE RESULT THUS FAR.

CHAP

XVIII.

THUS have we traced, almost exclusively from contemporary documents and records, the colonization of the twelve oldest states of our Union. At the period of the great European revolution of 1688, they contained not very many beyond two hundred thousand inhabitants, of whom MASSACHUSETTS, with Plymouth and Maine, may have had forty-four thousand; New HAMPSHIRE and RHODE ISLAND, with Providence, each six thousand; CONNECTICUT, from seventeen to twenty thousand; that is, all New England, seventy-five thousand souls; NEW YORK, not less than twenty thousand; NEW JERSEY, half as many; PENNSYLVANIA and DELAWARE, perhaps twelve thousand; MARYLAND, twentyfive thousand; VIRGINIA, fifty thousand, or more; and the two CAROLINAS, which then included the soil of Georgia, probably not less than eight thousand souls.

The emigration of the fathers of these twelve commonwealths, with the planting of the principles on which they rested, though, like the introduction of Christian.

Neal, ii. 601. Sir Wm. Petty, 75, says 150,000. Brattle says, in 1708, in N. England, from 100 to 120,000. This is right, and corresponds with other data. In the account for N. E. for 1688, I have confidence. Neal blunders about Boston, which, in 1790, had not 20,000, much

less in 1720. The statements in the text are made by inductions, and are, I believe, substantially correct. The positive data in those days are half the time notoriously false; as the statements of Randolph. The account in Humphrey much underrates Virginia.

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ity into Rome, but little regarded by contemporary CHAP writers, was the most momentous event of the seventeenth century. The elements of our country, such as she exists to-day, were already there.

Of the institutions of the Old World, monarchy had no motive to emigrate, and was present only by its shadow; in the proprietary governments, by the shadow of a shadow. The feudal aristocracy had accomplished its mission in Europe; it could not gain new life among the equal hardships of the wilderness; in at least four of the twelve colonies, it did not originally exist at all, and, in the rest, had scarcely a monument except in the forms of holding property. Priestcraft did not emigrate; by the steadfast attraction of interest, it was retained in the Old World; to the forests of America, religion came as a companion; the American mind never bowed to an idolatry of forms; and there was not a prelate in the whole English part of the continent. The municipal corporations of the European commercial world, the close intrenchments of burghers against the landed aristocracy, could not be transferred to our shores, where no baronial castles demanded the concerted opposition of guilds. Nothing came from Europe but a free people. The people, separating itself from all other elements of previous civilization; the people, self-confiding and industrious; the people, wise by all traditions that favored popular happiness,— the people alone broke away from European influence, and in the New World laid the foundations of our republic,

"Plebeian, though ingenuous the stock

From which her graces and her honors sprung."

X

Life of

The people alone were present in power. Like Moses, Norton' they had escaped from Egyptian bondage to the wil- Cotton

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CHAP derness, that God might there give them the pattern of the tabernacle. Like the favored evangelist, the exiles, in their western Patmos, listened to the angel that dictated the new gospel of freedom. Overwhelmed in Europe, popular liberty, like the fabled fountain of the sacred Arethusa, gushed forth profusely in remoter fields.

Of the nations of the European world, the chief emigration was from that Germanic race most famed for the love of personal independence. The immense majority of American families were not of "the high folk of Normandie," but were of "the low men," who were Saxons. This is true of New England; it is true of the south. Shall the Virginians be described in a word? They were Anglo-Saxons in the woods again, with the inherited culture and intelligence of the seventeenth century. "The major part of the house of burgesses now consisted of Virginians that never saw a town." The Anglo-Saxon mind, in its serenest nationality, neither distorted by fanaticism, nor subdued by superstition, nor wounded by persecution, nor excited by new ideas, but fondly cherishing the active instinct for personal freedom, secure possession, and legislative power, such as belonged to it before the reformation, and existed independent of the reformation, had made its dwelling-place in the empire of Powhatan. With consistent firmness of character, the Virginians welcomed legislative power; displaced an unpopular gov. ernor; at the overthrow of monarchy, established the freest government by happy intuition; rebelled against the politics of the Stuarts; and, uneasy at the royalist principles which prevailed in its forming aristocracy, soon manifested the tendency of the age at the polls "The inclinations of the country," wrote Spotswood,