1729.

1728.

66

erns. To the timid eye of that day, there seemed "a real danger of insurrection." The assemblies were troublesome; the spirit of insubordination grew by indulgence; "squatters" increased so rapidly that their number threatened to become their security. And Maryland was as restless as Pennsylvania; Lord Baltimore, though a very reasonable gentleman, was most insolently treated by some of his assemblies." The result was inexplicable on the old theories of government. "One perplexity had succeeded another, as waves follow waves in the sea, while the settlement of Penn had still prospered and thriven at all times since its beginning." And yet Logan could not shake off distrust of the issue of the experiment. With "a long enjoyment of a free air and almost unrestrained liberty," wrote he, "we must not have the least appearance even of a militia, nor any other officers than sheriffs chosen by the multitude themselves, and a few constables, part of themselves, to enforce the powers of government; to which add a most licentious use of thinking, in relation to those powers, most industriously inculcated and fomented."

Through the press, no one was so active as Benjamin Franklin. His newspaper defended absolute freedom of speech and of the press, for he held that falsehood alone dreads attack and cries out for auxiliaries, while truth scorns the aid of the secular arm and triumphs by her innate strength. He rejected with disdain the "policy of arbitrary government," which can esteem truth itself to be a libel. Nor did he fail to defend "popular governments, as resting on the wisest reasons." In "the multitude, which hates and fears ambition," he saw the true counterpoise to unjust designs; and he defended the mass, as unable "to judge amiss on any essential points." "The judgment of a whole people," such was the sentiment of Franklin, “if unbiassed by faction, undeluded by the tricks of designing men, is infallible." That the voice of the people is the voice of God, he declared to be universally true; and therefore "the people cannot, in any sense, divest themselves of the supreme authority." Thus he asserted the common

rights of mankind, by illustrating "eternal truths, that cannot be shaken even with the foundations of the world." Such was public opinion in Pennsylvania more than a century ago.

Virginia was still more in contrast with England. The eighteenth century was the age of commercial ambition; and Virginia relinquished its commerce to foreign factors. In the age when nations rushed into debt, when stockjobbers and bankers competed with landholders for political power, Virginia paid its taxes in tobacco, and alone of the colonies, resisting the universal tendency of the age, had no public debt, no banks, no bills of credit, no paper money. The committee of its burgesses did not fear "to speak irreverently of the king's government; " the people were apt to esteem "a friendship for the governor incompatible with the interest of the country;" but, though fond of self-direction, they had no sullen griefs, no brooding discontent.

The colonies were forming a character of their own. Throughout the continent, national freedom and independence were gaining vigor and maturity. They were not the offspring of deliberate forethought: they grew like the lilies, which neither toil nor spin.

CHAPTER XLII.

BRITISH MONOPOLIES OF THE

SLAVE-TRADE.

COLONIZA

TION OF GEORGIA.

THE moral world is swayed by general laws. They extend not over inanimate nature only, but over man and nations; over the policy of rulers and the opinion of masses. Event succeeds event according to their influence; amidst the jars of passions and interests, amidst wars and alliances, commerce and conflicts, they form the guiding principle of civilization, which marshals incongruous incidents into their just places, and arranges checkered groups in clear and harmonious order. Yet let not human arrogance assume to know intuitively, without observation, the tendency of the ages. Research must be unwearied, and must be conducted with indifference; as the student of natural history, in examining even the humblest flower, seeks instruments that may unfold its wonderful structure, without color and without distortion. For the historic inquirer to swerve from exact observation would be as absurd as for the astronomer to break his telescopes, and compute the path of a planet by conjecture. Of success, too, there is a sure criterion; for, as every false statement contains a contradiction, truth alone possesses harmony. Truth also, and truth alone, is permanent. The selfish passions of a party are as evanescent as the material interests involved in the transient conflict: they may deserve to be described; they never can inspire; and the narrative which takes from them its bias will hurry to oblivion as rapidly as the hearts in which they were kindled moulder to ashes. But facts faithfully ascertained, and placed in proper contiguity, become of themselves the firm links of a brightly burnished chain, connecting events with their causes, and marking the line

along which the power of truth is conveyed from generation to generation.

Events that are past are beyond change, and, where they merit to be known, can in their general aspect be known accurately. The constitution of the human mind varies only in details; its elements are the same always; and the multitude, possessing but a combination of the powers and passions of which each one is conscious, is subject to the same laws which control individuals. Humanity, constantly enriched and cultivated by the truths it develops and the inventions it amasses, has a life of its own, and yet possesses no element that is not common to each of its members. By comparison of document with document; by an analysis of facts, and the reference of each of them to the laws of intelligence which it illustrates; by separating the idea which inspires combined action from the forms it assumes; by comparing events with the great movement of nations, historic truth may establish itself as a science; and the principles that govern human affairs, extending like a path of light from century to century, become the highest demonstration of the superintending providence of God.

The inference that there is progress in human affairs is warranted. The trust of our race has ever been in the coming of better times. Universal history does but seek to relate “the sum of all God's works of providence." In America, the first conception of its office, in the 1739. mind of Jonathan Edwards, though still cramped and perverted by theological forms not derived from observation, was nobler than the theory of Vico: more grand and general than the method of Bossuet, it embraced in its outline the whole "work of redemption," the history of the influence of all moral truth in the gradual regeneration of humanity. The New England divine, in his quiet association with the innocence and simplicity of rural life, knew that, in every succession of revolutions, the cause of civilization and moral reform is advanced. "The new creation," such are his words, "is more excellent than the old. So it ever is, that, when one thing is removed by God to make way for another, the new excels the old." "The

wheels of Providence," he adds, "are not turned about by blind chance, but they are full of eyes round about, and they are guided by the Spirit of God. Where the Spirit goes, they go." Nothing appears more self-determined than the volitions of each individual; and nothing is more certain than that the providence of God will overrule them for good. The finite will of man, free in its individuality, is in the aggregate subordinate to general laws. This is the reason why evil is self-destructive; why truth, when it is once generated, is sure to live for ever; why freedom and justice, though resisted and restrained, renew the contest from age to age, confident that messengers from heaven fight on their side, and that the stars in their courses war against their foes. There would seem to be no harmony and no consistent tendency to one great end, in the confused events of the reigns of George II. of England, and Louis XV. of France, where legislation was now surrendered to the mercantile passion for gain, was now swayed by the ambition and avarice of the mistresses of kings; where the venal corruption of public men, the open profligacy of courts, the greedy cupidity of trade, conspired in exercising dominion over the civilized community. The political world was without form and void; yet the Spirit of God was moving over the chaos of human passions and human caprices, bringing forth the firm foundations on which better hopes were to rest, and setting in the firmament the lights that were to guide the nations.

England, France, and Spain occupied all the continent, nearly all the islands, of North America; each established over its colonies an oppressive metropolitan monopoly. Had they been united, no colony could have rebelled successfully; but Great Britain, while she vigorously enforced her own acts of navigation, disregarded those of Spain. Strictly maintaining the exclusive commerce with her own colonies, she coveted intercourse with the Spanish islands and main; and was about to give to the world, for the first time in history, the spectacle of a war for trade, — a war which hastened the downfall of commercial restrictions and the independence of America.