12.-The physical economy of the settlements kept pace SECT.II. with the moral, and is not less the subject of admiration with a few of the more liberal among the English writers. Of this description are the authors of the Modern Universal History, whose account of the North American Colonies is among the best parts of their useful work. In tracing the early progress of Pennsylvania, they dwell with complacency upon the stupendous prosperity of a commonwealth so lately planted, and so flourishing by pacific measures." When they have brought the history of New England down to the treaty of Utrecht, (1713,) they speak thus of her condition.

"The inhabitants of New England, at the peace of Utrecht, to their native love of liberty, added now the polite arts of life; industry was embellished by elegance; and what would be hardly credible in antient Greece and Rome, in less than fourscore years, a colony almost unassisted by its mother country, arose in the wilds of America, that if transplanted to Europe, and rendered an independent government, would have made no mean figure amidst her sovereign states."*

If we ascend with the same accurate reporters to an earlier period in the career of the people of New England, we shall be no less edified.

"In 1642, the number of English capable to bear arms in New England, were computed to be between 7 or 8000. At this time 50 towns and villages were planted, above 40 ministers had houses, and public works of all kinds were erected at public expense. All this could not have beeen done but through the almost incredible industry of the inhabitants, which had by this time rendered their country a near resemblance of England. Fields were hedged in; gardens, orchards, meadows, and pasture grounds were laid out, and all the improvements of husbandry took place, particularly the sowing of corn and feeding of cattle. As to the commercial part of the inhabitants, they shipped off vast quantities of fish for Portugal, and the Straits; besides supplying other places; England particularly, Scotland and Ireland. They exported bread and beef to the sugar islands, with oil and lumber of all kinds, some of which they sent to the mother country; and what is still more surprising, they carried on a great trade in ship building."

Some of the features in the physical condition of the Colonies, noted in the Official Reports, which were made on the subject, to Charles II. must have excited either incredulity or * Vol. xxxix.

VOL. I.-K

+Ibid.

PART I envy in his disquiet council. "We leave every man," said the Governor of Rhode Island, "to walk in religion as God shall persuade his heart; and as for beggars and vagabonds, we have none among us." "The worst cottages of New England," said another inspector," are lofted: there are no beggars, and not three persons are put to death annually for civil offences." This representation would have been equally true of the middle colonies. I will not place by the side of it the cotemporary condition of Ireland, under the immediate dominion of Britain, when the spectacle of what exists there at the present day is too hideous to be endured by the imagination. But it may be well to furnish a trifling specimen of the state of some of the agricultural districts of England; and this shall be drawn from the journal of the faithful Evelyn.

"August 2, 1664.-Went to Uppingham, the shire town of Rutland; pretty, and well built of stone, which is a rarity in that part of England, where most of the rural villages are built of mud, and the people living as wretchedly as the most impoverished parts of France, which they much resemble, being idle and sluttish. The country (especially Leicestershire) much in common; the gentry free drinkers."

te

August 14, 1664.-Lay at Nottingham. Here I observed divers to live in the rocks and caves," &c.*

* Memoirs, vol. i.

75

SECTION III.

OF THE DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED BY THE COLONISTS.

1. THE cheering scene which the provinces thus exhi- SECT. III. bited in the beginning of the eighteenth century; the maturity and stability of their institutions; the sedateness, humanity, and piety, of their character, are rendered the more creditable and remarkable, by the disadvantages and difficulties of various kinds with which they had to contend. It may be said of them, without exaggeration, that they were the associations of men, of all that have existed of civilized origin,-in whom a backwardness in the arrangements and improvements which constitute the dignity and comfort of social life; a total neglect of the higher arts of civilization, and the pursuits of philanthropy; a fierce, relentless, and even ruthless character, would have been most natural and excusable. It was their peculiar lot, at one and the same time, to clear and cultivate a wilderness; to erect habitations and procure sustenance; to struggle with a new and rigorous climate; to bear up against all the bitter recollections inseparable from distant and lonely exile; to defend their liberties from the jealous tyranny and bigotry of the mother country; to be perpetually assailed by a savage foe, "the most subtle and the most formidable of any people on the face of the earth" -a foe that made war the main business of life, and waged it with forms and barbarities unknown to the experience, and superlatively terrible to the imagination, of a European.

The general situation of the first emigrants in the midst of a wilderness, and surrounded by an enemy of this description, can be imaged without difficulty, and does not require to be described for those to whom our common histories are familiar. The pictures drawn therein have been realized in part before our eyes, in the settlement of our western wilds. I say in part, because, although the immediate labours and dangers may have been, in some of the modern instances, as great, yet, the distressing, paralyzing influences for the mind, the duration of

* Colonel Barrè, in the House of Commons.

PART I. the principal ills, and the obstacles in the way of ultimate success, appear much less in the comparison. The Annals of Chalmers, Stith's History of Virginia, and Trumbull's Connecticut, furnish a particularly striking and full detail of those circumstances of original adversity common to most of the colonies, which justify any warmth of encomuim on their fortitude, or of admiration at their progress. Well might Lord Chatham exclaim, in 1774, "viewing our fellow subjects in America, in their original forlorn, and now flourishing state, they may be cited as illustrious instances to instruct the world-what great exertions mankind will make, when left to the free exercise of their own powers." Having before me the accounts of the historians just mentioned, and present to my mind the various obstacles upon which I am about to touch, I am filled with new wonder at the results sketched in my last section. I feel with additional force, the justice of the beautiful commemoration, which the contemplation of them drew from Mr. Burke, in 1764, and which that bright intelligence uttered, not merely as an orator ambitious of the meed of eloquence, but as a philosopher attentive to the ordinary march of human affairs, and the ordinary efficacy of human powers. "Nothing in the history of mankind," said he, " is like the progress of the American Colonies. For my part, I never cast an eye on their flourishing commerce, and their cultivated and commodious life, but they seem to me rather antient nations grown to perfection through a long series of fortunate events, and a train of successful industry, accumulating wealth in many centuries, than the colonies of yesterday; than a set of miserable outcasts, a few years ago, not so much sent as thrown out, on the bleak and barren shore of a desolate wilderness, three thousand miles from all civilized intercourse."*

2. It is conceded by the historians of every party, that as far as the mother country was able, in the confusion of her domestic affairs, or condescended, in the plenitude of her greatness, to bend her attention to the colonies, she pursued towards them until the revolution of 1668 at least, a course of direct oppression. The administration of the chartered companies, of the proprietary governors in general, and of the councils and executive representatives of the Stuarts, is acknowledged on all hands, to have been burdensome and mischievous. So far from promoting, it tended to impede the

Speech on American Taxation.
See particularly Chalmers-passim.

growth, and break the spirit of the plantations. It was not, SECT. III. therefore, by favour, but in spite of their political connexion with Great Britain, that they preserved their liberties, and became what they were at the end of the seventeenth century. The condition of the Carolinas, of New York, and New Jersey, under the proprietary rule,-of Virginia in the hands of the London company, and of the Stuart governors,-of this province and Maryland, when in the gripe of the Commonwealth, of New Hampshire in that of Mason's agents, and of New England at large during the vice-royalty of Andros,are sufficiently known to all who have read our annals.

As soon as the long parliament was settled, it manifested a determination to assert and exercise an unlimited authority in the colonies; and by its act of navigation, and other regulations conceived in the same spirit, threw over them a set of fetters which did not cripple them entirely, only because they were loosely worn, and sometimes laid aside altogether, in defiance of the peering jealousy of the metropolitan government. The community of religious opinion, the great bond of union in those days-and a marked predilection for the cause of the Parliament, obtained for New England, no real concession or substantial favour-no legal exemption from the navigation act. She escaped its full pressure, not by the partiality of Cromwell, as has been asserted, but by her own sturdy resolution to be free. Chalmers relates, in an angry tone, that she foiled the Parliament, and outwitted the Protector, whom, in fact, while she addressed him in terms of obeisance, she always cautiously avoided to acknowledge in form. Virginia refused to receive the navigation act of 1661, and was liable by her devotion to the royal side, to the particular displeasure of the Commonwealth: But we may cite, as a sample of the prevailing temper of mind in England, with regard to all the colonies, the instruction given to the fleet, which the parliament despatched for the reduction of that province," to employ every act of hostility" in case of refractoriness-" to set free such servants and slaves of masters who should oppose the parliamentary government, as would serve as soldiers to subdue them"*_ -a parental expedient, shewing the antiquity of the feeling, which prompted the observation of Governor Littleton in the debate of the British Parliament of the 26th of October, 1775-" that if a few regiments were sent to the southern colonies of America, the negroes would rise and embrue their hands in the blood of their masters.

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* Chalmers, c. v. Annals.