The Portuguese, though impelled by a similar passion for conquest, were more eager for trade than their powerful and often domineering Spanish neighbors. They oppressed their colonies, were greedy in their commercial strivings, maltreated the weak natives of Brazil and the West Indies, lacked administrative ability and the spirit of progress, and suffered from want of a well-balanced colonial system. The Portuguese colonies in America had much the same history as the Spanish, their situation being similar. Brazil was of no great importance until the early years of the nineteenth century, and made herself independent in 1822,—thus following the lead of Mexico, which set up an independent government the previous year.
20. French Policy.
France had no permanent colonies in America before the seventeenth century. Port Royal was planted in 1604, and Quebec not until four years later. The French were good fighters, enterprising, and while not eager to colonize, were capable of adapting themselves to new conditions; they had the capacity to carry their ideas with them across the seas, and they readily assimilated with the aborigines. While freely intermarrying with the natives, unlike the Spaniards they rather improved the savage stock than were degraded by it. They had the faculty of making the red barbarian a boon companion, and of inducing him to serve them and fight for them; indeed, since their colonizing enterprises were based on the fur-trade, their opposition to the advance of English agricultural possession was, like that of the Indians, fundamental. The French and the savages were therefore united in a common cause against a common foe.
The Breton and Norman merchant-seamen who went out to Newfoundland and carried on fisheries and the fur-trade paved the way for the future throng of emigrants. As colonizers the French worked quietly and persistently, and would have succeeded, had not their enterprises been ruined by their unfortunate political and ecclesiastical policy and the mismanagement of their rulers. Louis XIV. was capricious and extravagant. His court was a nest of intrigue, corruption, peculation, jealousies, and dissensions. The Huguenots, who represented the industrial classes, began the French colonization of America; but we have seen how sadly their government neglected them in Florida. Finally, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) resulted in driving them from home, and they were eager to join their lot with that of their countrymen in Canada, priest-rule prescribed their deliberate exclusion from the colonies,—which they could have made a New France in fact,—and thus forced them to contribute their strength to the rival English settlements farther down the coast. The government was in some respects over-liberal to its North American colonies,—it aided them financially to an extent unknown elsewhere; but they were not self-governed, and the king continually interfered with the commercial companies, which in a large measure controlled the colonies, so that a favor granted through corrupt influences to-day might to-morrow be revoked by counter-influences equally corrupt. Paternalism, centralization, bureaucratic government, official rottenness, instability of system, religious exclusiveness, and a vicious system of land-tenure were the prime causes of the ruin of New France; although we must not forget that the centre of its power had been planted in an inhospitable climate, and that its far-reaching water-system tempted the inhabitants into the forests and cultivated the fur-trade at the expense of agriculture, thereby placing the province at a disadvantage from the start.
21. Dutch and Swedish Policy.
The burden of over-population with which Spain, France, and Portugal were troubled, and to relieve the pressure of which was one of the motives of their colonizing efforts, was not felt by Holland; for despite the fact that she sustained a more dense population than any other European State, her citizens were prosperous. They were not stirred, like neighboring peoples, by the impulse of emigration. Preeminently a trading nation, Holland sought commerce rather than extension of empire. Long the chief carrier of Europe before striking into a broader field, she followed in the steps of the Portuguese, and by the opening of the seventeenth century took rank as a colonizing power. Her most fruitful labors were in the East rather than in the West. It was in the attempt to find the northwest passage to India that Hudson discovered the river which bears his name. With the Dutch, though religious reformers, religion was secondary to trade. So long as trade was good, they were patient under insult and outrage. Individually they made but little impress upon the community. Commerce was chiefly conducted through large chartered companies, minutely managed in Holland. Dutch colonies declined because their commercial system was non-progressive and unsound; they appear to have been unable to rise out of the trader state. Yet we must not forget that Holland was of small size and had overbearing, jealous neighbors; her long and heroic struggle with Spain tended greatly to delay her efforts to trade in and colonize the New World.
The Swedish colony on the Delaware was planned by authority of Gustavus Adolphus on broad, liberal principles; he hoped it would become "the jewel of his kingdom." But while it throve for a time and gave much promise of endurance, the Dutch soon overpowered it. Had the Swedish monarch lived to carry out the design, doubtless he would have proved that Scandinavians could successfully maintain an independent province in the New World. Like the Germans, however, they have in later years been in the main content to colonize as the subjects of foreign governments.
22. English Policy.
England remains the only country which planted populous colonies within the present United States and retained them long after they were planted. Her insular position and fine harbors have given her a race of sailors; her climate has proved favorable for rearing a hardy people, who, secure in their boundaries and not necessarily entangled in Continental affairs, have been left free to develop and to push independent enterprises. As regards American exploration, the fact that England is the westernmost State in Europe had at first much to do with her pre-eminence. Until the close of the sixteenth century England's resources were slender, and her government was not desirous of incurring the hostility of stronger European neighbors by poaching too freely on their colonial preserves. Cabot went out at his own cost. Drake's operations, while adding to the glory of England, and directly favored by Queen Elizabeth, were continually endangering her with Spain. But in the face of all discouragements, the sixteenth century was a notable training period for English sea-rovers. The records of the age are aglow with the deeds of the Cabots, Frobisher, Davis, Drake, Cavendish, Gilbert, Raleigh, Grenville, and their like, who, while invariably failing in their persistent efforts at colonization, were charting the American coast-line, making the New World familiar to their countrymen, and striking out shorter paths across the Atlantic. At first outstripped by other European nations, England was becoming one of the principal maritime powers when the seventeenth century began. Spain, weakened by the defection of the Netherlands, and still further humiliated by the defeat of the Armada (1588), was by this time showing evidences of decay, and France was the growing rival in the West.
English occupation in North America, like the French, began with the fishermen who, following in Cabot's wake, early sought the banks of Newfoundland. |The English trading spirit.| They were courageous, businesslike men, who soon supplemented their calling as fishermen with a profitable native trade in peltries. The trading spirit has always been deeply implanted in the Teutonic races; when England had gathered sufficient strength to make it discreet to assert herself, we find that her reachings out for wider territory took the shape of commercial enterprise. The romantic adventurers of the age of Elizabeth, as much freebooters as explorers, were now succeeded by prosaic trading companies, which undertook to plant colonies along the Atlantic coast. In doing this they were impelled in part by a desire to relieve England from some of her surplus population; but in the main the colonies were to serve as trading and supply stations.
In aiding these corporations, which succeeded after a fashion in planting colonies, but failed for the most part in reaping profits, the State expected increased revenue rather than the spread of European civilization. In England, State assistance to such undertakings was always slight and uncertain; the strength of the early colonies lay in the wealth and persistence of their promoters.
23. Character of English Emigrants.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were full of trouble for the English people. |English impulse to emigration.| Religious restlessness was succeeded by revolution and civil war, while crude and oppressive economic conditions induced lawless disturbance and disaster. Colonizing schemes were readily taken up in such times of unrest. At first the notion prevailed that the colonies might profitably be utilized for clearing the mother-country of jail-birds and paupers, although with these went out many who were worthy pioneers. It remained for the Plymouth planting to demonstrate that only the honest and thrifty can work out the salvation of a wilderness. America attracted the attention alike of traders and settlers because its soil was supposed to be rich, because the climate was temperate and not unlike that of England, because there was plenty of room, and because the unknown land attracted the adventurous.
Englishmen were soon found to be the best colonizers in the world. An intelligent, large, well-built, and handsome race, active in a high degree and passionately fond of out-door life and manly sports, they are brave and enterprising, will fight for supremacy, are tenacious of purpose, and carry with them in their migrations their ideas, their customs, and their laws. |Their characteristics,| They do not assimilate with other races,—in fact, there is inbred in them a strong disdain of foreigners, and still more of inferior races; but they rule with vigor, and make a lasting impress of their characteristics upon the communities they establish. Although Englishmen in the seventeenth century, when they colonized America, lacked many of the refinements of civilization, were coarse in their tastes and sentiments, and much given to dissipation and petty vices, a fibre of robust morality ran through the national life. The leaders were educated, they were ambitious for their race, and there was a healthy tone to their patriotic aspirations. Simple and reserved in manner, they prided themselves on repressing the utterance of their feelings, entering upon the serious business of rearing a nation in the wilds with most becoming gravity. Their conduct was often bad, but they were schooled in piety and reverence, and were steadfast in high aims.
They had been trained in self-government, and were sticklers for healthy political precedents. They were the heirs of grim and sturdy Teutonic ancestors who knew no rule but that imposed by "the armed assembly of the whole people." The germs of modern English free and representative institutions are to be plainly traced in the forest councils of the Germanic tribes. In the succeeding ages these institutions had grown irregularly, but it was a growth founded on the irresistible will of the people; |and their free institutions.| they had descended to the men of the seventeenth century as the sacred heirlooms of generations which had freely spent blood and treasure for the rights of all Englishmen to come. The principle and habit of self-government were deep rooted in the heart of every English commoner; it was a part of his nature. And this principle, this habit, he brought with him to America. English institutions were merely transplanted to the New World, where they developed with perhaps greater rapidity than at home,—certainly on somewhat different and characteristic lines; but they were and still are English institutions.
24. Local Government in the Colonies.
The primary local body in the England which these first colonists to America knew, was the parish, or town, which had both an ecclesiastical and a temporal jurisdiction. Next above the parishes was the territorial division known as the county, with an independent magistracy and a judicial and military organization adapted to the needs of a large rural area. In making independent settlements on the American coast, the English commercial companies and proprietors were not establishing states; what they planted were but the germs of states. |and county.| Each detached colony had a distinct life, and it was natural that, despite the general rules of government established by the companies, the people should proceed at once to govern themselves in their local affairs upon either the town or the county plan, according to circumstances. The flexibility of English representative institutions has never elsewhere been so well illustrated as in the different forms they took on in the American colonies, without once departing from the integrity of historic models.
In the Southern colonies the country was traversed by deep, broad river highways, leading far inland; the climate was genial, the savages proved comparatively friendly, and the introduction of slavery tended to foster an aristocratic class of landed proprietors,—large plantations, therefore, were the rule. There were a few small trading villages, but the bulk of the people were isolated, and township governments were impracticable. The settlers therefore adopted a primary government akin to the English rural county, having jurisdiction over a wide tract of country, with a commander of militia, appointed by the governor and styled a lieutenant, whose duties and authority were similar to those of the lords-lieutenant at home; judicial powers being exercised by eight or more gentlemen, also appointed by the governor, serving as a county court. It should be remembered that the Southern county was not, as in England, a group of towns,—it was itself the primary organization. The parish was sometimes, in newly settled portions, co-extensive with the county; but more often the latter was, for religious purposes, divided into parishes, the vestries of which had authority in some civil matters. Again, for the purposes of tax levy and collection, the county was divided into precincts; and in some districts conditions were such—among them the hostility of the savages—that the people of each plantation or small neighborhood assembled for worship by themselves, and thus became recognized as a separate community, in some matters self-governed. These differences in local organization account for the terms "plantation," "congregation," and "hundred," often met with in early Southern records. The tendency of the Southern political and social system was to concentrate power in the hands of a few men, in sharp distinction to the New England plan, where the people governed themselves in small primary assemblies, only delegating the conduct of details to their agents, the town officers.
In New England, the narrowness of the Atlantic slope, the shortness of the rivers, the severe climate, the hostility of the savages, the neighborhood of the French, the density of the forests, and the fact that each community was an organized religious congregation,—people belonging to one church, who had "resolved to live together,"—led to the establishment of more or less compact communities, called towns; and these were the political and ecclesiastical units. Since the conditions were changed, some features of the English parish were modified to suit the more primitive necessities of life in the wilderness. |Unconscious reversion to older Teutonic forms.| Thus we find that here and there in New England was a reversion to older Teutonic forms, although of this significant fact the colonists themselves were unaware; for the now familiar truth that the ancestry of our institutions reaches back to the beginnings of the race, had not then been discovered. Not only was the English town government practically reproduced on American soil, with such changes as were adapted to the new environment, but the titles of the town officials were, in many cases, borrowed from the mother-land. When the first town meeting was held, English local government had been successfully grafted upon the New World.
In the middle colonies, which partook of the climatic characteristics of both their Northern and Southern neighbors, and had a population made up of various nationalities, there were compact trading towns as well as large agricultural regions; and there we find a mixed system, of both townships and counties.
With all these differences in form, the principle at work was the same. From the beginning the American colonists were hampered in the work of their general assemblies, at first by commercial companies, and then by royal and proprietary interference; nevertheless, in the conduct of their purely local affairs they often exercised a greater degree of freedom than their brethren in England. It is the purpose of this and succeeding volumes to show how, amid many shiftings, unions, and divisions, these isolated, self-governing English colonies, planted independently here and there in the American wilds, unconscious of the great future before them, were, by an orderly, logical progression of events, the trend of which was often not noticeable to the men of the time, successfully merged, at first into states, and finally into a nation.
25. Colonial Governments.
The colonists were accustomed in England to specific ranks and orders of society. In America, while there were from the first sharp social distinctions, the fact that the great body of the settlers began life in the wilderness side by side, on an equal basis, was favorable to a democratic sentiment. Nobility was connected, in English minds, with great landed estates, of which there were few in America outside of Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, and New York. Under Locke's constitution it was attempted by the proprietaries formally to divide Carolina society into groups, with hereditary titles; but the project could not be carried out. Nevertheless, Southern society was in the main as distinctly stratified, after the introduction of slavery, as though titles had existed. New England life was calculated strongly to foster the spirit of independence; and the slave class was not large enough materially to affect social conditions. Still, there was an acknowledged and respected aristocracy, founded on ancestry, education, commercial success, and individual merit, but lacking staying qualities; for it had neither large estates nor primogeniture to back it. The scheme of Lord Brooke, Lord Say and Sele, and others, to introduce hereditary rank in Massachusetts (1636) fortunately failed to receive popular approval.
Used as they were to the exercise of the royal prerogative, the colonists accepted the free exercise by the governors of the privileges of appointment and veto, whether those officials were selected by the Crown or by proprietaries. In addition to these privileges, the governor of a royal colony was the bearer of royal instructions and the medium of royal directions; he was the executive officer, the granter of pardons (except in capital cases), the commander of the military and naval forces, the head of the established church, and the chief of the judiciary; and he could summon, prorogue, and dissolve the assembly. The assembly held the purse-strings, however, and the actual power of the governor was consequently in a great degree curtailed. The record of colonial politics is largely made up of disputes between the representatives and the executive, in which the assembly usually won by withholding supplies until the governor came to its terms.
The judiciary system was alike in no two colonies, but there were certain resemblances in all. There were commonly local justices of the peace, with jurisdiction limited to petty civil cases; sometimes these were elected by the freeholders of the district, but generally they were appointed by the governor. Then came the county courts, the members of which were appointees of the governor, except in New Jersey, where they were elected. These county judges were representative gentlemen, and not trained in the law. They had criminal jurisdiction except in capital cases, and final jurisdiction in civil cases not involving large amounts; the limit was £20 in Virginia and £2 in Maryland, and elsewhere between these extremes. Next was the provincial, supreme, or general court: ordinarily this was composed of the governor, as chancellor, and the members of his council; but in several colonies this colonial court was a separate body, appointed by the governor, who, with his council, constituted a still higher court of appeals and chancery. From the highest courts a suitor could, in important cases, carry his appeal to the king in council. The common and statute law of England prevailed when provincial law was silent on the subject. Sometimes questions arose upon the validity of provincial statutes: when the courts found that they were not in accordance with the charter, they declared them void; but the matter could be carried to the English Privy Council for ultimate decision. This was the germ of the power of the United States Supreme Court to decide on the constitutionality of a law.
At first American territory was granted to chartered commercial companies,—notably the Virginia Company and the Council for New England,—which sought to control their colonies from England, under the supervision of the Crown. The Virginia colony was early deprived of its charter by the Crown (1624); but members of the Massachusetts Company boldly emigrated to America, and taking advantage of the confusion in England, kept up a practically independent state for two generations; though at last (1692) the people were obliged to accept a new charter establishing a royal governor. The colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut obtained charters direct from England, with privileges of self-government, and lived under them till long after they had become States. New Hampshire, after having been governed by Massachusetts, became a royal province without having passed through the charter or proprietary stage. The other colonies were proprietary, but all finally reverted to the Crown. Maryland and Pennsylvania and Delaware were still proprietary at the outbreak of the Revolution, having been restored to the proprietors after reversion.
The two houses of Parliament had made the colonists accustomed to the bicameral system. In Virginia under company management the corporation council in England served in a measure as the upper house, with powers of general direction. In Massachusetts (where the company was technically resident in the colony), and in the proprietary and royal colonies as well, there was for a long time but one house. Finally, often as the result of dissensions between the deputies and the officials, the former came to sit apart,—the colonies thus in most cases returning to the English system of two houses; but the council was small, and had administrative functions which made it very different from the House of Lords. These colonial assemblies were schools for the cultivation of the spirit of independence. Burke said the colonists "had formed within themselves, either by royal instruction or royal charter, assemblies so exceedingly resembling a parliament in all their forms, functions, and powers that it was impossible they should not imbibe some opinion of a similar authority."
26. Privileges of the Colonists.
Electoral qualifications varied greatly. In the consideration of this, as well as of other institutions, Massachusetts and Virginia must be taken as types of opposite systems, the other colonies departing more or less from them, according to proximity. Originally in Massachusetts, "any person inhabiting within the town" could vote at town-meetings; later, with the arrival of objectionable immigrants, this privilege was restricted (1634) to freemen,—practically all the members of the church,—and still later (1691), to "the possessors of an estate of freehold in land to the value of 40s. per annum, or other estate to the value of £40." In Virginia, at the start, all freemen were allowed to vote. But it was afterwards decided (1670) that the "usuall way of chuseing burgesses by the votes of all persons who, haveing served their time, are freemen of this country," was detrimental to the colony; and the principle was laid down that "a voyce in such election" should be given "only to such as by their estates, real or personall, have interest enough to tye them to the endeavour of the publique good." By the beginning of the eighteenth century a freehold test obtained in most, if not in all, the colonies. In 1746 Parliament added a further qualification, in the guise of a general naturalization law, providing that a voter must have resided seven years in his colony, taken the oath of allegiance, and professed the "Protestant Christian faith."
The principle of representation, by which a few are charged with acting and speaking for the many in the conduct of public affairs, has been familiar to Englishmen since the time when a parliament was convoked during the contest between John and the barons (1213). The practice was adopted early in the history of the colonies,—the first house of burgesses of Virginia meeting in 1619; while in Massachusetts, the refusal of Watertown (1632) to be taxed without representation caused the adoption of the plan of sending deputies to the General Court. The American colonial assemblies were more truly representative of the great body of the people than the English Parliament of the period; to-day, male suffrage is nearly universal in England, and entirely so in all the British dependencies, with the exception of the Crown colonies.
In the American colonies the execution of the laws was as a rule comparatively an easy task. The English colonists had been trained in the political art of self-control; they had an abounding regard for just laws and the courts; they respected precedent, and stoutly stood for the common law, or recognized customs of their race. They were restive under statutes which conflicted with the customary rights of Englishmen, which had come down to them from the earliest times, and had been confirmed by Magna Charta. These rights had not been strictly observed by the Tudor sovereigns, and many of the earlier settlers had in the mother-country assisted in agitation for their renewal. Now that they were transplanted to America, the struggle was continued at long range with the Stuarts, thus developing in the colonists a habit of resistance which was to stand them in good stead in the troublous period leading up to the American Revolution.
CHAPTER IV.
THE COLONIZATION OF THE SOUTH. (1606-1700.)
Bibliographies.—S. Kingsbury, Introduction to Records of Virginia Company, 207-214; P. Bruce, Economic History of Virginia, I. xv.-xix.; N. Mereness, Maryland, 521-524; E. Whitney, Government of South Carolina, footnotes; Avery, United States, II. 411-417, 434-438, III. 407-410, 412, 413; Larned, Literature of American History, 100-106; Winsor, III. 153-166, 553-562, V. 335-356; C. Andrews, Colonial Self-Government, 351-354; Channing and Hart, Guide, §§ 97-102.
Historical Maps.—Nos. 2 and 3, this volume (Epoch Maps, Nos. 2, 3); Doyle, English Colonies, I.; MacCoun, Winsor, and school histories cited in our ch. i.
General Accounts.—Lodge, English Colonies, chs. i., iii., v., vii.; Doyle, as above, I.; H. Osgood, American Colonies in Seventeenth Century; Avery, as above, II. chs. ix., x., III. chs. i.-iii.; Channing, United States, I. chs. v.-ix.; Andrews, as above, chs. ix., xiii.-xv.; Greene, Provincial America, chs. i.-v.; Winsor, as above, III. chs. v., xiii., V. ch. v.
Special Histories.—Virginia: Brown, First Republic in America, and English Politics in Early Virginia History; Bruce, as above; Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors; J. Cooke (Commonwealths); L. Tyler, Cradle of the Republic, and Williamsburg; R. Pryor, Birth of the Nation; J. Wayland, German Element in Shenandoah Valley.—Maryland: Browne (Commonwealths), Scharf, Bozman, Mereness, as above; C. Hall, Lords Baltimore; B. Steiner, Beginnings of Maryland.—Carolinas: J. Moore, I. chs. i.-iii.; C. Raper; E. McCrady, South Carolina under Proprietary Government; S. Ashe, North Carolina, I. Lives of Smith by Bradley, Roberts, and Smith.
Contemporary Accounts.—Reprints of Smith's True Relation, and other early documents: Force, Tracts; publications of historical societies and commissions of the several states; Carroll, Historical Collections; Brown, Genesis of United States; Kingsbury and Osgood, Records of Virginia Company; Jameson, Original Narratives of Early American History; American History told by Contemporaries, I. part iv; American History Leaflets, No. 27.
28. Reasons for Final English Colonization.
By the beginning of the seventeenth century it was quite evident to thoughtful men that England needed room for growth. The population of the island had greatly increased during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The extension of the wool trade had encouraged the turning of vast tracts of tillable ground into sheep-pastures, which elbowed large communities of farm-laborers out of their calling. England at large waxed great, the condition of the merchant and upper classes was improved, but the peasant remained where he was, the gulf widening between him and those above him. The growth of the merchant class and their appearance on the scene as large landholders, still further lessened the feudal sympathy between peasant and landlord. The land abounded with idle men. Everywhere was noticed the uneasiness which frets a people too closely packed to find ready subsistence. Starvation induced lawlessness. |Colonization as a means of relief.| Colonization was thought by many to be the only means of obtaining permanent relief from the pressing political and economic dangers of pauperism; and naturally America, from which Gosnold, Pring, and Weymouth had but recently brought favorable reports, was deemed most available for the planting of new English communities.
But the temper of Englishmen had somewhat changed since the days of Raleigh's brilliant enterprises. A spirit of sober calculation had succeeded with the increase of the mercantile habit. Raleigh was out of favor, and there were no longer any private men who would undertake the task of colonization. If it were to be done at all, it must be by chartered trading companies; and naturally they looked upon all ventures with merchants' eyes rather than statesmen's. The career of the Muscovy Company, which had been profitably trading to Russia for a half century, and the rapid successes achieved by the East India Company, founded in 1599, were pointed to as examples of what could be done in this direction; although the obvious fact that Russia and India were old and wealthy countries, while America was a wilderness peopled by savages, appears not to have been considered.
29. The Charter of 1606.
Gosnold, returning from his voyage to New England, was ardent in the desire to establish a colony in the milder climate of Virginia, and easily won to his support six representative Englishmen,—Richard Hakluyt, then prebendary of Westminster, and now famous as an editor of the chronicles of early voyages; Robert Hunt, a clergyman; Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, two "brave and pious gentlemen;" a London merchant named Edward Maria Wingfield; and John Smith, a soldier. |The London and Plymouth Companies organized.| As a result of their endeavors,—seconded by Sir John Popham, chief justice of England, and Sir Ferdinando Gorges (page 41),—a charter was granted by King James (April 10, 1606) to a company with two subdivisions,—1. The London Company, composed of London merchants, who were to establish a colony somewhere between the 34th and 41st degrees of latitude; that is, between the southern limit of the North Carolina of to-day and the mouth of Hudson River. 2. The Plymouth Company, composed chiefly of traders and country gentlemen in the West of England, with chief offices at Plymouth, who were to plant a settlement somewhere between the 38th and 45th degrees; that is, north of the mouth of the Potomac, and south of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. But neither was to make a planting within one hundred miles of the other, although their assigned territories overlapped each other three degrees. Later (1609), the southern colony was given bounds in more specific terms,—it was to extend two hundred miles along the coast in either direction from Old Point Comfort, and "up into the land from sea to sea, west and northwest;" this latter phrase being the foundation of the later claim of Virginia to the Northwest.
King James, unlike Elizabeth, did not favor colonization; but he was induced to yield his consent to this undertaking. The colonies established under the charter were directly under the king's control, and not under that of Parliament. The government of the two proposed colonies was placed in the hands of two resident councils, of thirteen members each, nominated by the Crown from among the colonists; while above them was a general council of fourteen in England, also appointed by the king. Afterwards, eleven other persons, similarly selected, were added to the council in England.
The resident council was to govern according to laws, ordinances, and instructions dictated by the Crown. The royal instructions sent out with the first colonists to Virginia stipulated that the Church of England and the king's supremacy must be maintained, but the president of the council must not be in holy orders. The land tenure was to be the same as in England. Jury trial was guaranteed. Summary punishment must be enforced for drunkards, vagrants, and vagabonds, while the death penalty was prescribed for rioting, mutiny, and treason, murder, manslaughter, and offences against chastity. The resident council might coin money and control the extraction of all precious metals, giving one fifth to the Crown. It might also make provisions for the proper administration of public affairs; but all laws were to remain in vogue only conditionally, till ratified by the general council in England or the Crown. In another clause the king declared that all ordinances should be "consonant to the laws of England and the equity thereof." All trade was to be public, and in charge of a treasurer or cape merchant,—an officer chosen by the resident council from its own membership. All the produce of the colony was to be brought to a magazine, from which settlers were to be supplied with necessaries by the cape merchant. Doyle says: "The company ... was to be a vast joint-stock farm, or collection of farms, worked by servants who were to receive, in return for their labor, all their necessaries and a share in the proceeds of the undertaking." As a pious afterthought, the colonists were admonished "to show kindness to the savages and heathen people in those parts, and use all proper means to draw them to the true knowledge and service of God."
The rights given to the patentees, represented in the general council in England, were: free transport of emigrants and goods, the right to exact a duty of two and one half per cent on trade with the colony by Englishmen, and five per cent on trade by foreigners. For twenty-one years the proceeds of the enterprise were to accrue to the company; after that, to the Crown.
It should be noted that this patent, given by James to the combined London and Plymouth companies, differed greatly from that granted by Elizabeth to Gilbert and Raleigh, for it prescribed a constitution for the colonies, and left but little to the judgment of the patentees. The latter, in their eagerness to get a commercial charter, had allowed the king to assume an undue political control over their establishment. It was fortunate for Englishmen, both in America and England, that James was a weak monarch. He might readily have used his supreme power over the Virginia colonists, not only to browbeat them at will, but to tax them unmercifully for the purpose of raising money, with which he would be the better enabled to bid the home Parliament defiance while attacking the liberties of his people. He did not lack desire, but was wanting in courage and astuteness, and allowed those shrewder than himself gradually to re-shape the American charter until, within twenty years, Virginia had emerged into practical independence.
30. The Settlement of Virginia (1607-1624).
The London Company, of which Hakluyt, Somers, and Gates were the most active spirits, was first in the field. A hundred and forty-three colonists were gathered aboard three ships,—the "Discovery," the "Good Speed," and the "Susan Constant,"—which on the 19th of December, 1606, sailed down the Thames, on the way to Virginia. The composition of the party was not promising. Most of them were "gentlemen," unused to and scorning manual toil; only twelve were laborers; and among the artisans were "jewellers, gold-refiners, and a perfumer." |Character of the colonists.| Adventure, mines, and golden sands were in the minds of the company, and the "gentlemen" doubtless thought they were out for a holiday excursion. The fact that there were neither women nor children in the expedition shows how little conception these people had of the true mission of a colony. The little fleet was in charge of Christopher Newport, a seaman of good reputation, with whom Gosnold was associated.
Among the party was one of the patentees,—Captain John Smith. He was the son of a Lincolnshire gentleman; and being a soldier of fortune, had travelled and experienced adventures in many European countries,—a brave, robust, self-reliant, public-spirited, enterprising, humane, and withal a boastful Englishman, he has come down to us as one of the most romantic figures in American history. Smith's active temperament was not at first appreciated by his fellow-colonists, and in a fit of jealousy on shipboard they put him into irons upon a silly charge of conspiracy; and though he had been named a councillor by the king, he was not allowed to participate in the government for nearly a month after landing.
On the sixteenth of April, 1607, land was sighted, and the adventurers soon entered Chesapeake Bay, naming the outlying capes, Henry and Charles, after the king's sons, and the river, which they soon ascended, the James, in honor of the monarch himself. Fifty miles above the mouth of the river is "a low peninsula half buried in the tide at high water," which they unfortunately selected as the site of a town; and landing there on the thirteenth of May, they called the place Jamestown. Wingfield, one of the patentees, was chosen president of the resident council, exploring parties were sent out, fortifications were begun, and a few log-huts reared. The colonists had been instructed by the English council to search for water passages running through to the Pacific. A party soon set out, under Newport and Smith; but on reaching the falls of the James turned back. At first they were troubled by Indians; but peace had been made with the neighboring chief before Newport left for England, the twenty-second of June.
The marshes were rank, the water was bad, and food scanty at Jamestown. The colonists were for the most part a shiftless set, lacking the habit of industry. |A dismal summer.| The heat was so intense during the first summer that few houses were built, and the tents were rotten and leaky. The natives, being ill-treated, soon broke out again into hostilities. When autumn came, fifty of the colonists had died. "Some departed suddenly," wrote a chronicler, "but for the most part they died of mere famine. There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were in this new discovered Virginia.... It would make ... hearts bleed to hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries." The only men in office who had not in some degree succumbed to the miseries of the situation were Gosnold, a man of really superior ability, and Smith himself, the latter having now attained to supreme control by common consent. Smith compelled his people to labor,—"he that will not work shall not eat," was his dictum,—maintained trade with the Indians, among whom he became popular, drilled the little garrison, kept up the fortifications, explored and mapped the country and the coast, wrote appeals for assistance to London, and was the life and soul of the colony for two years.
In 1609 Newport had come out with supplies and one hundred and twenty emigrants, who again were mainly "gentlemen, goldsmiths, and libertines;" and he promptly sailed back with a load of worthless shining earth. Smith found the new-comers seized with a frenzy for discovering gold mines, and his troubles increased. |Smith the savior of the colony.| The company, impatient for returns, were disappointed because he insisted on having the people cultivate the rich soil, build houses, trade with the natives, and explore, rather than go seeking for gold where there was none. He appears to have been the only man of authority in the enterprise who understood the true conditions of colonization. He had repeatedly urged the patentees in London to cease sending him gentlemen, idlers, and curious handicraftsmen, and instead of such to ship "carpenters, husbandmen gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and diggers up of trees' roots;" and insisted that they "as yet must not look for profitable returning." To Smith we owe it that Jamestown lived through all its early disasters, so that when he left it, in October, 1609, it had acquired a foothold and was the nucleus of permanent settlement in Virginia. He never again returned to the colony, although in later years we find him diligently exploring the New England coast.