per's associate and colleague, as receiver-general, while “the traitor, George Durant," quietly discharged the duty of a judge. "Settle order amongst yourselves," wrote the proprietaries; and order had already been settled. Would the disciples of Fox subscribe to the authority of the proprietaries? "Yes," they replied, "with heart and hand, to the best of our capacities and understandings, so far as is consonant with God's glory and the advancement of his blessed truth;" and the restricted promise was accepted. In 1681, an act of amnesty, on easy conditions, was adopted.

In 1683, Sothel, on reaching the colony, found tranquillity established. His arrival changed the scene.

Sothel was of the same class of governors with Cranfield of New Hampshire. He had accepted the government in the hope of acquiring a fortune, and he cheated his associates, as well as plundered the colonists. To the latter he could not be acceptable, for it was his duty to establish the constitutions and enforce the navigation acts. To introduce the constitutions was impossible, unless he could transform a log cabin into a baronial castle, a negro slave into a herd of leet-men. And how could one man, without soldiers, and without a vessel of war, enforce the navigation acts? Sothel had no higher purpose than to grow rich by exacting illegal fees and engrossing traffic with the Indians. The people of North Carolina, already experienced in rebellion, having borne with him about five years, deposed him without bloodshed, and appealed once more to the proprietaries. It is proof that Sothel had committed no acts of wanton cruelty, that he preferred a request to submit his case to an assembly, fearing the colonists, whom he had pillaged, less than the associates whom he had betrayed. His request was granted; and the colony condemned him to a twelve months' exile and a perpetual incapacity for the government.

Here was a double grief to the proprietaries; the rapacity of Sothel was a breach of trust, the judgment of the assembly an ominous usurpation. The planters of North Carolina recovered tranquillity as soon as they escaped the misrule from abroad; and, sure of amnesty, esteemed themselves the happiest people on earth. They loved the clear air and bright

skies of their "summer land." Careless of religious sects, or colleges, or lawyers, or absolute laws, they possessed liberty of conscience and personal independence, freedom of the forest and of the river. From almost every homestead they enjoyed a prospect of spacious rivers, of primeval forests. For them unnumbered swine fattened on the fruits of the forest; for them cattle multiplied on the pleasant meadows. What though Europe was rocked to its centre by commotions? What though England was changing its constitution? Should the planter of Albemarle trouble himself for Holland or France for James II. or William of Orange? for a Whig party or a high church party? Almost all the American colonies were chiefly planted by those to whom the uniformities of European life were intolerable; North Carolina was planted by men to whom the restraints of other colonies were too severe. They dwelt in lonely granges; there was neither city nor township; there was hardly even a hamlet, or one house within sight of another; nor were there roads, except as the paths from house to house were distinguished by notches in the trees. But the settlers were gentle in their tempers, enemies to violence. Not all their successive revolutions had kindled in them vindictive passions; freedom was enjoyed without anxiety as without guarantees; and the spirit of humanity maintained its influence in the paradise of Quakers.

CHAPTER VIII.

SETTLEMENTS IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

To promote success in planting South Carolina, the proprietaries tempted emigrants by the offer of land at an easy quit-rent, and one hundred and fifty acres were granted for every able man-servant. "In that they meant negroes as well as Christians." Of the original thirteen states, South Carolina alone was from its origin essentially a planting state with slave labor.

In January, 1670, more than a month before the revised model was signed, a considerable number of emigrants set sail for Carolina, which, both for climate and soil, was celebrated as "the beauty and envy of North America." They were conducted by Joseph West, as commercial agent for the proprietaries; and by William Sayle, who, having more than twenty years before made himself known as leader in an attempt to plant the isles of the gulf of Florida, was constituted a proprietary governor, with jurisdiction extending as far north as Cape Carteret, as far south as the Spaniards would tolerate. Having touched at Ireland and Barbados, the ships which bore the company entered the well-known waters where the fleet of Ribault had anchored, and examined the site where the Huguenots had engraved the lilies of France and erected the fortress of Carolina. After short delay, they sailed into Ashley river, and on "the first high land convenient for tillage and pasturing," the three ship-loads of emigrants, who as yet formed the whole people of South Carolina, began their town. Few as were the settlers, no immediate danger was apprehended from the natives; epidemic sickness and sanguinary wars had left the neighboring coasts

almost a desert. Of this town, every log-house has vanished, and its site is absorbed in a plantation.

The emigrants had hardly landed before they instituted a government on the basis of liberty. A copy of the original fundamental constitutions, which had no article establishing the church of England, had been furnished them, duly signed and sealed; but it was indeed impossible "to execute the grand model." A parliamentary convention was held; five members of the grand council were elected to act with five whom the proprietaries had appointed; the whole body possessed a veto on the executive, and, with the governor and twenty delegates, who were now elected by the people, constituted the legislature of the province. Representative government struck root from the beginning. John Locke, as well as Sir John Yeamans and James Carteret, was created a landgrave. In 1671, the revised copy of the model was sent over, with a set of rules and instructions, but were firmly resisted, and the commonwealth, from its organization, was distracted by a political feud between the proprietaries and the people; between the friends of the church, always a minority, and a union of all classes of dissenters.

From Barbados arrived Sir John Yeamans, in 1671, with African slaves. In the same year there came from New York two ships with Dutch emigrants, who were followed by others of their countrymen from Holland.

The planting of South Carolina did not encounter unusual hardships. Yet the red men, though few, were unfriendly; and it was with arms at hand that the emigrants gathered oysters, or swept the rivers, or toiled at building.

The first site for a town had been chosen without regard to commerce. The point between the two rivers, to which, in honor of Shaftesbury, the names of Ashley and Cooper were given, soon attracted attention; in 1672, those who had purchased grants there, desirous of obtaining neighbors, willingly offered to surrender one half of their land as 66 commons of pasture;" and the town on the neck of land then called Oyster Point, in 1680, to become a village named from the reigning king, and, after more than a century, incorporated as the city of Charleston, began with the cabins of graziers.

In April, 1672, all previous parliaments and parliamentary conventions were dissolved; the rapidly increasing colony demanded "a new parliament," and instituted a government for itself; it did not deem it possible to conform more closely to the constitutions.

Labors of agriculture in the sultry clime were appalling to Englishmen. Neither did the culture of the cereal grasses at once promise success. It was observed that the climate of South Carolina is more congenial to the African "than that of the more northern colonies;" it became the great object of the emigrant "to buy negro slaves, without which,” adds Wilson, "a planter can never do any great matter;" and the negro race was multiplied so rapidly by importations that, in a few years, we are told, the blacks in the low country were to the whites in the proportion of twenty-two to twelve-a proportion that had no parallel north of the West Indies.

Imagination already regarded Carolina as the chosen spot for the culture of the olive; and, in the region where flowers bloom every month in the year, orange-trees were to supplant the cedar; mulberries to feed silk-worms; and choicest wines to be ripened. For this end, Charles II., with an almost solitary instance of munificence toward America, sent at his own expense to Carolina a few foreign Protestants, to domesticate the productions of the south of Europe.

From England emigrations were considerable. Even Shaftesbury, when, in July, 1681, he was committed to the Tower, desired leave to withdraw to Carolina. The character of the proprietaries was a sufficient invitation to members of the church of England. The promise of equal immunities attracted many dissenters. A contemporary historian commemorates with singular praise the company from Somersetshire, who, in 1683, were conducted to Charleston by Joseph Blake, brother to the gallant admiral. Blake was already advanced in life; but impatient of present oppression, and fearing still greater evils from a popish successor, he devoted to the advancement of emigration all the fortune which he had inherited as the fruits of his brother's victories. A colony of Scotch-Irish of the same year received a hearty wel

come.