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years after Hooke's loving reference to King Charles there was something ominous in the cool self-control with which the people of Massachusetts refrained from either approving or disapproving his execution. It was equally ominous when they abstained from recognizing the accession of Richard Cromwell, and when they let fifteen months pass before sending a congratulatory address to Charles II. It was the beginning of a policy of indifference more significant than any policy of resistance. When in 1660, under that monarch, the Act of Navigation was passed, prescribing that no merchandise should be imported into the plantations but in English vessels navigated by Englishmen, the New England colonies simply ignored it. During sixteen years the Massachusetts Governor, annually elected by the people, never once took the oath which the Navigation Act required of him; and when the courageous Leverett was called to account for this he answered, "The King can in reason do no less than let us enjoy our liberties and trade, for we have made this large plantation of our own charge, without any contribution from the crown." Four years after the Act of Navigation, in 1664, the English fleet brought royal commissioners to Boston, with instructions aiming at farther aggression; and there was great dignity in the response of the General Court, made through Governor Endicott, October 30, 1664:

an alarm on the trumpet, and proclaimed that the General Court protested against any such meeting. He then departed to make similar proclamation in other parts of the town; and when the royal commissioners came together they found nobody with whom to confer but the gouty and irate Colonel Cartwright, enraged at the disturbance of his morning slumbers. So perished all hope of coercing the Massachusetts colony at that time.

Thus early did the British yoke begin to make itself felt as a grievance. The Massachusetts men discreetly allayed the effect of their protest by sending his Majesty a ship-load of masts, the freight on which cost the colony £1600. For ten years the quarrel subsided: England had trouble enough with the London fire and the London plague without meddling with the colonies. Then the contest revived, and while the colonies were in the deathstruggle of Philip's war, Edward Randolph came as commissioner with a king's letter in 1675.

Two years later the Massachusetts colonists made for the first time the distinct assertion to the King, while pledging their loyalty, that "the laws of England were bounded within the four seas, and did not reach America," giving as a reason for this, they [the colonists] not being represented in Parliament." Then followed the long contest for the charter, while Edward Randolph, like a sort of Mephistopheles, was constantly coming and going between America and England with fresh complaints and new orders, crossing the Atlantic eight times in nine years, and having always, by his own statement, "pressed the necessity of a general Governor as absolutely necessary for the honor and

The all-knowing God he knowes our greatest ambition is to liue a poore and quiet life in a corner of the world, without offence to God or man. Wee came not into this wilderness to seeke great things to ourselves, and if any come after vs to seeke them heere, they will be disappoint-service of the crown." All this long series ed." They then declare that to yield to the demands of the commissioners would be simply to destroy their own liberties, expressly guaranteed to them by their King, and dearer than their lives.

The commissioners visited other colonies and then returned to Boston, where they announced that they should hold a court at the house of Captain Thomas Breedon on Hanover Street, at 9 A.M., May 24, 1665. It happened that a brother officer of Captain Breedon, one Colonel Cartwright, who had come over with the commissioners, was then lying ill with the gout at this same house. At eight in the morning a messenger of the General Court appeared beneath the window, blew

of contests has been minutely narrated by Mr. Charles Deane, with a thoroughness and clearness which would have won him a world-wide reputation had they only been brought to bear upon the history of some little European state. Again and again, in different forms, the attempt was made to take away the charters of the colonies; and the opposition was usually led, at least in New England, by the clergy. crease Mather, in 1683-4, addressed a town meeting in opposition to one such demand, and openly counselled that they should return Naboth's answer when Ahab asked for his vineyard, that they would not give up the inheritance of their fathers.

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early charters were defective in this, that | fasting and prayer.'" And it required not merely these methods, but something more, to eject Sir Edmund at last from the colonies.

they did not clearly define where the line was to be drawn between the rights of the local government and of the crown. . We can see now that such definition would have been impossible; even the promise given to Lord Baltimore that Maryland should have absolute self-government did not avert all trouble. It is also to be remembered that there were great legal difficulties in annulling a charter, so long as the instrument itself had not been reclaimed by the power that issued it. We read with surprise of a royal scheme thwarted by so simple a process as the hiding of the Connecticut charter in a hollow tree by William Wadsworth; but an almost vital importance was attached in those days to the actual possession of the instrument. It was considered the most momentous of all the Lord Chancellor's duties indeed, that from which he had his name (cancellarius)—to literally cancel and obliterate the King's letters patent under the great seal. Hence, although the old charter of Massachusetts was vacated October 23, 1684, it has always been doubted by lawyers whether this was ever legally done, inasmuch as the old charter never was cancelled, and hangs intact in the office of the Massachusetts Secretary of State to this day. In 1686 came the new Governor for the colonies-not the dreaded | Colonel Kirke, who had been fully expected, but the less formidable Sir Edmund Andros.

The first foretaste of the provincial life as distinct from the merely colonial was in the short-lived career of Sir Edmund Andros. He came, a brilliant courtier, among the plain Americans; his servants wore gay liveries; Lady Andros had the first coach seen in Boston. He was at different times Governor-General of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Virginia. Everywhere he was received with aversion, but everywhere this was tempered by the feeling that it might have been worse, for it might have been Kirke. Yet there was exceeding frankness in the way the colonists met their would-be tyrant. When he visited Hartford, Connecticut, for instance, he met Dr. Hooker one morning, and said, "I suppose all the good people of Connecticut are fasting and praying on my account.' The doctor replied, "Yes; we read, 'This kind goeth not out but by

The three years' sway of Sir Edmund Andros accustomed the minds of the American colonists to a new relation between themselves and England. Even where the old relation was not changed in form it was changed in feeling. The colonies which had seemed most secure in their self-government were liable at any moment to become mere royal provinces. Indeed, they were officially informed that his Majesty had decided to unite under one government "all the English territories in America, from Delaware Bay to Nova Scotia," though this was not really attempted. Yet charters were taken away almost at random, colonies were divided or united without the consent of their inhabitants, and the violation of the right of local government was everywhere felt. But in various ways, directly or indirectly, the purposes of Andros were thwarted. When the English revolution of 1688 came, his power fell without a blow, and he found himself in the hands of the rebellious men of Boston. The day had passed by when English events could be merely ignored, and so every colony proclaimed with joy the accession of William and Mary. Such men as Jacob Leisler, in New York, Robert Treat, in Connecticut, and the venerable Simon Bradstreetnow eighty-seven years old-in Massachusetts, were at once recognized as the leaders of the people. There was some temporary disorder, joined with high hope, but the colonies never really regained what they had lost, and henceforth held, or less distinctly, the character of provinces until they took their destiny, long after, into their own hands. It needed almost a century to prepare them for that event, not only by their increasing sense of grievance, but by learning to stretch out their hands to one another.

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With the fall of the colonial charters fell the New England confederacy that had existed from 1643. There were other plans of union: William Penn formed a very elaborate one in 1698; others labored afterward in pamphlets to modify his plan or to suggest their own. On nine different occasions, between 1684 and 1751, three or more colonies met in council, represented by their Governors or by their commissioners, to consult on internal af

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fairs, usually with reference to the Indians; but they apparently never had a thought of disloyalty, and certainly never proclaimed independence; nor did their meetings for a long time suggest any alarm in the minds of the British ministry. The new jealousies that arose related rather to commercial restrictions than to the form of government.

It is necessary to remember that even in colonial days, while it was of the greatest importance that the British law-makers should know all about the colonies, there

was on their part even a denser ignorance as to American affairs than that which now impresses the travelling American in England. When he is asked if he came from America by land, it is only a matter for amusement; but when, as James Otis tells us writing in 1764-it was not uncommon for official papers to come from an English Secretary of State addressed to "the Governor of the island of New England," it was a more serious matter. Under such circumstances the home government was liable at any minute to be

JAMES OTIS.-From a painting by I. Blackburn, 1755

swept away from all just policy by some angry tale told by Randolph or Andros. The prevalent British feeling toward the colonies was one of indifference, broken only by outbursts of anger and spasms of commercial selfishness.

The event which startled the British ministry from this indifference was the taking of Louisburg in 1745. This success may have been, as has been asserted, only a lucky accident; no matter, it startled not only America, but Europe. That a fortress deemed impregnable by French engineers, and amply garrisoned by French soldiers, should have been captured by a mob of farmers and fishermen-this gave subject for reflection. "Every one knows the importance of Louisburg," wrote James Otis, proudly, "in the consultations of Aix-la-Chapelle." Voltaire, in writing the history of Louis XV.. heads the chapter of the calamities of France with this event. He declares that the mere undertaking of such an enterprise showed of what a community was capable when it united the spirit of trade and of war. The siege of Louisburg, he says, was not due to the cabinet at London, but solely to the daring of the New England traders ("ce fut le fruit de la hardiesse des marchands de la Nouvelle Angleterre"). But while the feeling inspired on the European continent was one of respect, that created in England was mingled with dread. Was,

then, the child learning to do without the parent? And certainly the effect on the minds of the Americans looked like anything but the development of humility. Already the colonies, from Massachusetts to Virginia, were eagerly planning the conquest of Canada, they to furnish the whole land force and Great Britain the fleet-a project which failed through the fears of the British ministry. The Duke of Bedford, then at the head of the naval service, frankly objected to it because of "the independence it might create in these provinces, when they shall see within themselves so great an army possessed by so great a country by right of conquest." And the Swedish traveller, Peter Kalm, writing three years later from New York, put the whole matter yet more clearly, thus: "There is reason for doubting whether the King, if he had the power, would wish to drive the French from their possessions in Canada.... The English government has therefore reason to regard the French in North America as the chief power that urges their colonies to submission." Any such impressions were naturally confirmed by the fact that the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in the same year when Kalm wrote, provided for the mutual restoration of all conquests, and the indignant American colonists saw Louisburg go back to the French.

The trouble was that the British government wished the colonies to unite sufficiently to check the French designs, but not enough to assert their own power. Thus the ministry positively encouraged the convention of delegates from the New England colonies and from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland which met at Albany, by a happy coincidence of date, on July 4, 1754. It was in this convention that Franklin began that course of national influence which was so long continued, and brought forward his famous representation of the snake dismembered, with the motto, "Unite or Die." He showed also his great power of organizing and harmonizing public movements by carrying through the convention a plan for a council of forty-eight members distributed among the different colonies, and having for its head a royal presiding officer with veto power. All the delegates, except those from Connecticut, sustained the plan; it was only when it went to the several colonies and the British ministry that it failed. Its failure in these two direc

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tions came from diametrically opposite ern settlements, which had suffered most reasons; the colonies thought that it gave in the Indian wars, were again to suffer them too little power, and the King's Coun- most from oppression. An English politicil found in it just the reverse fault. It fail- cal economist of 1690, in a tract included ed, but its failure left on the public mind in the Harleian Miscellany, pointed out an increased feeling of separate interests that there were two classes of colonies in between England and America. Merely America; that England need have no jeato have conceived such a plan was a lousy of colonies which raised only sugar great step toward the American Union and tobacco, and thus gave her a market; which came afterward; but still there but she must keep anxious watch on those was no conscious shrinking from the colonies which disputed that traffic, comBritish yoke. peted with England in fishing and trade, and "threatened in time a total independence therefrom." "When America shall be so well peopled, civilized, and divided into kingdoms," wrote Sir Thomas Browne about the same time, "they are like to have so little regard of their originals as to acknowledge no subjection unto them." All the long series of arbitrary measures which followed were but the effort of the British government to avert this danger. The conquest of Canada, by making the colonies more important, only disposed the ministry to enforce obnoxious laws that had hitherto been dead letters.

The ten colonies which had a separate existence in 1700 had half a century later grown to thirteen. Delaware, after having been merged in Pennsylvania, was again separated from it in 1703; North and South Carolina were permanently divided in 1729; Georgia was settled in 1733. No colony had a nobler foundation; it was planned by its founder-a British general and a member of Parliament-expressly as a refuge for poor debtors and other unfortunates; the colony was named Georgia in honor of the King, but it was given to the proprietors "in trust for the poor," and its seal had a family of silk-worms, with the motto, "Not for yourselves" (Sic vos non vobis). Oglethorpe always kept friendship with the Indians; he refused to admit either slavery or ardent spirits into the colony. But his successors did not adhere to his principles, and the colony was small and weak up to the time of the coming separation from England. Yet the growth of the colonies as a whole was strong and steady. Bancroft estimates their numbers in 1754 at 1,185,000 whites and 260,500 colored, making in all nearly a million and a half. Counting the whites only, Massachusetts took the lead in population; counting both races, Virginia. "Some few towns excepted, wrote Dickinson soon after, "we are all tillers of the earth, from Nova Scotia to West Florida. We are a people of culti vators, scattered over an immense terri tory, communicating with each other by means of good roads and navigable rivers, united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws without dreading their power, because they are equitable."

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Such laws were the "Navigation Act," and the "Sugar Act," and what were known generally as the "Acts of Trade,' all aimed at the merchants of New England and New York. Out of this grew the "Writs of Assistance," which gave

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GENERAL OGLETHORPE, FOUNDER OF GEORGIA.

But if the colonies had all been composed of peaceful agriculturists, the British yoke would have been easy. It was authority to search any house for meron the commercial colonies that the ex-chandise liable to duty, and which were actions of the home government bore most resisted in a celebrated argument by James severely, and hence it was that the East- Otis in 1761. Then came the "Declara

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