Views of the mother country. CHAPTER X. THE MOTHER COUNTRY. As the colonies passed through the struggles of infancy into the promises of manhood, they wore a new look in the sight of the mother country. Something more than had been anticipated was to be hoped, something more also was to be feared from them. It seemed as if they might be able to contribute largely to the resources of the mother-land; and yet it seemed as if they might think themselves able to withhold as well as to contribute. Strange symptoms of insubordination had appeared. The crown, the parliament, and the officials by which both were represented, had been confronted, here and there, with amazing boldness. It was high time, so thought the English rulers, to take the colonies in hand, to tighten the reins of government, and to confine them to the course marked out, as it was thought, by the interests of the mother country. Board of Chief of the agencies put in operation was the trade. board of trade, consisting of a president and seven members, entitled the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, (1696.) To this body were committed the functions hitherto exercised by committees of the privy council, but now magnified into large powers of administration. It was intrusted with the execution of the navigation acts, to which were at this time appended fresh and oppressive provisions of colonial Courts of Admiralty. It was also empowered to carry out the new acts by which not merely (169) 15 the trade but the administration of the colonies was to be brought under stricter control. The royal approval of all colonial governors, and the conformity of all colonial laws to the statutes of Parliament, were amongst the first steps to be taken. The board entered heartily into its missioǹ. It proposed the appointment of a captain general with absolute power to levy and to organize an army without reference to any colonial authority, (1697.) It laid a prohibition. upon the exportation of colonial woollens, even from one colony to another, (1698.) It actually went so far as to recommend the resumption of the charters that remained to some of the colonies, (1701.) Time and again, a bill was brought into Parliament to declare the charters void; but, for one reason or another, the design was postponed. The board of trade, approving itself by its zeal, became a sort of ministerial body on being attached to a secretary of state as its chief, (1714.) Its course, however, was not improved. The secretary longest in office (1724-48)- the Duke of Newcastle supposed New England to be an island. The board of trade acted as if they thought all the colonies a broken cluster off the British coast. African About the same time that the board of trade was Company organized, the Royal African Company, previously a monopoly, was so enlarged as to allow general participation in its operations. What these were appears from its name. But the name gives no indication of the near connection of the company with the American colonies, of their restiveness, and of its oppressiveness. "Give due encouragement," say the royal instructions of Queen Anne to the governor of New York and New Jersey, "to merchants, and, in particular, to the Royal African Company," (1702.) "The slave trade," reëchoes Parliament, half a century afterwards, in making the trade independent of the African Company, "is very advantageous to Great Britain," (1750.) It was, in fact, a cardinal point in the treaties of England with the European powers. The treaty of Utrecht contained a contract on the part of Spain that her colonies should be provided with slaves by Great Britain alone, (1713.) The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was followed by a convention indemnifying Great Britain, to the amount of a hundred thousand pounds, for relinquishing the monopoly of the slave trade with the Spanish colonies, (1750.) The closer was the gripe upon the English colonies. Vainly did Virginia and South Carolina, for instance, lay a prohibitory duty upon the importation of slaves; their acts were annulled by the royal command. And by what reasoning, it will be asked, were the advantages of the traffic upheld in the mother country? The answer is simple. In the first place, the profits of the African Company and of the private slave traders were enormous. In the second place, the dependence of the colonists in agriculture, manufacture, and trade, as well as in government, was assured, so long as they were kept to slave labor. This was openly avowed in England; so that, resist as they would, the colonies were at the mercy of the Royal African Company as long as it endured. Colonial The boards and companies of the mother country govern- found congenial instruments in the governors of the ors. various colonies. All but those whom the colonists were able to elect for themselves, as in Connecticut and Rhode Island, may be said, as a general remark, to have been the main stays of the policy pursued by the English authorities. A needier, greedier set of men was never sent forth to rule than the spendthrift courtiers, the brokendown officials, and the cringing colonists, who successively appeared in the scramble after colonial spoils. 2 An illustration offers itself in the career of Edward Hyde, Lord Cornbury, grandson of the great Earl of Clar Cornbury in New endon, and cousin to Queen Anne, by whom he was appointed governor of New York, (1702.) His York. arrival was greeted with delight by a faction then suffering from the reaction consequent upon Leisler's cruel fate, ten years before. The party opposed to Leisler and his adherents, now getting the upper hand, voted an enthusiastic grant to his lordship the governor, and doubled his salary besides. He was not contented; but, on the vote of a large sum, in the ensuing year, for the fortification of the Narrows, he appropriated it to himself without leave or license. This drove the assembly to insist upon having a treasurer of its own -a demand that was afterwards allowed by the queen, (1705.) Cornbury became more and more odious to those who had welcomed him with rapturous obedience. One assembly after another was dissolved for not meeting his multiplied requisitions. Two Presbyterian missionaries from England were prosecuted by him on no other charge than their creed, but were triumphantly acquitted by the jury, (1707.) His course was much the same in New Jersey, then under the New York governor, where, after violent assaults upon the political and religious privileges of the colony, he was met face to face in the assembly by charges of oppression and corruption, (1707.) Such proceedings as Cornbury's were too wanton to be tolerated even in England. He was recalled, but without any other amends besides the recall, for the indignities from which New York and New Jersey had suffered during seven bitter years, (1709.) Burnet Belcher Some years pass, and the then governor of New and York, Colonel Cosby, complains to the board of in Massa- trade of "the example of the Boston people," chusetts. (1732.) With his views and with the views of the board there was ample motive for complaint. William Burnet, formerly governor of New York, now of Massa chusetts, had made it a point, from his first entrance upon his new government, to obtain a permanent salary, (1728.) The House of Representatives would not hear of such a thing, much preferring their usual mode of a yearly vote. This the governor scorned, and hinted at the loss of the charter in case he was denied his will. A town meeting of the Bostonians sustained the house with so much effect that Burnet held the next General Court at Salem. Boston is the proper place for our sessions, declared the sturdy representatives. "Then meet in Cambridge the next time," rejoined the governor, (1729.) Burnet dying, one of the agents sent to complain of him in England, Jonathan Belcher, was appointed his successor. But the colonist was soon involved in the same disputes as the Englishman, both, in the present case, obeying instructions rather than following their own desires. After a two years' controversy, Belcher obtained leave from England to accept a salary for the year, (1731.) Even this was cut off, on his opposing, as he was instructed to do, the further issue of paper money, already a sore subject in Massachusetts. Belcher wrote to the board of trade that a crisis was at hand. The house, on the other side, wrote to request the king to recall the governor's instructions, (1732.) On the king's refusal, the agents of the house made the same request to Parliament. "This is a high insult," replied that body, "upon his majesty's government, and tending to shake off the dependency of the colonies," (1733.) The House of Representatives restored the salaries which it had suspended; but some fresh disputes arising, the removal of Belcher was asked for and obtained, (1740.) Clinton's A few years later, and Governor Clinton of New appeal. York, failing to obtain a grant for five years, appealed to the secretary at the head of the board of trade "to make a good example for all America," (1748.) What |