MARYLAND.

ORIGIN OF VAST CHANGES.

127

the restoration, in full possession of liberty, based upon the practical assertion of the sovereignty of the people. Like Virginia, it had so nearly completed its institutions, that, till the epoch of its final separation from England, it hardly made any further advances towards freedom and independence.

Men love liberty, even if it be turbulent; and the colony increased, and flourished, and grew rich, in spite of domestic dissensions. Its population, in 1660, is variously estimated, at eight thousand and at twelve thousand. The country was dear to its inhabitants: there they desired to spend the remnant of their lives; there they coveted to make their graves.

CHAPTER XI.

NEW ENGLAND AND THE REFORMATION.

THE settlement of New England was a result of the reformation; not of the contest between the new opinions and the authority of Rome, but of implacable differences between Protestant dissenters and the established Anglican church.

Who will venture to measure the consequences of actions by the apparent humility or the remoteness of their origin? The mysterious influence of that Power which enchains the destinies of states, overruling the decisions of sovereigns and the forethought of statesmen, often deduces the greatest events from the least commanding causes. A Genoese adventurer, discovering America, changed the commerce of the world; an obscure German, inventing the printing-press, rendered possible the universal diffusion of intelligence; an Augustine monk, denouncing indulgences, introduced a schism in religion, and changed the foundations of

128

EARLY VOYAGES TO NEW ENGLAND.

European politics; a young French refugee, -skilled alike in theology and civil law, in the duties of magistrates and the dialectics of religious controversy, entering the republic of Geneva, and conforming its ecclesiastical discipline to the principles of republican simplicity, established a party, of which Englishmen became members, and New England the asylum. The enfranchisement of mind from spiritual despotism led directly to inquiries into the nature of civil government; and the doctrines of popular liberty, which sheltered their infancy in the wildernesses of the newly-discovered continent, within the short space of two centuries, have infused themselves into the life-blood of every rising state from Labrador to Chili.

The trading company of the west of England, incorporated, in 1606, in the same patent with Virginia, possessed too narrow resources or too little enterprise for success in establishing colonies. The Spaniards, affecting an exclusive right of navigation in the seas of the new hemisphere, captured and confiscated a vessel which Popham, the chief justice of England, and Gorges, the governor of Plymouth, had, with some others, equipped for discovery. But a second and almost simultaneous expedition from Bristol encountered no disasters; and the voyagers, on their return, increased public confidence, by renewing the favorable reports of the country they had visited. The spirit of adventure was not suffered to slumber; the lord chief justice displayed persevering vigor, for his honor was interested in the success of the company which his influence had contributed to establish; Gorges, the companion and friend of Raleigh, was still reluctant to surrender his sanguine hopes of fortune and domains in America; and, in 1607, two ships were despatched to Northern Virginia, commanded by Raleigh Gilbert, and bearing emigrants for a plantation under the presidency of George Popham. After a tedious voyage, the adventurers, in August, reached the coast of America near the mouth of the Kennebec, and, offering public

1607-1614.]

COLONY AT SAGADAHOC.

129

thanks to God for their safety, began their settlement under the auspices of religion, with a government framed as if for a permanent colony. Rude cabins, a storehouse, and some slight fortifications, were rapidly prepared, and the ships sailed for England in December, leaving forty-five emigrants in the plantation, which was named St. George. But the winter was intensely cold; the natives, at first friendly, became restless; the storehouse caught fire, and part of the provisions was consumed; the emigrants grew weary of their solitude; they lost Popham, their president, "the only one of the company that died there;" the ships which revisited the settlement with supplies, brought news of the death of the chief justice, the most vigorous friend of the settlement in England; and Gilbert, the sole in command at St. George, had, by the decease of his brother, become heir to an estate which invited his presence. So the plantation was abandoned; the colonists, returning to England, "did coyne many excuses," and sought to conceal their own deficiency of spirit by spreading exaggerated accounts of the rugged poverty of the soil, and the inhospitable severity of the climate.

The fisheries and the fur trade were not relinquished; vessels were annually employed in traffic with the Indians; and once, at least, perhaps oftener, a part of a ship's company_remained during a winter on the American coast. But new hopes were awakened, when, in April, 1614, Smith, who had already obtained distinction in Virginia, and who had, with rare sagacity, discovered, and, with unceasing firmness, asserted, that colonization was the true policy of England,

with two ships, set sail for the coast north of the lands granted by the Virginia patent. The expedition was a private adventure of "four merchants of London and himself," and was very successful. The freights were profitable; the health of the mariners did not suf fer; and the whole voyage was accomplished in less than seven months. While the sailors were busy with

130

JOHN SMITH IN NEW ENGLAND.

[1616.

their hooks and lines, Smith examined the shores from the Penobscot to Cape Cod, prepared a map of the coast, and named the country New England, a title which Prince Charles confirmed. The French could boast, with truth, that New France had been colonized before New England obtained a name; Port Royal was older than Plymouth, Quebec than Boston.

Encouraged by commercial success, Smith next endeavored, in the employment of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and of friends in London, members of the Plymouth company, to establish a colony. Sixteen men were all whom the adventurers destined for the occupation of New England. The attempt was unsuccessful. Smith was forced by extreme tempests to return. Again renewing his enterprise, he was, at last, intercepted by French pirates. His ship was taken away; he himself escaped alone, in an open boat, from the harbor of Rochelle. With unwearied enthusiasm, he next published a map and a description of New England, and spent many months in visiting the merchants and gentry of the west of England, to excite their zeal for enterprise in America. He proposed to the cities, mercantile profits, to be realized in short and safe voyages; to the noblemen, vast dominions; to men of small means, his earnestness drew a lively picture of the rapid advancement of fortune by colonial industry, of the abundance of game, the delights of unrestrained liberty, the pleasures to be derived from " angling and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea." The western company began to form plans of colonization; Smith was appointed admiral of the country for life; and a renewal of the letters patent, with powers analogous to those possessed by the southern company, became an object of eager solicitation.

But a new charter was not obtained without vigorous opposition. "Much difference there was betwixt the Londoners and the Westerlings," since each party was striving to engross all the profits to be derived from America; while the interests of the nation were up

1620.] THE COUNCIL ESTABLISHED AT PLYMOUTH. 131

held by others, who were desirous that no monopoly should be conceded to either company. The remonstrances of the Virginia corporation, and a transient regard for the rights of the country, could delay, but not defeat, a measure that was sustained by the personal favorites of the monarch. After two years' entreaty, the ambitious adventurers gained every thing which they had solicited; and, in November, 1620, King James issued to forty of his subjects, some of them members of his household and his government, the most wealthy and powerful of the English nobility, a patent, which in American annals, and even in the history of the world, has but one parallel. The adventurers and their successors were incorporated as "The Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering and governing New England, in America." The territory conferred on the patentees in absolute property, with unlimited jurisdiction, the sole powers of legislation, the appointment of all officers and all forms of government, extended, in breadth, from the fortieth to the forty-eighth degree of north latitude, and, in length, from the Atlantic to the Pacific; that is to say, nearly all the inhabited British possessions to the north of the United States, all New England, New York, half of New Jersey, very nearly all Pennsylvania, and the whole of the country to the west of these states, comprising, and, at the time, believed to comprise, much more than a million of square miles, and capable of sustaining far more than two hundred millions of inhabitants, were, by a single signature of King James, given away to a corporation within the realm, composed of but forty individuals.

The grant was absolute and exclusive: it conceded the land and islands, the rivers and the harbors, the mines and the fisheries. No regard was shown for the liberties of the future inhabitants of the colony; they were to be ruled, without their own consent, by the corporation in England. The patent yielded every thing to the avarice of the corporation. The very extent of