ANALYSIS. 1. Peace of 1763. Hoto toe may view the colonies at this period. 2. Of the causes which led to this change. and Pontchartrain,* to the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time Spain, with whom England had been at war during the previous year, ceded to Great Britain her possessions of East and West Florida.† 18. 'The peace of 1763 was destined to close the series of wars in which the American colonies were involved by their connection with the British empire. We may now view them as grown up to manhood, about to renounce the authority of the mother country-to adopt councils of their own-and to assume a new name and station among the nations of the earth. Some of the causes which led to this change might be gathered from the foregoing historical sketches, but they will be developed more fully in the following Appendix, and in the Chapter on the causes which led to the American Revolution. Pontchartrain is a lake more than a hundred miles in circumference, the southern shore of which is about five miles N. from New Orleans. The passage by which it communicates with Lake Borgne on the E. is called The Rigolets. (See Map, p. 438.) That part of the country ceded by Spain was divided, by the English monarch, into the governments of East and West Florida. East Florida included all embraced in the present Florida, as far W as the Apalachicola River. West Florida extended from the Apalachicola to the Mississippi, and was bounded on the N. by the 31st degree of latitude, and on the 8. by the Gulf of Mexico, and a line drawn through Lakes Pontchartrain and Maurepas, and the Rivers Amite and Iberville, to the Mississippi. Thus those parts of the states of Alabama and Mississippi which extend from the 31st degree down to the Gulf of Mexico, were included in West Florida. APPENDIX TO THE COLONIAL HISTORY. Appendix. 1. Before we proceed to a relation of the immediate causes JAMES 1. which led to the American Revolution, and the exciting incidents 1603-1625. of that struggle, we request the reader's attention, in accordance 1. General with the design previously explained, to a farther consideration of character and such portions of European history as are intimately connected with design of this our own during the period we have passed over in the preceding pages;-in connection with which we purpose to examine farther more of the internal relations, character, condition, and social progress of the American people during their colonial existence. 2. At the close of the "Appendix to the period of Voyages and 2. Previous Discoveries" we gave an account of the origin, early history, and character of the puritan party in England, some of whose members became the first settlers of several of the North American colonies. 3We now go back to England for the purpose of following out in 3. Continua their results the liberal principles of the puritan sects, as they afterwards affected the character and destiny both of the English and the American people. 3. 4On the accession of James the First to the throne of England, in the year 1603, the church party and the puritan party begin to assume more of a political character than they had exhibited during the reign of Elizabeth. The reign of that princess had been favorable to intellectual advancement; the Reformation had infused new ideas of liberty into the minds of the people; and as they had escaped, in part, from the slavery of spiritual despotism, a general eagerness was manifested to carry their principles farther, as well in politics as in religion. 4. 5The operation of these principles had been in part restrained by the general respect for the government of Elizabeth, which, however, the people did not accord to that of her successor; and the spell being once broken, the spirit of party soon began to rage with threatening violence. That which, in the time of Elizabeth, was a controversy of divines about religious faith and worship, now became a political contest between the crown and the people. account of the puritans. tion of their history. JAMES 1. 1603-1625. 4. Character the time of the accession of James I. of parties at 5. Political aspect of the religious controversies. in numbers and influ ence. 5. The puritans rapidly increased in numbers, nor was it long 6. Increase of before they became the ruling party in the House of Commons, the puritans where, although they did not always act in concert, and although their immediate objects were various, yet their influence constantly tended to abridge the prerogatives of the king, and to increase the power of the people. Some, whose minds were absorbed with the desire of carrying out the Reformation to the farthest possible extent, exerted themselves for a reform in the church: others attacked arbitrary courts of justice, like that of the Star-chamber, and the power of arbitrary imprisonment exercised by officers of 7. Their vari ous objects, dency of their Juris. and the ten The appellation "puritan" now stood for three parties, which though commonly united, were yet actuated by very different views and motives. "There were the political puritans, who maintained the highest principles of civil liberty; the puritans in discipline, who were averse to the ceremonies and episcopal government of the church; and the doctrinal puritans, who rigidly defended the speculative system of the first reformers." ."- Hume. ANALYSIS the crown-but yet the efforts of all had a common tendency:the principles of democracy were contending against the powers of despotism. 1. The policy af James 2 H partal defeared 2. The anom character. 6. The arbitrary principles of government which James had adopted, rather than his natural disposition, disposed him to exert all the influence which his power and station gave him, in favor of the established church system, and in opposition to the puritan party. Educated in Scotland, where presbyterianism prevailed, he had observed among the Scoth reformers a strong tendency towards republican principles, and a zealous attachment to civil liberty, and on his accession to the throne of England he was resolved to prevent, if possible, the growth of the sect of puritans in that country. Yet his want of enterprise, his pacific disposition, and his love of personal ease, rendered him incapable of stemming the torrent of liberal principles that was so strongly setting against the arbitrary powers of royalty. 7. The anomalies of the character of James present a curious altes of his compound of contradictions. Hume says: "His generosity bordered on profusion, his learning on pedantry, his pacific disposition on pusillanimity, his wisdom on cunning, his friendship on light fancy and boyish fondness." "All his qualities were sullied with weakness, and embellished by humanity." Lingard says of him. His discourse teemed with maxims of political wisdom; his conduct frequently bore the impress of political folly. Posterity has agreed to consider him a weak and prodigal king, a vain and loquacious pedant." His English flatterers called him "the British Solomon," the Duke of Sully says of him, He was the wisest fool in Europe." 4. The reign of James memorable Jor chat. Live to the S. 4The reign of this prince is chiefly memorable as being the period in which the first English colonies were permanently planted in America. Hume. speaking of the eastern American 5. Hume's re- coast in reference to the colonies planted there during the reign of mark James, says: " Peopled gradually from England by the necessitous American and indigent, who at home increased neither wealth nor populousness, the colonies which were planted along that tract have promoted the navigation, encouraged the industry, and even perhaps multiplied the inhabitants of their mother country. The spirit of independence, which was revived in England, here shoue forth in its full lustre, and received new accessions from the aspiring colonies. An extract from Hallain showing the different tenes and practices of the opposing religious parties at this time, and the disposition of James needlessly to harass the purins may be interesting to the reader The puritans, as is well known, practiced a very strict observance of the Sabbath, a term which, instead of Sunday, became a distinctive mark of the puritan party We quote, as a matter of historical interest, the following: Those who opposed them the puritans) on the high church side, not only derided the extravagance of the Sabba'arians, as the others were called, but pretended that the command ment having been confined to the Hebrews, the modern observance of the first day of the week as a season of rest and devotion was an ecclesiastical institution, and in po degree more venerable than that of the other festivals or the season of Lent, which the puritans stubbornly despised. Such a controversy might well have been left to the usual weapons. But James, or souie of the bishops to whom he listened, bethought themselves that this might serve as a test of puritan ministers. He published accor ingly a declaration to be read in the churches, permitting all lawful recreations on Sunday after divine service, such as dancing, archery, Maygames, and morrice-dances, and other usual sports; but with a prohibition of bear-baiting, and other unlawful games. No recusant, or any one who had not attended the church service, was entitled to this privilege; which might consequently be regarded as a bounty on devotion. The severe puritan saw it in no such point of view. To his cynical temper, May-games and morrice-dances were hardly tolerable on six days of the week; they were now recommended for the seventh. And this impious license was to be promulgated in the church itself. It is indeed difficult to explain so unnecessary an insult on the precise clergy, but by supposing an intention to harass those who should refuse compliance.” The declaration. however, was not enforced till the following reign. The puritan clergy, who then refused to read this declaration in their churches, were punished by suspension or deprivation. JAMES I. character of those who, being discontented with the established church and monarchy, had sought for freedom amidst those savage 1603-1625. deserts." favorable to American colonization. 9. An account of the planting of several of the American colo- 1. The king nies during the reign of James has elsewhere been given. The king, being from the first favorable to the project of American colonization, readily acceded to the wishes of the projectors of the first plans of settlement; but in all the charters which he granted, his arbitrary maxims of government are discernible. 2By the first charter of Virginia, the emigrants were subjected to a corporation in England, called the London Company, over whose deliberations they had no influence; and even this corporation possessed merely administrative, rather than legislative powers, as all supreme legislative authority was expressly reserved to the king. The most valuable political privilege of Englishmen was thus denied to the early colonists of Virginia. 2. His arbitrary policy the first Virginia char as shown by ter. 3. Character of the second and the third charter. 10. By the second charter, granted in 1609, the authority of the corporation was increased by the surrender of those powers which the king had previously reserved to himself, yet no additional privileges were conceded to the people. The same indifference to The political rights of the latter are observable in the third charter, granted in 1612, although by it the enlarged corporation assumed more democratic form, and, numbering among its members many of the English patriots, was the cause of finally giving to the Vir- 4. Connection ginia colonists those civil liberties which the king would still have between Eng lish independenied them. 4Here is the first connection that we observe be- dence, and tween the spirit of English independence and the cause of freedom freedom in in the New World. 11. After the grant of the third charter of Virginia, the meetings of the London Company were frequent, and numerously attended. Some of the patriot leaders in parliament were among the members, and in proportion as their principles were opposed by the high church and monarchy party at home, they engaged with the more earnestness in schemes for advancing the liberties of Virginia. In 1621 the Company, after a violent struggle among its own members, and a successful resistance of royal interference, proceeded to establish a liberal written constitution for the colony, by which the system of representative government and trial by jury were established-the supreme powers of legislation were conceded to a colonial legislature, with the reserve of a negative voice to the governor appointed by the company-and the courts of justice were required to conform to the laws of England. the New World. 5. The London Company favors the cause of freedom. Grahame. 12. 6 Thus early," says Grahame, "was planted in America that 6. Remarks of representative system which forms the soundest political frame wherein the spirit of liberty was ever imbodied, and at once the safest and most efficient organ by which its energies are exercised and developed. So strongly imbued were the minds of Englishmen in this age with those generous principles which were rapidly advancing to a first manhood in their native country, that wherever they settled, the institutions of freedom took root and grew up along with them." Although the government of the Virginia colony was soon after taken into the hands of the king, yet the representative system established there could never after be subverted, nor the colonial assemblies suppressed. Whenever the rights of the people were encroached upon by arbitrary enactments, their representatives were ready to reassert them; and thus a channel was ever kept open for the expression of the public griev ances. The colonial legislature, in all the trials through which it 7. Permanence of the tire system in Virginia representa ANALYSIS. afterwards passed, ever proved itself a watchful guardian of the cause of liberty. 1. Failure of the Plymouin Com any at Colonization. 13. The charters granted by king James, in 1606, to the Lonthe schemes of don and Plymouth companies, were embraced in one and the same instrument, and the forms of government designed for the projected colonies were the same. After various attempts at colonization," the Plymouth company, disheartened by so many disappointments, abandoned the enterprise, limiting their own efforts to an insignificant traffic with the natives, and exercising no farther dominien over the territory than the disposition of small portions of it to private adventurers, who, for many years, succeeded no better in attempts at settlement than the Company had done before them. In reference to the seemingly providential failure of all these schemes for planting colonies in New England, we subjoin the following appropriate remarks from Grahame. 2 Remarks of Gaan on 14. We have sufficient assurance that the course of this world is not governed by chance; and that the series of events which it exhibits is regulated by divine ordinance, and adapted to purposes which, from their transcendent wisdom and infinite range, often elude the grasp of created capacity. As it could not, then, be without design, so it seems to have been for no common object that discomfiture was thus entailed on the counsels of princes, the schemes of the wise, and the efforts of the brave. It was for no ordinary people that the land was reserved, and of no common qualities or vulgar superiority that it was ordained to be the prize. New England was the destined asylum of oppressed piety and virtue; and its colonization, denied to the pretensions of greatness and the efforts of might, was reserved for men whom the great and mighty despised for their insignificance, and persecuted for their integrity." 3. Applica 15. After the puritans had determined to remove to America, ton of the they sent agents to king James, and endeavored to obtain his apPurtians for the forer of proval of their enterprise. With characteristic simplicity and King James. honesty of purpose they represented to him "that they were well weaned from the delicate milk of their mother country, and inured to the difficulties of a strange land; that they were knit together in a strict and sacred bond, by virtue of which they held themselves bound to take care of the good of each other, and of the whole; that it was not with them as with other men, whom small things could discourage, or small discontent cause to wish themselves at home ↑ Their par- again." All, however, that could be obtained from the king, who tai success. refused to grant them a charter for the full enjoyment of their religious privileges, was the vague promise that the English governmont should refrain from molesting them. 5 The pro gress is far wade. 6 Death of James the a. March 27, old style. CHARLES I 16. We have thus passed rapidly in review the more prominent events in English history connected with the planting of the first American colonies during the reign of James the First. He died in 1625, the first sovereign of an established empire in America,” just as he was on the point of composing a code of laws for the domestic administration of the Virginia colony. 17. James was succeeded by his only son, Charles the First, then 1625–1649. in the 25th year of his age. Inheriting the arbitrary principles 1. Succession of his father; coming to the throne when a revolution in public opinHes charac ion in relation to the royal prerogative, the powers of parliament, ter, policy, and the liberty of the subject was rapidly progressing: and destiand fall. tute of the prudence and foresight which the critical emergencies of Charles L. of the times required in him, he persisted in arrogantly oppesing the many needed reforms demanded by the voice of the nation |