XIII. original laws. A rapid change of governors aug- CHAP. mented the confusion. There was no harmony of interests between the lords paramount and their tenants, or of authority between the executive and the popular assembly. As in all other colonies south of the Potomac, colonial legislation did not favor the collection of debts that had been contracted abroad; the proprietaries demanded a rigid conformity to the cruel and intolerant method of the English courts. It had been usual to hold the polls for elections at Charleston only; as population extended, the proprietaries ordered an apportionment of the representation; but Carolina would not allow districts to be carved out and representation to be apportioned from abroad; and the useful reformation could not be adopted till it was demanded and effected by the people themselves. England had always favored its merchants in the invasion of the Spanish commercial monopoly; had sometimes protected pirates; and Charles II. had conferred the honors of knighthood on a freebooter. The treaty of 1667 changed the relations of the pirate and the contraband trader. But men's habits do not change so easily; and in Carolina, especially after Portroyal had been laid waste by the Spaniards, there were not wanting those who regarded the buccaneers as their natural allies against a common enemy;1 and thus opened one more issue with the proprietaries. When the commerce of South Carolina had so 1685 increased that a collector of plantation-duties was appointed, a new struggle arose. The palatine court, careful not to offend the king, who, nevertheless, was not diverted from the design of annulling their charter by a process of law, gave orders that the acts of 186 CHAP. navigation should be enforced. The colonists, who XIII. had made themselves independent of the proprietaries 1685. in fact, esteemed themselves independent of parlia CONTEST FOR POPULAR POWER IN SOUTH CAROLINA ment of right. Here, as every where, the acts were indignantly resisted as at war with natural equity; here they were also hated as an infringement of the conditions of the charter, of which the validity was their motive to emigrate. The pregnant cause of dissensions in Carolina could not be removed, till the question of powers should be definitively settled. The proprietaries were willing to believe, that the cause existed in the want of dignity and character in the governor. That affairs might be more firmly established, James Colleton, a brother of a proprietary, was appointed governor, with the rank of landgrave and an endowment of forty-eight thousand acres of land; but neither his relationship, nor his rank, nor his reputation, nor his office, nor his acres, could procure for him obedience; because the actual relations between the contending parties were in 1686. no respect changed. When Colleton met the colonial parliament which had been elected before his arrival, a majority refused to acknowledge the binding force of the constitutions; by a violent act of power, Colleton, like Cromwell in a similar instance in English history, excluded the refractory members from the parliament. What could follow but a protest from the disfranchised members against any measures which might be adopted by the remaining minority? Νον. 1687. A new parliament was still more intractable; and the "standing laws" which they adopted were negatived by the palatine court. From questions of political liberty, the strife between the parties extended to all their relations. XIII. When Colleton endeavored to collect quit-rents, not CHAP only on cultivated fields, but on wild lands also, direct insubordination ensued; and the assembly, 1687 imprisoning the secretary of the province, and seizing the records, defied the governor and his patrons, and entered on a career of absolute opposition. Colleton resolved on one last desperate effort, and, 1689. pretending danger from Indians or Spaniards, called out the militia, and declared martial law. But who were to execute martial law? The militia were the people, and there were no other troops. Colleton was in a more hopeless condition than ever; for the assembly believed itself more than ever bound to protect the country against a military despotism. It was evident, the people were resolved on establishing a government agreeable to themselves. The English revolution of 1688 was therefore imitated on the banks of the Ashley and Cooper. Soon after William 1690 and Mary were proclaimed, a meeting of the representatives of South Carolina disfranchised Colleton, and banished him from the province. CHAPTER XIV. THE COLONIES ON THE CHESAPEAKE BAY. CHAP. FOR more than eight years, "THe people of VirXIV. GINIA" had governed themselves; and their govern 1652 to ment had been conducted with wise moderation. 1660. Tranquillity and a rapid increase of population prom ised the extension of its borders; and colonial life was sweetened by the enjoyment of equal franchises. No trace of established privilege appeared in its code or its government; in its forms and in its legislation, Virginia was a representative democracy; so jealous of a landed aristocracy, that it insisted on universality of suffrage; so hostile to the influence of commercial wealth, that it would not tolerate the " mercenary ministers of the law; so considerate for religious freedom, that each parish was left to take care of itself. Every officer was, directly or indirectly, chosen by the people. The power of the people naturally grew out of the character of the early settlers, who were, most of them, adventurers, bringing to the New World no wealth but enterprise; no rank but that of manhood; no privileges but those of Englishmen. The principle of the English law which grants real estate to the eldest born, was respected; but generations of Virginians had hardly as yet succeeded each other; the rule had produced no effect upon society, and, from the XIV. beginning, had been modified in many counties by the CHAP custom of gavelkind.1 Virginia could not imitate those great legislative reforms of the Long Parliament, because her happier soil was free from the burdens of forest laws and military tenures, courts of wards, and starchambers. The tendency towards a multiplication of religious sects began already to be perceptible, under the freedom of a popular government. In its care for a regular succession of representative assemblies, Virginia exceeded the jealous friends of republican liberty in England; there triennial parliaments had been established by law; the Virginians, imitating the terms of the bill, claimed the privilege of a biennial election of their legislators. In addition to the strength derived from the natural character of the emigrants, from the absence of feudal institutions, from the entire absence of the excessive refinements of legal erudition, and from the constitution, legislation, and elective franchises of the colonists, a new and undefined increase was gained by the universal prevalence of the spirit of personal independence. An instinctive aversion to too much government was always a trait of southern character, expressed in the solitary manner of settling the country, in the absence of municipal governments, in the indisposition of the scattered inhabitants to engage in commerce, to collect in towns, or to associate in townships under corporate powers. As a consequence, there was little commercial industry; and, on the soil of Virginia, there were vast accumulations of commercial wealth. The exchanges were made almost entirely 1 Jones's State of Virginia, p. 61. 2 Hening, i. 517. The bill is modelled after the "act for preventing inconveniences happening by the long intermission of parliament," |