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Penn's care, and all his frames of government, of which there was a goodly number, the course of his proprietorship did not run smooth. Troubles within the colony were accompanied by troubles without; the province being at one time taken from him by the English authorities, (1692 -94.) Even after his restoration, he found matters so difficult to manage, that he at length proposed to cede his sovereignty to the crown, (1710.) He retained it, however, and transmitted it to his sons, to be much the same source of struggle to them that it had been to him.

The territories, so styled, of Delaware, originally Delaware. a Swedish, afterwards a Dutch, possession, then an appendage of New York, and then again annexed to Pennsylvania, became so far separate from the latter province as to obtain a distinct assembly, though continuing to have the same governor, (1702.)

A mem

Last of the thirteen was the colony of Georgia, Georgia. in founding which there were mingled purposes of resistance to the Spaniards and the French in the south, as well as of relief to the suffering in England. ber of the House of Commons, James Edward Oglethorpe, had been active in proposing and carrying out an inquiry into the state of the prisons in Great Britain. The idea of rescuing some of the prisoners from a state of degradation even greater than they could have fallen into by themselves, and of settling them in a colony, occurred to Oglethorpe, as a philanthropist, while, as an officer in the royal army, he was also sensitive on the point of defending the colonial boundaries against the encroachments of other powers in America. The purchase of the Carolinas by the crown (1729) opened the way to the foundation of a colony to the south of the settlements already made; and for this a grant was obtained of the territory between the Savannah and Altamaha Rivers, under the royal name of

Georgia, (1732.) The charter conveyed the land and the dominion over it, not to colonists, nor yet to proprietors, but to twenty-one trustees, who, though subject to the royal oversight, and to the obligations of the English law, were otherwise clothed with full power for twenty-one years. A common council of thirty-four members, fifteen of whom were named in the charter, and the rest appointed by the trustees, were to act as a board of administration merely. The colonial lands, it was further provided, were to be held by feudal tenure; that is, only by male heirs. A universal interest was excited by this novel scheme of colonization. General subscriptions poured in to aid the trustees in their halfbenevolent, half-patriotic plans, while Parliament made a national grant of ten thousand pounds. First to enlist personally, was a party of more than one hundred, whom Oglethorpe himself led to the settlement, which he named Savannah, (1733.) Every thing seemed to bid fair; the Indians were conciliated, the colonists were satisfied, the nation was all alive with sympathy. Immigrants came from afar; Moravians from Germany; Presbyterians from the northern, mountains of Scotland; the earnest and the careless, the peasant and the prisoner, united in one people, (1734-36.) To the generous project of saving the convicts of Britain was added the devoted hope of the Moravians that the natives of America might be converted. But there was a dark side to the scene from the first. The character of the colonists, that is, of the main body from England, was helpless enough, not to say corrupted enough, to cause great difficulties both to themselves and to their trustees. It will be seen hereafter that the military service expected from the colony was pretty much a failure. The colony soon became a royal province, (1754–55.)

Such were the thirteen colonies of England. Spread out with indefinite borders and indefinite resources, they lay

Aspect

of the thirteen.

like misty points along the Atlantic shore. The eye that saw them, separate and indistinct, as they rose at the beginning, could catch no vision of the broad fields and the fruitful vales that were to expand and blend together in the future. As we look back ourselves,

we see few promises of development or of unity in the early days of the thirteen colonies.

6*

Races.

CHAPTER II.

COLONIAL Relations.

THE thirteen colonies were the colonies of Eng

land. But they were far from being settled exclu、 sively by Englishmen. The west, the centre, and the south of Europe all sent forth emigrants in greater or less numbers to people the American shore. Nor did these come to the settlements of other nations, to those of the Spaniards, the French, the Dutch, or the Swedes, alone, but rather to the English colonies, whose praise it is to have thus attracted and provided for the stranger.

As there were different races, so there were dif

the lower orders, as

Classes. ferent classes. First came the gentleman, peculiarly so styled, of various look and of various spirit, according to the respective colonies, but every where classified as of "the better sort." This order was perpetuated by the law of primogeniture, the eldest son receiving at least a double, if not more than a double, share of his father's estate. Next were the people of "the poorer sort their name denotes. But by no means the lowest; as there were others beneath them in the scale. The indented servants, or apprentices, constituted a class of temporary bondmen. Sometimes exactly what their name suggests, too young or too shiftless to be their own masters, the indented were often men of a higher grade, the adherents, in many instances, of a defeated party or of a persecuted creed, who, falling into the hands of their opponents, were

sold for transportation to a market where they could be resold at a profit. Such were the English royalists, taken captive by the parliamentary forces; such the Roman Catholics, conquered while fighting for their faith in Ireland. Such, too, were many of the exiles from the continent. So great were the numbers imported as to amount — and in time of peace - to fifteen hundred a year in the single province of Virginia. The little consideration that there was for the class appears in the colonial codes.* Lower still, however, were the slaves. The first of this class were Indians, captured in wars or taken in snares, sometimes bought of their parents, even of themselves. Then came the negroes from Africa. These poor creatures found little mercy in the colonial statutes. The English law recognizing slavery declared the children of a free father to be free. But the Virginian code declared a child to follow the lot of the mother, (1662.) England pronounced it felony to kill a slave. Virginia decided it to be none, (1667.)†

Of the old world.

The law of
The law of

These classes were confined to no colony, and to no division of colonies. They existed amongst the rigid settlers of the north as well as amongst the freer

* Maimed by a master, the servant is to be set free, (Mass. 1641; N. Y. 1665;) but any resistance on the servant's part entails an additional year of servitude, (Va. 1705.) Such as escape from their bonds are to be given up to their masters, or else their value is to be made up by those who harbor them, (Va. 1661.) Poorly as the class was rated, there was that about them, in their anger, which prompted the Virginians to make a "perpetual holiday" of the day on which a conspiracy, detected amongst their servants, was to have been executed, (1663.)

† The Virginia laws make it allowable to kill a fugitive, (1672,) forbid the slave at any time to carry arms, (1682,) cut him off from trial by jury, (1692,) and prohibit his manumission, except he is transported out of the province, (1692,) or except the governor and council deem him worthy of his liberty, (1724.) Other codes take much the same tone, without always entering into the same details. The most rigid laws were those of South Carolina, (1712-50.)

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