THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY R ASTOR, LENOX AND 1915 1836. Entered according to Act of Congress." HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. CHAPTER I. A Summary View of the State and Character of the British Colonies of North America. ABOUT eighty years after the first permanent settlement in Virginia, the territory granted in the two original patents to the London and Plymouth companies, was divided into twelve distinct and separate colonies; and, in about fifty years afterwards, Georgia was added to the southern extremity of these provinces ; being the only colony which was settled at the expense of the crown. The greatest part of the first adventurers bought of the natives the lands on which they settled. Some of them, without doubt, made this agreement from the purest motives-from a consciousness that the Indians were the true proprietors of the soil; to which no charter from their own sovereign could, of itself, confer a just title. Other settlers entered into this convention with the Indians merely from motives of personal security, whatever might have been their opinion concerning the validity of the charters from the crown; this inferencc may justly be drawn, from their subsequent quarrels with the natives, and encroachment upon their grounds. The aboriginal inhabitants were divided into numerous tribes, who were frequently at war with one another. In these quarrels, the Europeans generally took part with the weaker side, in such a manner as to waste the strength of both parties: the short sighted natives preferring the present pleasure of revenge upon their mortal enemies, to the future happiness of themselves and their posterity. An eminent instance of this occurs in the history of the Pequod and Narragansett Indians in New England. There was a fixed enmity between the two tribes. The Pequods were the most warlike among all the neighboring nations, and per- 9 ceiving themselves unable, alone, to combat the English, were willing to bury their animosity, and offered to enter into a treaty, with the Narragansetts against the common enemy. They urged that the English were come to dispossess them of their country; and, although they had never heard the story of Polepheme and Ulyssee, told the Narragansetts, that all they could hope from the friendship of the English was, the favour of being last devoured. The Narragansetts were deaf to their remonstrances; and the prophesy of the Pequods was at length fulfilled. See Hutchinson's Hist. Mass. Indian fidelity is proverbial in America, as the Punic faith was in Italy. The Narragansetts are said to have kept the treaty they made with the English, until the Pequod's were destroyed, and then they grew insolent and treacherous. Notwithstanding the frequent ruptures of the Ind ans with the colonies, very few, comparatively, have perished by war. Famine, and its companion the pestilence, frequently destroy whole tribes. Their preCominant passion for spirituous liquors, in which they have been initiated by the whites, proves likewise repugnant to population. They waste, they moulder away, and, as Charlevoix says of the Indians of Canada, they disappear. Each of the colonies, after many changes, attained a form of government essentially resembling that of the mother country; wherein ample provision was made for the liberties of the citizens. The royal prerogative and dependence on the British government had no great impression on that of the colonies. Even in those provinces where the governors were most dependent on the crown, they had no higher prerogatives above their fellow subjects, or power over the provin cial legislative assemblies, than the king was constitutionally vested with, over the people and legislature in England. The colonization of North America began at a period when the dread of arbitrary government was the predominant passion of the English nation. Excepting the colony of Georgia, which received its charter in 1732, all the English colonies obtained their charters, and their greatest number of European settlers, in the period between the year 1603 and 1688, when the great struggle commenced between privilege and prerogative, which, in its progress, brought king Charles I. to the block, and ended in the expulsion of his family from the throne. The founders of the colonies, in general, adopted the wisest policy in settling the vacant lands; by granting them to those only who personally cultivated their pur. chases. In New England, especially, this equal division of lands was more steadily adhered to, than in any of the other provinces. Instead of dispersing the inhabitants over an extensive country, they successively formed settlements in townships of about six miles square: and arrangements for religious instruction and the education of youth, kept equal pace with the enlargement of the colony. A spirit of liberty and independence gave vigor to industry, and a free constitution guarded their civil and religious rights. Few individuals were either very rich or very poor. They enjoyed that happy state of mediocrity, which is equally favorable to strength of body and vigor of mind.. The New England, or northern colonies, particularly, were settled by a people, who, during the reign of the Stuarts, had been galled by the yoke of despotism; and were, for the most part, adverse to the prerogative of kings, but friendly to republicanism. It would have been very astonishing if such colonists, after having tasted the sweets of liberty in a new land, had not instilled into the minds of their children a love of freedom and an abhorrence of arbitrary government: accordingly, their descendants cherished that jealousy of their rights, which is the true characteristic of freemen. When the British constitution was renovated by the revolution, in the year 1688, the colonists participated in the blessings of that happy era. It was then that the distinct boundary was fixed between the privileges of the subject and the prerogatives of the sovereign. It was then recognized, to be essential to the constitution of Great Britain, that the people could not be compelled elther to pay taxes or be bound by any laws but such as had been granted or enacted, with the consent of themselves or their representatives; and that they could not be affected either in their property, their liberties, or their persons, but by the unanimous consent of twelve of their peers. The principles upon which that revolution was founded, were, "That taxes were the free gifts of the people to their rulers.-That the authority of the sovereign was to be exercised only for the good of his subjects.That it was the right of the people to meet together, and peaceably to consider of their grievances.-To petition for a redress of them, and, finally, when intollerable grievances were unredressed, to seek relief, on the failure of petitions and remonstrances, by forcible means.” The colonists were devoted to liberty on these English principles, from their first settlement in America. Their religion likewise corresponded with their free principles of civil government. There were few Roman Catholics, and these were chiefly in Maryland. The great body of the people were Protestants; so called because the founders of that persuasion, Martin Luther and John Calvin, protested against the errors of the Romish Church, and claimed a title to private judgment in religious matters; in opposition to the pretended infallibility of the Roman pontiff, in a general council. A majority of the colonists were Dissenters from the Church of England, consisting of a number of different sects who were still more averse to the interference of authority in matters of opinion, than either of the primitive reformers. The greater part of those who retained the liturgy of the Church of England were independents, as far as the discipline of the church was concerned. The number of Episcopalians, who supported the tenets and discipline of the church as established in England, was comparatively few; excepting in Virginia and Maryland. It has been already mentioned, in the preceding account of the settlement of the colonies, that religious persecution took place very early in New England and in Virginia, and continued for some time. "No better apology" says Ramsay, "can be made for this inconsistent conduct, than that the true grounds of liberty of conscience were then neither understood, nor practised by any sect of Christians. Nor can any more satisfactory account of so open a dereliction of former principles, by the Puritans, be offered, than that human nature is the same in all bodies of men, and that those who are in, and those who are out of power, insensibly exchange opinions with each other on a change of their respective situations." After the revolution in England, all sects were tolerated in the colonies, and all agreed in the communion of liberty. Tythes, and all the train of evils attendant upon a system of religion subservient to political purposes, were unknown. The clergy of all the different sects were paid by the people, either by moderate salaries; or by voluntary contribution. But in Virginia and Maryland, long before the war, the Church of England preserved a legal preeminence, and was maintained at the expense not only of its own members, but of all other denominations. However, a few years before that period, the Presbyterians, and Dissenters from the Church of England, formed a majority of the people in almost all the southern colonies; which was |