THE

CHARTERS OF THE AMERICAN PROVINCES,

CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO SOME PREDISPOSING CAUSES OF THEIR REVOLT FROM GREAT BRITAIN.

"That I am a Tory, a lover of power in monarchy, and a discourager of much liberty in the people, I avow; but it is not clear to me that our colonies are completely our subjects. I am puzzled with the Charters."-Letters of JAMES BOSWELL.

Neglect of Colonial History.-The Early Charters.-Locke's Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina.-Concealment of the Charter of Connecticut. -The Charters Liberal, yet defective. -Their Indefinite Operation.Uncertainty of Law.-Testimonies of Chalmers and Governor Pownal. Inducements to Revolt.-Our Colonial Reformers.-Corollary of their Success.

THE relations of Great Britain to its Colonies, past and present, are an important part of the history of the world, and the form which these relations may hereafter take will be no small element in the political future. Yet, although our interest in the expansion of our race is thus considerable, we are notoriously indifferent to most of its proceedings from the date of its leaving the shores of our own islands. We know, perhaps, the bare names of our dependencies at this moment; but, if it were not for the work of Mr. Arthur Mills, unfortunately at this time out of print, most educated Englishmen would probably be at a loss to say how each of these was acquired, or what was its mode or machinery of government. More especially is it strange that we are so unfamiliar with the incidents of our former admi

NEGLECT OF COLONIAL HISTORY.

251

nistration of the American provinces. In this case the magnitude of the result is so conspicuous that there is no other spectacle resembling it on any side. For upwards of a century and a quarter we administered, as a dependency, a nation which is now, notwithstanding its present convulsions, one of the most formidable or the most hopefully constituted of any, a nation which is fast filling up an immense continent, which it will probably map out into a system of great States. Whatever the mutual relations of these States in time to come, and whether they be hereafter United or Disunited, it concerns us at all events to know the nature of their connection with ourselves, so long as they continued to be provinces of Great Britain. Their continued allegiance to the mother country for so many years, with their late revolt and final separation, is the leading case on questions of the treatment of dependencies, and to this day it affects the tenure of our vast colonial empire. Nevertheless, it is a case which is so little in our minds, that, we repeat, there is no history of equal importance which is so unfamiliar to Englishmen as the history of these colonies, while they were still an integral part of the British Empire. Even our Professors of History only venture to refer to the immediate occasion of their final severance, and, like others from whom we expect less, abstain from noticing their system of government or the predisposing motives to their subsequent revolt. Burke may have been right in his political inference that in one sense the neglect with which they were treated was 'salutary," but it is hardly salutary to neglect the lessons of their history, with the exception of the final contest which resulted in their Independence.

Probably if we knew this history somewhat better, we should be less disposed to ascribe its catastrophe to any single agent, though that agent was the most obstinate of English monarchs, or the most fatally compliant of English Ministers. There were at least other inducements to the rupture which

they jointly consummated, and which would have probably consummated it under other circumstances. The republican temper of the States was, from the first, a stronger element than their loyalty to the Crown. There are proofs of this proclivity extant, and, if they were collected, they would serve to qualify the protestations of attachment to the English Sovereign which marked the earlier stages of the American Revolt. It would take a long narrative to specify the particulars in which the bond between the two Englands was thereby weakened, but it would be still more difficult to trace the process of estrangement arising from mistakes and misapprehensions of another sort. There was, however, as we see, a repeated misconception of the conditions essential to the retention of our colonies, apart from the attempt to tax them without asking their consent. In fact, the attempt to levy excise and customs duties in the States was one phase only of a more considerable mistake, a confusion as to the rights of the mother country and the colonies, which was sure, sooner or later, to end in a collision. We were taking our first lessons in the government of dependencies, and our views of our duties and claims were so exceedingly vague that we were sure to encounter some formidable miscarriage.

Thus, it is curious to mark the questions which arose. out of the Charters and Patents under which the States were severally founded, and which regulated their relations to the Home Government, subject to various misconstructions on both sides. A general interest attaches to these venerable documents for the variety of governmental experiments they contain, for some of which great men were responsible, who made some of them the earliest as well as the noblest instruments of natural right and mutual toleration. In the memorable cases of Penn and Lord Baltimore, these Charters are monumental in a very splendid sense, and they are strikingly contrasted with the exemplary fatuity of the

LOCKE'S CONSTITUTIONS OF CAROLINA.

labours of as great a man, John Locke. In "The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina" this eminent philosopher, assisted by Shaftesbury, devised a sort of Whig Utopia, which might aptly have come from the Abbé Sieyes' noted repository, and of which we may affirm that never was a scheme devised, more ingenious, explicit, elaborate, and absurd.*

Such was practically the estimate of these amateur devices, that in 1685 the people of Carolina, finding these Constitutions unfavourable to their liberty, used, as a pretext for suppressing them, the hypothesis that the copy sent could not have been genuine.* They were unwilling to believe that a great philosopher could so fail, and they were still more unwilling that he should fail at their expense.

On the other hand, some of these Charters were so highly prized, that, in the case of one of them, that of Connecticut, the attempt to resume it was defeated by an act, which is one of the most impressive in American annals. Thus in the general attack which was made upon the Charters about 1686, a quo warranto was issued against Connecticut, amongst the rest, but the King's impatience would not allow him to wait for its result. In conformity with his orders, Andros, who had been appointed Governor of New England, marched at the head of a body of troops to Hartford,—the seat of the Provincial Government, and demanded that the Charter should be delivered into his hands. Thereupon, a remarkable scene ensued, which-as an evidence how dearly such charters were valued-I here give, in the language of Grahame. "The Charter," he says, was laid upon the table of the Assembly, and some of the principal inhabitants of the Colony addressed Andros at considerable length, relating the exertions that had been made and the hardships that had been incurred, in order to found the institutions which he was come to destroy; entreating him yet to spare them, or, at least, to leave the people in possession of the patent, as a testimonial of the favour and happiness they had hitherto enjoyed. The debate was earnest but orderly, and

commentary on the last article of the famous fundamentals, which declared that they "should be the sacred and unalterable form and rule of government of Carolina for ever."

*Chalmers' Introduction to "Revolt of the Colonies," vol. i., p. 194; a rare book, of which only six copies were printed, but which has since, I believe, been republished in America.