[1660 A.D.] RESTORATION OF THE STUARTS During the long period that had now elapsed since the commencement of the civil war in Britain, the New England provinces continued to evince a steady and vigorous growth, in respect both to the numbers of their inhabitants and the extent of their territorial occupation. The colonists were surrounded with abundance of cheap and fertile land, and secured in the enjoyment of that ecclesiastical estate which was the object of their supreme desire, and of civil and political freedom. They were exempted from the payment of all taxes except for the support of their internal government, which was administered with great economy; and they enjoyed the extraordinary privilege of importing commodities into England free from all the duties which other importers were obliged to pay. By the favour of Cromwell, too, the ordinances by which the Long Parliament had restricted their commerce were not put in force, and they continued to trade wherever they pleased. Almost all the peculiar circumstances which had thus combined to promote the prosperity of New England during the suspension of monarchy contributed proportionally to overcast the prospects awakened by the restoration. There were the strongest reasons to expect an abridgment of commercial advantages, and to tremble for the security of religious and political freedom. Other circumstances combined to retard the recognition of the royal authority in New England. On the death of Cromwell, the colonists had been successively urged to recognise first his son Richard as protector, afterwards the Long Parliament, which for a short time resumed its ascendency, and subsequently the committee of safety, as the sovereign authority in England. But they prudently declined to commit themselves by positive declaration.e FOR seventy years or more before the Declaration of Independence the matters of general public concern, about which stump speeches were made on Virginia court-days, were very similar to those that were discussed in Massachusetts town meetings when representatives were to be chosen for the legislature. This perpetual antagonism to the governor, who represented British imperial interference with American local self-government, was an excellent schooling in political liberty alike for Virginia and for Massachusetts. When the stress of the Revolution came, these two leading colonies cordially supported each other, and their political characteristics were reflected in the kind of achievements for which each was especially distinguished. The Virginia system, concentrating the administration of local affairs in the hands of a few county families, was eminently favourable for developing skilful and vigorous leadership. And while in the history of Massachusetts during the Revolution we are chiefly impressed with the remarkable degree in which the mass of the people exhibited the kind of political training that nothing in the world except the habit of parliamentary discussion can impart, on the other hand, Virginia at that time gave us-in Washington, Jefferson, Henry, Mason, Madison, and Marshall, to mention no others such a group of leaders as has seldom been equalled.-JOHN FISKE.b DURING the continuance of the English commonwealth Virginia had enjoyed a very popular form of government. All tax-payers had the right to vote for burgesses. The assembly, subject to frequent renewals, had assumed the right of electing the governor, councillors, and other principal officers; and local affairs appear to have been managed with very little of external control. Great changes in these respects were now to happen. During [1660 A.D.] the quarter of a century which followed the restoration, a considerable part of the freemen of Virginia were deprived of the elective franchise-an invaluable privilege, not recovered till the middle of the current century. The assembly's authority was also greatly curtailed, while a corresponding increase took place in the power and prerogatives of the governor and the councillors. The founders of Virginia, like those of New England, had brought with them from the mother country strong aristocratic prejudices and a marked distinction of ranks. Both in Virginia and New England the difference between " gentlemen" and "those of the common sort" was very palpable. Indented servants formed a still inferior class; not to mention negro and Indian slaves, of whom, however, for a long period after the planting of Virginia, the number was almost as inconsiderable in that colony as it always remained in New England. But though starting, in these respects, from a common basis, the operation of different causes early produced different effects, resulting in a marked difference of local character. The want in New England of any staple product upon which hired or purchased labour could be profitably employed discouraged immigration and the importation of indented servants or slaves. Hence the population soon became, in a great measure, home-born and homebred. The lands were granted by townships to companies who intended to settle together. The settlements were required to be made in villages, and every village had its meeting-house, its schools, its military company, its municipal organisation. In Virginia, on the other hand, plantations were isolated; each man settled where he found a convenient unoccupied spot. The parish churches, the county courts, the election of burgesses, brought the people together, and kept up something of adult education. But the parishes were very extensive; there were no schools, and parochial and political rights were soon greatly curtailed. Even the theocratic form of government prevailing in New England tended to diminish the influence of wealth by introducing a different basis of distinction; and still more so that activity of mind, the consequence of strong religious excitement, developing constantly new views of religion and politics, which an arrogant and supercilious theocracy strove in vain to suppress. Hence, in New England, a constant tendency towards social equality. In Virginia and Maryland, on the other hand, the management of provincial and local affairs fell more and more under the control of a few wealthy men possessed of large tracts of land, which they cultivated by the labour partly of slaves, but principally of indented white servants. The cultivation of tobacco, at the low prices to which it had sunk, afforded only a scanty resource to that great body of free planters obliged to rely on their own labour. Yet all schemes for the introduction of other staples had failed. The maritime character of New England was already well established. The fisheries and foreign trade formed an important part of her industry. Her ships might be seen on the Grand Bank, in the West Indies, in the ports of Britain, Spain, and Portugal, on the coast of Africa, in the Chesapeake itself; while hardly one or two small vessels were owned in Vir ['Even though Virginia had not the town meeting, it had its court-day, which, says Edward Ingle,c was a holiday for all the country-side, especially in the fall and spring. From all directions came in the people on horseback, in wagons, and afoot. On the courthouse green assembled, in indiscriminate confusion, people of all classes-the hunter from the backwoods, the owner of a few acres, the grand proprietor, and the grinning, heedless negro. Old debts were settled and new ones made; there were auctions, transfers of property, and, if election times were near, stump-speaking." i] [1660-1663 A.D.] ginia, and that notwithstanding the efforts of the assembly to encourage shipbuilding and navigation, for which the province afforded such abundant facilities. Competition between Dutch and English trading vessels had assisted hitherto to keep up the price of tobacco, and to secure a supply of imported goods at reasonable rates. But that competition was now to cease. The English commercial interest had obtained from the Convention Parliament, which welcomed back Charles II to the English throne, the famous Navigation Act of 1660.d 1 THWAITES ON THE NAVIGATION ACTS All manner of trade was more or less hampered by the parliamentary acts of Navigation and Trade. In the time of Richard II (1377-1399) it had been enacted that "none of the king's liege people should ship any merchandise out of or into the realm except in the ships of the king's ligeance, on pain of forfeiture." Under Henry VII (1485–1509) only English-built ships manned by English sailors were permitted to import certain commodities; and in the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603) only such vessels could engage in the English coasting trade and fisheries. The earliest English colonies were exempted by their charters from these restrictions, but under James I (1603-1625) the colonies were included. For many years the colonists did not heed the Navigation acts; in consequence, the Dutch, then the chief carriers on the ocean, obtained control of the colonial trade, and thereby amassed great wealth. Jealous of their supremacy, the statesmen of the commonwealth sought to upbuild England by forcing English trade into English channels, and this policy succeeded. Holland soon fell from her high position as a maritime power, and England, with her far-spreading colonies, succeeded her. The Act of 1645 declared that certain articles should be brought into England only by ships fitted out from England, by English subjects, and manned by Englishmen; this was amended the following year so as to include the colonies. In exchange for the privilege of importing English goods free of duty, the colonists were not to suffer foreign ships to be loaded with colonial goods. In 1651 a stringent Navigation Act was passed by the Long Parliament, the beginning of a series of coercive ordinances extending down to the time of the American Revolution. It provided that the rule as to the importation of goods into England or its territories, in English-built vessels, English manned, should extend to all products "of the growth, production, or manufacture of Asia, Africa, or America, or of any part thereof, as well of the English plantations as others"; but the term "English-built ships" included colonial vessels, in this and all subsequent acts. Under the restoration the commonwealth law was confirmed and extended (1660). Such enumerated colonial products as the English merchants desired to purchase were to be shipped to no other country than England; but those products which they did not wish might be sent to other markets, provided they did not there interfere in any way with English trade. In all transactions, however, "English-built ships," manned by "English subjects" only, were to be patronised. Three years later (1663) another step was taken. By an act of that year such duties were levied as amounted to prohibition of the importation of goods into the colonies except such as had been actually shipped from an English port; thus the colonists were forced to go to England ['Reproduced by permission. Copyright, 1897, by Longmans, Green, & Co.] [1661 A.D.] for their supplies-the mother country making herself the factor between her colonies and foreign markets. A considerable traffic had now sprung up between the colonies. New England merchants were competing with Englishmen in the southern markets. At the behest of commercial interests in the parent isle, an act was passed in 1673 seriously crippling this intercolonial trade; all commodities that could have been supplied from England were now subjected to a duty equivalent to that imposed on their consumption in England. From 1651 to 1764 upwards of twenty-five acts of parliament were passed for the regulation of traffic between England and her colonies. Each succeeding ministry felt it necessary to adopt some new scheme for monopolising colonial trade in order to purchase popularity at home. It was 1731 before the home government began to repress the manufacture in the colonies of goods that could be made in England; thereafter numerous acts were passed by parliament having this end in view. In brief, the mother country regarded her American colonies merely as feeders to her trade, consumers of her manufactures, and factories for the distribution of her capital. Parliament never succeeded in satisfying the greed of English merchants, while in America it was thought to be doing too much. The constant irritation felt in the colonies over the gradual application of commercial thumb-screws-turned at last beyond the point of endurance-was one of the chief causes of the Revolution. Had it not been that colonial ingenuity found frequent opportunities for evading these acts of Navigation and Trade, the final collision would doubtless have occurred at a much earlier period.e THE NEW CODE AND ITS TREATMENT OF SLAVES The Virginians, alarmed at the Navigation Act of 1660 which threatened to place them at the mercy of the English traders, sent Governor Berkeley to England, in March, 1661, at an expense to the colony of two hundred thousand pounds of tobacco, to remonstrate on their behalf. Berkeley failed in this public mission; but he improved the opportunity to secure for himself a share in the new province of Carolina, now erected by charter, and of which he became one of the eight proprietors. Under the administration of Colonel Francis Moryson [or Morrison], captain of the fort at Point Comfort, a royalist immigrant of 1649, appointed by the council to act as governor during Berkeley's mission to England, a third revision was made of the Virginia statutes. The Church of England is re-established by this code, with the canons, the liturgy, and the church catechism. The anniversary of the execution of Charles I is made a fast, and of the restoration of Charles II a holiday. Non-comformist preachers are to be silenced and sent out of the country. Shipmasters bringing Quakers into the colony were subjected to a penalty of £100. The Quakers themselves were to be imprisoned without trial till they gave security to leave the colony and not to return. The management of county as well as of parish affairs was taken from the body of the inhabitants and vested in a few wealthy planters, who held their appointments for life, or at the pleasure of the governor. Trial by jury was established in all cases, and grand juries are now first introduced. There were to be provided by each county a prison, pillory, pair of stocks, whipping-post, and ducking-stool. The provisions of this code respecting the Indians are conceived in a more humane and candid spirit than any previous enactments on the same |