| [40] | Born, 1644; died, 1718. Was expelled from Oxford for joining the Quakers; was imprisoned in the Tower for preaching their tenets; received from Charles II. an extensive grant in 1681; took possession of his province and negotiated his famous treaty with Indians in 1682; returned to England in 1684; was deprived of his province in 1686; regained it in 1688; visited America again at the close of the century; during his career in England he did much writing and preaching, was now influential in politics, now under suspicion, had trouble with his settlers in America, and also with members of his own family. |
| [41] | A writ compelling a person or body of persons to show by what authority they hold certain rights or offices. |
| [42] | Until 1738 New Jersey was administered by the governor of New York, through a deputy. |
CHAPTER IV.
the country at the end of the seventeenth century.
GENERAL CONDITIONS.
77. Population.—We have now learned that of the thirteen original colonies that formed the United States, all except the youngest, Georgia, had attained individual, or semi-individual, existence by the end of the seventeenth century. The population of New England in 1700 was about one hundred and five thousand, Massachusetts, including Maine, leading with about seventy thousand, and Connecticut coming second with about twenty-five thousand. Rhode Island and New Hampshire were much smaller, containing only six thousand and five thousand respectively. Homogeneity, thrift, piety, and love of liberty characterized the population of the New England colonies, and were the presage of the great development the eighteenth century was to see. The population of the Middle colonies in 1700 was about fifty-nine thousand, New York having twenty-five thousand, the Jerseys fourteen thousand, and Pennsylvania and Delaware about twenty thousand. Homogeneity was characteristic of New Jersey alone, both New York and Pennsylvania having very mixed populations. Thrift characterized all the Middle region; but English enterprise was somewhat tempered by Dutch phlegm and Quaker sobriety. In the Southern colonies (if we may estimate from figures of 1688) there were more than twenty-five thousand persons in Maryland, sixty thousand in Virginia, and about five thousand in the Carolinas. The English race was dominant, but the presence of large numbers of black slaves, who were chiefly fit for work in the fields, checked the enterprise of the whites by confining it practically to agriculture.
78. Social Conditions.—With regard to social conditions, the tendency in the South was to form an aristocracy, based on race and the distinction between manual and other forms of labor. In New England, too, there was an aristocracy, based mainly on education and religion, but also on birth and wealth. In the Middle colonies there were traces of an aristocracy in the “Patroons” of New York and in the masters of the fairly numerous negro slaves. But on the whole, manual labor was held in esteem, and the population was democratic in its tendencies.
CHARACTERISTICS OF NEW ENGLAND.
79. Political Characteristics of New England.—The aristocracy of New England was unlike any other the world has ever seen. Its members were energetic, unusually well-educated, serious, and full of a sense of responsibility. They filled with distinction the public offices and the professions, especially the ministry. Precedence was allowed them by the merchants, farmers, and mechanics through force of custom, not through the presence of a caste system like that of slavery (although a few slaves were owned), or through the force of laws derived from the feudal system. As the masses of the people increased in wealth and culture, and learned to use the opportunities allowed them by the New World, the power of the aristocracy naturally decreased, although it continued to exert considerable influence well into the nineteenth century.