CHAPTER VII.
During the early part of the eighteenth century, the British North American provinces had made extraordinary progress in population and wealth—a progress then unequaled in the world's history, and only now excelled by that of the Australian settlements. From many of the European nations, swarms of the energetic and discontented poured into the land of plenty and comparative freedom. By far the greater number of immigrants, however, were from the British islands, and their national character in a great measure, absorbed the peculiarities of all the rest. The natural increase of the population also far exceeded that of European states; the abundant supply of the necessaries of life, and immunity from oppressive restraint, produced their invariable results. In the absence of any harassing care for the future, early marriages were almost universally contracted. The man who possessed no capital but his labor found in it the means of present support, and even of future wealth; if he failed to obtain remunerative employment in the old districts, he needed only to carve out his way in the new. The fertile wilderness ever welcomed him with rude but abundant hospitality; every tree that fell beneath his ax was an obstacle removed from the road to competence; every harvest home, an earnest of yet richer rewards to come.
From the first, the British colonists had applied themselves to agriculture as the great business of life; then trade followed, to supply luxuries in exchange for superabundant products; and manufactures came next, to satisfy the increasing necessities of a higher civilization. From the peculiarities of the country, and the restless and irregular habits of many of the earlier immigrants, a system of cultivation arose, which, however detrimental to the progress of some individuals, tended to develop the resources of the country with astonishing rapidity. A number of the hardy men, who first began the clearing of the wilderness, only played the part of pioneers to those who permanently settled on the fertile soil: they felled the trees with unequaled dexterity, erected log houses and barns, hastily inclosed their farms, and, in an incredibly short space of time, reduced the land to a sort of cultivation. With their crops, a few cattle, and the produce of the chase, they gained subsistence for themselves and their families. These men could not endure the restraints of regular society; as the population advanced toward them, and they felt the obnoxious neighborhood of the magistrate and the tax gatherer, they were easily induced to dispose of their clearings at a price enhanced by that of surrounding settlements: once again they plunged into the wilderness, and recommenced their life of almost savage independence.
The new owner of the pioneer's clearing was generally a thrifty and industrious farmer: his object, a home for himself and an inheritance for his children. In certain hope of success, he labored with untiring energy, and converted the half-won waste into a fruitful field. His neighbors have progressed equally with himself; the dark shadows of the forest vanish from the surrounding country; detached log huts change to clusters of comfortable dwellings; churches arise, villages swell into towns, towns into cities.
This system exercised an important influence on the politics and manners of the colonists; the restless, impatient, and discontented found ample scope and occupation in the wilderness, instead of waging perpetual strife against the restraints of law and order in the older districts: many of these men ultimately even became useful and industrious. The acquisition of a little property of their own, and the necessity of law and order for the preservation of that property, reconciled them to the forfeiture of the wild liberty in which they had before exulted. The truculence of the desperate often turned into the healthy ambition of the prosperous.
Along the shores of the magnificent bays and estuaries of the Atlantic coast had already arisen many populous and thriving cities. Boston numbered more than 30,000 inhabitants; her trade was great; her shipping bore the produce of all countries through all seas, either as carriers for others, or to supply her own increasing demands; her sailors were noted for hardihood and skill, her mechanics for industry, and her merchants for thrift and enterprise; her councils, and the customs of her people, still bore the stamp which the hands of the Pilgrim Fathers had first impressed. Moral, sober, persevering, thoughtful, but narrow-minded and ungenial, they were little prone to allow the enjoyment of social intercourse to interfere with the pursuit of wealth. Although at times oppressive and always intolerant themselves, they ever resented with jealous promptitude the slightest infringement of their own freedom of conscience or action. They despised but did not pity the Indian, and had no scruple in profiting largely by the exchange of the deadly fire-water for his valuable furs.
At the time of which we treat, the people of the New England States numbered more than 380,000; they were the bone and sinews of British power in America; in peace the most prosperous and enterprising, and in war the most energetic, if not the most warlike, of the Anglo-Americans. Their hostility against the French was more bitter than that of their southern fellow-countrymen: in the advance guard of British colonization they came more frequently in contact with the rival power, and were continually occupied in resisting or imitating its aggressions. The senseless and unchristian spirit of "natural enmity" had spread in an aggravated degree among the children of the two great European states who had cast their lot of life in the New World.
The colony of New York had also arrived at considerable importance, but, from the varied sources of the original population, the 100,000 inhabitants it contained at the time of the war were less exclusively British in character and feeling than their Puritan brethren of New England. Many of the Dutch and Swedish farmers, as well as of the French emigrants, retained unaltered the language and customs of their fathers, and felt little affection for the metropolitan state, formerly their conqueror, and now their somewhat supercilious ruler. The trade of New York city, aided by the splendid navigation of the Hudson River, was very large in proportion to the then small population of 8000. Great quantities of corn, flour, and other provisions were conveyed from the rich Western country by the inland waters to the noble harbor at their mouth, and thence found their way to the West Indies and even to Europe. The town of Albany, although inferior in population, was important and prosperous as the chief dépôt for the Indian trade, and the place where conferences were usually held between the English and the fast-failing tribes of the once formidable Iroquois. New Jersey partook in some respects of the characteristics of New York, and contained about 60,000 souls. Owing to the protection of the larger neighboring states, this fertile province had suffered but little from Indian hostility, and the rich soil and mild climate aided the undisturbed labors of its husbandmen. The forests abounded with oak, ash, cypress, hickory, and other valuable timber, and the cultivation of flax and hemp was largely carried on: these different productions were disposed of in the markets of New York and Philadelphia, principally for European consumption.
The great and prosperous State of Pennsylvania, nearly 5000 square miles in extent, contained 250,000 inhabitants, and carried on a large trade with Europe and the West Indies; through the rich and beautiful capital, an immense surplus of agricultural produce, from its fertile soil, was exported to other less favored countries. Philadelphia was happily situated upon the tongue of land formed by the confluence of the two navigable rivers, Delaware and Schuylkill; the streets were broad and regular, the houses spacious and well built, and the docks and quays commodious. This city still continued largely impressed by the spirit of Quakerism; the stiffness of outline, the trim neatness of the dwellings, the convenient but unpretending public buildings, and the austere manners of the inhabitants, bespoke the stronghold of the formal men of peace. Here it was, not twenty years afterward, in a vulgar and unsightly brick edifice, that a few bold and earnest men pledged their sacred honor, their fortunes, and their lives to an act, perhaps the most important that history records—"The Declaration of Independence."