A short history of Rhode Island

by George Washington Greene

It is deserving of remark that in this young society slander was not suffered to go unpunished. A Gabriel Bernon had brought a false accusation against one of the assistants. He was compelled to make “a written acknowledgment to the injured party,” and ask pardon in writing of the Assembly which he had treated with disrespect on his examination.

The condition of the Indians called for legislative interference. On the petition of Ninigret their lands were taken under the protection of the Colony, and overseers appointed to lease them for the benefit of the tribe and remove trespassers. The following year an attempt was made to enforce temperance among them by increasing the difficulty of their obtaining liquor on credit.

The militia law was revised from time to time and various changes introduced. In that of 1718 the governor was styled “Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief,” and the deputy-governor “Lieutenant-General.”

It will be remembered that colonial laws were required to conform as far as possible to English laws. The colonial legislatures put a large interpretation upon this provision, and in providing for the estates of intestates modified materially the law of primogeniture. The eldest son, instead of the whole estate, received only a double share—one-third being given to the widow and the remainder divided among the children.

The Board of Trade had repeatedly called for a complete copy of the laws, and the Assembly had appointed more than one committee to revise and print them. It was not, however, till 1719 that the work was taken seriously in hand. That it should have been printed in Boston shows how old prejudices were passing away. This first edition was distributed among the towns and the Assembly.

Boundary questions revive from time to time. The northern boundary gave rise to bitter discussions, and though often on the point of being decided, was not really brought to a decision for several years. The western boundary, also, had been practically decided in favor of Rhode Island. But this question, too, was reöpened, and the uncertainties and inconveniences which such disputes engender idly prolonged to the sore annoyance of the inhabitants of the border. How imperfectly the serious nature of the question was understood in England may be seen by the proposition of the Privy Council that both Rhode Island and Connecticut should surrender their charters and be annexed to New Hampshire. It was not till 1727 that Westerly knew whether she belonged to Connecticut or to Rhode Island.

Protection begins about this time to manifest itself as essential to the success of domestic industry. Acts also were passed for the protection of river fisheries. The manufacture of nails and hemp duck were encouraged—nails by a loan and duck by a bounty. With the increase of population new guarantees were required to secure purity of suffrage. In the winter of 1724 the freehold act was passed “requiring a freehold qualification of the value of one hundred pounds, or an annual income of two pounds derived from real estate to enable any man to become a freeman.” With modification of detail but none of principle, this law held its place on the statute book for a hundred and twenty years. “Freemen of the towns who were not freemen of the Colony were allowed to vote for deputies.”

In 1721 a new bank or loan for forty thousand pounds was established upon the same principle as the first. Hemp and flax were received in payment of interest. Specie had become so scarce that an English half-penny passed for three half-pence, and it was soon manifest that the introduction of paper money had raised prices and encouraged speculation in land.

But nothing occurred to break the monotony of colonial life so important as the capture in 1723 of a pirate schooner and the trial of her crew by a court of admiralty. Twenty-six of the prisoners were condemned to death, hanged at Gravelly or Bull’s Point, and buried on Goat Island between high and low water mark.

One of the important events of 1722–3, and which must be considered as a favorable indication of the increase of population was the division of Kingston into two towns. In 1724 the failure of the crops led again to the prohibition of the exportation of grain. Two thousand bushels of Indian corn were bought on public account and sold to the people at low prices. In Newport no one was allowed to have more than four bushels at a time—in the other towns not more than eight. The temperance question, also, began to attract attention at an early day, and various efforts were made to check drunkenness. Among them was an act prohibiting the selling of liquor to common drunkards, and to ensure the carrying out of the act town councils were required to post in their own and the neighboring towns those who came under it. In nothing, however, was the progress of the Colony more evident than in the growth of the religious sentiments. The soul liberty of its founder had been mistaken for license. Towards the close of the seventeenth century Cotton Mather had written: “Rhode Island is a colluvies of Antinomians, Familists, Anabaptists, Anti-Sabbatarians, Arminians, Socinians, Quakers, Ranters, everything in the world but Roman Catholics and true Christians.” A quarter of a century later he wrote: “Calvinists with Lutherans, Presbyterians with Episcopalians, Pedobaptists with Anabaptists, beholding one another to fear God and work righteousness, do with delight sit down together at the same table of the Lord.” In strict accordance with the fundamental principle of the Colony the pay of the clergy was made by voluntary contribution of their parishioners.