For thirty-four years the Quaker diplomatist, Richard Partridge, had faithfully and skillfully served Rhode Island as her agent in London. In 1759 mindful to the last of the interests of the Colony, he wrote on his death bed to recommend a brother Quaker, Joseph Sherwood, for his successor.
In this same year freemasonry was introduced, a charter was granted by the Assembly with permission to raise twenty-four hundred dollars by lottery for building a hall in Newport.
We have seen how early attention was called to the subject of fires. In 1759 the immediate action at fires was placed under the direction of five presidents of firewards, three of whom were elected at annual town meetings with authority to blow up buildings if necessary in order “to stop the progress of the flames.” These details though minute, serve to show how far our fathers carried their ideas of the powers and duties of government.
The increase of population called for a new division of territory. In 1757 Westerly was divided and its northern portion incorporated under the name of Hopkinton, a choice of name which shows that in that legislature the Hopkins party was in the majority. Two years later the new town of Johnston was formed out of Providence and named after the attorney-general.
CHAPTER XXII.
RETROSPECT.—ENCROACHMENTS OF ENGLAND.—RESISTANCE TO THE REVENUE LAWS.—STAMP ACT.—SECOND CONGRESS OF COLONIES MET IN NEW YORK.—EDUCATIONAL INTEREST.
Thus far we have traced the progress of Rhode Island, step by step from the first small settlement on the banks of the Mooshausick to the flourishing Colony, which, by its firmness and perseverance had made it mistress of the shores and islands of Narragansett Bay. We have seen it taking for its corner stone a vital principle of human society, unrecognized as yet by the most advanced civilization. We have seen this principle and society with it constantly endangered by misinterpretations, and the little Colony brought more than once to the brink of the precipice by the malignity of implacable enemies. We have seen it gradually growing in strength and enlightenment, drawing abundant harvests from a niggard soil, spreading its ships of commerce over distant seas and protecting its coasts by its own ships of war. We have seen it working out its civil organization by patient experiment, making laws and unmaking them as they met or failed to meet the want for which they were made. And now we shall see her strong by virtue, resolute by conviction and rich by intelligent industry, gird herself up for the contest which was to decide forever the relations of the British colonies of North America to their mother country. But before we enter upon this part of our subject let us pause a moment and consider somewhat more closely our new starting point.
The society which Roger Williams brought with him to the banks of the Mooshausick was a morally constituted society, in which all the questions of moral law had been studied and discussed as revealed in the Scriptures. It was not till their numbers increased and their wants with them that the idea of law took root amongst them and they became a legally constituted society. Their laws arose from their necessities and followed the development of their legal sense. They felt the want and strove by experiment to discover the remedy. Successful experiment became law and the statute book the record of the progress of civilization.