A short history of Rhode Island

by George Washington Greene

To this statute book, therefore, we must go for our knowledge of colonial life in all its relations. It defines the condition of the individual and the qualifications, the rights and the duties of the citizen. It defines the powers and prerogatives of government, and assigns to each department its limits and its sphere. Its enumeration of crime is the key to the moral sense of the community, and its provisions for the moral and intellectual training of the citizen show how far it has comprehended the reciprocal obligations and true nature of the ties which bind the citizen to his commonwealth.

Following this guide we find that Rhode Island has worked out her problem of self-government and soul liberty, framing for herself a pure democracy and surrounding it with all the provisions required for protection against foreign violence and internal dissension. After many trials she has organized a judiciary system adequate to the protection of person and property and the prompt administration of justice. She has cultivated the sense of right and wrong and made careful provision for the enforcement of contracts and the punishment of crimes. She has opened highways, established ferries and built bridges. She has favored navigation by the institution of judicious harbor laws. She has provided for the extermination of wolves and foxes by the offer of liberal bounties, and for the protection of fish and deer by stringent laws. She has broached the difficult subject of public charities and made a beginning of provision for the poor and the insane. She has initiated a system of public schools and founded a college which in the course of half a century becomes a university. She has opened her doors wide for different creeds, and required only that they all should be equally free.

Her relations with the mother country had taken their coloring from the attitude of self-defence which she was compelled to maintain towards the adjacent colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut, which were eager to divide her territory between them. Against their long persecutions her last appeal was to the King, and she made it without humbling herself, for her enemy was at her own door and of her own household.

From the beginning of her civil life she had been contemptuously refused admission to the league from which Massachusetts and Connecticut derived the strength that made them bold both for aggression and for defence. More than once she seemed to be upon the point of being crushed, but of yielding—never. Hence in her relations with the mother country she never assumed the defiant attitude which her stronger sisters assumed and which at an early day awakened suspicions of their loyalty. Rhode Island was loyal as it behooved her to be; but she never carried her loyalty so far as to imperil the rights guaranteed to her by her charter.

We enter upon a new period of colonial history. The contest with France was over. The contest with England was beginning. For England, not satisfied with the advantage which she had derived from her colonies by constitutional means, resolved to deprive them of the protection which the constitution accorded to the humblest subject of the crown. They would gladly have contributed their portion to the expenses of the war and taxed themselves to pay it. But English constitutional law had prescribed the forms and conditions with which taxes could be raised, and colonial constitutional law taught that representation was an essential condition of taxation. This led to the stamp act and that train of disasters so fatal to English supremacy.

Equally fatal was the ill-timed jealousy with which she sought to fetter the commerce and check the manufacturing spirit of the colonists. It was from their commerce with the French islands that they drew not only many articles which habit had made essential to their comfort, but the greater part of their hard money. To England they sent their raw material, and receiving it back in the shape of manufactured goods paid liberally for the English labor and skill. England’s best customers were her colonies.

War had been a severe school in which much needed lessons had been learned. Farmers and mechanics had learned to be soldiers and bear the hardships of a soldier’s life. Taxes had increased and legislation had been compelled to busy itself largely with questions of military organization, with the building of forts, the raising of recruits, the providing of supplies. Maritime enterprise had lost none of its ardor, but had encountered sore rebuffs. From the port of Providence alone forty nine vessels richly laden had fallen into the hands of the enemy. On the land, also, many valuable lives had been lost and many industrious hands taken from the tilling of the soil to waste their strength in the barren offices of war. The time when these lessons would be turned to account was drawing nigh.

Meanwhile internal improvements continued to receive the attention of the legislature. Church’s Harbor was made safer for fishermen by the erection of a breakwater. Providence Cove was the seat of a prosperous trade, and especially of shipbuilding. To facilitate the communication with the water below a draw was opened in Weybosset bridge.

The cancer of paper money was still eating into the vitals of the community, in spite of the legislative palliatives which were from time to time fruitlessly applied to it. Party spirit also had reached its fullest development, and the two rival factions of Ward and Hopkins continued to hate each other bitterly and fight each other obstinately at the polls. These were minor evils. But in the great northwest new war clouds were gathering under the influence of the mighty Pontiac, its king and lord. Parliament prepared for the outbreak, and voted an appropriation of a hundred and thirty-three thousand pounds and an army of ten thousand men for the defence of the American colonies. The regulars were sent against the Indians and parts of the provincials were distributed through the frontier garrisons. The Rhode Islanders were stationed at Fort Stanwix. We are spared the story of the war of Pontiac. It belongs to the frontier and is in no way connected with Rhode Island history. Another contest on which hung the fate of all the colonies is already begun.

I have often spoken of the Board of Trade and the jealous scrutiny with which it watched the growth of the colonies. Too short-sighted to see that their prosperity was intimately connected with the prosperity of the mother country, the ministry by advice of the Board of Trade drew tight the bands of commerce and encumbered the communications of the two countries with dangerous restraints. Trade had increased, but the revenue had not increased in its natural proportion. The form of the evil was smuggling, but its root was the imposition of oppressive duties. Walpole alone had seen forty years before that the surest way to enlarge the revenue was to make the importation of the raw material and the exportation of the manufactured goods as easy as possible. But Walpole stood alone in his wisdom. An attempt was made to enforce the acts of trade. New officers were appointed, a ship of war was stationed in Newport harbor during the winter of 1763 and the noisome tribe of revenue officers stimulated to zealous exertion.