The nation, it seems, was not unanimous in its approbation of this statute. The great knight himself informs us, page 105, "that some wise and honest gentlemen and merchants doubted whether the inconveniences it has brought with it be not greater than the conveniences." This chapter was, therefore, written to answer all objections; and vindicate and justify Downing's statute.
Mr. Otis cast an eye over this chapter, and adverted to such observations in it, as tended to show the spirit of the writer, and of the statute; which might be summed up in this comprehensive Machiavelian principle, that earth, air, and seas, all colonies and all nations were to be made subservient to the growth, grandeur and power of the British navy.
And thus, truly, it happened. The two great knights, Sir George Downing, and Sir Josiah Child, must be acknowledged to have been great politicians!
Mr. Otis proceeded to chapter 10, of this work, page 166, "concerning plantations." And he paused at the 6th proposition, in page 167, "That all colonies and plantations, do endamage their mother kingdoms, whereof the trades of such plantations are not confined by severe laws, and good executions of those laws, to the mother kingdom."
Mr. Otis then proceeded to seize the key to the whole riddle, in page 168, proposition eleventh, "that New England is the most prejudicial plantation to the kingdom of England." Sir George Downing, no doubt, said the same to Charles 2d.
Otis proceeded to page 170, near the bottom, "we must consider what kind of people they were and are that have and do transport themselves to our foreign plantations." New England, as every one knows, was originally inhabited, and hath since been successively replenished by a sort of people called Puritans, who could not conform to the ecclesiastical laws of England; but being wearied with church censures and persecutions, were forced to quit their fathers' land, to find out new habitations, as many of them did in Germany and Holland, as well as at New England; and had there not been a New England found for some of them, Germany and Holland probably had received the rest: but Old England, to be sure, would have lost them all.
"Virginia and Barbadoes were first peopled by a sort of loose, vagrant people, vicious, and destitute of the means to live at home, (being either unfit for labour, or such as could find none to employ themselves about, or had so misbehaved themselves by whoring, thieving, or other debauchery, that none would set them at work) which merchants and masters of ships, by their agents, (or spirits, as they were called) gathered up about the streets of London, and other places, clothed and transported, to be employed upon plantations; and these I say, were such as, had there been no English foreign plantation in the world, could probably never have lived at home, to do service for their country, but must have come to be hanged, or starved, or died untimely of some of those miserable diseases, that proceed from want and vice; or else have sold themselves for soldiers, to be knocked on the head, or starved in the quarrels of our neighbours, as many thousands of brave Englishmen were in the low countries, as also in the wars of Germany, France, and Sweden, &c. or else, if they could by begging or otherwise, arrive to the stock of 2s. 6d. to waft them over to Holland, become servants to the Dutch, who refuse none.
"But the principal growth and increase of the aforesaid plantations of Virginia and Barbadoes, happened in, or immediately after, our late civil wars, when the worsted party, by the fate of war, being deprived of their estates, and having, some of them, never been bred to labour, and others of them made unfit for it by the lazy habit of a soldier's life, their wanting means to maintain them all abroad, with his majesty, many of them betook themselves to the aforesaid plantations; and great numbers of Scotch soldiers of his majesty's army, after Worcester fight, were by the then prevailing powers voluntarily sent thither.
"Another great swarm or accession of the new inhabitants to the aforesaid plantations, as also to New England, Jamaica, and all other his majesty's plantations in the West Indies, ensued upon his majesty's restoration, when the former prevailing party being by a divine hand of providence brought under, the army disbanded, many officers displaced, and all the new purchasers of public titles dispossessed of their pretended lands, estates, &c. many became impoverished, and destitute of employment; and therefore such as could find no way of living at home, and some who feared the re-establishment of the ecclesiastical laws, under which they could not live, were forced to transport themselves, or sell themselves for a few years, to be transported by others, to the foreign English plantations. The constant supply, that the said plantations have since had, hath been such vagrant, loose people, as I have before mentioned, picked up especially about the streets of London and Westminster, and malefactors condemned for crimes, for which by law they deserved to die; and some of those people called quakers, banished for meeting on pretence of religious worship.
"Now, if from the premises it be duly considered, what kind of persons those have been, by whom our plantations have at all times been replenished, I suppose it will appear, that such they have been, and under such circumstances, that if his majesty had had no foreign plantations to which they might have resorted, England, however, must have lost them."