Meanwhile the young colony leaped vigorously over into the eighteenth century, found its supply of anthracile[anthracile] coal sufficient for a good house-warming, invited over Dutch, Germans, Norwegians, and Swedes, with their large horses, heavily tired wagons, and never-tiring heavy wives, who settled down on the whole territory so solidly that neither they nor it could ever be moved from that day to this.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE COLONIES IN THE UPPER HALF OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
The Young Colonies watched by the “Old Folks at Home.”—Required to furnish Inventories of their Property.—Old People particular as to Shops where the Youngsters traded.—Several Articles of Political Housekeeping, as Printing-Presses, Jury-Boxes, etc., not allowed.—Some Favorites among the Children.—The first American Ring.—Cromwell as a Step-Father.—The Atlantic Swimming-Bath.—Political Rights jarred off the Parent Tree; others fell when ripe.—Some Proprietors sell out to raise Money for Costs.—General Thaw in High Places.—Legislative Mills with two Runs of Stone.—Woman’s Rights in Capsules.—How hard Puritan Wood got softer.—Episcopal Race-Courses enlarged.—A Black Frost curls up the Green Leaves of the Charters.—What Sir Edmund Andros swallowed and the Fit of Indigestion which followed.—Effect of European Housecleaning in setting Colonial Brooms in Motion.—New York swept into the English Pan.—Result of James II.’s Over-stay in Paris.—Slaps in the Face of Canada and their Return.—How Public Events tell on Family Matters tolled long and loud.—People occasionally subject to Scarlet Fever and Fourth of July, but can’t live on either.—Kidd at Sea; takes off a few People.—How the Deficiency was supplied.—Number of Colonists at close of Seventeenth Century.—Would have been more had Chicago started.—Colonial Colts at the Bars of the Eighteenth Century.
By the middle of the seventeenth century, the young colonial damsels from England, Holland, Sweden, and Germany had, in the main, obtained comfortable and satisfactory settlements along the Atlantic slopes. The jealous “old folks at home” kept a strict watch on their doings, and sent servants to look after their ways. Here and there some stolen interviews with that very disreputable acquaintance, Legislative Liberty, had been detected; and the servants were especially charged to keep both eyes upon any renewal of such improprieties. Frequent inventories of property were insisted on. All the household stuff was required to be bought at the home shops; and, what hurt the feelings and interests of the young people more than anything else, they were forbidden even to send back what they did not want to use themselves, unless in ships built and despatched from England for them. There were some articles, as printing-presses, jury-boxes, etc., which were deemed by the anxious parents as particularly unnecessary and even improper. Two whims there were, which the youngsters had of late got into their heads, that they were repeatedly enjoined to banish, once for all: namely, the notion of electing somebody to go and meet somebody else and have a talk over that foolish and altogether unsatisfactory subject the taxes; and that other equally absurd fancy of counting over occasionally the loose change collected for public purposes. They told them that such things were above their years, and that, in fact, they knew nothing about them; and moreover, that such whimsies had made a great deal of trouble even among the wiser heads on the old island, and, if indulged in, would be sure to bring their progeny into bad habits and to worse ends. These injunctions and warnings of course only increased curiosity, led to talks across the dinner-table and in the evenings after the day’s work was over. The more they talked it over, the more, of course, they set their hearts upon having the forbidden fruit. It was found that Virginia had enjoyed the dangerous luxuries of sending two men from every one of her eleven boroughs to do both these improper things, ever since she was twelve years old. She, too, had been permitted to have a jury-box, and liked the music of it right well, although some of the twelve strings sometimes got out of order, and the instrument occasionally played too long when badly wound up. Favoritism in a family is never pleasant for the unfavored ones. The others could not see why they should not have what Virginia was allowed. The subject became at last a sore one, and several times ended in angry flushes and muttered adjectives that went off without any nouns to touch them; some into the air, and some—we are forced to say—right into the faces of the old people.
Cromwell, that brusk English step-father, who, after the sudden taking off of his predecessor, Charles I., vigorously seized the cold hand of Albion, had his favorites among the step-children, the New-Englanders. Yet he did not hesitate to trounce them as soundly as he did Virginia and the two Carolinas, whenever they set up their wills against his. It was he who, in 1651, tied up all the colonies by those leading-strings, the Navigation Acts. When Charles II. came into the family, these colonial cords were not cut, but multiplied and tied into knots, not at all sailor fashion. In fact, whoever ruled the house, Commonwealth, Stuart, or Orange, strengthened and doubled these vexatious marine strings, until finally father and children were threatened with the fate of Laocoön.
Temptation; or, the First American “Ring.”
(p. 153)
The large swimming-bath of the Atlantic, so near their doors, sorely tempted the young swimmers; but the old people insisted upon nothing so much as the maxim, not to go into the waters of commerce until they had learned to swim, and never to begin to learn an art so perilous to—themselves. In fact, the entire maritime policy of England towards the colonies was very dry nursing on very wet principles.
At one time, Virginia was the pet, and got several sugar-plums from royal bounty. Then Connecticut came in for some caressing. The younger Winthrop presented to Charles II., in 1662, a petition for a new toy,—a charter. He would have been refused, but that he slipped in, at the same time, a ring given to his own grandfather by the father of Charles, which so pleased the dress-loving king, that he gave to Connecticut one of the best charter hobby-horses ever seen at that time in America. This, it may be remarked, is the earliest example in our history of what “a ring” can effect.
We cannot record in detail the successive struggles of the Colonies to free themselves from political and commercial restrictive rules,—for rights of representation in assemblies of their own, for the privilege of taxing themselves, and spending their own assessments, and for the many solid and large freedoms which we now enjoy without question or fear. The story of the way in which the cellar was dug, through obstructions of root and stone, the walls sunk, the beams of the lower floor, hewn out amid discouragements and opposition, laid and primed, ought not to be otherwise than pleasant, even when rehearsed to those who have long and securely revelled in all the comforts and luxuries of the completed building; in its hot and cold water baths of free discussion; the numerous call-pipes through the wall, for public servants; the cedar closets for the best clothes of liberty; the iron safe for the family silver or greenbacks; the gas-pipes of illuminating knowledge; and the varied upholstery to soothe labor-aching limbs, or to gratify luxurious and even extravagant tastes. But space, like nobility, obliges; and although, like those experts who write the Lord’s Prayer on a sixpence, we can condense Genesis on the smallest historic disk, we cannot crowd all creation on the rim of the same piece. Speaking in a general way, however, we may affirm that for forty years preceding the accession of James II. in 1685, the Colonies, on the whole, steadily gained from jealous political privilege and chartered monopoly some of the rights enjoyed at home. As these rights fell, one after another, upon colonial soil, they were carefully secured by strong hands. Sometimes they were jarred suddenly from the parent tree by the iron hand of war. Sometimes they fell carelessly, like great, golden pippins, over the royal enclosure into the king’s highway, ripe and well flavored. Sometimes they matured naturally under the very eyes of those keepers of the royal Transatlantic preserves,—the colonial governors,—and when mellow, were seized and hurried out of reach until it was safe to give them to the hungry people.