Expressing a Colonial Governor from London.
(p. 189)
The colonists very early felt the inconvenience of this little arrangement; and, being a sharp set, soon perceived the loss in thus buying and selling exclusively in a foreign market, stuff which they could suit themselves better with at home, even if the articles did not have the companies’ trade-mark or shine with their patented varnish. Gradually they tried their hands at law-making and officer-making, and, finding how easy it was, took a great liking to the business; and at length, dropping the foreign-made articles one after another, came to carry on a considerable manufacture of their own. The Yankee colonists were particularly handy at making church regulations, and so multiplied them that we doubt whether any churches then existing had such a large and full collection. In fact, in some parts of New England, church-members had a difficulty often in knowing what to do, not having sufficient time to read the long codes, and yet conscientiously fearing lest they might offend against some of their minute provisions prescribing or proscribing action. It may be remarked, in passing, that this cacœthes faciendi leges is an itch highly American, no ointment having yet been found strong enough to cure it. The colonists early insisted on acquiring their lands in fee, not liking any leases but releases. The old fable of Anteus was again vivified. The man who stands on the soil gets the strength of the earth; and forthwith wrestles down his opponents, want or idleness, be they never so herculean. And so the simple land-owners of the Colonies, touching constantly their own acres, sucked up law-making power from their pores, and even imbibed a certain resisting faculty to cannons bored by any one but themselves.
They had an aversion to roads not made with their own hands; to laws of entail or inheritance, disposing of their lands which they had chopped out of the raw side of a continent; and, in fine, became so resolutely resistant to all resolutions moved on the far Atlantic side, unless seconded on this by themselves through their own representatives, that we are compelled by authentic documents to believe, if the ten commandments had been enacted by the royal law-makers without Colonial ratification, the sturdy settlers would have practically expunged all the “nots” from the suspected decalogue.
In those early times nothing was more criminal than the laws against criminals. Like the medical practitioners, the legal doctors believed in blood-letting for all ailments. Misdemeanors, now disposed of at quarter sessions and by police magistrates with small fines or petty imprisonment, then dangled at the hideous cross-bars.
The soft, April-like rains of clemency, now and then, however, began to fall upon these hard enactments. Quakers mildly doubted whether these scarecrows really frightened other offenders off the fields of crime. Silent tears, shed in secret household places over brothers and sons hung up on high hills for stealing or trespass, began to gather, like the waters of fountains hidden away in the depths of valleys, and to create that large American river, Public Sentiment,—larger than the Hudson, the Ohio, or the Mississippi,—which, rising and rising, has swept so many abuses and errors into the gulfs of time.
That solemn Saxon joke, a coroner’s inquest, as gloomy in its dissections, and as funny in its illogical conclusions, as in the land of the heptarchy, was not denied to those deodand colonists whose hearts suddenly stopped beating, and whose mortal wrecks, thrown up on that very weary shore “Crow’ners Law” were always prizes for small bunglers. For live men, habeas corpus, that great opener of illegally locked doors, began at the close of the century to be provided.
If colonial judges sometimes wrote to England to know how to decide cases politically edged, for fear they might cut a royal prerogative or sharpen popular rights; or if justices of the peace—those small pedlers of very common law, and uncommon specimens of judicial wares—dribbled out decisions for plaintiff or defendant, not knowing which was which, the puzzled magistrate giving opinions about the off ox, without knowing which was the “off” or which the “near” ox; or if sometimes in extreme cases the obfuscated and doubting arbiter of law consulted his wife and retailed her caudle lecture to the astonished suitor, as his well-considered judgment in the case,—in the main it may be averred that justice was as well tolled from the mills, as in these latter days when the judicial miller takes from the bag before the grist goes in, and sees to it that his private gutter taps the hopper before it shakes itself into the customer’s heap. Color is supposed to lurk just under the outer skin, and, if placed on the scales, to be imponderable; but it was always found that positive colors, when put on the judicial Fair banks, were very light; the white, which is no color at all, invariably weighing down that side of the balance, when a cinnamon-colored Indian or a black-berried African was found in the other. The black man always lost at the checker-board, even when the moves were claimed to be on the square. In fact, until a few years past, when the military game called “drafts” began, luck never favored that color at the little game of law, at which two can play and one pay, or in fact at any of the larger games of life in America. The bleaching-powders that whiten even the ermine were slow in coming into use. The seventeenth century, like so many of its ancestors, while working its double team, one white and the other black, to draw its loads, took better care at baiting-places and at the taverns over night of the white horse than of the other.
CHAPTER XI.
THE COLONIES IN THE LOWER HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
The Colonial Colts in the large, open Field of the Eighteenth Century.—The Effects of a Sniff of French Gunpowder.—Queen Anne’s War, 1702–1713; its Cost and Results in Europe and America.—Acadia changes its Name to Nova Scotia.—How the Colonies started a Newspaper in 1704.—Philadelphia in a Sheet in 1719; and how comfortable it was.—The Franklin Bros. furnish Food too condensed even for Boston.—Benjamin quits the Hub; foots it, without tiring, to New York.—How he got through New Jersey without paying Toll.—Enters Philadelphia with Two Loaves, and sets up an Intellectual Bakery.—Banks built on the Sands of Credit.—Moving Accidents.—John Law’s Scheme to use the Mississippi Valley; how it grew; what it promised, and how it performed.—A French Pasquinade.—The Results of a Bank Panic in the Eighteenth Century.—The Effects on the Manufacture of Children.—Number of Colonists in 1713 and 1743.—The Condition of Delaware, New Hampshire, and Vermont.—The Training of Young America.—Yale College and its Mustard-like Growth.—The American Learned Oak.—The Connection between Slate-Pencil and Gum Chewing and Female Education.—What took Place between 1713 and 1743.—A Negro Plot in New York.—Negroes thrown overboard, and the Bubbles that rose.—How large Historic Doors swing on small Hinges.—Examples from A to W.—What happened because Maria Theresa was a Female.—The English Georges; what Bulls they were, and made.—The Transatlantic Bullocks; how they rushed into King George’s War in 1744, and what Mischief they did for Four Years.