A Century Too Soon: The Age of Tyranny

by John R. Musick

Civil freedom was safe under the shelter of masculine morality, and beggary and crime could not thrive in the midst of severest manners. From the first, the minds of the yeomanry were kept active by the constant exercise of the elective franchise, and, except under James II., there was no such thing in the land as a home officer appointed by the English king. Under the happy conditions of affairs, education was cherished, religious knowledge was carried to the highest degree of refinement, alike in its application to moral duties and to the mysterious questions on the nature of God, of liberty and of the soul. A hardy race multiplied along the alluvion of the streams and subdued the more rocky and less inviting fields. Its population for a century doubled once in twenty years, though there was considerable emigration from the valley. Religion united with the pursuits of agriculture gave to the people the aspects of steady habits. The domestic wars were discussions of knotty points in theology. The concerns of the parish and the merits of the minister were the weightiest affairs, and a church reproof the heaviest calamity. The strifes of the parent country, though they sometimes occasioned a levy among the sons of the husbandmen, never brought an enemy over their border. No fears of midnight ruffians disturbed the sweetest slumber, and the best house required no fastening but a latch, lifted by a string.

Happiness was enjoyed unconsciously. Beneath a rugged exterior, humanity wore its sweetest smile. For a long time there was hardly a lawyer in the land. The husbandman who held his own plough and fed his own cattle was the greatest man of the age. No one was superior to the matron, who, with her busy daughters, kept the hum of the wheel incessantly alive, spinning and weaving every article of their dress. Fashion was confined within narrow limits, and pride, which aimed at no grander equipage than a pillion, could exult only in the common splendor of the blue and white linen gown, with short sleeves, coming down to the waist, and in the snow-white flaxen apron, which, primly starched and ironed, was worn on public days. There was no revolution except from the time of sowing to the time of reaping, from the plain dress of the week to the more trim attire of Sunday. Every family was taught to look to the fountain of all good.

Life was not all sombre. Frolic mingled with innocence. Sometimes religion itself wore the garb of gayety, and the annual thanksgiving to God was, from primitive times, as joyous as it was sincere. Nature always asserts her rights, and Christianity means gladness.

The English colonies of the south after the restoration began to show evidence of improvement. Mr. William Drummond, the sturdy Scotch emigrant to Virginia, having been appointed governor of North Carolinia brought that country into the favorable notice of the world. Clarendon gained for Carolinia a charter which opened the way for religious freedom. One clause held out to the proprietaries a hope of revenue from colonial customs, to be imposed in colonial ports by Carolinia legislatures. Another gave them authority to erect cities and manors, counties and baronies, and to establish orders of nobility with other than English titles. The power to levy troops, to erect fortifications, to make war by sea and land on their enemies, and, in cases of necessity, to exercise martial law was granted them. Every favor was extended to the proprietaries, nothing being neglected but the interests of the English sovereign and rights of the colonists. Imagination encouraged every extravagant hope, and Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, the most active and the most able of the corporators, was deputed by them to frame for the dawning states a perfect constitution, worthy to endure throughout all ages.

The constitutions for Carolinia merit attention as the only continued attempt within the United States to connect political power with hereditary wealth. America was singularly rich in every form of representative government. Its political life was so varied that, in modern constitutions, hardly a method of constituting an upper or popular house has thus far been suggested, of which the character and operation had not already been tested in the experience of our fathers. In Carolinia the disputes of a thousand years were crowded into a generation.

"Europe suffered from absolute but inoperative laws. No statute of Carolinia was to bind beyond a century. Europe suffered from the multiplication of law-books and the perplexities of the law. In Carolinia not a commentary might be written on the constitutions, the statutes, or the common law. Europe suffered from the furies of bigotry. Carolinia promised not equal rights, but toleration to 'Jews, heathens and other dissenters,' to 'men of any religion.' In other respects, 'the interests of the proprietors,' the desires of 'a government most agreeable to monarchy,' and the dread of 'a numerous democracy,' are avowed as the motives for forming the fundamental constitutions of Carolinia.

"The proprietaries, as sovereigns, constituted a close corporation of eight, a number which was never to be diminished or increased. The dignity was hereditary, but in default of heirs, the survivors elected a successor. Thus was formed an upper house, self-elected and immortal." [Footnote: Bancroft, vol. i., page 495.]

Carolinia was an aristocracy, the instincts of which dreads the moral power of proprietary cultivators of the soil, so enacted their perpetual degradation. The leet-men, or tenants holding ten acres of land at a fixed rent, were not only destitute of political franchises, but were adscripts to the soil: "Under the jurisdiction of their lord, without appeal," and it was added: "all children of leet-men shall be leet-men, and so to all generations."

In 1665, Albemarle had been increased by fresh emigrants from New England and by a colony of ship-builders from the Bermudas, who lived contentedly with Stevens as chief magistrate, under a very wise and simple form of government. A council of twelve, six named by the proprietaries, and six chosen by the assembly. An assembly, composed of the governor, the council, and twelve delegates from the freeholders of the incipient settlements, these formed a government which enjoyed popular confidence. No interference from abroad was anticipated, for freedom of religion, and security against taxation, except by the colonial legislature, were conceded. As their lands were confirmed to them on their own terms, the colonists were satisfied.

The authentic record of the legislative history of North Carolinia begins with the autumn of 1666, when the legislators of Albemarle, ignorant of the scheme which Locke and Shaftesbury were maturing, formed a few laws, which, however open to objection, were united to the character and manner of the inhabitants. While freedom struggled in the hearts of the common people to assert its rights and declare that all men were equal and ought to be free, scheming nobles sought to enchain them in one form or another of slavery.