Again the Indian war was carried on in the northern frontier, and even as far west as Connecticut River, where Fort Dummer was erected as a defence of the towns in that quarter. Fort Dummer is now Brattleborough, the oldest town in the present state of Vermont. Without going into the particulars of this war, it is sufficient to say, that it was terrible and bloody, as all such former wars; that the premium on Indian scalps rose to £100; and that Norridgewock was taken, and the Jesuit father, Sebastian Rasles, slain, with numbers of his Indian disciples, the chapel profaned and burned, together with the whole village.
The English government, jealous of the growing prosperity of the colonies, and incited by the dissatisfaction of the royal governors, menaced the American provinces by the loss of their charters, by the curtailment of their popular liberty, and the imposition of taxes. The latter, however, the scheme of which originated, it is said, with Sir William Keith, at one time governor of Pennsylvania, was rejected by the commissioners of trade and by Sir Robert Walpole, who, foreseeing the impolicy of such a measure, replied, “I will leave the taxing of the British colonies to some of my successors who have more boldness than I have, and who are less the friends of commerce than myself.”
Every means was taken to advance the British manufacturer at the expense of the colonies, and all competition of industry in the colonies was prohibited. It was soon found that hats could be made most advantageously in the land of the beaver, but this was forbidden; nor in any wise could the provinces he allowed to trade with each other. In 1719, the House of Commons declared, that the erecting of manufactories in the colonies tended to decrease their dependence on Great Britain, and the production of iron was strictly forbidden: “None in the plantations should manufacture iron-wares of any kind whatsoever, nor make bar nor iron-rod.” The northern colonies opposed this hill resolutely. Logan, the excellent governor of Pennsylvania, justly remarked, “To prohibit our making bar-iron for our own use, is the very way to alienate the minds of the people of these parts, and shake their dependence on Britain.” To promote the interests of the British sugar colonies, all intercourse was forbidden between the northern provinces and any tropical island, except those belonging to Britain, which put a stop to the commercial transactions between the northern colonies and the French and Dutch islands, whereby the provisions, horses and timber of the north had been exchanged for rum, sugar and molasses. In 1733, parliament having recognised the “sugar colonies of America as the most important to the trade of England,” imposed a duty of 9d. on every gallon of rum, 6d. on every gallon of molasses, and 5s. on every hundred-weight of sugar, or on any of these articles imported from foreign plantations into the British colonies. This led to extreme dissatisfaction, to contraband trade, and, in the case of molasses, to almost entire prohibition; for, rather than submit, the resolute colonists gave up the use of it. In Maine, also, where a royal monopoly of the fir-timber existed, the settlers were brought into continual and vexatious collision with the revenue officers. If a single tree were felled on any of the land claimed by the British Crown, the settler was liable to punishment for trespass and for the destruction of timber destined for the royal navy. Added to all this, were financial difficulties and disputes about the currency. Unceasing discontent and dissatisfaction existed between the colonies and Great Britain. The seeds of the great approaching struggle were already sown.
In 1728, Burnet, the son of Bishop Burnet, was appointed governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, in the place of Shute, and again the controversy rose respecting salary. £1,400 were offered, which, he refused, and removed, on suspicion of undue influence, the general court from Boston to Salem; but even there it was equally refractory, when it was again adjourned, and met in four months at Cambridge, but with no favourable result. The following month, harassed with the difficulties of his position, Burnet sickened of fever and died, bequeathing the old quarrel to his successor, Belcher. The instructions of the new governor forewarned him of the temper of the people he had to govern, and that “for some years they had been attempting by unwarrantable practices, to weaken, if not cast off, the obedience which they owed to the crown, and the dependence which all colonies ought to have on the mother-country.” Belcher, therefore, as the wisest policy, accepted such amount of salary as the assembly chose to vote him.
During the time of Belcher’s governorship, the metaphysician Berkeley, the advocate of the non-existence of matter, removed to Newport, in Rhode Island, intending to become a citizen of the New World. He had conceived the idea of establishing a college in the Bermudas for the instruction of Indians and the education of missionaries; and resigning his rich sinecure Irish deanery of Derry, he proposed to become rector of this college, which was to be endowed by the sale of lands in the portion of St. Kitts ceded to the English, at £100 per annum. George I. took an interest in the scheme, and the House of Commons gave the necessary assent, when Berkeley, just married, arrived at Newport, now a “gay, thriving and commercial city of five thousand inhabitants.” Berkeley, pleased by his reception, bought land and built a house, intending here to wait till all requisite arrangements were made. But George I. died, and the requisite arrangements never were made; and after two years Berkeley returned to England, and became Bishop of Cloyne.
In New York the people and the governor came also into collision, and in the midst of the excitement it occasioned, a newspaper appeared as the organ of the popular cause, which soon led to the imprisonment of its printer, John Peter Zenger. The trial was an important one. The aged Andrew Hamilton, a lawyer of Philadelphia, addressed the jury for the printer. “This is not,” he said, “the cause of a poor printer of New York alone; it is the best cause—the cause of liberty. Every man who prefers freedom to a life of slavery will bless and honour you as men, who, by an impartial verdict, lay a noble foundation for securing to ourselves, our posterity, and our neighbours, that to which nature and the honour of our country have given us a right—the liberty of opposing arbitrary power by speaking and writing truth.” The jury returned a verdict of “Not Guilty;” and not only the colony of New York, but all the other colonies in which the struggle for the birth of liberty had commenced, exulted as for a great triumph. At the same time, Benjamin Franklin, through a paper which he had established in Philadelphia, was giving a voice to the sentiment which was vital in every American breast. “The judgment of a whole people,” declared he, “if unbiased by faction, undeluded by the tricks of designing men, is infallible. The people cannot, in any sense, divest themselves of the supreme authority, inasmuch as the voice of a whole people is the voice of God.”
“The colonies,” says Bancroft, “were forming a character of their own, Throughout the whole continent national freedom and independence were gaining vigour and maturity.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE SETTLEMENT OF GEORGIA AND THE PROGRESS OF THE STATES.
The settlement of Louisiana was for many years a series of unsuccessful attempts. That of Georgia, though perhaps it cannot be called a success from the commencement, furnishes that which is still better, a beautiful chapter in the history of humanity.
At the period of which we are now writing, England acknowledged the principle avowed by Locke and Shaftesbury in the Grand Model Constitution of Carolina, that the protection of property was the end of government; hence petty theft, whatever the incitement might be, was punished by the gallows, and the jails were filled with small debtors, whom the law condemned to life-long imprisonment. The hard and hapless case of these unfortunate men attracted the attention of the benevolent, and a commission to inquire into the state of the jails throughout the kingdom was formed. Of this commission was James Oglethorpe, a member of the British parliament, “a man of an heroic mind and a merciful disposition, in the full activity of middle life,” at once a scholar and a soldier. He had served in the British army, and under Prince Eugene, was present at the siege of Belgrade; his most marked characteristic, however, was that of active philanthropy, and as founder of a state, he holds a distinguished place in American history beside William Penn and the pilgrim fathers.