CHAPTER III. The Navigation Act—its Impolicy.—Discontent and Distress of the Colonists.Naturalization of Aliens.-Progress of the provincial Discontent.-Indian Hostilities.-Bacon's Rebellion.-Death of Bacon-and Restoration of Tranquillity.Bill of Attainder passed by the Colonial Assembly.-Sir William Berkeley superseded by Colonel Jeffreys.—Partiality of the new Governor-Dispute with the Assembly.-Renewal of Discontents.-Lord Culpeper appointed GovernorSeverity and Rapacity of his Administration.—An Insurrection-Punishment of the Insurgents. Arbitrary Measures of the Crown.-James the Second-augments the Burdens of the Colonists.--Corrupt and oppressive Government of Lord Effingham.-Revolution in Britain.-Complaints of the Colonies against the former Governors discouraged by King William.-Effect of the English Revolution on the American Colonies.-State of Virginia at this Period-PopulationLaws-Manners. III. 1660. THE intelligence of the restoration of the House of Stewart to C H A P. the throne of Britain soon reached America, and excited in the various British colonies which were now established in that region, very different emotions. In Virginia, whose history we must still separately pursue, it was received by a great majority of the people like the surprising fulfilment of an agreeable dream, and hailed with acclamations of unfeigned and unbounded joy. Even that class of the inhabitants which had recently expressed esteem and approbation of the protectoral government, evinced a new-born zeal for royalty hardly inferior to the more consistent ardour of the genuine cavaliers. These sentiments, confirmed by the gracious expressions of esteem and good-will1 which the king very readily vouch 1 Sir William Berkeley, who made a journey to England to congratulate the king on his restoration, was received at court with distinguished regard; and Charles, in honour of his loyal Virginians, wore at his coronation a robe manufactured of Virginian silk.-Oldmixon. This was not the first royal robe that America supplied. Queen Elizabeth wore a gown made of the silk grass, of which Raleigh's colonists sent a quantity to England. -Coxe's Description of Carolana. There is a copy of this curious work in the library of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. BOOK safed, excited hopes of substantial favour and recompense I. which it was not easy to gratify, and which were fated to 1660. undergo a speedy and severe disappointment. Sir William Berkeley having received a new commission from the crown to exercise the office of governor, proceeded to convoke the provincial assembly, which, after zealous declarations of loyalty and satisfaction, undertook a general revision of the laws and institutions of Virginia. Trial by jury, which had, been discontinued for some years, was now again restored; judicial proceedings were disencumbered of various abuses; and a provision, of essential importance to the interests of liberty, was made for enlarging the number of representatives in the Assembly in proportion to the increase of the province in peopled and cultivated territory. The supremacy of the Church of England was recognized and established by law; stipends were allotted to its ministers; and no preachers but those who had received their ordination from a bishop in England, and who should subscribe an engagement of conformity to the orders and constitutions of the established church, were permitted to exercise their functions either publicly or privately within the colony.1 A law was shortly after passed against the importation of quakers into Virginia, under the penalty of five thousand pounds of tobacco inflicted on the importers; but with a special exception of such quakers as might be judicially transported from England for breach of the laws.2 The same principles of government which prevailed in England after the restoration, uniformly extended their influence, whether salutary or baneful, across the Atlantic; and the colonies, no longer deemed the mere property of the prince, were considered as extensions of the British territory, and subject to parliamentary legislation. The explicit declaration by the Long Parliament of the dependence of the colonies on the parent state, introduced maxims which received the sanction of the courts of Westminster Hall, and were thus interwoven with the fabric of English law. In a variety of cases which involved this great constitutional point, the judges pronounced 2 Chalmers. In 1663, the assembly entertained a complaint against one of its own members, of "being loving to the Quakers."-Burk. III. that by virtue of those principles of the common law which CHAP. bind the territories to the state, the American plantations were included within the pale of British dominion and legislation, 1660. and affected by acts of parliament, either when specially named, or when reasonably supposable within the contemplation of the legislature.1 In conformity with the adjudications of the courts of law, was the uniform tenor of the parliamentary proceedings; and the colonists soon perceived that although the Long Parliament was no more, it had bequeathed to its successors the spirit which influenced its commercial councils. The House of Commons determined not only to retain the system of colonial policy which the Long Parliament had introduced, but to mature and extend it; to render the trade of the colonies completely subject to parliamentary governance, and exclusively subservient to the interests of English commerce and navigation. No sooner was Charles seated on the throne, than a duty of five per cent. was imposed by the parliament on all merchandize exported from, or imported into, any of the dominions belonging to the crown ;2 and the same session, in producing the celebrated Navigation Act, originated the most memorable and important branch of the commercial code of England. By this statute (in addition The Navigation to many other important provisions which are foreign to our present consideration), it was enacted that no commodities should be imported into any British settlement in Asia, Africa, or America, or exported from thence, but in vessels built in England or her colonial plantations, and navigated by crews of which the masters and three-fourths of the mariners should be English subjects, under the penalty of forfeiture of ship and cargo; that none but natural-born subjects of the English crown, or persons legally naturalised, should exercise the occupation of merchant or factor in any English colonial settlement, under the penalty of forfeiture of goods and chattels; that no sugar, tobacco, cotton, wool, indigo, ginger, or woods used in dyeing, produced, or manufactured in the colonies, should be shipped from them to any other country than England; and 1 Freeman's Reports, 175. Modern Reports, iii. 159, 160. iv. 225. Vaughan's Reports, 170. 400. Salkeld's Reports, ii. 6. 2 12 Car. II. cap. 4. Act 1. 1660. 1663. BOOK to secure the observance of this regulation, ship owners were required, at the port of lading, to give bonds with surety for sums proportioned to the tonnage of their vessels. The commercial wares thus restricted, were termed enumerated commodities: and when new articles of colonial produce, as the rice of Carolina, and the copper ore of the northern provinces, were raised into importance and brought into commerce by the increasing industry of the colonists, they were successively added to the original list which we have noted, and subjected to the same regulations. As some compensation to the colonies for these commercial restraints, the parliament at the same time conferred on them the exclusive supply of tobacco, by prohibiting its cultivation in England, Ireland, Guernsey, or Jersey. The navigation act was soon after enlarged, and additional restraints imposed by a new law, which prohibited the importation of European commodities into the colonies, except in vessels laden in England, and navigated and manned in conformity with the requisitions of the original statute. More rigorous and effectual provisions were likewise enacted for securing the infliction of the penalties attached to the transgression of the navigation act : and the principles of commercial policy on which the whole system was founded were openly avowed in a declaration that, as it was the usage of other nations to keep the trade of their plantations to themselves, so the colonies that were founded and peopled by English subjects ought to be retained in firm dependence upon England, and obliged to contribute to her advantage in the employment of English shipping, the vent of English commodities and manufactures, and the conversion of England into a settled mart or emporium, not only of the productions of her colonies, but also of such commodities of other countries as the colonies themselves might require to be supplied with. Advancing a step farther in the prosecution of its domineering policy, the parliament proceeded to tax the trade of the several colonies with each other; and as the act of navigation had left all the colonists at liberty to export the enumerated commodities from one settlement to another with out paying any duty, this exemption was subsequently with2 Ibid. cap. 34. 3 15 Car. II. cap. 7. 1 12 Car. II. cap. 18. 1 III. drawn, and they were subjected, in trading with each other, CHA P. to a tax equivalent to what was levied on the consumption of their peculiar commodities in England.1 The system pursued by these regulations, of securing to England a monopoly of the trade of her colonies, by shutting up every other channel which competition might have formed for it, and into which the interest of the colonists might have caused it preferably to flow, excited in their minds the utmost disgust and indignation. In England, it was long applauded as a masterpiece of political sagacity; retained and cherished as a main source of opulence and power; and defended on the plea of expediency deduced from its supposed advantages. The philosophy of political science, however, has amply refuted these illiberal principles, and would long ago have corrected the views and amended the institutions which they sanctioned or introduced, but that, from the general prevalence of narrow jealousies, and of those obstinate and passionate prepossessions that constitute wilful ignorance, the cultivation of political science has much more frequently terminated in knowledge merely speculative, than visibly operated to improve human conduct, or increase human happiness. Nations, biassed by passionate enmities as well as mean partialities, have suffered an illiberal jealousy of other states to contract the views they have formed of their own interests, and to induce a line of policy of which the operation is to procure a smaller amount of exclusive gain, in preference to a larger contingent in the participation of general advantage. Too passionate or gross-sighted to discern the bonds that connect the interests of all the members of the great family of mankind, they have accounted the detriment and exclusion of their rivals, equivalent to an extension of benefit to themselves. The prevalence of this mistaken policy has commonly been aided by the interested representations of the few who contrive to extract a temporary and partial advantage from every abuse, however generally pernicious: and when, in spite of the defects of its commercial policy, the prosperity of a state has been augmented by the force of its natural advantages, this effect has been eagerly 125 Car. II. cap.7. Anno 1672. 1663. |