.- GIFT OF 
 MICHAEL REESE 
 
AN> APPEAL / 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 JUDGMENTS OF GREAT BRITAIN 
 
 RESPECTING THE 
 
 m 
 
 PART FIRST, 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 AN HISTORICAL OUTLINE 
 
 OF THEIR 
 
 MERITS AND WRONGS AS COLONIES; 
 
 AND 
 STRICTURES UPON THE CALUMNIES OF THE BRITISH WRITERS 
 
 BY ROBERT WALSH, JR. 
 
 quod quisque fecit, patitur : autotem icelus 
 Repetit, suoque premitur exemplo nocens, 
 
 SENEC. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY MITCHELL, AMES, AND WHITE 
 
 William Brown, Printer. 
 
 1819 
 
Eastern District of Pennsylvania > to ivit. 
 
 BE IT REMEMBERED, That, on the twenty-third day of September, in 
 the forty-fourth year of the Independence of the United States of America, 
 A. D. 1819, Mitchell, Ames, and White, of the said District, have deposited in 
 this office the title of a book, the right whereof they claim as proprietors, in 
 the words following, to wit : 
 
 " An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain respecting the United State? 
 " of America. Part First, containing An Historical Outline of their Merits and 
 "Wrongs as Colonies; and Strictures upon the Calumnies of the British 
 " Writers. By Robert Walsh, Jr. Quod quisque fecit, patitur : autorem 
 " scelus repetit, suoque premitur exemplo nocens. SENEC." 
 
 In conformity to the act of the Congress of the United States, entitled " An 
 act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, 
 and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times 
 therein mentioned." And also to the act, entitled, "An act supplementary to 
 an act, entitled An act foe the encouragement of learning by securing the co 
 pies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, 
 during the times therein mentioned, and extending the benefits thereof to the: 
 arts of designing, engraving, and etching historical and other prints." 
 
 D. CALDWELL, 
 Clerk of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania 
 
 \ 
 
To ROBERT OLIVER, ESQ. 
 
 X ^ 
 
 OF BALTIMORE. 
 
 UNIVt 
 
 DEAR SIR, 
 
 THIS is a clumsy volume, and its tenor may not be 
 exactly in unison with your opinions and predilections. 
 I could, therefore, have wished to attach your name rather 
 to its intended adjunct, which may have higher claims to 
 regard; but I am anxious to improve the first opportunity 
 of bearing public testimony to a character, which an ac 
 quaintance of many years, has taught me to view as of un 
 common worth and elevation. It is only a few months 
 ago that your merits were commemorated in your native 
 land, in a strain which those inhabitants of your adopted 
 country, who know you well, cannot deem too lofty, nor 
 hesitate to re-echo. In proclaiming you public-spirited, 
 open-hearted, and munificently hospitable, the distinguish 
 ed assemblage in Dublin spoke as our experience would 
 have led us to speak. A remarkable strength of natural 
 abilities, maintained in full exertion by an active, vehe 
 ment spirit, and the favour of fortune seconding a sound 
 judgment and steadfast faith in commercial dealings, have 
 put you in possession of an ample estate, to which you daily 
 vindicate your title by a noble use of it in the offices of 
 beneficence and friendship. 
 
IV DEDICATION. 
 
 I have another object in addressing you thus in my ca 
 pacity of author. It is, to witness, in opposition to the 
 false relations of the British travellers, that the native 
 American is not backward in recognizing and honouring 
 the estimable qualities and just pretensions of a fellow citi 
 zen of foreign birth. We make no distinctions and have 
 no reserved feelings, where respect and confidence are 
 abstractly due: if, blended and compounded as we are, the 
 case could be otherwise, it would not certainly be so in 
 reference to Irishmen. With them, the process of as 
 similation in all respects, is more easy and natural than 
 with any other people. America owes them much. She 
 cannot but sympathize deeply in the wrongs they have 
 suffered at home. In the same nation in which they have 
 always found a tyrannical mistress, slie, throughout her 
 colonial existence^ found a jealous step-mother, and now 
 finds a malevolent scold. 
 
 I am, dear sir, 
 
 truly and affectionately, 
 your obedient servant, 
 
 ROBERT WALSH, JR 
 
 PHILADELPHIA, SEPT. 1819. 
 
PREFACE 
 OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 1. ABOUT the end of the month of January last, I 
 undertook to prepare for the press, a Survey of the insti 
 tutions and resources of the American republic; and of the 
 real character and condition of the American people. A 
 work of this kind, wrought from authentic information, 
 appeared to me to constitute the best refutation of the 
 slanders, which are incessantly heaped upon us by tire 
 British writers. In assuming the task, I expected to be 
 able to complete it in the course of the present summer; 
 and accordingly set on foot such enquiries in the several 
 divisions of the Union, as the design prescribed. After 
 pursuing my first arrangements for a couple of months, I 
 discovered that I had not duly measured the delays inci 
 dent to the collection of facts, over so extensive a surface, 
 and through the agency of gentlemen engrossed, for the 
 most part, by professional affairs. Finding that I must 
 allow a longer term than was at first proposed, for the ac 
 cumulation of materials, I fell upon the plan of making up. 
 in the interval, a preliminary volume, which should em 
 brace a review of the dispositions and conduct of Great 
 Britain towards this country, from the earliest period; 
 and a collateral retaliation for her continued injustice and 
 invective. 
 
 What I now submit to the public, is the fruit of the plan 
 just mentioned. Jt is not offered as a digested book; but 
 
VI PREFACE. 
 
 as a series of Notes and Illustrations; and it could not be 
 other, from the shortness of the time within which it has 
 been composed. The immediate object required, indeed, 
 nothing more. I have to apologize rather for the bulk of the 
 volume, which exceeds my own expectation; and is owing 
 to the impression under which I proceeded, that the quota 
 tions, instructive in themselves, and useful towards eluci 
 dation and proof, should not be curtailed for the sake of 
 economizing a certain number of pages. As respects dic 
 tion, I have aimed at clearness and signilicancy alone. 
 What has been instantly transferred from the desk to the 
 press, must necessarily be liable to the reproach of diffu 
 sion and roughness. It is not a model of style or of epitome 
 that is wanting on such an occasion as the British writers 
 have created, for the exertion of our faculties of literary 
 defence, whatever these may be; but an aggregation of 
 facts pointedly told, and the production in detail of what 
 ever tends to rectify perverse, or propagate just opinions. 
 
 My purpose in this undertaking generally, is not merely 
 to assert the merits of this calumniated country; I wish to 
 repel actively, and, if possible, to arrest, the war which is 
 waged without stint or intermission, upon our national re 
 putation. This, it now appears to me, cannot be done 
 without combating on the offensive; without making in 
 roads into the quarters of the restless enemy. 
 
 I had long indulged the hope, in common with those 
 Americans who were best affected towards Great Bri 
 tain, that the false and contumelious language of the 
 higher class at least, of her literary censors,"would be 
 corrected by the strong relief, in which our real condition 
 and character were daily placing themselves before the 
 world. We expected that another tone more conformable 
 to truth and sound policy would be adopted, when we had 
 on our side the degree of notoriety as to those points, which 
 usually overawes and represses any degree of assurance in 
 the spirit of envy and arrogance. 
 
 But the disappointment is complete, for every American 
 who has paid attention to the tenor of the late British 
 writings and speeches, in which reference is made to these 
 
PREFACE. VII 
 
 United States. The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, 
 have, within the twelvemonth past,, by the excesses of 
 obloquy into which they have given from the most unwor 
 thy apprehensions, put beyond question the insufficiency 
 of any amount of evidence, and of all the admitted laws of 
 probability and reasoning, to work the reformation to 
 which I have alluded. 
 
 It was, too, believed by many, that the British writers ^ 
 would assign some bounds to their attacks, as long as we 
 forbore to recriminate; and it was thought harsh and un 
 charitable to touch the sores and blotches of the British 
 nation, on account of the malevolence and folly of a few 
 individuals, or of a party, within her bosom. The whole 
 is proved to be mere illusion. There is no intemper 
 ance of provocation, which could have excited more 
 rancour, and led to fiercer and wider defamation, than 
 we find in the two articles of the forty first number of 
 the Quarterly Review, which treat of American affairs. 
 The whig journals have begun to rail in the same strain: 
 the Opposition have joined, with the ministerial party, even 
 on the floor of parliament, in a hue and cry against 
 " American ambition and cruelty;" and in affecting to cre 
 dit the coarse inventions of Englishmen who have either 
 visited us for the express purpose of manufacturing libels, 
 or betaken themselves to this expedient on their return 
 home, as a profitable speculation. It is enough, that the 
 desire of emigrating to the United States should spread 
 among the population of England, in an extent deemed 
 invidious, or hurtful; that the territorial security of the 
 Americans on one side should appear about being ren 
 dered complete, with some possible danger to the stability 
 of the British empire in the West Indies, to throw the 
 British politicians of every rank, and denomination, into 
 paroxysms of despite and jealousy, and to enlist them in a 
 common scheme of misrepresentation which may inspire 
 the British farmer and artisan with a horror of republi 
 can America, and the nations of the world with a distrust 
 of the spirit of her government. 
 
 We cannot defeat their purpose as far as their country- 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 men are concerned; but we may guard the better against 
 the effects of the hatred and contempt which they labour 
 to inculcate, by acquainting ourselves thoroughly with the 
 true nature and scope of their designs. < If we have, as I 
 verily believe, a band of implacable and indefatigable foes, 
 in those who direct the public affairs, and mould the pub 
 lic mind, of Great Britain, we should be fully alive to 
 the fact, and alert in using the means in our power, of 
 restraining the effusions of their malice. National an 
 tipathies are to be deprecated in themselves; to excite 
 them wantonly, is an offence against humanity and re 
 ligion; but we are not censurable, if they are produced 
 incidentally, by the course which self-defence may require 
 of us to pursue. It is the English writer who becomes 
 doubly culpable, if his pertinacity in defaming the United 
 States, be such as to leave to the American, whose right 
 it is to check this as well as every other form of hostility, 
 no resource for the purpose, but the exhibition of what is 
 odious and despicable in the character, conduct, and com 
 position of the British nation. 
 
 There is much truth in the old maxim of the schools 
 retorquere non est respondere: to retort is not to reply. 
 The present case forms an exception, however; for the 
 British writers and orators never throw out their re 
 proaches against the United States, without putting Great 
 Britain in glorious contrast; it is the excellence, the 
 purity, and the liberty, and the comfort, which they see 
 at home, that, they would fain have us believe, quicken 
 their sensibility, and embitter the expression of their hate, 
 to the evils and abuses abounding on this side the water. 
 Thus, to expose their real spirit and aims, and to fortify 
 the confidence in our relative merit, necessary to us in 
 this struggle with systematic detraction, we are compelled 
 to investigate and set forth the misery and turpitude by 
 which they are surrounded, and the wrongs and insults 
 of which we have had constantly to complain. This is 
 not mere recrimination; it is resistance to degrading com 
 parisons and injurious pretensions; we tear off one of the 
 many disguises which our enemies assume to facilitate 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 f 
 
 their project of bringing us into disrepute with man 
 kind. 
 
 It is, certainly, wretched sophistry to argue, as they do, 
 from single instances of disorder and vice; and neither fair 
 nor charitable to display only what is bad in a mixed system, 
 in which the good may greatly predominate. We would 
 not be entitled to follow this example, but for the purpose 
 of repressing it, by shewing how severely Great Britain 
 may suffer in her turn from its adoption elsewhere. Upon 
 the principles of the logic which she has used against the 
 United States, she might be proved to be the most misera 
 ble and wicked nation that has ever existed. The pub 
 licity which she gives to all her domestic transactions and 
 circumstances; the discussion which her foreign policy 
 and administration undergo, in and out of parliament, lay 
 bare all her vulnerable points. Never before was such a 
 mass of materials prepared for the satirist of national vices 
 and distempers, as is to be found in the debates and re 
 ports of her legislature, and in the innumerable chronicles 
 of her internal history, which, as we there have it, is but 
 a tissue of the grossest enormities and the most cruel dis 
 tresses. 
 
 In endeavouring to establish her invariable unkindness 
 and injustice to this country, and her liability to reproach 
 in an indefinite degree beyond ourselves, on the grounds 
 of disparagement which she is never weary of repeating, 
 it is not to American writers and travellers, to obscure and 
 vulgar witnesses, labouring under the suspicion of national 
 prejudice, personal pique, or gross venality, that I shall 
 have recourse; but to British authorities of the highest 
 standard; to British historians and legislators, and even 
 to the very journals, which serve as the spiracles, through 
 which the torrents of venom are incessantly spouted against 
 the American people. Our accusers "in Great Britain 
 have built their charges upon English testimony, and that 
 the least respectable of its kind. I shall be found, in im 
 peaching her in return, to use not suspicious foreign, but, 
 in almost every instance, unquestionable British state 
 ments; not the allegations of General Fillet quite as 
 
 VOL. I.-B* 
 
* PREFACE. 
 
 trustworthy as those of the Jansons and Fearons but 
 the records of Parliament and the oracles of the British 
 empire. Here, it cannot escape the reader, how much 
 more dignified and warrantable the retaliation, than the 
 attack ; and that, in repelling aggression with evidence 
 derived from these sources, we do not descend to the level 
 of those who bespatter us with ordure amassed by natural 
 or hired scavengers of their own blood and temper. 
 
 " The libels of the present day," said Mr. Burke, in 
 his retort upon the Duke of Bedford, " are just of the 
 same stuff as the libels of the past But they derive an 
 importance from the rank of the persons from whom 
 they come, and the gravity of the place where they are 
 uttered. In some way or other they ought to be noticed." 
 We think and reason thus, in respect to the calumnies 
 with which we have been lately assailed in Great Britain. 
 All that is accumulated, for instance, in the Edinburgh 
 and Quarterly Reviews, in the articles which form the 
 immediate provocation upon which I now write, is an old 
 compost of vile ingredients and impure leven, in itself 
 unfit to be handled, and much more unfit to be imitated. 
 Those journals, however, exert an unrivalled influence 
 over the British public; they are not without considerable 
 authority on the continent of Europe, where they are 
 widely circulated; they have credit and sway with num 
 bers of readers, even in the United States: in the cata 
 logue of their authors and special patrons we find men of 
 eminence, both in letters and politics; some who have a 
 material share in the public councils of their country, and 
 whose writings, on other subjects than the affairs of Ame 
 rica, possess a degree of excellence, which invests the 
 pamphlets in question with a general character of great 
 weight and value. 
 
 2. I will pass from the instance of these Reviews to 
 another, worthy of particular observation, on many ac 
 counts; in which, also, the merest, most hacknied ribaldry 
 respecting America, is rendered important and memora- 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 ble by " the rank of the persons from whom it came, and 
 the gravity of the place where it was uttered." 
 
 Westminster school is one of the principal semina 
 ries of classical education, for the sons of the British 
 nobility and gentry; for those who are destined, either 
 by birthright or custom, to become her legislators and 
 rulers; to wield the national power, and give the tone to 
 national sentiment. It has been long the practice, in this 
 institution, to exhibit annually a Latin play, of which the 
 characters are filled by the senior students, about to be 
 translated to one of the great universities. The perform 
 ance is attended by a crowd of great personages by mi 
 nisters of state, dignitaries of the church, and patrician 
 families; and all the eclat is given to the occasion of 
 which we can suppose it susceptible. A Latin prologue 
 and epilogue, serving as specimens 6f scholarship, usually 
 accompany the play. In an exhibition of the kind, which 
 took place about the conclusion of our late war with Great 
 Britain, the subject chosen for the epilogue was emigra 
 tion to the United States. It was treated in the form of a 
 colloquy between a person preparing to embark, and a 
 patriotic Englishman attempting to dissuade him from the 
 adventure. Nothing can exceed the terseness of the lati- 
 nity, but the virulence of the abuse lavished upon America, 
 in this piece. Whatever the writings of the British tra 
 vellers could furnish, that was most injurious, and insult 
 ing to the American people, is here elaborately condensed, 
 and imbued with a new and more active venom. The 
 following is a translation of part of this classical lampoon. 
 
 DAVUS TO GETA. 
 
 "Whither do you propose to fly? Get. To Hesperia (America). 
 Da. What! to that country which is beyond the ocean; a coun 
 try barbarous in itself and inhabited by Barbarians! In that coun 
 try Geta, Astraea is not a virgin, but a virago : sometimes, as report 
 goes, she is a drunkard, often a pugilist ; sometimes even a thief. 
 Nor is it easy to say whether the tenor of their manners is more to 
 be admired for simplicity or elegance : a negro wench, as we are 
 told, waits on her master at table in native nudity ; and a beau will 
 stri p imself to the waist, that he may dance unincumbered, and 
 with more agility. Do you love your glass, every hour brings with , 
 
Xll PREFACE- 
 
 it a fresh bumper. There you have the gum-tickler, the phlegm* 
 cutter, the gall-breaker, the antifogmatic. No man is a slave there, 
 for negroes are not considered as of the human species in America. 
 Every man thinks what he pleases, and does what he pleases. The 
 young men spurn the restraint of laws and of manners: his own 
 inclination is there every man s sufficient diploma. Bridewell and 
 the stews supply them with senators, and their respectable chief jus 
 tice is a worthless scoundrel. Does a senatorial orator dexterously 
 aim to convince his antagonist ? he spits plentifully in his face ; 
 and that this species of rhetoric may be more efficacious, tobacco 
 furnishes an abundance of saliva for the purpose*. The highest 
 praise of a merchant is his skill in lying. Then their amusements 1 
 to gouge out an eye with the thumb, to skin the forehead, to bite 
 off the nose! and to kill a man, is an admirable joke. Believe me, 
 Geta, even if the black vessel of transportation you embark in, 
 should bear you safely to this elysium of yours, the very passage 
 would exhaust all your funds, and your whole life would be held in 
 pledge, never to be redeemed : your destiny at last would be to 
 feed the rats of a prison^ But come, think better of this scheme 
 while you have it in your power. Let the ruined man, the impious 
 wretch, the outlaw, praise America; if you are yet in your senses, 
 Geta, stay at home." 
 
 The whole of the dialogue may be read in the Port 
 Folio, into which it was copied in the year 181 6, from 
 the English Gentleman s Magazine for April, 1815, to 
 which it was committed thus for circulation, three months 
 after the signature of the treaty of peace and amity be 
 tween Great Britain and the United States. The able 
 writer who introduced it into the American journal, at 
 tached to it a commentary which equally deserves to be 
 read entire, and of which I adopt the following passages, 
 as speaking what is due from me to the occasion. 
 
 " Thus it is, that at an age when impressions are apt to take the 
 strongest hold of the mind, with the associations most calculated 
 to give vividness and effect to the sentiments uttered at the direc 
 tion and under the superintendence of the reverend preceptors in 
 the first school of classical education that Great Britain can boast- 
 in the presence, and with the sanction of persons deemed highly 
 respectable for rank, learning, character, and station the young 
 sons of the nobility and gentry of England are taught to pronounce* 
 applaud, and give effect to, the most glaring and disgusting false 
 hoods, and the most virulent and vulgar abuse against this country 
 and its inhabitants universally. 
 
PREFACE, X1I1 
 
 " There is nothing in the invectives of the Quarterly Review 
 more abusive and flagitious than this epilogue. I am no advocate 
 for keeping up national animosity, but I do not approve of the doc 
 trine of non-resistance; nor do I feel the obligation upon Ameri 
 cans of submitting tamely to the insult, when the persons who have 
 descended to these aspersions are themselves liable to the retort. 
 Had this attack been the hasty effusion of a political partizan, or 
 the witty scurrility of a writer whose sarcastic talent furnishes his 
 daily bread, or had we been subjected even to the mistaken correc 
 tion of a well-meaning observer, it might have been passed over : 
 but this, the studied, deliberate composition of deep-rooted enmity, 
 deserves no quarter. One style of reply to impartial and friendly- 
 reprehension, another to the sarcastic rancour of a proud and in 
 sulting foe. 
 
 " li may be, as it seems to be, the intention in Great Britain, to 
 educate their youth in sentiments of the most sarcastic and rancor 
 ous hostility towards America ; and I dare say, the attempt will 
 succeed ; and I dare aver also, that it will be met, as it naturally 
 must, by correspondent feelings on this side the water." 
 
 3. We were not altogether ignorant, in the United 
 States, that much of the favour shown to us, since the 
 commencement of the present centuiy, by the whig party 
 in parliament, and their connexions out of doors, arose 
 from the relation of a minority or opposition, in which 
 they stood in the British government. Yet we believed, 
 that there was enough of real cordiality in their feelings, 
 and of elevation in their sentiments, to prevent them, at 
 all times, from countenancing gross misrepresentations of 
 our condition and character, and raising groundless cla 
 mours against our political transactions and views; from 
 setting us in a false or invidious light, merely to embarrass 
 and discredit the ministry, or to promote some domestic 
 ends, such as those of checking emigration, and counter 
 acting extravagant plans of parliamentary reform. An 
 attentive observation of the language concerning our af 
 fairs, held of late by the whig journals and the par 
 liamentary opposition, has convinced me that we were 
 deceived in supposing they had not always acted, in rela 
 tion to this country, altogether from party feelings and 
 aims, and would not readily sacrifice justice and truth, 
 where it was concerned, to selfish considerations. 
 
 There is but one interpretation to be put upon the 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 course they have taken, in regard to the execution of 
 Ambrister and Arbuthnot, and the agreement between 
 Spain and the United States for the transfer of the Flo- 
 ridas. It has been a system of exaggeration, not to say 
 slander, designed to bring the ministry under the suspi 
 cion of pusillanimity and supineness, and to recommend 
 the assailants to the nation as the truer Britons; the more 
 spirited assertors and anxious guardians of her honour 
 and interests. This accomplished, it was immaterial what 
 feuds and ruinous strife, and what injustice to the United 
 States, might follow, if their clamours raised a ferment 
 among the British people, and thus forced the ministry to 
 pursue to extremity an unattainable redress, and frustrate 
 a fair and equitable arrangement. Remark the artificial 
 tone and hyperbolical representation, so well, though not 
 primarily calculated to produce discord and aversion be 
 tween the two nations, of leading members of the mi 
 nority in both houses of parliament. 
 
 Mr. Tierney (House of Commons, May 19th, 1819). 
 
 ** There was one foreign power to which he must direct the atten 
 tion of the house, with the same view as he had mentioned France 
 he meant America; she was out of the pale of confederation; 
 with her we had a separate treaty of peace ; towards her we had 
 long cast an eye of jealousy ^ and it ivell became us to be prepared 
 for the "worst. Let the house consider only what had happened in 
 the last three months. Two British subjects had been executed by 
 an American commander. There might be circumstances warrant 
 ing his conduct, and justifying, according to the law of nations, 
 the approbation which his government had expressed ; but he (Mr. 
 Tierney) was old enough to remember the time when, had two Bri 
 tish subjects been executed by a foreign state in time of peace, this 
 country would not have put up with it quite so tamely. He knew 
 the subject was a sore one, and he did not wish to press it farther. 
 
 " While the noble lord opposite was at congress, two German 
 princes could not have exchanged a few meadows without important 
 expresses being despatched to him. But America owned no con 
 gress: because she was a long way off, ministers seemed to think 
 that danger could not be near, and she was accordingly allowed to 
 take up a position on a vast continent, as injurious as possible to the 
 colonial returns of this country, putting them in imminent and un 
 deniable jeopardy. 
 
 " Let the house and the country reflect then, if it was not the 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 i 
 
 duty of the government to do something to prepare the empire for 
 possible mischiefs that might arise even from France and America." 
 
 Sir Robert Wilson (June 4th, 1819) "America aspired too 
 much after her own aggrandizement. She had sent commissioners 
 to South America to inspire hope and energy there. She had esta 
 blished a strong force in Texas, the province next to Mexico. Ame 
 rica would next demand Cuba." 
 
 Mr. M Donald (4th June, 1819) " Such an aggrandizement of 
 a powerful rival, as the acquisition of Florida, ought not to be 
 passed over without a strict enquiry into the cause of this most ex 
 traordinary and unprecedented proceeding," kc. 
 
 And the Marquis of Lansdowne (in the House of Lords, May 
 llth, 1819) 
 
 " Of all the events that could happen at this time, there was not 
 one which so deeply affected the commercial interests of Great Bri 
 tain as the cession of the Floridas to the United States. The pos 
 session of those provinces would enable the Americans to annihilate, 
 the British trade in the West India seas; and give them an oppor 
 tunity of connecting themselves with the black governments there 
 in a manner that might prove essentially injurious to our interests. 
 The cession should have been guarded against at the congress of 
 Vienna. No one at Vienna conceived it necessary to make any 
 provision that should have the effect of preventing the aggrandize 
 ment of the United States. Hitherto there was a balance on which 
 this country used to rely for her security, and it was an essential 
 part of this balance to prevent the Floridas from being ceded to the 
 United States. The conduct of General Jackson in the execution 
 of Ambrister and Arbuthnot ivas unparalleled in the history of 
 civilized nations. If at the time when Copenhagen was taken by 
 the British troops, Lord Cathcart, who then commanded them, 
 found that several persons belonging to neutral countries had been 
 engaged in the defence of the place, and ordered them to be exe 
 cuted, on pretence that they had no right to take up arms against 
 Great Britain, would not that act have been a gross violation of the 
 laws of nations."* 
 
 It may be doubted whether any measures which could 
 have been taken at the Congress of Vienna to guard 
 against the severance of Florida from Spain, would have 
 proved effectual: but the idea of a concurrence of the 
 members of that Congress in precautions against the 
 aggrandizement of the United States for the security of 
 
 * The language of the ministerial journals, concerning General Jackson, 
 bordered on the infuriate. Thus we read in the London Courier of March 25, 
 1819. " General Jackson has the most villanous look ever beheld ; he is never 
 seen to smile. The hero is wthy of the people, and the people of the hern " 
 
XVI PREFACE. 
 
 Great Britain! has something of the marvellous,, besides 
 implying an extraordinary sort of equity. We had not 
 been called on to explain how our security might be 
 affected by her aggrandizement in the West Indies; or 
 how the balance on which we might have relied, was de 
 stroyed by "the positions" she had "taken up," all over 
 the world; positions commanding every sea of commer 
 cial importance; Heligoland; Malta, in addition to Gib 
 raltar; the Isle of France; the Island of Ceylon; the Prince 
 of Wales Island; New South Wales; the Cape of Good 
 Hope. " Our noble station at the Cape of Good Hope," 
 says a late London paper, " commands the commerce of 
 the globe; it is the natural key to India; the bridle of 
 America; the surface which we might people with hardy 
 Englishmen is upwards of 100,000 square miles. Make 
 the Cape a free port for the nations of Europe, and we 
 banish North America from the Indian seas. 3 The 
 powers of the Continent may smile when they find Great 
 Britain, while herself adding constantly new kingdoms to 
 her dominions in the East, and grasping at every mari 
 time station of consequence in the four quarters of the 
 globe, exclaiming against American ambition and aggran 
 dizement,, because the United States had acquired a con 
 tiguous province, from which, if in foreign hands, they 
 must be subject to the severest annoyance, by fair nego 
 tiation, and with the relinquishment of large pecuniary 
 claims, and well-founded pretensions to territory of much 
 greater extent and intrinsic value. 
 
 The American government and people are as little 
 likely "to demand the Island of Cuba/ as they are "to 
 connect themselves with the black governments of the 
 West Indies." They want no slave islands; and to insti 
 gate the blacks of Hayti to foment and protect insurrec 
 tion in the British islands (for this must be meant by the 
 Marquis of Lansdowne) is an atrocity of which they must 
 ever be incapable, though Great Britain, in her next war 
 with us, should repeat the example which she has here 
 tofore given, of exciting the negroes of the southern 
 states to supplant and butcher their masters. The case 
 
PREFACE. XV11 
 
 which the British Peer selected to illustrate the justness 
 of his sentence upon general Jackson, is every way an 
 unfortunate one for the purpose. His lordship and all 
 his colleagues of the Opposition had denounced the attack 
 upon Copenhagen as a heinous aggression; to be pa 
 ralleled in treachery and outrage, only by Bonaparte s 
 invasion of Spain. What parity of reason, then, in the 
 supposed case of lord Cathcart putting to death the 
 strangers whom he might have found assisting in the de 
 fence of the capital of a civilized power, a member of the 
 European Christian commonwealth, so unexpectedly and 
 iniquitously attacked; and that of the American general 
 pursuing a savage horde into an adjacent territory, from 
 which it had issued to desolate the American frontier, 
 and there executing two European adventurers, proved 
 to be its instigators and accomplices? As the Danes 
 did not follow the practice of massacreing their pri 
 soners, the strangers who might have identified them 
 selves with them, would not, when seized, have been 
 subject to the punishment of death by retaliation, as 
 were the allies of the Seminoles, even under the EUD- 
 pean law of nations. If the custom of Europe be deter 
 minative of that law in any particular, it may be confi 
 dently invoked in favour of the execution of Arbuthnot 
 and Ambrister, on the supposition that they were actually 
 leagued with the Indians, as the British ministry have ad 
 mitted; for, during the great wars of the Germans and 
 Poles against the Turks, death was the immediate lot 
 of the European Christian found acting on the side of 
 the infidels. So, there has never been the least hesita 
 tion in the Mediterranean waters and territories, about 
 despatching at once the renegade, no matter of what 
 Christian country, taken in arms on board a Barbary cor 
 sair, or in a predatory descent upon the coast. 
 
 I find it difficult to reconcile the full knowledge which 
 the Marquis of Lansdowne must possess of the history of 
 the British empire in India, and in Ireland, with his de 
 claration, that " the conduct of the American gene al was 
 unparalleled in the history of civilized nations." This de- 
 
 VOL. I. C* 
 
XV111 PREFACE. 
 
 claration, I deem the more remarkable, as it was only 
 two months before (March 3, 1819,) that, on the occasion 
 of the vote of thanks moved to Lord Hastings and the 
 British generals in India, the Marquis of Lansdowne 
 made, in the House of Lords, the following statement, in- 
 eluding, as will be seen, a case of at least as criminal an 
 aspect as that of the American general. 
 
 The Marquis of Lansdowne said : " He felt it his duty to observe, 
 that there appeared on the face of the papers before their lord 
 ships, a transaction which could not be passed over in silence a 
 transaction which must be made the subject of some expression of 
 censure, if thanks were to be generally voted to the whole army of 
 India. The transaction to which he alluded, was the execution of 
 the Killedar of the fort of Talneir. It appeared, that after a vigor 
 ous resistance made by the fort, this commander had come out and 
 surrendered. The garrison left in the fort, however, resisted. The 
 fort was then attacked by the British army, and taken ; and the 
 whole of the garrison was put to the sword. However much he 
 might regret such a proceeding, he did not make it the subject of 
 complaint. Perhaps, under the circumstances of the case, it was 
 unavoidable ; but what must be their lordship s opinion of the 
 transaction that followed. The Killedar, who had remained in the 
 possession of the British commander, was deliberately put to death. 
 It was impossible to leave this horrible circumstance out of view in 
 any vote of thanks which their lordships should give. The des 
 patch of Sir Thomas Hislop states, that whether the Killedar was 
 accesspry to the treachery of the garrison or not, he was justly 
 punished with death on account of his rebellion in the first instance. 
 There was no ground for concluding that this unfortunate com 
 mander had any concert with the garrison in their treachery ; but, 
 according to every rule of European war, some proof of that con 
 cert ought to have been exhibited, before the right of punishing 
 him was assumed. As to the assertion, that he was guilty of re 
 bellion in holding out after his master had submitted and conclud 
 ed a treaty of peace, that was an offence over which a Britsh autho 
 rity could have no legal cognizance. He was accountable for his 
 rebellion to Holkar only. But how was he to know that he was in 
 rebellion ? How was he apprised of the conclusion of the treaty ? 
 He had no information of it but through the report of the British 
 army. Would their lordships say that upon information received 
 from an enemy the commander of a fortress was bound to surren 
 der, or even to discontinue hostilities, and that he was liable to the 
 punishment of death if he refused ? If, indeed, he had been a party 
 to the treachery of the garrison, he might have been, for that act, 
 liable to punishment, after an inquiry before a regular military tri- 
 
PREFACE. XIX 
 
 bunal ; but with the other charge of rebellion the British com 
 mander could have nothing to do." 
 
 I am particularly struck with another example of 
 disingenuousness and exaggeration on the part of our 
 friends of the opposition, which I have now before me in 
 a speech of Earl Grey, at the New Castle Fox dinner of 
 the 31st. of December, 1818. This nobleman stands, 
 with Lord Grenville, at the head of the old whigs; he 
 was trained by the side of Fox, and deserved to be called 
 the Diomedes of the band who waged so powerful a war 
 in the House of Commons under that leader. His zeal 
 for parliamentary reform even surpassed that of his col 
 leagues; but, on his ascension to the House of Lords, his 
 feelings and views on this subject underwent a material 
 change; although he still continued inseparable in other 
 questions from his first associations, and, in his American 
 politics, ranked with the most strenuous antagonists of 
 the ministerial system. As the imagination of a large 
 proportion of the British politicians has been particularly 
 affected with the extensive emigrations, that of his lord 
 ship is disturbed in an especial manner, with the cry for 
 universal suffrage and annual parliaments; and he proba 
 bly feels the more anxious to discredit these innovations, 
 from having himself taken the lead in the House of Com 
 mons in arraigning the constitution of the British legisla 
 ture. The example of America, as to the point of re 
 presentation, seemed naturally to interfere with his object, 
 and was therefore to be invalidated, not merely by being 
 shown to have no application to the circumstances of 
 Great Britain, but by being exhibited as of a most malig 
 nant and revolting character in itself. To this design I 
 ascribe the use which he made, on the occasion above 
 mentioned, of Fearon s " Sketches of America/ and the 
 character which he gave of the book and its author. I 
 shall make the case better understood by transcribing 
 that portion of the speech to which I allude, before I give, 
 as I intend, some glimpses of the true light in which the 
 Sketches are to be viewed, and must have been viewed. 
 
XX PREFACE. 
 
 in fact, by the noble Earl. After drawing a frightful pic 
 ture of the state of England, he proceeded thus: 
 
 " But there is even a more dreadful instance than ours to be 
 found in the history of a country whose popular constitution must 
 furnish matter of much interesting observation to every lover of 
 freedom. The constitution of America is free and popular in the 
 largest sense. Now, what is the case in America? A gentleman 
 \vas deputed by thirty-nine families, who had been driven by the 
 necessities of the times to think of emigration a melancholy proof 
 of our present condition. On his report they were to depend, for the 
 spirit of the country, and the inducements it might hold out to 
 them. The gentleman s name is Fearon. He has published the 
 report which he made to these persons, and his book is full of the 
 most "valuable information, and is distinguished by the marks not 
 only of an inquiring, observing, and intelligent mind, but of the 
 greatest f air tiess and impartiality. What does Mr. Fearon say of 
 the operation of their laws and of this boasted constitution?" 
 
 His lordship then adduced, as decisive revelation, what 
 Fearon has written concerning the process of election and 
 the distribution of offices in America; and he concludes 
 in these words " This is Mr Fearon s statement, and I 
 should observe to you, that he is by no means a willing wit 
 ness on the subject. Why do I repeat these things? Is it 
 that I may depreciate the value of popular rights in your 
 estimation? Far from it; I wish merely to show you 
 that, under a system which may appear more perfect 
 similar, or even greater abuses, may still exist than in 
 England." 
 
 We must conclude that the orator had actually read the 
 work on which and its author, he pronounced so lofty a 
 panegyric; which he thus held out to the world as the 
 source of the most authentic information concerning Ame 
 rican affairs. He has, in fact, by the latitude and em 
 phasis of his recommendation, become the sponsor of the 
 whole. It is a serious accountability; arid I must confess 
 that I am surprised at the boldness of the proceeding. 
 
 In the first place, as to the point of our elections and 
 the distribution of public trusts, Fearon s allegations arc 
 confined to the affairs of two states only, New York and 
 Pennsylvania, and the choice of one federal officer, the 
 
PREFACE. XXI 
 
 chief magistrate. It happens that those are precisely 
 and notoriously the parts of the union, in which the 
 game of state politics, a comparatively insignificant one, 
 bears the worst character and appearance. In them, 
 there is more perhaps, of what, as long as human, nature 
 is not perfect with us, must exist in a certain measure, in 
 the rest, I mean paltry intrigue for petty offices, and in 
 terested effort to influence votes. Cases of some enor 
 mity may occur in the first line of abuse, and suffrages be 
 sometimes given from mere party subserviency; but it is 
 as absurd to compare what happens here in these respects, 
 with what prevails in England, as it would be to compare 
 the amount and description of the mendicity in our streets, 
 or of the criminal delinquency on our calendars, with those 
 of which we read in Colquhoun s Treatises and the late 
 Parliamentary Reports. 
 
 Whoever talks of a degree of bribery and corruption, 
 and undue influence in America, like that of the neighbour 
 hood of the treasury of London, and the theatres of English 
 suffrage, whether the shires or boroughs, deals in the most 
 extravagant hyperbole. Fearon only repeats on this sub 
 ject, what he pretends to have heard from two persons of 
 his own country, Mr. Cobbett and Mr. Hulme, both of 
 whom, be it remarked, peremptorily disclaim the language 
 which he imputes to them, and accuse him of an impudent 
 imposture. He might, perhaps, have read it in some of the 
 wild declamations, which are published among us during 
 the heat of a contested election, and from the exaggerat 
 ing spirit of party recrimination. But, nothing that has 
 ever happened in this country, furnishes the least foun 
 dation for asserting broadly, that votes and places are 
 bought and sold. Throughout the states, the right of suf 
 frage is exercised, in general, with independence and 
 integrity, by freeholders jealous of their prerogative, 
 strangers to the want and very idea of a largess, and too 
 proud to submit to any dictation. The elections in New 
 England, for instance; are marked by a strictness of de 
 corum, probity of spirit, and universal intelligence of 
 action, such, as an European accustomed to view the 
 
XX11 PREFACE. 
 
 people every where as populace, would not be capable of 
 imagining.* 
 
 On this subject, moreover, it is not what may be done 
 or said in some of the large cities on the Atlantic coast, 
 that furnishes a test of the practice among the mass of this 
 nation. 
 
 With respect to disorder and corruption in the system 
 of voting and appointing to office, under the general go 
 vernment, the oracle of Lord Grey says no more, from 
 himself, than that " he became acquainted with facts in 
 Washington which no man could have induced him to 
 believe without personal observation." With more than 
 common discretion, he abstains from telling what those 
 facts are, but proceeds to give an account of what he 
 ; there heard respecting the " appointment" of the presi 
 dent by the caucus of congress, which he represents, in 
 deed, as a mandate issued to the electors in the different 
 states, and never disobeyed. But Lord Grey could not 
 have been so ignorant of the letter and whole analogy of 
 our institutions, as to have understood this to be more, in 
 form or fact, than a recommendation from a certain num 
 ber of members of congress assembled extra-officially, to 
 the people at large, to vote for a particular individual as 
 their chief magistrate. The proceeding is, certainly, an 
 irregularity, and unsafe as a precedent; yet, so far, it can 
 not be said, to have been of practical injury, or of any real 
 
 * "I have lived long in New England," said Dr. Dwight, the late distin 
 guished president of Yale College, " and have never yet known a single shilling 
 given to purchase a vote." This is the testimony of one than whom no person 
 could have had better opportunities of knowledge. He describes thus the 
 manner of a New England election, 
 
 "In New England, on the morning of an election day, the electors assemble 
 either in a church or a town house, in the centre of the township, of which, 
 they are inhabitants. 
 
 "The business of the day is sometimes introduced by a sermon, and very 
 often by public prayer. A moderator is chosen: the votes are given in with 
 strict decency ; without a single debate ; without noise, or disorder, or drink ; 
 and with not a little of the sobriety, seen in religious assemblies. The meeting 
 is then dissolved ; the inhabitants return quietly to their homes, and have 
 neither battles nor disputes. I do not believe that a single woman, bound or free., 
 ever appeared (it an election in New England since the colonization of the coun 
 try. It would be as much as her character was worth." 
 
 Reply to the Quarterly Keviewers, 1815. 
 
PREFACE. XX111 
 
 significance. I believe it is not doubted by any one, but 
 that the personages who have been elected in succession 
 to the office of president, and particularly the one who 
 now fills it, would have succeeded equally with the people, 
 without the forward counsel of such an assembly; and, 
 it seems to me, no less certain, that it is not in the power 
 of any cabal of whatever composition, to impose any man 
 upon the people as their chief magistrate; to effect the 
 adoption of one to whom the preference would not be 
 given spontaneously.* 
 
 On the whole, all that is found in Fearon s book, touch 
 ing these matters, does not, when fairly examined, impli 
 cate in general, " the laws and boasted constitution" of 
 America; for, there is nothing that calls in question the 
 conformity of the representation in congress, with the 
 theory of those laws and that constitution. The " case in 
 America 57 admitted of application to the project of par 
 liamentary reform in England, only so far as it could be 
 shewn, that the right of suffrage was not exercised honest 
 ly and independently in the election of congress; that this 
 body was not free from corrupt dealings towards the peo 
 ple and within itself; and did not fully and fairly represent 
 the nation. No accusations of the kind are hazarded by 
 Fearon, and I am sure that whosoever might utter, would 
 find it impossible to sustain them, in the opinion of im 
 partial minds. 
 
 It may be worth while to obtain an idea of the ge 
 neral doctrines, concerning this country, of the book to 
 which Earl Grey has so formally put his authoritative 
 seal. I take at random, by way of specimen of that 
 
 * "We kno-w" say the Edinburgh Reviewers, in their number for Decem 
 ber, 1818, (article on Universal Suffrage) "that the leaders of the democratic 
 party who now predominate in their caucus or committee at Washington, do, 
 in effect, nominate to all the important offices in North America," It is inconceiv 
 able how such an assertion as this, could have been risqued in a publication 
 likely to find its way into the United States. I scarcely need add that no one 
 in this country ever before heard of a standing committee of the kind; and 
 that no such nomination takes place, beyond the occasional recommendation 
 to the president, by members ot congress, or others, in their in iividual capaci 
 ty, of persons who are soliciting offices, or on whom it is thought desirable that 
 they should be conferred. 
 
XXIV PREFACE. 
 
 "most valuable information with which it is full/* the 
 following passages. 
 
 " No species of correction is allowed in the American schools ; 
 children even at home are perfectly independent, (p. 39.) A cold, 
 uniform bigotry seems to pervade all religious sects, (p. 48.) Clean 
 liness is scarcely known on this side of the Atlantic, (p. 80.) The 
 tradesmen here (Philadelphia) are less intelligent than men follow 
 ing the like occupations in England, (p. 161 .) The Americans are 
 most remarkable for complete and general coldness of character 
 and disposition a cold blooded callousness of disposition, (p. 166.) 
 Whatever degree of religious intelligence exists is confined to the 
 clergy., (p. 167.) The colour of the young females of Philadel 
 phia is produced by art: the junior branches of the Society of 
 Friends there, are not at all deficient in the practice of rougeing. 
 (p. 168.) The dirk is the inseparable companion of all classes in 
 the state of Illinois, (p 262.) The United States are cursed with a 
 fiojiulation undeserving of their exuberant soil and free government. 
 (p. 273.) The American lawyers are at least thirty-three and a 
 third per cent, lower than their brethren in England, (p. 317.) The 
 Americans, neglecting to encourage any pursuits, either indivi 
 dually or collectively, which may be called mental-, they appear, as 
 a nation, to have sunk into habits of indolence and indifference: 
 they are neither lively in their tempers nor generous in their dispo 
 sitions, Sec.* (p. 362.) We do not meet in America with even an 
 approach to simplicity and honesty of mind. (p. 363.) The nation 
 at large dislike England, and yet, both individually and collectively, 
 would be offended, should a hint be expressed that they were of 
 Irish or of Dutch, and not of English descent, (p. 368.) No peo 
 ple are so vain as the Americans; their self-estimation and cool- 
 headed bombast, when speaking of themselves or of their country, 
 are quite ludicrous, (p. 368.) Every man in America thinks he 
 has arrived at perfection, (p. 368.) Every American considers that 
 it is impossible for a foreigner to teach him any thing, and that his 
 head contains a perfect encyclopaedia, (p. 369.) A non-intercourse 
 act seems to have passed against the sciences, morals^ and literature, 
 in America, (p. 371.) The sexes seem ranked as distinct races of 
 beings, between whom social converse is rarely to be held. A uni 
 versal neglect of either mental or domestic knowledge appears to 
 exist among the females here, as compared with those of England. 
 (p. 377.) Such is the habitual indolence of the American people, 
 and their indifference with regard to Jiublic affairs, that occurrences 
 
 * So Lieutenant Hall, in his book of Travels in America, says. " The Ame 
 ricans are habitually serious and silent; their spirits are seldom elevated!! 
 Apathy, taciturnity, are traits which we did not suspect to exist in our cha 
 racter 
 
PREFACE. XXV 
 
 of first rate importance are known but by few individuals, (p. 385.) 
 There would appear to be placed in the very stamina of the people 
 a coldness, a selfishness, and a spirit of conceit, which form strong 
 barriers against improvement." (p. 391.) 
 
 Every particular assertion in this medley is in the 
 nature of antiphrasis; and the general allegations are 
 slanderous. The extravagance of several of them be 
 trays not only a libellous disposition, but an utter want 
 of judgment, in the writer. 1 will illustrate further " that 
 fairness and impartiality," which Earl Grey ascribes 
 to him in the superlative degree. He states (p. 46,) that 
 in New York all the churches (forty-five in number) are 
 well filled on the Sunday. The fact being rather credita 
 ble to that community, it was necessary to give it another 
 direction; and this is done by the following arbitrary, 
 ridiculous, and malevolent interpretation. " The great 
 proportion of attendants at any particular church appear 
 to select it, either because they are acquainted with the 
 preacher, or that it is frequented by fashionable compa 
 ny, or their great-grandmother went there, before the re 
 volution, or because their interests will be promoted by 
 so doing." We are not told the particular indication or 
 circumstance by which this appeared. Wherever the re 
 ligious worship and spirit of this country are brought 
 into view, it is in the same strain that they are celebrated; 
 and ignorance of the scriptures is perpetually charged 
 upon the whole body of a people by whom the bible is, 
 doubtless, more generally possessed and read, in family, 
 than by any other on earth.* 
 
 Our traveller, when he cannot venture to affirm an 
 opprobrious fact, as of his own knowledge, has recourse 
 to this form of speech, " I have reason to believe" a 
 convenient mode of calumniating, when, as uniformly 
 happens with him, the reason is not assigned. Thus, 
 he says (p. 171), in relation to Philadelphia, a city as 
 remarkable for domestic neatness, order, morality, and 
 
 * It is used in all the schools in the interior, and these receive nearly every 
 native white. 
 
 VOL. I.D* 
 
XXVI PREFACE, 
 
 happiness as any which has ever existed, "Although 
 the eyes and ears of a stranger are not insulted, in the 
 openness of noonday, with . evidence of hardened pro 
 fligacy, I have, nevertheless, reason to believe in its ex 
 istence to a very great extent. The habits of the people 
 are marked by caution and secresy. There is here a la 
 mentable want of cleanliness, in such matters as are re 
 moved from the public eye; an ignorance of order and 
 neatness in domestic life." Again, when in Kentucky, 
 " I havo not seen the practice of gouging occur, though 
 I have good reason to helieve in its existence;" and, 
 when at New Orleans, "At a tavern opposite, I witnessed 
 a personal conflict, in which / suppose one of the parties 
 was dirked." Admirably "fair and impartial!" 
 
 According to this " enquiring, observing and intelligent. 
 gentleman" (p. 46, 373,) " conversation in American so 
 ciety, that even of the ladies, turns entirely upon the 
 capture of the Guerriere, and the battle of New Orleans; 
 the price of flour and cotton, and the bad conduct nd 
 inferior nature of c niggars. He dialogues much as he 
 goes along, and all his American interlocutors, of what 
 ever degree, talk in the same cant phrases of the most 
 vulgar cacophony. Their language, on all occasions, is 
 provincial and plebeian. This circumstance alone might 
 have excited in the mind of Lord Grey a distrust of his 
 gentleman s candour, or of the cast of his associations, 
 both in this country and at home. The dramatic style of 
 narrative, whether in an historian or traveller, is, at best, 
 open to suspicion. 
 
 Mr. Fearon insists earnestly upon "the jealousy and 
 dislike of foreigners rooted in the breasts of all the native 
 Americans." He returns often to this topic, and will 
 have it that, " throughout the states, there is a strong line 
 of distinction drawn between citizens of native and of 
 foreign birth. 3 (P. 347.) The ample portion which is en 
 joyed by persons of the last description, of whatever 
 means of comfort, power, distinction this country affords 
 the manner in which we are consubstantiated and evened 
 throughout the body politic and social, render it unneces- 
 
PREFACE. XXVli 
 
 sary for me to deny the absurd allegation; but I mention 
 it, and the earnestness with which it is made, as striking 
 particulars of the evidence which the sketches themselves 
 offered to the British earl, of their being mainly designed 
 to discourage emigration to the United States. The dis 
 tinct, elaborate attempt which is made in them, to refute 
 and disgrace the publications of Mr. Birbeck, is addi 
 tional proof of this drift, which we can hardly believe 
 could have escaped the observation of his lordship, though 
 we should admit that he overlooked the sweeping calum 
 nies and sinistrous interpretations with which the work 
 abounds, and the constant solicitude of the author to 
 qualify what favourable testimony he is compelled to bear, 
 in s,uch a way as to defeat its allurement. 
 
 But, it is not only of flippancy and rancour that we could 
 convict this traveller, throughout: in several instances he 
 might be shown to be guilty of deliberate, circumstantial 
 falsehood. I will select one which may represent his 
 whole book, and in which the Quarterly Review is impli 
 cated. In his report from Philadelphia, dated October ]2, 
 1817, he writes thus: 
 
 " Seeing the following advertisement in the newspapers, put in 
 by the captain and owners of the vessel referred to, I visited the 
 ship, in company with a bootmaker of this city. 
 
 THE PASSENGERS 
 
 1 On board the brig Bubona, from Amsterdam, and who are wil- 
 4 ling to engage themselves for a limited time, to defray the ex- 
 penses of their passage, consist of, &c. Apply on board of the 
 Bubona, opposite Callowhill street, in the river Delaware, or to W. 
 s ODLIN St Co. No. 38, South Wharves. 
 
 " As we ascended the side of this hulk, a most revolting scene of 
 want and^ misery presented itself. The eye involuntarily turned for 
 some relief from the horrible picture of human suffering, which 
 
 this living sepulchre afforded. Mr. enquired if there were 
 
 any shoemakers on board. The captain advanced: his afifiearance 
 besjioke his office; he is an American, tall, determined, and with an 
 eye thatjiashes with Algerine cruelty. He called in the Dutch lan 
 guage for shoemakers, and never can I forget the scene that follow 
 ed. The poor fellows came running up with unspeakable delight, 
 no doubt anticipating a relief from their loathsome dungeon, Their 
 
XXV1U PREFACE. 
 
 clothes, if rags deserve that denomination, actually perfumed the 
 air. Some were without shirts, others had this article of dress, but 
 of a quality as coarse as the worst packing cloth. I enquired oi 
 several if they could speak English. They smiled, and gabbled. 
 * No Engly, no Engly, one Engly talk ship. The deck was filthy. 
 The cooking, washing, and necessary department, were close toge 
 ther. Such is the mercenary barbarity of the Americans ivho arc 
 engaged in this trade, that they crammed into one of those vessels 
 500 passengers, 80 of whom died on the passage." 
 
 This account is quoted with evident satisfaction, in the 
 Quarterly Review, for May, 1819, and the reviewer adds 
 from himself "The infamous traffic is confined., ex 
 clusively, to American vessels." 
 
 I have thought it worth while to ascertain the facts of 
 the case, and they are as follows: The Brig Bubona in 
 question was a British vessel, from Sunderland, in Eng 
 land; she was British property, and navigated on British 
 account; her crew was British, and her captain an Eng 
 lishman, by the name of William Garterell. On arriving 
 in the port of Philadelphia, he selected as his factors, fhe 
 Messrs. Odlin and Co. merchants of that city, whom 
 Fearon falsely represents as the oivners of the vessel. 
 The captain was not " tall," but about the middle size, 
 or rather below it, and his countenance had an open, 
 agreeable expression. What is more: of the vessels 
 that entered the port of Philadelphia in the years 1816, 
 and 1817, laden with redemptioners from the continent 
 of Europe, the greater number was foreign; these 
 amounted to ten, of which five were British in British 
 employment; namely, the Brig Bubona, above mentioned; 
 the ship Zenophon, captain Goodwin; the brig Constantia, 
 captain Janson; the brig William, captain Arrowsmith, 
 and brig William, captain Danton.* The condition of 
 the redemptioners on board the British vessels was no bet 
 ter than in the others of whatever nation, engaged in the 
 "infamous traffic." 
 
 I derive these particulars from unquestionable sources: 
 
 * The other foreign vessels (Prussian and Haneseatic) were, ship Vrow Ca- 
 thrina, captain John Van Dyle ; brig Bonif acias, captain Leitman ; brig Concor- 
 dia, captain Diedrickson ; ship Vrow Elizabeth, captain Blankman, &c. 
 
PREFACE. XXIX 
 
 the Mr. Woodbridge Odlin, who transacted the busi 
 ness of the Bubona; and Mr. Andrew Leinau, a respecta 
 ble inhabitant of Philadelphia, who served as general 
 agent for the foreign redemptioner ships, as they were 
 styled, and who has in his hands official vouchers,, which 
 I have examined, of their respective national character, 
 the number of their passengers, &c. It is known, more 
 over, that as soon as the abuses practised in the trade 
 became notorious, the American Congress passed a law 
 designed to prevent the recurrence of them, and remark 
 able for the humanity and efficaciousness of its precau 
 tions. 
 
 If Fearon really visited the Bubona, which may be 
 doubted, he, an Englishman, could not have mistaken 
 her national character, nor that of the captain. This 
 " tall American, with an eye flashing Algerine cruelty," 
 is a phantasm manifestly intended to heighten the injuri 
 ous effect of the whole malignant fiction. So the use of 
 the present tense by the Quarterly Reviewers, in their 
 unwarrantable assertion, argues the design of giving it 
 to be understood, that the trade is still carried on by 
 American vessels, with the same abuses as existed before 
 the passage of the preventive law. 
 
 Whether Earl Grey has found " the greatest fairness 
 and impartiality" in the article of the Quarterly Review, 
 on Fearon s Sketches, as well as in the latter, I know not; 
 but it is certain that the noble lord and the reviewer dif 
 fer much in their views of the character of the traveller. 
 " We find Mr. Fearon," says the reviewer, " whenever 
 England is concerned, venting his ignorant sneers, or in 
 dulging his spiteful calumnies, at the expense of decency 
 and truth: he crouches with base servility before Cobbet; 
 he grossly libels his fair countrywomen; he is solicitous to 
 entice the poor of Europe from their country, by fallacies 
 and lies; he has greedily seized upon every opportunity of 
 traducing the best and bravest officers of England; his 
 prejudices are rooted in the profoundest ignorance; he 
 deals in flippant and frequent abuse of scripture ; he is evi 
 dently a man of very limited faculties: he is in a state of 
 
XXX PREFACE, 
 
 perpetual childhood; his total want of knowledge is suffi 
 ciently apparent, &c." It is a witness thus blackened, 
 blighted, and stultified by themselves, and whom in fact, 
 they convict, in their examination of his book, of gross in 
 consistency and prevarication, that the master critics of 
 London bring forward to explode the pretensions of the 
 United States to any degree of moral worth, intellectual 
 dignity, or physical comfort. It is upon his testimony, 
 " who violates truth and decency, whenever England is 
 concerned/ they affect to believe, and would have the 
 world believe, besides what, I have quoted from him, 
 and a multitude of other general imputations and parti 
 cular calumnies, that "the churches in America are 
 filled by fanatics, hypocrites, and buffoons;" that "gain 
 is the education, the morals, the politics, the theology, 
 and stands instead of the domestic comfort of all ages and 
 classes of Americans ;" that " the worst degree of corrup 
 tion which the inventive malice of the worst Jacobin ever 
 charged upon the government of England, is more than 
 realized at the American capital;" that "every election 
 in America, from the president downwards, is carried on 
 v by bribery, corruption, and intrigue."* 
 
 I cannot refrain, in dismissing Mr. Fearon and his 
 compurgators, from offering to my American reader, 
 some random testimony concerning the nature of those 
 abuses in the system of British suffrage and representa 
 tion, greater than which Lord Grey is pleased to believe, 
 may or do exist under that of the United States. 
 
 In the year 1793, the honourable Mr. Grey, then a 
 member of the House of Commons, now Earl Grey, 
 and a member of the House of Peers made a motion in 
 the Commons, for a reform in parliament, grounded upon 
 a petition which he presented, and vehemently supported. 
 and was understood to have himself composed. The 
 following quotations are parts of that petition, and the 
 
 * The Edinburgh Reviewers have also so far forgotten their station, as to 
 h?stow on Fearon, the epithets " enlightened and intelligent," and to recom 
 mend his book, \\ith the simple reservation that he is " a little given to exagge 
 ration in his views of vices and prejudices." See their 61st number. 
 
PREFACE. XXXI 
 
 facts stated in them, which did not admit of denial, are 
 equally true of the subject at the present day. 
 
 " Your petitioners complain, that the elective franchise is so 
 partially and unequally distributed, and is in so many instances 
 committed to bodies of men of such very limited numbers; that the 
 majority of your honourable House, is elected by less than fifteen 
 thousand electors, which even if the male adults in the kingdom 
 be estimated at so low a number as three millions, is not more than 
 the two hundredth part of the people to be represented. 
 
 " The second complaint of your petitioners, is founded "on the 
 unequal proportions in which the elective franchise is distributed, 
 and in support of it, 
 
 " They affirm, that seventy of your honourable members are re 
 turned by thirty-five places, where the right of voting is vested in 
 burghage and other tenures of a similar description, and in which it 
 would be to trifle with the patience of your honourable House, to 
 mention any number of voters whatever, the elections at the places 
 alluded to being notoriously a mere matter of form. And this your 
 petitioners are ready to prove. 
 
 " They affirm, that in addition to the seventy honourable mem 
 bers so chosen, ninety more of your honourable members are elect 
 ed by forty-six places, in none of which the number of voters 
 exceeds fifty. And this your petitioners are ready to prove. 
 
 " They affirm, that in addition to the hundred and sixty so elect 
 ed, thirty-seven more of your honourable members are elected by 
 nineteen places, in none of which the number of voters exceeds one 
 hundred. And this your petitioners are ready to prove. 
 
 " They affirm, that in addition to the hundred and ninety-seven 
 honourable members so chosen, fifty-two more are returned to 
 serve in Parliament by twenty-six places, in none of which the 
 number of voters exceeds two hundred. And this your petitioners 
 are ready to prove. 
 
 "They affirm, that in addition to two hundred and forty-nine so 
 elected, twenty more are returned to serve in Parliament for coun 
 ties in Scotland, by less than one hundred electors each, and ten 
 for counties in Scotland by less than two hundred and fifty each. 
 And this your petitioners are ready to prove, even admitting the 
 validity of fictitious votes. 
 
 " They affirm, that in addition to the two hundred and seventy- 
 nine SQ elected, thirteen districts of burghs of Scotland, not con- 
 taming one hundred voters each, and two districts of burghs, not 
 containing one hundred and twenty-five each, return fifteen more 
 honourable members. And this your petitioners are ready to 
 prove. And in this manner, according to the present state of your 
 representation, two hundred and ninety-four of your honourable 
 members are chosen, and being a majority of the entire House of 
 
XXX11 PREFACE. 
 
 Commons, are enabled to decide all questions in the name of the 
 whole people of England and Scotland. 
 
 " Religious opinions create an incapacity to vote. All Papists 
 are excluded generally, and, by the operation of the test laws, Pro 
 testant dissenters are deprived of a voice in the election of repre 
 sentatives in about thirty boroughs, where the right of voting is 
 confined to corporate officers alone; a deprivation the more unjusti 
 fiable, because, though considered as unworthy to vote, they are 
 deemed capable of being elected, and may be the representatives of 
 the very places for which they are disqualified from being the 
 electors. 
 
 " A man paying taxes to any amount, how great soever, for his 
 domestic establishment, does not thereby obtain a right to vote, un 
 less his residence he in some borough where that right is vested in 
 the inhabitants. This exception operates in sixty places, of which 
 twenty-eight do not contain three hundred voters each, and the 
 number of householders in England and Wales (exclusive of Scot 
 land,) who pay all taxes, is 714,911, and of householders who pay 
 all taxes, but the house and window taxes, is 284,459, as appears by 
 a return made to your honourable House in 1785. 
 
 " In Scotland, the grievance arising from the nature of the rights 
 of voting, has a different and still more intolerable operation. In that 
 great and populous division of the kingdom, not only the great 
 mass of the householders, but of the landholders also, are excluded 
 from all participation in the choice of representatives. 
 
 " Your honourable House knows, that the complicated rights of 
 voting, and the shameful practices which disgrace election pro 
 ceedings, have so loaded your table with petitions for judgment and 
 redress, that one half of the usual duration of a parliament has 
 scarcely been sufficient to settle who is entitled to sit for the other 
 half. 
 
 "From the peculiar rights of voting, by which certain places re 
 turn members to serve in parliaments, eighty-four individuals do, 
 by their own immediate authority, send one hundred and fifty- 
 seven of your honourable members to Parliament, and your peti 
 tioners are ready to name the members and the patrons. 
 
 " Your petitioners are convinced that in addition to the one hundred 
 and fifty-seven honourable members above mentioned, one hundred 
 and fifty more, making in the whole three hundred and seven, are 
 returned to your honourable House, not by the collected voice of 
 those whom they appear to represent, but by the recommendation 
 of seventy powerful individuals, added to the eighty-four before 
 mentioned, and making the total number of patrons altogether only 
 one hundred and fifty-four, who return a decided majority of your 
 honourable House. 
 
 " Your petitioners inform your honourable House, and are ready 
 to prove it at your bar, that they have the most reasonable grounds 
 to suspect, that HO less than one hundred and fifty of your honourable 
 
PREFACE. XXX11I 
 
 members owe their elections entirely to the interference of peers; 
 and your petitioners are prepared to show by legal evidence, that 
 forty peers, in defiance of your resolutions, have possessed them 
 selves of so many burghage tenures, and obtained such an absolute 
 and uncontrolled command in very many small boroughs in the 
 kingdom, as to be enabled by their own positive authority to return 
 eighty-one of your honourable members. 
 
 " The means taken by candidates to obtain, and by electors to be 
 stow a seat in your honourable house, appear to have been increas 
 ing in a progressive degree of fraud and corruption. In the 31st 
 year of the reign of his present majesty, the number of statutes 
 found necessary to prevent bribery, had increased to sixty-five." 
 
 In confirming the allegations and pressing the object of 
 the petition, the honourable Mr. Grey said, that " the evils 
 of the American war were, in his mind, entirely owing to 
 the unequal and corrupt representation in Parliament/ 
 And Mr. Sheridan made the following observations in the 
 course of the debate, to which Mr. Grey s motion gave 
 rise. 
 
 " As to the general challenge of proving the abuse which subsists 
 in our government, he (Mr. Sheridan) had no delight in it; but as 
 he must answer, he should say, that some of the abuses of which he 
 complained, and of which a reform of Parliament was the only 
 remedy, were, that Peers of the other house sent members to the 
 House of Commons by nomination ; that the Crown sent members 
 into that house by nomination too ; that some members of that house 
 sent in members by their own nomination also all these things 
 made a farce of an election for the places for which these were re 
 turned ; that men were created peers without having been of the 
 least service to the public in any action of their lives, but merely on 
 account of their Parliamentary influence the present minister had 
 been the means of creating a hundred of them. He did not blame 
 him, bjit the fault was in the system of government; corruption 
 was the pivot on which the whole of our public government af 
 fairs turned; the collection of taxes was under the management 
 of wealthy men in Parliamentary interest, the consequence of which 
 was, that the collection of them was neglected ; that to make up the 
 deficiency, excisemen must be added to the excise this soured 
 the temper of the people ; that neither in the church, the army, the 
 navy, or any public office, was any appointment given, but through 
 Parliamentary influence ; that, in consequence, corrupt majorities 
 at the will of the minister.* 
 
 * See the Debate in the 30th vol. of the Parliamentary History. 
 
 VOL. I. E* 
 
XXXIV PREFACE. 
 
 The following parts of the debate of the House of Com 
 mons respecting the new taxes, which I extract from the 
 London Courier of June 19, 1819, will show what degree 
 of reformation that body has undergone since Mr. Sheri 
 dan s exposition of its character. 
 
 " The Marquis of Tavistock said, (June 18, 1819.) Was it not 
 grievous to reflect, that, when the minister had proposed an income 
 tax, the house defeated his purpose or, as the noble lord had ex 
 pressed it, relieved themselves, and not the country ? Was it not 
 grievous to reflect, that the house had rejected with indignation the 
 income tax ; and that when other taxes were proposed, which fell 
 upon the poor and distressed, they were passed with acclamations, 
 and nothing was talked of but the triumphant majorities of minis- 
 ters ? (cheering). If any difficulty was felt in believing this to be a 
 correct view of the case, let it be recollected, that when the income 
 tax was refused in 1816, ministers gave up the malt tax, and the 
 noble lord (Castlereagh) said, " Since Parliament has relieved itself 
 from the income tax, I and my colleagues relieve the country by 
 giving up the malt tax." Why did not ministers, entertaining this 
 view of the different taxes, propose a renewal of the income tax, 
 which they believed to be a burden upon the members of the house, 
 and not upon the country, instead of the taxes which they had 
 admitted to be felt by the country, and especially by the poorer 
 classes? They acted so, obviously because they were afraid of a 
 defeat in that house upon the income tax. But would they have 
 last year proposed the taxes now required ? If they had made the 
 proposal, would it have been endured in the last year of the last 
 Parliament? Was it surprizing that the people of this country 
 should be discontented, when they saw their representatives shelter 
 ing themselves from an income tax? (Hear.) When they saAv 
 those representatives at the same time laying further taxes on malt, 
 on tea, and on wool ? 
 
 " How happened it, that when the people called loudly and earn 
 estly for retrenchment and economy, the ministers, backed by over 
 whelming majorities, answered them by imposing fresh taxes, and 
 increasing their overpowering burdens ? The clear and indisputa 
 ble cause was, that the majority of that house ivere returned by 
 borough-monger in g, and corruption, and that the Parliaments con 
 tinued for seven years." 
 
 "Mr. Coke (of Norfolk) said It was the duty of every inan to 
 oppose the attempt to arm ministers with new powers of collecting 
 money. He was an old member of Parliament, and he had often 
 seen and well knew the profligate mode in which the public money 
 was squandered : he would not trust them with a single farthing. 
 He would go the full length of asserting that this was a corrufit 
 house, from which no good could be ex/icctcd. Ministers had no- 
 
PREFACE. XXXV 
 
 thing to do but to summon their troops, and they had a majority 
 instantly at their command ; it is in fact a joke upon the country, 
 and the people felt it to be so from one end of the kingdom to the 
 other." 
 
 " Mr. Ricardo maintained, at some length, that the idea of there 
 being a sinking fund was nothing but a delusion. 
 
 " Before he sat down, he could not help observing, that he con 
 curred in every thing which had been said by the noble marquis, 
 regarding the necessity of a reform in the representation of that 
 house." 
 
 As Earl Grey has rendered this subject of British re 
 presentation and election of importance to us, I will set it 
 in a broader light by additional extracts from the debates 
 of the House of Commons, as I find them reported in the 
 ministerial newspaper, the London Courier. The speak 
 ers, with the exception of Lord Cochrane, are all mem 
 bers of considerable distinction. 
 
 " Mr. Tierney asked (Feb. 7th, 1817,) if the house recollected the 
 number of holders of offices now sitting there. There were not less 
 than sixty of these gentlemen, all of whom were liable to be dis 
 missed at pleasure. If they deducted their number from some of 
 the ministerial majorities, the result would appear, that the fair and 
 free sense of the house was against the measures of ministers. 
 Many members, too, were certainly connected by the ties of rela 
 tionship to those who were in power." 
 
 "Mr. Brougham said (June 8th, 1819,) that the whole of that 
 which gave the patronage of a borough in the county he had men 
 tioned, which returned two members, and which had never been 
 disputed, was the gross and wilful abuse of a great charitable estate^ 
 intended strictly for the education of the floor." 
 
 u Mr. Brougham said (Feb. 17, 1818,) that in the last year of 
 every Parliament, more benefit accrued to the public than during- 
 all the preceding years of its existence." 
 
 " Mr. Calvert said (Feb. 7th, 1817,) that he was one of six persons 
 who had sent two members to Parliament, and for which, each mem 
 ber paid 4,500/." 
 
 "Lord Cochrane said (June 20th, 1817,) he remembered very 
 well the first time he was returned as a member to the house, which 
 was for the borough of Hornton, and on which occasion the town 
 bellman was sent through the town to order the voters to come to 
 Mr. Townshend s the head man in that place, and a banker, to re 
 ceive the sum of 10/. 10s. This was the truth, and he would ask, 
 how could he, in that situation be called a representative of the peo 
 ple in the legitimate constitutional sense of that word ? 
 
 " He had no doubt but there were verv manv in that house, who 
 
XXXVI PREFACE. 
 
 had been returned by similar means. His motive, he was now fully 
 convinced, was wrong, decidedly wrong; but as he came home 
 pretty well flushed with Spanish money, he had found this borough 
 open and he had bargained for it ; and he was sure he would have 
 been returned, had he been Lord Camelford s black servant, or his 
 great dog." 
 
 " Sir Robert Heron said (May 19th, 1818,) that the necessity of 
 reform had often been acknowledged by the house itself. Distin 
 guished members had offered to prove at the bar its corrupt consti 
 tution, but no strong desire to proceed to those proofs had ever 
 been manifested on the part of the house. The corruption was 
 manifested by the Grenville act, which declared the house no longer 
 fit to be trusted with the decision of its own elections by the oaths 
 and precautions which it declared to be absolutely necessary to pre 
 vent partial decisions." 
 
 "Mr. Lockart said (March 2d, 1818,) that he approved of the 
 general principle of the (election laws amendment) bill, especially 
 that part forbidding the distribution of cockades. He had known 
 30,000 cockades given away at an election, and this signal of party- 
 was thus made an engine of bribery, not to the multitude at large, 
 but towards persons of particular trades." 
 
 " Mr. Wynn said that, at one election he knew that 8,000/. had 
 been given to special constables. At another election 1,500 special 
 constables had been engaged at half a guinea a day each." 
 
 Camclford election. " Mr. D. W. Harvey observed (July 2x1, 
 1819,) the counsel who conducted the case before the committee, 
 undertook to prove the existence of a conspiracy for procuring a 
 corrupt return for the borough ; and the report of the committee 
 showed that that charge had been in a great measure substantiated. 
 The facts were that there were twenty-nine electors for Camelford 
 that that borough had been frequently the subject of sale or bar 
 ter and that it was now. the property of a noble lord, whom he 
 would not name, as those who had read the report of the committee 
 must know that his lordship s name was no secret. Not long before 
 the last election, a meeting of five of the electors was held at an inn 
 near the borough, called the Allworthy, which meeting was joined 
 by a certain Reverend Divine, who expressed to the individuals as 
 sembled a desire to return two members to serve in Parliament for 
 the borough of Camelford. To this estimation the electors did not 
 object. They annexed only one condition to their compliance with 
 it, namely, that a large sum of money should be deposited for cer 
 tain purposes which were mentioned in a whisper. It appeared 
 that with that condition the Reverend Divine would not, or could 
 not, comply. The five electors, however, did not abandon their de 
 sign. Accordingly they met again at another inn near Camelford, 
 called the Five Lanes, where a letter signed James Harvey was 
 read, offering 6,000/. for the power of returning two members for 
 the borough of Camelford, to be distributed among any fifteen (be 
 ing a majority) of the electors. This proposal was agreed to. The 
 reply of the letter, containing the acquiescence in the proposal, was 
 
PREFACE. XXXV11 
 
 addressed to Mr. Sibley, the partner of Mr. Hallett. It \vas proved 
 before the committee that Mr. Hallett had held up 6,000/. before 
 his partner, Mr. Sibley, and had said " Sibley, do you think the 
 Camelford electors will bite at this ?" As a security for the money, 
 it appeared that the half notes of the 6,000/. were deposited at 
 Camelford. Ultimately, however, the conspiracy failed, and the 
 election was lost. It did not appear, however, that the half notes 
 had been returned ; for it was proved that Hallet or Sibley had said 
 " What damned rogues those Camelford electors are ! do you 
 know I could not get back the half notes from them without making 
 some compromise !" 
 
 Mr. Southey had informed us, in Espriella s Letters, 
 that Englishmen regard all kinds of deceit as lawful 
 in electioneering, that they stop not at asserting the 
 grossest and most impudent falsehoods; that at a JVof- 
 tingham election the mob ducked some, and killed others; 
 that on such occasions no frauds, pious or impious, are 
 scrupled; that any thing like an election, in the plain 
 sense of the word, is unknown in England; that a majo 
 rity of the members of the House of Commons are re 
 turned by the most corrupt influence; that seats in that 
 house are not uncommonly advertised in the newspapers; 
 that, although oaths are required of the voters, they are 
 evaded by the grossest means; that votes are publicly 
 bought and sold.* 
 
 All this is abundantly illustrated in the history of the 
 English elections of the summer of 1818. Much of the 
 time of the courts of justice and the House of Com 
 mons, since, has been occupied in the investigation of 
 cases of bribery and corruption, involving the most auda 
 cious fraud and perjury. Besides that of Camelford, al 
 ready mentioned, those of Grampound and Barnstaple 
 may be cited as edifying specimens. The tactics of the 
 boroughs are thus instructively explained, in the number of 
 Bell s Weekly Messenger, of the 29th June, 1818. 
 
 " Among the various scenes now exhibiting in the progress of 
 the business of the general election, there are one or two to be seen 
 in some of the boroughs which deserve not only to be generally 
 
 * See Letter xlviii. 
 
XXXV111 PREFACE. 
 
 known, but which we should hope will not be soon forgotten. \VV 
 deem it a duty to call particular attention to one of these elective 
 bodies. Upon the arrival of their late member to repeat his canvass, 
 he was met by the electors in a body, and the first question put to 
 him was, whether he was willing to pay the usual gratuity of 40^. 
 per man ? that is to say, to invite them all to a breakfast, where 
 each should find a 401. bank of England note under his saucer. 
 The gentleman replied that he was really not rich enough to give 
 this expensive breakfast to three hundred voters ; but that he had 
 rendered the borough such important services in their trade, roads, 
 and harbour, that he trusted their gratitude would not seize the 
 present occasion of turning him out ; but if they insisted on the 
 40/. per man, they must seek for some one who was better able to 
 buy them at that price." 
 
 "In another borough, the practice of the election we understand 
 to be as follows: The price of the worthy and independent elec 
 tors is 50/. per head, and one of the principal men in the town being 
 a banker, the money is to be paid in his notes, and at his bank. 
 Upon the day preceding the nomination and return, the town crier 
 gives public notice for all the electors to appear personally at the 
 
 banking house of Mr. , to consult upon a suitable member 
 
 for their independent borough. Each appears accordingly, and re 
 ceives his fifty pounds. On the following day, the banker appears 
 at the hustings or town hall, recommends very warmly Mr. such a 
 one, and the electors immediately elect him. No questions are 
 asked as to the fifty pounds, or from whom it came, and no one of 
 course takes any blame to himself for having received a bribe from 
 the worthy Mr. such a one. Each is willing to swear that he never 
 saw his money. The vote is given only from good will to the banker, 
 and it seems that the oath does not apply to gratuities from third 
 persons." 
 
 " In a third borough, the money is given by the man in the 
 moon, who deputes an attorney for his agent. In a few days the 
 same attorney produces a notice from the same man in the moon, 
 that he could wish their respected and most independent borough to 
 be represented by Mr. A. and Mr. B. two gentlemen with whose 
 worth he is acquainted. The recommendation is adopted as a mat 
 ter of course, and two persons as fitted for corruption as themselves 
 are sent into Parliament. In a word, there is scarcely a slang term 
 or a slang practice, which may not be found in the abominable prac 
 tices of some of these boroughs, in which perjury is made a comedy, 
 and the most atrocious roguery converted into a jolly pleasantry. 
 All these things are going on before our eyes." 
 
 In scenes of disorder and violence, the late election 
 \vas as rich as any former occasion of the kind. The 
 treatment of Sir Murray Maxwell is not unknown to us 
 on this side of the Atlantic. Such horrible outrage as 
 
PREFACE. XXXIX 
 
 was practised in Westminster by the mob, and such ri 
 baldry as was exchanged on the hustings by the rival 
 candidates, " men of rank and fashion/ might procure 
 from those who write, within the Westminster uproar, 
 some toleration for the occasional animation of our voters, 
 and the rough declamation of our stump orators in the 
 electioneering contests of the southern states. 
 
 The condition of things, in Ireland, with regard to the 
 choice of legislators, is truly melancholy, as it is described 
 in a late book of travels, possessing the highest autho 
 rity.* "So far," says the author, "are the wretched 
 tenants of the cabins from receiving benefit for their in 
 apposite distinction of freeholders, that it operates a con 
 trary way, and puts them to expense and loss of time, 
 without the privilege of having any choice. Ruin would 
 inevitably overtake him who should dare to presume to 
 have any opinion but that dictated to him by his landlord; 
 and the candidate who should solicit, or accept without 
 solicitation, the vote of a tenant, against the will of his 
 landlord, must answer the irregularity with his life, and 
 incur the general odium of his own class of society. Po 
 pular opinion has little or no influence in the election of 
 the one hundred Irish members. Election contests with us 
 procure, for a time, some consideration for the lower 
 ranks what dignifies the English character debases the 
 Irish. The magnitude of the evil is greater than can be 
 conceived by those who have not had an opportunity of 
 witnessing its effects. In the most venal places in Eng 
 land, besides the bribe, some condescension is expected: 
 here the poor voter is only degraded by an additional link 
 to the chain of his dependency. The representation of 
 the town rests mostly in each body corporate, which sel 
 dom exceeds twelve members. The selecting for repre 
 sentation by the extent of the population was a farce, in 
 which the people had no assigned part to act. The de 
 mocratic part of the British constitution, quoad the Irish, 
 had better not exist." 
 
 * Observations on the State of Ireland, written in a tour through that COUIN 
 try, by J. C. Curwen, Esq. M. P. London, 1818. Vol. II. Letter li. 
 
Xl PREFACE. 
 
 " In some instances, the very favours granted the Ca 
 tholics are considered as sources of aggravation, if not of 
 insult emblazoned badges of slavery! In conferring the 
 elective franchise, they have been denied the exercise of 
 a free choice, the proudest prerogative of Englishmen; 
 and compelled to feel, in the discharge of the granted 
 privilege, their own inferiority/ 
 
 4. It is not in newspapers, reviews, and parliamentary 
 speeches alone, that the United States are traduced in 
 England. Her writers of formal treatises on subjects 
 connected with general literature, and even with natural 
 science, fall into preposterous digressions about the un- 
 worthiness of their " American kinsmen/ and are not al 
 ways inordinately scrupulous as to the accuracy of their 
 disparaging statements. I have an instance at hand in 
 the following passage of a late work, entitled "The 
 History and Practice of Vaccination, by James Moore, 
 Director of the National Vaccine Establishment at Lon 
 don, Member of the Royal College of Surgery, &c." 
 
 "The freedom that reigns in the United States of America, is 
 incompatible with unanimity; consequently, the vaccine had to 
 struggle there with a long and -violent opposition, which was not 
 much allayed by the exertions of the President, Mr. Jefferson, who 
 patronized the new practice; yet by degrees it spread and was in 
 troduced even among the Indian tribes. It was in the year 1799, 
 that this important benefit was conveyed to the United States from 
 Great Britain. Indeed, except the produce of the soil, what that is 
 valuable has not that nation received from us? Certainly their arts, 
 literature, laws, and religion, the model of their political establish 
 ments, and even their love of liberty. Yet when Great Britain was 
 hard pressed by Napoleon, the United States submitted to the 
 threats and depredations of the tyrant, Sec. But let England forget 
 this and rejoice in being able to add the vaccine to the other bene 
 fits conferred on the Americans. And may our physicians continue 
 to instruct them to cure and prevent the diseases of their country; 
 may our poets soften and delight them; and above all, may our 
 philosophers improve their dispositions, and perhaps, in a future 
 age, their animosity will cease, and there will spring up in that 
 country some filial gratitude!"* 
 
 C. 12. 
 
PREFACE. Xll 
 
 All this objurgation in a history of the vaccine! The 
 absurdity and malice of deviating into such topics on 
 such an occasion, would be manifest, though the princi 
 pal accusation should be acknowledged to be sustainable. 
 But what are we to think of the member of the Royal 
 College of Surgeons, when we reflect that it is unjust; 
 that he must have known it to be so; and that it may be 
 retorted upon England with tenfold force? There, had 
 the vaccine to struggle with a longer and more violent op 
 position, than in any other of the countries into which it 
 has been introduced. No heavier disgrace was ever 
 brought upon the medical faculty, or the human mind in 
 civilized life, than by the prejudices with which it was 
 encountered among a part of the British population, and 
 the pamphlets sent forth against it from the British press, 
 in the names of London physicians eminent in their pro 
 fession. The opposition to it amounted to phrenzy, even 
 in such quarters; and in the protracted controversy, the 
 foulest scurrility was mixed with the wildest raving. I 
 need but mention Dr. Moseley s Essay on the Lues Bo- 
 villa, and the publications of Doctors Rowley, Squirril, 
 Birch, Lipscomb, &c. 
 
 In the very book of the director, we have all the evi 
 dence we could desire against Great Britain on this 
 head; and in the voluminous publication of Dr. Ring,* 
 there is still more. I refer to this work particularly, 
 because it was well known to our faithful historian, who 
 read in it the reverse of what he has alleged against 
 America. Dr. Waterhouse of Boston, acknowledges, in 
 deed, in one of his essays, which Dr. Ring has quoted, 
 that some incredulity was displayed, and some ridi 
 cule indulged, in New England, at the first annunciation 
 of the discovery; but Dr. Ring furnishes the testimony of 
 the same physician, and others of the faculty in the Uni^ 
 ted States, to show with what rapidity it conciliated even 
 
 * Treatise on the Cow-Pox, containing the history of Vaccine Inoculation, by 
 John Ki.ng, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Part 2d, 
 
 VOL. I. F* 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 the warmest zeal in its favour, and was carried into 
 general operation. One of Dr. Waterhouse s statements to 
 him, of 1801, says "The arguments thrown out in 
 England against this noble discovery and its application, 
 are detailed here (in Boston,) but a great majority believe 
 and will be saved." Ring writes thus himself " Some 
 unlucky cases, it seems, have damped the ardour of a 
 people (the Americans,) who received the new inocula 
 tion with a candour, a liberality, and even generosity 
 much to their credit/ He recites the cases and adds, 
 " This was enough to damp the ardour of any nation/ 1 
 A few pages onward, he mentions its signal progress 
 throughout the United States; compliments the American 
 government for communicating it so promptly to the In 
 dian tribes; and subjoins the following remarks: "In 
 England the public opinion is, at the time of my writing 
 this ( 1 803, Jive years after Jenner s promulgation of the 
 discovery!) rather wavering. Falsehoods propagated by 
 the most base and despicable characters, have been too 
 successsful."* 
 
 It occurred to me to place the extract from surgeon 
 Moore s work, under the eye of Dr. Redman Coxe, the 
 present learned professor of Materia Medica in the Uni 
 versity of Pennsylvania; so honourably and deservedly 
 mentioned in Dr. Ring s work as the physician to whom 
 Pennsylvania is primarily indebted for the benefit of vac 
 cination. Dr. Coxe has had the goodness to put into my 
 hands a small paper of notes, which I copy as decisive 
 testimony on the subject, since his knowledge of the pro 
 gress and establishment of the discovery in the United 
 States, is more direct and minute, than that of any other 
 person. 
 
 "I am confident I am correct in asserting, that no novelty of 
 equal importance to mankind, was ever received in any country, 
 with more rapidity more unanimity, or more extensively. It is 
 true, the same cautious spirit which ought invariably to govern us 
 in concerns of this nature, led many medical men (not to oppose 
 
 * P. 760. The controversy raged with unabated violence as late as 1806 r 
 
PREFACE. Xllii 
 
 its progress, but) merely to await the result of experiments, in or 
 der to determine their judgments. What opposition has this Jen- 
 nerian blessing ever met with in this country, that equals even a 
 tenth part of that which it received in Great Britain? Let Mr. Ring s 
 elaborate production on the subject of vaccination clear us from the 
 reproach thrown on us. In that work, his pen has unfolded the 
 opposition it encountered from almost every quarter of the United 
 Kingdoms of Great Britain; an opposition, the effects of which have 
 scarcely yet subsided there; whilst here, for many years, even a 
 whisper against it has not been raised. Were it necessary, I could 
 give you perhaps one hundred letters from medical men in all parts 
 of America, received within twelve months after I had introduced 
 it here, earnestly applying for the infection, and requesting infor 
 mation respecting the disease. I saw, in fact, nothing like opposi 
 tion; I read of none in our medical journals. An uniform desire 
 was every where evinced to spread the benefit as speedily as possi 
 ble. A few miserable quacks alone, who depended on the small 
 pox for their daily bread, protested against it and even of those, 
 the greater part soon were obliged to yield to the popular opinion 
 in its favour. 
 
 " Such are the facts which stifle the inconsiderate assertion of 
 Mr. Moore I need scarcely add to the number; which if neces 
 sary, I could easily do. The disease had fully established its repu 
 tation in America within two years from its first introduction here; 
 and long before its claims were admitted freely in Great Britain." 
 
 There are some points at least, as to which " the free 
 dom that reigns in the United States of America," would 
 not seem to be incompatible with unanimity. If the whole 
 population of those states were canvassed,, perhaps not 
 one individual would be found disaffected to the form and 
 constitution of their government. The number malecon- 
 tent with the system of administration, or distrustful of 
 the ability and integrity of the present executive councils, 
 is certainly so small as to disappear on a glance at the 
 mass of citizens in the opposite temper of mind. FIRMIS- 
 
 SIMUM IMPERIUM QUO OBEDIENTES GAUDENT. 
 
 How far has the freedom which reigns in Great Bri 
 tain proved effectual to create unanimity as to her political 
 institutions, and the composition and course of her national 
 councils? Is not the monarchy itself odious to a multi 
 tude of her subjects? The mechanism of her legislature 
 and cabinet, and the system of administration are matters 
 of disgust and outcry through every rank and class of her 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 inhabitants. From the highest quarters we are informed, 
 and, indeed, the fact cannot fail to be perceived, even at a 
 distance, that the great majority of the British people 
 have not the least confidence in the patriotism and disin 
 terestedness of any of the parties in Parliament, or of the 
 men in place; all are believed to aim only at the possession 
 of power and patronage. Among the lower orders, sedi 
 tion is declared to have a permanent abode, and to prowl 
 without intermission. " There prevails," said Mr. Lamb, 
 in the House of Commons (March 11, 1818,) "though 
 to what extent I will not pretend accurately to define, in 
 all the manufacturing districts, a spirit always active, inve 
 terate, and implacable; not exasperated by suffering; not 
 soothed by prosperity; not allayed by time; a spirit ever 
 laying in wait, and in ambush, to take advantage of the 
 disasters of the country." 
 
 We see fully verified at this moment, the creed of this 
 member of Parliament, a whig leader: the habitual leven 
 of insurrection only becomes the more active and expan 
 sive, as the rate of wages or the supply of food declines. 
 It places the British government, in the season of ferment, 
 as at present, under the horrible necessity of shedding, 
 with the apparatus of war, the blood of the guiltless, per 
 haps loyal peasant, whom the want of occupation draws to 
 the convention of starving manufacturers, arid hairbrain- 
 ed, or counterfeit demagogues.* It leads I cannot say 
 obliges that government, to resort to one of the most 
 hateful of the devices of timorous despotism the employ 
 ment of spies and informers, who cannot execute their 
 office, without, to a certain degree, studiously exasperating 
 the discontents, and encouraging the delusions, against 
 which it is the alleged object of their mission to guard. 
 It does more: it throws the constitution off its poise; it 
 creates a potential dictatorship in the ministry, who either 
 do feel, or profess to feel themselves bound to consult the 
 
 * See the history of the Manchester meeting, of August, 1816, at which 
 women and girls were cut and trampled down by corps of dragoons, and left 
 mangled and weltering, to be conveyed in carts to the hospitals. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 tranquillity of the state, or of particular parts of the king 
 dom, at the expense of the established forms and rules of 
 law; counting upon what they are always sure to procure, 
 indemnity by vote of Parliament. What is there in the 
 American republic comparable to this state of things? 
 
 This want of unanimity, this propensity to rebellious 
 violence, among the lower orders, has placed the British 
 rulers under another embarrassment, the most awful that 
 can be imagined, and far outweighing any evil in our si 
 tuation, produced or threatened by our negro slavery. 
 
 According to the best authorities, the system of the 
 poor rates in England, is proceeding to take the whole 
 produce of the land from the owner, with very little bene 
 fit to the poor. It already " amounts, with the land tax 
 and tythes, in many parishes, to a disherison of the pro 
 perty of the landholder/ * It " falls exclusively on lands 
 and houses, the dividends (exceeding twenty-seven millions 
 sterling) upon the unredeemed national debt, of eight 
 hundred millions sterling, being wholly exempt. "f Its 
 operation is most oppressively partial, independently of 
 this last circumstance, so unjust and invidious. It forms 
 a tax thus characterized, which, according to some, must 
 amount for the year 1818, to ten millions sterling,! per 
 haps to twelve; and this product is chiefly consumed in 
 rearing the offspring of improvidence and vice. It is fast 
 multiplying the already immense number of paupers, and 
 widening the acknowledged degeneracy of the labouring 
 classes. It exhibits, in short, to use the language of 
 Colquhoun, one ninth part of a numerous nation existing 
 as paupers, vagabonds, idlers, and criminal offenders, at 
 the expense of one third of the remaining population." \\ 
 In the year 1812, the number of paupers who received 
 parish relief, besides vagrants, was 1,208,125, out of a po- 
 
 * Report on the Poor Laws, from the Committee of the House of Commons, 
 1817. Appendix. 
 
 f Observations on the Poor Laws. By J. Lord Sheffield. London, 1818. 
 t Lord Sheffield. 
 
 See Note X. at the end of this volume. 
 ;i Treatise on Indigence. P. 262. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 pulation of 10,653,000.* The proportion of really im 
 potent paupers in the number just stated, was but one 
 seventh, according to the ratio officially returned for 1804, 
 "It will be found, on investigation/ says Colquhoun, 
 that, of a million and a half of paupers with their families, 
 now living chiefly on the labour of others, considerably 
 more than half a million are in the vigour of life, and 
 whose labour, if well directed, ought to produce at least 
 ten millions sterling beyond their present earnings; which 
 sum is totally lost to the community, in addition to what 
 is expended in affording them a feeble and scanty subsist 
 ence/^- Since the termination of the last war, this 
 wretched and noxious class of persons has been progres 
 sively increasing in number, and deteriorating in charac 
 ter. 
 
 The only true remedy for this manifold, portentous 
 evil, is the abolition or great reduction of the poor rates. 
 But the government, though it has before it the alterna 
 tive of ultimate ruin to the country, dares not go beyond 
 palliatives.J Near a million of sturdy beggars could not 
 
 * Clarkson s Enquiry on Pauperism. London, 1816. 
 
 f Treatise on the Wealth, Power, and Resources of the British Empire. 
 London, 1814. 
 
 1 The late act of Parliament, (59 G.1IT. 1819,) "to amend the laws for the 
 relief of the poor," aims only at mitigating, not eradicating, the evil. Very 
 little confidence seemed to be entertained by Parliament, in its efficacy for any 
 purpose. Mr. S. Bourne, the member most active on this question, had unsuc 
 cessfully proposed a bill, respecting the failure of which I find the following 
 remarkable observations in Bell s Weekly Messenger of 17th May, 1819. 
 
 "The two great interests of the country, the agricultural and the manufac 
 turing interests, are here in direct conflict. The complaint of the landed in 
 terest is, that they have to pay the poor-rates for the manufacturing labourers : 
 That the manufacturers not only employ and wear out the men, but, as it were, 
 produce and call into existence a mendicant population ; and, after they have 
 had the best days of the labourer, and encouraged him to marry and rear a 
 large family, they return him unto the parish from whence they first took him 
 
 "The object of this bill was, that all who resided three years in any parish, 
 should.be settled in such parish, or, in other words, (for such was its purpose as 
 well as its effect,) that the manufacturing towns and districts should support 
 their own old and sick poor. Accordingly, all the manufacturing districts have, 
 to a man, united in opposition against it, and, by a private address to every 
 member of parliament singly, have actually succeeded in throwing it out, and 
 this in a House of Commons, the majority of which is necessarily of the landed 
 interest. We must confess that this issue of the bill has very much surprised 
 us, and, we believe, neither Mr. Bourne himself, nor any of the committee, 
 expected this event. The bill, however, is lost for the present session." 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 be starved with impunity; they would be provoked by ab 
 solute deprivation to persevering violence; such a nucleus 
 for riot and rebellion, is not to be set in motion, to gather 
 actively what no array of the military might be sufficient 
 to crush, without extensive desolation. Colonization is 
 now attempted as a means of relief; and the Cape of 
 Good Hope is chosen as the theatre, in order that a dou 
 ble purpose may be answered: but this expedient, if any 
 number of the vampyres can be drawn off, will be like 
 tapping for a radical dropsy. The poor rates will conti 
 nue, with the taxes* and the tythes, generating pauper- 
 
 * "It was acknowledged," said Lord Ebrington, in the House of Commons, 
 (April 28th, 1819,) " that a labourer, whose income did not exceed IS/, a year, 
 paid 27s. a year duty on the salt he consumed." Dr. Phillimore, in the course 
 of his speech of the same date, respecting 1 the salt duties, made this statement. 
 " The bushel of salt is taxed at forty times its value, and the tax falls upon all 
 the necessaries of the poor. No tax operates more on their morals ; and it had 
 been found, that wherever it prevailed, it was the sure forerunner of crime. 
 It was distinctly stated in an address of the grand jury for the county of Ches 
 ter, that the profit derived from selling untaxed salt was so great, and operated 
 so powerfully, as to taint the morals of that part of the community. The evi 
 dence before the committee, derived from various sources, all tended to esta 
 blish the same conclusion. The temptation to steal, and conceal what was 
 stolen, was such as to cause the practice too generally to prevail. * 
 
 The following quotations from the debates of Parliament will illustrate the 
 operation of another single tax, upon the lower orders. 
 
 " Mr. Gratian suid, as to the dangerous prevalence of the fever in Ireland 
 being in part attributable to the confined air of the abodes of the poor, there 
 could be no stronger proof than the relaxation granted by government, enabling 
 the parties deprived of adequate ventillation, to open their windows without 
 being liable to the window tax." 
 
 "if a single individual," said the Marquis of Dounshire (House of Lords, 
 March, 1819,) "lived in a house, it became liable to the window tax ; and owners 
 therefore, in Ireland, crowded great numbers into one, and shut up others, to 
 avoid paving the taxes." 
 
 " Sir John Newport said, (May 13th, 1818,) he wished to inform the house, 
 that in comparing the accounts of 1814 and 1818, it was found that no less than 
 one-tenth of the windows of the kingdom of Ireland, within that period, 1iad 
 been closed up to avoid the tax, and he should appeal to the house whether such 
 a circumstance was not calculated to have a most injurious effect, particularly 
 on the poorer classes, by depriving them of air and light. Taxation in Ireland 
 had, within a short period, increased with a rapidity which was grievously felt." 
 
 " Mr. liobert Shaw asked, (April 21st, 1818,) are gentlemen aware, tfeat un 
 der the present act (for taxing windows,) the collectors can demand an entrance 
 into every room in every house in Ireland, from eight in the morning until sun 
 set, and insist upon admission, under a penalty of 20/.? 
 
 "Mr. Shaw stated, (May 6th, 1819,) that" in the part of Dublin called the 
 liberties, the houses were large enough to be subject to the \v5n-Jo\v tax, and 
 were inhabited by the poor and miserable. The government had felt that so 
 deeply, that it had announced, that \vhcrever windows had been opened to faci- 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ism; and, above all, the exorbitant system of manufactures, 
 which perpetually throws back upon the agricultural dis 
 tricts, as mendicants and desperadoes, those labourers 
 whom it received from them originally, in that happier 
 condition of body and mind, which is the regular effect 
 of agricultural life. It is this operation, resulting from 
 the English law of settlement as to paupers, along with 
 other adventitious causes,* which makes the returns of 
 mendicity and criminality from some of the agricultural 
 counties of England, larger than those from the manufac 
 turing districts, and thus libels, as it were, that state and 
 occupation most favourable to the moral and physical 
 welfare of our species. 
 
 To revert to Surgeon Moore. His suggestion about 
 filial gratitude will be found fully answered in the body 
 of this volume, as well as the chiding remark of the 
 Quarterly Review, in the article on Fearon s Travels 
 that "the American colonists grew up in prosperity, 
 maintained and fostered by a liberal parent, who saw, with 
 heartfelt satisfaction, her offspring increase in strength 
 and stature, and advance with firm and rapid steps to 
 wards maturity." I rely upon the facts and statements 
 which 1 adduce in my first sections, as sufficient to dis 
 pel this hallucination of the reviewers. 
 
 The other topic upon which the surgeon has touched, 
 the animosity of the Americans against Great Britain, 
 which her philosophers are to correct, in lapse of time, by 
 improving our dispositions, is a favourite one with the 
 travellers and reviewers, and is treated by them with the 
 more emphasis, because it serves to promote their main 
 
 litute the circulation of air and prevent infection, the tax would be remitted. It 
 would no doubt be urged that but few had availed themselves of this offer; but 
 that was because they had unfortunately too little confidence in the veracity ot 
 government. They did not possess besides the means of opening 1 those windows. 
 This was proved by the report of Dr. Parker in 1807 and 1812, and confirmed 
 by the number of windows closed, according 1 to the notices given. Those no 
 tices amounted for the last three years to thirty-two thousand, four hundred and 
 twenty-four, of which 3,501 came from Dublin alone, and it might be inferred 
 that the distress was great which would thus drive men to deny themselves the 
 light of Heaven and u free circulation of air." 
 
 * See Colquhoun s Treatise on Indigence, p. 273, 4. and Treatise on the Kc 
 sources of the British Empire, p. 12. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xlix 
 
 object of raising aversion and distrust in the breasts of 
 their countrymen. 
 
 On this score, as well as every other, great injustice is 
 done to the Americans. No small number of them are 
 entitled to consider the imputation as a sort of ingratitude 
 on the part of a Briton. I will venture to assert that in 
 no nation, foreign to Great Britain, had she, until the se 
 cond year of our last war, so many warm, firm friends, 
 and blind admirers, as in the American. A great party, 
 the Federalists, forming a decided majority in seven or 
 eight states, numerous in most of the others, and having 
 a full proportion of the desert, intelligence, and wealth of 
 the country, were contradistinguished by their veneration 
 for her character, and the deep, affectionate interest which 
 they took in her prosperity. They exulted in her successes 
 over France, even at the time when she was waging war 
 upon their own firesides. This was not merely because 
 they detested and dreaded the ascendancy of the French 
 military despotism, but because much of the old positive 
 kindness and reverence towards her remained. She might 
 have revived it entirely by a course of generosity and 
 justice; by teaching her philosophers to attempt the " im 
 provement of our dispositions," and her politicians to 
 regulate their language and conduct, upon a different sys 
 tem from that which they have pursued. 
 
 Habitual ejaculations of contempt and ill-nature, join 
 ed to a new state of things, have a sure tendency to 
 produce total alienation. The new state of things to 
 which I allude consists in the prostration of the Gorgon in 
 France, by which so many of us were petrified; the con 
 sequent restoration of our powers of vision and reflection, 
 in regard to its colossal antagonist; and the remission of 
 those intestine heats which, having their origin, in part, 
 in an inordinate preference of the cause of one or the 
 other European belligerent, conduced in turn to aggra 
 vate that preference. The Jbiglo-mania has, I believe, 
 almost universally subsided; but, notwithstanding the stu 
 died contumelies and injuries to which no American can 
 be insensible, it has not yet been replaced in the same 
 
 VOL. I. G* 
 
1 PREFACE. 
 
 breasts by sentiments of hostility. We lament that peril 
 ous crisis at which England has arrived; when, with a 
 crushing apparatus of government, a most distorted and 
 distempered state of society, no reform can be admitted, 
 lest it should run, by its own momentum, to extremes, and 
 produce general confusion; when her statesmen, over 
 powered by the very aspect of so much morbidness and 
 obliquity, are compelled to exclaim, Nee vitia, nee reme- 
 dia pati possumus. We cherish and esteem the English 
 individuals whom we possess, and, without coveting the 
 presence of more, we are ready to entertain the same 
 feelings, to practise all the charities, towards those who 
 may come among us at any time, provided it be not for 
 the purpose of holding us up to the scorn and derision of 
 the world. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 POLITICAL and Mercantile Jealousy of Great Britain. Peculiar fate of the North 
 American Colonies in being constantly defamed by the mother country, 
 Her early jealousy and selfish alarms. Testimony of Evelyn, Hume, Pos- 
 tlethwayt, Child, Gee, &c. Measures to prevent the growth of American 
 manufactures. Illiberal colonial policy. Testimony of Adam Smith, of 
 Dummer, &c. Scheme of confining the North American settlements to 
 the sea-coast. Early panic about emigration ; attempts to repress it, &. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 General Character and Merits of the Colonists. English testimony in their favour, 
 Quarterly Review; Burke ; Chalmers, &c. Character of the first settlers 
 in New England ; in Virginia ; and the other provinces. Their respecta 
 ble rank in life ; their love of liberty and independence ; the excellence 
 of their institutions ; no obligations to the mother country on this score. 
 Charters how obtained. Uniform endeavours of the mother country to 
 destroy the Charters. System of religious freedom and equality esta 
 blished by the Colonists ; disturbed, and, in some instances, subverted, by 
 the mother country. Religious intolerance of Massachusetts extenuated. 
 Political intrepidity of the Colonists ; leading traits of it in their history. 
 Their domestic morals and habits ; religious spirit. Their attention to the 
 object of general education. Their moderation and beneficence towards 
 the aborigines. Their physical economy and prosperity. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 Difficulties surmounted by the Colonists. The conquest of the wilderness, 
 Oppressive administration of the mother country. Absence of all external 
 aid. Struggle with the Indians ; with the French of Canada. Accusations 
 of the mother country, as to the treatment of the Indians, retorted. Case 
 of the Acadiansin 1755; barbarous conduct of Great Britain towards them. 
 Wars which she made in America, exclusively her own, and not induced by 
 the interest of the colonies. 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 Great exertions and sacrifices of the colonies in the wars of Great Britain, be 
 tween the years 1680 and 1763. Expeditions of New England and New 
 York against Canada. Hostilities with the Indians in New England and the 
 Carolinas. Provincial expeditions against the Spaniards in Florida. Injus 
 tice of the mother country. Reduction of the fortress of Louisbourg by the 
 Provincial troops. Ungrateful return of the mother country. Braddock s 
 affair. Colonel Johnson s victory over the French. War of 1756. Mis- 
 
ill CONTENTS, 
 
 management and imbecility of the British generals. Achievements of the 
 Provincials. Aspersions cast upon them. Insensibility of the mother coun 
 try to their merits. Confirmation of the contents of this Section by British 
 testimony. 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 Commercial obligations of Great Britain to the Colonies. Acknowledgments of 
 her political writers. Amount of the colonial trade at different epochs. 
 Details of its nature and productiveness. Lord Sheffield; Mr. Glover; 
 Anderson ; Chatham ; Mr. Burke ; Champion. Consumption of British 
 manufactures by the colonies. Good_fkilhuj>f the American merchants. 
 Rigour of the British monopoly. Disadvantages suHerecT by the Colonies. 
 Benefits reaped by Great Britain from her commercial intercourse with the 
 United States of America. 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 Affectionate loyalty of the Colonists at the peace of 1763. No designs of in 
 dependence. Refutation of Chalmers and Robertson on this head. Dis 
 trust and despotic aims of the mother country. Her ingratitude and harsh 
 ness. Stamp Act, and its train of outrages and contumelies. Applause 
 bestowed upon the resistance of the colonies by Chatham and Camden, 
 
 . Character of the British councils. Their ignorance concerning America. 
 Enlightened discourse of Glover False ideas entertained of America. 
 Overweening confidence of the British ministry and nation. Abuse of the 
 colonies. Colonel Grant, Earl of Sandwich, &c. Ferocity of the hostili- 
 
 * lies waged by the mother country. Her acrimony of feeling and expres 
 sion. Her temper of mind at and after the conclusion of peace. Illusions 
 in which she indulged. Oracles of Lord Sheffield. Contrast between 
 
 "her dispositions and those of the United States. Her unremitted enmity 
 and jealousy. Evidences. Disappointment of her hopes. 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 Titles of the United States to the respect and good will of Great Britain. Ani 
 mosity and arrogance of the British periodical writers. Edinburgh Re 
 view its system of derision and obloquy. How distinguished from the 
 I Quarterly Review Ln this respect. Instances of its malevolence and incon 
 sistency. Article on Davis s Travels ; Transactions of the American Phi 
 losophical Society ; Letters on Silesia of John Quincy Adams ; Life of 
 Washington, by Chief Justice Marshall ; Ashe s Travels ; Columbiad of 
 Barlow, ike. Sneers and Calumnies. Exposition of some of the contra 
 dictions abounding in the Edinburgh Review. Reprisals upon Great Bri 
 tain. 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 The Quarterly Review. Its implacable enmity ; false logic ; unworthy pro 
 ceeding ; invectives and misrepresentations. Articles on American works . 
 Inchiquin s View of the United States Lewis and Clarke s Expedition 
 Life of Fulton, by Cadwallader Colden, Esq. This work defended against 
 the Quarterly Review. Question of Steam Navigation. Fulton s merits 
 asserted. Controversy respecting the invention of the Quadrant, called 
 Hadley s. The claims of Godfrey maintained. Original evidence. James 
 Logan. Contradictions, as to England, detected in the Quarterly Review. 
 British Critic : London Critical Journal ; their ribaldry. Examination anci 
 Refutation of the charge against America, of having declared herself, in 
 Congress, "the freest and most enlightened nation of the earth." Speech 
 of Fisher Ames. Defence of the American Congress from other charge* 
 Retort upon the British Parliament. 
 
CONTENTS. liii 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 Accusations of the Edinburgh Review respecting the existence of negro slavery 
 in the United States. Early upbraidings of England on the same head. 
 Her share in the establishment of that evil. Early denunciations of it by 
 the colonists. Their repeated attempts to arrest the introduction of ne 
 groes. Inflexibility of the mother country. American abolition of the 
 slave trade. Measures of the State Legislatures and of Congress on this 
 subject. United States have the merit of priority. Historical deduction 
 of the British slave trade. Its extent and criminality. Developments. His 
 tory of the British abolition of the slave trade. Its interested and imper-^ 
 feet character. Selfish aims of the British government. Supineness of the 
 ministry until the approach of the peace of 1814. Concession of the slave 
 trade to Spain, Portugal, and France. Fatal consequences. British capital 
 largely engaged in the illicit trade. Negociations at the Congress of Vi 
 enna. Insidious propositions of Lord Castlereagh. Miscarriage. British 
 West Indies adequately supplied with negroes since the British abolition. 
 West India slavery ; its character ; in no degree mitigated. Renewed ne 
 gotiations with foreign powers. Their well founded distrust of the views of 
 Great Britain in relation to the general abolition of the slave trade. De 
 velopment of those views. Frustration of her scheme of establishing a 
 right, of search in time of peace. Hypocrisy and imposture. Present state 
 of the slave trade. Vindication of the United States, as regards the exist 
 ence of slavery within their bosom. What they have separately effected, 
 in the way of abolition. Colonization. Character and condition of the 
 American negroes, free and enslaved. Character and deportment of the 
 American masters. Denial of the allegations of the British travellers. " 
 State of the British Poor. 
 
 SUBJECTS OF THE NOTES. 
 
 Indian Warfare. Locke s Constitutions for Carolina. Religious toleration of 
 Rhode Island. Maroon War in Jamaica. Petition of the Acadians to the 
 King of Great Britain. Reduction of Louisbourg. Braddock s papers. 
 London s campaigns. Franklin s refutation of 1,he British calumnies of 
 1759. Character of the Royal Governors of the Colonies. Credulity of 
 the British Cabinet of 1776 89. Debates in Parliament on American 
 cowardice. Utility of the North American colonies as an asylum for Bri 
 tish subjects. The American Philosophical Society. Marshall s Life of 
 Washington. State of society in Great Britain as to the vices of intoxica 
 tion and gambling ; cruelty to animals; brutal sports and conflicts, &c. Dr. 
 Colden. Steam Boat navigation. James Logan. Position of the English 
 and Irish Roman Catholics. Kidnapping in Great Britain and the United 
 States. British Poor, and Poor Laws. Established Church in England. 
 British prisons ; criminal calendar; administration of penal justice, finan 
 cial affairs, &c. 
 
MEMENTOS. 
 
 LET us read, and recollect, and impress upon our souls, the views and 
 ends of our own more immediate forefathers, in exchanging their native 
 country for a dreary, inhospitable wilderness. Let us examine into the 
 nature of that power, and the cruelty of that oppression, which drove 
 them from their homes. Recollect their amazing fortitude, their bitter 
 sufferings ! the hunger, the nakedness, the cold, which they patiently 
 endured ! the severe labours of clearing their grounds, building their 
 houses, raising their provisions, amidst dangers from wild beasts and 
 savage men, before they had time, or money, or materials for commerce ! 
 Recollect the civil and religious principles, and hopes, and expectations, 
 which constantly supported and carried them through all hardships, 
 with patience and resignation !" 
 
 Essay on the Canon and Feudal Law, by John Adams, Esq. 1765, 
 
 "If we do not, my lords, get the better of America, America will 
 get the better of us. We do not fear, at present, that they will attack 
 us at home ; but consider, on the other hand, what will be the fate of 
 the sugar islands, what will be the fate of our trade to that country. 
 That, my lords, is a most valuable, important consideration ; it is the 
 best feather in our wing. The people of America are preparing to 
 raise a navy ; they have begun in part ; trade will beget opulence, and 
 by that means they will be enabled to hire ships from foreign powers." 
 
 Lord Mansfield, House of Lords, 1775. 
 
 " It hurts me to hear a proposition urged in this house, so destruc 
 tive to the welfare of Britain, as American independence. Would not 
 the independency of America be the eve of their advancement into a 
 flourishing naval poiuer? Their situation commanding a species of supe 
 riority over all the earth, they would soon rival Europe in arts, as well 
 as grandeur, and their power in particular would rear itself on the 
 decay of ours. Are we, then, so lost to all the feelings of patriotism, 
 that, with a wanton hand, we would lay the foundation stone of a block 
 ade against our own existence ? 
 
 Mr. Pulteney, House of Commons, 1777. 
 
 "We have heard, indeed, the prosperity of America declared, by 
 Lord Sidrnouth, when he was minister of state, to be an awful warning 
 to Great Britain, never hereafter to colonize a new country. Merciful 
 Heaven ! that the brethren of our ancestors should have founded a 
 mighty empire, indefinite in its increase an empire, which retains, and 
 is spreading, all that constitutes " country" in a wise man s feelings, 
 viz. the same laws, the same customs, the same religion, and, above all, 
 the same language ; that, in short, to have been the mother of a pros 
 perous empire, is to be a -warning to Great Britain ! And whence this 
 dread ? Because, forsooth, our eldest born, when of age, had set up 
 for himself; and not only preserving, but, in an almost incalculable 
 
Ivi MEMENTOS. 
 
 proportion, increasing the advantages of former reciprocal intercourse, 
 had saved us the expense and anxiety of defending 1 , and the embarrass 
 ment of governing a country three thousand miles distant ! That this 
 separation was at length effected by violence, and the horrors of a civil 
 war, is to be attributed solely to the ignorance and corruption of the 
 many, and the perilous bigotry of a few." No. 24, Edinburgh Review. 
 
 " Let our jealousy burn as it may ; let our intolerance of America be 
 as unreasonably violent as we please ; still, it is plain that she is a power, 
 in spite of us, rapidly rising to supremacy ; or, at least, that each year 
 so mightily augments her strength, as to overtake, by a most sensible 
 distance, even the most formidable of her competitors." 
 
 JVb. 49, Edinburgh Review. 
 
 " In one of my late rambles, I accidentally fell into the company of 
 half a dozen gentlemen, who were engaged in a warm dispute about 
 some political affair ; which naturally drew me in for a share of the con 
 versation. 
 
 " Amongst a multiplicity of other topics, we took occasion to talk of 
 the different characters of the several nations of Europe ; when one of 
 the gentlemen, cocking his hat, and assuming such an air of importance 
 as if he had possessed all the merit of the English nation in his own 
 person, declared that the Dutch were a parcel of avaricious wretches ; 
 the French a set of flattering sycophants ; that the Germans were 
 drunken sots, and beastly gluttons; and the Spaniards proud, haughty, 
 and surly tyrants ; but that, in bravery, generosity, clemency, and in 
 every other virtue, the English excelled all the rest of the world. 
 
 " This very learned and judicious remark was received with a general 
 smile of approbation by all the company all, I mean, but your humble 
 servant." GOLDSMITH S ESSAYS Essay XL 
 
PART I. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 OF THE POLITICAL AND MERCANTILE JEALOUSY OF 
 GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 " AMERICA is destined, at all events, to be a great and SECT. I. 
 " powerful nation. In less than a century, she must have a s^-*^ 
 " population of at least seventy or eighty millions. War can- 
 " not prevent, and it appears from experience, can scarcely 
 <e retard, this natural multiplication. All these people will 
 " speak English; and, according to the most probable conjec- 
 " ture, will live under free governments, whether republican 
 u or monarchical, and will be industrious, well educated, and 
 " civilized. Within no very great distance of time, there- 
 " fore, within a period to which those who are now en- 
 " tering life may easily survive, America will be one of 
 " the most powerful and important nations of the earth; 
 " and her friendship and commerce will be more valued, 
 " in all probability, than that of any European state." 
 Such were the speculations of the Edinburgh Review, in 
 the year 1814. In looking forward to what this journal 
 predicts, to the supremacy in power and character which the 
 North Americans are destined to reach, there is something 
 not only curious, but instructive, in the fact, that they have 
 been and are more contemned and defamed, than any other 
 people of whom history has kept a record. Compared with 
 our fate in this respect, that of Boeotia among the ancients, 
 severe as it was and sufficiently unjust, may be described as 
 condign and lenient. It was not alone in their exemption 
 from political and commercial dependence, that the colonies 
 
 VOL. i. A 
 
2 POLITICAL AND 
 
 PART I. of Greece may be said to have been more fortunate than thosr 
 
 v -*" h *T^ / of modei^i Europe. Neither enlightened Greece, nor even 
 
 ^ ** imp &fious Rome, or rapacious Carthage whose colonial policy 
 
 ; ,* .-bore a nearer resemblance to the modern, made perpetual 
 
 *var upon the reputation of its emigrant offspring. The parent 
 
 state was sometimes exorbitant in its demands, and tyrannical 
 
 in the exercise of its superior force; but the colony had not t) 
 
 contend with a system of universal detraction; to serve as i 
 
 mark for the arrogance, spleen, or jocularity of orators, poeb , 
 
 and reviewers. 
 
 The wise man of Europe- homo sapiens Europot net 
 satisfied with sneering and railing at these distant settlement;;, 
 conspired, at one time, to decry nature herself in her opera 
 tions on the new continent: and the theories of Buffon, Raty- 
 nal, and De Paw, so fashionable and authoritative during a. 
 certain period,, though now so entirely exploded, are to te 
 cited in illustration of the state of the European mind towards 
 the Western World. The feature not the least remark 
 able, belonging to this case is, that the particular mothe 1 - 
 country which might have been expected to be most tender )f 
 the feelings and character of her colonies, out of a due regard 
 to justice, gratitude, and her own interests, was, at times, 
 the most scornful in her tone, and the loudest in the chorus jf 
 j obloquy. GREAT BRITAIN continued to throw out sarcasms 
 and reproaches against her North American kinsmen, after/ 
 the continent of Europe had adopted the opposite style, and/ 
 had even passed into an enthusiastic admiration. We may\ 
 pardon vapouring, and invective, and affected derision, at 
 the juncture when her authority was directly questioned, and 
 her colossal power braved by the thirteen pigmy communities 
 of provincials; and some allowance is to be made for the play 
 of passions strongly excited, during and immediately after 
 the struggle, by which she lost so valuable a portion of her 
 empire: But the same course has been pursued without any 
 abatement of virulence or exception of topics, towards these 
 Independent United States; it has not been abandoned after a 
 second war, and after a development of character, resources, 
 and destinies, which would seem sufficient to silence malice 
 and subdue the most sturdy prejudice. When the "planta 
 tions" had grown into colonies, England still thought and 
 spoke of them as the plantations: since the coloniefc have 
 transformed themselves into an independent and powerful 
 nation, it is the colonies, with an imagery to which increased 
 jealousy and despite have added new and more hideous chimf- 
 ras, that are yet seen in the English speculum. 
 
MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 3 
 
 We know that some of the states of antiquity harboured a SECT. I. 
 mischievous jealousy of the prosperity, spirit, and aims of their ^^^<^^ 
 colonies; but it was only when the latter had become truly 
 formidable; had attained to an equality of strength, and given 
 unequivocal evidence of indifference, estrangement, or hos 
 tility. But among the modern colonies, the Anglo-North 
 American, were precisely those which stood the farthest from 
 this relation, which, in all stages of their existence, whether 
 we consider their dispositions, or the general circumstances of 
 their condition, presented the least cause of distrust or alarm 
 to the powerful parent. One of a truly magnanimous and 
 judicious character would have seen, as I hope to prove, abun 
 dant reason for treating them with the utmost latitude of in 
 dulgence and " ceremonious kindness." England, however, 
 is the mother country, who, although perpetually proclaiming 
 the weakness, as well as insulting the origin, and vilifying 
 the pursuits of her plantations, conceived the earliest fears 
 for her supremacy; who displayed, throughout, the keenest po 
 litical and mercantile jealousy. It is true, that the other 
 European powers established and maintained in their settle 
 ments on this continent, a stricter commercial monopoly, and 
 more arbitrary systems of internal administration. It is 
 equally true, however, that England always sought to secure 
 to herself the carriage of the produce of her North American 
 colonies; to engross their raw materials, and to furnish them 
 with the articles of every kind which they required from 
 abroad: That if, from the cupidity or indifference of her mo- 
 narchs, charters of a liberal genius were granted to the first 
 settlers if, from a like cause, or national embarrassments, 
 commonwealths thus cast in the mould of freedom, were suf 
 fered to acquire consistency, and to become identified as it 
 were with their first institutions she made incessant attempts 
 to destroy those charters, and substitute a despotic rule. Her 
 writers on the trade and general politics of the empire, her 
 colonial servants, civil and military, continually called for a 
 more rigorous monopoly and subjection. It was owing to 
 extraneous events, and to the firmness, vigilance and dexterity 
 of the provinces, that they remained in possession of their 
 liberties. I scarcely need remark in addition, that it was a 
 scheme of administration, tending to place them on the level 
 of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, which impelled them 
 to attempt and achieve their independence. 
 
 The main purpose of this worji imposes upon me the task, 
 of adducing some portion of the abundant evidence which 
 books afford, in support of .the general assertions made above: 
 
4 POLITICAL AND 
 
 PART I. And it appears to me not unadvisable on other grounds, to 
 ******** refresh the memory of the public, with respect to the early 
 dispositions and proceedings of Great Britain, towards these 
 North American communities. I will begin with the point to 
 which I have last adverted her political and mercantile 
 jealousy. 
 
 1. This feeling was coeval with the foundation of the colonies. 
 Nothing similar is to be traced so high in the colonial history 
 even of Spain or Portugal. We have the following testimony 
 in Hume s Appendix to his account of the reign of James I. 
 " What chiefly renders the reign of James memorable, is the 
 commencement of the English colonies in America; colonies 
 established on the noblest footing that has been known in any 
 age or nation." 
 
 " Speculative reasoners, during that age, raised many ob 
 jections to the planting those remote colonies; and foretold, 
 that, after draining their mother country of inhabitants, they 
 would soon shake off her yoke, and erect an independent go 
 vernment in America." 
 
 In the excellent article on the British colonies, of Pos- 
 tlethwayt s Universal Dictionary of Trade, there is a more 
 particular statement to the same effect. 
 
 " It is certain that from the very time Sir Walter Raleigh, the father 
 of our English colonies, and his associates, first projected these esta 
 blishments, there have been persons who have found an interest in 
 misrepresenting or lessening the value of them. When the intention 
 of improving these distant countries, and the advantages that were 
 hoped for thereby, were first set forth, there were some who treated 
 them not only as chimerical, but as dangerous : They not only insinu 
 ated the uncertainty of the success, but the depopulating the nation. 
 These, and other objections, flowing either from a narrowness of un 
 derstanding or of heart, have been disproved by experience," &c. &c. 
 
 * The difficulties which will c.lways attend such kind of settlements 
 at the beginning, proved a new cause of clamour; many malignant 
 suggestions were made about sacrificing so many Englishmen to the 
 obstinate desire of settling colonies in countries, which produced very 
 little advantage. But, as these difficulties were gradually surmounted, 
 those complaints vanished. No sooner were those lamentations over 
 than others arose in their stead ; when it could no longer be said that 
 the colonies were useless, it was alleged that they were not useful 
 enough to their mother country ; that while we were loaded with 
 taxes they were absolutely free ; that the planters lived like princes, 
 while the inhabitants of England laboured hard for a tolerable sub 
 Kistence. This produced customs and impositions on plantation com 
 modities," Sec. &c. 
 
 Within little more than a. generation after the commence 
 ment of the plantations, the royal government anxiously began 
 
MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 
 
 those formal inquiries into their population and manufactures, SECT. L 
 which were so often renewed until the period of our revolt, ^^^^^ 
 and of which the results, as to manufactures, served to place 
 the jealousy that provoked them in a ludicrous and pitia 
 ble light. In the reign of Charles I. commissioners were de 
 puted to ascertain the growth and dispositions of New England: 
 And we find her agent in London, in the time of Cromwell, 
 informing one of his constituents, that, even then, there were 
 not wanting many in England, to whom her privileges were 
 matter of envy, and who eagerly watched every opportunity 
 of abridging her political liberties and faculties of trade. 
 Besides emissaries of the description just mentioned, the 
 ministry of Charles II. despatched spies to watch over the con 
 duct and views of the royal governors in America. From the 
 ^ame motive, printing presses were denied to the plantations. 
 We are told by Chalmers, that " no printing press was allowed 
 in Virginia;" that " in New England and New York there 
 were assuredly none permitted," and that " the other pro 
 vinces probably were not more fortunate."* When Andros 
 was appointed by James II. captain-general of all the northern 
 colonies, he was instructed " to allow of no printing press." 
 In an official report of Sir William Berkeley, governor of 
 Virginia, dated 20th June, 1671, there is the following charac 
 teristic passage: " I thank God we have no free schools, nor 
 any printing; and I hope we shall not have them these hun 
 dred years. For learning has brought disobedience, and 
 heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged 
 them and libels against the best government: God keep us 
 from both." Accordingly, every effort was made to shut 
 out the pestilent tree of knowledge. On the appointment of 
 Lord Effingham to the government of Virginia, in 1683, he 
 was ordered, agreeably to the prayer of Sir William Berke 
 ley, " to allow no person to use a printing press on any occa 
 sion whatever." 
 
 The erect port, and firm tone, of the legislature of the infant 
 Massachusetts, not only filled the cabinet of Charles II. with 
 alarm for the metropolitan sovereignty, but actually overawed 
 them, so as to prevent the measures of repression which would 
 otherwise have been pursued; and to maintain the province 
 in the license of action necessary for its prosperity. Curious 
 and remarkable evidence on these heads is extant in the Me- 
 
 Political Annals of the United Colonies, chap. 15 
 
6 POLITICAL AND 
 
 PART i. moirs of Evelyn,* who was one of the council of Charles II. 
 *^-v~^s His language deserves to be quoted. 
 
 " The 6th of May, 1670, I went to council, where was produced 
 a most exact and ample information of the state of Jamaica, and of 
 the best expedients as to New England, on which there was a long 
 debate ; but at length twas concluded that, if any, it should be only 
 a conciliating paper at first, or civil letter, till we had better informa 
 tion of y present face of things, since ive understood they were a people 
 almost upon the very brink of renouncing any dependence on y* crown" 
 Vol. i. p. 415. 
 
 " The first thing we did at our next meeting, was to settle the fornr 
 of a circular letter to the governors of all his Majesty s plantations 
 and territories in the West Indies and Islands thereof, to give them 
 notice to whom they should apply themselves on all occasions, and to 
 render us an account of their present state and government, bu 
 what we most insisted upon was, to know (he condition of New Englana , 
 which, appearing to be "very independent as to their regard to Old England 
 or his Majesty, rich and strong as they now were, there were great de 
 bates in what style to write to them ; for the condition of that colony 
 was such, that they were able to contest with all other plantations 
 about them, and Mere was fear of their breakimg from all dependence 
 on this nation." Ibid. 
 
 " The matter in debate in council on the 3d of August, 1671, wa, 
 whether we should send a deputy to New England, requiring them cf 
 the Massachusetts, to restore such to their limits and respective pos 
 sessions as had petitioned the council; this to be the open commis 
 sion only, but in truth with secret instructions to informs the council oft) e 
 condition of those colonies, and whether they were of such power as to Le 
 able to resist his Maty, and declare for themselves as independent of t/.e 
 erowne, which we were told, and which of late years made them re- 
 fractorie. Coll. Middleton being called in, assur d us they might b 2 
 curb d by a few of his Ma ( y f first rate fregats, to spoile their trade 
 with the Islands ; but tho my Lo : President was not satisfied, the rest 
 were, and we did resolve to advise his Ma ( r to send commiss rs with 
 a formal commission for adjusting boundaries, &c. with some other 
 instructions." p 417. 
 
 "We deliberated in council, on the 12th of Jany, 1672, on some fit 
 person to go as commisser to inspect their actions in New England, and 
 from time to time report how that people stood affected." p. 423. 
 
 When the real amount of the "riches and strength, and the 
 power to resist," mentioned in these extracts, is traced in the 
 returns made from New England at the era in question, it is 
 difficult to think of the apprehensions of the British court, 
 with any degree of seriousness. 
 
 2. The fisheries, shipping, and foreign West India trade of 
 the colonies had scarcely become perceptible, before the Bri 
 tish merchants and West India planters caught and sounded 
 
 * A work of a very interesting cast in all respects, published in Lon 
 don in 1818, in 2 vols. quarto. The article devoted to it in the Quar 
 terly Review has, no doubt, made the most of my readers acquainted 
 with its general character 
 
MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 7 
 
 the alarm. As soon as the colonists, in the progress of wealth SECT. I. 
 and population, undertook to manufacture, for their own con- ^^^-^^ 
 sumption, a few articles of the first necessity, such as hats, 
 paper, &c, a clamour was raised by the manufacturers in 
 England, and the power of the British government was ex 
 erted to remove the cause of the complaint. The Discourse 
 on Trade^_ojLSi r Jnsi a h -Child, a work published in 1670, 
 but written in 1665, and long considered as of the highest 
 authority, expresses, in the passages which I am about to 
 quote, the prevailing opinions of the day. " Certainly it is 
 " the interest of England to discountenance and abate the 
 " number of planters at Newfoundland, for if they should in- 
 " crease, it would in a few years happen to us, in relation to 
 " that country, as it has to the fishery at New England, which 
 6C many years since was managed by English ships from the 
 " western ports; but as plantations there increased, it fell to 
 " the sole employment of people settled there, and nothing of 
 " that trade left the poor old Englishmen, but the liberty of 
 " carrying now and then, by courtesy or purchase, a ship load 
 " of fish to Bilboa, whtfn their own New English shipping are 
 " better employed, or not at leisure to do it." 
 
 " New England is the most prejudicial plantation to this 
 " kingdom, I am now to write of a people, whose frugality, 
 " industry and temperance, and the happiness of whose laws 
 " and institutions, promise to them long life, with a wonderful 
 " increase of people, riches and power; and although no men 
 fcC ought to envy that virtue and wisdom in others, which themselves 
 " either can or will not practise, but rather to commend and ad- 
 " mire it; yet I think it is the duty of every good man primarily 
 " to respect the welfare of his native country; and therefore, 
 " though I may offend some whom I would not willingly dis- 
 " please, I cannot omit, in the progress of this discourse, to 
 " take notice of some particulars, wherein Old England suffers 
 " diminution by the growth of the colonies settled in New 
 " England." * * * 
 
 " Of all the American plantations, his majesty has none so 
 " apt for the building of shipping as New England, nor any 
 " comparably so qualified for the breeding of seamen, not only 
 a by reason of the natural industry of that people, but princi- 
 u pally by reason of their cod and mackerel fisheries; and in 
 " my poor opinion, there is nothing more prejudicial, and in 
 cc prospect more dangerous to any mother kingdom, than the 
 " increase of shipping in her colonies, plantations, or pro- 
 :< vinces," &c. Chap. 10. 
 
 Illustrations of the spirit" testified in these extracts 
 
8 POLITICAL AND 
 
 PART i. from Child, may be collected from the work of_Josho;i 
 v^-v-^/ Gee,J^QjQ.Jthe Trade and Navigation of Great Britain," pub 
 lished at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and also held 
 in great estimation. This writer proposed plans " for mak 
 ing the plantation trade more profitable to England, by 
 strengthening the act of navigation," but suggested, at the sam ; 
 time, the expediency of suffering some of the plantation com 
 modities to be carried directly to the straits of the Mediter 
 ranean. He thought it necessary too, to assign many reasons 
 why the " plantations" neither sought nor could acquire in* 
 dependence. The following passages are from his thirty- 
 first chapter. 
 
 " But before I proceed to show the great advantage those addition:.] 
 materials would be to carry on the aforesaid manufactures, I thin c 
 proper to take notice of an objection made by some gentlemen, whici 
 is, that if we encourage the plantations, they will grow rich, and set no 
 for themselves, and cast off the English government." 
 
 " I have considered those objections abundance of times, theo" 
 tener I think of them, the less ground I see for such doubts an:i. 
 jealousies." 
 
 " It must be allowed, New England has shewn an uncommon stiffnes 
 \Ve think, however, all judicious men, when they come to examine 
 thoroughly into their fears, will see they are groundless ; and that as t. 
 seems impossible for the other colonies to joyn in any >uch design, so 
 nothing could be more against their own interest: For if New Enr- 
 land should ever attempt to be independent of tins kingdom, the stop 
 ping their supplying the sugar islands, and coasting and fishing trade, 
 would drive them to the utmost difficulties to s ubsistas aforesaid ; and 
 of consequence the part they have in that trade would fall into hands 
 of other colonies, which would greatly increase their riches. But f 
 some turbulent spirited men should ever be capable of raising any 
 defection, a small squadron of light frigates would entirely cut olf 
 their trade, and if that did not do, the government would be forcec , 
 contrary to their practice, to do what other nations do of choice, vL, 
 place stand ing forces among them to keep them in order, and oblige 
 them to raise money to pay them. We do not mention this with anv 
 apprehension that ever they will give occasion, but to shew the conse 
 quences that must naturally follow." 
 
 "Some persons who endeavour to represent this colony in th:- 
 worst light, would persuade us they would put themselves under a 
 foreign power, rather than not gratify their resentments," &c. 
 
 " Now as people have have been filled with fears, that the colonies, 
 if encouraged to raise rough materials, would set up for themselves ; a 
 little regulation would remove all those jealousies out of the way, as 
 aforesaid," Sec. 
 
 " It is to be hoped this method would allay the heat that some peo 
 ple have shewn (without reason) for destroying the iron works in the 
 plantations, and pulling down all their forges ; taking an-ay in a violent 
 manner, their estates and properties, preventing the hiubandmen from getting 
 their plough shares, carts, or other utensils mended ; destroying the manu 
 facture of ship building, by depriving them of the liberty of making 
 bolts, spikes, or other things proper for carrying on that work ; by 
 which article, returns are made for purchasing woollen manufactures, 
 which is of more than ten times the profit that is brought into this 
 kingdom by the exports of iron manufacture e." 
 
MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 9 
 
 "The present age is so far unacquainted with the cause of the in- SECT. I. 
 crease of our riches, that they rather interrupt than encourage it, 
 and instead of enlarging, lay hold of some small trifling things, which 
 they think may touch their private interest, rather than promote the 
 general good ; and if they think any commodity from th~ plantations 
 interferes with something we have at home, some hasty step Is taken to 
 prevent it ; so that for the sake of saving a penny, we often deprive 
 ourselves of things of a thousand times the value." 
 
 The report made in 1731, at the command of the British par 
 liament, by the Board of Trade and Plantations, concerning tlae 
 " trades carrTe Jon, and manufactures set up, in the colonies," 
 betrays much disquietude, and recommends that, " some ex 
 pedient be fallen upon to direct the thoughts of the colonists 
 from undertakings of this kind; so much the rather, because 
 these manufactures in process of time, may be carried on in a 
 greater degree, unless an early stop be put to their progress." 
 The report carefully notes that in New England " by a paper 
 mill set up three years ago, they make to the value of =200 
 sg. yearly." The measures adopted by the parliament in 1732 
 and 1733, were symptomatic of the morbid sensibility com^ 
 mon to all classes of politicians as well as traders. By the 
 act " for the better securing and encouraging the trade of his 
 majesty s sugar colonies in America," the interests of New 
 England were sacrificed to those of the sugar planters. 
 
 The petition of Rhode Island and Providence, against the 
 sugar colony bill, occasioned a debate in the House of Com 
 mons in 1733, some parts of which deserve to be copied as 
 interesting in a double point of view. 
 
 " Sir John Barnard moved for leave to bring up the petition. * 
 
 " Sir Wm. Yonge said, I must take notice of one thing which I have 
 observed in the petition. They therein tell us, that as to the bill 
 now depending before us, they apprehend it to be against their char 
 ter. This, I must say, is something very extraordinary ; and in my 
 opinion, looks very like aiming at an independence, and disclaiming 
 the authority and jurisdiction of this House, as if this House had not a 
 power to tax them, or to make any laws for the regulating the affairs 
 of their colonies ; therefore if there were no other reason for our not: 
 receiving the petition, on this single account I should be against it." 
 
 " Mr. Wennington I hope the petitioners have no charter which 
 debars this House from taxing them as well as any other subjects of 
 this nation. I am sure they can have no such charter." 
 
 " Sir John Barnard alleged that the language of the petitioners was 
 * that they humbly conceive, that the bill now depending, if passed 
 into a law, would be highly prejudicial to their charter. It may be 
 that this House has sometimes refused to receive petitions from some 
 parts of Britain, against duties to be laid on ; but this can be no rea 
 son why the petition I have now in my hand should be rejected. The 
 people in every part of Britain have a representative in this House, 
 who is to take care of their particular interest and they may, by 
 means of their representative in this House, offer what reasons they 
 think proper against any duties to be laid on, But the people who 
 VOL. T, B 
 
10 POLITICAL AND 
 
 PART I. are the present petitioners, have no particular representatives in tin* 
 -^- T -^- House, therefore, they have no other way of applying- or offering their 
 
 reasons to this House, but in the way of being heard at the bar of 
 
 the House, by their agent here in England. Therefore, the case of 
 
 this petition is an exception." 
 The question being put for bringing up the petition, passed in the 
 
 negative." ( Parliamentary History, j) 
 
 The trade of the northern colonies with the foreign West 
 India Islands, would have been totally prohibited, according 
 to the prayer of the sugar planters, had not the parliament 
 apprehended distant consequences, of a nature incompatible 
 with the general British policy as to France.* The spirit of tht 
 legislation under review, is strikingly exemplified in the law 
 of 1732, to prevent the exportation of hats out of the plan 
 c tations in America, and to restrain the number of appren 
 c tices taken by the hat makers, in the said plantations, &c. 
 So also, in the act of 1750, prohibiting, under severe penal 
 ties, the erection of any slitting-mill, plating-forge, or furnace 
 for making steel, &c. Heavy complaints were made in Great 
 Britain, that the people of New England " not satisfied witli 
 carrying out their own produce, had become carriers for th-; 
 other colonies." The injustice of the restraints imposed or 
 solicited, may be understood from the circumstance that 
 New England had no staple to exchange for the British 
 manufactures. " Hats," says the Account of the European 
 Settlements,! " are made in New England, which in aclan- 
 " destine way, find a good vent in all the other colonies. The 
 " setting up this, and other manufactures, has been, in a great 
 " measure, a matter necessary to them; for, as they have not 
 " been properly encouraged in some staple commodity by 
 tc which they might communicate with their mother country, 
 " while they were cut off from all other resources, they must 
 f< either have abandoned the country, or have found means of 
 c employing their own skill and industry to draw out of it the 
 " necessaries of life. The same necessity, together with their 
 " convenience for building and manning ships, has made them 
 " the carriers for the other colonies." 
 
 New England, Massachusetts particularly, was constantly 
 
 * See Account of the European Settlements in America, vol. ii. p. 
 179. Moreover, according to the^ornetiuthority, " The northern colo 
 nies declared, that if they were deprived of so great a branch of their 
 trade, it must necessitate them to the establishment of manufactures. 
 For, if they were cut off from their foreign trade, they never could 
 purchase in England the many things for the use or the ornament of 
 Ijfe, which the} have from thence, &c." 
 
 j Ibid, p. 175. A. 1). 1757. 
 
MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 
 
 arraigned and threatened, for contempt of the act of naviga- SECT. i. 
 tion, and the subsequent regulations of a like purport, although, ^^^^ 
 by the confession of the board of trade itself, in its reports, 
 nature left them no alternative but disobedience, or a long 
 and feeble infancy. These restraints, those relating to ma 
 nufactures, at least, were as unnecessary, as vexatious and 
 unjust. Our experience since the separation, has demonstrated 
 the extravagance of the apprehensions of the mother country, 
 when referred to New England at the beginning of the last 
 century. The selfishness must have been extreme, the 
 jealousy exquisite, which generated the phantoms of an in 
 dependent empire and rival manufactures in that quarter, 
 at so early a period. The opinions of Adam Smith, concern 
 ing the British legislation generally, in the case of the Ame 
 rican colonies, carry with them an authority not to be resisted, 
 and belong especially to an exposition, such as the one in which 
 I am engaged. I am the more strongly tempted to adventure 
 upon pretty copious extracts from the seventh chapter of his 
 fourth book, in which he particularly treats of that legislation, 
 since most of our domestic historians, inattentive to the cry, 
 if I may be allowed the phrase, of the very facts which they 
 relate, talk volubly of the " wise and liberal policy," of Great 
 Britain.* 
 
 "The policy of Europe has very little to boast of, either in the ori 
 ginal establishment, or so far as concerns their internal government, in 
 the subsequent prosperity of the colonies of America." 
 
 " Folly and injustice seem to have been the principles which pre 
 sided over, and directed the first project of establishing those colonies ; 
 the folly of hunting after gold and silver mines, and the injustice of 
 coveting the possession of a country whose harmless natives, far from 
 having ever injured the people of Europe, had received the first ad 
 venturers with every mark of kindness and hospitality." 
 
 "The adventurers, indeed, who formed some of the later establish 
 ments, joined to the chimerical project of finding gold and silver 
 mines, other motives more reasonable and more laudable ; but even 
 these motives do very little honour to the policy of Europe. ^ 
 
 " The English Puritans, restrained at home, fled for freedom to 
 America; and established there the four governments of New England. 
 The English Catholics, treated -with much greater injustice, established 
 that of Maryland ; the Quakers, that of Pennsylvania, &c. &c." 
 
 " The government of England contributed scarce any thing towards 
 effectuating the establishment of some of its most important colonies 
 in North America." 
 
 " When those establishments were effectuated, and had become so 
 considerable as to attract the attention of the mother country, the first 
 regulations which she made with regard to them had always in view to 
 keep to herself the monopoly of their commerce ; to confine their mar 
 ket, and to enlarge her own at their expense, and consequently rattier t 1 * 
 
 * See RamsayColonial Hi story, chap.i. 
 
POLITICAL AND 
 
 PART I. damp and discourage, than to quicken and forward the course of their pros 
 perity. In the different ways in which this monopoly has been exer 
 cised, consists one of the most essential differences in the policy of the 
 different European nations with regard to their colonies. The best of 
 them all, that of England, is only somewhat less illiberal and oppressive than 
 that of any of the rest." 
 
 " England purchased, by some of her subjects who felt uneasy at 
 home, a great estate in a distant country. The price indeed was very 
 small, and instead of thirty years purchase, the ordinary price of land 
 in the present times, it amounted to little more than the expense of 
 the different equipments which made the first discovery, reconnoitered 
 the coast, and took a fictitious possession of the country. The land 
 was good and of great extent, and the cultivators having plenty of good 
 ground to work upon, and being for some time at liberty to sell their 
 produce where they pleased, became, in the course of little more than 
 thirty or forty years, (between 1620 and 1660) so numerous and thriv 
 ing a people, that the shop-keepers and other traders of England, 
 wished to secure to themselves the monopoly of their custom. Without 
 pretending, therefore, that they had paid any part, either of the original 
 pm chase money, or of the subsequent expense of improvement, they 
 petitioned the parliament that the cultivators of America might, for 
 the future, be confined to their shop ; first, for buying all the goods 
 which they wanted from Europe ; and, secondly, for- selling all such 
 parts of their own produce as those traders might fold it convenient to 
 buy, for they did not find it convenient to buy every part of it. Some 
 parts of it imported into England might have interfered with some of 
 the trades which they themselves carried on at home. Those parti 
 cular parts of it, therefore, they were willing that the colonists should 
 sell where they could ; the. farther off" the better ; and, upon thataccount t 
 proposed that their market should be confined to the countries south of 
 Cape Finisterre. A clause in the famous act of navigation established 
 this truly shop-keeper proposal into a law." 
 
 " The maintenance of this monopoly has hitherto been the princi 
 pal, or more properly, perhaps, the sole end and purpose of the do 
 minion which Great Britain assumes over her colonies. It is the prin 
 cipal badge of their dependency, and it is the sole fruit which has 
 hitherto been gathered from that dependency. Whatever expense 
 Great Britain has hitherto laid out in maintaining this dependency, has 
 realiy been laid outm order to support this monopoly ." 
 
 "While Great Britain encourages in America the manufactures of 
 pig and bar iron, by exempting them from duties, to which the like 
 commodities are subject, when imported from any other country, she 
 imposes an absolute prohibition upon the erection of steel-furnaces 
 and slit-mills in any of her American plantations. She will not suffer 
 her colonies to work in those more refined manufactures even of their 
 own consumption ; but insists upon their purchasing 1 of her merchants 
 and manui acturers all goods of this kind which they have occasion 
 for." 
 
 ** She prohibits the exportation from one province to another by 
 water, and even the carriage by land on horseback or in a cart, of hats, 
 of wools and woollen goods, of the produce of America ; a regulation 
 which effectually prevents the establishment of any manufacture of 
 such commodities for distant sale, and confines the industry of her 
 colonists in this way to such coarse and household manufactures, as a 
 private family generally makes for its own use, or for that of some of 
 jts neighbours in the same province." 
 
 " To prohibit a great people, however, from making all that they can of 
 every part of their own produce, or from employing their stock and industry 
 in the ivny that the" jitflpe most advantageous to themselves t in a manifest 
 
MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 13 
 
 violation of the most sacred rights of mankind. Though they had not SECT. I. 
 been prohibited from establishing such manufactures, yet in their pre- y^-. -^_- 
 sent state of improvement, a regard to their own interest would, pro 
 bably, have prevented them from doing 1 so. In their present state of im 
 provement, those prohibitions, perhaps, without cramping 1 their indus 
 try, or restraining it from any employment to which it would have gone 
 of its own accord, are only impertinent badges of slavery, imposed upon 
 them, without any sufficient reason, by the groundless jealousy of the 
 merchants and manufacturers of the mother country." 
 
 " Of the greater part of the regulations concerning the colony trade, 
 the merchants who carry it on, it must be observed, have been the prin 
 cipal advisers. We must not wonder, therefore, if, in the greater part 
 of them, their interest has been more considered than either that of 
 the colonies or that of the mother country. In their exclusive privi 
 lege of supplying the colonies with all the goods which they wanted 
 from Europe, and of purchasing all such parts of their surplus pro- 
 duce as could not interfere with any of the trades which they them- 
 selves carried on at home, the interest of the colonies was sacrificed 
 to the interests of those merchants." 
 
 " If the whole surplus produce of America in grain of all sorts, in 
 salt provisions, and in fish, had been put into the enumeration, and 
 there by forced into the market of Great Britain, it would have inter 
 fered too much with the produce of the industry of our own people. 
 It was probably not so much from any regard to the interest of America, 
 as from a jealousy of this interference, that those important commodi 
 ties have not only been kept out of the enumeration, but that the im 
 portation into Great Britain of all grain, except rice, and of all salt 
 provisions, has, in the ordinary state of the law, been prohibited." 
 
 " The non-enumerated commodities could originally be exported to 
 all parts of the world. Lumber and rice having been once put into 
 the enumeration, when they were afterwards taken out of it, were 
 confined, as to the European market, to the countries that lie south of 
 Cape Finisterre. By the 6th of George HI. c. 51. all non-enumerated 
 commodities were subjected to the like restriction. The parts of Eu 
 rope which lie south of Cape Finisterre, are not manufacturing coun 
 tries, and we were less jealous of the colony ships carrying home from 
 them any manufactures which could interfere with our own." 
 
 3. As the plantations advanced in numbers, strength, 
 wealth, and manufactures, they awakened a still more lively 
 distrust, and jealous vigilance, in the mother country. In 
 1715, a bill was brought into the House of Commons to abolish 
 all the charter governments; against which tyrannical project, 
 the agent of Massachusetts, Dummer, published an elaborate 
 and masterly pamphlet. One of the sections of his c: De 
 fence of the New England Charters," is headed thus, " The 
 objection that the charter colonies will grow great and formi 
 dable, answered:" and the author details, with much anxiety, 
 the circumstances which, in his opinion, established the pro 
 bability of the reverse. He begins his argument with stating, 
 There is one thing I have heard often urged against the 
 u colonies, and indeed, it is what one meets from people of 
 " all conditions and qualities. Tis said, that their increasing 
 " numbers and wealth, joined to their great distance from 
 
POLITICAL AND 
 
 PART I. a (2 reat Britain, will give them an opportunity, in the course 
 v -*" v- ^~ / " of some years, to throw off their dependence on the nation, 
 " and declare themselves a free state, if not curbed in time. 
 " I have often wondered to hear some great men profess their 
 " belief of the feasibleness of this, &c."* The House c-f 
 Commons continued, as may be seen, from the portion gives 
 above, of their debate of 1733, on the petition from Rhode 
 Island, to be tremblingly alive on this point. It displayed 
 its sensibility even in a more marked way, a few years afte % 
 In 1740, it voted, upon the complaint preferred by tie 
 general court of Massachusetts, against governor Belcher, 
 for denying to them the disposal of the public monies, 
 " That the complaint, contained in the New Englai d 
 u memorial and petition, was frivolous and groundless; rn 
 " high insult upon his majesty s government, and tending to 
 " shake off the dependency of the said colony upon this 
 " kingdom, to which, by law and right, they are and ought to 
 " be subject." When the general court ventured to censure 
 one of their agents, Mr. Dunbar, for giving evidence before 
 parliament on the bill for the better securing the trade of tne 
 sugar colonies, the House of Commons voted, nem. con. 
 " That the presuming to call any person to account, or pass a 
 censure upon him; for evidence given by such person before that 
 House, was an audacious proceeding, and an high violation 
 of the privileges of that House." 
 
 The fate of the Albany plan of union, familiar to the me 
 mory of all who have read our history, affords additional 
 proof of the temper which it is my object to illustrate. A 
 confederacy of the colonies for the purpose of defence against 
 the French and Indians, was at first instigated by the British 
 government; but it could tolerate no arrangements except 
 such as were incompatible with their liberties. It finally pre 
 ferred leaving them exposed to the most formidable dangers, 
 -and itself to the cost and trouble of their protection, rather 
 than acquiesce in any scheme of coalition, in the execution 
 of which, they might, to use the language of Franklin, 
 " grow too military, and feel their own strength. "t In the 
 pamphlet which this great statesman published, in 1760, 
 to show the impolicy of restoring Canada to the French, there 
 is a section allotted to the question, " whether the American 
 colonies were dangerous in their nature to Great Britain." He 
 found it necessary, on every occasion, when an advantage 
 was sought for them, to set in formal array, all the considera- 
 
 * Page 73. 
 
 t See Memoirs of Franklin, p. 142, American edition. 
 
MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 15 
 
 lions which pleaded against the bare supposition, of their being SECT. I. 
 disposed or able, to effect their independence. ^^^^^^ 
 
 To lessen the danger, or obviate new hazards, for her sove 
 reignty and monopoly, England embraced the policy, of confining 
 the settlements in North America as much as possible to the sea 
 coast. The great points of preventing the French power from 
 being immoveably established at their back, and over the whole 
 vast interior; of securing the Atlantic provinces not only from 
 this evil, but from their cruel scourge the Indians; of opening 
 the fruitful and beautiful countries beyond the Appalachian 
 mountains to English cultivation and empire, were all postponed 
 to views, of which it is difficult to say whether they were more 
 selfish or short sighted. The plan of a colony on the Ohio, 
 for the salutary and noble purposes just enumerated, was con 
 ceived in America in the middle of the last century, submitted 
 fruitlessly to the British government in 1 768, and offered anew 
 by Dr. Franklin, in 1770, with the engagement on the part of 
 the projectors, to be at the whole expense of establishing and 
 maintaining the civil administration of the country to be set 
 tled. A few extracts from the two Reports* of the Board of 
 Trade and Plantations, on the subject, to the Lords of the privy 
 council, will explain the favourite system in relation to the 
 plantations. 
 
 " The proposition of forming inland colonies in America is, we 
 humbly conceive, entirely new: it adopts principles in respect to 
 American settlements, different from what have hitherto been the po 
 licy of this kingdom, and leads to a system which, if pursued through 
 all its consequences, is, in the present state of that country, of the 
 greatest importance." 
 
 " And first with regard to the policy, we take leave to remind your 
 lordships of that principle which was adopted by this Board, and ap 
 proved and confirmed by his majesty, immediately after the treaty of 
 Paris, viz. the confining the western extent of settlements to such a 
 si distance from the sea coast, as that those settlements should lie 
 -vithin the reach of the trade and commerce of this kingdom, upon which 
 the strength and riches of it depend ; and also of the exercise of that 
 authority and jurisdiction, which was conceived to be necessary for the 
 preservation of the colonies, in a due subordination to, and dependence 
 upon, the mother country ; and these we apprehend to have been two 
 capital objects of his majesty 9 s proclamation of the 7th of October, 1763, 
 by which his majesty declares it to be his royal will and pleasure, to 
 reserve, under his sovereignty, protection, and dominion, for the use of 
 the Indians, all the lands not included within the three new govern 
 ments, the limits of which are described therein, as also all the lands 
 and territories lying to the westward of the sources of the rivers 
 which shall fall into the sea from the west and north-west, and by which 
 all persons are forbid to make any purchases or settlements whatever, 
 or to take possession of any of the lands above reserved, without spe 
 cial license for that purpose." 
 
 * Fourth vol. Franklin s Works, article Ohio Settlement 
 
16 POLITICAL AND 
 
 PART I. " The same principles of policy, in reference to settlements at ;;o 
 ^^^ -^_- great a distance from the sea coast as to be out of the reach of all ad 
 vantageous intercourse with this kingdom, continue to exist in their 
 full force and spirit ; and though various propositions for erecting m w 
 colonies in the interior parts of America have been, in consequence of ti is 
 extension of the boundary line, submitted to the consideration of govemme, it, 
 (particularly in that part of the country wherein are situated the Ian is 
 now prayed for, with a view to that object,) yet the dangers and disad 
 vantages of complying with such proposals have been so obvious, as 
 v to defeat every attempt made for carrying them into execution." 
 
 v " " The effect of the policy of this kingdom in respect to colonizing 
 America, in those colonies where there has been sufficient time for 
 that effect to discover itself, will, we humbly apprehend, be a very 
 strong argument against forming settlements in the interior country ; 
 more especially when every advantage derived from an established 
 government would naturally tend to draw the stream of populatio i; 
 fertility of soil, and temperature of climate, offering superior incre 
 ments to settlers, who, exposed to few hardships, and struggling -with jew 
 difficulties, could, -with little labour, earn an abundance for their own wants, 
 
 but without a possibility of supplying ours with any considerable quantities." 
 " Admitting that the settlers in the country in question are mine- 
 rous as report states them to be, yet we submit that this is a fact which 
 does, in the nature of it, operate strongly in point of argument against 
 what is proposed for if the foregoing reasoning has any weight, it 
 certainly ought to induce you to advise his majesty to take every ne- 
 thod to check the progress of these settlements, and not to make such 
 grants of land as will have^an immediate tendency to encourage theii.** 
 
 The language of the royal servants of North America was 
 of the same tenor with that of the Lords of Trade. The 
 commander in chief of his majesty s forces there, wrote in 
 17G9, to lord Hillsborough, who presided over the colonial 
 department. 
 
 "As to increasing the settlements to respectable provinces, and 
 to colonization in general terms in the remote countries, 1 conceive 
 it. altogether inconsistent with sound policy. I do not apprehend 
 the inhabitants could have any commodities to barter for manufac 
 tures, except skins and furs, which will naturally decrease as the 
 country increases in people, and the deserts are cultivated; so that 
 in the course of a few years, necessity would force them to provide 
 manufactures of some kind for themselves ; and when all connexion 
 upheld by commerce with the mother country shall cease, it may be 
 expected that an independency in her government will soon follow. 
 The laying open new tracts of fertile country in moderate climates 
 might lessen the present supply of the commodities of America, for 
 it is the passion of every man to be a landholder, and the people have 
 a natural disposition to rove in search of good land, however distant." 
 
 The governor of Georgia, above named, is quoted with 
 great deference by the Lords of Trade, as having written to 
 them thus : 
 
 " This matter, my lords, of granting large bodies of land in the I 
 back parts of any of his majesty s northern colonies, appears to me | 
 in a very serious and alarming light ; and I humbly conceive, may 
 be attended with the greatest and worst of consequences; for, my 
 lords, if a vast territory be granted to any set of gentlemen, who 
 
MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 
 
 really mean to people it, and actually do so. it must draw and carry SECT. I, 
 out a great number of people from Great Britain ; and I apprehend, v^^-v-^, 
 they will soon become a kind of separate and independent people, who 
 will set up for themselves ; that they will soon have manufactures of 
 their own, &c. in process of time, they will become formidable enough 
 to oppose his majesty s authority," &c. 
 
 It is curious, and demonstrative of the sense commonly en 
 tertained of the views of the British government, that some 
 of the advocates for the project of interior settlements, in 
 sisted, that such establishments would serve as a check upon 
 attempts, on the part of the old colonies, to become indepen 
 dent, by draining them of their population. There is, in fact, 
 much plausibility in the suggestion, which is made in one of 
 the memorials on the subject, of the year l.TCT^^that.Qf. .ge 
 neral Lyman. " The period will doubtless come, when North 
 " America will no longer acknowledge a dependence on any 
 " part of Europe. But that period seems to be so remote, as 
 " cot to be at present an object of rational policy or human 
 " prevention, and it will be rendered still more remote by 
 <e opening new scenes of agriculture, and widening the space 
 " which the colonists must first completely occupy." 4 
 
 I shall not be considered as going wide of my subject, if I 
 advert here, to the fact, that the British government has pur 
 sued, with respect to India, a policy similar to that recom 
 mended in the foregoing extracts, in relation to North Ame 
 rica. I need only appeal to the authority of Mills, who, in 
 his " History of British India, "TJs^IhTs eirTpIiatlc language. 
 " If it were p<)ssIF!e for iTiie"English government to learn wis- 
 tc clom by experience, which governments rarely do, it might 
 tc at last see, with regret, some of the effects of that illiberal, 
 " cowardly, and short-sighted policy, under which it has taken 
 " the most solicitous precautions to prevent the settlement of 
 " Englishmen; trembling, forsooth, lest Englishmen, if al- 
 " lowed to settle in India, should detest and cast off its yoke! 11 
 
 " It is wonderful to see how the English government, every 
 " now and then, voluntarily places itself in the station of a 
 u government existing in opposition to the people, a govern- 
 " ment which hates, because it dreads the people, and is hated 
 " by them in its turn. Its deportment with regard to the resi- 
 41 dence of the Englishmen in India, speaks these unfavour- 
 " able sentiments with a force which language could not 
 " easily possess."! 
 
 The Edinburgh Review, in quoting the first of these para- 
 
 * See Macpherson s Annals of Commerce. Quarto Ed. vol. iii. 469 
 f B. 6. vol. iii. p. 334, 336! 
 
 VOL. I. C 
 
18 
 
 POLITICAL AND 
 
 PART i. graphs, affects, indeed, to doubt whether " the obstructions 
 which have been thrown in the way of colonization in In- 
 " dia, have arisen mainly from the idea that another nation of 
 " Englishmen would spring up there, who might take upon 
 " them to govern themselves;" and it cannot admit that " any 
 " Englishman would be base enough /not to wish to see another 
 " America arise at a distance, which might relieve Britain 
 " from the fear of her nVa/i/j/."* But no one that has read the 
 masterly work of the historian whom I have just cited, will 
 hesitate between his opinions on the subject, and those of any 
 anonymous critic; and there is a corroborative circumstance 
 too notorious to be questioned: 1 mean the attempt sanctioned 
 in the same quarter, to prevent the diffusion of Christianity 
 among the Hindoos, from an apprehension of danger to the 
 British power.f I am myself unable to devise a juster or 
 stronger commentary upon the policy towards the North Ame 
 rican colonies, than is furnished in the following general ob 
 servation of the Edinburgh critics, in allusion to the case of 
 India. " We cannot conceive any thing more discreditable 
 " to a government, than to place itself in opposition to a mea- 
 <{ sure, conducive, and almost essential to the prosperity of a 
 a great empire, merely because it would be attended with a 
 u chance, at some distant period, of a curtailment of the ex- 
 u tent of its dominions." 
 
 It is not easy to forget that at the commencement of the ne- 
 gociations at Ghent, in 1814, a policy was betrayed by the Bri 
 tish government, in the demands of its commissioners, touching 
 a new Indian boundary, akin to that which discountenanced 
 the plan of the Ohio settlement. Nor ought we to forget the 
 eloquent condemnation of the pretension of 1814, pronounced 
 by Sir James Mackintosh, in the House of Commons, a con 
 demnation equally due to his majesty s proclamation of the 
 7th October, 1763, and to the system* of the Lords of Trade. 
 " The western frontier of North American cultivation is the 
 " part of the globe in which civilization is making the most 
 " rapid and extensive conquests on the wilderness. It is the 
 " point where the race of man is the most progressive. To 
 
 * N.o. 61. 
 
 f See the " Christianjlesearches in Asia," of the Rev. Claudius 
 Buchanan. The \vritcradITuceTaletter to himself, dated May 14, 1806, 
 from Watson, Bishop of Llanduff, which contains the following passage 
 " Twenty years und more have now elapsed, since in a sermon before 
 the House of Lords, I hinted to the government the propriety of pay 
 ing regard to the propagation of Christianity in India; and. I nave 
 since then, as fit occasion offered, privately, but unsuccessfully, pressed 
 the matter on the consideration of those in power." 
 
MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 19 
 
 u forbid the purchase of land from the savages, is to arrest the SECT. I. 
 
 " progress of mankind. More barbarous than the Norman ^-^v*^* 
 
 " tyrants, who afforested great tracts of arable land for their 
 
 " sport, ministers attempted to stipulate that a territory quite as 
 
 " great as the British islands, should be doomed to an eternal 
 
 " desert. They laboured to prevent millions of freemen and 
 
 " Christians from coming into existence. To perpetuate the 
 
 " English authority in two provinces, a large part of North 
 
 " America was for ever to be a wilderness. The American 
 
 " negociators, by their resistance to so insolent and extravagant 
 
 " a demand, maintained the common cause of civilized men."* 
 
 4. Emigration to the colonies proved, from the outset, a 
 subject of alarm for the mother country. Her apprehension 
 from it was two-fold; of her own depopulation, and the trans 
 lation and decline of her manufactures. 
 
 " The barbarism of our ancestors," says the author of the 
 European Settlements in America, " could not comprehend 
 " how a nation could grow more populous by sending out apart 
 " of its people. We have lived to see this paradox made out 
 " by experience, but we have not sufficiently profited of this 
 " experience; since we begin, (in 1757,) some of us at least, 
 " to think that there is a danger of dispeopling ourselves, by 
 " encouraging new colonies, or increasing the old." 
 
 Precautions were taken against too great an efflux from the 
 kingdom, to America, even in the time of James I. and were 
 renewed on several occasions in that of his successor. The 
 circumstance is noticed by Hume in the following terms: 
 " The Puritans, restrained in England, shipped themselves 
 " off for America, and laid there the foundations of a go- 
 " vernment, which possessed all the liberty, both civil and 
 " religious, of which they found themselves deprived in their 
 u native country. But their enemies, unwilling that they 
 " should any where enjoy ease and contentment, and dread- 
 ic ing, perhaps, the dangerous consequences of so disaffected 
 " a colony, prevailed with the king to issue a proclamation, 
 " debarring these devotees access even into those inhospitable 
 " deserts."f 
 
 In 1637, a proclamation was issued by Charles I. " to re- 
 " strain the disorderly transporting of his majesty s subjects to 
 " the colonies without leave;" and in 1638, another, " com- 
 " manding owners and masters of vessels, that they do not 
 " fit out any with passengers and provisions to New England, 
 
 * Speech on the Treaty with America April 1815. 
 f Chapter 52, 
 
20 POLITICAL AN6 
 
 PART i. " without license from the Commissioners of Plantations, 
 v^^v-^, One incident of the operation of this interdict has attracted the. 
 
 notice of all the historians, and is thus strikingly told by 
 
 Robertson. 
 
 " The number of the emigrants to America drew the attention of 
 government, and appeared so formidable, that a proclamation was 
 issued, prohibiting masters of ships from carrying passengers to New 
 England, without special permission. On many occasions this injunc 
 tion was eluded or disregarded Fatally for the king, it operated with 
 full effect in one instance. Sir Arthur Haslerig, John Hampden, 
 Oliver Cromwell, and some other persons, whose principles and views 
 coincided with theirs, impatient to enjoy those civil and religious liber 
 ties, which they struggled in vain to obtain in Great Britain, hired some 
 ships to carry them and their attendants to New England. By order 
 of council, an embargo was laid on these when on the point of sailing ; 
 and Charles, far from suspecting that the future revolutions in his 
 kingdoms were to be excited and directed by persons in such an hum 
 ble sphere of life, forcibly detained the men destined to overturn his 
 throne, and to tei-minate his days by a violent death."* 
 
 Towards the close of the seventeenth century, the alarm of 
 depopulation, and trans- at] an tic manufactures, from the re 
 moval of British subjects to the colonies, had increased, and 
 become the theme of much political speculation. Sir_Josiah 
 Child thought it necessary to investigate minutely the realitj 
 6T The clanger, and devoted to the question a consi 
 derable section of his work on Trade. Some few of his 
 phrases will explain the state of the case. " Gentlemen of 
 u no mean capacities are of opinion, that his majesty s plan- 
 " tations abroad, have very much prejudiced this kingdom by 
 " draining us of people.** I do not agree that our people in 
 " England are in any considerable measure abated, by reason 
 " of our foreign plantations. This, I know, is a controverted 
 " point, and I do believe, that where there is one man of my 
 " mind, there may be a thousand of the contrary," &c.f Child 
 argued the question upon the true principles of political econo 
 my, and among other particular views gave the following : 
 " I do acknowledge, that the facility of getting to the plan 
 " tations, may cause some more to leave us than would do, 
 u - if they had none but foreign countries for refuge: but then, 
 " if it be considered, that our plantations spending mostly our 
 " English manufactures, and those of all sorts almost irnagi- 
 " nable, in egregious quantities, and employing nearly Uvo- 
 li thirds of all our English shipping, do therein give a con- 
 " stant sustenance to it, may be 200,000 persons here at 
 u home; then I must needs conclude, upon the whole matter, 
 
 * Fourth vol. History of America. 
 j- Chapter 
 
MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. *J 
 
 cc that we have not the fewer, but the more people in Eng- SECT. I. 
 " land, by reason of our English plantations in America."* ^^^-*** 
 
 Notwithstanding the complete refutation of the error by 
 this an ; o-.he liberal writers, lively alarms continued to 
 recur. We find the political economists of England engaged, 
 in 1756, and at later periods, before and after he American . 
 revolution, in warm controversies respecting the decline of the 
 British population, from various causes, emigration included.! 
 The govtmiment acted uniformly upon the received prejudice. 
 Th< Lords of Trade, in the officiaL-repo.il.jQf If 70, which, I 
 have quoted above, refer to the doctrine also quoted, of the 
 governor oi Georgia, in the following terms: "And there is 
 " on? objection suggested by governor Wright, to the extension 
 " of settlements in the interior country, which, we submit, 
 " deserves your lordship s particular attention, viz. the en- 
 " couragement that is thereby held ou* to the emigration of his 
 u majesty s subjects; an argument which, in the present pe- 
 " culiar situation of this kingdom, demands very serious con- 
 " sideration, and has for some time past had so great weight 
 " with this Board, that it has induced us to deny our concur- 
 " rence to many proposals for grants of land, even in those 
 "parts of the continent of America, where, in other respects, 
 u we are of opinion, that it consists with the true policy of the 
 " kingdom to encourage settlements." 
 
 On the recognition of our independence, the panic respect 
 ing emigration returned, in England, with double violence. 
 Nothing short of complete depopulation, from the tempta 
 tions wbioh the seeming natural advantages, or the designing 
 legislation, of the new republic might offer to his majesty s 
 liege subjects, was apprehended by the privy council of the 
 home department. Lord Sheffield set himself at work to 
 medicate the imagination of his countrymen, by depicting 
 this land as one of multifarious wretchedness, and in al 
 most the last s;ag( oi atrophy. He represented emigration as 
 the resource only of the culprit, and of those who had 
 
 * Chapter 10. 
 
 f To discourage it, the device was early employed, which has been 
 BO often resorted to, iri relation to the United States The following title 
 of a work. \vhsc!> appeared in the mother country in 1753, will explain 
 what I mean : " America^ dissected ; being a true and full account of 
 all the American Colonies T shewing thelhtemperance of the climates ; 
 badness of i7ione\ ; danger from em-mies; and the danger to the souls 
 of the poor people that remove th TiluM*, from the heresies that prevail 
 there. By a Rev Divine of the Church of England, Missionary to 
 America, and D. T). Published as u caution to unsteady people, wA# 
 7i uy be tempted to leave their native cmmtnj." 
 
POLITICAL AND 
 
 PART I ma( le themselves the objects of contempt. "America would 
 ^ prove the bane of all others;" " not above one emigrant infim^ 
 to that country, succeeded so as to settle a family;" " the bet 
 ter sort of them were begging about the streets of Philadelphia ; 
 Irishmen went there to become slaves to negroes," &c.* Ex - 
 pedients more effectual than this phantasmagoria, were adopt 
 ed by the government, particularly in J794, in the shape of 
 prohibitory laws. We had a remarkable instance of its feeling 
 in 1817, in the act of parliament of that year, by which Bri 
 tish and foreign vessels were allowed to carry passengers from 
 Great Britain and Ireland to the United States, in the propor 
 tion of one passenger only to every five tons, whereas the British 
 vessels were permitted to convey them to other countries in 
 the proportion of one for every two tons. 
 
 The government of England would seem, at this time, 1o 
 have relapsed into that particular " barbarism of our ances 
 tors," mentioned in the quotation from the European Settle 
 ments. The report of die parliamentary proceedings for Mar, 
 1818, furnishes the following paragraph: " In answer to a 
 " question of a member from a manufacturing town, respect- 
 " ing the increased progress of emigration, lord Castlereach 
 " replied, that it was the earnest object of government totermi- 
 " nate this most mischievous evil, and that they were meditatit g 
 " means for this purpose." I have had already occasion o 
 notice some of the means which appear to have been me 
 ditated by his lordship; but in looking at the British stature 
 book, and the repository of orders in council, I find it diffi 
 cult to conjecture what means could be contrived in the nature 
 of penal regulation, in addition to those already provided, at 
 different eras in the British history. The transportation of 
 machinery is still punishable with death. On the 6th of Feb 
 ruary, 1817, lord Lauderdale made his lament in the House of 
 Peers, that the law interfered to prevent a poor artisan from 
 leaving his country, and transferring his industry elsewhere; 
 and that persons who attempted to export machinery were sub- -! 
 jected to capital punishment. We have recently seen these 
 "poor artisans" stealing their way at double expense, to the si a 
 ports of France, in order to escape thence with impunity, to . 
 the only country which holds out to them the probability of a 
 tolerable lot. The statute book and ministry lag behind even 
 the Quarterly Review in illumination on this subject, if we 
 may judge from this passage, of the number of that Jour 
 nal, for April, 1816: " It is vain to imagine, that ini- 
 
 * See Observations on the Commerce of the United States, by John 
 Lord Sheffield, 1784. p. 190, 96. 
 
MERCANTILE JEALOUSY. 
 
 u improvements in machinery can, for any length of time, be SECT. I. 
 " confined to the country in which they are invented; and at- ^^^^^^ 
 " tempts to prevent manufacturers from emigrating, by penal 
 " statutes, are not only oppressive, but inefficacious." 
 
 The historians relate, that the acts of Charles I. restraining 
 emigration, " increased the murmurs and complaints of the 
 " people, and raised the cry of double persecution, to be 
 " vexed at home, and not suffered to seek peace abroad" This 
 cry is again heard in England, after a lapse of nearly two cen 
 turies, and that jealousy which* in part, furnished the cause for 
 it at the earliest period, has now a larger share in its produc 
 tion with a still greater certainty of disappointment. 
 
 Nothing remains for the British government, but to pursue 
 the course which Ovid has indicated as the reproach of the 
 Argives among the nations of antiquity. 
 
 Prohibent discedere leges 
 Paenaque mors posita est patriam mutare volenti. 
 
 5. The reduction of the fortress of Louisbourg, in 1 745, by 
 the colonial troops, the twenty-five thousand soldiers whom 
 the colonies furnished and maintained in the war of 1755, 
 the four hundred privateers fitted out in their ports during the 
 same period, to cruise against French property, the large 
 sums which they advanced, beyond their fair proportion, to 
 the military chest, the considerable aids in men and provi 
 sions, which they sent to the West Indies, the important, 
 principal share which they had in the overthrow of the French 
 power in North America, and in the consequent, unexampled 
 glory and aggrandizement of England, these splendid efforts 
 and services, of which I propose to speak particularly here 
 after, extorted annual thanks from the British parliament, 
 and encomiums from the ministry: But they awakened no 
 real gratitude, and won no solid marks of favour. The old 
 jealousy was irritated; and a keener cupidity excited, by such 
 supposed evidences of power and wealth: The design so long 
 formed, of discharging upon the colonies, a part of the load of 
 taxation under which Britain groaned, and of fastening a 
 military yoke upon their necks, was only confirmed and ripen 
 ed, by their generous and excessive exertions, for the triumph 
 of the mother country over her great rival. This effect was 
 quickly visible in the stamp-act of 1764; and the scheme of 
 subjugation, though intermitted for a moment, was soon made 
 evident by the revival of that act, and the train of desperate 
 attempts upon the liberties and spirit of the colonies, which 
 the Declaration of Independence has engraven on the memory 
 of every American, 
 
POLITICAL AND 
 
 PART i. r phe views and dispositions of the British ministry, from tin 
 v -^^-^ year 1763, until the sword was drawn, and during the struggle, 
 belong more particularly to another section of this volume. 
 They are, indeed, so well known, as scarcely to call for illus 
 tration from history. It is alike notorious and coufesseil, 
 that the majority of the British nation partook in them, and 
 finally consented to the recognition of American independence , 
 not from any change of feelings, but from momentary exhaus 
 tion and discouragement. As the determination of the colt- 
 nies to resort to arms, became apparent, and after the rupture 
 was complete, the jealousy of dominion and monopoly, and 
 the dread of future rivalry, heightened into rage, and ro 
 longer restrained by immediate interest, were vented in every 
 variety of passionate and resentful expression. u I mu>t 
 " maintain," said a ministerial leader in the. House of 
 Lords, in the debate of the 26th October, 1775, on tie 
 king s speech, " that it would have been belter that America 
 " had never been known, than that a great consolidated em- 
 " pire should exist independent of Great Britain." Gover 
 nor Johnstone, and his colleagues of the opposition, cried shame 
 upon "the ignoble jealousies daily uttered in Parliament 
 against the Americans." just as an orator of the House of 
 Commons found himself, in 1812, compelled to exclaim 
 and protest against " the perpetual jealousy of America."* 
 One of the passages which I have selected from the Edin 
 burgh Review, to place at the head of this work, relates a 
 fact, which may be said to speak volumes to the same pur 
 port. It were endless, and it is not within my present aim, 
 to recount the demonstrations of this feeling, particularly as 
 respects trade and navigation, given by England since her 
 acknowledgment of our independence. Nor do I think 
 it necessary to prove further her habitual temper, by 
 quoting her conduct towards another of her dependencies 
 Ireland whose strength, trade, and manufactures were so < 
 long and cruelly oppressed and crippled, while her domestic 
 character and history were so grossly misrepresented and tra 
 duced, f 
 
 * Mr. Brougham s Speech on the Commerce and Manufactures of 
 Great Brit:. in. 
 
 f See a victorious work recently published in this country, and e-, ti 
 tled Vindicix llibcmicx* by Mathew Carey, Esq. The sagacious and 
 patriotic writer ou^ht to pursue his well laid train of detection The 
 subject is not without attraction for Americans in genera! : and for 
 Irishmen, and the descendants of Irishmen, it has the deepest interest. 
 
SECTION II. 
 
 OF THE GENERAL CHARACTER AND MERITS OF THE 
 COLONISTS. 
 
 1. I HAVE said that England, is the particular mother coun- SECT. II. 
 try, which might have been expected, to be most tender of the ^^^^^^^ 
 feelings and character of her colonies, out of a due regard to 
 justice, gratitude, and her own interests, as well as from the 
 sympathies of blood, and the dictates of an enlarged philan 
 thropy. This is a proposition, from which no candid man, 
 acquainted with the history of the American continent, is 
 likely to dissent, and which can be fully sustained by drawing 
 upon the English writers. It is my intention to quote prin 
 cipally their acknowledgments in favour of the origin and 
 character, and, as regards Great Britain, of the services and 
 dispositions, of the North American colonies. An illustration 
 of these points by such testimony, will set in a stronger light 
 the injustice and folly, of the sarcasms and contumelies, which 
 have been directed against the Americans from the same 
 quarter. 
 
 " There are few states," says the Quarterly Review,* 
 " whose origin is on the whole so respectable as the Ameri- 
 " can none whose history is sullied with so few crimes. 
 " The Puritans who had fled into Holland to avoid intoler- 
 u ance at home, carried with them English hearts. They 
 " could not bear to think that their little community should 
 u be absorbed and lost in a foreign nation: they had forsaken 
 u their birth place and their family graves; but they loved 
 cc their country, and their mother tongue, and ratherthan their 
 u children should become subjects of another state, and speak 
 " another language, they exposed themselves to all the hard- 
 " ships and dangers of colonizing in a savage land. JVb 
 " people oncarlhmay so justly pride themselves on their anccs- 
 " tors as the JVeic Bnglanders." 
 
 Although it has been repeated with great complacency, in 
 
 4th Number Review of Holmes Annals. 
 
 VOT, I. D 
 
26 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART i. the work just quoted, that the Mam and Eve of the co- 
 ^^v-^ lonies came out of Newgate, yet it has been admitted, not 
 only in England, but nearly throughout Europe, that the firs! 
 settlers, and all the European generations of British America, 
 were, in every respect, more worthy of esteem and encou 
 ragement, than those of the other parts of this continent 
 The Quarterly Review itself,* has drawn a comparison whicl. 
 is every way to my purpose. 
 
 The original settlers from England, in North America, were fo 
 the most part, an austere, frugal, and industrious people, the hard- 
 ships and privations of their early establishments, were not endured 
 with the inspiring feelings of military adventurers, but borne with tho 
 patience of religious submission ; the purity of their morals, tinged 
 with no small portion of the fanaticism which caused their emigration, 
 kept them from promiscuous intercourse with the female Indians ; and 
 hence an unmixed race was continued, among whom there was no dis 
 tinction of cast or complexion, to introduce a difference, or politics! 
 contention. As no great inequality of property, the principal cause cf 
 political power, existed, there was no great inequality of educatio i 
 among those born in the country ; none were so destitute of know 
 ledge as the mass of the laborious in most countries of Europe." 
 
 " Comparing the population of Spanish with that of British Ame - 
 rica, we shall, at every step, be struck with the wonderful difference in 
 origin, in progress, and in present situation. The conquerors from 
 Spain, instead of the frugal, laborious, and moral description of 01 r 
 English settlers, partook of the ferocity and superstition of an earlier 
 and less enlightened period. The warriors who had exterminated the 
 Mahomedanism of Granada, were readily induced to propagate the r 
 own religion by the sword. As few or no women accompanied the 
 first settlers of South America, their intercourse with native femah s 
 produced a race of successors of a most anomalous character, and 
 these, in a few generations, mixing with the slaves imported from 
 Africa, still further increased the different classes, who, in process of 
 time, more by the rules of society than by the influence of the laws, 
 assumed a variety of ranks, according to their greater or less affinity to 
 the white race. The education of the lower orders in South America, 
 has been totally neglected." 
 
 In the list of English authors who, although not exempt 
 from gross errors of opinion, display a laborious study and 
 discriminating knowledge of the formation and character 
 of the settlements on this continent, I may safely class_Mr. 
 Br^oiigham, distinguished also among the writers of the 
 Edinburgh Review, and among the leading statesmen of the 
 British Parliament In his excellent work on Colonial Policy, 
 he has advanced, and successfulT^maintaTin^e37~3Bctrines con 
 cerning the thirteen British colonies, some of which deserve 
 to be set apart for our history. I shall avail myself of them 
 as the occasion offers. To begin with the following passages. 
 
 * July, 1817, Article on Spain and her Colonies. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS, Zi 
 
 " The first settlers of all the colonies, were men of irreproachable SECT. II. 
 characters; many of them fled from persecution; others. on account v ^^ -^_. 
 of an honourable poverty ; and all of them with their exj^ctations 
 limited to the prospect of a bare subsistence, in freedom and peace. 
 All idea of wealth or pleasure was out of the question. A set of men 
 more conscientious in their doings, or simple in their manners, never 
 founded any commonwealth. It is indeed the peculiar glory of North 
 America, that, with a very few exceptions, its empire was originally 
 founded in charity and peace."* 
 
 " The new emigrants who, at various times, continued to flock to 
 this extensive country, as it became open and improved, were not of 
 the same description as the first settlers. They were of a various race, of 
 different ranks, but chiefly needy men ; of different sects, but of no 
 perceptible religion ; and of different nations, in which, however, the 
 English greatly predominated. Some of them were persons of despe 
 rate fortunes and dissolute characters. No combination of circum 
 stances can be figured, to contribute more directly to the reformation 
 of the new cultivators character and manners, than that which was 
 found in the situation of the North American colonies."! 
 
 " The mixture of various population was, by the influence of those 
 simple manners, which are formed by an agricultural life, soon blended 
 into one nation of husbandmen, whose character has communicated 
 itself, in a great degree, to the most profligate of those, whom com 
 pulsion or despair from time to time introduced. While the purity of 
 manners was in this way preserved, that firmness of principles in re 
 ligion and politics was maintained, which had so eminently contributed 
 to the establishment of colonies. Sentiments of freedom might find 
 an asylum in America, when even in Switzerland it should no longer be 
 lawful to think beyond the rules "j- 
 
 The " Account of the^ European Settlements in America," 
 published in London, in the middle of tlie^TasTcentury, and 
 ascribed to Edmund Burke, has always possessed a great 
 and deserved authority. It holds the following language, 
 besides much more in the same strain, to which I may here 
 after advert. 
 
 " The Puritans established themselves at a place which they called 
 New Plymouth. They were but few in number ; they landed in a 
 bad season ; and they were not at all supported but from their private 
 funds. The winter was premature, and terribly cold. The country 
 was covered with wood, and afforded very little for the refreshment of 
 persons, sickly with such a voyage, or for the sustenance of an infant 
 people. Near half of them perished by the scurvy, by want, and the 
 severity of the climate ; but they who survived, were not dispirited 
 with their losses, nor with the hardships they were still to endure ; 
 supported by the vigour which was then the character of the English 
 men, and by the satisfaction of finding themselves out of the reach of 
 the spiritual arm, they reduced this savage country to yield them a to 
 lerable livelihood, and by degrees a comfortable subsistence. This lit 
 tle establishment was made in the year 1631. It was in the year 1629, 
 that the colony began to flourish in such a manner, that they soon be 
 came a considerable people. By the close of the ensuing year they 
 had built four towns, Salem, Dorchester, Charlestown, and Boston, 
 which has since become the capital of New England." 
 
 " Their exact and sober manners proved a substitute for a proper 
 subordination, and regular form of government, which they had for 
 
 * Book I. Section!. f Ibid. 
 
CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART I. som e time wanted, and the want of which, in such a country, had 
 v-^v-^^/ otherwise been felt very severely. The people, by their being gene 
 rally freeholders, and by their form of government, acquired a very 
 free, bold, and republican spirit. 
 
 " The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, in the space of about seventy 
 jears, from a beginning of a few hundreds of refugees and indigent 
 men, has grown to be a numerous and flourishing people, a people, 
 who from a perfect wilderness, have brought their territory to a state 
 of great cultivation, and filled it with wealthy and populous towns ; 
 and who, in the midst of a fierce and lawless race of men, have pre 
 served themselves with unarmed hands and passive principles, by the 
 rules of moderation and justice, better than any other people has done 
 by policy and arms." Vol. ii. p. 196. 
 
 The " Political jLnnals of the United Colonies, by 
 Geocge^Chalmers," are remartaBIeToT authentic and ample 
 details, and were published in the course of our revolution 
 ary war, under the auspices of the British government. The 
 author displays throughout, the design of discrediting the 
 American cause, particularly the pretensions of New Eng 
 land. He is a witness whom I shall often produce, and whose 
 evidence, when given in favour of the colonies, is entitled tc 
 especial weight, not only on account of his political aims 
 and prejudices, but from the strength of his understanding, 
 the nature of the records to which he had access, and the dili 
 gence of his researches. Of the settlement of New England 
 he speaks thus: 
 
 " When New Plymouth consisted only of two hundred persons, of 
 all ages and sexes, it repulsed its enemies, and secured its borders with 
 a gallantry worthy of its parent country, because it stood alone in the 
 desert, \vithout the hope of aid." p. 494. 
 
 " Though religious matters engaged much of the attention of the 
 first planters in Massachusetts, they seem to have been extremely in 
 dustrious in temporal affairs. All their laws had a natural tendency to 
 exclude luxury, and to promote diligence. When the civil wars com 
 menced, they had already planted fifty towns and villages ; they had 
 erected upwards of thirty churches, and ministers houses ; and they 
 had improved their plantations to a high degree of cultivation." 
 
 " At the same time that these colonists (the people of New England) 
 very prudently preferred the blessings of peace, they were not afraid 
 of the disasters of war. They easily repelled an unprovoked attack 
 of the neighbouring Indians, with a becoming bravery. They soon 
 after made a peace with that people, which does equal honour to their 
 justice and good sense : and they long enjoyed all the blessings of a 
 government conducted at once with prudence and vigour." p. 89. 
 
 " Notwithstanding the long train of public disputes with the mother 
 country, New England flourished prodigiously. She promoted suc 
 cessfully the operations of agriculture, she augmented her manufac 
 tures, and extended her commerce, and she acquired wealth and po 
 pulation in proportion to the greatness of all these ; because the rough 
 hand of oppression had not touched the labours of the inhabitants, or 
 interrupted the freedom of their pursuits." p. 416. 
 
 2. The composition of the first settlements, particularly that 
 *>f Virginia, was early, and continues to be, the theme of 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 29 
 
 much raillery, and serious accusation. The coarse jest, SECT. n. 
 which I have before noticed, has been received and treated v^-v^^ 
 in England as an historical fact.* Yet, nothing is better 
 established, than that the Puritans by whom New England 
 was originally inhabited, and successively replenished, were, 
 not only such, in their moral character and domestic habits, as. 
 they are described in the quotations I have made, but, for the 
 most part, men of substance, and of a respectable rank in life. 
 In the year 1630, ten ships were sent to Massachusetts from 
 England, with several hundred passengers, many of whom, 
 says Macpherson, in the second volume of his Annals of Com 
 merce, were " persons of considerate /as/iion." The leader of 
 the congregation of dissidents, who founded the new common 
 wealth at Plymouth, in 1620, is described, even by the ene 
 mies of his sect, " as a person of excellent parts, and of a 
 most learned, polished, and modest spirit." And it is im 
 possible to read the terse and touching language used by 
 those virtuous exiles, in applying to their intolerant country 
 men for a patent, without acknowledging, that they must 
 have been of a superior cast of mind in all respects. 
 They were well weaned from the delicate milk of their 
 Cc country, and inured to the difficulties of a strange land: 
 c They were knit together in a strict and sacred bond, by vir- 
 " tue of which they held themselves bound to take care of the 
 " good of each other, and of the whole: It was not with them 
 tc as with other men, whom small things could discourage, or 
 " small discontents cause to wish themselves at home again," 
 &c. &c. 
 
 It is accurately stated by Ramsay,! that the first settlers of 
 New England in general, had been educated at the English 
 Universities, and were imbued with all the learning of the 
 times; that not a few of the early emigrant ministers possessed 
 considerable erudition; and that numbers of clergymen of this 
 description, came over nearly together, in consequence of the 
 parliamentary act of uniformity, passed in 1662, when upwards 
 of two thousand Puritan ministers were, in one day, ejected 
 
 * " The Americans are the modern Jews, possessing 1 all the qualities 
 of the ancient, under different masks. They pervade every country 
 on the face of the earth, and with the phrases of liberty, morality, and 
 religion, they deceive the most wary, and the most hypocritical. Mr. 
 Fox has had ample experience of the tribes of Israel ; let him beware 
 of the refined and complicated cunning of that race, -whose Adam and 
 Eve emigrated from Newgate." Critical Review, third series, vol. iii. 
 
 &, 
 
 " The Americans are_a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful 
 for any thing we allow them, short of hanging." Dr. Johnson ap. 
 Boswell, vol. ii- 
 
 t Colon! aTCTvil History, p. 235. 
 
30 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART i. from their livings in England.* The Massachusetts planta- 
 v >-^^v^^-^ tion may be considered as the parent of all the other settle 
 ments in New England. There was no emigration from the 
 mother country to any part of the continent northward of 
 Maryland, except to Massachusetts, for more than fifty years 
 from the birth of this colony.f 
 
 Among the one hundred and five adventurers who sailed 
 from England with Captain Newport, in 1607, and founded 
 Jamestown, in Virginia, several officers of high family con 
 nexions, and of much personal distinction, are designated 
 by the historians. The first accession of females, to the 
 Virginia settlement, may be cited by the Virginian of the 
 present day, without a blush for his lineage. " In order," 
 says Chalmers, " to settle the minds of the colonists, and to 
 induce them to make Virginia their place of residence and 
 continuance, it was proposed to send thither one hundred 
 maids, as wives for them: ninety girls, young and uncor- 
 rupt, were transported in the beginning of the year 1620; and 
 sixty more, handsome and recommended for virtuous demean 
 our, in the subsequent year.f" Robertson is still more particu 
 lar in noticing the respectability of these females. The descent 
 from mothers of this character, is at least as reputable as from 
 the "maids of honour" of the court of Charles II. and the fa 
 thers who reclaimed the wilderness and built up a free slate, 
 transmitted a blood which might be deemed as pure and noble, 
 as any that runs in the veins of the progeny of the debauched 
 and venal parasites of that monarch. We are told by Robert 
 son^ that, in the time of the Commonwealth, many adherents 
 to the royal party, and among these, some gentlemen of good 
 
 * Hume notices tliis transaction, in his History, in the following 1 terms: 
 " However odious Vune and Lambert were to the Presbyterians, that 
 party had no leisure to rejoice at their condemnation. The fatal St. 
 Bartholomew approached, the day, when the clergy were obliged by 
 the late law, either to relinquish their livings, or to sign the articles re 
 quired of them, declaring their assent to every thing contained in the 
 Book of Common Prayer, &c. A combination had been entered into 
 by the more zealous of the Presbyterian ecclesiastics, to refuse the 
 subscription; in hopes that the bishops would not dare at once to expel 
 so great a number of the most popular preachers. The king, himself, 
 by his irresolute conduct, contributed, either from design or accident, 
 to increase this opinion. Above all, the terms of subscription had been 
 made very strict and rigid, on purpose to disgust all the zealous and 
 scrupulous among the Presbyterians, and deprive them of their livings 
 About two thousand of the clergy in one day relinquished their cures ; 
 und, to the great astonishment of the court, sacrificed their interest to thev 
 -digivus tenets." Chapter 63. 
 
 f Hutchinson s History of Massachusetts Preface. 
 
 t Page 46. 
 
 History of America, vol. iv. 
 
OP THE COLONISTS. 31 
 
 families, in order to avoid danger and oppression, to which they SECT. IT. 
 were exposed in England, or in hopes of repairing their ruined ^^-v-^ 
 fortunes, resorted to Virginia. Lord Clarendon bears testi 
 mony to this fact in his History of the Rebellion. " Out of 
 confidence in Sir William Berkeley, the governor of Virginia, 
 who had industriously invited many gentlemen and others 
 thither, as to a place of security, which he could defend against 
 any attempt, and where they might live plentifully, many 
 persons of condition, and good officers in the war, had trans 
 ported themselves with all the estate they had been able to 
 preserve."* Chalmers may be quoted to a similar purport, 
 and to the general character of the early Virginians. "The 
 " instructions of Charles I. gave large tracts of land to indi- 
 " viduals, men of consideration and wealth, who roused by 
 " religion, or ambition, or caprice, removed to Virginia, and 
 " the population of that colony had increased to about twenty 
 " thousand souls at the commencement of the civil wars." 
 p. 125. 
 
 " The Virginians being animated by timely supplies from 
 " England, displayed a vigor in design and action, which men, 
 " when left to themselves amid dangers, never fail to exert. 
 " They rejected the timid counsels of those, who advised them 
 u to abandon their settlements, and retire to the eastern shore 
 " of the Chesapeake, They not only resisted the attacks of 
 " their implacable enemies, but, with the accustomed bravery 
 u of Englishmen, pursued them into their fastnesses. And 
 cc now, for the first time, the aborigines receded from the 
 " rivers, and from the plantations around; leaving their op- 
 ic ponents in possession of the territories that their swords had 
 won." p. 63. 
 
 If we turn to Maryland, we may appeal to the same author 
 with equal confidence. 
 
 " The first emigration to Maryland, consisting 1 of about two hundred 
 gentlemen of considerable fortune and rank, with their adherents, who 
 were composed chiefly of Roman Catholics, sailed from England in 
 November, 1632." 
 
 " The Roman Catholics, unhappy in their native land, and desirous 
 of a peaceful asylum in Maryland, emigrated in considerable numbers. 
 Lord Baltimore laid the foundation of his province upon-the broad 
 basis of security to property, and of freedom in religion ; granting in 
 absolute fee fifty acres of land to every emigrant; establishing Chris 
 tianity agreeably to the old common law, of which it is a part, without 
 allowing pre-eminence to any particular sect." p. 208. 
 
 " In order chiefly to procure the assent of the freemen of Maryland 
 to a body of laws which the proprietary had transmitted, Calvert, the 
 
 * Vol. iii. p. 706, 
 
32 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART I. governor, called a new assembly in 1637-8. But, rejecting these with 
 ^*^^^s a becoming 1 spirit, they prepared a collection of regulations, which de 
 monstrate equally their good sense and the state of their affairs." 
 p. 211. 
 
 " The assembly of Maryland endeavoured, with a laudable anxiety 
 to preserve the peace of the church ; and, though composed chiefl) 
 of Roman Catholics, it adopted that measure, which could alone prove 
 absolutely successful. The act which it passed, concerning reli 
 gion, recited, that the enforcement of the conscience had been of 
 dangerous consequence in those countries wherein it had been prac 
 tised. And it enacted, that no persons believing- in Jesus Christ shall b". 
 molested in respect of their religion, or in the free exercise thereof \ or b<* 
 compelled to the belief or exercise of any other religion, against their 
 consent ; so that they be not unfaithful to the proprietary, or conspire 
 not against the civil government : that persons molesting any other i i 
 respect of his religious tenets, shall pay treble damages to the part/ 
 aggrieved, and twenty shillings to the proprietary: That those n- 
 proaching any ivith opprobrious names of religious distinction) shall forfe t 
 ten shillings to the persons injured." p. 218. 
 
 Maryland derived apart of her population from the other 
 provinces. The Puritans persecuted by the established church 
 in Virginia, the Quakers oppressed by the synod of Massr- 
 chusetts, and the Dutch expelled from Delaware, sought and 
 found a generous protection, and entire freedom of religiois 
 worship, in the Roman Catholic colony. New York was first se> 
 tled by the Dutch, at the time when they had just shaken cff 
 the yoke of Spain; when they displayed national energies ar.d 
 virtues of the highest order, and pursued a more liberal ard 
 enlightened policy, with respect to civil liberty, religion, ar.d 
 trade, than any other people of Europe. The emigrants from 
 Holland to North America, brought with them, the charac 
 teristic industry and sobriety, the tolerant spirit and sound eco 
 nomics, of the commercial republic. The original population of 
 New Jersey was composed of Swedes and Hollanders, and of 
 emigrants from the northern colonies: That of Pennsylvania 
 needs not be celebrated by a reference to the parent state. The 
 commonwealth, which the wise and humane associates of 
 Penn, the laborious, frugal, and orderly Germans, and the 
 intelligent, active, and generous Irish, formed, and brought to 
 beauty and solidity, in so short a time, is a monument, elo 
 quent enough in itself; a creation, upon which no European 
 writer has looked steadily, without bursting into expressions 
 of admiration. Even the austere loyalty of Chalmers, is 
 relaxed by it, and the following emphatic testimony extorted 
 from his convictions. 
 
 " As a supplement to the frame of government for Pennsylvui.ia, 
 there was published a body of laws agreed upon in England by 
 the Adventurers, which was intended as a great charter. And it does 
 great honour to their wisdom as statesmen, to their morals as men, 
 Jo their spirit as colonists. A plantation reared on such a seed-plot, 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. oo 
 
 could not fail to grow up with rapidity, to advance fast to maturity, to SECT II. 
 attract the notice of the world." p. 643. \^r^^^ 
 
 "The numerous laws, which were enacted at the first settlement of 
 Pennsylvania, which do so much honour to its good sense, display the 
 principles of the people ; these legislative regulations kept them alive 
 long after the original spirit began to droop and expire. Had Penn 
 sylvania been less blessed by nature, she must have become flourishing 
 and great, because it wasaprinciple of her great charter, that children- 
 should be taught some useful trade, to the end that none may be idle, 
 but the poor may work to live, and the rich, if they become poor, may 
 not want. That country must become commercial, which compels 
 factors, wronging their employers, to make satisfaction, and one-third 
 over; which subjects not only the goods but the lands of the debtor, 
 to the payment of debts ; because it is the credit given by all to all, that 
 forms the essence of traffic. We ought naturally to expect great in 
 ternal order when a fundamental law declares, that every thing which 
 excites the people to rudeness, cruelty, and irreligion, shall be dis 
 couraged and severely punished. And religious controversy could not 
 disturb her repose, when none, acknowledging one God," and living 
 peaceably in society, could be molested for his opinions or his practice, 
 or compelled to frequent and maintain any ministry whatsoever. To 
 the regulations which were thus established as fundamentals, must 
 chiefly be attributed the rapid improvement of this colony, the spirit 
 of diligence, order and economy, for which the Pennsylvanians have 
 been at all times so celebrated." p. 643. 
 
 Swedes and Fins, a simple and virtuous race of men, 
 opened the soil of Delaware, and were joined by the Dutch, 
 and by emigrants of different nations, from the neighbouring 
 provinces. New England, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, gave 
 the first inhabitants to the Carolinas. In consequence of the 
 revocation of the edict of Nantz, a multitude of French Pro 
 testants of the most respectable families, established them 
 selves in South Carolina. These were followed, at different in 
 tervals, by numbers of their own countrymen, and of Germans 
 and Swiss, professing the same religious tenets. The character 
 of the French settlers has been recently pourtrayed by a young 
 American, in a language which I am proud to quote, as a 
 specimen of what is produced in those literary societies, 
 whose existence even, the European critics would not, in all 
 likelihood, condescend to notice. 
 
 " History derives more than half its value from the moral parallels 
 and contrasts, which it suggests. It is a singular coincidence of this 
 sort, that between the years 1682 and 1688, at the very time that Wil 
 liam Penn, the gentlest and purest of all rulers, was rendering his 
 name for ever illustrious, by establishing, in America, a refuge for the 
 wretched and oppressed of the whole earth ; Louis XIV., one of the 
 most gorgeous and heartless of sovereigns, was delivering up three 
 hundred thousand families of his Protestant subjects to the atrocious 
 tyranny of the fanatical Le Tellier, and the sanguinary Louvois ; and 
 by his ambition of universal empire abroad, and his bigotry and osten 
 tation at home, was preparing for France those calamities which h;ive 
 since fallen upon her. The Huguenots were the most moral, industri 
 ous, and intelligent part of the French population, and when they were 
 
 VOL. I.E 
 
34 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART 1. expelled from their native country, they enriched all Europe with the 
 ._^-_ ~^. commerce and arts of France. Many of the more enterprising of them, 
 finding themselves shut out, by the narrow policy of the French court 
 from Louisiana, where they had proposed to found a colony, turned 
 their course to New York and to South Carolina, where they soon 
 melted into the mass of the population. 
 
 " Certainlv, we cannot wish to see perpetuated among us the old 
 Asiatic and European notions of indelible hereditary excellence ; and 
 equally wild are those theories -tf a fantastical philosophy, which would 
 resolve all the intellectual and moral qualities of man into accidental 
 physical causes. But surely there is a point at which good feeling 
 and sound philosophy can meet, and agree in ascribing the best parts 
 of our character to the moral influence of a virtuous and intelligent 
 ancestry. 
 
 * Considering the subject in this light, we may well look back, with 
 pride, to our Huguenot forefathers. The modern historians of France 
 have rarely done them full justice. The decline which the loss of their 
 industry and arts caused in the commerce of their own country, and 
 the sudden increase of wealth and power which England and Holland 
 derived from them, are sufficient proofs that their general character 
 was such as I have described. Nor are they to be regarded solely as 
 prosperous merchants, and laborious and frugal artisans. 
 
 "The French character never appeared with more true lustre than 
 it did in the elder protestants. Without stopping to expatiate in the 
 praise of their divines and scholars, Calvin, Beza, Salmasius, and the 
 younger Scaliger; Claude, Jurieu, Amylraut, and Saurin, nor on those 
 of Sully, the brave, the wise, the incorruptible, the patriotic ; I shall 
 only observe, ihat though his own countrymen have been negligent of 
 his glory, and choose to rest the fame of French chivalry on their Du- 
 nois, their Bayard, their Du Guescelin and their Crillon, we may search 
 their history in vain for a parallel to that beautiful union of the intrepid 
 soldier with the profound scholar, of the adroit politician with the man 
 of unbending principle, of the rigid moralist and the accomplished gen 
 tleman, which is to be found in the life of the Huguenot chief, Mornai 
 Du Plessis. 
 
 "Many of those who emigrated to this country, after the revocation 
 of the edict of Nantes, were the companions, the sons, or the disciples 
 of these men, and they brought hither a most valuable accession of in 
 telligence, knowledge, and enterprise."* 
 
 A considerable number of Palatines rivalling the Dutch in 
 habits of industry and order,settled in North Carolina, in the 
 beginning of the eighteenth century. The memorable ravages 
 of war committed at that period in the countries of the 
 Rhine, drove into England seven thousand of the ruined inha 
 bitants. Palatines and Suabians. Three thousand of them 
 were transported to New York, and a part of these found their 
 way into the other provinces. It seems incredible, yet is matter 
 of parliamentary record, that the expense incurred for their 
 transportation, not more beneficial to them, than to the co 
 lonies which received them drew complaints from the British 
 House of Commons. A body styling itself the citadel ot 
 
 * An Anniversary Discourse delivered before the New York Histori 
 cal Society, December 7, 1818, by Gillian C. Verplank, Esq. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 35 
 
 Protestantism, and the refuge of the victims of Catholic bigot- SECT. II. 
 ry, could, nevertheless, in a formal representation to Queen v-^-v-^" 
 Anne, discourse querimoniousty of " the squandering away great 
 " sums upon the Palatines, a useless people, a mixture of all 
 " religions, and dangerous to the constitution," with the de 
 claration besides, that u it held those who advised the bringing 
 " them over to England, as enemies to the queen and king- 
 " dom." How different the conduct of the unpretending 
 Quakers of Pennsylvania, by whom the portion of the wretch 
 ed exiles that took shelter there, was not defamed or stinted 
 but, according to an English writer, most kindly entertained 
 and assisted!* 
 
 The poverty and humble condition of a part of the emigrants 
 to the middle and southern provinces, constitute the heaviest 
 reproach to which they are liable, if we except, indeed, the cir 
 cumstance, notable in the case of Georgia particularly of so 
 many of them being Scotchmen; which forms, no doubt, a 
 just subject of ridicule for the wits of Edinburgh. The gene 
 ral estimation in which our emigrant ancestors should be held, 
 is proclaimed in the rapid growth, strength, order, and felicity 
 of the communities, which they added to the British empire. 
 The mighty difficulties which they vanquished the conquests 
 which they made over nature, and over a savage enemy greatly 
 exceeding them in numbers and the means of annoyancef 
 the freedom and liberality of their institutions, and the inte 
 grity in which those institutions were preserved the solicitude 
 and success with which they laboured to render universal 
 among them an acquaintance with the rudiments of learning 
 all these points which I propose to enlarge upon in the 
 subsequent pages demonstrate the noblest qualities ; enter- 
 prize, industry, perseverance, valour, sagacity, humane, and 
 broad views, setting them plainly above the mass of their co- 
 temporaries in Europe. 
 
 The white population of Georgia consisted of only fifty 
 thousand souls in the year 1775, and but forty-five years had 
 then elapsed since the foundation of the colony: yet, though so 
 weak, and though vulnerable and sure of being assailed, on 
 every side, she joined, in that year, the confederacy against the 
 mother country. The character of her founder, general Ogle- 
 thorpe, who lived to see her independence and sovereignty 
 acknowledged was such as to have hallowed that of the 
 exiles who seconded his plans of civil government, arid fought 
 
 * Macpherson s Annals of Commerce, vol. iii. p. 6 
 t See Note A. 
 
30 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART I. under his banners against the Indians and Spaniards. The 
 ^~v>w Oglethorpes, the Robinsons, the Penns, the Roger Williams , 
 the Smiths, the Culverts, may be placed at the head of the 
 worthies to whom Adam Smith alludes, in the following pas 
 sage of the fourth book of his Wealth of Nations. u It was 
 " not the wisdom and policy, but the disorder and injustice of 
 " the European governments, which peopled and cultivated 
 u America. In what way, then, has the policy of Europe 
 " contributed either to the first establishment, or to the pre- 
 " sent grandeur of the colonies of America? In one ivay, and 
 " in one way only, it has contributed a good deal. Magna 
 " virum mater! It bred and formed the men who were capa- 
 u ble of atchieving such great actions, and of laying the founda- 
 " tion of so great an empire; and there is no other quarter of the 
 " world, of which the policy is capable of forming, or ever has 
 " actually and in fact, formed, such men. The colonies owe 
 " to Europe the education and great views of their active and 
 u enterprising founders, and some of the greatest and most 
 t: important of them, so far as concerns their internal govern- 
 " ment, owe to it scarce any thing else." 
 
 3. The occasional exportation to the plantations, of those 
 whom the government of England chose to denominate con 
 victs, vagrants, and - dissolute persons," is the most plausible 
 ground for the language of contempt and derision, which has 
 been so commonly indulged, with respect to the original stock 
 of these States. The fact taken in the broad and unqualified 
 manner in which it is usually announced, would exalt but 
 little the generosity and justice of the mother country, if the 
 character of the first and voluntary settlers be admitted to have 
 been such as it appears in the foregoing pages, upon the testi 
 mony of the British writers. An impartial investigation of this 
 subject gives it, however, a different complexion from that 
 which it commonly wears.* 
 
 Franklin calculated in 1 751, f that there were then one mil 
 lion or upwards of English souls in North America, and that 
 scarce eighty thousand had been brought over sea. Among this 
 number of emigrants, not one-eighth was of the description men 
 tioned above, and it is certain, from the uniform acknowledg 
 ment of history, that those who were, did not adulterate, but 
 imbibed, themselves, in a great degree, the character of their 
 predecessors. Numbers became, in process of time, laborious 
 and orderly citizens; anxious and exemplary fathers of families. 
 
 * Discourse on Trade, chap. x. f Essay on Population, 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 37 
 
 I have quoted in p. 21 some remarks made by Mr. Brougham SECT. n. 
 
 in his " Colonial Policy," which bear upon the true theory of ^^^s-*^/ 
 
 this point; and I may add here from the same work, " that if 
 
 " the convicts in the colony of New Holland, though sur- 
 
 " rounded on the voyage, and in the settlement, by the com- 
 
 " panions of their iniquities, have, in a great degree, been re- 
 
 " claimed, by the mere change of scene, what might not be 
 
 " expected from such a change as that which the transported 
 
 " persons experienced on arriving in America?"* 
 
 It is to be noted, that the real convicts were received by 
 the colonists not as companions, but as servants; and if the 
 circumstance of their comparative paucity did not render ab 
 surd a general reproach upon our descent, it is difficult to 
 conceive why any generation in Great Britain should not be 
 stigmatized in its origin, on account of the much more consi 
 derable proportion of " dangerous rogues," who remained at 
 home. Chalmers tells us, that " it is to James I. that the 
 " British nation and the colonists owe the policy whether sa- 
 " lutary or baneful, of sending convicts to the plantations." 
 The excuse which this writer offers for the British nation 
 would seem fitted to operate as efficaciously in favour of the 
 colonies: u The good sense of those days justly considered 
 " that their labour would be more beneficial in an infant set- 
 " tlement, which had an immense wilderness to cultivate, than 
 " their vices could possibly be pernicious."! 
 
 But there are other considerations, of a nature, to render a 
 Briton cautious, how he attempts to handle this topic offensive 
 ly. When we find the term cowwcte used, in reference to the 
 persons transported, during three-fourths of the seventeenth 
 century, we are not to understand it in the opprobious sense 
 in which it is generally received, and was tyrannically meant 
 to be employed. The several parties who alternately gained 
 the ascendency in the furious struggles of that era, in Eng 
 land, oppressed and exiled, under this appellation, the objects 
 of their political resentment, or their religious intolerance. 
 Chalmers even, confesses, that the only law which, in the 
 time of James 1. justified the infliction of expulsion, unknown 
 to the common law, was the statute of Elizabeth, which en 
 acted that " dangerous rogues might be banished out of the 
 " realms;" and he adds that it is probable the obnoxious men 
 were transported agreeably to the genius of the administration 
 of the time by prerogative. 
 
 The extent of the guilty abuse and cruel hardship to which 
 
 * Book I. Sect. I. f Chap. iii. Political Annals. 
 
38 CHARACTER AND MER11S 
 
 PART i. this assumption of power led, can be readily imagined, from 
 ^^^^^ the facility of sweeping off the obnoxious and distressed, und ;r 
 the denomination of vagrants, or " dangerous rogues." It may 
 be worth while, in order to illustrate the point further, to refor 
 to Sir Josiah Child s account of the peopling of the planta 
 tions, which, from its early date, carries with it a particular au 
 thority, and which, at the same time, furnishes a curious picture 
 of the miserable state of things in England at the epoch in 
 question. He relates, in the first instance,* that Virginia ai d 
 Barbadoes were partly settled by a loose, vagrant people, wl o 
 must, if there had been no English plantations, have starved at 
 home, or " else have sold themselves for soldiers, to be knocked 
 " on the head, or starved in the quarrels of England s neigh- 
 " bours, as many thousands of brave Englishmen were, in the 
 " Low Countries, as also in the wars of Germany, Franc. 3, 
 a and Sweden; or else, if they could by begging or otherwise 
 " arrive to the stock of two shillings and six pence, to waft 
 " them over to Holland, become servants, where none are 
 " refused." Then come the following passages: 
 
 " But the principal growth and increase of the aforesaid plantations 
 of Virginia and Barbadoes happened in, or immediately after, our late 
 civil wars, when the worsted party, by the fate of war, being 1 deprived 
 of their estates, and having some of them never been bred to labou , 
 and others made unfit for it, by the lazy habit of a soldier s life ; theie 
 wanting means to maintain them all abroad witli his majesty, many of 
 them betook themselves to the aforesaid plantations, and great num 
 bers of Scots soldiers, of his majesty s army, after Worcester tight, 
 were, by the then prevailing 1 powers, voluntarily sent thither." 
 
 " Another great swarm, or accession of new inhabitants to the afore 
 said plantations, as also to New England, Jamaica, and all others his 
 majesty s plantations in the West Indies, ensued upon his majesty s 
 restoration, when the former prevailing party being, by a divine hand 
 of Providence, brought under, the army disbanded, many officers dis 
 placed, and all the new purchasers of public titles, dispossessed of their 
 pretended lands, estates, &c. many became impoverished, and destitute 
 of employment ; and, therefore, such as could find no way of living at 
 home, and some who feared there-establishment of the ecclesiastical 
 laws, under which they could not live, were forced to transport them 
 selves, or sell themselves fur a few years, to be transported by others to the 
 foreign English plantations.**And some were of those people called 
 Quakers, banished for meeting on pretence of religious worship." 
 
 In noticing the prevalence of the practice of transportation, 
 after the Restoration, Chalmers remarks, that it was probably 
 upon the authority of the statute which empowered the king 
 to send Quakers to the colonies. f This is the statute 13, 14, 
 ch. ii. c. 1, " for preventing the dangers that may arise by 
 " certain persons called Quakers, and others refusing to takt 
 
 * Discourse on Trade, chap. x. + Chap. xv. Annals. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 39 
 
 u the lawful oaths." It enacted, that it should be lawful for SECT. II. 
 his majesty, to cause such refractory persons to be transported v -^^-^* / 
 beyond the seas. We are informed by Hume,* that Cromwell 
 caused the royalists who engaged in conspiracies against his 
 government, to he sold for slaves and transported. On the 
 suppression of Monmouth s rebellion against James II., those 
 of his followers who escaped judicial massacre, were treated 
 in the same way. Chalmers furnishes, from the records of 
 the plantation office in London, a letter from James to the 
 governor of Virginia, which states, that the crown " had been 
 u graciously pleased to extend its mercy to many rebellious 
 " subjects who had taken up arms against it; by ordering their 
 " transportation to the plantations;" and which directs the go 
 vernor to propose a bill to the assembly for preventing the 
 convicts, those rebellious subjects, from redeeming themselves 
 by money, or otherwise, until the expiration of ten years at 
 least. The assembly refused to co-operate in this scheme of 
 royal vengeance, and the inhabitants of Virginia received the 
 victims with the sympathy due to their situation. 
 
 Either from a sense of the futility of expostulation, or 
 from the advantage which the labour of the convicts pro 
 mised, or from a knowledge of the fact which must now be 
 clear to all, that most of the persons transported were but the 
 victims of misfortune, and of the tyranny or bigotry of their 
 countrymen, the colonists did not at first condemn, or remon 
 strate against, the system of transportation. But it had not 
 been pursued long after the Restoration, before open opposition 
 was made. Maryland ventured even to legislate adversely, 
 and drew upon herself, in consequence, the reprobation of the 
 crown lawyers, who contended that every law of the colonial 
 legislature, passed to restrain a measure that was allowed and 
 encouraged by acts of parliament, was void ab initio. " Whe- 
 " ther," says Chalmers, " from the too great numbers brought 
 " into Maryland, or from an apprehension that their vices 
 " might contaminate the morals of the colonists, the introduc- 
 " tion of criminals was then deemed an inconvenience: and a 
 law was passed against the importation of convicted per- 
 " sons into the province, which was continued at different 
 " times, till towards the beginning of the reign of Anne."f 
 
 The persistauce of the British government in the practice 
 of transporting real malefactors, after the colonies had grown 
 into considerable commonwealths, and signalized thonnselves 
 by the noblest qualities and most valuable services, was an 
 
 * History, chap, Ixi f Book I. chap, xv 
 
40 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART i. indignity, of which the impolicy must be as obvious, as the 
 v^-v-^^ arrogance and ingratitude. If it could not extinguish their 
 glowing loyalty, it was, however, deeply felt and resented. 
 In Franklin s piece on the causes of the American discontents 
 before 1768, he includes it in the list of their grievances, and 
 employs this strong language. " Added to the evils which I 
 " have enumerated, the Americans remembered the act au- 
 " thorising the most cruel insult perhaps ever offered by O 
 " people to another, that of emptying the English gaols in:o 
 " their settlements. Scotland, too, has within these two years 
 " (in 1766) obtained the privilege it had not before, of send- 
 " ing its rogues and villains to the plantations." When the 
 illustrious patriot expostulated, by the direction of his consti 
 tuents, with the British minister on this head, he was told that 
 England must be relieved of her moral putrefaction and Hs 
 laconic reply adumbrates the nature of the case. " What 
 u would you say, if, upon the same principle, we sent you our 
 " rattle-snakes." Fortunately, there was a virtue in the cha 
 racter and condition of the despised and outraged colonis :s, 
 which secured them from the infection, and even converted lie 
 virus into wholesome nutriment for the state. 
 
 4. The love of liberty and independence is the trait which, 
 if any, would stem to assure to a people, the admiration and 
 applause of an Englishman, pursuant to his own boasted 
 principles and perpetual claims. It is impossible to deny this 
 merit to the North American colonists, even in the superl i- 
 tive degree; whatever doubts may be affected in relation to 
 the other high titles asserted for them by their descendant. 
 Hume, in noticing the commencement of their establishments, 
 remarks that " the spirit of independency which was then 
 " reviving in England, shone forth in America in its full lustre, 
 " and received new accession of force from the aspiring charac- 
 " ter of those who, being discontented with the established 
 " church and monarchy, had sought for freedom amidst those 
 " savage deserts."* To the early settlers, as well as to their 
 posterity of 1775, the well known language of Mr. Burke, 
 was strictly applicable. " In the character of the Americans, 
 " a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks 
 " and distinguishes the whole. This fierce spirit of liberty, is 
 " stronger in the English colonies than in any other people of 
 " the earth."* 
 
 Appendix to the reign of James I. 
 Speech on Conciliation with the colonies. 
 
OP THE COLONISTS. 41 
 
 The first planters in Virginia called for arrangements of the SECT. II. 
 most liberal character, and within fourteen years from the ^^^^^^ 
 settlement, that constitution by which they became freemen 
 anil ci izens, was fixed in its genius and permanent forms.* 
 Freedom was the errand of the colonists of Plymouth and 
 Massachusetts; and these, so properly styled, republican dis 
 senters, framed accordingly, their body politic and social, upon 
 principles of perfect equality. The complete organization of a 
 republic in the representative form, within the same term after 
 the landing at Plymouth, as that just mentioned in the case 
 of Virginia, under circumstances so new and critical, in defi 
 ance of the adverse habits, spirit, and scheme of rule, which 
 predominated in the mother country, has drawn forth, expres 
 sions of wonder and homage from some of the more liberal 
 of the British historians. 
 
 As the Puritans spread themselves over New England, they 
 gave to the distinct communities which they established, con 
 stitutions still more democratical; and that, although bold 
 and elevated in their plans, they were not visionary or rash, 
 is proved by the duration and happy effects of those constitu 
 tions. After relating, that on the 14th January, 1639, all the 
 free planters upon Connecticut river, convened at Hartford, 
 formed a system of government, and after giving the substance 
 of that system, the faithful historian of Connecticut, Trum- 
 bull, makes the following remarks, which all who read his 
 work must feel to be just. u With such wisdom did our 
 venerable ancestors provide for the freedom and liberties of 
 themselves and their posterity. Thus happily did they guard 
 against every encroachment on the rights of the subject. This, 
 probably, is one of the most free and happy constitutions of 
 civil government which has ever been formed. The forma 
 tion of it at so early a period, when the light of liberty was 
 wholly darkened in most parts of the earth, and the rights of 
 men were so little understood in others, does great honour to 
 their ability, integrity, and love of mankind. To posterity, 
 indeed, it exhibited a most benevolent regard. It has con 
 tinued with little alteration, to the present time, (1814). The 
 happy consequences of it, which, for more than a century and 
 an half, the people of Connecticut have experienced, are 
 beyond description."! 
 
 * " Thus early," says Stith, " was the assembly of the colony 
 studious and careful to establish our liberties ; and we had here, in the 
 eighth and ninth articles of its laws, a Petition of Right passed, above 
 four years, before that matter \vas indubitably settled and explained iu 
 England." History of Virginia, book 5. 
 
 f Vol. i. c. 6. 
 
 VOL. I. P 
 
42 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART I. Chalmers, who wrote to prove the uniform " self-suffi 
 ciency, an^fbellious dispositions of New England" repre 
 sents with much chiding and lamenting, how " the first set 
 tlers of New Haven erected a system suitable indeed to 
 their own views, but altogether independent on the sove 
 reign state;" and how "there was established, in Rhode 
 Island and Connecticut, a mere democracy or rule of the peo 
 ple; every power, as well deliberative as active, being invested 
 in the freemen of the corporation, or their delegates, and the 
 supreme executive of the empire, by an inattention little ho 
 nourable to the English statesman of those days, being wholly 
 excluded."* Hurr.l^nsnnj in his Hjflfrrp fif Massarhnspfts 
 traces, in a summaryancl striking manner, the operations of 
 the spirit which gives so much umbrage to Chalmers. " It i< 
 " observable, all the colonies, before the reign of king Charles 
 " the Second, Maryland excepied, settled a model of govern- 
 " ment for themselves. Virginia had been distracted under the 
 " government of presidents and governors, with councils, ir 
 " whose nomination or removal the people had no voice, un 
 " til in the year 1620, a house of burgesses broke out in the- 
 " colony, neither the king, nor the grand council at home, 
 " having given any powers or directions for it. The governor 
 " and assistants of Massachusetts, at first intended to rule the 
 " people, and, as I have observed, obtained their consent for 
 " it; but this lasted two or three years only; and, although there 
 Ct is no colour for it in the charter, yet a House of Deputies 
 a appeared suddenly, in 1634, to the surprise of their magis 
 " trates, and (he disappointment of their schemes for power 
 " Connecticut soon after followed the plan of Massachusetts 
 " New Haven, although the people had the highest rever- 
 " ence for their leaders, and for near thirty years, in judicial 
 " proceeding, submitted to their magistracy (it must, how 
 <c ever, be remembered, that it was annually elected,) withou*. 
 " a jury, yet in matters of legislation, the people, from the 
 " beginning, would have their share by their representatives. 
 " New Hampshire combined together under the same form as 
 " Massachusetts. Lord Say tempted the principal men of 
 u Massachusetts to make themselves and their heirs nobles 
 cc and absolute governors of a new colony, but under this 
 " plan, they could find no people to follow them."f 
 
 In Maryland and Pennsylvania, the first assemblies esta 
 blished a popular representation, and, in all their political 
 
 * Page 29&-294, Annals, 
 f Vol. ii. p. 2987 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 48 
 
 regulations, proceeded upon broad views of civil freedom. SECT. II. 
 The same remark may be extended to the Carolinas,* and to ^-^v-^* 
 New York. The inhabitants of this province wrested from 
 the patentee, the Duke of York, in 1681, privileges of self 
 government similar to those assumed in the other plantations. 
 No one of the proprietaries was able to establish, without 
 modification, the constitution which he framed for his grant; 
 all were compelled, in the end, to acquiesce in the more 
 liberal order of things required by the assemblies of the peo 
 ple. In some of the provinces, no time was lost in abolishing 
 primogeniture and entail, which Adam Smith so justly styles, 
 u the two most unjust and unwise regulations that exist." 
 
 The first emigrants to Virginia, New England, Maryland, 
 and Pennsylvania, would seem to have been universally, 
 in their respective eras, much in advance of those whom they 
 left at home, as regards not only private morals, but the love 
 and intelligence of freedom. Whoever has studied the history 
 of England, with the due attention to particular facts, must 
 be convinced, that until the revolution of 1668, the theory of 
 liberty was, except in the case of a few illustrious individuals, 
 as little understood as practised; and in fact, we may descend 
 much lower, without being greatly edified on this head. In 
 the time of James I. the epoch of Virginia and New England 
 a slavish reverence of monarchy was nearly universal, and 
 the system of administration altogether absolute and arbitrary. 
 Of the social state, we may judge from the representations of 
 Hume, who tells us, that u high pride of family then prevailed; 
 that it was by dignity and stateliness of behaviour, that the 
 gentry and nobility distinguished themselves from the com 
 mon people;" and that, " much ceremony took place in the 
 common intercourse of life, and little familiarity was in 
 dulged by the great." The concurrence of the colonists in 
 the same political maxims and arrangements, the reverse of 
 what prevailed in England, and throughout Europe, the 
 contentment and tranquillity which reigned among them, as 
 to political doctrines, and forms of government, particularly 
 in New England, are strikingly contrasted with the sanguinary 
 and unprincipled struggles in the mother country; with that 
 " continued fever in the domestic administration," and those 
 " furious convulsions and disorders" which are so eloquently 
 painted by Hume. The political distractions extant in 
 the colonial history, were occasioned, almost universally, by 
 the ambition and avarice of the proprietaries, or the violence 
 
 * See Note B. 
 
44 CHARACTER AND MEKlTS 
 
 PART i. attempted upon the charters by the English government and 
 v^-v-^* its representatives in America. 
 
 5. The preceding survey makes it sufficiently plain that nc 
 credit can, in strictness, be allowed to England for the insti 
 tutions which the colonists framed, themselves, in the wilder 
 ness. Nor is any fairly due to her, for the liberal purport o 
 the charters which they received. All the original charters, 
 except that of Georgia, were granted between the years 1608 
 and 1688. It would be setting at defiance both history and 
 reason, to ascribe to the house of Stuart, or to the Protectorate, 
 any fond or liberal dispositions in favour of the cause of free 
 dom in America, stripped of all gothic encumbrances. An 
 English historian has remarked, on the subject of the patent! 
 accorded by the first James and Charles, that these monarch* 
 were glad to get rid of the turbulent, republican religionists, 
 at any rate; and freely invested them with any privileges, t} 
 be exercised on a desolate continent, at the distance of three 
 thousand miles, where, as they supposed, it could never be cf 
 account to extend the arm of prerogative. The English Uni 
 versal History makes the following statement, of the manner 
 in which the congregation of Brovvnists, succeeded in their 
 application: 
 
 " Sir Robert Naunton was then one of the secretaries of 
 " state, and the exiled Puritans, as they were then called, knew 
 " him to be their friend. 
 
 " They applied to Naunton for leave to settle in those in- 
 " hospitable wilds, where the Indians, savage as they were, 
 " were more desirable neighbours than the tyrants from 
 " whom they fled. Naunton had the address to persuade 
 "James I., that it was bad policy to unpeople his own king- 
 " doras for the benefit of his neighbours; and that whatever 
 " exception he might have, he could have none in granting 
 " them liberty of conscience, where they would still continue 
 " to be his subjects, and where they might extend his domi- 
 " nion. His majesty s answer was, that it was a good and 
 " honest proposal, and liberty was accordingly granted."* 
 
 " At our first planting America," says the author of the Eu 
 ropean Settlements, " it was not difficult for a person who had 
 " interest at court, to obtain large tracts of land, not inferior in 
 "extent to kingdoms; and to be invested with a power very 
 " little less than regal over them; to govern by what laws, and 
 "to form what sort of constitution he pleased."! The same 
 
 * Vol. xl. p. 272. f Vol. ii. p. 298. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 45 
 
 author remarks,* "that nothing of an enlightened and legisla- SECT. n. 
 tive spirit appears in the planning of the English colonies, ^-^^^^-^ 
 and that the charter governments were evidently copied 
 from some of the corporations at home." The patent of the 
 council of Plymouth comprehended the continent of America, 
 from New Scotland to Carolina. In less than eighty years, 
 fifteen hundred miles of the sea coast were granted away.: 
 some of the grants, that especially to lord Clarendon and 
 others, of the whole tract of country lying between the thirty- 
 first and thirty-sixth degrees of north latitude extended to the 
 Pacific Ocean: in several instances the same ground was em 
 braced in different grants. 
 
 The acquisition of territory in America was the ruling 
 passion of the times; and Charles II. found the gratification 
 of this passion an easy mode of compensating his adherents, 
 and feeding the rapacity of his courtiers. It is an observa 
 tion of Macpherson, in his Annals, that " the charters of 
 Rhode Island and Connecticut were carelessly given by a very 
 careless monarch." The agent of Connecticut won the per 
 sonal favour of the monarch, by presenting him with a ring 
 of an extraordinary mechanism, the gift of Charles I. to the 
 agent s grandfather. He found means, also, to secure the 
 support of the chamberlain of his majesty s household, and of 
 the lord privy seal, for the colony s petition. f Penn obtained 
 his patent from the restored monarch, as Sir George Calvert 
 had procured that of Maryland from James I. by virtue of 
 court patronage. It had been promised to his father, admiral 
 Penn, a great favourite; and Clarkson relates, in his Life of 
 the son, that it was allowed as payment of a debt of sixteen 
 thousand pounds sterling, due from the royal government to 
 the admiral. Calvert is said by Chalmers to have indited 
 his own grant: Penn caused to be given to his the com 
 plexion required by his aims. Both of these illustrious men 
 were actuated in the adoption of liberal provisions, by their 
 love of freedom, as well as by a knowledge of their true 
 interests. But the historians are unanimous in declaring 
 that the other lord proprietors gave the pledge of civil and 
 religious liberty from no other motive than that of alluring set 
 tlers; and the acknowledged necessity of this expedient be 
 speaks the high character of those, who, in that age, could be 
 gained upon no other terms. Much stress is to be laid on the 
 
 * Vol. ii. p. 301. 
 
 f Trumbull s History of Connecticut, b. i. c. 12. 
 
46 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PARTI, coincidence of Chalmers, with these views, and it maybe as- 
 v -* p ~v-^^ serted from the following passages of his Annals.* 
 
 "It was rather the example of the Spaniards, than the practice of 
 the renowned nations of antiquity, which was copied by England in 
 colonizing- ; because similar success and wealth \vas expected. Prompt 
 ed by his ambition, perhaps more by his vanity, the primary designs of 
 James I. were, to share in the gold and silver which were expected from 
 mines, to rule the colonies in the same manner as he had proposed to 
 govern Ireland, as territories belonging to his person, and therefore 
 subject to his will, though his ultimate views are not so easily discern 
 ed. The great corporations -which have acquired the honour of planting the 
 first permanent settlements, had no other object, probably, than the expextation 
 of sudden gain from the -working of mines, a project, of all others the 
 most delusive, the most to be discountenanced by nations which regard 
 their own good." p. 675. 
 
 "The country which had been denominated Florida by the French 
 and Spaniards, by the English Virginia, at length owed its final settle 
 ment as much to the rapacity of the courtiers of Charles II., as to the 
 facility of a prince, who wished to reward those to whom he was so 
 much indebted, with a liberality that cost him little. The pretence, 
 which had been used on former occasions, of a pious zeal for the pro 
 pagation of the gospel among a barbarous people, who inhabited an un 
 cultivated country, \vas successfully employed to procure a grant of that 
 immense region, lying on the Atlantic Ocean, between the thirty-sixth 
 degree of north latitude and the river Saint Matheo. On the 24th of 
 March, 1663, this territory was erected into a province, by the name of 
 Carolina. They, the lord proprietors, were invested with as ample 
 rights and jurisdictions within their American palatinate, as any bishop 
 or Durham enjoyed within his diocese. And the present charter seems 
 to have been copied from that of Maryland. 
 
 ** Thus was that colony established upon the broad foundation of a 
 regular system of freedom of every kind ; which it was now deemed ne 
 cessary to offer to Englishmen, to induce them to encounter all the difficulties 
 of planting a distant country, covered -with forests, and inhabited by numerous 
 tribes > to endure the dangers of famine, and the damps of the climate." 
 
 When the nature and tendency of the colonial charters be 
 gan to be understood at the British court, it was quickly re 
 solved to attempt their destruction. As early as 1635, Charles 
 I. assailed that of Massachusetts; and Charles II. repenting of 
 his prodigal and heedless distribution of freedom, continued 
 the warfare upon colonial liberties in general. , All the char 
 ters of New England were vacated by James II., whose plan 
 it was to reduce the colonies under one arbitrary government. 
 By her new, and forced compact with king William, Massa 
 chusetts lost a valuable part of her original privileges; and in 
 the reign of this monarch, Pennsylvania, although, indeed^ 
 soon regained, by the indefatigable zeal and consummate ad 
 dress of Perm, was, without any respect to her charter, 
 annexed to New York, the province which had perpetually 
 to wrestle with the royal government for the common rights 
 
 * Page 517. 
 
 i 
 
OP THE COLONISTS. 47 
 
 of Englishmen. Early in the reign of queen Anne, a bill was SECT. n. 
 brought into Parliament, which proposed the abrogation of the <^-v-**~> 
 charters of New England, of East and West New Jersey, 
 Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Carolina, upon the ground of 
 their being prejudicial and repugnant to the trade of the king 
 dom, to her majesty s revenue, &c.* The bill failed from the 
 weight of reasonings, looking to the interests of the mother 
 country. In the year 1748, the ministry offered another bill, 
 by which the king s instructions were to have the force of law 
 in the colonies; but the plan involved an usurpation which, 
 when displayed in full light, and traced in its consequences 
 both to England and America, appeared to the majority of the 
 Commons too gross and dangerous for immediate adoption. It 
 swept away all the charters without trial or legal judgment.! 
 Upon the occasion of the extension of the mutiny act to Ame 
 rica, in 1755, the agent of New England, near the British go 
 vernment, Bollan, a man of sagacity and impartial mind, 
 apprized his constituents of his possessing the best evidence, 
 that it was meditated at the British court " to govern America 
 like Ireland, by keeping up a body of standing forces with a 
 military chest, under some act similar to the famous Poyning s 
 law." 
 
 If more direct and determined efforts to effect the object 
 were not subsequently made by the government, until the year 
 1764, it was because the enterprise had become too hazard 
 ous. The colonies had attained to considerable strength, and 
 grown inflexibly tenacious of their liberties; their aid was in 
 dispensable for the destruction of the French power on this 
 continent; and this circumstance made it of course eligible to 
 preserve, or at least, not wholly to destroy, their good will and 
 national sympathy. It was apprehended, moreover, in queen 
 Anne s time, as may be seen by one of the quotations which 
 1 have made from Gee, that they might, if chafed and dis 
 gusted, throw themselves into the arms of France, and turn 
 the scales in favour of that hated rival. To considerations of 
 this nature are we to ascribe the forbearance so fortunate for 
 all parties; not to any tenderness for transatlantic freedom, or 
 to a generous admiration of the noble spirit and carriage of the 
 transatlantic kindred. Until the period when their enslavement 
 was systematically and perseveringly attempted, circumstances 
 had uniformly been such, as to render that course of proceed- 
 
 * For a particular account of this bill and the proceedings of the 
 House of Commons thereupon, see Macpherson s Annals of Commerce, 
 vol. ii\.4to. p. 47. 
 
 t See Miaot s Continuation of the History of Massachusetts, p. 146, 
 vol. i. 
 
CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART i. ing, incompatible with the prosecution of objects deemed of 
 ^^v^w immediate necessity or higher importance. Had not this been 
 the case, whig and tory would have alike assailed the consti 
 tutional privileges of British America. u When the war is 
 closed," said the elder Pitt to Dr. Franklin, during the strug 
 gle of 1756, between France and England, " if I should be in 
 the ministry, I will take measures to prevent the colonies, from 
 having a power, to refuse or delay the supplies, which may be 
 wanted for national purposes." 
 
 6. The system of religious freedom, coeval with the esta 
 blishment of some of the colonies, constitutes a proud dis 
 tinction for the founders. There is a glory to be envied! by 
 the world, in the first, and continued recognition and en 
 forcement of the rights of conscience, by constitutional law. 
 Compared with it, the subiimest discoveries in science, the 
 most useful inventions in the arts, the most majestic physical 
 monuments, must appear as secondary, in the opinion of ibose 
 who consider what would be the effect, for the dignify and 
 happiness of our species, were the example universally fol 
 lowed; and what the evils that have flowed and continue to 
 flow, from religious intolerance. This glory cannot be denied 
 to the provinces of Maryland, Rhode Island,* and Penn 
 sylvania; and it brightens with the reflection, how com 
 pletely the human mind was elsewhere shut to the voice 
 of reason and humanity. Religious equality was unknown 
 to the codes of Europe; and persecution, adopting, wherever 
 it prevailed, the injustice as well as terrors of the inquisi 
 tion, raged in the countries claiming to be the most refined 
 and enlightened. Even in the United Provinces, so often to 
 use the language of Hume, cited as models of toleration, though 
 all sects were admitted, yet civil offices were only enjoyed 
 by the professors of the established religion. I need not re 
 mind those who have read the work of this incomparable 
 historian, of the state of things in England of the mean 
 and ignoble arts, as well as the sanguinary atrocities practised 
 in the wars of the leading sects, which, as he remarks, throw 
 an indelible stain on the British annals. f A single extract 
 from his history will illustrate the progress of reason and hu 
 manity in the Scottish parliament, but a little before Penn 
 organized his commonwealth, and nearly two generations 
 after Maryland had taken the principles which I havt 
 quoted,^ as the foundations of her polity. " In a session 
 
 * See Note C. f Chap. 68. } Page 32. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 49 
 
 June, 1673,) of the Scottish parliament, a severe law was SECT. H 
 enacted against conventicles. Ruinous fines were imposed v^-v-^- 
 both on the preachers and hearers, even if the meet 
 ings had been in houses; bu* field conventicles were sub 
 jected to the penalty of death, and confiscation of goods. 
 Four hundred marks (Scots,) were offered as a reward to 
 those who should seize the criminals; .and they were indemnified 
 for any slaughter which they should commit in the execution 
 of such an undertaking. And, as it was found difficult 
 to get evidence against these conventicles, however numer 
 ous, it was enacted by another law, that, whoever, being 
 required by the council, refused to give information upon 
 oath, should be punished by arbitrary fines, by imprisonment, 
 or by banishment to the plantations."* 
 
 The Catholics of Maryland, who had hoped to escape the 
 fell spirit of triumphant bigotry, by renouncing their country, 
 were not long suffered to remain undisturbed in their remote 
 and hard-earned retreat. Their scheme of religious charity, 
 was as incomprehensible, as hateful, to their old persecutors. 
 Some of the most desperate and fanatical of the sectaries, 
 who had repaired to the Catholic asylum, were instigated to 
 disturb its tranquillity, and to set themselves in array against 
 their magnanimous hosts. During the Commonwealth in 
 England, the proprietary government of Maryland was sub 
 verted, and the affairs of the province put into the hands of 
 commissioners, creatures of the protector. The spurious as 
 sembly which they convened, after recognizing Cromwell s 
 " just title and authority," enacted, that " none who professed 
 the Popish religion could be protected in the province by the 
 laws of England!" The Catholic missionaries in Maryland, 
 who from the year 1640, had begun to carry the light of the 
 gospel among the Indians, were compelled to desist, on the 
 ground that they aimed at forming a party against the English 
 government, to enable themselves to become independent. 
 
 Things took nearly the same course after the reinstating 
 of the proprietary by Charles II. " The troubles in Mary- 
 " land," says Chalmers, " were made a foundation, whereon 
 " were raised fresh complaints against the proprietary in Eng- 
 " land for partiality to Papists. Lord Baltimore, in justifi- 
 " cation of himself and the province, showed the act of 1649, 
 " concerning religion, which had been confirmed in the year 
 >c 1676, as a perpetual law, and which tolerated and protected 
 " every sect of Christians, but gave special privileges to none. 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
 Chapter 66. 
 
50 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART I. " It was in vain for him to represent, that he had endeavoured 
 to divide the offices of his government as nearly equal among 
 u Protestants and Roman Catholics, as their abilities would 
 " permit; that he had given almost the whole command of the 
 " militia to the former, who were entrusted with the care of 
 " the arms and military stores. The ministers of Charles II. 
 " to throw the imputation of popery from their own shoulders, 
 " commanded that all offices should be put into Protestant 
 " hands."* 
 
 The Church of England was at length established by law 
 in Maryland; and the Catholics were rewarded for the u mild 
 est of laws," for " a moderation unparalleled in the annals 
 of the world,"f by being disfranchised, and subjected anew 
 to the restrictions and penalties, from which their charter had 
 seemed to assure them a perpetual protection. The condition 
 to which they were reduced, by the government of William, 
 was not only a horrible injustice in itself, but a scandalous 
 breach of national faith. The Protestant religion had been al 
 ready established by law in Virginia, in 1661, and that colony 
 converted, likewise, into, a theatre of persecution. An at 
 tempt was made, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
 to give the same ascendancy to the Church of England, in 
 Carolina; but it encountered a spirited and successful resist 
 ance from the inhabitants. 
 
 7. The excesses of bigotry, which were committed by the 
 Puritans of New England, during the seventeenth century, 
 can neither be disguised nor defended. They admit, how 
 ever, of some extenuation, which is to be found in such con 
 siderations as the following, offered by one of their descend 
 ants:;]: u To vindicate the errors of our ancestors, were to 
 " make them our own. It is allowed, that they were culpable; 
 " but, we do not concede that, in the present instance, they 
 " stood alone, or that they merited all the censure, betowed on 
 " them. Laws, similar to those of Massachusetts, were passed 
 " elsewhere against (he Quakers, and particularly in Virginia. 
 * If no execution took place here, as it did in New Eng- 
 u land, it was not owing to the moderation of the church, 
 " (Jefferson, Virg. Query xviii). The prevalent opinion among 
 vt most sects of Christians, at that day, that toleration is sinful, 
 a ought to be remembered; nor should it be forgotten, that the 
 u first Quakers in New England, beside speaking and writing 
 i 1 what was deemed blasphemous, reviled magistrates an<l 
 
 * Chapter 15. f Chalmers, 
 
 t Holmes, in his American Annals. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 51 
 
 tc ministers, and disturbed religious assemblies; and that the SECT. II. 
 a tendency of their tenets and practices was to the subversion ^^^^^ 
 " of the commonwealth, in that period of its infancy. (See 
 " Hubbard, MS. N. Eng. Hazard Coll. i. 630; ii. 5, 96; and 
 " the early historians of New England.) In reviewing the 
 " conduct of our revered ancestors, it is but just to make 
 " allowance for the times in which they lived, and the occa- 
 " sions of their measures." 
 
 Any accusation or sarcasm on this head, comes with a 
 wretched air from Great Britain. Her cotemporary history is 
 a tissue of all that can be conceived most atrocious, or malig 
 nant, or preposterous, in the hostilities and extravagances of 
 fanaticism; it cannot be surpassed in the annals of those enor 
 mities and follies, which provoke alternately laughter and 
 tears, scorn and horror. On comparing the condition and 
 pretensions of the English and Scotch nations, (for the re 
 proach attaches to the whole,) with those of the zealots of 
 New England, every one will perceive at once on which side 
 lies the greater load of guilt and shame. Massachusetts had 
 no assembly or synod, rivalling the Rump Parliament, or the 
 presbytery of Argyle; there is no transaction in the history 
 of that province, upon the same scale of mischief and absur 
 dity, as the affair of the Popish plot there is nothing like the 
 conviction and execution of Stafford, upon the evidence of 
 Gates and Tuberville; no judicial career vying with the cir 
 cuits of Kirk and Jefferies. 
 
 The religious ferment subsided in New England before the 
 expiration of the seventeenth century. Not an instance is to 
 be found, in her subsequent history, of sanguinary or vexa 
 tious persecution for variations in opinion or worship.* The 
 rigor exercised against particular sects, in the other colonies, 
 is to be traced in all cases, to the instigation, or general 
 influence, of the mother country. At the separation, advan 
 tage was immediately taken of the entire freedom of legisla 
 tion, to put all denominations of Christians upon a footing of 
 equality; and this proceeding shows how prevalent the spi 
 rit of toleration had become among the colonists. That 
 the reason and humanity of England lagged far behind, is* 
 sufficiently attested by the Draconian Code concerning the Ca 
 tholics, which survived our revolution, and the disabilities from 
 which the Protestant dissenters are not yet relieved. If I did not 
 find it stated in the fourth number of the Quarterly Review, that 
 " the northern states have hardly outgrown their fanaticism," 
 and that there is, in America, " scarcely any medium between 
 
 * See Note D. 
 
CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART I. " over-godliness and a brutal irreligion," I would confident- 
 ^^*~^ \y appeal for what we now are, as respects our religious 
 spirit, to the following statement, of the 31st number of that 
 authoritative journal. " The old settlers of America carried 
 " with them -habits of strict morality and austere religion. 
 u The descendants of these old settlers have outgrown the 
 " intolerance and bigotry of their ancestors, but have retained 
 " their virtues, and embellished them by humane manners. 
 " They are republicans as much by principle and duty as by 
 " prejudice and inheritance." 
 
 I would not hesitate to concede to the author of " the Bri- 
 tishjgmpjrg |p America^" that " the great foible of the New 
 England history is the story of the witches."* But this story 
 has aspects widely different from that under which it is ex 
 hibited abroad. Belief in witchcraft was epidemic in the 
 seventeenth century, and could not fail to extend to New 
 England. The insulated situation of her inhabitants, one 
 which presents them, to use their own graphic language, as 
 " conflicting with many grievous difficulties and sufferings in 
 the vast howling wilderness, among wild men and wild 
 beasts"! the austerity of their domestic habits the solem 
 nity of their religious feelings the terrific dangers to which 
 they were hourly exposed their daily intercourse with the 
 Indians, whose conversation was perpetually of demons and 
 necromancers the new maladies of body, resulting from a 
 new and crude climate the heart-sickening recollections of 
 " the pleasant land of their nativity," of which the ravening 
 brood of tyrants would almost be forgotten, as memory recall 
 ed its better features, with the enjoyments and ties of their 
 youth all these influences combined against the force of their 
 reason, and contributed to render irresistible the contagion of 
 the European superstition. The simple example of the mo 
 ther country might account for their infatuation; and the ex 
 tent, to which it is chargeable upon that example, may be 
 understood, from the following passage of Hutchinson s His 
 tory of Massachusetts. " Not many years before the delusion 
 " seized New England, Glanville published his witch stories 
 " in England; Perkins and other Nonconformists were earlier; 
 " but the great authority was that of Sir Matthew Hale, re- 
 u vered in New England, not only for his knowledge in the 
 " law, but for his gravity and piety. The trial of the witches 
 u in Suffolk was published in 1684. All these books were 
 
 * Preface. 
 
 f Petition of the General Court of Massachusetts to the king 1 . (1680." 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. i>J 
 
 " in New England, and the conformity between the behaviour SECT. II. 
 
 " of Goodwin s children, and most of the suppos< d bewitched ^^-v^~ / 
 
 " at Salem, and the behaviour of those in England, is so exact 
 
 " as to leave no room to doubt the stories had been read by the 
 
 " New England persons themselves, or had been told to them by 
 
 " others who had read them. Indeed, this conformity, instead 
 
 " of giving suspicion, was urged in confirmation of the truth 
 
 " of both; the Old England demons and the New being so 
 
 " much alike. The court justified themselves from books of 
 
 u law, and the authorities of Keble, Dalton, and other lavv- 
 
 " yers, then of the first character, who laid down rules of con- 
 
 " viction as absurd and dangerous as any which were prac- 
 
 " tised in New England."* The authors of the Universal 
 
 History have also stated some palliative facts, which deserve 
 
 to be reported upon such authority. u ln justice to the mi- 
 
 u nistry and people of New England, we are to observe, that 
 
 " the persecutions for witchcraft were carried on by wretches, 
 
 " partly to gratify their private resentments and interests, and 
 
 " partly from a spirit of enthusiasm and credulity; nor could 
 
 " they have happened, had it not been for the weakness of the 
 
 " governor and Dr. Mather, who were rendered the tools of 
 
 " more designing men. The people in general, and some 
 
 sc ministers, particularly Mr. Caleb of Boston, detested them, 
 
 " and remonstrated against them from the beginning, but all 
 
 " to no purpose."! 
 
 All ranks in Scotland and England concurred in raising a 
 complete demonocracy for those countries, throughout the se 
 venteenth century. Lord Kaimes asserts, in his Sketches of 
 the History of Man, that during the civil wars every one be 
 lieved in magic, charms, spells, sorcery and witchcraft. An 
 incident related by Evelyn, for which no parallel is to be 
 found in American history, shows the temper of the times, in 
 England. " 29th March, 1652 was that celebrated eclipse 
 of the sun, so much threatened by the astrologers, and which 
 had so exceedingly alarmed the whole nation, that hardly any 
 one would work or stir out of their houses, so ridiculously were 
 they abused by knavish and ignorant star-gazers." The Long 
 parliament, alias, "the great reformation parliament," issued 
 several commissions " to discover and prosecute witches," 
 and upon those commissions were many unfortunate persons, 
 of both sexrs, tried and executed. We should not forget the 
 testimony of Hume, with respect to the state of Scotland, at 
 the period in question. " The fanaticism which prevailed. 
 
 * Vol. ii. chap. 
 
 fVol. xxxix 
 
54 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART i. " acquired, besides the malignants and engagers, a new object 
 v^-v-^> " of abhorrence. These were the sorcerers. So prevalent vti.s 
 " the opinion of witchcraft, that great numbers, accused of 
 " that crime, were burnt by sentence of the magistrates, 
 u through all parts of Scotland. In a village near Berwick, 
 " which contained only fourteen houses, fourteen persons were 
 " punished by fire, and it became a science even] where much 
 " studied and cultivated, to distinguish a true witch by proper 
 " trials and symptoms."* 
 
 I have now before me a quarto volume, published in Lon 
 don, in the present year (1819), and entitled, "The memo 
 rable things that fell out within the Island of Britain, from 
 1638 to 1683, by the Rev. Mr. Robert Law, of that time." 
 This work is little more than a chronicle of the witchcraft of 
 Britain, during the interval to which it is confined; and, truly, 
 the details of credulity and judicial murder which it furnishes, 
 might entitle New England to expect very gentle usage in that 
 quarter on the subject of witchcraft. Among the papers pre 
 fixed to the " Memorable things," is a " True relation of an 
 apparition, expressions, and actings, of a spirit, which infested 
 the house of Andrew Mackie, in Scotland, in 1695;" which 
 relation is signed on oath by at least twelve regular clergy 
 men of especial sanctity and authority. The worthy minister, 
 Law, has left, in his journal, a notice of New England, which 
 may reasonably be taken as the epitome of the popular notions 
 of the day, concerning that colony. It is sufficiently remarka 
 ble to be copied. 
 
 " (August, 1676 ) These of New England that hail planted that part 
 of America, are grievously troubled by the natives, who make in 
 roads upon the plantation.-, and kill many of the English, having by 
 their slaves, (that were with the English and fled to them, again,) 
 learned ihe art of shooting guns, purchasing out of France and Holland 
 guns, swords, and pycks, make them much adoe and great trouble, so 
 that they were necessitate to shift for themselves in other parts of the 
 world. The truth is, the Protestants in all parts of the world suffer in 
 these sad tyises. The origin of these in New England, went from Eng 
 land in the days of queen Mary of England, when the persecution against 
 the Protestants was raised there, and in the days of queen Elizabeth, 
 her successor, a Protestant, was well supplyed with money and other 
 necessaries to make good that plantation. They were all furnished with 
 able ministers, and grew np to a famous and glorious church. Their 
 church government was and is yet independent, and of their state it is 
 aristocratic. They refused to own the king of Britain as their king, only in 
 commemoration of their coming out of England, they noiv and then send him 
 a free gift." 
 
 For thirty years after the settlement of Massachusetts, 
 
 * Chapter 59. 
 
OP THE COLONISTS. 55 
 
 while victims were daily sacrificed by fire and the rope, in SECT. H. 
 Great Britain, none suffered for witchcraft in that colony. v^-v-^* 
 Hutchinson asserts truly, that " more were put to death in a 
 single county of England for that cause, than suffered in New 
 England from the planting until his time, in 1760."^ The 
 phrenzy endured in America but seven months; whereas 
 it may be said to have continued, with little or no abate 
 ment, in the mother country, in Scotland particularly, 
 for a long series of years. If Cotton Mather partook of the 
 wretched delusion, he was at least as excusable as Sir Mat 
 thew Hale; and we may doubt whether there was any learn 
 ed judge of New England, cotemporary with chief justice 
 Blackstone, who would have gravely summed up the evi 
 dence, respecting the reality of witchcraft, and as gravely 
 decided it to be, " most eligible to conclude, that, in general, 
 such a thing as witchcraft had been."f North America, of the 
 eighteenth century, can furnish no counterpart for the story of 
 the Cocklane ghost. Hutchinson has, on this subject, some ob 
 servations in addition to those I have quoted from him, which 
 ought not to be withheld. " The trial of Richard Hatheway, 
 " the impostor, before lord chief justice Holt, was ten or 
 " twelve years after the trials in New England. This was a 
 iC great discouragement to prosecutions in England for witch- 
 " craft, but an effectual stop was not put to them until the act 
 " of parliament in the reign of his late majesty, George II. 
 " Even this did not wholly cure the common people, and we 
 " hear of old women ducked and cruelly murdered within 
 " these last twenty years. Reproach, then, for hanging 
 " witches, although it has been often cast upon tlie people of 
 " JVeio England by those of Old, yet it must have been done 
 " with an ill grace." 
 
 8. As respects political intrepidity, we may challenge a 
 comparison between our ancestors, and the communities the 
 most renowned for that potent virtue. The instances of it with 
 which our colonial annals abound, are inestimably precious, 
 as lessons and incentives for the American people at all times, 
 and under all circumstances. We cannot too often remind 
 each other how heroically the first settlers, and the genera- 
 
 * Hist, of Mass. vol. ii. chap. i. 
 
 -j- Commentaries, b. iv. c. iv. " Witchcraft or sorcery is a truth to which 
 every nation in the world, hath, in its turn, borne testimony, by either 
 examples seemingly well attested, or prohibitory laws, which at least 
 suppose the possibility of a commerce with evil spirits." 
 
56 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART I. (ions immediately succeeding, overlooked their own physical 
 v -^ v ~^ / weakness and domestic dangers, and braved the power and 
 pride of the mother country, in asserting the rights of man and 
 the privileges recognized or implied in their charters. The 
 complaints which the British historians and orators have ut 
 tered concerning their haughty and refractory spirit, and theii 
 early aspirations after positive sovereignty, are to be cherished 
 as testimonies borne to the elevation of their character. I re 
 peat with exultation, and think there should be no anxiety on 
 the part of any American to avoid, the reproaches intended to 
 be made by such allegations as the following: 
 
 " The persons whom the Plymouth company sj*nt over to America 
 as soon as they landed there, considered themselves as individuah 
 united by voluntary associations, possessing the natural rights of men 
 who form a society, to adopt what mode of government, and to enact 
 what laws they deemed most conducive to general felicity. Suitably 
 to these ideas, they framed all their future plans of court and ecclesi 
 astical policy.* 
 
 " Massachusetts, in conformity to its accustomed principles, acted 
 during the civil wars, almost altogether as an independent state. It 
 formed leagues not only with the neighbouring colonies, but with fo 
 reign nations, without the consent or knowledge of the government of 
 England. It permitted no appeals from its courts to the judicatories 
 of the sovereign state; and it refused to exercise its jurisdiction in the 
 name of the commonwealth of England. It erected a mint at Boston, 
 impressing the year 1652 on the coin, as the era of independence.** 
 Thus evincing to all what had been foretold by the wise, that a people 
 of such principles, religious and political, settling at so great a distance 
 from control, would necessarily form an independent state.f 
 
 "During the greater part of the reign of Charles II, the colony of 
 Connecticut acted rather as an independent state, than as the inconsi 
 derable territory of a great nation. The general orders of that prince 
 were contemned, because the royal interposition was deemed incon 
 sistent with the charter. The acts of navigation were despised and 
 disobeyed, because they were considered equally inconsistent with 
 the freedom of trade as with the security of ancient privileges : and the 
 courts of justice refused to allow appeals to England, because the pow 
 ers of ultimate jurisdiction were claimed from the patent.* 
 
 " On receiving authentic news of the revolution of 1688, and the 
 accession of William and Mary, though the people of Massachusetts 
 spoke with deference of the higher powers in England, and of their 
 relationship to it, they resolved, with their peculiar spirit, that the settle 
 ment of their government on that extraordinary occasion, belonged 
 wholly to themselves. * 
 
 The Americans have had all along a reluctance to order and good 
 government, since their first establishment in their country. They 
 have been obstinate, undutiful, and ungovernable from the very begin 
 ning ; from their first infant settlements in that country. They began 
 to manifest this spirit as early as the reign of Charles I. They disputed 
 
 * Robertson s History of America, vol. iv. 
 f Chalmers, chap. viiiTATiiTaTsT~*~* 
 7 Ibid. , 
 
OP THE COLONISTS. 57 
 
 our right of fishing 1 on their coasts, in the times of the commonwealth SECT. II. 
 and protectorate, &,c.* ^^ -^_ . 
 
 " The bud consequences of planting northern colonies were early 
 predicted. Sir Josiah Child foretold, before the revolution, that they 
 would, in the end, prove our rivals in power, commerce, and manufac 
 tures. Davenant adopted the same ideas, and foresaw what has since 
 happened : he foresaw that whenever America found herself of suffi 
 cient strength to contend with the mother country, she would endea 
 vour to form herself into a separate and independent state. This has 
 been the constant object of New England, almost from her earliest in 
 fancy," &c.f 
 
 We find the colony of Virginia, when only in its seven 
 teenth year, (1624,) and just recovered from the heaviest 
 disasters, answering, through its general assembly, an angry and 
 insidious inquiry into its condition and dispositions, ordered 
 by the king and privy council, and resisting the artifices and 
 threats of the commissioners deputed from England for the 
 purpose of extorting a surrender of its charter, with the ut 
 most sagacity and boldness, or, to use the phrase of its histo 
 rian, Stith, " with sharpness and vigour;" with an array of 
 the loftiest principles, and in a style of composition, very little 
 inferior to the best of that age.J The same colony, only 
 twelve years after, seized the royal governor, Harvey, become 
 odious to them by his exactions and insolence, and sent him a 
 prisoner to London. And it is further illustrative of her in 
 trepidity, that Charles I. considered the proceeding as an act 
 of rebellion, and reinstated the obnoxious officer, to super 
 sede him, however, immediately, by one of a character 
 dissimilar in all respects. Virginia, prepossessed in favour 
 f the royal cause, resisted the government of the Protecto 
 rate, by arms, in 1651, and submitted at length to the power 
 ful squadron sent to enforce her obedience, only upon terms 
 which do infinite honour to her courage, and remain a striking 
 memorial of her resolute and enlightened attachment to liber 
 ty. The following abstract of some of the articles of capitu 
 lation will be read with interest. 1. u The plantation of 
 * Virginia, and all the inhabitants thereof, shall remain in 
 " due subjection to the Commonwealth of England, not as a 
 
 * Earl TalbQ.t,in.ti< F Lords. Debate of Feb. 29, 1776. 
 | Lord Mansfield, in the House of Lords. ^Debate Nov. 15, 1775. 
 
 * See the account of this controversy, in the 5th book-_of Stall s 
 History oX Virginia. "Every titheable or taxable inhabitant," says 
 Burk, "voted for members of assembly. And what honour does not 
 the choice of such an assembly as that of 1624, reflect on the colonists ; 
 what sagacity and public spirit does it not suppose in them, at a junc 
 ture so delicate and trying, to have selected a body which immediately 
 saw their true interest, and pursued it with ardour and unanimity, in the 
 face of the royal commissioners, and in defiance of the authority and 
 resentment of the kinir." 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
58 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART l. " conquered country, but as a country submitting by their own 
 ^~*"**~s " voluntary act,,and shall enjoy such freedoms and privileges 
 " as belong to the free people of England. 2. The general as- 
 " sembly, as formerly, shall convene, and transact the affairs 
 " of the colony. 3. The people of Virginia shall have a 
 " free trade, as the people of England, to all places, and with 
 " all nations. 4. Virginia shall be free from all taxes, cus- 
 " toms, and impositions whatsoever; and none shall be im- 
 " posed on them, without consent of the general assembly; 
 <c and neither forts nor castles be erected, or garrisons main- 
 " tained without their own consent."* 
 
 Her subsequent-conduct has been the theme of lofty pane 
 gyric with all the historians. She took advantage of the sud 
 den death of a governor named by Cromwell , to restore the 
 royal officers, and proclaimed Charles II. even before intelli 
 gence was received of the demise of the Protector. The spirit 
 which produced these exploits, descended without interruption 
 or enervation, and proved its identity and divinity in the reso 
 lutions offered by Patrick Henry, in 1765; in the propositions 
 for a general congress, and in the Declaration of Independence. 
 
 The career pursued by Massachusetts from her birth, 
 is pre-eminent for daring, as well as dexterity, and may 
 be considered in these respects as unique in the annals of the 
 world. To the charter, as containing a confirmation of some 
 portion of her natural liberty, she clung with a pertinacious- 
 ness, under every vicissitude and pressure, which must awaken 
 in all generous breasts, a thrilling sympathy, and a lively admi 
 ration. Diminutive as she was in 1635, yet, when a rumour 
 reached the colonies, that the measure of a general government 
 for New England, was decided upon at the British Court, her 
 magistrates and clergy agreed unanimously that, u if such a go 
 vernor were sent, the colony ought not to accept him, but to de 
 fend its lawful possessions." When her patent was demanded 
 in 1638, by order of the king in council, it was answered, that 
 if the charter should be taken away, the people would re 
 move to another place, and confederate under some new form 
 of government; and fc such was their resolution," says the 
 historian Hutchinson, u that they would have sought a va 
 cuum domicilium, (a favourite expression with them,) in some 
 part of the globe, where they would, according to their appre 
 hensions, have been free from the controul of any European 
 power."f We have the evidence of one of the spies of 
 
 * See vol. ii. chap. ii. of Bark s History of Virginia: for the entire 
 convention, and a just commentary upon the magnanimous deportment 
 of the colony. 
 
 f Vol. i. p. 87. 
 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 59 
 
 Archbishop Laud, in the colony, that it was, at this period of SECT, a 
 her history, accounted perjury and treason in her General v^-v^/ 
 Court, to speak of appeals to the king. 
 
 In 1641, the General Court established the one hundred laws, 
 called the Body of Liberties. The strain of them, so abhorrent 
 and advantageously distinguished, from the genius of the cotein- 
 porary legislation in England, shows with what fearless deter 
 mination these pilgrims marched up to their invariable object, 
 of civil and religious freedom. The memorable league of the 
 New England plantations, in 1643,^ is another proof of 
 the independent and confident spirit, with which they provided 
 for their own protection. " It originated," says Chalmers, 
 " with Massachusetts, always fruitful in projects of indepen 
 dence. No patent legalized the confederacy, which continued 
 until the dissolution of the charters, in 1 686. Neither the 
 consent nor approbation of the governing powers in England 
 was ever applied for or given. The principles upon which 
 this famous association was formed were altogether those of 
 self-government, of absolute sovereignty."! Massachusetts saw 
 from the beginning, the true bearing of the acts of naviga 
 tion of 1651, and 1660, and of the custom house duties pre 
 scribed in 1672, upon her interests and natural rights, and she 
 evaded or resisted them, until the whole weight of the mother 
 country was turned to their enforcement. The officer sent 
 from England, to collect the customs at Boston, was recalled, 
 upon his representation, " that he was in danger of being 
 punished with death, by virtue of an ancient law, as a sub- 
 verter of the constitution." When taxed with disobedience, 
 the General Court did not hesitate to allege, that " the acts of 
 navigation were an invasion of the rights and privileges of the 
 subjects of his majesty in that colony, they being not repre 
 sented in Parliament; and that, according to the usual sayings 
 of the learned in the law, the laws of England were bounded 
 within the four seas, and did not reach America." Some of 
 the other provinces joined in this language, and were equally 
 hardy in their practice. Massachusetts, from the outset, openly 
 contended against the doctrine, that Parliament had a right to 
 make laws binding the colonies in all cases whatsoever; she 
 denied the competency of that body to impose any tax upon 
 them, without the consent of their legislatures. Her theory, 
 on this head, was solemnly proclaimed in 1692, and embo 
 died in one of the laws which she then framed under the new 
 
 * See vol. i. of Trumbull s History of Connecticut, for a detailed 
 account of this confederation. 
 f Chap. viii. Annals. 
 
60 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART i. charter received from William. In 1663, Rhode Island for* 
 v^-v- 1 ^ mally enacted it, as one of her privileges, that no tax should 
 be imposed on, or required of the colonists, but by the Gene 
 ral Assembly. The Assembly of New York nobly passed reso 
 lutions to the same purport, in the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century. As early as 1624, the Assembly of Virginia had 
 set the example of asserting this principle as fundamental. 
 
 Massachusetts manifested a strong predilection for the 
 cause of the independents in England, during ihe civil 
 wars; but she resisted the attempts of the Long Parlia 
 ment upon the sacred charter. Being strongly advised, i:i 
 1641, when suffering much domestic distress and embar 
 rassment, to solicit parliamentary aid or patronage, she 
 steadily refused, with a train of reasoning, which well de 
 serves to be noted. " If we place ourselves under the protec 
 tion of Parliament, we must be subject to all such laws as 
 they should make, or at least, such as they might impose upo.i 
 us, in which course, though Parliament might intend our 
 good, yet it might prove very prejudicial.""* 
 
 The carriage of the northern colonies, on the restoration, 
 when all England fell prostrate before the monarchical pageant, 
 may be best told in the angry language of the loyal Chalmers. 
 " The people of New England received the tidings of that in 
 teresting event with a caution bordering on incredulity; an 
 nounced the king in a manner almost insulting; and submitted 
 not to the resolutions of the supreme power, till they had, by their 
 own resolves, declared tlieir own privileges.** The affectionate 
 reception which Connecticut gave to the regicides, even after 
 their attainder by Parliament, who here enjoyed a long life of 
 miserable security, and died in peace, sufficiently demon 
 strates her principles and attachments.! She received the 
 royal commissioners with studied indifference, and with a 
 fixed resolution to deride their authority and disobey their com 
 mands.;):" 
 
 * Hutchinson, chapter i. 
 
 f The regici cl e"s",~ tcTwh om our author refers, were Whalley and 
 GoflTe, men of great abilities and accomplishments, of a noble spirit, 
 and winning demeanour. The conduct of the people of New England 
 towards them, does not, methinks, suffer in the comparison with the 
 procedure related in the following passage of Evelyn s Memoirs : 
 " This day, the 30th of Jany. 1660, were the carcases of those arcli 
 rebells Cromwell, Bradshaw, the judge who condemned his majesty, 
 and Ireton, sonn-in-law to y e usurper, drag-g- d out of their superb 
 tombs in WestnT". among the kings, to Tyburn, and hang d on the gal 
 lows there from 9 in y morning till six at night, and then buried under 
 that fatal and ignominious monument in a deepe pit, thousands who ha I 
 seen them in all their pride, being spectators." (Vol. i. p. 317.) 
 
 * Chapter xii. Annals. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 61 
 
 New England generally, prohibited all appeals to the par- SECT. n. 
 iiamerit or the king in council; and Massachusetts in particu- v^^-^ 
 lar, fined and imprisoned certain persons, for designing to so 
 licit parliament to revise a sentence of the General Court. 
 This body, on the arrival of the commissioners sent by Charles 
 II. in 1665, to investigate and regulate the affairs of New 
 England, put them under close supervision; refused to recog 
 nize their authority, or to impose the oath of allegiance required 
 from the people, unless with nice restrictions and limitations; 
 counteracted all their proceedings, and resolved " to adhere to 
 the patent so dearly obtained and so long enjoyed by undoubted 
 right in the sight of God and man." The commissioners would 
 seem to have been imbued with something of the spirit which 
 actuates the modern English critics. One of their letters, to 
 the general court, dated in 1668, begins thus: "We have re 
 ceived a letter from your marshal, subscribed by the secreta- 
 tary, so full of untruth, and in some places wanting grammar 
 construction, that we are unwilling," &c. The account which 
 Chalmers gives of the conclusion of their transactions in 
 Massachusetts, is an amusing picture of the temper of both 
 parties. 
 
 " The commissioners at length peremptorily asked the general court, 
 * Do you acknowledge the royal commission to be of full force to all 
 the purposes contained in it ? But, to a question at once so decisive 
 and embarrassing, the general court excused itself from giving a direct 
 answer, and chose rather to plead his majesty s charter." The com 
 missioners, however, attempting to hear a complaint against the go 
 vernor and Company, the general court, with a characteristic vigour, 
 published by sound of trumpet, its disapprobation of this proceeding, 
 and prohibited every one from abetting a conduct so inconsistent with 
 their duty to God and their allegiance to the king. And, in May, 1665, 
 the commissioners determined to lose no more labour upon men, who 
 misconstrued all their endeavours, and opposed the royal authority. 
 They soon after departed, threatening their opponents with the pu 
 nishment which so many concerned in the late rebellion had met with 
 in England. "* 
 
 All the agents of New England with the British govern 
 ment, had it in especial charge " to consent to nothing that 
 should infringe the liberties granted by charter." 
 
 The manner in which Connecticut frustrated the attempt 
 of Andros, in 1675, to acquire for the Duke of York the 
 country lying westward of the Connecticut river the discom 
 fiture of the same tyrannical viceroy ofthe Stuarts, when he 
 endeavoured, in 1687, to possess himself of her charter his 
 deposition and imprisonment by the people of Boston, in 1689, 
 
 * Chap. xvi. Annals. 
 
62 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PARTI, and the resumption, by all the New. England provinces, of 
 their abrogated charters and forms of government, even be 
 fore they received any certain intelligence of the success o 
 William in England the re-establishment, in 1668, of tin 
 authority of Massachusetts over New Hampshire, by the ge 
 neral court, in defiance of the royal authority* the violen ; 
 subversion, in 1672, of the proprietary government in New 
 Jersey the insurrectionary movements of Albemarle in 1677 
 , the revolution of 1719 in South Carolina the successful 
 struggles of the general court of Massachusetts, between the 
 years 1721 and 1730, with the royal governors of that inter 
 val, backed as they were by the countenance of the crown 
 are all so many additional incidents, which may be singlec 
 out of a multitude, to exemplify the passionate zeal, the 
 fearlessness, and activity of the first generations of Ameri 
 cans, in the cause of civil liberty; as their institutions may 
 be cited to prove their clear discernment of its true prin 
 ciples and appropriate forms. England possessed, in the 
 seventeenth century, some votaries to the same cause, of 
 the largest views and boldest determination: but the true 
 model of freedom was, as I have already intimated, neither 
 sought nor comprehended by the nation in general. This is 
 palpable from the despotic genius of the Commonwealth, and 
 the kindred spirit of the Restoration. The main spring and 
 principle of the civil wars, and even of the revolution of 1688, 
 was religious rancour; not the desire or intelligence of political 
 liberty an object always subordinate to the gratification of 
 fanatical hate, and the acquisition of inordinate power. It is 
 said by Hume, that the British were, in the time of Charles I., 
 and till long after, of all the European nations, the most 
 under the influence of that religious spirit, which tends to in 
 flame bigotry and beget desperate factions. " The Scotch 
 nation," he adds, " plainly discovered, after the restoration^ 
 that their past resistance had proceeded more from the turbu- 
 lency of their aristocracy, and the bigotry of their ecclesiastics, 
 than from any fixed passion towards civil liberty." 
 
 The New England plantations could not feel, and did not find 
 themselves, secure in their distance from the British court. 
 Whatever influence the circumstance of this distance might be 
 supposed to exert in bracing their spirit, it must have been more 
 than counteracted by the Immense disparity of strength; and the 
 belief, that, if pressed, a new emigration was their only 
 
 * Chalmers, chap. xix. 
 
OP THE COLONISTS. 63 
 
 resource. Their situation altogether, apparently so forlorn and SECT. n. 
 critical, had a stronger tendency to inspire docility and sub- v-^v^- 
 mission to the house of Stuart, than the relative position of 
 the British people. But let the language and countenance of 
 the government of New England, in the year 1685, be com 
 pared with those of the British parliament, towards James II. 
 at the same period. " The parliament," says Hume,* "pro 
 ceeded to examine the dispensing power, and voted an address 
 against it. The address was expressed in the most respectful 
 and submissive manner, yet it was very ill received by the 
 king, and his answer contained a flat denial. The Commons 
 were so daunted with this reply, that they kept silence a long 
 time; and when Coke, a member from Derby, rose and said, 
 c I hope we are all Englishmen, and not to be frightened by a 
 few hard words, so little spirit appeared in that assembly, 
 often so refractory and mutinous, that they sent him to the 
 tower for bluntly expressing a free and generous sentiment. 
 
 " On their next meeting, they very submissively proceeded 
 to the consideration of the supply demanded by the court, and 
 even went so far as to establish funds for paying the sum voted 
 in nine years and a half. The king, therefore, had, in effect, 
 almost without a struggle, obtained a total victory over the 
 Commons; and instead of contesting an additional revenue to 
 the crown; and rendering the king in some degree independent, 
 contributed to increase those imminent dangers, with which 
 they had so good reason to be alarmed." 
 
 I shall have occasion, as I proceed with the main subject, 
 to notice so many brilliant traits of civil courage, in the ca 
 reer of the colonists, that I ought to be satisfied, with what 
 I have adduced; and it is not, moreover, a part of my plan, 
 to particularize here, their beroip proceedings after the passage 
 of the stamp act; which are sufficiently emblazoned in the 
 admiration expressed by the most respectable voices and 
 pens of England herself. But I must be indulged with culling 
 from the history of Massachusetts a couple of incidents more, 
 as contrasts to the anecdote just quoted from Hume. When 
 Andros, as governor general of New England, by the appoint 
 ment of James II. imposed, in the beginning of 1688, a tax of 
 a penny in the pound on all the towns under his government, 
 the select men, (municipal officers,) of those of Massachusetts, 
 particularly of Ipswich, voted, "that inasmuch as it was against 
 the common privileges of English subjects, to have money 
 raised without their own consent given in an assembly or par 
 liament; therefore they would petition the king for liberty of 
 an assembly before they made any rates" nor did they yield 
 
 * Chapter Ixx. 
 
64 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART I. the point, although put to the test by imprisonment and heavy 
 ^^~v-w fines.* The other case is of the year 1761. In that year, the 
 governor of the colony, Bernard, took upon himself to equip 
 the province sloop Massachusetts, upon a more expensive scale 
 than that prescribed by the House of Assembly, or than what 
 was called, " the old establishment. 1 On receiving from 
 him a message relating to it, the house immediately prepared, 
 and voted by a large majority, an answer which contained the 
 following passages: "Justice to ourselves and our constituents 
 oblige us to remonstrate against the method of making or in 
 creasing establishments, by the governor and council. It is. 
 in effect, taking from the House their most darling privilege, 
 the right of originating all taxes." 
 
 " No necessity can be sufficient to justify a House of Repre 
 sentatives in giving up such a privilege;/or it would be of link 
 consequence to the people, whether tliey were subject to George. 
 or Louis, the king of Great Britain or the French king, if both 
 were arbitrary, as both ivould be, if both could levy taxes without 
 parliament." 
 
 9. The most prejudiced of the English writers have scarcely 
 ventured to decry the domestic morals and habits of the earl) 
 ^ colonists. Industry, order, temperance, and the social affec 
 tions were demonstrated by the rapid increase of their means, 
 comforts, and numbers, and by the stability of their institu 
 tions. The rarity of political changes, or intestine dissen- 
 tions, of domestic origin, after the several communities were 
 formed, is in itself, adequate proof of the general subordina 
 tion to the authority of law and reason. Hutchinson men 
 tions that " in the Massachusetts colony, for the first thirty 
 years, although the governor and assistants were annually 
 chosen by the body of the people, yet they confined themselves 
 to the principal gentlemen of family, estate, understanding 
 and integrity;" and that " there were instances in the char 
 ter governments of Connecticut and Rhode Island, where 
 the representatives had virtue enough to withstand popular 
 prejudices, when the governor s council had not."f The 
 question of restoring to New England, the charter suppressed 
 by James II., was submitted, after the accession of William III, 
 to Hook, an eminent lawyer of the British capital. This 
 enlightened individual, in pronouncing in the affirmative, did 
 
 * See " A Narrative of the Miseries of New England, by reason of an 
 arbitrary government erected there by James II." This curious pam 
 phlet, which arraigns with the utmost severity the administration of An 
 dros, was printed in Boston during what it calls " his tyrannic reign," 
 and re-printed in the same place in the near 1775. 
 
 f Vol. ii. chap. i. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 65 
 
 not hesitate to describe the colonists as " a people who had SECT. II. 
 maintained civility beyond any other on earth" The authors v^-v-^ 
 of the modern part of the Universal History, referring to the 
 same era, remark, that " the police of the inhabitants of New 
 England, with regard to their morals, surpassed that of any 
 in the world." Such, indeed, was their reputation for dis 
 cipline and virtue, that the pious of the mother country, sent 
 over their children for education. The legislators of New 
 England were, indeed, exorbitantly austere with respect to 
 the elegant recreations of civilized life: They prohibited, 
 moreover, horse racing, cock fighting, bull and bear baiting. 
 In excluding these vulgar and vicious sports, they certainly did 
 not suffer in the contrast with those who, in Britain, tolerated 
 such pastime as the following, of which we read in Evelyn s 
 Memoirs: " There was now (April, 1667,) a very gallant 
 horse to be baited to death with dogs. They run him through 
 with their swords, when the dogs did not succeed," &c. 
 
 Religion was the fundamental order of society, and uni 
 versally cultivated, in all the colonies north of the Potomac, 
 except New York. Even in this province, into whose 
 political being it had not entered as an element, as in the 
 case of Pennsylvania and New England, it flourished in 
 considerable vigour and diffusion. Throughout New Eng 
 land, the first measure in the organization of the com 
 monwealths, was to establish a system, by which all should 
 partake of religious worship and instruction. The represen 
 tation which was made officially in 1680, to the Committee 
 of Plantations, concerning the condition of Connecticut in 
 this respect, admits of being applied to the whole of New 
 England. " Great care is taken of the instruction of the 
 people of Connecticut in the Christian religion, by minis 
 ters catechising and preaching twice every Sabbath, and 
 sometimes on lecture days; and also by masters of families 
 instructing and teaching their children and servants, which the 
 law commands them to do. We have twenty-six towns and 
 there are twenty-one churches in them, and in every one there 
 is a settled minister." 
 
 A mild, steady, sedulous piety, very little polemical or 
 fanatical, distinguished the founders of Pennsylvania; spread 
 its purifying and quickening influence over the new settlers 
 of every nation and sect, and gave a permanent complexion 
 of efficacious faith to that province. New Jersey had risen 
 under the same fortunate auspices, and wore a similar 
 aspect. To the excellent religious character of Maryland, 
 during the seventeenth century, even Chalmers bears tes- 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
66 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART I. timony, in opposition to those who, out of a charitable abo- 
 ^-^v-^> mination of the bare existence of Popery, and in order to 
 persuade the Archbishop of Canterbury of the necessity of an 
 established Protestant religion in the province, scrupled not to 
 paint it as a " Sodom of uncleanness, and a pest house of 
 iniquity."* Virginia was devoted to the Church of England; 
 supported a numerous clergy, upon a most liberal establish 
 ment; and in all her ecclesiastical arrangements, as they are 
 detailed by the historian, Beverley,t manifested a lively and 
 honest solicitude for the diffusion and decency of divine worship. 
 In her feelings on this head, Burk finds a satisfactory solution 
 for her tenacious adherence to the royal cause. His observations 
 are sufficiently remarkable to be copied. " The measures of 
 the patriots in England, manifestly tended to a complete al 
 teration, or rather abolition, of the forms and discipline of that 
 church, which the Virginians had been accustomed to revere; 
 and theTuritans, whom they held in abhorrence, appeared as 
 the principal agents in this scheme for the destruction of reli 
 gion." " T/iis, I apprehend, was the principal, if not the only 
 motive for their new born ardour, in favour of royalty. Their 
 political attachments were obviously on the other side; and 
 in the career of liberty and resistance, they had even antici 
 pated and outstripped the Parliament. They had the same 
 marked regard for their rights and privileges, as this illustrious 
 body; they resisted with equal ardour, and for a long time, 
 with greater success, the encroachments and the insolence of 
 the crown."| 
 
 For the practical religion of Great Britain, during the seven 
 teenth-century, I refer my readers to any the most national of 
 her historians. In marking the furious, desolating fanaticism 
 of the Roundheads, Hume admits, that riot, disorder, and in 
 fidelity prevailed very much among the partisans of the 
 church and monarchy. The mutual hatred and excitement of 
 sects gave, he remarks, just reason to dread, at every moment, 
 " all the horrors of the ancient massacres and proscriptions."^ 
 A stale of faction and rebellion, of political and religious dis 
 sension, inflamed into sanguinary wars was but little favour 
 able to morals, and necessarily produced a general taint, which 
 would not soon, if ever, be completely expelled. Its effects 
 are visible to us in the literary works which are in our hands, 
 and which justify the observation of Hume, that, of all the 
 
 * See Chalmers Political Annals, chap. xv. 
 | History of Virginia, from 1585 to 1780, b. iv. 
 History of Virginia, vol.ii. c. ii. 
 History of England, chap. Ixii. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 67 
 
 considerable writers of the age of the two last Stuart^ " Sir SECT. H. 
 William Temple is almost the only one who kept himself al- v-^~v-^ 
 together unpolluted by that inundation of vice and licentious 
 ness which overwhelmed the nation."* The fidelity of tht 
 general picture drawn by the same master hand, has never 
 been questioned. u The people, during the reign of Charles II. 
 and James II. were, in a great measure, cured of that wild 
 fanaticism, by which they had formerly been so much agi 
 tated. Whatever new vices they might acquire, it may be 
 doubted, whether, by this change, they were, in the main, 
 much losers in point of morals. By the example of the king 
 and the cavaliers, licentiousness and debauchery became very 
 prevalent in the nation. The pleasures of the table were 
 much pursued. Love was treated rather as an appetite than a 
 passion. The one sex began to abate of the national charac 
 ter of chastity, without being able to inspire the other with 
 sentiment or delicacy. The abuses in the former age, arising 
 from overstrained pretensions of piety, had much propagated 
 the spirit of irreligion; and many of the ingenious men of this 
 period, lie under the imputation of Deism. The same fac 
 tions which formerly distracted the nation were revived, and 
 exerted themselves in the most ungenerous and unmanly en 
 terprises against each other. "f 
 
 10. The parliamentary party in England ostentatiously 
 contemned all human learning, and were wholly indifferent 
 to the object of general education. The American colonists 
 had scarcely opened the forests, and constructed habitations, 
 when they, bent their attention to that object. As early as 1637, 
 only a few years after the landing at Plymouth, the legisla 
 ture of Massachusetts founded and endowed, for the ancient 
 languages, and higher branches of learning, a college, which 
 began to confer degrees in 1642; and has since ripened into 
 an university of the first class both in extent and usefulness. 
 To this institution, the plantations of Connecticut and New 
 Haven, as long as they remained unable to support a similar one 
 at home, contributed funds from their public purse, and sent 
 such of their youth as they wished to be thoroughly educated.^: 
 
 * Ibid. chap. Ixxi. 
 
 f Ibid. 
 
 t " The Rev W. Sheppard wrote, in 1644, to the commissioners of 
 the united colonies of New England, representing the necessity of 
 further assistance for the support of scholars at Cambridge, whose pa 
 rents were needy, and desired them to encourage a general contribu 
 tion through the colonies. The commissioners approved the motion ; 
 
68 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART i. It seems almost incredible, how much was accomplished in this 
 ^~v-^> way, i the very formation of the settlements. On the death of the 
 firs* literary emigrants, natives of Massachusetts, taught in the 
 province, were qualified to fill the void; and not a few of the 
 /irst alumni of Harvard College attained to considerable lite 
 rary and political distinction in the mother country. But what 
 is chiefly remarkable, is the provision made for the education of 
 the body of the people, then and in all future time. As a spe 
 cimen of the arrangements common to the New England 
 colonies, I will state those of Connecticut By her first code 
 of 1639, every town, consisting of fifty families, was obliged 
 by the laws, to maintain a good school, in which reading and 
 writing should be well taught ; and in every country town a 
 good grammar school was instituted. Large tracts of land 
 were given and appropriated by the legislature, to afford them 
 a permanent support. The select men of every town were 
 obliged by law to take care that all the heads of families 
 should instruct their children and servants to read the English 
 tongue well. 
 
 We have read a very eloquent speech of Mr. Brougham, 
 on the Education of the Poor, pronounced in the British House 
 of Commons (May, 1818,) in which he lavishes compli 
 ments and congratulations upon Scotland, for her system of 
 parish schools. He declares, that the attention which she had 
 bestowed, in early times, upon the subject of national educa 
 tion, reflected immortal honour upon her inhabitants, and that 
 it had given them the most enviable characteristics, as well 
 as the happiest fortunes. It was only, however, as he correctly 
 states, in 1696, that the scheme of extending the means of 
 instruction to the poorer classes, was rendered effectual, by 
 what he styles u one of the last and best acts of the Scottish 
 Parliament," " a law justly named among the most precious 
 legacies which it bequeathed to its country." If the merit and 
 the felicity of Scotland on this score,be so great, how is not New 
 England exalted and blessed! where, in the midst of dan 
 gers and labours the most arduous in which a community of 
 men could be involved, the system so justly commended by 
 the British orator, was earlier, and has been, I can venture to 
 assert, more uniformly and completely, carried into effect. 
 
 and, for the encouragement of literature, recommended it to the ge 
 neral courts in the respective colonies, to take it into their considera 
 tion, and to give it general encouragement. The general courts adopt 
 ed the recommendation, and contributions of grain and provisions 
 were annually made, throughout the united colonies, for the charitable 
 end proposed." Trumbull s Hist, of Con. vol. i. ch. viii. 
 
OP THE COLONISTS. 69 
 
 The outcasts of England, in the first part of the seven- SECT. n. 
 teenth century, brought hither with them, that sense of the v^-v-^/ 
 importance and beauty of national education, which their 
 descendants have constantly cherished, and to which England 
 herself, with all her boasted illumination, is, now only and re 
 luctantly, come. It is but lately, that her government and her 
 politicians regarded and treated the universal diffusion of 
 knowledge, the instruction of the lower classes, particularly 
 as a critical, not to say pernicious theory. " About eleven 
 years ago," said Mr. Brougham, in the speech to which I 
 have referred, " Mr. Whitbread broached the subject of the 
 education of the poor. His benevolent views met with great 
 opposition. He had strong prejudices to encounter even in 
 men of high character and talents. It is melancholy and even 
 humiliating to reflect that Mr. Wyndham, himself the model 
 of a finely educated man, should have stood forward as the 
 active opponent of national education. He was followed by 
 persons who, with the servile zeal of imitators, outstripped their 
 master, and maintained, that if you taught ploughmen and me 
 chanics to read, they would thenceforward disdain to work."* 
 
 11. In partitioning the vast region of North America, among 
 mercantile companies and rapacious courtiers, the monarchs 
 of England, were wholly unmindful of the interests of the 
 aborigines. The soil was granted, as though the Indians had 
 no claim or want, distinct from those of the wild beast; and 
 if the settlers had placed them on the same footing, expelled 
 them alike from their lairs, and hunted them together to de 
 struction, they might have pleaded the tacit warrant of the 
 mother country. But they acted in a very different spirit from 
 that in which the royal patents were framed: they purchased 
 with their own estates, the supposed title of the natives. Al 
 most every foot of territory occupied by the whites in New 
 England, at the distance of many years from the formation 
 of their communities, and until wars of extermination were 
 commenced against them by the Indians, was thus acquired. 
 Abundant and well merited honour has been paid to Penn, for 
 his conscientious dealings in this respect. As much is due. 
 
 * "Nobody can have forgotten the murmurs and dissonant clamours, 
 with which the first proposal for communicating the blessings of edu 
 cation to the great body of the people was lately received." Edin 
 burgh Review, 1814. 
 
 " We well remember, when all attempts to educate the lower classes, 
 were at once clamoured down by the real or pretended apprehensions, 
 that such education would disturb the order of society, and would only 
 render the poor discontented and impatient." Bell s Weekly Messen 
 ger, December, 1818 
 
"70 CHARACTER AND MEKITS 
 
 PARTI, however, to the founders of the New England colonies; to 
 ^-v-^ those of Maryland, New Jersey, and North Carolina. The 
 Plymouth colony in 1621, and that of Massachusetts in 1629; 
 in 1633, Calvert and his band of Roman Catholics, and Rogsr 
 Williams and his associates, in 1634, set the example of that 
 Christian course, which is so properly admired and extolled in 
 Penn. " To lay a foundation for a firm and lasting friend 
 ship," says Dummer, after the historians, " they called as 
 semblies of the Indians, to enquire who had a right to dis 
 pose of their lands, and being told that it was their sacherns 
 or princes, they thereupon agreed with them for what districts 
 they bought, publicly, and in^ open market." It became, 
 finally, in all the settlements undertaken by the great proprie 
 tors, a fundamental principle, that territory was to be purchas 
 ed from the aborigines; and this principle did not spring from 
 the plantation office at Whitehall, but was rendered necessary 
 to the interests of the proprietors by the example just men 
 tioned, and the dispositions of the settlers. 
 
 The civilization and conversion of the Indians early shared 
 the attention and the resources of the middle and northern co 
 lonists, and of the southern planters also, though in a less de 
 gree.^ In 1646, the general court of Massachusetts passed 
 an act to encourage the propagation of the gospel among the 
 natives, and associations of clergymen were formed for the 
 purpose, under its auspices. The work was then prosecuted 
 with apostolical ardour and devotion, upon the true maxim 
 in the case that " the Indians must be civilized, in order to 
 being christianized." The attention of the English nation 
 was not excited to the subject, until accounts were published 
 in England, of the remarkable progress of the New England 
 missionaries. In 1649, Winslow, the agent of the united 
 colonies, at the British court, extorted from the parliament, 
 by pressing instances and glowing exhortations, an act, which 
 incorporated a society for the benefit of the " poor heathens," 
 and which recommended to the good people of England and 
 Wales to contribute to its pious objects by a general collection., 
 inasmuch as the "New England people had exhausted their 
 estates in laying the foundations of many hopeful towns and 
 colonies in a desolate wilderness." 
 
 * See Bummer s Befence of the Charters: and Bark s History oi 
 Virginia, vol. ii. ch. ii. The regulations of the assembly of Virginia, in 
 1654, were replete with humanity as well as good sense. Here, as well 
 as in New England, to preserve the Indians from being overreached, 
 all persons were forbidden to purchase land from them, without the ap 
 probation of the assembly. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 71 
 
 Although letters were published besides, at the solicitation SECT. n. 
 of the American agents, from the two universities of Oxford ^-^~v-^> 
 and Cambridge, calling upon the ministers of Britain to stir up 
 their congregations to the promotion of so glorious an under 
 taking, yet, according to Hutchinson, great opposition was 
 expressed to the collection in England; and it went on so 
 slowly that an attempt was made to raise a sum out of the 
 army.* This, too, yielded but a poor harvest. The evangeli 
 cal charity of England and Wales kindled, however, as the 
 fame of the New England missions increased, and at length, 
 on the accession of Charles II., the society, incorporated in 
 1649, found itself in possession of six or seven hundred pounds 
 a year. But as this income arose out of an act of the Common- 
 wealth-purliamentt it was in danger of being confiscated by the 
 crown, and was saved at last, only through the interest which 
 some of the patrons of the institution happened to possess at 
 court. This fund was committed to some of the old magistrates 
 and ministers of New England, and the historians concur in the 
 allegation, that never was one of the nature more faithfully ap 
 plied. Notwithstanding, it was near being wrested from them, 
 in the time of James II., and transferred to much less scrupu 
 lous custody, by authority of the archbishop of Canterbury. 
 
 Meantime the assemblies of New England allotted tracts 
 of land to such Indians as were likely to become Christians; 
 supplied them with building materials and household utensils; 
 and assisted in every way, the unremitting efforts of the mis 
 sionary societies. The bible was translated into the language 
 of the natives, and published in 1661. Schools were opened in 
 the Indian settlements; the children taught to read; and such of 
 these as displayed capacity, placed in the grammar schools of 
 the colonists, and even at the university of Cambridge. To 
 furnish some idea of what was accomplished, I will extract 
 one or two short passages on the subject, from Hutchinson. 
 " In 1660, there were ten Indian towns of such as were called 
 " Praying Indians, in Massachusetts. In 1687, as appears by 
 " a letter of Dr. Increase Mather, there were four Indian as- 
 " semblies in that province, besides the principal church at 
 " Natick.. In Plymouth, besides the principal church at 
 " Mashpee, there were five assemblies in that vicinity, and a 
 <c large congregation at Saconet. There were also six different 
 " societies, probably but small, with an Indian teacher to each, 
 " between the last mentioned and Cape Cod; one church at 
 " Nantucket, and three at Martha s Vineyard. There were 
 " in all six assemblies formed into a church state, having offi- 
 
 * Vol. i. chap. i. 
 
72 CHARACTER AND MERITS 
 
 PART I. " cers, and the ordinances duly administered, and sixteen as- 
 v^-v-^* " semblies which met together for (he worship of God."* 
 
 On these heads, of the occupation of the soil and the treat 
 ment of the Indians our forefathers have the good fortune to 
 be defended in the two works, to which the defamation of the 
 American character may be said to have been specially allot 
 ted: I mean the Annals of Chalmers and the Quarterly Review. 
 There is so much solidity, and, what is still more rare, so 
 much liberality, in their observations, that I may be excused 
 for transcribing them at length. 
 
 " Man," says Chalmers, " having a right to the world from the gift of 
 the beneficent Creator, must possess and use the general estate ac 
 cording to the grant, which commanded him to multiply and to subsist 
 by labour: and little would the earth have been peopled or cultivated, 
 had men continued to live by hunting or fishing, or the mere produc 
 tions of nature. The roving of the erratic tribes over wide extended 
 deserts, does not form a possession which excludes the subsequent oc 
 cupancy of emigrants from countries overstocked with inhabitants. 
 The paucity of their numbers, and their mode of life, render them 
 unable to fulfil the great purposes of the grant. Consistent, therefore, 
 with the great charter to mankind, they may be confined within certain 
 limits. Their rights to the privileges of men, nevertheless, continue 
 the same. And the colonists, who conciliated the affections of the 
 aborigines, and gave a consideration for their territoiy, have acquired 
 the praise due to humanity and justice."! 
 
 " As for the usurpation of territory from the natives, by the Ameri 
 can states, he must be," says the Quarterly Review,i " a feeble moralist, 
 who regards that as an evil: the same principle upon which that usur 
 pation is condemned, would lead to the nonsensical opinion of the Bra- 
 mins, that agriculture is an unrighteous employment, because worms 
 must sometimes be cut by the ploughshare and the spade. It is the 
 order of nature, that beasts should give place to man, and among men 
 the savage to" the civilized ; and no where has this order been carried 
 into effect with so little violence as in North America. Sir Thomas 
 Moore admits jt to be a justifiable cause of war, even in Utopia, if a 
 people, who have territory to spare, will not cede it to those who are 
 in want of room. The Quakers of Pennsylvania have proved the prac 
 ticability of a more perfect system than he had imagined, and the treaty 
 which the excellent founder of the province made with the Indians, 
 has never been broken. If the conduct of the other states towards the 
 natives be fairly examined, there will be found a great aggregate of in 
 dividual wickedness on the part of the traders and back-settlers, but 
 little which can be considered as national guilt. They have never been 
 divided among the colonists like cerfs ; they have never been consumed 
 in mines nor in indigo works; they have never been hunted down for 
 slaves, nor has war ever been made upon them for the purptse of con 
 quest, though the infernal cruelties which they exercise upon theii 
 prisoners might excuse and almost justify a war of extermination." 
 
 * For the evangelical labours generally of the Anglo-Americans among 
 the Indians, see the first volume of a late English work, entitled, "His 
 tory of the Propagation of Christianity among the Heathen, since the 
 Reformation, by the Rev. William Brown." 2 vols. London. See, also, 
 1st vol. Mass. Hist. Collections, for an ample account, by Daniel Gookiii. 
 general superintendant of all the Indians, &c. (1764.) 
 t Book I. i No. 4. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 73 
 
 12. The physical economy of the settlements kept pace SECT.n. 
 with the moral, and is not less the subject of admiration with ^^^^ 
 a few of the more liberal among the English writers. Of this 
 description are the authors of the Modern Universal History, 
 whose account of the North American Colonies is among the 
 best parts of their useful work. In tracing the early progress of 
 Pennsylvania, they dwell with complacency upon u the stu 
 pendous prosperity of a commonwealth so lately planted, and 
 so flourishing by pacific measures." When they have brought 
 the history of New England down to the treaty of Utrecht, 
 (1713,) they speak thus of her condition. 
 
 " The inhabitants of New England, at the peace of Utrecht, 
 to their native love of liberty, added now the polite arts of 
 life; industry was embellished by elegance; and what would 
 be hardly credible in anticnt Greece and Rome, in less than 
 fourscore years, a colony almost unassisted by its mother country, 
 arose in the wilds of America, that if transplanted to Europe, 
 and rendered an independent government, would have made 
 no mean figure amidst her sovereign states."* 
 
 If we ascend with the same accurate reporters to an earlier 
 period in the career of the people of New England, we shall 
 be no less edified. 
 
 " In 1642, the number of English capable to bear arms 
 in New England, were computed to be between 7 or 8000. 
 At this time 50 towns and villages were planted, above 40 
 ministers had houses, and public works of all kinds were 
 erected at public expense. All this could not have beeeji done 
 but through the almost incredible industry of the inhabitants, 
 which had by this time rendered their country a near resem 
 blance of England. Fields were hedged in; gardens, orchards, 
 meadows, and pasture grounds were laid out, and all the im 
 provements of husbandry took place, particularly the sowing 
 of corn and feeding of cattle. As to the commercial part of 
 the inhabitants, they shipped off vast quantities of fish for 
 Portugal, and the Straits; besides supplying other places; 
 England particularly, Scotland and Ireland. They exported 
 bread and beef to the sugar islands, with oil and lumber of 
 all kinds, some of which they sent to the mother country; 
 and what is still more surprising, they carried on great trade 
 in ship building."! 
 
 Some of the features in the physical condition of the Colo 
 nies, noted in the Official Reports, which were made on the 
 subject, to Charles II. must have excited either incredulity or 
 
 * Vol.xxxix. | Ibid. 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
74 CHARACTER AND MERITS, &C. 
 
 PART I. envy in his disquiet council. " We leave every man," said the 
 \^~Y^*S Governor of Rhode Island, " to walk in religion as God shaft 
 persuade his heart; and as for beggars and vagabonds, we 
 have none among us." " The worst cottages of New Eng 
 land," said another inspector, " are lofted: there are no beg 
 gars, and not three persons are put to death annually for civil 
 offences." This representation would have been equally true 
 of the middle colonies. I will not place by the side of it the 
 cotemporary condition of Ireland, under the immediate domi 
 nion of Britain, when the spectacle of what exists there at 
 the present day is too hideous to be endured by the imagina 
 tion. But it may be well to furnish a trifling specimen of the 
 state of some of the agricultural districts of England; and this 
 shall be drawn from the journal of the faithful Evelyn. 
 
 " August 2, 1664. Went to Uppingham, the shire town 
 of Rutland; pretty, and well built of stone, which is a rarity 
 in that part of England, where most of the rural villages are 
 built of mud, and the people living as wretchedly as the most 
 impoverished parts of France, which they much resemble, 
 being idle and sluttish. The country (especially Leicester 
 shire) much in common; the gentry free drinkers." 
 
 " August 14, 1664. Lay at Nottingham. Here I ob 
 served divers to live in the rocks and caves," &c.* 
 
 * Memoirs, vol. i. 
 
75 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 OF THE DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED BY THE COLONISTS. 
 
 1. THE cheering scene which the provinces thus exhi- SECT. III. 
 bited in the beginning of the eighteenth century; the maturity v ^ v ^- 
 and stability of their institutions; the sedateness, humanity, 
 and piety, of their character, are rendered the more creditable 
 and remarkable, by the disadvantages and difficulties of vari 
 ous kinds with which they had to contend. It may be said of 
 them, without exaggeration, that they were the associations of 
 men, of all that have existed of civilized origin, in whom a 
 backwardness in the arrangements and improvements which 
 constitute the dignity and comfort of social life; a total neglect 
 of the higher arts of civilization, and the pursuits of philan 
 thropy; a fierce, relentless, and even ruthless character, would 
 have been most natural and excusable. It was their pe 
 culiar lot, at one and the same time, to clear and cultivate 
 a wilderness; to erect habitations and procure sustenance; to 
 struggle with a new and rigorous climate; to bear up against 
 all the bitter recollections inseparable from distant and lonely 
 exile; to defend their liberties from the jealous tyranny and 
 bigotry of the mother country; to be perpetually assailed by a 
 savage foe, u the most subtle and the most formidable of any 
 people on the face of the earth"* a foe that made war the 
 main business of life, and waged it with forms and barbarities 
 unknown to the experience, and superlatively terrible to the 
 imagination, of a European. 
 
 The general situation of the first emigrants in the midst of 
 a wilderness, and surrounded by an enemy of this description, 
 can be imaged without difficulty, and does not require to be 
 described for those to whom our common histories are familiar. 
 The pictures drawn therein have been realized in part before 
 our eyes, in the settlement of our western wilds. I say in 
 part, because, although the immediate labours and dangers may 
 have been, in some of the modern instances, as great, yet, the 
 distressing, paralyzing influences for the mind, the duration of 
 
 * Colonel Barre, in the House of Commons. 
 
70 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 
 
 PART I. the principal ills, and the obstacles in the way of ultimate 
 ^"-v-^^ success, appear much less in the comparison. The Annals of 
 Chalmers, Stith s History of Virginia, and TrumbulPs Con 
 necticut, furnish a particularly striking and full detail of those 
 circumstances of original adversity common to most of the 
 colonies, which justify any warmth of encomuim on their 
 fortitude, or of admiration at their progress. Well might 
 Lord Chatham exclaim, in 1774, "viewing our fellow sub 
 jects in America, in their original forlorn, and now flour 
 ishing state, they may be cited as illustrious instances to in 
 struct the world what great exertions mankind will make, 
 when left to the free exercise of their own powers." Hav- 
 ang before me the accounts of the historians just mentioned, 
 and present to my mind the various obstacles upon which 
 I am about to touch, I am filled with new wonder at the re 
 sults sketched in my last section. I feel with additional 
 force, the justice of the beautiful commemoration, which 
 the contemplation of them drew from Mr. Burke, in 1764, 
 and which that bright intelligence uttered, not merely as an 
 orator ambitious of the meed of eloquence, but as a philoso 
 pher attentive to the ordinary march of human affairs, and 
 the ordinary efficacy of human powers. " Nothing in the 
 history of mankind," said he, u is like the progress of the 
 American Colonies. For my part, I never cast an eye on 
 their flourishing commerce, and their cultivated and commo 
 dious life, but they seem to me rather antient nations grown 
 to perfection through a long series of fortunate events, and a 
 train of successful industry, accumulating wealth in many 
 centuries, than the colonies of yesterday; than a set of miser 
 able outcasts, a few years ago, not so much sent as thrown 
 out, on the bleak and barren shore of a desolate wilderness, 
 three thousand miles from all civilized intercourse."* 
 
 2. It is conceded by the historians of every party, that as 
 far as the mother country was able, in the confusion of hei 
 domestic affairs, or condescended, in the plenitude of hei 
 greatness, to bend her atUnlion to the colonies, she pursued 
 towards them until the revolution of 1668 at least, a course 
 of direct oppression. The administration of the chartered 
 companies, of the proprietary governors in general, and of the 
 councils and executive representatives of the Stuarts, is ac 
 knowledged on all hands, to have been burdensome and mis 
 chievous, f So far from promoting, it tended to impede the 
 
 * Speech on American Taxation. 
 f See particularly Chalmers passim. 
 
BY THE COLONISTS. 
 
 77 
 
 growth, and break the spirit of the plantations. It was not, SECT. III. 
 therefore, by favour, but in spite of their political connexion v^^v-^^ 
 with Great Britain, that they preserved their liberties, and 
 became what they were at the end of the seventeenth century. 
 The condition of the Carolinas, of New York, and New Jer 
 sey, under the proprietary rule, of Virginia in the hands of the 
 London company, and of the Stuart governors, of this pro 
 vince and Maryland, when in the gripe of the Common 
 wealth, of New Hampshire in that of Mason s agents, and 
 of New England at large during the vice-royalty of Andros, 
 are sufficiently known to all who have read our annals. 
 
 As soon as the long parliament was settled, it manifested 
 a determination to assert and exercise an unlimited authority 
 in the colonies; and by its act of navigation, and other regu 
 lations conceived in the same spirit, threw over them a set of 
 fetters which did not cripple them entirely, only because they 
 were loosely worn, and sometimes laid aside altogether, in 
 defiance of the peering jealousy of the metropolitan govern 
 ment. The community of religious opinion, the great bond 
 of union in those days and a marked predilection for the 
 cause of the Parliament, obtained for New England, no real 
 concession or substantial favour no legal exemption from the 
 navigation act. She escaped its full pressure, not by the par 
 tiality of Cromwell, as has been asserted, but by her own 
 sturdy resolution to be free. Chalmers relates, in an angry 
 tone, that she foiled the Parliament, and outwitted the Pro 
 tector, whom, in fact, while she addressed him in terms of 
 obeisance, she always cautiously avoided to acknowledge in 
 form. Virginia refused to receive the navigation act of 
 1661, and was liable by her devotion to the royal side, to the 
 particular displeasure of the Commonwealth: But we may 
 cite, as a sample of the prevailing temper of mind in Eng 
 land, with regard to all the colonies, the instruction given to 
 the fleet, which the parliament despatched for the reduction 
 of that province, " to employ every act of hostility" in case 
 of refractoriness " to set free such servants and slaves of 
 masters who should oppose the parliamentary government, as 
 would serve as soldiers to subdue them"* a parental expe 
 dient, shewing the antiquity of the feeling, which prompted 
 the observation of Governor Littleton in the debate of the 
 British Parliament of the 26th of October, 1775 " that if a 
 few regiments were sent to the southern colonies of America, 
 the negroes would rise and embrue their hands in the blood of 
 their masters." 
 
 * Chalmers, c. v. Annals. 
 
DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 
 
 PART I. The courageous loyalty of Virginia, although acknowledged 
 v^-v-^ and applauded on the restoration, turned still less to her ad 
 vantage than the republicanism of New England. A scheme 
 of restriction, and a train of measures, more prejudicial and 
 galling than those of Cromwell, were pursued by Charles II. 
 and his successor, towards those who boasted with truth " that 
 they were the last of the King s subjects who renounced, and the 
 first who resumed their allegiance." " With the restoration," 
 says Chalmers, " began a series of evils which long afflicted, 
 and well nigh ruined the plantation of Virginia." One of 
 these evils was, the distribution among certain favourite ad 
 herents of Charles II. in England, of a large portion of the 
 soil, including cultivated estates, held by every right which 
 could vest indefeasible property. " Virginia," says the writer 
 whom I have just quoted, " beheld the Northern JVecfc, con 
 taining one half of the whole, given away to strangers, who 
 had shared neither the danger nor expenses of the original 
 settlement."* 
 
 A spoliation no less iniquitous was attempted, and partly 
 accomplished by Andros, in 1688, in New England. There, 
 on the lawless abolition of all the charters, a declaration 
 followed, that the titles of the colonists to their lands had 
 become void in consequence. By this monstrous fiction of 
 tyranny, the oldest proprietors were summoned to take out, 
 at a heavy cost, new patents for estates acquired by pur 
 chase from the Indians; possessed for near sixty years; de 
 fended against the inroads of a barbarous enemy, at the 
 hazard of life, and improved with incessant toil and im 
 mense expense. Hutchinson remarks,! that according to the 
 computation then made, all the personal estate of Massachu 
 setts would not have paid the charge of the new patents re 
 quired in that colony. A scheme of despotism and rapine s 
 exorbitant, could not be long prosecuted with a people that 
 had made such sacrifices for freedom, and had lost nothing of 
 their pristine fervor. It was quickly terminated by the 
 popular insurrection at Boston, already noticed, which deposed 
 all its abettors, and extinguished the government of James in 
 New England. What is called the rebellion of Bacon, in the 
 annals of Virginia, sprung from grievances of equal injustice, 
 and wanted, I am inclined to think, nothing but ultimate suc 
 cess, to make it, in the estimation of all, equally noble with 
 the bold and characteristic movement of Massachusetts. ;f 
 
 * Auiu.ls, cli. iv. 
 j" Vol. i. c. iii. 
 
 t This opinion is fully sustained by Riirk s narrative of Bacon s rebel 
 lion. See vol. ii. cli. iv. History of Virginia, 
 
BY THE COLONISTS. 79 
 
 3. All the thirteen colonies, with the exception of Georgia? SECT. TIL 
 were established and had attained to considerable strength, v -^^-^- / 
 without the slightest aid from the treasury of the mother coun 
 try. Whatever was expended in the acquisition of territory 
 from the Indians, proceeded from the private resources of the 
 European adventurers. Neither the crown, nor the parlia 
 ment of England, made any compensation to the original mas 
 ters of the soil, or could lay claim to a share in the creation of 
 the rich stock and fair landscape, which so soon bore testimony 
 to the industry and intelligence of the planters. The set 
 tlement of the province of Massachusetts Bay alone, cost 
 =200,000 an enormous sum at the era in which it was ef 
 fected. Lord Baltimore expended =40,000 for his contingent 
 in the establishment of his colony in Maryland: on that of 
 Virginia immense wealth was lavished; and we are told by 
 Trumbull, that the first planters of Connecticut consumed great 
 estates in purchasing lands from the Indians, and making set 
 tlements, in that province, besides large sums in the purchase 
 of their patents, and the right of pre-emption. 
 
 Within a few years after their debarkation, the settlers of 
 Virginia, of New England, and of the Carolinas, were assailed 
 by warlike tribes, decuple their number, and furiously bent on 
 their destruction. But the government of the mother country 
 extended no succour to them in these contests;* she furnished 
 neither troops nor money; built no fortifications; entered into 
 no negociations for them; she manifested little sympathy or in 
 terest in the fate of her offspring. The sense of extreme dan 
 ger, and the despair of aid from abroad, gave birth, in 1643, 
 in New England, to the confederacy, which I have already 
 noticed, and without which, in all probability, the colonies 
 of that region would have been either extirpated, or miserably 
 crippled. Some of the most considerable of the Indian wars 
 were immediately brought upon them by the rashness and 
 cupidity of the royal governors. That, for instance, which 
 is styled king William s war, memorable in the annals of 
 New Hampshire particularly was owing to a wanton, pre- 
 
 * This, and the facts stated in the preceding paragraph, were ac 
 knowledged in acts of parliament, and repeatedly asserted to the British 
 government by the colonists, in their petitions, before as well as dur 
 ing the eighteenth century. Franklin told the House of Commons, in 
 1766, on his examination "The Americans defended themselves when 
 they were but a handful, and the Indians much more numerous. They 
 continually gained ground, and drove the Indians over the mountains, 
 without any troops sent to their assistance from Great Britain." The 
 number of Indian warriors in New England on the arrival of the first 
 settlers, has been computed at eighteen thousand. 
 
80 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 
 
 PART I. datory expedition of Andros, in 1688, against the possessions 
 ^~v-^> of a French individual, situate between Penobscot and Nova 
 Scotia. 
 
 It is a remarkable trait in the history of the New England 
 settlers, that they did not seek, and appear to have been even 
 unwilling to receive, assistance from the mother country. 
 The magnanimity of these jealous exiles is placed in full 
 contrast with the selfishness of the British Court, by the letter 
 of reproof for their backwardness in solicitation, of the date 
 of 1676, from the earl of Anglesey, which Hutchinson has 
 copied into his history.* "I received your letter," said the 
 royal privy-councillor to the governor of Massachusetts, " in 
 timating the troubles unexpectedly brought upon you by the 
 Indians. I must chide you, and that whole people of New 
 England, that (as if you were independent of my master s 
 crown, needed not his protection, or had deserved ill of him. 
 as some have not been wanting to suggest, and use testimony 
 thereof,) from the first hour of God s stretching his hanc 
 against you to this time, you have not as yet, as certainly be 
 came you, made your addresses to the king s majesty, or somt: 
 of his ministers, &c. I can write but by guess; yet it is not 
 altogether groundlessly reported, that you are too tenacious oi 
 what is necessary for your preservation; that you are poor, 
 and yet proud. I know his majesty hath power sufficient as 
 well as will, to help his colonies in distress, as others have 
 experienced, and you may in good time. He can send ships 
 to help you, &c. and there are many who will not only be in 
 tercessors to the throne of grace, but to Gotfs vicegerent also, 
 if you are not wanting to yourselves, and failing in that duti 
 ful applicatioD which subjects ought to make to their sove 
 reigns in such cases." 
 
 Another striking illustration of the comparative dispositions 
 of the parties, is afforded in the fact, which we have upon 
 the authority of Hutchinson,! that the collections made in 
 the colony of Massachusetts for the relief of the sufferers by 
 the great fire in London, and on other occasions of foreign 
 calamity, at least equalled the whole sum bestowed upon her 
 from abroad, from the first settlement, to the abrogation of her 
 charter by James II. 
 
 While the people of New England were providing for their 
 own safety, -with consummate judgment, and performing pro 
 digies of valour in innumerable rencounters with the enemy, 
 they had not even the consolation of escaping the reproach 
 
 * Vol. i. chap. ii. f Ibid. 
 
BY THE COLONISTS. 81 
 
 of pusillanimity, from the mother country. The court of James SECT. in. 
 II. besides withholding assistance, on the pretext that it was v^-v-^- 
 not implored, taxed them with wanting hearts to make use of 
 their means of defence. A part of the nation concurred in 
 this injustice; which, even at this distance of time, causes the 
 breast to swell with indignation, when the bold expeditions 
 of these colonists, the prodigal effusion of their blood, and the 
 hardships of their warfare, are passed in review. This 
 emotion is not allayed, as we read, in descending through 
 their history, that on the occasion of the bill, introduced into 
 the British Parliament, in 1715, for the destruction of all the 
 charter governments, the first of the charges brought against 
 them was, " the having neglected the defence of the inhabi 
 tants !" To convey an idea of the severity and destructive- 
 ness of the hostilities to which they were constantly exposed, 
 I will transcribe from the Annals of Holmes, the summary 
 which he makes, of the evils of the war waged by the New 
 England Confederacy, in 1675, with Philip, sachem of the 
 Wampanoags. " In this short, but tremendous war, about 
 six hundred of the inhabitants of New England, composing its 
 principal strength, were either killed in battle, or murdered by 
 the enemy; twelve or thirteen towns were entirely destroyed; 
 and about six hundred buildings, chiefly dwelling houses, were 
 burnt. In addition to these calamities, the colonies contracted 
 an enormous debt." 
 
 Hutchinsoj^states^that the accounts which were transmitted 
 to England, of the distresses of the province of Massachusetts 
 Bay during this contest, although they might excite compas 
 sion in the breasts of some, yet were improved by others, 
 to render the colonies more obnoxious."* In fact, in the 
 very height of the calamity at the moment when New 
 England was putting forth all her strength for the retention of 
 the soil, the merchants and manufacturers of the mother 
 country were clamorous, and the committee of plantations 
 tasked, for measures of rigour against her, on the ground that 
 her " inhabitants had encouraged foreigners to traffic with 
 them, and supplied the other plantations with those foreign 
 productions which ought only to have been sent to England." 
 While the earth was yet reeking with the carnage of the six 
 hundred brave yeomen, and the smoke still issued from the 
 ruins of the six hundred dwellings, a general scheme of op 
 pression and disfranchisement was projected at the British 
 Court. It prescribed, without delay, that no Mediterranean 
 
 * Vol.i. c.ii. 
 VOL. I.L 
 
8 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 
 
 PART i. passes should be granted to New England, to protect her ves- 
 ^^v-^^ sels against the Turks, till it was seen what dependence she 
 would acknowledge on his Britannic majesty, and whether his 
 custom houses would be received." 
 
 Most of the colonies had to subdue, and nearly to extermi 
 nate, in the outset, fierce and populous nations, aiming, within 
 their bosom, at their utter destruction. Almost every indivi 
 dual of the settlers became a soldier, and was kept perpetually 
 on the alert: the musket accompanied the plough, and the 
 employment of these may be said to have been unremittingly 
 alternate. It is not too much to affirm, that there was more 
 of military effort and suffering on the part of New England, 
 for the first half century of her history, than among any equal 
 number of the civilized inhabitants of Europe within the same 
 period. The colonists did not merely await, and repel with 
 great slaughter, the assaults of their indefatigable enemy; 
 but they marched to their head quarters, attacked them in 
 their fortifications, and pursued them through all their re 
 cesses. To campaigns of wasting hardship, and sanguinary 
 strife, were added general massacres, prepared by the Jn- 
 , dians, with the utmost refinement of dissimulation, during 
 the intervals of their professed submission. We are told 
 by Dummer, that, in his time, (1715,) many in England, 
 who were unable to deny that the colonists had defended 
 themselves, without being burdensome to the crown, "en 
 deavoured to depreciate their conquests, as gained over a rude 
 and barbarous people, unexercised to arms." The general 
 reply of the eloquent advocate, on this head, contains a true 
 representation of the case, and teaches us a solemn duty. " If 
 " it be considered, that the New England forces contended 
 " with enemies bloody in their nature and superior in number, 
 " that they followed them in deep morasses; that the assailants 
 " were not provided with cannon, nor could approach by 
 " trenches, but advanced on level ground: and if to this be 
 " added, the vast fatigues of their campaigns, where officers 
 . " and soldiers lay on the snow, without any shelter over their 
 " heads, in the most rigorous winters; I say, if a just conside- 
 " ration be had of these things, envy itself must acknowledge 
 u that their enterprises were hardy and their successes glori- 
 " ous. And though the hrave commanders who led on these 
 ic troops and most of them died in the bed of honour, must 
 " not. shine in the British annals^ yet their memory ought to 
 a be sacred m their own country, and there at least be trans- 
 " mitted to the latest posterity."* 
 
 * Defence of the Charters, 
 
BY THE COLONISTS. 83 
 
 . At the period of the accession of William to the British SECT. in. 
 throne, this scourge of a savage foe no longer existed in the ^^^-^^ 
 heart of the settlements; but obstacles to civil labour, and 
 causes of inordinate mortality, of the same kind, were even 
 multiplied. From the year 1690, to the peace of Paris, in 
 1763, the colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia, were 
 engaged in almost unremitting hostilities with the aborigines 
 on their borders. Their whole western frontier was a scene 
 of havoc and desolation. After the establishment of the French , 
 at Fort Du Quesne, in 1754, the tribes of the Ohio assailed 
 and laid waste the western settlements of the middle provinces; 
 and it is calculated that the colonies lost altogether by war, 
 not less than twenty thousand adults, in the interval from that 
 period to the peace of 1763. 
 
 About the year 1690, the French in the north, and the 
 Spaniards in the south, began to act as the instigators and 
 auxiliaries of the savages, and continued for seventy-three 
 years to be the instruments of infinite distress and mischief 
 to the Anglo-Americans. Their enmity was occasioned by 
 the connexion of the latter with Great Britain; and their 
 hostilities arose directly, and date exactly, from her quarrels 
 with France. It is doubtful whether, if that connexion 
 had not existed, they would have molested their neighbours. 
 In 1644, the season of the total dereliction of the British pro 
 vinces by the mother country, a formal treaty of amity was 
 concluded between the French of Acadie, and the commis 
 sioners of the united colonies of New England. The French 
 of Canada sent an agent, in 1647, to solicit aid from Massa 
 chusetts against the Mohawks; which was refused from an un 
 willingness to assist in removing, what might serve as a barrier 
 between the English and French colonies, in case of a rupture 
 between the two mother countries. A year after, when it was 
 proposed by New England, to the governor and council of 
 Canada, that the parties should contract an engagement to 
 maintain perpetual peace, whatever might be the relations of 
 the parent states, the French entered with alacrity into a ne 
 gotiation for the purpose. It failed only because they required 
 the English colonists to aid them against the Iroquois; and they 
 renewed it themselves by plenipotentiaries, at a short interval 
 of time, without success.* These facts warrant the supposi 
 tion, that, but for their allegiance to the British crown, the 
 provinces would have been able to avert the animosities which 
 proved their severest affliction, and even, perhaps, to make 
 auxiliaries of the French and Spanish dependencies. It seems, 
 
 * Universal History, vol. xxxix. p. 448. 
 
$ DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 
 
 PART. I. moreover, upon an attentive review of the history of France, 
 v ^-v-^ during the seventeenth century, almost certain, that she would 
 not herself have attempted, in that period, to arrest their pro 
 gress: Afterwards, they might have defied her powers. 
 
 They could, at all events, hold the mother country re 
 sponsible, for the long train of ills, which they suffered from 
 the neighbourhood of the French, by referring to the treaty of 
 1632, between Charles I. and Louis XIII. On this occasion, 
 Charles restored to France, absolutely and without demarca 
 tion of limits, " all the places possessed by the English in 
 New France, Lacadie, and Canada, particularly Port Royal, 
 Quebec, and Cape Breton." An officer, in the British service, 
 Sir David Kirk had, under a commission from the crown, made 
 himself master of Quebec, in 1628, during the war between 
 England and France. " To this fatal treaty," says a British 
 writer,* " may be truly ascribed all the disputes we have had 
 " ever since with France, concerning North America; cur 
 u king and his ministers being sadly outwitted by Richlieu s 
 " superior dexterity. The three places delivered up to France 
 " were not, it is true, thought of the same importance then, 
 " as they are since found to be; yet it was very obvious, even 
 " then, to any considerate observer, that as those French co- 
 " Ionics should increase in people and commerce, those places 
 " would be of the utmost importance to France, and very 
 u dangerous to England; but more especially, our parting with 
 " Port Royal and Cape Breton is never to be excused, as the 
 " possession of them by the French gave them a fair pretext 
 " for settling on the south side of the river St. Lawrence, and 
 " thereby claiming the rest of Nova Scotia bordering on Eng- 
 cc land; whereas, had the French been strictly confined to their 
 " original settlements on the north side of that river, the coun- 
 " try is so bad and the trade thereof so indifferent, that before 
 " now they would probably have quite abandoned them." 
 
 4. At a very early period, the mother country cast the re 
 proach which she has constantly repeated, against the colo 
 nists, of provoking the Indian wars, and acquiring the domi 
 nion of the Indian territory by fraud as well as force. Dum 
 mer s Defence of the Charters, written at the commencement 
 of thT Tastcentiary, treats of this " unworthy aspersion," as the 
 honest author styles it, and as he proves it to be, by unanswer 
 able suggestions. With respect to New England particularly, 
 
 * Macpherson s Annals, vol. ii. p. 372. Chalmers holds nearly tk : 
 same language. 
 
BY THE COLONISTS. 
 
 85 
 
 what he asserts is susceptible of abundant evidence that " she SECT. m. 
 sought to gain the natives by strict justice in her dealings with ^^^ ^^ 
 them, as well as by all the endearments of kindness and huma 
 nity;" that "she did not commence hostilities, nor even take up 
 arms of defence, until she found by experience that no other 
 means would prevail" and, " that nothing could oblige the 
 Indians to peace and friendship, after they conceived a jealousy 
 of the growing powers of the English." The congress of the 
 New England league was particularly authorized, to prescribe 
 rules for the conduct of the colonists, towards the natives; and 
 its legislation on this head, was tempered with as much for 
 bearance and mercy, as a due regard for self-preservation, 
 would possibly admit. So rigid were its enactments against 
 private violence, and so strict was the execution of them, that 
 we have an instance of three settlers being put to death at the 
 same time, for the murder of a single Indian. 
 
 The New England colonies, far from being exasperated, as 
 was natural, by the desperate and harassing nature of their 
 struggle with the aborigines, into an obdurate resentment and 
 mortal hate against the whole race, exerted, as I have al 
 ready had occasion to state, unbounded zeal and generosity, 
 in improving the condition, and refining the character, of 
 that portion of them whom they were able to propitiate. 
 I believe the other provinces, to whom the British charge was 
 extended, and who have been more particularly the object 
 of it, in recent times, to be capable of vindication; and I am 
 convinced, that the American writers, who have maintained 
 the contrary doctrine, have either suffered themselves to be 
 hoodwinked by prejudice, or have not traced our Indian rela 
 tions in the detail requisite for the formation of a sound opi 
 nion. But if the point were not determinable by history, we 
 might at once infer from the general aims and obvious interests, 
 the weakness and the wants, of the early colonists, that they 
 were not the aggressors in the Indian wars. Be this, for the pre 
 sent, as it may, it cannot be denied, that after hostilities had be 
 gun to rage; after the savage had been roused to distrust and ven 
 geance the case of the settlers was one of the most absolute 
 self defence of extreme necessity. |In the contest which I 
 have noticed, between Philip and New England, and in the 
 similar struggles in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the 
 very existence of these provinces, respectively, was at stake, 
 and often in suspense. Those English writers who so loudly 
 inveigh against the North American colonies for their treat 
 ment of the Indians, may be defied to detect in their annals, 
 an expedient for the destruction of their inveterate enemy, like 
 
86 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 
 
 PART i. that of the employment of the Spanish bloodhounds in Jamaica, 
 v-^-v-^ to, subdue the Maroon negroes, in the year 1730, and again to 
 wards the close of the eighteenth century. Certainly, there is 
 no argument urged by Dallas* or Bryan Edwards, to justify 
 the recourse, on the part of the government of that island, to 
 such fell auxiliaries, which would not have been available for 
 the people of New England; which might not, indeed, receive 
 additional force from their situation.! The pride of manhoodj 
 Uie innate sympathies of kind, and the influence of religion, 
 with the hardy and virtuous Puritans, must have rendered it 
 impossible for them to imitate, while they professed to abhor, 
 the worst of the atrocities practised by the Spaniards on the 
 aborigines of the West Indies. 
 
 But, in order to convict the accusers, of a guilt of inhuma 
 nity, far deeper than any with which they have ventured to 
 charge their u kinsmen of America," it is hot necessary to 
 refer to their alliance, in Jamaica, with the Spanish chasseurs, 
 or to their military administration in Hindostan. I would 
 challenge the closest scrutiny into our history, for a parallel to 
 the measure which the British commanders adopted, after the 
 reduction of Nova Scotia, in 1755, of transplanting, and dis 
 persing through the British colonies, the French inhabitants 
 of that province. This is a transaction in which the point at 
 issue was, not existence, but the more easy retention of a con 
 quest; in which the victims were, not blood-thirsty and un- 
 tameable savages, or ferocious banditti, who had aimed at the 
 extermination, and whose presence seemed incompatible with 
 the safety, of the conquerors; but " a mild, frugal, industrious, 
 pious people," of whom only a few had committed any offence, 
 and who, generally, could be taxed with no more, than having 
 indirectly favoured the cause, and preferred the dominion, of 
 their own nation. It has always appeared to me, that the 
 reason of state was never more cheaply urged, or more odiously 
 
 * History of the Maroons, by R. C. Dallas, vol. ii. letters ix. and x. 
 History of the West Indies, by Bryan Edwards, Appendix to Book II. 
 
 f The Edinburgh Review, (No. 4,) in condemning 1 the proceedings of 
 the Jamaica government, remarks, " If, by our own policy, iue have filled 
 our colonies -with barbarians, let us not aggravate the original crime," &c. 
 The American colonists did not originally fill the country whicli they 
 acquired, with the barbarians whom they expelled : they did not even, 
 for the most part, intrude upon them voluntarily ; but were driven by 
 the lash of domestic tyrants. 
 
 $ " Some gentlemen," says Bryan Edwards, " even thought that the 
 co-operation of dogs with British troops, would give not only a cruel, 
 but also a very dastardly complexion to the proceedings of government. * 
 
 $ See Note E. 
 
BY THE COLONISTS. 87 
 
 triumphant, than on this occasion; that no proceeding in rela- SECT. ill. 
 tion to the Indians, for which we have been rebuked by the v-x-v^/ 
 British, either before or since our independence, could, by any 
 ingenuity or eloquence, be made to wear an aspect of so much 
 wantonness and barbarity, as the case of the French neutrals 
 presents in the simplest form of recital. Although I may seem 
 to fall into a wide digression, or an awkward anticipation, I 
 will venture to exhibit it here in some detail, as matter of 
 history worthy of being more generally and accurately known. 
 Retribution is due to all the parties; to those who perpetrated 
 the crime, and to the memory of the sufferers, who, with the 
 Americans that received them, have been aspersed, in order 
 to weaken the impression of its enormity. 
 
 The most particular account which I have found of this 
 transaction, is given in Minot s Continuation of the History 
 of Massachusetts.* The historian drew his narrative from 
 the manuscript journal of the American commander of the 
 Massachusetts troops, to whom the merit of the conquest of 
 Nova Scotia was due. This officer, General Winslow, of 
 an unexceptionable and elevated character, left upon record, 
 the expression of his disgust and horror, in submitting to act 
 the part which was imposed upon him by the British authori 
 ties. I transcribe some of the shocking details from Minot. 
 
 " The French force in Nova Scotia being 1 subdued, it only remained 
 to determine the measures which ought to be taken with respect to the 
 inhabitants, who were about seven thousand in number, and whose 
 character and situation were so peculiar, as to distinguish them from 
 almost every other community that has suffered under the scourge 
 of war." 
 
 " They were the descendants of those French inhabitants of Nova 
 Scotia, who after the treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, by which the province 
 was ceded to England, were permitted to hold their lands, on condition 
 of making a declaration of allegiance to their new sovereign, which 
 acknowledgment of fidelity was given under an express stipulation that 
 they and their posterity should not be required to bear arms, either 
 against their Indian neighbours, or transatlantic countrymen. This con 
 tract was at several subsequent periods revived, and renewed to their 
 children ; and such was the notoriety of the compact, that for half a 
 century, they bore the name, and with some few exceptions, maintained 
 the character of neutrals." 
 
 " The character of this people was mild, frugal, industrious and pious ; 
 and a scrupulous sense of the indissoluble nature of their ancient obli 
 gation to their king, was a great cause of their misfortunes. To this 
 ^ye may add an unalterable attachment to their religion, a distrust of the 
 right of the English to the territory which they inhabited, and the in 
 demnity promised them at the surrender of fort Beau -sej our, where it 
 was stipulated that they should be left in the same situation as they were 
 in when the army arrived, and not be punished for what they had done 
 afterwards." 
 
 "Such being the circumstances of the French neutrals, as they were 
 
 * Cltap. x. 
 
88 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 
 
 PART I. called, the lie tenant governor of Nova Scotia, and his council, aided 
 v^^ ~-^_. by the admiral Boscawen and Mostyn, assembled to consider of the 
 necessary measures to be adopted towards them. If the whole were 
 to sufler for the conduct of a part, the natural punishment would 
 have been to have forced them from their country, and left them to go 
 wherever they pleased; but from the situation of the province of 
 Canada, it was obvious that this would have been to recruit it with 
 soldiers, who would immediately have returned in arms upon the 
 British frontiers. It was, therefore, determined to remove and disperse 
 this whole people among the British colonies, where they could nc t 
 unite in an* offensive measures, and where they might be naturalized 
 to the government and country." 
 
 " The execution of this unusual and general sentence was allotted 
 chiefly to the New England forces; the commander of which, from the 
 humanity and firmness of his character, was the best qualified to cany 
 it into effect. It was without doubt, as he himself declared, disagree 
 able to his natural make and temper; and his principles of implicit 
 obedience as a soldier were put to a severe test by this ungrateful kind of 
 duty, which required an ungenerous cunning, and subtle kind of seve 
 rity, calculated to render the Acadians subservient to the English in 
 terests to the latest hour. They were kept entirely ignorant of the r 
 destiny until the moment of their captivity, and were overawed or 
 allured to labour at the gathering in of their harvest, which was secretly 
 allotted to the use of their conquerors." 
 
 " The orders from lieutenant governor Lawrence to captain Mur 
 ray, who was first on the station, with a plagiarism of the language, 
 without the spirit of scripture, directed that if these people behaved 
 amiss, they should be punished at his discretion; and if any attempts 
 were made to destroy or molest the troops, he should take an eye for 
 an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and in short, life for life, from the 
 nearest neighbour where the mischief should be performed." 
 
 " The convenient moment having arrived, the inhabitants were called 
 into the different ports to hear the King s orders, as they were termed. 
 At Grand Pre, where colonel Winslow had the immediate command, 
 four hundred and eighteen of their best men assembled. These being 
 shut into the church, (for that too had become an arsenal,) he placed 
 himself with his officers in the centre, and addressed them thus : 
 
 " GENTLEMEN, 
 
 " I have received from his excellency governor Lawrence, the 
 king s commission, which I have in my hand; and by his orders you are 
 convened together, to manifest to you his Majesty s final resolution to 
 the French inhabitants of this his Province of Nova Scotia." 
 
 " The part of duty I am nota upoji, though necessary, is very disagreeable 
 to my natural make and temper, as I know it must be grievous to you wA 
 are of the same species" 
 
 " But it is not my business to animadvert, but to obey such orders as \ 
 receive, and therefore, without hesitation, I shall deliver you his 
 Majesty s orders and instructions, namely, That your lands and tene 
 ments, cattle of all kinds, and live stock of all sorts, are forfeited to the 
 crown, with all other your effects, saving your money and household 
 goods, and you yourselves to be removed from this his province." 
 
 " Thus it is peremptorily his Majesty s orders, that the whole French 
 inhabitants of these districts be removed, and I am, through his Majes 
 ty s goodness, directed to allow you liberty to carry off your money and 
 household goods, as many as you can without discommoding the vessels 
 you go in. I shall do every thing in my power, that all those goods kz 
 secured to you, and that >ou are not molested in carrying them off : 
 also that whole families shall go in Jhe same vessel; and make th s 
 
BY THE COLONISTS. 89 
 
 remove, which I am sensible must give you a great deK of trouble, as SECT. III. 
 easy as his Majesty s service will admit ; and hope, that . 1 whatever part v^"v*v* 
 of the world you may fall, you may be faithful subjects, a peaceable and 
 happy people." 
 
 " I must also inform you, that it is his Majesty s pleasure that you 
 remain in security, under the inspection and direction of the troops that 
 I have the honour to command." 
 
 " And he then declared them the King s prisoners. 
 
 " As some of these wretched inhabitants escaped to the woods, all 
 possible measures were adopted to force them back to captivity. The 
 country was laid waste to prevent their subsistence. In the district of 
 Minas alone, there were destroyed 255 houses, 276 barns, 155 out 
 houses, 11 mills, and 1 church ; and the friends of those who refused to 
 come in, were threatened as the victims of their obstinacy. In short, so 
 operative were the terrors that surrounded them, that of twenty-four 
 young men who deserted from a transport, twenty-two were glad to 
 return of themselves, the others being shot by sentinels ; and one of their 
 friends who -was supposed to have been accessary to their escape, having been, 
 carried on shore, to behold the destruction of his house and effects, -which were 
 burned in his presence, as a punishment for Ms temerity, and perfidious aid 
 to his comrades^ Being embarked by force of the musquetry, they were 
 dispersed, according to the original plan, among the several "British 
 Colonies." 
 
 Most of the English historians have slurred over this har 
 rowing drama. It is even asserted in Smollett s Continuation 
 of Hume, and in the modern Universal History, that the 
 Acadians were merely disarmed, and then suffered to remain 
 in tranquillity! Entick, in his " General History of the Seven 
 Years War," is somewhat more candid; and for the further 
 edification of my readers, I will proceed to quote the language 
 in which this reverend author of no mean authority relates 
 and glosses so portentous an iniquity. As, moreover, his ac 
 count is the only one through which the affair is circumstan 
 tially known to the readers of English history, I am disposed 
 to improve the opportunity, of placing by the side of it, the 
 vindication of those whom he calumniates. 
 
 " In Nova Scotia, matters did not favour the French at all in the 
 year 1755. General Lawrence pursued his success, and was obliged to 
 use much severity, to extirpate the French neutrals and Indians, who 
 refused to conform to the laws of Great Britain, or to swear allegiance 
 to our sovereign, and had engaged to join the French troops in the 
 spring, expected to arrive from old France, as early as possible, on 
 that coast or at Louisbourg ; some of whom with ammunition, stores, 
 &C. fell into the hands of our cruizers off Cape Breton. General Law 
 rence did not only pursue those dangerous inhabitants with fire and sword, 
 laying the country waste, burning their dwellings, and carrying off their 
 stock ; but he thought it expedient for his Majesty s service to transport 
 the French neutrals, so as to entirely extirpate a people, that only 
 waited an opportunity to join the enemy." 
 
 " This measure was very commendable. But the execution of it was 
 not qviite so prudent. The method taken by the general to secure the 
 province from this pest, was to distribute them, in number about seven 
 thousand, among the British Colonies, in that rigorous season of winter, 
 almost naked, and without monev or effects to help themselves. In which 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
90 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 
 
 PART. I. distribution, too many were transported to those colonies, where they 
 ^^^^v might with greatease get to the French forts, or might facilitate any 
 enterprize from those forts, on the back of our provinces on the south 
 of the bay of St. Lawrence. Besides, it was exercising a power he had 
 no right unto. For his command reached not beyond the limits of 
 Nova Scotia; and this was loading each government, into which those 
 neutrals were transported, with an arbitrary and great expense." 
 
 " This may be exemplified in the case of Pennsylvania. The quota 
 imposed on that province was 415, men, women, and children. They 
 landed in a most deplorable condition at Philadelphia, to be maintained 
 by the province, or turned loose to beg their bread : and this city not 
 being above two hundred miles distant from fort Dti Quesne, it was very 
 probable the men might get unto, and join their countrymen at that 
 fort; or strengthen the parties, which hovered about the frontiers, 
 and were continually laying waste the back settlements. The govern 
 ment in order to get clear of the charge, such a company of miserable 
 wretches would require to maintain them, proposed to sell them with 
 their own consent : but when this expedient fer their support was 
 oft ered to their consideration, the transports rejected it with indigna 
 tion, alledging, That they were prisoners, and expected to be maintained 
 as such, and not forced to labour. They farther said, that they had not 
 violated their oath of fidelity ; which, by the treaty of Utrecht, they 
 were obliged to take ; and that they were ready to renew that oath, 
 but that a new oath of obedience having been prescribed to them, by 
 which, they apprehended the neutrals would be obliged to bear arms 
 against the French, they could not take it, and thought they could not 
 be compelled to do it. Thus Gerteral Lawrence cleared the country of the 
 French neutrals; and the Indians in their intertst, who hud been very 
 troublesome, being most of them Roman Catholics, retired to Canada 
 for protection."* 
 
 The first remark I would make on this narrative of Entick. 
 is, that the plan which he ascribes to the government of Penn 
 sylvania, of selling the exiles, had no existence, and was im 
 possible, consistently with its principles and powers. That 
 government, and the inhabitants of Philadelphia, when near 
 five hundred of them were landed in a plight of misery which 
 beggars all description, received them with the liveliest com 
 passion, and provided for their wants with the readiest libera 
 lity.! They were immediately committed to the charge of 
 
 * Vol.i. p. 385. 
 
 "I" I have before me an exemplification of the original subscription pa 
 per for their relief; and a list of the names of some of them, which runs 
 thus : the Widow Landry, blind and sickly; her daughter, Bonne Landry 
 blind ; Widow Coprit, has a cancer in her breast ; Widow Seville, alway> 
 sickly; Ann Leblanc, old and sickly; Widow Leblanc, foolish and 
 sickly; the two youngest orphan children of Philip Melanson ; three 
 orphan children of Paul Bujauld, the eldest sickly, a boy foolish, and r- 
 girl with an infirmity in lier mouth ; Haptist Galerm s foolish child . 
 Joseph Vincent, in a consumption; Widow Gautram, sickly, with a 
 young child; Joseph Benoit, old and sickly; Peter Bressay, has a rup 
 ture, &.c. ; Peter Vincent, himself and wife sickly three children, one 
 blind, and very young, &.c. Such was the treatment which they had ex 
 perienced, that notwithstanding the charitable attentions which they re 
 ceived after their arrival in Philadelphia, more than one half of them dice 
 in a short time. From these particulars we may judge how far they wen- 
 fitted " to strengthen the parties which hovered about the frontiers !" 
 
BF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 91 
 
 WBMI v/ii/y. Vll 
 
 philanthropy, 
 lie, who have 
 
 the conservators of the poor, to be lodged and fed at the pub- SECT III. 
 lie expense; while benevolent individuals of the society of ^^^v-^- 
 Friends, made and collected considerable subscriptions for 
 their more comfortable subsistence. One of the almoners of 
 the city, on this occasion, Anthony Bcnezet, a model of 
 r, with whose character those of the English Pub- 
 have read Clarkson s History of the Abolition of the 
 Slave Trade, cannot pretend to be unacquainted devoted 
 himself to the alleviation of both the physical and mental 
 wretchedness of the unexpected guests. It is, probably, from 
 an anecdote connected with his parental exertions in their 
 favour, that arose the idea which Entick embraced, respect 
 ing the conduct of the government of Pennsylvania. This 
 anecdote is thus told by Mr. Roberts Vaux in his excellent 
 biography of Benezet. "Such was his assiduity, and care of 
 them, that it produced a jealousy in the mind of one of the 
 oldest men among them, of a very novel and curious descrip 
 tion; which was communicated to a friend of Benezet s 
 c it is impossible^ said the Acadian, that all this kindness 
 is disinterested; J\fr. Benezet must certainly intend to recom 
 pense himself by treacherously selling usS When their patron 
 and protector was informed of this suspicion ? it was so far 
 from producing an emotion of anger, or an expression of indig 
 nation, that he lifted up his hands and laughed immode 
 rately." 
 
 The reverend historian was right in affirming that the British 
 commandant in Nova Scotia, imposed an arbitrary and heavy, 
 and he might have added, unrequited expense upon the colo 
 nies, among which the neutrals were distributed; but he 
 laboured under an error in supposing that General Lawrence 
 " cleared the country" at once. As many were sent away in 
 1755, as could be disposed of immediately. A considerable 
 number remained, with whom the same course was pursued a 
 few years afterwards, upon the inordinate alarm created by 
 the landing of the French in Newfoundland. 
 
 In the first instance, seven thousand of the obnoxious com 
 munity, as Entick relates, were thus torn from their rustic 
 homes, and transported in a way worthy of being compared 
 with the " middle passage." The quota then assigned to 
 Massachusetts exceeded one thousand. a This extraordinary 
 tax," says her historian Minot,* " was about to be laid anew 
 upon the Province, in 1762, by the arrival of nine ships from 
 Halifax, with 700 French neutrals on board. By an examen 
 of these people in the beginning of the year 1760, there was 
 
 * Vol. ii. ch. v. 
 
y * DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 
 
 PART i. found to be 1017 of them in the Province, of whom only 394 
 
 v -^v~^/ were a b] e to labour. For the expense of subsisting them, the 
 
 Province could procure no allowance from Parliament, and so 
 
 had become subject to indefinite taxation in this way at the 
 
 discretion of the commander in Nova Scotia." 
 
 No proof has ever been produced, none exists, to support 
 the charges which Entick prefers against the sufferers of 
 having engaged to join the French troops, and refused abso 
 lutely to take the oath of allegiance to the British sovereign. 
 On the other hand, their own allegations, as he reports them, 
 and which give them strong titles to respect, are upheld by 
 the tenor of the official declarations of the British authorities 
 in Nova Scotia, who pleaded, little more in substance, than 
 the positive orders of their government, and a supposed over 
 ruling necessity, as regarded the more secure dominion of 
 that territory. Tradition is fresh and positive among us 
 respecting the guileless, peaceful, and scrupulous character 
 of this injured people. The impression which it made here, 
 upon every one who held intercourse with them, contributed 
 to render more intense, the compassion raised by the misera 
 ble vicissitude of their fortunes, and the extreme poignancy 
 of their grief. Their descendants, now scattered over these 
 States, receive, universally from them the same tale of in 
 justice and woe. It is consigned in the Petition which they 
 transmitted from Pennsylvania to the King of Great Britain, 
 and which bears intrinsic evidence, too strong to be resisted 
 by a feeling and unprejudiced reader, of the truth of all the 
 details.* To complete the history, I ought to add, that no 
 attention whatever was paid to their prayer either for imme 
 diate redress, or a judicial hearing. 
 
 Before I finish with this matter, I will claim permis 
 sion to moot a simple case, and propound a few natural 
 queries. Had war broken out, in 1808, between France 
 and the United States, as was expected, and had the 
 latter immediately, upon the suspicion, or the certainty, 
 of the French inhabitants of Louisiana being favourably 
 inclined to Bonaparte, u cleared" that province of all of 
 them; of men, and women, of the aged and the young, of the 
 sick and the insane; "pursuing them with fire and sword, 
 burning their dwellings, laying waste their plantations, and 
 destroying their stock" had those inhabitants been driven 
 off at the point of the bayonet " in the rigorous season of 
 winter, almost naked, and without money or effects to help 
 
 * See Note F. for the Petition itself, copied from the draught in the 
 hand-writing of Benezet. 
 
BY THE COLONISTS. 
 
 93 
 
 themselves" had they been thrown in this condition, from SECT. ill. 
 prison ships as confined and wasting as the English hulks, N^~^** / 
 upon the charity of strangers ignorant of their language, and 
 prejudiced against their race? Or, had all this been done by 
 the American commanders in Louisiana, of their own motion, 
 and had the American government then refused 10 listen to 
 the petition for relief, of that remnant of the prostrate exiles, 
 which disease and grief had spared, and left them irrevo 
 cably to their fate what would have been said in Great 
 Britain? When would the world have ceased to ring with her 
 execrations upon American barbarity? If one of her general 
 officers had afterwards put to death two Americans, found and 
 acknowledged to be co-operating, with a hostile tribe of sa 
 vages on the borders of Canada, would she have suffered this 
 act to be placed in the same line of atrocity? or, however 
 keen her sensibility at the effusion of her own blood, and at a 
 fancied outrage upon her national majesty, would she have 
 ventured to denounce the execution of Ambrister and Arbuth- 
 not, as equal in guilt, to the extirpation, upon such grounds 
 as her historians offer in the case of the Acadians, of a civi 
 lized community of many thousands, unimpeachable in their 
 private life; confessedly amiable in their dispositions; and 
 happy in the midst of ease and abundance created by their 
 industry and frugality? 
 
 5. Notwithstanding the notoriety of the facts upon which 
 I have touched that the colonies were planted at the expense 
 of private adventurers, fugitives from relentless persecution; 
 that they formed, for the most part, their own constitutions; 
 that they fought and overcame the Indians without aid from 
 abroad that the mother country built no forts either on their 
 internal or Atlantic frontier, to protect them from invasion 
 that she sent no ships of war to guard their trade, till 
 many years after their settlement, when their commerce had 
 become an object of revenue to the crown, and of profit to the 
 British merchants that her parliament passed no one ma 
 terial act concerning them, which did not relate to the regu- 
 tion of trade or the enlargement of the metropolitan authority 
 yet, even before the expiration of the seventeenth century, 
 it was not uncommon, for the most distinguished of the par 
 liamentary leaders, to hold the language which Charles Towns- 
 end employed in 1765, in his speech in favour of the stamp 
 act, u that the Americans were children planted by her care; / > 
 nourished up by her indulgence, and defended by her arms." 
 I can trace also, to an early period, the complaints repeated by 
 
94 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 
 
 PART I. the same British minister, concerning their unthankful and 
 ^f^^^^ seditious spirit, and that niggardliness " which grudged even 
 a mite to relieve the beneficent and venerable parent from the 
 heavy burdens under which she groaned." When the disputes 
 consequent on the stamp act grew warm, these topics were in 
 the mouths of all who supported the scheme of taxation, and 
 with them were plentifully mixed the prejudices concerning 
 the pedigree and general character of the Americans, of which 
 I have spoken in the preceding section. Bit is among the re 
 marks made by Franklin, in his examination before the House 
 of Commons, in 1766, that "America had been greatly abused 
 in England, in papers, and pamphlets, and speeches, as un 
 grateful, and unreasonable, and unjust, in having put the 
 British nation to an immense expense for their defence, and 
 refusing to bear any part of that expense." 
 
 "Our newspapers and politicians," said one of the ablest 
 of the British writers of that day, " have been lately full of 
 " invectives against the disposition and conduct of the Ameri- 
 " cans, and using foul-mouthed reproach. There are indeed 
 " a set of men, who, from dulness, being totally ignorant of 
 " the colonies, or from pride, ashamed to have a knowledge 
 " of them, talk of what we, for such is their language, have 
 "done for them; what money we have spent; what blood we 
 " have lavished; and what trouble we have had in establishing 
 " and protecting them to this day; and after a thousand such 
 " self-applauses, declaim against the baseness, ingratitude, 
 " and rebellion, of an obstinate, senseless, and abandoned set 
 " of convicts." 
 
 In this strain, Dr. Johnson wrote and talked, as the organ 
 of the ministry. It was in vain that Barre replied to Towns- 
 end with a fire and force of rhetoric worthy of Demosthenes, 
 and that Burke declared to Parliament, " the colonies in ge 
 neral owe little or nothing to any care of ours a generous 
 nature has with them, taken its own way to perfection." 
 Merits of every kind continued to be claimed for the mother 
 country, and it was particularly insisted, that the blood and 
 treasure lavished in the American wars, from 1690 to 1763, 
 were spent in the cause of the colonies alone. This point had 
 come particularly under discussion in the year 1760, when 
 the question of surrendering Canada to the French was agi 
 tated in England. It was argued affirmatively with great zeal, 
 in a work of high authority at that time, to which Franklin 
 answered by his celebrated Canada-Pamphlet. The illustri 
 ous philosopher demonstrated, that the retention of Canada was 
 of the utmost importance to Great Britain; but that, though 
 
BY THE COLONISTS. 95 
 
 desirable for the colonies as a means of preserving peace on SECT. in. 
 
 their borders, it would be attended with disadvantages over- ^^^^^^ 
 
 balancing this consideration, which had become of the less 
 
 moment from the military strength they had acquired, and the 
 
 impression they had made upon the Indian nations. He took 
 
 one particular view of their case, which belongs to history, 
 
 and should be offered to my readers as equally striking and 
 
 just. " I do not think that our c blood and treasure have been 
 
 46 expended/ as the author of the pamphlet intimates, 4 in the 
 
 " cause of the colonies, and that England is making conquests 
 
 " for them; yet I believe this is too common an error; I do 
 
 " not say that they are altogether unconcerned in the event. 
 
 " The inhabitants of them are, in common with other sub- 
 
 " jects of Great Britain, anxious for the glory of her crown, 
 
 " the extent of her power and commerce, the welfare and 
 
 " future repose of the whole British people. They could not, 
 
 u therefore, but take a large share in the affronts offered to 
 
 " Britain; and have been animated with a truly British spirit, 
 
 " to exert themselves beyond their strength, and against their 
 
 " evident interests. Yet so unfoiiunate have they been, that 
 
 44 their virtue has made against them; for upon no better foun- 
 
 " dation than this have they been supposed the authors of the 
 
 " war, and has it been said to be carried on for their advan- 
 
 " tage only." 
 
 Adam Smith strengthened the common error, and unwit 
 tingly promoted the ministerial scheme of deception, by the 
 following loose passage of the seventh chapter of the fourth 
 book of his Wealth of Nations. " The English colonists have 
 never yet contributed any thing towards the defence of the 
 mother country, or towards the support of its civil government. 
 They, themselves, on the contrary, have hitherto been defend 
 ed almost entirely at the expense of the mother country." 
 These propositions are inconsistent with the tenor of the opi 
 nions which I have quoted from the same chapter, and have 
 not the least hold in the colonial history. A direct and com 
 plete refutation of them is to be found in Franklin s writings. 
 With respect to the war of 1756 particularly, which Adam 
 Smith had, no doubt, immediately in view, the American cham 
 pion placed the question in its true light to the House of Com 
 mons, in his examination before that body. His doctrine passed 
 without contradiction at the moment. " I know the last war 
 " is commonly spoken of here as entered into for the defence, 
 " or for the sake of the people in America. I think it is quite 
 " misunderstood. It began about the limits between Canada 
 *- and Nova Scotia; about territories to which the crown indeed 
 
96 DIFFICULTIES SURMOUNTED 
 
 PART I. " laid claim, but which were not claimed by any British coio- 
 ^^-v-**^ u ny; none of the lands had been granted to any colonists, we 
 u had therefore no particular concern or interest in that dispute. 
 " As to the Ohio, the contest there began about your right of 
 " trading in the Indian country, a right you had by the treaty 
 u of Utrecht, which the French infringed; they seized the tra- 
 " ders and their goods, which were your manufactures; they 
 " took a fort which a company of your merchants, and their 
 " factors and correspondents, had erected there, to secure that 
 " trade. Braddock was sent with an army to retake that fort, 
 " (which was looked on here as another encroachment on the 
 " king s territory,) and to protect your trade. It was not till 
 " after his defeat that the colonies were attacked. They were 
 ic before in perfect peace with both French and Indians; the 
 " troops were not therefore sent for their defence." 
 
 The whole subject, including the motives and ends of what 
 were called the colonial contests of the Europ^ajjupowers, was 
 taken up by Broughajn-^in his work on their colonial policy, 
 and so treated as to be nolWger a field of controversy. He has 
 satisfactorily shown, that " the quarrels of the mother country 
 alone were, in almost every instance, the causes which involved 
 every part of the empire in wars;" that u the foreign relations 
 of the colonies were almost always subservient, and postponed 
 to those of the parent state;" and that, "so far from involving 
 her in their quarrels, they suffered more than any part of the 
 system, by the proper quarrels of the metropolis." 
 
 The following desultory extracts from his first volume con 
 tain general views, which I think it important to present, 
 upon such authority, and some facts, of which the force will 
 be more felt, when they are so avouched. 
 
 "The supporters of the different economical systems have consider 
 ed a colony as a mother country, held in subjection by another state ; 
 not as a part of that state, connected with it by various ties. It appears 
 more proper to view the establishment of distant colonies as an exten 
 sion of a country s dominions, into regions which enjoy a diversity of 
 soil and climate AVh le the colonies then are only to be viewed as 
 distant provinces of the same country, it is absurd to represent their 
 defence and government as a burden, either to the treasury or to the 
 forces of the mother country." 
 
 "The wars which a state undertakes, apparently for the defence of 
 the colonial dominions, are, in reality, very seldom the consequence, 
 even of her possessing those distant territories. Two nations, who 
 would commence hostilities on account of their colonies, would never 
 want occasions for quarrelling, had they no possessions. In fact, any 
 influence which the circumstances of the colonies can exert on the 
 dispositions of the parent state, is much more likely to be of a nature 
 favourable to the maintenance of peace ** Whatever effects may be at 
 tributed to the attention which has been paid to colonial policy, it is 
 probable that instead of increasing, it has diminished the frequency of 
 
BY THE COLONISTS. 
 
 97 
 
 wars in modern times. Whatever circumstances may have involved SECT. III. 
 Great Britain in a colonial warfare in 1739 and 1756, a little reflection ^^^^-^^ 
 will show us, that the contests were not occasioned by the possession 
 of territories in America, but only broke out in that quarter of the globe, 
 as well as in Europe, in consequence of the relations of European poli 
 tics between the different powers possessing territories on both sides 
 of the Atlantic." 
 
 "It should seem, that in ascribing to the possession of colonies, the 
 wars of 1739, 1756, and 1778, philosophers have been led into an error, 
 not uncommon in any of the departments of science, and in none more 
 frequent than in politics, the mistake of the occasion for the cause, 
 and of a collateral effect for a principle of causation. They have search-, 
 ed in America for the origin of misfortunes, of which the seeds lay neaij 
 home in the mutual relations of the European powers, the diversityl A 
 of national character, and the belligerent nature of man." } 
 
 "The colonies occasion a diversion in favour of the tranquillity and 
 security of the parent states. The strength and valour which might 
 otherwise be exerted, in committing to the chance of war the indepen 
 dence of the European powers, are displayed in the distant regions of 
 the New World, and exhausted without danger to the capitals." 
 
 " While their colonies thus render to the great maritime powers of 
 Europe the important service of determining (as it were) the eruption 
 of hostilities, to the extremities, where it may spend a force that would 
 have proved fatal to the nobler parts of the system, the structure of 
 those distant communities, is, in general, of a less delicate nature, and 
 better adapted to sustain the shock of military operations." 
 
 " The old colonies of North America, besides defraying the whole 
 expenses of their internal administration, were enabled, from their situa 
 tion, to render very active assistance to the mother country, upon seve 
 ral occasions, not peculiarly interesting to themselves. They uniformly 
 asserted, that they would never refuse contributions even for purposes 
 strictly imperial, provided these were constitutionally demanded. Nor 
 did they stop at mere professions of zeal." 
 
 ** The whole expense of civil government in the British North Ame 
 rican colonies, previous "to the revolution, did not amount to eighty 
 thousand pounds sterling; which was paid by the produce of their 
 taxes. The military establishment, the garrisons, and the forts, in the 
 old colonies, cost the mother country nothing." 
 
 "In the war of 1739, when their population and resources were very 
 trifling, they sent three thousand men to join the expedition to Cartha- 
 gena. The privateers fitted out in the different ports of America, and 
 belonging to the colonies, were even in that time, both in numbers of 
 men and guns, more powerful than the whole British navy, at the era 
 of its victory over the Spanish armada. Many parts of the colonies have, 
 at all times, furnished large supplies to the naval force that was destined 
 to protect them. The fisheries of New England, in particular, used to 
 contribute a vast number of excellent seamen to the British navv." 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
SECTION IV. 
 
 OF THE MILITARY EFFORTS AND SUFFERINGS OF THE 
 COLONISTS, IN THE WARS OF THE MOTHER COUNTRY^ 
 
 PART I. ! THE colonies took an active part, and had even an 
 
 v^^-v-^/ excessive share, in the almost continuous wars which Great 
 Britain waged between the years 1680 and 1763. As soon 
 as hostilities broke out in Europe, towards the close of the 
 seventeenth century, the belligerent powers industriously 
 kindled the fiercest animosities between their respective Ame- 
 * rican dependencies. Those of the French and Spaniards 
 being greatly inferior in internal strength, thought to compen 
 sate themselves for this disparity, by arraying the Indians on 
 their side, and keeping their merciless auxiliaries in perpetual 
 action. They animated and led them, in irruptions into the 
 British provinces, memorable for the worst evils which charac 
 terize Indian warfare. The destruction of the settlements ot 
 Port Royal, on the southern frontier of Carolina, by the Spa 
 niards of St. Augustine, in 1686, the murderous expedition 
 of the French against Schenectady and Corlar, in New York, 
 and their successful attacks upon Salmon Falls and Casco, in 
 1690, maybe cited as specimens, of what is to be considered 
 as the mere prelude, to the similar hostilities with which the 
 English colonists were afflicted, almost without intermission.; 
 for more than half a century afterwards. They began nearly 
 at the same time, to act vigorously on the offensive; less, how 
 ever, by the proxy of the Indians, whom they could attach 
 to their cause, than in their own persons, and with their own 
 resources. We find New England twice engaged during 
 1690, in attempts upon a large scale, to reduce Canada. In 
 that year, Sir William Phipps, governor of Massachusetts, 
 with a fleet of eight small vessels, and eight hundred men, 
 made himself master of the fort of Port Royal in Acadia, and 
 took possession of the whole coast from that place to the New 
 England settlements. Another, and more considerable arma 
 ment was despatched immediately after, under the same com 
 mander, against Quebec, but it proved highly disastrous 
 
MILITARF EFFORTS, &C. 99 
 
 owing to the incapacity of the royal governor.* One thousand SECT.IV 
 of the New England troops perished in this bold enterprise, v^-v-*^ 
 and the vessels employed in it, were all lost on their return; 
 the colonies that had so nobly strained their means, incurred 
 a debt of =140,000, and the necessity of issuing bills of cre 
 dit the first paper money (born in an evil hour,) which is 
 mentioned in our annals. The contingent of men, which 
 Connecticut and New York had stipulated to send against 
 Montreal, as a diversion in favour of the forces directed against 
 Quebec, was arrested in camp, and dreadfully reduced by the 
 small pox. This, and other malignant epidemics, made, at 
 different times, great havoc throughout the North American 
 communities, and are to be classed among the most formida 
 ble of the numerous obstacles to their progress. 
 
 These enterprises of New England originated in her own 
 sagacity and intrepidity. The mother country took no part 
 and little interest in them. Sir William Phipps made a voy 
 age to London, in order to solicit aid and encouragement for 
 the prosecution of the object, but met with no success.! " It 
 would be amazing," says the Universal History, " that the 
 English court should all the while express so little, or no con 
 cern, for so fine and well situated a country as Acadia, did we 
 not consider that king William and the English government 
 had at this time on their hands, two great wars in Europe, one 
 in Ireland, and one in Flanders. Whatever had been done 
 against the French in New France, was effected by the New 
 England forces, without any assistance from Old England, 
 farther than that the king and ministry there signed commis 
 sions."^ The fruits of the success at Port Royal were lost 
 by the restoration of the whole territory taken, at the peace of 
 Ryswick. 
 
 In 1693, the British cabinet yielding at length to the in 
 stances of New England, undertook to assist her with a con 
 siderable force towards another invasion of Canada. The 
 fleet designated for the purpose, was, however, first employed 
 in an attempt upon Martinico, and experienced there, disasters 
 which unfitted it for any further operations. In the mean 
 while, the colonies eagerly made preparations, in conformity 
 with the plan concerted in England; which were so great, says 
 the Universal History, that they probably would have been 
 
 * Universal Military History, vol. xl. 
 
 f Some years after, Colonel Schuyler, of New York, went to Eng 
 land, at his private expense, on the same errand. 
 i Vol. xxxix. 
 
100 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PARTI, successful.* In the province of New York five hundred men 
 ^^s~**^ were raised for an attack upon Montreal; and this body when 
 set upon by a greatly superior force of French and Indians, 
 fought, adds the same authority, u with inconceivable resolu 
 tion." An accumulation of debt and trouble was the only 
 result for the colonies, of the whole arrangement. The French 
 of Canada were emboldened by its miscarriage, to more 
 harassing and destructive incursions. Three years after, the 
 French court equipped a considerable fleet, destined to reta 
 liate on the British, by ravaging the coasts of New England, 
 and reducing New York. No means of averting the impend 
 ing danger were neglected by the colonies; and the only ma 
 terial injury, besides the labour and expense of considerable 
 levies, which they suffered from the French plan of conquest, 
 was the loss of the fort at Pemaquid, erected, most idly, 
 " by the special order of king William and queen Mary," 
 though at the sole and very heavy cost of Massachusetts, and 
 of which the futility was obvious from the first, to some of the 
 " poor provincials." 
 
 When, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, intel 
 ligence was received in America, of England being again 
 at war with France and Spain, hostilities were renewed 
 there with the utmost animation. In 1702, South Carolina, 
 with a population of only seven thousand whites, and scarce 
 ly forty years after its settlement, sent an expensive expedi 
 tion of six hundred militia, and as many Indians, against 
 St. Augustine. The whole purpose was not accomplished, 
 indeed, but great mischief was done to the Spaniards. " It 
 is almost incredible," remarks the Universal History,! " that 
 a government so lately settled as that of Carolina, and subject 
 to such mismanagements from the proprietary, should under 
 take so unpromising an affair, and be so near succeeding in it 
 as the Carolinians were." The mystery is to be explained by 
 the spirit of its popular assembly. Under the same auspices, 
 a body of Carolinians marched, the following year, against 
 the Apalachian Indians, the allies of the Spaniards, acting 
 under the command of a Spanish colonel; penetrated into the 
 heart of their settlements; subdued and dispersed them, and 
 reduced their whole territory under the British power. An 
 invasion of Carolina, from the Havanna, was attempted in 
 1706, by the Spaniards and French, with a formidable force, 
 and most gallantly repelled and frustrated by troops assem 
 bled in haste at Charleston. Nearly one half of the assail 
 ants were cither killed or taken, and the infant colony had 
 
 * Vol. xxxix. p. 63. f Vol. xxxix. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 101 
 
 little to regret on the occasion, except the heavy burden of SECT.IV. 
 the expenses incurred in the military levy. v^-v-^- 
 
 2. The martial activity of the northern provinces was 
 equally remarkable, and their suffering greater. In 1702, all 
 the settlements from Casco to Wells were ravaged with fire 
 and sword, by a party of Indians and French, and one hun 
 dred and thirty of the laborious husbandmen either killed or 
 made prisoners. A large band of the same enemies surprised, 
 two years subsequent, the town of Deerfield, in Massachusetts, 
 laid it in ashes, and either butchered or captured the inha 
 bitants to the number of nearly two hundred. This olamity 
 was immediately and fully retorted, by an expedition* oi* five 
 hundred and fifty New England volunteers, againsUhe French 
 and Indian settlements of Penobscot and Passafir/aijUD^dy; ,and 
 but a small time elapsed before the New England government 
 despatched another armament, consisting of several thousand 
 men, to reduce Acadia. The enterprise failed, in consequence 
 of an injudicious march in the neighbourhood of Port Royal, 
 which was occasioned by the obstinacy and insubordination 
 of the officers of the Deptford man of war, under whose con 
 voy the provincial fleet of transports had been sent.* The at 
 tention of New England was speedily attracted to her domestic 
 safety; for the French and Indians penetrated, in 1708, to 
 Haverhill, on Merrimack river, and dealt with that town as 
 they had done with Deerfield. 
 
 The subjugation of Canada continued to be urged upon the 
 British court by the politicians of Massachusetts and New 
 York; but it had no relish for the ministry of the day, who, 
 as the historians relate, would have preferred rather the ex 
 tension, than the abridgment of the French power in America. 
 However, in 1709, orders were received by the provinces 
 to prepare for the enterprise, upon a larger scale, and obey 
 ed with the utmost alacrity. After considerable levies had 
 been made, and the transports and troops kept, four months, in 
 waiting at Boston for the arrival of the English fleet, it was 
 announced from London, that a change in the affairs of Eu 
 rope rendered it expedient to relinquish the expedition! 
 
 The account which the historian of New York, Smith, has 
 transmitted of this affair, developes further its character, and 
 is highly creditable to the spirit of that province. " The plan 
 "of operations was ( oncerted at New York, with Francis 
 " Nicholson, formerly our lieutenant governor, who, at the 
 
 * Universal History, vol. xl. p. 151. 
 
MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART I. " request of our governor and of those of Connecticut and 
 ^-v-^- u Pennsylvania, accepted the chief command of the provin- 
 " cial forces, intended to penetrate into Canada, by the way 
 " of Lake Champlain. Impoverished as we were, the as- 
 " sembly joined heartily in the enterprise. Universal joy 
 " now brightened every man s countenance, because all ex- 
 " pected the complete reduction of Canada before the ensuing 
 " autumn. We exerted ourselves to the utmost. Having put 
 u ourselves to the expense of above twenty thousand pounds, 
 " the delay of the arrival of the British fleet spread a general 
 " discontent through the country; our forces were finally re- 
 "called/rpifi camp, &c. Had this expedition been vigorously 
 " prcistctitad, doubtless it would have succeeded. The allied 
 ".a-rjiay triumphed in repeated successes in Flanders; and the 
 4 i cQur|;/>f;Ftaoce was in no condition to give assistance to so 
 * c distant a colony as Canada. The Indians of the Five Na 
 tions were engaged to join heartily in the attempt, and the 
 " eastern colonies had nothing to fear from the Ouwenagungas. 
 " In America, every thing was ripe for the attack. At home, 
 " lord Sunderland, the secretary of state, had despatched or- 
 u ders to the queen s ships at Boston to hold themselves in 
 " readiness, &c. At this juncture, the news arrived of the 
 u defeat of the Portuguese; the forces intended for the Ame- 
 u rican adventure were then ordered to their assistance, and 
 " the thoughts of the ministry entirely diverted from the Cana- 
 u da expedition. The abortion of our plan exposed us to con- 
 " sequences equally calamitous, dreaded and foreseen; as soon 
 a as the scheme dropped, numerous parties of the French and 
 u Indian allies were sent out to harass the English frontiers, 
 a and committed the most savage cruelties."* 
 
 New England, with her usual spirit, pressed an immediate 
 descent upon Acadia at least, with the military means which 
 had been collected at such heavy cost; but the captains of the 
 British men of war on that station, could not be prevailed upon 
 even to serve as convoy to the transports. To defray their 
 quota of the expenses of this fruitless armament, the colonies of 
 Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey, issued for the first 
 time, those ill-omened symbols bills of credit. 
 
 In less than a twelvemonth, New England, engaged upon 
 further promises of co-operation from the mother country, 
 which were not fulfilled: in an expedition against Port Royal; 
 and with several regiments of her owr, supported by a few 
 English frigates, forced that place to surrender. In the year 
 
 * History of New York, Part iv. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 103 
 
 1710, the governments of New England, New York, the Jer- SECT.iv. 
 seys, and Pennsylvania, suddenly received orders from the v^v-**- 
 British sovereign, to hold in readiness their contingents of men 
 for an enterprise against Canada, in which a powerful fleet, 
 to be expected in a few days after on the American coast, was 
 to take the lead. The fleet arrived in little more than a fort 
 night, bringing requisitions for troops and provisions, which it 
 seemed impossible to satisfy on so short a notice. A congress 
 of the colonial governors assembled at New London, and took 
 such measures as to raise and fully equip, a considerabe force 
 in a few weeks. Infinite distress arose out of so sudden and 
 large a demand for money and provisions; and a suspicion 
 prevailed, that the tory ministry of queen Anne designed, by 
 this hurried proceeding, to defeat, themselves, the proposed 
 end of the expedition, and to make New England responsible 
 for the miscarriage. 
 
 The expedition did, in fact, fail most miserably, by the 
 stranding of the British vessels in the river St. Lawrence; and 
 the whole blame was cast upon the colonies, as they had fore 
 boded. The English admiral attributed the loss of his ships 
 to the advice of the New England pilots, and the French his 
 torian, Charlevoix, an impartial arbiter in this case, charges 
 it upon "the distrust and obstinacy of the English admiral." 
 The pilots made oath that they gave no such advice as was 
 imputed to them, and that their opinion was neither followed 
 nor regarded, the English officers having " a mean idea of 
 their capacity." The general assembly of Massachusetts chal 
 lenged a formal inquiry into the affair, and sent three of the 
 pilots to England to be interrogated, who waited many months; 
 but no questions were asked, nor elucidations sought by the 
 British court.* 
 
 At the same time not the least credit was openly given to 
 the colonies for their prodigious exertions and severe losses. 
 " What," says one of the historians, c( would be thought ex 
 traordinary in any state of Europe, one fifth part of the whole 
 inhabitants of Massachusetts, capable of bearing arms, were 
 in pay that summer, not vagrants, swept, as in England, from 
 the streets and brothels, but heads of families, artificers, and 
 robust young men, whose labour was inestimable to new settle 
 ments." We have, on the subject of this oppressive business, 
 the testimony of Dummer to this effect. f " Notwithstanding 
 some people found it necessary to blame New England, the 
 better to excuse themselves, yet it has been acknowledged to 
 
 * Hutchinson, vol. ii. p, 175. f Defence of the Charters. 
 
104 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART I. me by English gentlemen who were then on the spot, and well 
 ^^^^^ experienced in these affairs, that such a fleet and army, wanting 
 the necsssaries they did, could not have been despatched in 
 so short a warning from any port of England. It is really 
 astonishing, to consider, that these little governments of New 
 England should be able, by their own strength, to perform 
 such great things in the military way." 
 
 These little governments were not, moreover, prodigal of 
 men and money, merely in the struggles at their door, or for 
 their own seeming interests. When, in 1703, Jamaica, under 
 the apprehension of an invasion, solicited help from Massa 
 chusetts, that province sent to the island, several companies 
 of foot, of which but few individuals ever returned to their 
 native country. When, in the year 1705, Nevis was sacked 
 by Ibberville, New England spontaneously contributed a large 
 sum of money, together with building materials, &c. for the 
 relief of the sufferers, and never claimed nor received retribu 
 tion. The British court not only left to the northern colo 
 nies, the care and expense of their own defence against the 
 French and Indians, and of the protection and advancement 
 of the general interests of the empire, in North America, but 
 drew upon their resources for the execution of its plans of 
 aggrandizement, in the West Indies. In 1741, three thou 
 sand six hundred men were assessed and levied upon them, 
 in aid of the expedition of that year against the Island of 
 Cuba; and they were at the whole charge of bounty, pro 
 visions and transports for their respective quotas. Massa 
 chusetts contributed five hundred men, of whom the equip 
 ment and transportation cost her =7000. It is calculated by 
 Hutchinson, that, from the year 1675 to 1713, the epoch of 
 the treaty of Utrecht, five or six thousand of the youth of 
 Massachusetts and New Hampshire the provinces most ex 
 posed perished either by the hand of the enemy, or by dis 
 tempers, contracted in the military service. This judicious 
 author is of opinion, that the people of New England bore, 
 during the same interval, " such an annual burden, as was 
 not felt by any other subjects of Great Britain."* 
 
 3. While the northern colonies were putting forth these ex 
 traordinary energies, and undergoing so severe a probation, the 
 middle and southern prosecuted their arduous defence, against 
 enemies of an equally fierce and restless spirit; and were ex 
 posed to an additional scourge, which could be also traced, in 
 
 * Vol. ii. H. of M. p. 183 
 
OP THE COLONISTS. 
 
 105 
 
 to the cupidity of the mother country. The conspiracy of the SECT. IV 
 Indian tribes of North Carolina, in 1712, for the extermina 
 tion of the whites, is marked by the massacre of one hun 
 dred and thirty-seven settlers about Roanoke alone. The 
 valour and conduct of the militia of the two Carolinss, gave, 
 on this occasion, a final blow to the power of the Tuscaroras, 
 one of the most considerable Indian nations of that quarter. 
 Only three years from this signal exploit, South Carolina was 
 the theatre of a similar conspiracy, and had to wrestle, near 
 her capital, with a still more formidable tribe, the Yamossees. 
 With no more than twelve hundred men on the muster roll, 
 fit to bear arms, she expelled the multitude of these ferocious 
 barbarians from her soil, having vanquished them in a gene 
 ral" battle of a most obstinate and sanguinary character. Four 
 hundred of her white inhabitants fell in the war. There is an 
 incident in its train, which I shall not do amiss to mention. 
 " The Assembly of Carolina," says an English historian,* 
 " passed two acts, to appropriate the lands, gained by con 
 quest from the Yamassees, for the use of such British sub 
 jects as should come over and settle upon them. On this 
 encouragement, five hundred men from Ireland transported 
 themselves to Carolina; but not long after, in breach of the 
 provincial faith, and to the entire ruin of the Irish emigrants, 
 the proprietors ordered the Indian lands to be surveyed for 
 their own use, and run out in large baronies. The old settlers 
 thus losing the protection of the new comers, deserted their 
 plantations, and again left the frontiers open to the enemy. 
 Many of the unfortunate Irish emigrants, reduced to misery, 
 perished, and the remainder removed to the northern colonies." 
 The number of warriors of the four principal Indian na 
 tions the Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and Chickasaws 
 in the neighbourhood of Georgia and Carolina, are com 
 puted to have been, as late as in 1733, upwards of four 
 teen thousand, not less redoubtable by their numerical supe 
 riority, than their daring and martial spirit. The campaigns 
 which were made against them at subsequent periods, exhi 
 bit for their duration, like the Indian wars of the northern 
 and middle provinces, danger as appalling, and suffering as 
 intense, encountered with as much resolution, and sustained 
 with as much fortitude, as many obstacles overcome with as 
 much perseverance, as are commemorated in the military 
 annals of any people. 
 
 * Hewatt s Historical Account of South Carolina and Georgia. Lon 
 don, p. 228. 
 
 VOL. I 
 
106 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART I. Carolina had, at the same time, not only to shake off an 
 v^"-^w oppressive government, and extirpate a host of savages, but to 
 protect herself from a body of negro slaves, greatly out-num 
 bering their masters, and ripe for revolt and carnage. She 
 detected, in 1730, a domestic plot, which looked to the mas 
 sacre of all the whites, and in 1738, found herself engaged in 
 a servile war, which was brought to a speedy issue indeed, but 
 not without great slaughter. The negroes were excited, on 
 this occasion, by the Spaniards, who held out to them the pros 
 pect of liberty, and received the runaways into the military 
 service of Spain, the precise model of the conduct of Great 
 Britain towards the same colony, during our revolutionary war. 
 Besides the mutual invasions between the Spaniards of Flo 
 rida and the Carolinians, which I have already mentioned, 
 others of a later date might be cited, in which the blood and 
 treasure of the latter were profusely expended. Georgia was 
 planted in 1733. Already in 1740, this last born among the 
 colonies, sent forth an armament against St. Augustine, and 
 two years after, repelled an invasion of the Spaniards, who 
 made their attack with a force of thirty-two sail, and three 
 or four thousand picked men. 
 
 From the establishment of the French on the Ohio, in the 
 middle of the eighteenth century, Virginia, Maryland, and 
 Pennsylvania were cruelly infested with Indian hostilities, and 
 their sufferings may be regarded as due to the corruption or 
 sluggishness of the British rulers. The plan early formed by 
 France, of uniting her colonies of Canada and Louisiana, by 
 a chain of forts from the St. Lawrence to the Mississippi, did 
 not escape the sagacity, as it was well fitted to rouse the fears, 
 of the colonists. They long laboured in vain to obtain the 
 co-operation of the British court, in anticipating the French 
 plan, and to open the eyes of the British statesmen to the 
 dangers of its execution.* We have seen in the extracts 
 which I have made from the reports of the Board of Trade 
 and Plantations, the motive which wa^s indulged in England, 
 for discouraging anglo-American settlements beyond the moun 
 tains. The authors of the Universal History acknowledge 
 
 * Even before the close of the seventeenth century, the British go. 
 vernment had been admonished of this evil by Dr. Davenant, in the 
 following- passage of his Discourse on the Protection and Care of 
 Trade : " Should the French settle at the disembogueing of the river 
 Meschasipe, in the Gulph of Mexico, they would not be long-before they 
 made themselves masters of that rich province, which would be an ad 
 dition to their strength very terrible to Europe. But this would more 
 "particularly concern England ; for, by the opportunity of that settle 
 ment, by erecting forts along the several lakes bet-ween that river and Ca 
 nada, they may intercept all the trade of our northern plantations." 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 107 
 
 u as u certain that from the treaty of Utrecht, to the middle SECT. IV 
 of the century, the government of England was lulled into a v^^--^- 
 most fatal security, whilst that of France was making wide 
 strides towards a total acquisition of North America, by cut 
 ting off the English colonies from the back country." The 
 same writers teach us, however, in a passage which I am about 
 to quote, that it was to something more than supineness in the 
 British councils, that New York particularly, owed some of 
 her worst distresses. 
 
 " Spotswood, the lieutenant governor of Virginia, about 
 the year 17 1 6, a man of sense and spirit, finding the Outaouais, 
 now called the Twightees, extremely well affectioned towards 
 the English, proposed to purchase some of their lands upon 
 the river Ohio, and erect a company for opening a trade to 
 the southward, westward, and northward of the river with the 
 savages. This was at once a rational and practicable scheme, 
 but the execution of it depended entirely upon the favourable 
 dispositions of the natives for the English, which might have 
 been secured, by the punctual payment of the purchase mo 
 ney or effects. This noble project clashed with the views of 
 the French, who had by this time, formed their great schemes 
 upon the Mississippi, and the ministry of king George I. as 
 we have already hinted, having reasons for keeping well with 
 that court, the project was not only dropped, but the French 
 were encouraged to build the fort of Crown Poinl^ upon the ter 
 ritory of New For/c."* 
 
 4. For Europe, the achievements of which I have spoken, 
 however noble, and in themselves worthy of renown, were, in 
 a great degree, obscure and insignificant; and England might 
 even yet cheat herself into the belief, that the Provincials 
 were as humble in their military, as she represented them 
 to be in their political and literary capacities. But, an event hap 
 pened in 1746, after which, this delusion could not co&lnue, 
 without taking the character of infatuation; nor the continent 
 of Europe fail to be struck, with the singular prowess of the 
 transatlantic people, and to feel the decisive Weight which, 
 although of a new creation as it were, they already threw into 
 the scale of Great Britain. It will be at once under- 
 
 * "Spotswood," says Burke, in his History of Virginia, vol. iii. ch. 
 ii. " gave offence to the British ministry, by urging with too much 
 boldness, the necessity of establishing a chain of forts for the protec 
 tion of the country between the Apalachian mountains and the Missis 
 sippi." This able governor was dismissed, for urging at the same 
 time, the propriety of a claim for compensation, which was preferred 
 by some of the provincials, who had accompanied him on an exploring 
 arty beyond the mountains. 
 
108 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART I. stood, that 1 allude to the capture of the celebrated fortress of 
 -,.^-v-^* Louisbourg, nt-xl to Quebec, the strong hold of the French in 
 the western hemisphere the key to Nova Scotia the spring 
 of every evil to the British fisheries and trade, and from 
 the influence of its position, and the extent and immense 
 expense of its works, which were thought impregnable, com 
 monly styled the Dunkirk of America. At a moment when 
 France was without a fear for its safety, and England had 
 not even raised her hopes to its conquest, (lie project of re 
 ducing it was conceived in Massachusetts, and adopted, with 
 correspondent boldness, by the other provinces of New Eng 
 land. A body of near five thousand men was immediately 
 raised, and a fleet equipped for the purpose, all without the 
 concurrence, or even countenance, of the mother country: 
 An expedition, composed of the greater part of the naval 
 means of the projectors, and of a body of freeholders, thriving 
 artificers, and sons of wealthy farmers, led by a New England 
 merchant, had actually been despatched, before any British 
 vessels arrived to join in the attempt. I need not repeat the 
 details of its wonderful success, so well known to every reader 
 of modern history; but I ought to stale the opinions pronounced 
 by some of the English annalists, concerning the general con 
 duct of the Provincials on the occasion, and the importance oi 
 the exploit. The design pleads for itself too strongly to re 
 quire certificates, and the merit of it was never claimed by 
 Great Britain. 
 
 a The New England troops," says an English authority re 
 ceived as the highest, at the time,* "within the compass of 
 twenty-three days from the time of their first landing, erected 
 five fascine batteries against the town, mounted with cannon of 
 forty-two, twenty-two, and eighteen pounds shot, mortars of 
 thirteen, eleven, and nine inches diameter, with some cohorns; 
 all which were transported by land^ with incredible labour 
 and difficulty; most of them above two miles: all the ground 
 over which they were drawn, except small patches or hills of 
 rocks, was a deep morass, in which, while the cannon were 
 upon wheels, they several times sunk so deep, as not only to 
 bury the carriages, but their whole bodies. Horses and oxen 
 could not be employed in this service, but all must be drawn 
 by men, up to the knees in mud; the nights in which the work 
 was done, were cold and foggy, their tents bad, there being 
 no proper materials for tents to be had in New England at the 
 outset of the expedition. But notwithstanding these difficul- 
 
 * Memoirs of the Last War in America. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS, 
 
 109 
 
 ties, and many of the men being taken down with fluxes, so SECT. IV 
 that at one lime there were fifteen hundred incapable of duty, v-^v-^* 
 they went on without being discouraged or murmuring, and 
 transported the cannon over those ways, which the French had 
 always thought impassable for such heavy weights; and besides 
 this, they had all their provisions and heavy ammunition, 
 which they daily made use of, to bring from the camp over 
 the same way upon their backs." 
 
 " The people of New England," says Tindal, the conti- 
 nuator of Rapin,* " behaved on this occasion with great spi 
 rit. Three thousand eight hundred and fifty volunteers, all 
 of them well affected to the expedition, assembled and em 
 barked at Boston. Though neither the militia nor their com 
 manders had ever seen any military service, they proceeded 
 with all the regularity and intrepidity of veterans. The grand 
 approaches to the body of the place were to be carried on from 
 the southern side. Here the service was extremely laborious; 
 the guns for mounting the batteries being dragged through bogs 
 and incumbered places by the landsmen, for above two miles. 
 They succeeded, however, to admiration, and by assistance 
 of the officers and engineers of the marines, and some lent tlicm 
 by the commodore, they mounted a large train of artillery on 
 an eminence called the Green Hill, about three quarters of a 
 mile from the place. The garrison having made a resolute 
 defence, and a general assault being expected, surrendered on 
 the 13th of June." 
 
 " It is sufficient to state," observe the authors of the 
 Universal History, " that, the colony of New England 
 gave peace to Europe, by raising, arming, and transporting, 
 four thousand men, who took Louisbourg, which proved an 
 equivalent, at the peace of Aix-la-Chapellc, for all the suc 
 cesses of the French upon the continent of Europe. In the late 
 war with France, which was concluded in the year 1762, 
 they exerted the same glorious spirit against the common ene 
 my, and greatly contributed to that extension of territory in 
 North America," &c. 
 
 The following is the testimony of Smollet,f accompanied 
 by some remarks, which I am not sorry to produce at the same 
 time. " The most important achievement of the war of 1744, 
 xvas the conquest of Louisbourg. The natives of New Eng 
 land acquired great glory for the success of this enterprise. 
 Britain, which had in some instances, behaved like a step 
 mother to her colonies, was now convinced of their impor- 
 
 * Vol. xxi. p. 157. t Continuation of Hume. 
 
110 
 
 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART i. tance, and treated those, as brethren whom she had too long con 
 v ^^^- / sidered as aliens and rivals. Circumstanced as the nation is, 
 the legislature cannot too tenderly cherish the interests of the 
 British plantations in America. They are inhabited by a brave, 
 hardy, industrious people, animated with an active spirit of 
 commerce, and inspired with a noble zeal for liberty and inde 
 pendence." This historian, in the same breath in which these 
 fine sentiments are uttered, does not hesitate to assert, that 
 " the reduction of Louisbourg was chiefly owing to the vigi 
 lance and activity of Mr. Warren, a British commodore, and 
 that the operations of the siege, were wholly conducted, by the 
 engineers and officers who commanded the British marines!" 
 No effort, in fact, was spared in England, to perpetuate the 
 affair under this aspect. The agent deputed by the go 
 vernment of Massachusetts to solicit reimbursement for the 
 expenses of the expedition, wrote thus from London to the 
 secretary of the general court of that province: u Upon my 
 arrival in England, the first newspaper I met with on the road 
 contained an address to his majesty, from a sea-port which 
 trades to Boston; wherein they congratulated his majesty on 
 the success of his navy, in taking Cape Breton, without mak 
 ing the least mention of the land forces employed on that oc 
 casion. When I came to London, I there found the effects of 
 the arts used to have the conquest deemed a naval acquisition, 
 as it was afterwards in the most public manner, declared to 
 be by a noble lord then in the ministry. I determined to at 
 tempt to establish the credit of the New England forces, and 
 for that end drew up a petition to the secretary of state, pray 
 ing that the account of their behaviour, taken on the spot by 
 the governor, and transmitted to the secretary of state, might 
 be published by authority; after several montlis solicitation, 
 this was promised me; but I soon afterwards received such 
 treatment as was in effect openly declaring, that it was deter 
 mined not to comply with that promise; before I could pre 
 vail, I was forced into a sharper contest than I should ever 
 choose to be again concerned in."* 
 
 Nay, Mr. Warren himself deposed on oath, in the Higli 
 Court of Admiralty, seventeen months after the event, " that, 
 with the assistance of his majesty s ships, &c. he, the depo 
 nent, did subdue the whole island of Cape Breton:"t And 
 we shall, by and by, find, upon the testimony of one of the 
 
 * Letter of Mr. Bollaa, of April 23, 1752, preserved in the first volume 
 of the Collections-ofihe Mass. His. Society, 
 f Registry of the Hig-lfCourfof Admiralty of England, Sept. 29, 1747 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. Ill 
 
 ministry, that at the British court, he, the same deponent, SECT. IV. 
 represented the Provincials, as having displayed on the oc a- s -^* v "^* / 
 sion, arrant and ludicrous cowardice! To make the true spirit 
 and value of these allegations better understood, I am tempted 
 to transcribe a few passages from Hutchinson, whose impar 
 tiality, as far as New England is concerned, will hardly be 
 questioned, and who wrote from personal knowledge. 
 
 u The 23d March, 1745, an express-boat, sent to commo 
 dore Warren, in the West Indies, to request his co-operation 
 in the attempt upon Louisbourg, returned to Boston. As this 
 was a Provincial expedition, without orders from England, 
 and as his small squadron had been weakened by the loss of 
 the Weymouth, Mr. Warren excused himself from any con 
 cern in the affair. This answer necessarily struck a damp 
 into the governor, and the other persons who were made ac 
 quainted with it before the Provincial fleet sailed. On the 
 23d April, however, the commodore arrived. It seems that 
 in two or three days after the express sailed from the West 
 Indies for Boston, the Hind sloop brought orders to Mr. War 
 ren to repair to Boston, with what ships could be spared, and 
 to concert measures with Mr. Shirley for his majesty s general 
 service in North America. Whether the land or sea force 
 had the greatest share in the acquisition, may be judged from 
 the relation of facts. The army, with infinite labour and fa 
 tigue to themselves, harassed and distressed the enemy, and 
 with perseverance a few weeks or days longer, must have 
 compelled a surrender. It is very doubtful whether the ships 
 could have lain long enough before the walls to have carried 
 the place by storm, or whether, notwithstanding the appear 
 ance of a design to do it, they would have thought it advisable 
 to attempt it; it is certain they prevented the arrival of the 
 Vigilant, took away all hopes of further supply and succour, 
 and it is very probable the fears of a storm might accelerate 
 the capitulation." 
 
 " The commodore was willing to carry away a full share of 
 the glory of this action. It was made a question whether the 
 keys of the town should be delivered to him or to the general, 
 and whether the sea or land forces should first enter. The 
 officers of the army say ihey prevailed." 
 
 " As it was a time of year to expect French vessels from 
 all parts to Louisbourg, the French flag was kept flying, to 
 decoy them in. Two East India, and one South Sea ship, 
 supposed to be altogether of the value of ^=600,000 sterling, 
 were taken by the squadron at the mouth of the harbour, into 
 which they would undoubtedly have entered." 
 
112 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART. i. " With great colour the army might have claimed a share 
 *^*^,-~^ with the men-of-war in these rich prizes. Some of the officers 
 expected a claim would have been laid in, but means were 
 found to divert it, nor was any part decreed to the vessels of war 
 in the Province service, except a small sum to the brig Boston 
 Packet, Captain Fletcher, who being chased by the South Sea 
 ship, led her directly under the command of the guns of one 
 of the men-of-war."* 
 
 I would add to these facts, that reimbursement was obtain 
 ed from Parliament after seven years of urgent solicitation. 
 The picture of sordidness and chicane, which is presented by 
 the Massachusetts agent, in his account of the cavils and 
 delays interposed to defeat his errand, is as curious as it is 
 disgusting, when referred to the administration of so great an 
 empire. " The government of Massachusetts," says the 
 author whom I have last quoted, "was still, in 1747, soli 
 citing for the reimbursement of the charge in taking Cape 
 Breton, and by the address, assiduity, and fidelity of William 
 Bollan, esquire, who was one of the agents of the province 
 for that purpose, there was a hopeful prospect that the full sum, 
 about =180,000 sterling, would be obtained." 
 
 " Some of the ministry thought it sufficient to grant such sum 
 as would redeem the bills issued for the expedition, &c. at 
 their depreciated value, and Mr. Kilby, the other agent, 
 seemed to despair of obtaining more; but Mr. Bollan, who 
 bad an intimate knowledge of our public affairs, set the injus 
 tice of this proposal in a clear light, and made it evident, that 
 (he depreciation of the bills was as effectually a charge bornt: 
 by the people, as if the same proportion of bills had been 
 drawn in by taxes, and refused all proposals of accommodat 
 ing, insisting upon the full value of the bills when issued."! 
 This haggling with the colonial agents, where so signal a ser 
 vice was in question, one which purchased an indispensable 
 peace for Great Britain betrays a spirit which none can be 
 at a loss to understand, especially when it is recollected, 
 what immense sums were lavished by her in support oi 
 the continental nations. u If a continent must be supplied," 1 
 was the language of the addresses to the king, from some parts 
 of England, u if our spoils must be shared, let America 
 partake, rather than ungrateful Germany, the sepulchre o( 
 British interest." America did not, however, partake, as we 
 have seen, until a much later period, and then partook in n 
 very different degree and form. She received scarcely a 
 
 * Vol. ii. chap. iv. j Ibid. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 113 
 
 soldier for her defence, and had her pittance of retribution SECT. IV. 
 doled out to her with huckstering parsimony; while Hanover ^-^-v^* 
 was defended with a profusion of blood and treasure, which, 
 as the historians truly remark, astonished all Europe. The 
 immense subsidy even preceded the effort of the fickle ally in 
 Germany: The slender reimbursement followed haltingly, 
 the invaluable service of the loyal subject in America. France 
 stood forth herself, and undertook the whole defence of her 
 American possessions: Great Britain left the part of princi 
 pals to hers, acting merely as their occasional, and always 
 reluctant auxiliary. 
 
 By the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, of 1748, the conquest so , 
 hardly earned, and so dearly prized by the provincials, was 
 surrendered to France, as an equivalent the only one which 
 Great Britain had to offer, for the towns in Flanders taken 
 by the French from her German ally.* And the achievement 
 of the colonies proved not merely sterile for their interests, 
 as it was rendered by this issue, but the cause of a vital dan 
 ger, and fearful anxiety during many weeks; for, the French 
 court, roused by the loss of Louisbourg, directed against their 
 coast, the most powerful armament which had ever been sent 
 into the North American seas; and which, only an unparal 
 leled train of disastrous casualties, prevented from committing 
 extensive mischief. The activity and resolution of New Eng 
 land, in preparing the means of defence, on this occasion, 
 corresponded with her previous career. 
 
 Immediately before this invasion was announced, eight 
 thousand two hundred men had been voted by the colonies, 
 and the greater part of them raised, at the requisition of the 
 British ministry, for a general invasion of Canada, which the 
 same ministry abandoned the following year, leaving the 
 colonies to defray the expense of the levy. This abortive 
 scheme, and the Louisbourg expedition, involved them in the 
 greatest financial embarrassments. 
 
 5. It was not denied in England, that the reduction of 
 Louisbourg preserved Nova Scotia, and enabled the mother 
 country to make the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle : nor could it 
 fail to be perceived from the affair, how materially the colonies 
 might contribute to give her a final ascendancy over her great 
 rival. Acknowledgments and praise were not, therefore, al 
 together withheld; but they were so bestowed, as to betray an 
 exasperation of those feelings, of which I have particularly 
 
 * See Note G. 
 VOL. I. P 
 
114 
 
 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART I. treated in my first section. Scarcely two years elapsed^ 
 <^~v-^^ before the bill already mentioned, for enforcing all the king s 
 instructions in the colonies, was brought into Parliament; and, 
 at the distance of two years more, the new plan for " increas 
 ing their dependence" began to bear fruit, in the prohibition 
 of iron and steel manufactories. Among the jealous and un 
 natural returns for their military efforts in the war of 1744, I 
 may enumerate the clause inserted by Parliament, (1754,) in 
 the mutiny bill, subjecting all officers and soldiers raised in 
 America, by the authority of the respective governors or go 
 vernments, to the same rules and articles of war, and the same 
 penalties and punishments, as those to which the British forces 
 were liable. A generous opposition was, indeed, made to this 
 measure in the House of Commons. Some of the objections 
 which were uttered in the debate on the occasion, are worthy, 
 in an historical point of view, of being brought to the notice of 
 my readers. I transcribe from the Reports, those of Mr. Ro 
 bert Viner, and of Mr. Henry Fox, the minister of the day. 
 
 " Mr. Robert Viner said Our regiments, so far, at least, 
 as relates to the common soldiers, are usually composed of the 
 very lowest and most abandoned of our people; but with re 
 spect to the troops now raised, or that may hereafter be raised 
 in America, the case is very different: many of them may not, 
 perhaps, be able to support themselves in the service of their 
 country, without being paid by their country; but many of 
 them have engaged, and many of them will, I hope, engage, 
 merely for the sake of serving their country; they have senti 
 ments of religion, they have sentiments of honour, and by such 
 sentiments they may be kept under proper discipline, without 
 such rigorous punishments as are to be inflicted by this bilL 
 upon our British mercenary soldiers." 
 
 " This, Sir, we may be convinced of, from the whole tenor 
 of our American history. How many wars have our planta 
 tions from time to time been engaged in: Wars more cruel, and 
 more liable to ambuscade and surprises, than any we have in 
 Europe, and consequently, such as have always required a 
 stricter discipline, if possible, than is necessary in this part 
 of the world; and yet if we look into their militia laws, we 
 shall find, that they have but very few military crimes, and 
 that most of their military punishments are only a very mode 
 rate fine, or a very moderate corporal punishment, upon such 
 as cannot pay their fine; nay, I do not know, that any of our 
 plantations ever extended a military punishment to life 01 
 limb; and yet they have hitherto carried on, and ended all 
 their wars with glory and success. So powerful, Sir, are the 
 
OF THE COLONISTS, 
 
 115 
 
 motives of virtue, honour, and glory, where proper care is SECT. i\ r . 
 taken to cultivate them in the breast of the soldier, or rather, ^-^v-^~ / 
 where care is not taken to eradicate all such principles, by the 
 multitude and severity of military punishments." 
 
 " Mr. Henry Fox said I shall grant that their militia have 
 generally behaved pretty well, in all the wars they have been 
 engaged in; they have, indeed, on all occasions, shown un 
 daunted courage; as Englishmen, I hope, always will." 
 
 The mutiny act proved so odious to the colonists, as seriously 
 to obstruct the public service, and to render it necessary for 
 some of the governors to give public assurances, that the 
 militia, when called to march to the western frontiers, should 
 not be subject to its provisions. Ft was not the only griev 
 ance of the description, and by the imposition of which the 
 mother country sacrificed justice and policy, to pride, or 
 routine. By an act of Parliament, the general, or field 
 officers of the colonial troops, had no rank with the general 
 and field officers who served by commission from the king; 
 and a captain or other inferior officer of the British forces, 
 took precedence of the provincial officers of the like grade, 
 though the commissions of the latter were of prior date. 
 Many attempts had been made, at an early period, to put the 
 militia at the disposal of the royal governors, but always with 
 out success. The failure of one of these attempts in Connec 
 ticut, in 1693, was attended with circumstances which deserve 
 to be cherished in our history. They are thus related by 
 the historian Trumbull, in his homely though impressive way. 
 
 " Colonel Benjamin Fletcher, governor of New York, had 
 received a commission entirely inconsistent with the charter 
 rights, and the safety of the colonies. He was vested with 
 plenary powers of commanding the whole militia of Con 
 necticut and the neighbouring provinces. He insisted on the 
 command of the militia of Connecticut. As this was ex 
 pressly given to the colony charter, the legislature would not 
 submit to his requisition." 
 
 " The colony wished to serve his majesty s interest, and, 
 as far as possible, consistently with their chartered rights, to 
 maintain a good understanding with governor Fletcher. Wil 
 liam Pitkin, Esq. was, therefore, sent to New York, to treat 
 and make terms with him respecting the militia, until his 
 majesty s pleasure should be further known. But no terms 
 could be made with him short of an explicit submission of 
 the militia to his command." 
 
 " On the 26th of October he came to Hartford, while the 
 assembly were sitting, and, in his majesty s name, demanded 
 
116 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART. I. their submission of the militia to his command, as they would 
 v-^-v-*^ answer it to his majesty; and that they would give him a 
 speedy answer in one word, yes or no. He subscribed him 
 self his majesty s lieutenant, and commander in chief of the 
 militia, and of all the forces by sea or land, and of all the 
 forts and places of strength in the colony of Connecticut. 
 He ordered the militia of Hartford under arms, that he might 
 beat up for volunteers. It was judged expedient to call the 
 trainbands in Hartford, together; but the assembly insisted, 
 that the command of the militia was expressly vested by 
 charter in the governor and company; and that they could by 
 no means, consistently with their just rights, and the common 
 safety, resign it into any other hands. They insinuated, that 
 his demands were an invasion of their essential privileges, 
 and subversive of their constitution." 
 
 u Upon this, colonel Bayard, by his excellency s command, 
 sent a ieUer into the assembly, declaring, thai his excellency 
 had no design upon the civil rights of the colony; but would 
 leave them in all respects as he found shem. In Mie name of 
 his excellency, he tendered a commission to governor Treat, 
 empowering him, to command the militia of the colony. He 
 declared, that his excellency insisted, that they should ac 
 knowledge it an essential right, inherent in his majesty, to 
 command the militia; and that he was determined not to set 
 his foot out of the colony, until he had seen his majesty s 
 commission obeyed: That he would issue his proclamation, 
 showing the means he had taken to give ease and satisfaction 
 to his majesty s subjects of Connecticut, and that he would 
 distinguish the disloyal from the rest." 
 
 " The assembly, nevertheless, would not give up the com 
 mand of the militia; nor would governor Treat receive a 
 commission from colonel Fletcher." 
 
 " The trainbands of Hartford assembled, and, as the tra 
 dition is, while captain Wadsworth, the senior officer, was 
 walking in front of the companies, and exercising the sol 
 diers, colonel Fletcher ordered his commission and instruc 
 tions to be read. Captain Wadsworth instantly commanded, 
 " beat the drums," and there was such a roaring of them, 
 that nothing else could be heard. Colonel Fletcher com 
 manded silence. But no sooner had Bayard made an attempt 
 to read again, than Wadsworth cried, " Drum, drum, I 
 say." The drummers understood their business, and in 
 stantly beat up with all the art and life of which they were 
 masters. " Silence, silence," said the colonel. No sooner 
 was there a pause, than Wadsworth spoke with great earnest- 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 117 
 
 ness, " Drum, drum, I say;" and turning to his excellency, SECT IV. 
 said, " If I am interrupted again, I will make the sun 
 through you in a moment." He spoke with so much energv in 
 his voice, and meaning in his countenance, that no further at 
 tempts were made to read, or enlist men. Such numbers of 
 people collected together, and their spirits appeared so high, 
 that the governor and his suite judged it expedient, soon to 
 leave the town and return to New York."* 
 
 6. After the colonies had completely acquired the Atlantic 
 territory, by purchase and conquest, without pecuniary or mili 
 tary aid from the government of the mother country, peace 
 was the natural and fair fruit of their exertions; and it must 
 appear, abstractedly, a gross injustice and hardship, that they 
 should be deprived of that inestimable blessing by the broils 
 of Europe. The case assumes a complexion of greater 
 wrong and oppression, when we reflect, that the wars in which 
 they were implicated against their European neighbours, arose 
 out of the culpable ignorance of the parent states, respecting 
 American geography. The limits of Nova Scotia, and in 
 general, the boundaries of the French and English possessions 
 in America, were, with a shameful indifference to the welfare 
 of the colonists, left by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, unde 
 cided and indeterminable. Hence, even before it suited the 
 convenience of fhe metropolitan countries to break, in Europe, 
 through the mere truce consequent upon that treaty, their Ame 
 rican dependencies had begun to vindicate by the sword their 
 irreconcilable pretensions to territory. 
 
 The treaty produced no interruption in the encroachments 
 of the French of Canada. They pursued unremittingly their 
 designs upon Nova Scotia, and the western regions; and em 
 ployed force for their purpose, where force was requisite. 
 They seized upon the disputed parts of Acadia; fortified them 
 selves on the lakes and the line of the Ohio; concluded 
 alliances with the Indian tribes of those regions; plundered 
 and destroyed the trading establishments of the British, and 
 made hostile incursions from their forts into the Virginia li 
 mits; while the English colonies, though full of alarms at their 
 progress, and smarting under their blows, were restrained by 
 their sense of subordination to the government of the mother 
 country, from taking, at once, the measures of offence which 
 the provocation justified, and their safety seemed to exact. 
 " It cannot be dissembled," say the authors of the Modern 
 
 * Book i. chap. xvi. 
 
118 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART i. History, " that the state of parties in England at this time \\i\s 
 
 ^^v-^ unfavourable to any vigorous steps against the French. The 
 
 English Americans had not yet, in 1753, ventured to attack 
 
 the French themselves, and this forbearance laid them under 
 
 inexpressible advantages."* 
 
 Thus were the colonists prevented, by mal-administralion 
 in Great Britain, from averting the heavy evils they after 
 wards suffered from the strong footing which the French, more 
 wisely and honestly directed, were enabled to secure on the 
 Ohio. The American governors, and particularly Mr. Din- 
 widdie, lieutenant governor of Virginia, tried, by "many spi 
 rited speeches, messages, and despatches,"! to rouse the British 
 ministry to a sense of its duty and of the national interest; 
 until, finding their representations likely to remain unpro 
 ductive, they could hesitate no longer about exerting their 
 own strength to dislodge the enemy. Dinwiddie sent first, in 
 1753, a messenger, one major Washington, as the Universal 
 History styles him, to summon the French to evacuate their 
 posts on the Ohio; and upon receiving a haughty refusal, raised 
 and despatched a regiment under the command of this now 
 transcendant name, to establish the British rights in that quar 
 ter. The expedition was unfortunate, and no better success, 
 for the moment, attended the similar movements of the northern 
 colonies. 
 
 It was, however, recommended from England, that " the 
 British settlements should unite in some scheme of common de 
 fence, in the general and open war which was seen to be ine 
 vitable." The arrangement proposed to them by the mother 
 country, at that critical moment, when a spirit of generosity 
 would have dictated a particular tenderness for their liberties, 
 involved the sacrifice of their main political privilege exemp 
 tion from taxation by parliament. I need not relate how this was 
 resisted; nor dwell again upon the well known Albany plan of 
 union; but there is one circumstance in its history which ought 
 not to be pretermitted. The leaders of the Provincial assemblies 
 were earnestly 6f opinion, and declared without reserve, that, 
 if it were adopted, they could undertake to defend themselves 
 from the French, without any assistance from Great Britain. 
 They required but to be left to raise and employ their own 
 supplies, in their own way, under the auspices of a governor 
 appointed by the crown, to effect their permanent security, and 
 even predominance on this continent. 
 
 Vol. xl. p. 196. f Ibid. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 119 
 
 7. In 1755, Massachusetts levied, in the space of two SECT. IV. 
 
 months, at the Instigation and expense of the crown, a body .\^*~*~^~> 
 of three thousand men, and by this force, joined with a few 
 hundred regulars from Britain, the French were completely 
 expelled from Nova Scotia. The British ministry determined 
 about the same time on a decisive effort, by sending over troops 
 for the destruction of all the French posts, which had been es 
 tablished within the immense region to which the British crown 
 laid claim in America. They committed the enterprise to ge 
 neral Braddock, of fatal memory, who landed in Virginia early 
 in that year, with two regiments of British regulars; and in the 
 beginning of the summer, set out, reinforced by a body of 
 Virginia militia, and friendly Indians, on his noted expedition 
 against Fort Du Quesne. This officer had too just a sense of 
 the superiority of the European race of men and soldiers, not to 
 despise the Provincials. Accordingly, he " neglected, diso 
 bliged, and threw aside the Virginians, and treated the Indians 
 with the utmost contempt."* u He showed," says Entick,f 
 " such contempt towards the Provincial forces, because they 
 u could not go through their exercise with the same dexterity and 
 u regularity as a regiment of guards in Hyde- Park." u ln con- 
 u versation with general Braddock one day," says Franklin, 
 " (in his Memoirs,) " he was giving me some accouns of his in- 
 " tended progress. After taking Fort Du Quesne, said he, c I 
 u am to proceed to Niagara, and having taken that, to Fronte- 
 lt nac, if the season will allow time, and I suppose it will; for 
 u Du Quesne can hardly detain me above three or four days; 
 " and then I see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara. 
 ;c Having before revolved in my mind the long line his army 
 " must make in their march by a very narrow road, to be cut 
 u for them through the woods and bushes; and also what I had 
 " heard of a former defeat of fifteen hundred French, who in- 
 " vaded the Illinois country, I had conceived some doubts and 
 " some fears for the event of the campaign. He smiled at my 
 u ignorance, and replied, These savages may indeed be afor- 
 " l midable enemy to your raw American militia* but upon the 
 " king s regular disciplined troops. Sir, it is impossible they 
 " should make any impression. "J 
 
 The humble auxiliaries of Braddock pointed out the dan 
 gers to which he was exposed, remonstrated against the confi 
 dence of his march, and in so doing, heightened his magnani- 
 
 * Universal History, vol. xl. p. 203. 
 t Vol. i. p. 143. 
 t See Note H 
 
MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART. I. mous disdain. The horrible catastrophe is still fresh, in verse 
 ^^*~**~ and prose, at almost every fireside in the interior of our country. 
 Six hundred of his regulars either killed or disabled, by ai: 
 enemy not two-thirds of their number, and partly armed will 
 bows and arrows himself mortally wounded the middlt 
 colonies laid bare to the tomahawk and scalping knife their 
 frontiers devastated and drenched in blood consternation 
 spread throughout British America: such were the conse 
 quences of the national and personal pride of the British ge 
 neral. The moral of the affair is made doubly striking by the 
 following accurate relation of the English Universal History 
 " It is remarkable, that the Virginians and other Provincial 
 troops who were in this action, and whom Braddock, by way 
 of contempt, had placed in the rear, far from being affected 
 with the panic which disordered the regulars, offered to ad 
 vance against the enemy, till the others could form and faring 
 up the artillery; but the regulars could not be brought again to 
 the charge, where, as they said, they were butchered withou: 
 seeing the enemy. Notwithstanding this, the Provincials ac 
 tually formed, and behaved so well, that they brought off tht: 
 remaining regulars; and the retreat of the whole was so unin- 
 termitting, that the fugitives never stopped, till they met the 
 rear division, which was advancing under colonel Dunbar."* 
 I may add, from the Memoirs of Franklin, who wrote as an 
 eye witness, a passage which throws additional light on the he 
 roic character of the " king s regular disciplined troops." " In 
 their first march, from the landing till they got beyond the 
 settlements, they had plundered and stripped the inhabitants, 
 totally ruining some poor families, besides insulting, abusing, 
 and confining the people if they remonstrated. This was 
 enough to put us out of conceit of such defenders, if we had 
 really wanted any." 
 
 It was the lot of a provincial commander, with provincial 
 troops, to restore, in a few weeks after the discomfiture of 
 Braddock, the honour of the Bristish name, and the tone of 
 the public mind. The plan of operations for the campaign 
 of 1755, arranged in Virginia, by a congress of governors, 
 embraced an attempt on the French fort at Niagara, to b< 
 made by the American regulars arid Indians; and an expedi 
 tion against Crown-Point, to consist of militia from the north* 
 ern colonies. In the course of the summer, an American 
 force of six thousand men was collected for these purposes at 
 Albany, the appointed rendezvous, and the command of the 
 
 * Vol. xl. p. 204 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 aiain body devolved upon colonel William Johnson, a member SECT.IV 
 of the council of New York. When on his march to Ticon- ^-^^^^^ 
 deroga, this officer learned that a large body of the enemy, 
 composed principally of French regulars, under an expe 
 rienced commander, Baron Dieskau, had been despatched 
 from Canada, to intercept the design upon Crown-Point* 
 They met on the banks of Lake George, and Johnson gained 
 a victory nearly as signal as the defeat on the Monongahela. 
 Eight hundred of the French, the flower of their troops, were 
 killed in the action, and their distinguished leader fell, mor 
 tally wounded, into the hands of the anglo- Americans; while 
 the loss of the latter did not exceed one hundred and eighty 
 men. Dieskau s plan in setting out from Canada with his 
 invincible Europeans, was to, desolate the northern frontier 
 settlements, and wrap Albany in flames; and these were the 
 evils which Johnson averted, besides regaining for the English, 
 the esteem and confidence of the Indians, whom Braddock s 
 tragedy had alienated. According to the English historians v 
 Dieskau owed his misfortune to presumption, and an obstinate 
 contempt for the British provincials. 
 
 Although great expenses were incurred, and numerous 
 forces raised by the colonies, to carry into effect the whole 
 plan of the campaign, little was accomplished, except the re 
 pulse of the French, on this occasion. In accounting for the 
 unprofitableness of the preparations of the year, the Univer 
 sal History represents it as evident, that certain private 
 discontents lurked in the minds of the chief provincials. 
 u Whatever they might pretend, they knew well that Brad- 
 dock had a commission, to act as commander in chief of all 
 the British troops on the continent of America, and that they 
 were only to be subordinate to him."* The British govern 
 ment gave all the eclat to the affair of Lake George, of which 
 it was susceptible, with an eye to their interests in Europe; and 
 we find the parliament, in an address to the king, " thankfully 
 acknowledging his majesty s wisdom and goodness, in having 
 generously extended encouragement to that great body of his 
 majesty s brave and faithful subjects, with which his American 
 provinces happily abounded, to exert their strength on this 
 important occasion of the encroachments of the French in 
 America, as their duty, interest, and common danger obliged, 
 and strongly called upon them to do." 
 
 * Vol. xl. p. 211. 
 VOL. I. Q. 
 
MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART I. 8. When open war was at length declared, in 1756, be- 
 ^^~v^^ tween England and France, the British cabinet manifested the 
 disposition, to exert the force of the empire, against the French 
 power in North America; and " the English subjects," says 
 the Universal History, u all over that continent, seeing their 
 mother country was determined to support them in earnest, 
 made extraordinary efforts to bring a formidable force to the 
 field." It was, in fact, settled by a council of colonial gover 
 nors, that twenty-one thousand men should be raised for spe 
 cific expeditions, notwithstanding the great addition, which 
 the levies and disasters of the preceding year, had made to 
 the fiscal difficulties of the colonies. Their evil genius sug 
 gested to the mother country the appointment to the command 
 over their forces, and the twelve thousand British regulars 
 destined to the same service, of a man, in whose character the 
 leading trait was indecision. The Earl of Loudon, to whom 
 their fortunes were committed, had not only this defect, but 
 almost every other kind of incapacity. Authority to act was 
 wanting, until his arrival; or, at least, was affected to be 
 thought so, by general Abercrombie, who commanded in the 
 interval; and " owing to the unsettled state of the British 
 ministry,"* he came too late in the year for any enterprise of 
 moment. It is the opinion of the military critics, that had he 
 appeared sooner, and possessed the proper degree of energy, 
 the whole plan of operations concerted at New York, and 
 which looked to the reduction of all the principal posts of the 
 French, might have been effected. Thus another year was 
 lost, at an enormous expense to Great Britain, and with infinite 
 mischief and trouble to the colonies. 
 
 Meanwhile, the French exerted their accustomed activity, 
 and gained the most important advantages. They took Fort 
 Ontario, at Oswego, and made prisoners the garrison of sixteen 
 hundred American regulars. By this event they became 
 masters of the great lakes; the northern frontier was nearly 
 laid open, and full scope afforded to the Indians to glut their 
 vengeance on the English settlers. With common judgment 
 and exertion, on the part of the British general Abercrombie, 
 whom I have mentioned above as the commander in chief ad 
 interim, Oswego might have been preserved. This assertion 
 is fully established in a work which his immediate predeces 
 sor, governor Shirley, published in London in 1758, in de 
 fence of his own military administration in America. f It is, 
 
 * Universal History. 
 
 f" The Conduct of major general Shirley, late General and Com 
 mander in chief of his Majesty s forces in North America, briefly 
 stated." 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 123 
 
 in the same volume, put beyond question, that the American SECT.IV. 
 garrison, composed of the author s regiment and that of Pep- ^^^^ 
 perell, behaved with the utmost gallantry; so far that when 
 the works of the fort were no longer tenable, the officers had 
 considerable difficulty in persuading the men to lay down their 
 arms, and that, some of the latter, according to the testimony 
 of eye witnesses, " suffered themselves to be knocked on the 
 head by the enemy, rather than submit." " Yet," says go 
 vernor Shirley, "reports were propagated, and gained credit in 
 England, that the American regiments, (the fiftieth and fifty- 
 first,) consisted of transported convicts and Irish Roman Ca 
 tholics, who by their mutinous behaviour, had contributed to 
 the loss of the place. Reports were likewise propagated 
 greatly to the disadvantage of the officers of both regiments; 
 but their known characters, and the behaviour of several of 
 them upon other occasions, in his majesty s service, as well as 
 this, are sufficient to vindicate their honour." 
 
 The principal of the expeditions planned for the year 1756 
 by the provincial governments, was that against Crown-Point, 
 to consist of a body of ten thousand men, made up of contin 
 gents from the colonies north of the Carolinas. Seven thousand 
 troops were actually collected for the purpose, and the com 
 mand of the expedition was assigned to major-general Winslow 
 of Massachusetts. The sufficiency of this force is asserted by 
 Shirley as unquestionable, from the unanimous opinion of a 
 council of war held at Albany, at which general Abercrombie 
 assisted. Winslow was in full readiness, in good time, to 
 proceed with his provincials, first against Ticonderoga; and 
 it had been settled, that the British regulars should move up 
 to forts Edward and William Henry, which the former occu 
 pied, and be there prepared to sustain or assist them, as the 
 occasion might require. The march of Winslow was delayed 
 by obstacles ascribable to the improvidence of Abercrombie; 
 and on the intelligence of the fall of Oswego, all offensive ope 
 rations in that quarter were countermanded by the Earl of 
 Loudon. In the letter* which Winslow addressed to the Earl 
 of Halifax in London, on the subject of this affair, we find the 
 following passage. " I write that your lordship may be in 
 formed of the share the American troops under my command 
 have had in this expedition; and although we did not attempt 
 Crown-Point, which was the thing principally aimed at by our 
 constituents, yet we were the means of stopping the current 
 of the French forces, after their success in carrying Oswego, 
 
 * Preserved in the Collections of the Mass. His. Soc. vol. for 1799 
 
124 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART I. and thereby the saving of Albany, and a great part of the 
 ~*-v^^ government of New York, as well as the western parts of 
 New England, which, by their joining their forces at Carilon, 
 was doubtless their intent." 
 
 The right of Massachusetts to compensation for the provi 
 sions with which she furnished the king s troops during these 
 arrangements, was admitted by the British parliament; but se 
 veral years elapsed before any part of the sum liquidated was 
 paid. Minot relates a transaction of the governor of Massa 
 chusetts with the general court of that province, in relation to 
 a levy of three thousand five hundred for the Crown-Point 
 expedition, which exemplifies strikingly, the impression enter 
 tained by the royal officers in America, of the scrupulosity 
 of the fiscal conscience of the mother country, where the 
 northern colonies were concerned. " The governor agreed to 
 the terms of the general court, and loaned the province thirty 
 thousand pounds sterling, out of the king s money in his hands, 
 taking for security such grant as might be made them for their 
 extraordinary services by the king or parliament, and a farther 
 collateral mortgage of a tax, to be raised in the two following 
 years.* 
 
 Notwithstanding that the only brilliant achievements dur 
 ing the war, had been performed when the Provincials singly 
 opposed the enemy, or were seconded but in a very slight 
 degree by the British regulars; and that the adventure of 
 Braddock had baffled all the domestic arrangements for de 
 fence, it can occasion no surprise, that the British commander 
 in chief, at the beginning of 1757, formally laid to the charge 
 of the colonies, all the calamities of the preceding year. He 
 established his own infallibility by doing no more, the suc 
 ceeding campaign, although the British force in America at 
 his disposal had been augmented to twenty thousand men, and 
 twenty ships of the line, than make a demonstration upon 
 Louisbourg. He collected his troops at Halifax; waited there 
 some time for advices; then returned gallantly to New York and 
 dismissed the Provincials. Montcalm, who succeeded baron 
 Dieskau in the command of the military means of Canada, tak 
 ing advantage of the absence of the principal part of the British 
 army, besieged and reduced Fort William Henry, situated on 
 the southern coast of Lake George, so as to command that lake 
 and the western line. The Provincial army stationed for the 
 defence of this important post, made a noble resistance, and 
 were admitted to an honourable capitulation by the French 
 commander; but his Indian allies, with circumstances which 
 
 * History of Massachusetts, vol. i. c. xii. 
 
MILITARY EFFORTS 125 
 
 mark out the case as the pattern of the recent one of the SECT.iV. 
 river Raisin, either butchered, or appropriated to themselves, v^-v-^/ 
 as prisoners, a considerable part of the brave garrison. Out 
 of a New Hampshire corps of two hundred, eighty were mis 
 sing. It was not merely this horrible catastrophe, and the loss 
 of ordnance, ammunition, provisions, and the shipping on Lake 
 George, which the colonists had to lament: they saw the In 
 dians, whom they had been able to attach to their cause, 
 shaken in their fidelity; and such of the tribes as had deter 
 mined to keep aloof from the struggle, or had wavered in the 
 choice of a side, converted into indefatigable assailants. 
 Massachusetts felt, more than the enemy, the energy of the 
 British commander in chief, in a controversy which arose be 
 tween him and her general court, concerning the quartering 
 and billeting of the British regulars upon the inhabitants. She 
 resisted, with her ancient spirit, the extension of the act of par 
 liament on that head, to America, and stood firm under me 
 naces fitted only for the meridian of Hindostan. 
 
 Our illustrious countryman, Franklin, had personal rela 
 tions with the noble lord, who proved, during two years, so 
 fatal a scourge to the colonies. He has left, in his Memoirs, 
 the following notice of him, for the edification of posterity. 
 " I wondered how such a man as Loudon came to be entrusted 
 with so important a business as the, command of a great army. 
 Instead of defending the colonies with his great force, he left 
 them totally exposed, while he paraded idly at Halifax; by 
 which means Fort George was lost. Besides he deranged all 
 our mercantile operations, and distressed our trade by a long 
 embargo on the exportation of provisions, on pretence of keep 
 ing supplies, from being obtained by the enemy, but in reality 
 for the purpose of beating down their price in favour of the con 
 tractors, in whose profits it was said, (perhaps from suspicion 
 only,) he had a share; and when at length the embargo was 
 taken off, he neglected to send notice of it to Charleston, 
 where the Carolina fleet was detained near three months; and 
 whereby tbeir bottoms were so much damaged by the worm, 
 that a great part of them foundered in their y33s?.ge home."* 
 
 In 1758, the elder Pitt breathed a new son] into tile British 
 councils, and resuscitated in the colonies those native en-rgies, 
 which along series of exhausting and disappointed effjrts, had 
 sensibly depressed. Under the influence of his magnanimous 
 spirit, America may be said to have emerged, with the whole 
 British empire, a from the gulf of despondency, and risen to 
 the highest point of practical vigour." A contagious zeal 
 
 * See Note T. 
 
126 
 
 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART i. gave the fullest effect, to his call upon the colonial governors, 
 -^-v-^- for the largest bodies of men the number of the inhabitants 
 would allow. Fifteen thousand troops were voted by the three 
 provinces of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire 
 alone. In less than twenty-four hours, a private subscription 
 of ^20,000 sterling for encouraging enlistments, was filled up 
 in Boston. " The expense," says Minot, a of the regiments 
 raised for his majesty s service amounted to near one hundred 
 and twenty thousand pounds sterling: besides this, the inha 
 bitants of the several towns in the province, by fines, or by 
 voluntary contributions to procure men for the service, paid at 
 least sixty thousand pounds sterling more; which was, in all 
 respects, as burdensome as if it had been raised as a tax by 
 the government. The defence of our own frontiers, and 
 the other ordinary charges of government, amounted to, at 
 least, thirty thousand pounds sterling. The province had, in 
 one campaign, on foot, seven thousand troops. This was a 
 greater levy for a single province, than the three kingdoms 
 had made collectively in any one year since the revolution. " 
 Loudon was superseded, in the beginning of 1758, by ge 
 neral Abercrombie: but the colonies cannot be said to have 
 gained much by the substitution. The new commander in 
 chief wasted a part of their resources, and checked the mo 
 mentum of the mighty force which Pitt had arrayed on this 
 continent against the French, by an ill-advised and ill-ma 
 naged expedition against Crown-Point. He took with him 
 sixteen thousand men, of whom nine thousand were Provincials, 
 and urged them to a hopeless assault upon Ticonderoga, which 
 cost the lives of more than sixteen hundred of his bravest 
 European troops, and of four hundred provincials. u This 
 attack," says the Universal History, " when no prospect oi 
 success could possibly present itself, was followed by a retreat 
 as pusillanimous, as the other was presumptuous. The genera! 
 reimbarked the troops, and though not an incident had happened 
 that might not have been easily foreseen, or rationally expect 
 ed, he returned to his former camp at Lake George."* 
 
 Anxious to repair in any way, the mischief and disgrace of 
 this repulse, Abercrombie consented, at the solicitation of a 
 native American officer, colonel Bradstreet, to detach him 
 with three thousand men, against Fort Frontenac, on the 
 north side of the Ohio. This body of troops, with the ex 
 ception of only one hundred and fifty-five regulars, was com- 
 posed of Provincials; and after surmounting, as the historians 
 
 * Vol. xl. p. 220. 
 
OP THE COLONISTS. 
 
 127 
 
 acknowledge, incredible difficulties and hardships, it gave an SECT.IV. 
 earnest of victory to the British cause, by capturing the for- s -^^ - **^ 
 tress, together with nine armed vessels, a vast quantity of am 
 munition, &c. and breaking up thus, the principal depot of 
 supplies for the south western posts, and the hostile Indians. 
 Louisbourg constituted an object of primary importance in 
 the great scheme for annihilating the French power in Ameri 
 ca, which engrossed the care and strained the vigour of Pitt.* 
 The reduction of that fortress was one of the first operations of 
 the campaign, and was accomplished with an overwhelming 
 force indeed, but in a manner highly creditable to the courage 
 of the victors, among whom the provincials bore a distinguish 
 ed part. It was not easy, even for the mother country to for 
 get, or not to recal at the moment, what had been before 
 achieved by New England on the same theatre. 
 
 9. To dispossess the French of Fort Du Quesne, the bul 
 wark of their dominion over the western region, entered neces 
 sarily into the plan of the campaign. This object was effect 
 ed, not certainly through the judgment and skill of the British 
 commander, within whose province it fell, but by the magni 
 tude of the force employed, and the influence of extraneous 
 events. f The Virginia militia composed a large part of the 
 army, which general Forbes carried with him in this enter 
 prise, and were under the immediate direction of Washing 
 ton. They performed the chief labour, truly herculean, and 
 infinitely more oppressive than would have been necessary, 
 kad the British leader condescended to avail himself, in the 
 choice of a route and of the season of action, of the experi 
 ence and topographical knowledge of the provincial colonel. 
 Against the urgent, reiterated expostulations of the latter, and 
 
 * Much of the merit of the scheme is due to Franklin, who constantly 
 urged the conquest of Canada upon the British government. The fol 
 lowing statement of his grandson has never been contradicted in Eng 
 land. " The more Franklin weighed the subject in his mind, the more 
 was he satisfied, that the true interest of Great Britain lay in weakening 
 her rival on the side of America, rather than in Germany; and these 
 sentiments he imparted to some of his friends, by whom they were re 
 ported to William Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham ; who no sooner 
 consulted him on the practicability of the conquest of Canada, than he 
 was convinced by the force of his arguments, and determined by the 
 simple accuracy of his statements. The enterprise was immediately 
 undertaken ; the command given to general Wolfe," &.c. (Memoirs, 
 p. 194.) 
 
 f " The success of colonel Bradstreet, at Frontignac, in all proba 
 bility, facilitated the expedition under Forbes," &e. RussePs Modern 
 Europe, let. xxxiii. 
 
128 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART I. when there was left scarcely time to tread the beaten track 
 ^^^-^s universally confessed to be the best passage over the moun 
 tains, he selected a road, every inch of which was to be cuL 
 and which exacted the constant toil of fifteen hundred or two 
 thousand men. Washington advanced in front, and opened 
 the almost impervious forest and mountain to the main body of 
 the army. On the approach to Fort Du Quesne, the British 
 general, disregarding the caution of his faithful pioneer, sen! 
 forward a select corps of eight hundred men to reconnoi 
 tre the adjacent country. The enemy overpowered this de 
 tachment, and had destroyed it, but for the bravery and 
 self possession of a Virginia captain.* Out of a company 
 of one hundred and sixty-six provincials, sixty-two fell on the 
 spot; and of the whole detachment, the number of killed and 
 wounded was nearly tfcree hundred. From the account oi 
 this expedition, framed by Chief Justice Marshall,! upor 
 the papers of Washington, and unquestionably authentic, 
 it is to be inferred, that if the army of Forbes did not en 
 counter even a worse fate than that of Braddock, it was noi 
 owing to any superior wisdom of management, or greatei 
 pliability, in the leader. 
 
 " The army," says Marshall, " reached the camp at Loyal 
 Hanna, through a road alleged to be indescribably bad, about 
 the fifth of November, where, as had been predicted, a council 
 of war determined, that it was unadvisable to proceed further 
 this campaign. It would have been almost impossible to have 
 wintered an army in that position. They must have retreated 
 from the cold inhospitable wilderness into which they had 
 penetrated, or have suffered immensely, perhaps have perished. 
 Fortunately some prisoners were taken, who informed them oi 
 the extreme distress of the fort. Deriving no support from 
 Canada, the garrison was weak; was, in great want of pro 
 visions; and had been deserted by the Indians. These en 
 couraging circumstances changed the resolution which had 
 been taken, and determined the general to prosecute the ex 
 pedition." Washington seems to have felt the utmost indig 
 nation and chagrin at the conduct of the enterprise, and ex 
 pressed himself with unusual warmth, in his first letters to the 
 speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses. " We appear, 
 in my opinion, to act under the guidance of an evil genius. 
 We shall be stopped at the Laurel Hill this winter. Can ge 
 neral Forbes have orders for these proceedings? Impossible 
 
 * See a full account of the service performed by this officer, cap 
 tain Bullet, in vol. iii.p. 3, of Burk s History of Virginia, 
 f Life of Washington, vol. ii. ch. i. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 129 
 
 The conduct of our leaders is tempered with something I do SECT. iv. 
 not care to give a name to. Nothing but a miracle can bring v^^^x^ 
 the campaign to a happy issue," &c. 
 
 When we consider what is the present face of the country 
 between Philadelphia and Pittsburg, it is doubly interesting to 
 contemplate the picture drawn of it by the English historians, 
 in their commemoration of this affair. " In the beginning of 
 July, 1758, Brigadier Forbes set out on his expedition from 
 Philadelphia for Fort Du Quesne. He was to march through 
 countries that never had been impressed by human footsteps, 
 and he had difficulties to surmount, greater, perhaps, than 
 those of Alexander, in his expedition to India; by establishing 
 magazines, forming and securing camps, procuring carriages, 
 and encountering a thousand unforeseen obstacles in penetrat 
 ing through regions, that presented nothing but scalping parties 
 of French and savages, mountains, woods, and morasses," &c.* 
 
 It is sufficient to repeat the fact, that the colonies had on 
 foot, in active co-operation with the British forces, in 1759, 
 twenty-five thousand troops, to establish their title to a large 
 share of the glorious results of that year. The number of the 
 provincials was considerable before Quebec, and still greater 
 in Amherst s arduous expedition, by way of Ticonderoga, 
 Crown-Point, and Lake Champlain. That ablest of the British 
 commanders in America, bore, in the general orders which he 
 issued, after the complete reduction of Canada, in 1760, the 
 strongest testimony to " the indefatigable efforts of his majesty s 
 faithful subjects in America, and the zeal and bravery of the 
 officers and soldiers of the provincial troops." 
 
 The troops of this description composed altogether the third 
 grand division of the British force, with which general Pri- 
 deaux, " assisted by the interest and abilities of the provincial 
 leader, gen. William Johnson," marched to reduce Fort Niaga 
 ra, a post of the utmost consequence in itself, and in relation 
 to the success of the main enterprise of the campaign of 1759. 
 The manner in which this service was performed will sustain a 
 comparison at least, with that of Abercrombie s attempt upon 
 Ticonderoga. I will adopt the narrative of the Universal 
 History. 
 
 " While Amherst was reducing Crown-Point, and making 
 himself master of Lake Champlain, Prideaux and Sir Wil 
 liam Johnson were proceeding against Fort Niagara. On 
 the 20th of July, Prideaux, to the inexpressible grief of 
 the army, was killed in the trenches, by the bursting of a 
 
 * Vol. xl. p. 221, Universal History. 
 
 VOL. I. R 
 
130 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PARTI, cannon. The command then fell upon Sir William Johnson, 
 -^-v-^* who was superseded by brigadier-general Gage, by the appoint 
 ment of Amherst. Before Gage could arrive at Niagara, John 
 son had performed wonders. He had carried his approaches 
 within one hundred yards of the covert-way of the fort; and 
 the French were so apprehensive of losing that palladium of 
 their interest in North America, that they exerted their utmost 
 to maintain it, by collecting seventeen hundred men from all 
 the neighbouring posts, particularly from Detroit, Venango, 
 and Presque Isle, under the command of Mons. D Aubry. 
 Had this reinforcement reached the fort, it must have been 
 impregnable; but Johnson made dispositions towards the left, 
 on the road leading from Niagara falls to the fortress, for in 
 tercepting it." 
 
 "About 8 o clock, on the 24th of July, the enemy appear 
 ed, and the English Indians attempted in vain to have some 
 talk with their countrymen, who served under the French. 
 The battle began with a horrible war-whoop, which was now 
 matter of ridicule, rather than terror, to the English, uttered 
 by the French Indians. The French, as usual, charged with 
 vast impetuosity, but being received with equal firmness, and 
 the English Indians on the flanks doing considerable execu 
 tion, all the French army were put to the rout, and for five 
 miles the pursuit continued, in which seventeen officers, 
 among whom were the first and second in command, were 
 made prisoners. Next morning Sir Wm. Johnson sent a trum 
 pet to the French commandant, with a list of the seventeen 
 officers that had been taken, to convince him of the inutility 
 of further resistance. The commandant found all Sir Wil 
 liam Johnson s intelligence to be perfectly true, and in a few 
 hours a capitulation was signed, by which six hundred and 
 seven men, of which the garrison consisted, were to march 
 out with the honours of war, to be embarked on the lake, and 
 carried to New York, but protected from the barbarity of the 
 Indians. The women and children were carried to Montreal, 
 and the conqueror treated the sick and wounded in a manner 
 so humane, as to prove himself worthy of victory. Thus, for 
 a second time, this self-taught general obtained an entire tri 
 umph over the boasted discipline of the French arms. But 
 that was his least praise. Though eleven hundred Indians 
 followed him to the field, he restrained them within regular 
 bounds."* 
 
 While affecting at home to consider the colonists as of little 
 efficiency in the field, and even to deride their humblest pre- 
 
 * Vol. xl. p. 237. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 131 
 
 tensions to the military character,* the mother country inces- SECT. IV. 
 santly called upon their assemblies for more levies, with pro- ^^^^s 
 testations of the indispensableness of their fullest co-operation. 
 They were required, in 1760, to raise and equip, if practi 
 cable, at least as large a body of men as they had sent forth the 
 preceding year; and they obeyed with an alacrity equal to that 
 which they had manifested, when it seemed necessary for them 
 to make extreme efforts, to avoid being overrun by the com 
 mon enemy, let in through the incapacity of the British com 
 manders. Massachusetts supplied besides, troops to guard 
 Louisbourg, Halifax, and Lunenburg, and entirely garrisoned 
 Annapolis, Fort Cumberland at Chignecto, and Fort Frederick 
 at St. Johns. It was not merely land forces that were furnish 
 ed by New England. Her seamen served in such numbers on 
 board the British ships of war, that her merchants were com 
 pelled to navigate their trading vessels with Indians and ne- 
 groes.f More than four hundred privateers, as I have already 
 had occasion to remark, issued, during the war, from the North 
 American ports, ravaged the French West India Islands, and 
 distressed to the utmost the commerce of France in all parts 
 of the world. 
 
 During the years 1760 and 1761, the southern colonies 
 were involved in hostilities with the Cherokee Indians. These, 
 instigated by the French, made the most destructive inroads, 
 and required some arduous campaigns to be reduced to inac 
 tion. In 1763, a general Indian war unexpectedly broke 
 out, of a most disastrous and alarming character. It threat 
 ened the loss of some of the important posts which had 
 been wrested from the French, and depopulated a great part 
 of the western frontiers. Franklin, being asked, on his exa 
 mination before the House of Commons, whether this was not 
 a war for America only; answered, that it was rather a conse 
 quence or remains of the former one, the Indians not having 
 been thoroughly pacified; that the Americans bore much the 
 greater share of the expense; and that it was put an end to 
 by the army under general Bouquet, consisting of about three 
 hundred regulars, and above one thousand Pennsylvanians. 
 
 The pecuniary charges incurred by the colonists in the seven 
 years war, greatly exceeded the amount of the sums which were 
 allotted to them by the British Parliament, as an indemnity. 
 
 * See Note I. 
 
 f It was asserted, without contradiction, in the House of Commons, 
 in the debate of March 11, 1778, on the state of the British navy, that 
 ten thousand of the seamen employed in it during the war of 1756. 
 were natives of North America. 
 
132 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART I. The excess was two millions five hundred thousand pounds, 
 ^^^v^^ not taking into the account the extraordinary supplies granted 
 by the colonial assemblies. Their whole disbursement did 
 not fall short of three millions and a half; a sum far more 
 onerous for them, in the proportion of their ability and ha 
 bits, than that which was expended by the crown, great as it 
 was, could have been for the British people. 
 
 On the termination of the struggle in Canada, in 1760, and 
 the extinction of danger from the French in North America, 
 the provinces were fairly entitled to an exemption from all 
 contribution to the exterior military enterprises of the mother 
 country; at least until the deep wounds they had received in 
 their finances, and the most valuable part of their population, 
 should be healed A considerable body of native troops was, 
 however, drawn from them, to assist in the reduction of the 
 French and Spanish West India Islands: and Massachusetts 
 raised in 1762, three thousand two hundred and twenty, as her 
 quota, for the object of " securing the British dominions, and 
 particularly the conquests in her neighbourhood." " Many 
 of the common soldiers," says the historian, Gordon, "who 
 gained such laurels, by their singular bravery on the plains of 
 Abraham, when Wolfe died in the arms of victory, were na 
 tives of the Massachusetts Bay. When Martinico was attack 
 ed in 1761, and the British force was greatly weakened by 
 death and sickness, the timely arrival of the New England 
 troops enabled the former to prosecute the reduction of the 
 island to an happy issue. A part of the British force being 
 now about to sail from thence for the Havanna, the New 
 Englanders, whose health had been much impaired by service 
 and the climate, were sent off in three ships, to their native 
 country for recovery. Before they had completed their voyage, 
 they found themselves restored, ordered the ships about, steer 
 ed immediately for the Havanna, arrived when the British 
 were too much reduced to expect success, and by their junc 
 tion, served to immortalize afresh, the glorious first of August, 
 old style, in the surrender of the place on that memorable day: 
 they exhibited, at the same time, the most signal evidence of 
 devotedness to the parent state. Their fidelity, activity, and 
 courage, were such as to gain the approbation and confidence 
 of the British officers."* 
 
 There are some general considerations which place in strong 
 
 * History of the American Revolution, vol. i. page Ijj. The writer 
 received his information not only from public, but from private, sources 
 he cites particularly Brooke Woodcock, Esq. of Saffron Walden, whc 
 served at the taking 1 of Belleisle, Martinico, and the Havanna. 
 
OP THE COLONISTS, 
 
 133 
 
 relief, the merit of the multitude of Americans who served as SECT. IV. 
 volunteers in these campaigns. They cannot be supposed to \^~^^*s 
 have been tempted by the slender pay which they received; 
 for, their domestic affairs were, in all cases, of a nature to 
 suffer greatly by their absence: They could not be incited by 
 hopes of preferment, since the provincial forces were uniform 
 ly disbanded on a peace; the provincial officers no further 
 rewarded by commissions than the enlisting of men made it 
 necessary; and the vacancies which occurred among the re 
 gulars, filled with Europeans: They were liable to perpetual 
 mortification by invidious distinctions in favour of the British 
 troops; they were penuriously praised when their prowess was 
 unquestionable, and outrageously censured when their conduct 
 gave the least opening to detraction. Under such circum 
 stances, there are no other motives to be assigned for their 
 self-devotion, except public spirit, a sense of duty a native 
 manliness of character. In truth, the colonists were unspar 
 ing of their resources and their blood, not merely, from a belief 
 that the cause was their own, and from a resolution to protect 
 themselves to the utmost of their ability; but as members of the 
 British empire, eager for its prosperity, and deeply interested 
 in all its concerns; proud of their kindred and connection with 
 the British nation, and sympathetic in its prejudices and pas 
 sions. Whoever gives attention to the public papers of the 
 era of the seven years war, will be convinced, that they enter 
 ed into the rivalry between England and France, with the 
 keenness of the school of Pitt, and rejoiced in the success 
 of the British arms, not more as ministerial to their security, 
 than to the ascendency of the British power and the glory of 
 the British name. 
 
 10. At the peace of Paris, of 1763, England found herself 
 the acknowledged mistress of the whole continent of America 
 north, of the Gulf of Mexico, and assured of a permanent naval 
 supremncv over the nations of Europe. It is a proposition 
 now hardly disputed, even as an exercise of ingenuity, that for 
 this vast extension of her power, and the triumph of her for 
 tunes over those of France, she was largely indebted to the 
 exiles who adhered to her dominion. Originally, they 
 had preserved the Atlantic territory from the occupation of 
 her enemies. No great sagacity is required to perceive, that 
 had the French settled and retained it, she must have fallen 
 into the secondary rank as a naval and commercial power.* 
 
 * " It appears," says Hutchinson, (vol. i. chap i.) "that the Massachu 
 setts people took possession of the country at a very critical time. 
 
134 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART I. What she became, she never could have become, without the 
 w*v~>*/ thirteen colonies; and not unless they had become what their 
 industry, spirit, and intelligence, made them. Whatever obli 
 gations, then, she can pretend, with any colour of plausibility, 
 to have conferred, must fall far short of those which she re 
 ceived. Their instrumentality in her elevation and the de 
 pression of her rival, manifestly overbalances even the degree 
 of protection which she herself claims to have extended. And 
 the duty of gratitude appears the more exigent, from the con 
 sideration of that British feeling, to which I have referred 
 in the preceding page, as the main spring of their prodigious 
 efforts in seconding all her aims. 
 
 It will seem scarcely credible, that the politicians of Eng 
 land earnestly debated, during the negotiations for the peace 
 of 1763, and while parliament was yet complimenting the 
 colonies for their loyal sacrifices, whether Canada should not 
 be restored to the French, and the Island of Guadaloupe re 
 tained in preference. The odium of this controversy, which, 
 in its general purport, put out of question every claim and se 
 curity of their American brethren, and admitted of no calcula 
 tion but one of mere commercial profit and loss, was greatly 
 aggravated by the principal grounds of argument with some 
 of the most eminent writers of the day, who embraced the 
 affirmative" that the colonies were already large and nu 
 merous enough, and that the French ought to be left in North 
 America to prevent their increase, lest they should become not 
 only useless, but dangerous to Great Britain." " It was in 
 sinuated," says Russel,* " by some of our keen-sighted politi- 
 
 Richlieu, in all probability, would have planted his colony nearer the 
 sun, if he could have found any place vacant. De Monts and company 
 had acquired a thorough knowledge of all the coast, from Cape Sables 
 beyond Cape Cod, in 1604; indeed it does not appear that they then 
 went round or to the bottom of Massachusetts Bay. Had they once 
 gained footing there, they would have prevented the English. The 
 Frenchified court of king Charles I. would, at the treaty of St. Ger 
 main s, have given up any claim to Massachusetts Bay as readily as they 
 did to Acadie ; for the French could make out no better title to Penob- 
 scot and the other parts of Acadie, than they could to Massachusetts. 
 The little plantation at New Plymouth would have been no greater bar 
 to the French in one place than in the other. The Dutch, the next 
 year, would have quietly possessed themselves of Connecticut river, 
 unless the French, instead of the English, had prevented them. Whe 
 ther the people of either nation would hare persevered, is uncertain. 
 If they had done it, the late contest for the dominion of North America 
 would have been between France and Holland, and the commerce of 
 England would have borne a very different proportion to that of the 
 rest of Europe from what it does at present." 
 * Modern Europe, part ii. letter xxxv. 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 135 
 
 uians, that the security provided by the retention of Canada, SECT. TV. 
 for the English settlements in North America, as well as for ^-^-^w 
 their extension in the cession of Florida by Spain, would prove 
 a source of new evils. It would embolden our old colonies 
 to shake off the controul of the mother country, since they no 
 longer stood in need of her protection, and erect themselves 
 into independent states. 5 Franklin, who, at this period, as 
 agent of some of the provinces at the court of London, watch 
 ed paternally over the interests of the whole, found himself 
 under the necessity of combating these doctrines in an elaborate 
 tract, which I have already noticed. The very existence of 
 the " Canada-Pamphlet" is an eternal reproach to Great Bri 
 tain; and there is an increase of shame, from its being an ap 
 peal, not to her generosity or her justice, but to her separate 
 interests. Upon these, the sagacious author, deeming every 
 higher consideration, idle and misplaced, laid all stress; and 
 the same thing may be said of the British cabinet, on a refe 
 rence to the tenour of the discussions respecting the peace both 
 in and out of parliament. Amid the violent discontents which 
 the improvident treaty of Paris excited, consolation was found, 
 not, as some of her writers have gratuitously alledged, in the 
 exemption of the colonies from the annoyance of a European 
 enemy, and their increased ability to overawe the savages, 
 but in " the wide scope for projects of political ambition, and 
 the boundless field for speculations of commercial avidity, 
 which the undivided sovereignty of the vast continent of Ame 
 rica, with the exclusive enjoyment of its trade, seemed to open 
 to the British nation."* We may judge how the colonies 
 would have fared with the " tory counsels," to whose influence 
 the demerits of the peace were attributed, had not the retention 
 of Canada fallen within their selfish and corrupt views, when 
 we advert to the fact, that the execrable suggestion above 
 mentioned came from the whigs. To display it in its true light, 
 as well as to illustrate the temper of mind with which the great 
 champion of the colonies had to contend, I cannot do better 
 than quote his bold language on the point. 
 
 44 But what is the prudent policy inculcated to obtain this end 
 security of dominion over our colonies? It is, to leave the 
 French in Canada to c check their growth; for otherwise, our 
 people may increase infinitely from all causes. We have al 
 ready seen in what manner the French and their Indians check 
 the growth of our colonies. It is a modest word, this check. 
 for massacreing men, women, and children." 
 
 * Russel, ibid. 
 
136 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART i. "But if Canada is restored on this principle, will not Britain 
 v^~^w be guilty of all the blood to be shed, all the murders to be 
 committed, in order to check this dreaded growth of our own 
 people? Will not this be telling the French in plain terms, 
 that the horrid barbarities they perpetrated with Indians, on 
 our colonists, are agreeable to us; and that they need not ap 
 prehend the resentment of a government with whose views 
 they so happily concur? Will not the colonies view it in this 
 light? Will they have reason to consider themselves any 
 longer as subjects and children, when they find their cruel 
 enemies hallooed upon them by the country from whence they 
 sprung; the government that owes them protection, as it re 
 quires their obedience? Is not this the most likely means oi 
 driving ihem into the arms of the French, who can invite 
 them by an offer of security, their own government chooses 
 not to offer them?" 
 
 u If it be, after all, thought necessary to check the growth 
 of our colonies, give me leave to propose a method less cruel. 
 The method I mean, is that which was dictated by the Egyp 
 tian policy, when the c infinite increase, of the children oi 
 Israel, was apprehended as dangerous to the state. Let an act 
 of parliament then be made, enjoining the colony midwives 
 to stifle in the birth every third or fourth child. By this means 
 you may keep the colonies to their present size." 
 
 II. I have made no assertion in treating the topics upon which 
 I have enlarged so much, of the military merits of America, 
 and the nature of the protection extended to her by the mother 
 country, which it would not be in my power to vindicate by 
 British authority of the highest class. And I cannot refrain, 
 though it is done at the risk of fatiguing my readers by what 
 may have the air of repetition, from seeking in the records of 
 the British Parliament for a general confirmation of what I 
 have advanced. I find this, with every recommendation of un 
 questionable validity, and sententious eloquence, in a speech 
 of David Hartley, on the American question, delivered in the 
 House of Commons, in the year 1775. That gentleman long 
 held a conspicuous rank in Parliament; lived in the closest in 
 timacy with the most eminent British statesmen of the time; 
 concluded, as the minister plenipotentiary of Great Britain, the 
 definitive treaty of 1 783, with the United States; and though a 
 zealous friend of justice and the injured colonies, established, 
 with all parties at home, the character of a devoted patriot. 
 What follows from him will protect me from the charge of 
 
OF THE COLONISTS. 
 
 national partiality in my representations, and serve me as a 
 "iseful recapitulation of facts. 
 
 Mr. Hartley said, 
 
 " I would wish to state to the House, the merits of this 
 question of requisitions to the colonies, and to see upon what 
 principles it is founded; to revise the accounts between Great 
 Britain and them. We hear of nothing now but the protec 
 tion we have given to them; of the immense expense incurred 
 on their account. We are told that they have done nothing 
 for themselves; that they pay no taxes; in short, every thing 
 is asserted about America to serve the present turn, without the 
 least regard to truth. I would have these matters fairly 
 sifted out." 
 
 " To begin with the late war, of 56. The Americans 
 turned the success of the war at both ends of the line. Ge 
 neral Monckton took Beausejour in Nova Scotia, with fifteen 
 hundred provincial troops, and about two hundred regu 
 lars. Sir William Johnson, in the other part of America, 
 changed the face of the war to success, with a provincial 
 army, which took Baron Dieskau prisoner. But, Sir, the 
 glories of the war under the united British and American arms, 
 are recent in every one s memory. Suffice it to decide this 
 question; that the Americans bore, even in our judgment, more 
 than their full proportion; that this House did annually vote 
 them an acknowledgment of their zeal and strenuous efforts, 
 and compensation for the excess of their zeal and expenses, 
 above their due proportion. They kept, one year with ano 
 ther, twenty-five thousand men on foot, and lost in the war 
 the flower of their youth. How strange it must appear to 
 them, to hear of nothing down to the year 1763, but en 
 comiums upon their active zeal and strenuous efforts; and 
 then, no longer after than the year 1764, in such a trice 
 of time, to see the tide turn, and from that hour to this, to 
 hear it asserted that they were a burden upon the common 
 cause; asserted even in that same parliament which had voted 
 them compensations for the liberality and excess of their 
 service." 
 
 " Nor did they stint their services to North America. They 
 followed the British arms out of their continent to the.Havan- 
 na, and Martinique, after the complete conquest of America. 
 And so they had done in the preceding war. They were not 
 grudging of their exertions they were at the siege of Car- 
 thagena: yet, what was Carthagena to them, but as members 
 
 VOL. I. S 
 
 137 
 
138 
 
 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART i. of the common cause, friends of the glory of this country! 
 v -^ v ^" In that war too, Sir, they took Louisbourg from the French, 
 single handed, without any European assistance; as mettled 
 an enterprise as any in our history! an everlasting memorial 
 to the zeal, courage, and perseverance of the troops of New 
 England. The men themselves dragged the cannon over 
 morasses, which had always been thought impassable, where, 
 neither horses nor oxen could go, and they carried the shot 
 upon their backs. And what was their reward for this for 
 ward and spirited enterprise; for the reduction of this Ame 
 rican Dunkirk? Their reward, Sir, you know very well if 
 was given up for a barrier to the Dutch. The only conquest 
 in that war, which you had to give up, and which would have 
 been an effectual barrier to them, against the French power ir 
 America, though gained by themselves, was surrendered for 
 a foreign barrier, As a substitute for this, you settled Hali 
 fax for a place d annes, leaving the limits of the province of 
 Nova Scotia as a matter of contest with the French, which 
 could not fail to prove, as it did, the cause of another war 
 Had you kept Louisbourg, instead of settling Halifax, th 
 Americans could say, at least, that there would not have been 
 that pretext for imputing the late war to their account. Jt 
 has been their forwardness in your cause, that made them the 
 objects of the French resentment. In the war of 1744, at 
 your requisition, they were the aggressors on the French in 
 America. We know the orders given to Mons. D Anville, to 
 destroy and lay all their sea port towns in ashes, and we know 
 the cause of that resentment; it was to revenge their conquest 
 of Louisbourg." 
 
 " Whenever Great Britain has declared war, they have 
 taken their part. They were engaged in king William s wars, 
 and queen Anne s, even in their infancy. They conquered 
 Acadia in the last century, for us; and we then gave it up. 
 Again, in queen Anne s war, they conquered Nova Scotia, 
 which, from that time, has always belonged to Great Britain. 
 They have been engaged in more than one expedition to Ca 
 nada, ever foremost to partake of honour and danger with the 
 mother country." 
 
 ",Well, Sir, what have we done for them? Have we con 
 quered the country for them from the Indians? Have we 
 cleared it? Have we drained it? Have we made it habitable? 
 What have we done for them? I believe, precisely nothing at 
 all, but just keeping watch and ward over their trade, that 
 they should receive nothing but from ourselves, at our own 
 price. I will not positively say that we have spent nothing; 
 
OP THE COLONISTS. 139 
 
 though I don t recollect any such article upon our journals: SECT. IV. 
 but I mean any material expense in setting them out as colo- ^^-^s 
 nists. The royal military government of Nova Scotia cost, 
 indeed, not a little sum; above ^500,000 for its plantation, 
 and its first years. Had your other colonies cost any thing 
 similar either in their outset or support, there would have been 
 something to say on that side; but, instead of that, they have 
 been left to themselves for one hundred or one hundred and 
 fifty years, upon the fortune and capital of private adventur 
 ers, to encounter every difficulty and danger. What towns 
 have we built for them? What desert have we cleared? What 
 country have we conquered for them from the Indians? Name 
 the officers name the troops the expeditions their dates. 
 Where are they to be found? Not in the journals of this king 
 dom. They are no where to be found." 
 
 " In all the wars which have been common to us and them, 
 they have taken their full share. But in all their own dan 
 gers, in the difficulties belonging separately to their situation, 
 in all the Indian wars which did not immediately concern us, 
 we left them to themselves to struggle their way through. 
 For the whim of a minister, you can bestow half a million to 
 build a town, and to plant a royal colony of Nova Scotia; a 
 greater sum than you have bestowed upon every other colony 
 together." 
 
 u And notwithstanding all these, which are the real facts, 
 now that they have struggled through their difficulties, and 
 begin to hold up their heads, and to show that empire which 
 promises to be the foremost in the world, we claim them and 
 theirs, as implicitly belonging to us, without any consideration 
 of their own rights. We charge them with ingratitude, 
 without the least regard to truth, just as if this kingdom had 
 for a century and a half, attended to no other object; as if all 
 our revenue, all our power, all our thought had been bestowed 
 upon them, and all our national debt had been contracted in 
 the Indian wars of America; totally forgetting the subordina 
 tion in commerce and manufactures, in which we have bound 
 them, and for which, at least, we owe them help towards their 
 protection." 
 
 " Look at the preamble of the act of navigation, and every 
 American act, and see if the interest of this country is not the 
 avowed object. If they make a hat or a piece of steel, an 
 act of parliament calls it a nuisance; a tilting hammer, a steel 
 furnace, must be abated in America as a nuisance. Sir, I 
 speak from facts. I call your books of statutes and journals 
 
140 MILITARY EFFORTS 
 
 PART. i. to witness. With the least recollection, every one must ac- 
 <~^^> knowledge the truth of these facts." 
 
 " But it is said, the peace establishment of North America 
 has heen, and is, very expensive to this country. Sir, for 
 what it has been, let us lake the peace establishment before 
 1739, and after 1748. All that I can find in your journals is. 
 four companies kept up at New York, and three companies in 
 Carolina. As to the four companies at New York, this country 
 should know best why they put themselves to that expense, 01 
 whether really they were at any expense at all; for these wen 
 companies of fictitious men. Unless the money was repaic 
 into the treasury, it was applied to some other purpose 
 these companies were not a quarter full. In the year 1754 
 two of them were sent up to Albany, to attend commissioners 
 to treat with the six nations, to impress them with a high idea 
 of our military power; to display all the pomp and circum 
 stance of war before them, in hopes to scare them; when in 
 truth, we made a very ridiculous figure. The whole comple 
 ment of two companies did not exceed thirty tattered, tottering 
 invalids, fitter to scare the crows. This information 1 hav? 
 had from eye witnesses." 
 
 u It has not fallen in my way to hear any account of the 
 three Carolina companies: These are trifles. The substantial 
 question is, What material expense have you been at in the 
 periods alluded to, for the peace establishment of North Ame 
 rica? Ransack your journals, search your public offices for 
 army or ordnance expenses. Make out your bill, and let us see 
 what it is. No one yet knows it. Had there been any sucL, 
 I believe the administration would have produced it before 
 now, with aggravation." 
 
 " But is not the peace establishment of North America 
 now very high, and very expensive? ^1 would answer that by 
 another question: Why should the peace establishment sinre 
 the late war, and the total expulsion of the French interest, I.e 
 higher than it was before the late war, and when the French 
 possessed above half the American continent? If it be so, 
 there must be some singular reason." 
 
 " I cannot suppose that you mean under the general term of 
 North America, to saddle all the expenses of Canada, Nova 
 Scotia, Cape Brelon, Newfoundland, Florida, and the West 
 Indies, upon the old colonies of North America. You cannot 
 mean to keep the sovereignty, the property, the possession 
 (these are the terms of the cession in the treaty of 1763) to 
 yourselves, and lay the expense of the military establishment, 
 which you think proper to keep up, upon the old colonies. 
 
OP THE COLONISTS. 141 
 
 " Sir, the colonies never thought of interfering in the pre- SECT.iv. 
 rogative of war or peace; but if this nation can be so unjust ^^^^^^ 
 as to meditate the saddling the expense of your new conquests 
 separately upon them, they ought to have had a voice in set 
 tling the terms of peace. It is you, on this side of the water, 
 who have first brought out the idea of separate interests, by 
 pbning separate and distinct charges. It was their men and 
 their money, which had conquered North America and the 
 West Indies, as well as yours, though you seized all the spoils; 
 but they never thought of dictating to you, what you should 
 keep, or what you should give up, little dreaming that you 
 reserved the expense of your military governments for them. 
 Who gave up the Havanna? Who gave up Martinique? Who 
 
 Eive up Guadaloupe, with Marigalante? Who gave up Santa 
 ucia? Who gave up the Newfoundland fishery? Who gave 
 up all these without their consent, without their participation, 
 without their consultation, and, after all, without equivalents? 
 Sir, if your colonies had but been permitted to have gathered 
 up the crumbs which have fallen from your table, they would 
 gladly have supported the whole military establishment of 
 North America." 
 
 " Your colonies have now shown you the value of lands 
 in North America; and therefore you have vested in the crown 
 the sovereignty, property, and possession of infinite tracts of 
 land, perhaps as extensive as all Europe, which the crown 
 may dispose of at its own price, as the land rises in America, 
 and grants become invaluable; and to enable the crown to sup 
 port an arbitrary, military government, till these lands rise to 
 their future immense value, you are casting about to saddle 
 the expense either upon the American or the British supplies. 
 
 " This country is very liberal in its boasting of its protec 
 tion and parental kindness to America. It is for that purpose 
 that we have converted the province of Canada into an abso 
 lute and military government, and have established there 
 the Romish church, so obnoxious to our ancient, and Pro 
 testant colonies. What security, what protection do they 
 derive? In what sort are they the better for the conquest of 
 the French dominions, if we take that opportunity to establish 
 a government, civil, military, and ecclesiastical, in the utmost 
 degree hostile to the government of our own provinces, and 
 with the intent to set a thorn in their sides? Is this affection 
 and parental kindness? Surely you do not expect that they 
 should be taxed and talliaged to pay for this rod of iron, 
 which you are preparing for them !" 
 
142 MILITJV EFFORTS, SfC. 
 
 PART. i. Now, Sir, I come to a point, in which I think you may 
 ^^v-^ be said to have given some protection, I mean the protection 
 of your fleet to the American commerce. And even here I 
 am at a loss by what terms to call it; whether you are pro 
 tecting yourselves or them. Theirs are your cargoes, your 
 manufactures, your commerce, your navigation. Every ship 
 from America is bound to Britain. None enter an American 
 port but British ships and men. While you are defending 
 the American commerce, you are defending Leeds and 
 Halifax, Sheffield and Birmingham, Manchester and Hull, 
 Bristol and Liverpool, London, Dublin, Glasgow. However, 
 as our fleet does protect whatever commerce belongs to them, 
 let that be set to the account. It is an argument to them as 
 well as to us. As it has been the sole policy of this kingdom, 
 for ages, by the operation of every commercial act of par 
 liament, to make the American commerce totally subservient 
 to our own convenience, the least that we owe to them in 
 return is protection." 
 
143 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 OF THE BENEFITS REAPED BY GREAT BRITAIN FROM THE 
 AMERICAN TRADE. 
 
 1. IF so immense a gain, of which she retains a mighty SECT.V, 
 part in her actual North American possessions, accrued to ^-^v-^ 
 Great Britain from the military efforts of the thirteen colonies, 
 the advantages which she found in her commercial connexion 
 with them, were not less considerable. Before any thing had 
 been expended upon them, they began to enrich the treasury, 
 and feed the strength, of the mother country, by augmenting 
 her shipping, giving double activity to her trades and ma 
 nufactures, and even accelerating the increase of her popula 
 tion. These effects were quickly perceived and announced 
 by those of her earliest writers in political economy, to whom 
 she has assigned the first rank among their cotemporaries. To 
 begin with the testimony of Sir Josiah Child. " England has 
 constantly improved in people, since our settlement upon the 
 plantations in America. We are very great gainers by the 
 direct trade of New with Old England. Our yearly expor- 
 tations of English manufactures, malt and other goods from 
 hence thither, amounting, in my opinion, to ten times the va 
 lue of what is imported from thence, which calculation I do 
 not make at random, but upon mature consideration, and per- 
 adventure, upon as much experience in this trade, as any other 
 person will pretend to."* " The plantations," says Davenant, 
 " are a spring of wealth to this nation; they work for us, and 
 their treasure centres all here. It is better our islands should 
 be supplied from the northern colonies than from England 
 the provisions to be sent to them would be the unimproved 
 product of the earth, whereas the goods which we send to the 
 northern colonies, are such whose improvement may be justly 
 said, one with another, to be mar four -fourths of the value of 
 the whole commodity."! 
 
 * Discourse on Trade, chap. x. 
 f Discourse on Plantation Trade, 
 
144 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS, &C. 
 
 PART I. "An immense wealth," says Gee,* " has accrued to us by 
 ^^~v-^/ the labour and industry of those people that have settled in our 
 colonies. Of all the methods of enlarging our trade, was tin 
 finding out of our plantations the tobacco and sugar planta 
 tions were indeed the cause -of increasing our shipping and 
 navigation. If we examine into the circumstances of the in 
 habitants of our plantations, it will appear that not one-fourth 
 part of their product redounds to their own profit. There are 
 very few trading or manufacturing towns in the kingdom, but 
 have some dependence on the plantation trade." 
 
 " New England and the northern colonies have not com 
 modities and products enough to send us in return for pur 
 chasing their necessary clothing, but are under very great 
 difficulties, and therefore any ordinary sort sells with them; 
 and when they are grown out of fashion with us, they are new 
 fashioned enough there; and therefore those places are the great 
 markets we have to dispose of such goods, which are gene 
 rally sent at the risk of the shop-keepers and traders of 
 England, who are the great exporters, and not the inhabitants 
 of the colonies, as some have imagined. As the colonies are 
 a market for those sort of goods, so they are a receptacle for 
 young merchants who have not stocks of their own; and there 
 fore all our plantations are filled with such who receive the 
 consignments of their friends from hence; and when they 
 have got a sufficient stock to trade with, they generally return 
 home, and other young men take their places; so that the con 
 tinual motion and intercourse our people have in the colonies, 
 may be compared to bees of a hive, which go out empty, but 
 come back again loaded, by which means the foundation of 
 many families is laid. The numbers of sailors and other trades 
 men, who have all their dependence upon this traffic, are pro 
 digiously great. Our factors, who frequent the northern co 
 lonies, being under difficulties to make returns for such goods 
 as they dispose of, what gold, silver, logwood, and other com 
 modities they trade for upon the Spanish coast, is sent borne 
 to England; as also oyl, whale-fins, and many other goods. 
 Likewise another great part in returns is made by ships, built 
 there, and disposed of in the Streights, and other parts of Eu 
 rope, and the money remitted to us." 
 
 " There is another advantage we receive from our planta 
 tions, which is hardly so much as thought on; I mean the 
 prodigious increase of our shipping, by the timber trade be 
 tween Portugal, &c. and our plantations, which ought to have 
 
 * On the Trade and Navigation of Great Britain, chap. xxxi. 
 
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 145 
 
 all possible encouragement; for by it we have crept into all SECT. v. 
 the corners of Europe, and become the common carriers in v -^~ v ~^ 
 the Mediterranean, as well as between the Mediterranean. 
 Holland, Hambr o, and the Baltic, and this is the cause of so 
 great an addition to our shipping, and the reason why thr 
 Dutch, &c. are so exceedingly sunk." 
 
 " We have a great many young men who are bred to the 
 sea, and have friends to support them; if they cannot get em 
 ployment at home, they go to New England, and the northern 
 colonies, with a cargo of goods, which they there sell at 
 a very great profit, and with the produce build a ship, and 
 purchase a loading of lumber, and sail for Portugal or the 
 Streights, &c. and after disposing of their cargoes there, fre 
 quently ply from port to port in the Mediterranean, till they 
 have cleared so much money as will in a good part pay for the 
 first cost of the cargo carried out by them, and then perhaps 
 sell their ships, come home, take up another cargo from their 
 employers, and so go back and build another ship; by this 
 means multitudes of seamen are brought up, and upon a war 
 the nation better provided with a greater number of sailors 
 than hath been heretofore known. Here the master becomes 
 merchant also, and many of them gain by this lumber trade 
 great estates, and a vast treasure is thereby yearly brought into 
 the kingdom, in a way new and unknown to our forefathers, 
 for indeed it is gaining the timber trade, (heretofore carried 
 on by the Danes and Swedes,) our plantations being nearer 
 the markets of Portugal and Spain than they are." 
 
 The great productiveness of the colonies to the mother 
 country, thus recognized before the expiration, and at the be 
 ginning, of the eighteenth century, increased in a geometrical 
 progression from that period, and drew equally pointed ac 
 knowledgments from later writers. In the year 1728, Sir 
 William Keith, a man of superior sagacity, who had occupied 
 the station of governor of Pennsylvania, and investigated per 
 sonally and in complete detail, the commercial relations of 
 North America with the other parts of the British empire, 
 submitted to the British government a very able discourse on 
 the subject,* in which he presented the following summary of 
 what he styled " the principal benefits then arising to Great 
 Britain from the trade of the colonies." 
 
 " 1 . The colonies take off and consume above one-sixth 
 part of the woollen manufactures exported from Great Britain; 
 
 * See the whole of this curious and interesting paper, in Burk s His 
 tory of Virginia, vol. ii. chap. ii. 
 
 VOL. I. T 
 
146 
 
 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 
 
 PART I. which is the chief staple of England, and the main support of 
 s -^" v "^ / the landed interest. 
 
 " 2. They take off and consume more than double that 
 value in linen and callicoes, which are partly the product of 
 Britain and Ireland, and partly the profitable returns made for 
 that product when carried to foreign countries. 
 
 " 3. The luxury of the colonies, which increases daily, 
 consumes great quantities of English manufactured silks, ha 
 berdashery, household furniture, and trinkets of all sorts, as 
 also a very considerable value in East India goods. 
 
 " 4. A great revenue is raised to the crown of Britain by 
 returns made in the produced the plantations, especially to 
 bacco; which at the same time helps England to bring nearer 
 to a balance her unprofitable trade with France. 
 
 " 5. These colonies promote the interest and trade of Bri 
 tain, by a vast increase of shipping and seamen, which enables 
 them to carry great quantities offish to Spain, Portugal, Leg 
 horn, &c.; furs, logwood, and rice, to Holland, where they 
 keep Great Britain considerably in the balance of trade with 
 those countries. 
 
 " 6. If reasonably encouraged, the colonies are now in a 
 condition to furnish Britain with as much of the following 
 commodities as it can demand, viz: masting for the navy and 
 all sorts of timber, hemp, flax, pitch, tar, oil, rosin, copper 
 ore, with pig and bar iron; by means whereof the balance of 
 trade to Russia and the Baltic, may be very much reduced in 
 favour of Great Britain. 
 
 " 7. The profits arising to all those colonies by trade, are 
 returned in bullion, or rather useful effects, to Great Britain; 
 where the superfluous cash, and other riches, acquired in 
 America, must centre; which is not one of the least securities 
 that Britain has, to keep the colonies always in due subjection. 
 
 "8. The colonies upon the main are the granary of America, 
 and a necessary support to the sugar plantations, in the West 
 Indies, which could not subsist without them." 
 
 To exemplify further the nature of this commercial inter 
 course, for Great Britain, I will quote the case of Virginia and 
 Maryland, as Macpherson represents it for the year 1731, 
 from the best authorities of that day.* 
 
 u Virginia and Maryland are most valuable acquisitions to 
 Britain, as well for their great staple commodity, tobacco, as 
 for pitch, tar, furs, deer skins, walnut tree planks, iron in pigs. 
 and medicinal drugs. Both together send annually to Great 
 
 * Annals of Commerce, vol. iii. 
 
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 Britain, 60,000 hogsheads of tobacco, weighing, one with SECT. v. 
 another, 600 pounds weight, which at 2|d. per pound, comes v-*~v>w 
 to =375,000. And the shipping employed to bring home 
 their tobacco, must be at least 24,000 tons; which at ^10 per 
 ton, is =240,000, the value of the shipping; the greatest part 
 thereof by far being English-built, continually and constantly 
 fitted and repaired in England. The freight, at M. 10s. per 
 hogshead, (the lowest,) is j90,000; and the petty charges and 
 commission, on each hogshead, not less than ^1 or ^60,000; 
 which, making together ^150,000, we undoubtedly receive 
 from those two provinces upon tobacco only. The net pro 
 ceeds of the tobacco may be =225,000, on which there may 
 be about five per cent, commission and petty charges, being 
 =11,250. There is also imported in the tobacco ships from 
 those two provinces, lumber, to the value of ^ 15,000, two- 
 thirds whereof is clear gain, it not costing ^4,000 in that 
 country, first cost in goods; and as it is the master s privilege, 
 there is no freight paid for it. Skins and furs, about ^6,000 
 value; ^4,000 of which is actual gain to England. So the 
 whole gain to England amounts to about ^180,000, annually: 
 and moreover the whole produce of these two provinces is 
 paid for in goods." 
 
 Postlethwayt, who published his Universal Dictionary of 
 Trade in the middle of the last century, bears a most emphatic 
 general testimony. " Our trade and navigation," says this 
 erudite merchant, u are greatly increased by our colonies; they 
 are a source of treasure and naval power to this kingdom. 
 Before their settlements our manufactures were few and 
 those but indifferent the number of English merchants very 
 small, and the whole shipping of the nation much inferior to 
 what now belongs to the northern colonies only. These are 
 certain facts. But since their establishment, our situation has 
 altered for the better almost to a degree beyond credibility. 
 Our manufactures are prodigiously increased, chiefly by 
 the demand for them in the plantations, where they at least 
 take off one-half, and supply us with many valuable commo 
 dities for exportation, which is as great an emolument to the 
 mother kingdom as to the plantations themselves," &c. 
 
 The North American export trade of Great Britain amount 
 ed, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, to something 
 less than four hundred thousand pounds sterling; then no in 
 considerable portion of her whole exports. It had attained 
 before the separation to three millions and an half sterling, 
 nearly one-fourth of her whole cotemporaneous export trade, 
 the product of centuries of intercourse with all the world. 
 
148 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 
 
 PART I. The particular instance of the Pennsylvania trade furnished an 
 s-^-v-^ illustration of the general increase, which struck the British 
 statesmen with admiration. In the year 1704, that province 
 consumed only =11,459 in value of foreign commodities: in 
 1772, fifty times as much; in this last year the export to it 
 from Great Britain was upwards of half a million sterling. 
 
 The exports to the North American colonies alone ex 
 cluding the portion of the African trade to be set down to 
 their account, was one million on an average, from 1739 to 
 1756 two million three hundred thousand from 1756 to 
 1773 three millions and an half on a medium of the years 
 1771, 1772, 1773. The proportion of British goods to foreign 
 goods exported to North America, was of three-fourths British 
 and one-fourth foreign; whereas to the West Indies, it was of 
 two-thirds British and one-third foreign. 
 
 The foreign and circuitous trade of the northern colonies, 
 which was prosecuted only by a necessary relaxation, or by 
 an evasion, of the navigation act, redounded equally to the 
 profit of the mother country. It enabled the colonies to pay, 
 and consequently led them to call, for a greater quantity of 
 her manufactures. It is thus fully and accurately described 
 in the third volume of Macpherson s Annals. u The old 
 northern colonies in America, it is well known, had very few 
 articles fit for the British market; and yet they every year took 
 off large quantities of merchandise from Great Britain, for 
 which they made payments with tolerable regularity. Though 
 they could not, like the Spanish colonists, dig the money out 
 of their own soil, they found means to make a great part of 
 their remittances in gold and silver dug out of the Spanish 
 mines. This they effected by being great carriers, and by a 
 circuitous commerce, carried on in small vessels, chiefly with 
 the foreign West India settlements, to which they took lum 
 ber of all sorts, fish of an inferior quality, beef, pork, butter, 
 horses, poultry, and other live stock; an inferior kind of to 
 bacco, corn, flour, bread, cyder, and even apples, cabbages, 
 and onions, &c.; and also vessels, built at a small expense, the 
 materials being almost all within themselves; for which they 
 received in return mostly silver and gold, some of which re 
 mained as current coin among themselves; but the greatest 
 part was remitted home to Britain, and together with bills oi 
 exchange, generally remitted to London for the proceeds of 
 their best fish, sold in the Roman Catholic countries of Europe 
 served to pay for the goods they received from the mothej 
 country. This trade united all the advantages, which thf. 
 wisest and most philanthropic philosopher, or the most er 
 
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 149 
 
 lightened legislator, could wish to derive from commerce. It SECT. v. 
 gave bread to the industrious in North America, by carrying ^^-v-^ 
 off their lumber, which must otherwise rot on their hands, and 
 their fish, great part of which, without it would be absolutely 
 unsaleable, together with their spare produce and stock of 
 every kind; it furnished the West India planters with those 
 articles, without which the operations of their plantations must 
 be at a stand; and it produced a fund for employing a great 
 number of industrious manufacturers in Great Britain; thus 
 taking off the superfluities, providing for the necessities, and 
 promoting the happiness of all concerned." 
 
 Lord Sheffield even, makes the acknowledgment, that, by 
 this circuitous commerce, they must, in the interval between the 
 years 1700 and 1773, have obtained from other countries, and 
 remitted to Great Britain, upwards of thirty millions sterling, in 
 payment of goods taken from her, over and above the amount of 
 all their produce and fisheries remitted directly.* Mr. Glover, 
 in the beautiful speech which he delivered at the bar of the 
 House of Commons, in 1775, respecting the American trade, 
 presented, among many striking views of its productiveness to 
 Great Britain, the following: "Though I am convinced, that the 
 same number of hands at least is devoted to agriculture here, 
 and that the earth at a medium of years hath yielded the same 
 increase; as we have been disposed to consume it all among 
 ourselves, or as our presumption may impute, the scarcity to 
 Providence, restraining the fertility of our soil for ten years 
 past, in either case we could not spare, as heretofore, our 
 grain to the foreigner; a reduction in our exports, one year with 
 another, of more than ^600,000. The American subjects 
 took place of the British in markets we could no longer sup 
 ply; extended their vent from season to season, and from port 
 to port, and by a circuition of fresh money, thus acquired by 
 themselves, added fresh numbers to your manufactures; the 
 rents of land increasing at the same time, till the amount of 
 exports to North America for the last three years ending at 
 Christmas, 1773, stands upon your papers at ten millions and 
 a half, or three millions and a half at the annual medium." 
 
 " One part of our export to foreigners is supplied by colony 
 produce, tobacco, rice, sugar, &c. through Great Britain, for a 
 million sterling at a low estimation. There is a known export 
 of linen, exceeding ^200,000, supplied by North Britain to 
 England for American use. The North British colony-export 
 in addition, is about =400,000, by far the greater part to 
 
 * Observations on the Commerce of the American States, 1784. 
 
150 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 
 
 PART r. the tobacco provinces. The whole may be a little short oi 
 ^*~*^s =700,000. The kingdom of Ireland takes from England little 
 short of ^=2,400,000 annually in goods. How doth she pay 
 for them? A large part in linen and yarn; the remainder in 
 cash, acquired by her foreign traffic. In the printed report to 
 this House, from their linen committee, it appears, that, in 
 1771, the linen made, and brought to market for sale in that 
 kingdom, for its own use and ours, amounted to ^2,150,000, 
 and the yarn exported to about ^200,000. This immense va 
 lue, the employment of such numbers, hath its source in North 
 America. The flax seed from thence, not worth ^40,000, a 
 trifle to that continent, forms the basis of Ireland, and reverts 
 largely in manufacture from her to the original seat of growth, 
 In reply, what is the cry of my magnanimous countrymen 
 without doors? Dignity! Supremacy! &c. Upon the North 
 American imports I shall only remark, that the most consider 
 able part of their bulky productions is bought by the foreigner; 
 and of the amount consumed in Great Britain, the exchequer 
 hath a capital share. n 
 
 3. In the calculation which Mr. Burke presented to the 
 House of Commons, in his speech on the Conciliation with 
 America, he included the export trade of Great Britain to the 
 West Indies, upon the ground that this trade and the North 
 American were so interwoven, that the attempt to separate 
 them would tear to pieces the contexture of the whole, and if 
 not entirely destroy, very much depreciate the value of all 
 the parts. The observation was eminently just, as nothing 
 can be more certain, than that the prosperity of the West 
 Indies would have been infinitely less, without their trade with 
 the North American colonies. It*was by this means that they 
 were enabled to yield those ample benefits which Great Bri 
 tain derived from them, in the great consumption and in 
 crease of her manufactures; in the employment and increase 
 of her shipping and sailors; in the enrichment of individuals; 
 and in the abundance of the valuable produce poured into 
 her lap. Great as these benefits were, they fell, however, far 
 short of those of the same kind, which accrued to her directly 
 from the North American colonies. For five years, from 1754 
 to 1758, inclusive, her exports to the latter, were, in the total, 
 near eight millions sterling; to the West Indies, not four mil 
 lions; and in the course of the term just mentioned, the in 
 crease of export to the northern colonies, was almost four 
 millions; whereas that to the West Indies, did not amount to 
 half a million. 
 
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 151 
 
 The value of the provisions sent from Great Britain to her SECT. V. 
 West India islands was trifling. They were furnished with the .v^>^w 
 necessaries of life by the North American colonies, and gene 
 rally at about half the price at which they could have been 
 supplied from Great Britain. We are told by Dr. Davenant, in 
 his Discourse on the Plantation Trade, that, " before the period 
 at which he wrote, (1698,) so little care was taken for the con 
 voys which were to protect the supplies of provisions for the 
 West India Islands, they must, many times, have perished for 
 want, if they had not been supplied by the northern colonies." 
 The mother country was, indeed, for the most part, unable to 
 supply them at all, and occasionally indebted to the same source 
 as her islands, for her vital sustenance. " Our harvests," says 
 an able English writer,* u in a series of years were not suffi 
 ciently productive to afford support to the people; whilst 
 America was blessed with, abundance, and like another Egypt 
 to another Canaan, relieved us from the apprehension of a 
 want of food, and from the danger of popular commotions, to 
 obtain by force what the poor were not able to procure by pur 
 chase. Such was the scarcity of corn in this country, at the 
 period preceding the American war, that even the immense 
 importations from thence proved no more than a bare supply." 
 
 To this state of things, Mr. Burke thus eloquently alludes, 
 in the speech mentioned above. u For some time past the 
 old world has been fed from the new. The scarcity which 
 you have felt, would have been a desolating famine, if this 
 child of your old age, with a true filial piety, with a Roman 
 charity, had not put the full breast of its youthful exuberance 
 to the mouth of its exhausted parent." 
 
 * Richard Champion, Esq. deputy pay master general of his Bri 
 tannic majesty s forces, (1784,) in his reply to Lord Sheffield s 
 pamphlet. On the head of the provision for the West Indies, the same 
 enlightened economist makes the following remarks. "It has been 
 asked by the noble lord, how did the West India colonies subsist, dur 
 ing the war, when even Canada and Nova Scotia, any more than Eng 
 land, were not open to them, without great expense and risque ? To 
 this question, it is to be answered, that the greater part of the Wind 
 ward and Leeward Islands were in possession of the French ; and the 
 three which remained in our hands, were frequentlv reduced to great 
 distress. The planters in some of them compromised the labour of 
 their slaves for a slender daily food. The situation of Bermuda was 
 so deplorable, that some of the poorest inhabitants were actually fa 
 mished ; and it was owing to the humanity of the Americans tvho suffer 
 ed them, upon their application, to supply themselves -with provisions from 
 their states, (from Delaware and Connecticut in particular,) that the 
 whole people did not perish for want," 
 
152 
 
 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 
 
 PART i. Besides provisions, supplies of other kinds, which might bf 
 also said to have been indispensable, and unattainable from am 
 other quarter, were carried to the West Indies by the Nortf 
 American colonies. We are told by the English writers, tha 
 not less than one hundred thousand casks and puncheons were 
 in a year, made in Jamaica, from American staves and head 
 ing; that the different towns and the buildings in most of tin 
 settlements upon the sea coast of that island, were constructed 
 with timber imported from America, and that the same use 
 of those articles, many of them in a greater proportion, 
 prevailed in the other sugar islands. Bryan Edwards* esti 
 mated the whole value of the American commodities im 
 ported into them annually, at seven hundred and fifty thousand 
 pounds sterling. The Americans received West India pro 
 duce in barter, to the amount of about two-thirds, and the 
 excess of one-third found its way to England for the purchase 
 or payment of goods. Sugar to a great amount, and a vast 
 quantity of rum, saleable at no other than the American mar 
 ket, were among the chief articles taken in return. Some 
 short extracts from the testimony which the West India mer 
 chants gave at the bar of the House of Commons in 1775, 
 will exhibit this intercourse with more minuteness, and au 
 thority. 
 
 " North America is truly the granary of the West Indies: 
 from thence they draw the great quantities of flour and bis 
 cuit, for the use of one class of people, and of Indian corn, 
 for the support of all the others; for the support not of man 
 only, but of every animal; for the use of man, horses, swine, 
 sheep, poultry. North America also furnishes the West In 
 dies with rice. Rice, a more expensive diet, and less capa 
 ble of sustaining the body under hard labour, is of a more 
 limited consumption, but it is a necessary indulgence for the 
 young, the sick, the weakly, amongst the common people, and 
 the negroes. North America not only furnishes the West 
 Indies with bread, but with meat, with sheep, poultry, and 
 some live cattle; but the demand for these is infinitely short of 
 the demand for the salted beef, pork and fish. Salted fish 
 (if the expression may be permitted in contrast with bread,) 
 is the meat of all the lower ranks of people in Barbadoes, and 
 the Leeward Islands. It is the meat of all the slaves in the 
 West Indies. Nor is it disdained by persons of better condi 
 tion. The North American navigation also furnishes the 
 
 Thoughts on the connexion between America and the West Indies 
 
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 153 
 
 sugar colonies with salt from Turk s Island, Sal Tortuga, and SECT. v. 
 Anguilla, although these islands are themselves a part of the ^^^-^^ 
 West Indies. The testimony which some experience has en 
 abled me to bear, you will find confirmed by official accounts." 
 
 " For almost every purpose of the carpenter and the cooper, 
 it is the lumber of North America that is used. The part 
 which is furnished by the middle colonies, of North America, 
 is out of all proportion to the others. Without lumber to re 
 pair the buildings they run immediately to decay. And with 
 out lumber for the proper packages for sugar, and to contain 
 rum, they cannot be sold at market; they cannot even be kept 
 at home." 
 
 " As to rum, the dependence of all the islands, except 
 Jamaica, is as great upon the middle colonies of North Ame 
 rica, for the consumption of their rum, as it is for subsistence 
 and for lumber. The rum of Barbadoes, the Leeward Islands, 
 and the government of Granada, does not come into England, 
 except in small portions. It goes in part to Ireland; and all 
 the rest, the great quantity, is distributed chiefly among the 
 middle colonies of North America, agreeable to the law of 
 reciprocal exchange." 
 
 4. The mother country was benefitted in her eastern empire, 
 by the great consumption of tea in North America. Our ad 
 vocates in England, during the disputes which immediately 
 preceded the rupture, alledged that her usual annual demand 
 had amounted to ^600,000 sterling, besides great sums for 
 piece-goods and china ware. It is suggested in Macpherson s 
 Annals of Commerce,* that there was probably, some exag 
 geration in this statement; but admitting the amount to have 
 been less, it must still have formed an important contribution 
 to the funds of the East India Company. 
 
 Of the vast quantities of lumber imported by Great Bri 
 tain and Ireland, no inconsiderable part was drawn from the 
 middle colonies of North America. The trade arising out 
 of the cod fishery, furnished near one half of the remittances 
 from the New England provinces to the mother country. 
 The produce of thehr cod fishery was divided into two- 
 fifths of salted fish for the European market, and three- 
 fifths for the West India market, and the amount of sales in 
 the European continental markets, went to Great Britain 
 in payment of goods purchased there. The spermaceti, 
 whale oil, and whale bone, proceeding from the whale fishery, 
 
 * Vol. in. p. 545. 
 
 VOL. I. U 
 
154 
 
 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 
 
 PART i. as we ii as t} ie greater part of the cod oil, were sent to Great 
 -^^^^^ Britain, and ministered essentially to her manufactures. Ac 
 cording to the statements made in 1775, by the merchants en 
 gaged in the Ameriean trade, to the House of Commons, the 
 fishery generally, and carrying the fish to market from New 
 England, employed at that period about fourteen hundred and 
 fifty vessels, of one hundred thousand tons burthen, and eleven 
 thousand fishermen and seamen. 
 
 The growth and extent of the American fisheries are thus 
 exhibited by Seybert in his Statistics. "In 1670, the cod 
 fishery was commenced by the people in New England; such 
 was their application, that in 1675, they had in this employ 
 ment six hundred and sixty-five vessels, which measured 
 25,650 tons, and navigated by 4,405 seamen; at that early 
 period, they caught at the rate of from 350,000 to 400,000 
 quintals of fish per annum. In 1715, our fishermen first pur 
 sued the whale. The fish then known as the Greenland 
 whale, frequented our northern coasts; in a very short time, 
 the activity and success of the colonists in taking them, forced 
 them into more southern latitudes, where the intruders were 
 followed by the harpoons of their former enemies; they were 
 chased off the Azores, along the coast of Africa and Brazil, 
 to the remote regions of Falkland s Island. The discovery 
 of a new species of whale was the consequence of this ex 
 tensive and perilous circumnavigation; the new fish was found 
 to be more valuable than that on our northern coasts; to it 
 they gave the name of the spermaceti whale." 
 
 " In 1771, the Americans employed one hundred and eighty- 
 three vessels, measuring 13,820 tons, in the northern; and 
 one hundred and twenty-one vessels, measuring 14,020 tons, 
 in the southern whale fishery; these vessels gave employment 
 to 4,059 seamen. From 1771 to 1775, Massachusetts em 
 ployed annually one hundred and eighty-three vessels, of 
 13,120 tons, in the northern whale fishery, and one hundred 
 and twenty-one vessels, of 14,026 tons, in the southern; na 
 vigated by 4,059 seamen." 
 
 " Before the revolutionary war, the small island of Nan- 
 tucket had sixty-five ships, of 4,875 tons, annually employed 
 in the northern ; and eigthty-five ships, of 10,200 tons, in 
 the southern fishery."* 
 
 * Feb. 9, 1778, on the examination of witnesses at the bar of Par 
 liament, respecting the commercial losses by the war with America 
 * Mr. George Davis averred that he had been 26 years concerned in the 
 whale and cod fishery ; in respect to the former, he tried to take -whales 
 with men from England, but though they could strike them, and had. 
 struck several of late, he had not as yet taken one," 5cc. 
 
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 155 
 
 The fact is not a little significative, that for the encourage- SECT. v. 
 ment of the British fisheries separately, oil and whale fins, taken ^^^-^,- 
 in ships belonging to Great Britain, were allowed to be im 
 ported in her vessels, duty free ; while a duty was im 
 posed on the importation of (he same articles, taken or im 
 ported in vessels belonging to the plantations. Few of my 
 readers can be strangers to the splendid panegyric of Burke 
 upon the unparalleled industry and hardihood displayed by 
 New England in the pursuit of the whale. It may not be un 
 seasonable to recall the rebuke addressed to the British Par 
 liament, with which he prefaced it, as well as the merit which 
 he commemorated. u As to the wealth which the colonies 
 have drawn from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that 
 matter fully opened at your bar. You surely thought those 
 acquisitions of value, since they seemed even to excite your 
 envy; and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employ 
 ment has been exercised, ought rather, in my opinion, to have 
 raised your admiration. What in the world is equal to 
 it," #c. 
 
 5. So considerable a trade as that between the colonies 
 and the rest of the British empire produced a correspondent 
 increase of shipping. The one hundred thousand hogsheads 
 of tobacco, and the sixty thousand barrels of rice,* annu 
 ally imported into Great Britain, employed in the trans 
 portation, seventy thousand tons of shipping, almost wholly 
 belonging to Great Britain. Altogether, one thousand and 
 seventy-eight ships, and twenty-eight thousand nine hun 
 dred and ten seamen, were engaged in the American trade. 
 The building of ships for sale formed a material branch of 
 the industry of the northern and middle colonies, and was 
 brought to great perfection, particularly at Philadelphia. 
 They supplied the mother country with considerable numbers, 
 at prices much inferior to the standard rate of her cheapest 
 ports. She found an important advantage in this supply, in 
 as much as it was necessary to the support of her carrying 
 
 * By the act of 3 Gee. II. c. 28. all rice was, for the second time, 
 declared to be among the enumerated commodities, which were to pay 
 utax on being transported from colony to colony, and who could not be 
 carried directly to any foreign market. This act established, however, 
 an exception to the general rule ; and allowed that " any of his majesty s 
 subjects, in any ship or vessel built in Great Britain, or belonging to any 
 of his majesty s subjects residing in Great Britain, navigated according 
 to law, and having cleared outward in any port of Great Britain for the 
 province of Carolina, may ship rice in the same province, and carry 
 the same directly to any part of Europe, to the southward of Cape 
 Finisterre." 
 
156 COMiMERClAL OBLIGATIONS 
 
 PART i. trade, which, to use the language of her writers, " attained 
 ^*~v~^ to an amazing height by the aid of her colonies." She was 
 unable to provide enough of ships of her own construction to 
 answer her purposes; and this is attested by the fact, that in the 
 course of the revolutionary war, when America ceased to be 
 the provider, the foreign shipping employed in her commerce, 
 which before had borne the proportion of twelve to forty, rose 
 to that of twenty nine to thirty-five. Of the shipping em 
 ployed in the commerce of Great Britain, 398,000 tons were 
 of the built of America. According to Dr. Seybert s Statistics, 
 the proportion of the tonnage employed in the commerce of 
 the colonies and Great Britain, owned by the inhabitants of 
 Great Britain, amounted to about three and two-third eighths; 
 the proportion which belonged to British merchants, occasion 
 ally resident in those colonies, was about two-eighths, making 
 together nearly six-eighths of the whole, and the proportion 
 of the tonnage so employed, which belonged to merchants, 
 who were natives and permanent inhabitants of those colo 
 nies, was rather more than two and one-third eighths of the 
 whole. 
 
 Of the tonnage employed in the trade of the colonies with 
 tb*T British West Indies, five-eighths belonged to merchants, 
 who were permanent inhabitants of those colonies, and three- 
 eighths to British merchants, who resided occasionally in the 
 colonies. ^ 
 
 None of the colonies to the north of Maryland ever had 
 a balance in their favour in the trade with the mother 
 country; but always, on the contrary, a large balance against 
 them. The exports of all the colonies, for the year 1770, 
 amounted at least to three millions sterling;* the whole of 
 which may be said to have turned to her account. What she 
 did not consume herself of their productions, she received as 
 the entrepot for Europe, to the great inconvenience and loss 
 of the American owner; and the proceeds of that proportion 
 of them one-sixth only which went directly from America 
 to continental Europe, were invested in her manufactures. I 
 do not think it necessary to mark the particular utility of the 
 several articles which she consumed, and will content myself 
 on this head, with repeating after Mr. Burke, " If I were to 
 detail the imports of England from North America, I could 
 
 * " An estimate was made this year," (1769) says Macphersnn, (An 
 nals, vol. iii. p. 493,) "of the trade of the North American Provinces, 
 including Hudson s Bay and Newfoundland ; and the exports from 
 Great Britain, are made to amount to 3,370,900/. and the exports frorr 
 the colonies to 3,924, 6261." &c. 
 
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 157 
 
 show how many enjoyments they procured, which deceive the SECT. V. 
 burden of life; how many materials which invigorated 
 springs of national industry, and extended and animated every 
 part of British foreign and domestic commerce." With respect 
 to the trade with the Indians in America, that was wholly on 
 account of Great Britain. Dr. Franklin stated, in his exami 
 nation before the House of Commons, what could not be de 
 nied, that this trade u though carried on in America was not 
 an American interest; that the people of America were chiefly 
 farmers and planters, and scarce any thing which they raised or 
 produced was an article of commerce with the Indians; that 
 the Indian trade was a British interest: was carried on with 
 British manufactures for the profit of British merchants and 
 manufacturers." 
 
 Connected with this head of the trade between the colonies 
 and the mother country, there is one accusation often repeated 
 against the former, on which I would say a few -words: I allude 
 to their pretended backwardness in paying their debts to the 
 British merchants. This accusation was abundantly refuted 
 by the British merchants and manufacturers themselves; who 
 bore emphatic testimony at the bar of the House of Commons, 
 in 1775, of the fair dealing and good faith of their American 
 customers. It is, moreover, rendered highly improbable, by 
 the fact, that, although six millions sterling were owing the 
 latter, in December, "l 774, yet, in December, 1775, two mil 
 lions only remained to be paid; four millions having been re 
 mitted, even when a separation seemed inevitable.* It is 
 true, that at an earlier period, some few British traders had 
 complained of the laws in force in the plantations, for the re 
 covery of debts, and that parliament had, in consequence, 
 passed a tyrannical bill,f which altered the nature of evidence 
 in their courts of common law, and the nature of their estates, 
 by treating real estates as chattels. To facilitate the proof 
 and recovery of debts, it enacted, that an affidavit taken be 
 fore ihe mayor, or other chief magistrate of any town in Eng 
 land, and properly authenticated, should be received as legal 
 evidence in all the courts of the plantations, and have the 
 same force and effect as the personal oath of the plaintiff 
 made there in open court; and that lands, houses, negroes, and 
 all real estate whatsoever, should be liable to, and chargea 
 ble with all debts due either to the king, or any of his sub 
 jects, and be assets for the satisfaction thereof, &c. 
 
 Champion, p. 269. f 5 Geo. II. c. 7 
 
158 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 
 
 PART I. 6. On this subject of the trade of America with the mother 
 ^-v~^> country, it would have been almost enough to have cited the 
 testimony borne by Mr. Burke and Lord Chatham. The fol 
 lowing passage of the speech of the former, on the Concilia 
 tion with America, arose immediately out of his consi 
 deration of the custom house returns, and of the evidence of 
 notorious facts. " The trade with America alone is now within 
 less than ^500,000 of being equal to what this great com 
 mercial nation, England, carried on at the beginning of this 
 century with the whole world! If I had taken the largest year 
 of those on your table, it would rather have exceeded. But, 
 it will be said, is not this American trade an unnatural pro 
 tuberance, that has drawn the juices from the rest of the body? 
 The reverse. It is the very food that has nourished every other 
 part into its present magnitude. Our general trade has been 
 greatly augmented; and augmented more or less, in almost every 
 part to which it ever extended ; but with this material difference ; 
 that of the six millions which in the beginning of the century, 
 constituted the whole mass of our export commerce, the co 
 lony trade was but one-twelfth part; it is now (as a part of 
 sixteen millions) considerably more than a third of the whole." 
 There is something still more direct and conclusive in the 
 language of Chatham. He spoke with all the authority which 
 official station could possibly give in any matter. " When I 
 had the honourof serving his majesty, I availed myself," said 
 this illusftious statesman, in one of his speeches against Gren- 
 ville s scheme of taxation, u of the means of information, 
 which I derived from my office; I speak therefore from know 
 ledge. My materials were good. I was at pains to collect, 
 to digest, to consider them; and I will be bold to affirm, that 
 the profit to Great Britain, from the trade of the colonies, 
 through all its branches, is two millions a year. This is the 
 fund that carried you triumphantly through the last war. The 
 estates that were rented at two thousand pounds a year, three 
 score years ago, are three thousand pounds at present. Those 
 estates sold then from fifteen to eighteen years purchase; the 
 same may now be sold for thirty. You owe this to America 
 This is the price Jlmerica pays you for her protection." 
 
 The quotations which I have made from Adam Smith, in 
 the first section, develop the nature of the commercial re 
 straint under which the colonies existed. It was, in the 
 theory, a condition of rigorous servitude. They could 
 import no commodity, with the exception of a few articles, 
 of the growth or manufacture of Europe, but through Great 
 Britain; they were allowed a direct foreign trade, only so far 
 
OP GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 159 
 
 as was required by her interests. " The policy of Great Bri- SECT V. 
 tain," said Mr. Burke, addressing the House of Commons, v^-vx* 
 u was, from the beginning, the system of a monopoly. No 
 trade was let loose from that constraint, but merely to enable 
 the colonists to dispose of what, in the course of your trade, 
 you could not take; or to enable them to dispose of such arti 
 cles as we forced upon them, and, for which, without some 
 degree of liberty, they could not pay. Hence all your specific 
 and detailed enumerations; hence the innumerable checks and 
 counterchecks; hence that infinite variety of paper chains by 
 which you bind together this complicated system of the colo 
 nies. This principle of commercial monopoly runs through 
 no less than twenty-nine acts of parliament, from the year 
 1660 to the unfortunate period of 1764."* 
 
 The celebrated navigation act of 12 Car. II. not only pre 
 scribed in what vessels, and to what places, the goods of the 
 colonies might be exported, but it limited one of their internal 
 rights; it prescribed what persons might act as merchants or 
 factors, in the colonies. Three years afterwards, the Parlia 
 ment passed another bill, " to maintain," as they expressed 
 themselves, " a greater correspondence and kindness between 
 the colonies and England; to keep them in a firmer depend 
 ence on it; to make the kingdom a staple, not only of the 
 commodities of the plantations, but also of the commodities 
 of other countries for supplying them." This act (15 Car. 
 ii. c. 7.) directed accordingly, that no European goods should 
 be imported into the plantations, but such as should be shipped 
 in England, and proceed directly on board English or planta 
 tion-ships, &c. The penalty was forfeiture of the goods and 
 vessel; one-third to the king, one to the governor of the plan 
 tation, if the seizure v. ere made there, and one third to the in 
 former. And to facilitate the recovery of the penalties, the 
 informer had his option of suing either in the king s courts, 
 where the offence was committed, or in any court of record in 
 England. 
 
 Many of the articles which the colonies were compelled to 
 buy of the mother country, could have been procured at a 
 much cheaper rate elsewhere. She could charge her manu 
 factures with what imposts she pleased, and the burden fell 
 ultimately upon the American consumer. It was stated to her 
 ministers, by the agents of the colonies, that from the extra 
 ordinary demand in America, for her fabrics, she reaped an 
 advantage of at least twenty per cent, in the price, beyond 
 
 * Speech on American taxation 
 
160 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 
 
 PART I. what the articles could be purchased for at foreign markets. 
 
 ^^-v-^ The forced accumulation of American produce in her ports, 
 reduced its price, by which she gained, on what she consumed, 
 exactly in proportion to the loss of the colonists. The profit 
 accruing to her from the portion re-exported, was obviously 
 considerable. Taking off, as the colonies did in the latter 
 years of their dependence, two millions annually of her manu 
 factures, and depositing with her, compulsorily, produce nearly 
 to the same amount, it must be sufficiently clear, when the 
 otlier circumstances just stated, are kept in view, that they 
 paid an enormous indirect tax, independently of the charges 
 to which they were liable, as a consequence of her Eu 
 ropean quarrels. Happily their domestic governments, cas;; 
 in the simplest mould, and unencumbered with pageantry or 
 surplusage of any kind, subjected them to no heavy expense 
 " All the different civil establishments in North America," 
 said Adam Smith, "exclusive of those of Maryland and North 
 Carolina, did not, before their revolt, cost the inhabitant!; 
 above ^64,700 a year; an ever memorable example at how 
 small an expense three millions of people may not only be 
 governed, but well governed."* 
 
 What has been said conveys an adequate idea of the situa 
 tion in which the North American colonies were placed as to 
 trade, but I wish to offer something more in illustration of the 
 precipitation and levity, with which their interests, and the 
 true interests of the mother country at the same time, were 
 sacrificed, under the influence of an undistinguishing selfish 
 ness, I may quote as of perfect accuracy, since no British 
 writer ventured to contradict them, the following statements 
 which Franklin published in London, in 1768. 
 
 " They (the colonies,) reflected how lightly the interest of 
 all America had been estimated here, when the interests of a 
 few of the inhabitants of Great Britain happened to have the 
 smallest competition with it. That the whole American 
 people was forbidden the advantage of a direct importation of 
 wine, oil, and fruit, from Portugal; but must take them loaded 
 with all the expense of a voyage, one thousand leagues round 
 about, being to be landed first in England, to be re-shipped 
 for America; expenses, amounting in war time at least to 
 thirty pounds per cent, more than otherwise they would have 
 
 * W. of N. c. vii. b. iv. It bespeaks an extraordinary share of politi 
 cal virtue in the colonists, to have resisted, as they did, during 1 so long 1 
 and close a connexion, the example of the mother country, on the score; 
 of public expenditure and aristocratical distinctions. 
 
OP GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 ben charged with; anil all this merely, that a few Portugal SECT. V. 
 merchants in London may gain a commission on those goods \^*v^s 
 passing through their hands. 
 
 " On a slight complaint of a few merchants trading with 
 Virginia, nine colonies were restrained from making paper 
 money, become absolutely necessary to their internal com 
 merce, from the constant remittance of their gold and silver 
 to Britain. But not only the interest of a particular body of 
 merchants, but the interest of any small body of British trades 
 men or artificers, has been found to outweigh that of ail the 
 king s subjects in the colonies. 
 
 u Iron is to be found every where in America, and beaver 
 are the natural produce of that country: hats and nails and 
 steel are wanted there as well as here. It is of no importance 
 to the common welfare of the empire, whether a subject of the 
 king gets his living by making hats on this or on that side of 
 the water. Yet the hatters of England have prevailed to ob 
 tain an act in their own favour, restraining that manufacture in 
 America, in order to oblige the Americans to send their beaver 
 to England to be manufactured; and purchase back the hats, 
 loaded with the charges of a double transportation. In the 
 same manner have a few nail-makers, and still a smaller 
 body of steel-makers, (perhaps there are not half a dozen of 
 these in England,) prevailed totally to forbid, by an act of par- L 
 liament, the erecting of slitting mills, or steel furnaces in 
 America; that the Americans may be obliged to take all their 
 nails for their buildings, and steel for their tools, from these 
 artificers, under the same disadvantages," &c. 
 
 7. I may be permitted, before I leave this topic of com 
 mercial obligation, to advance to a more recent period. If a 
 British statesman could not, after the American war, say ab 
 solutely, as Chatham had done before its occurrence " Ame 
 rica is the fountain of our wealth, the nerve of our strength, 
 the basis of our power," he might, however, safely ascribe no 
 inconsiderable share of the continued prosperity of the British 
 isles, to the commercial intercourse which was re-established 
 with her, and to her increase in wealth and population. Her 
 vast consumption of British manufactures, her abundant pro 
 duction of the raw materials, cotton particularly,* her imports 
 
 * In 1791, the first parcel of cotton of American growth, was export 
 ed from the United States Calculated on the average of the six years, 
 from 1806 to 1811, there was annually importe i into Great Brita<nj from 
 the United States, 34,568,487 pounds, and in 1811, 46,872,452 pounds. 
 
 VOL. I. X. 
 
10* COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 
 
 PART I. from the East Indies, her traffic with the West, the diffusion. 
 > ^~v~^ through her means, of the British commodities of every de 
 scription over the continent of Europe, gave her, in her inde 
 pendent state, an aspect nearly approaching to that under 
 which Chatham saw her in the colonial. A distinguished 
 member of the British parliament, Mr. Alexander Baring, ex 
 amined fully in 1808, with the advantages of practical know 
 ledge and much general commercial learning, the question of 
 her increased utility, and pronounced that, upon the whole, 
 she had, in her independent situation, to a greater degree than 
 could have been expected from any other, been the means of 
 augmenting the British resources, in the war with the conti 
 nental powers that she contributed in the highest degree pos 
 sible, all the benefits which one nation could derive from the ex 
 istence of another, or that one mother country could receive 
 from that of the best regulated colony.* The same enquirer 
 ascertained, that three-fourths of the money proceeding from 
 the consumption of the produce of the soil of America, in all 
 parts of the world, were paid to Great Britain for her manu 
 factures. He developed other benefits, the reality of which 
 did not admit of dispute, and found it unpardonable " that 
 his countrymen should entertain a jealousy of the prosperity 
 and wealth American independence had produced, which not 
 only served to circulate the produce of their industry, where 
 they could not carry it themselves, but by increasing the means 
 of America, augmented in the same proportion her consump 
 tion of that produce, at a time when the loss of their former 
 customers, by the persecutions of France, rendered it most 
 valuable." 
 
 It will be enough, for the present, in addition to these re 
 marks, to state the leading facts in the history of our indepen 
 dent trade with the British empire, as they are exhibited in 
 the valuable works of Pitkin and Seybert. 
 
 The amount of goods imported into the United States from 
 England in the year 1 784, must have been about eighteen 
 millions of dollars, and in 1785, about twelve millions; mak 
 ing, in those two years, thirty millions of dollars; while the 
 
 In 1755, the cotton manufacture, in England, was ranked " among the 
 humblest of the domestic arts ;" the products of this branch were then 
 almost entirely for home consumption ; in 1797, it took the lead of all 
 the other manufactures in Great Britain, and in 1809, gave employment 
 to 80U,000 persons, and its annual value was estimated at 30,000,000/- 
 or 132,000,000 of dollars. Seybert. 
 
 * Examination of the Orders in Council, &c. 
 
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 163 
 
 exports of the United States to England, were only between SECT v. 
 eight and nine millions. v^~>^^ 
 
 On the average of the six years, posterior to the war of our 
 revolution, ending with 1789, the merchandise annually im 
 ported into Great Britain, from the United States, amounted 
 to 908,63ft/. sterling; and the importations into the United 
 States, from Great Britain, on the same average, amounted 
 annually to 2,119,837/. sterling; leaving an annual balance 
 of l,2l l,201/. sterling, or 5,329,284 dollars, in favour of 
 Great Britain. In 1792, according to the estimate of the 
 American Secretary of the Treasury, our exports to Great 
 Britain and her dominions amounted to 9,363,416 dollars, and 
 our imports to 15,285,428 dollars. Much the greater part of 
 the imports was from Great Britain, exclusive of her depen 
 dencies. 
 
 From sundry British documents it appears, that the United 
 States, from 1793 to 1800, imported from Great Britain a 
 greater amount of manufactures than were exported from 
 Great Britain during the same period to all foreign Europe. 
 In 1800, the United States received from Great Britain more 
 than one-fourth of the amount of the manufactured articles 
 exported by her to all parts of the world. 
 
 During the seven years from 1795 to 1801, both inclusive, 
 the balance of trade with Great Britain and Ireland, and the 
 dominions thereof, was uniformly against the United States, 
 and in the aggregate amounted to 106,118,104 dollars, or 
 15,159,748/. per .annum. The balance in favour of Great 
 Britain was only 70,116 dollars less than the apparent unfa 
 vourable balance produced by our trade with all parts of the 
 world collectively taken. 
 
 In 1800, the merchandise exported from Great Britain was 
 worth 16/. 14. sterling, or 74.23 dollars per ton; and that 
 imported from Great Britain into the United States was worth 
 54/. 4s. sterling, or 240.89 dollars per ton. 
 
 In 1802, 1803, and 1804, there was annually imported into 
 the United States, from the British possessions in Europe, of 
 merchandise paying duties ad valorem, and of other manufac 
 tured articles subject to specific duties, the aggregate of 
 27,400,000 dollars: if we admit that one-fourth of this 
 amount was re-exported, 20,550,000 dollars of the value 
 thereof remained for the annual consumption of our popula 
 tion; the profits on which were gained by Great Britain. It 
 is generally calculated that raw materials gain seven fold by 
 being manufactured. Such were our contributions in those 
 
164 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 
 
 PART I. years, for the advancement of the skill and industry of the 
 ^-v-^ British nation. 
 
 On the average of the three years, 1802, 1803, and 1804, 
 the annual value of the merchandise exported from the Uni 
 ted Slates to the dominions of Great Britain, amounted to 
 18,6(J5,777 dollars; and on the average of the same three 
 years, the annual value of the merchandise imported into the 
 United States from Great Britain amounted to 35,737,030 
 dollars; leaving an annual balance of 17,071,253 dollars 
 against the United States. 
 
 The real value of British produce and manufacture export 
 ed to the United States, on an average of the years 1806 and 
 1807, was 1 1,417,834L sterling, or about 50,500,000 dollars; 
 making one quarter and one-third of all the exports of British 
 produce and mauufac ure during those two years. By the Eng 
 lish accounts, the real value of cotton and woollen goods ex 
 ported to the United States from England, on an average ot 
 the same two years, was 8,984,886J. or about 39,500,000 
 dollars, as valued in England. 
 
 In 1807, the amount of goods, paying duties ad valorem, 
 was nearly 39,000,000 of dollars; when we add the goods 
 imported, in the same year, duty free, an.d those subject to 
 specific duties, the whole amount imported from Great Britain 
 in 1807, would not, it is believed, fall much short of 
 50,000,000 of dollars. 
 
 The aggregate value of the exports of every description to 
 the United States from Great Britain, during the seven years, 
 from 1805 to 1811, amounted to 62,266,6682. sterling, 01 
 annually to 36,470,471 dollars; their aggregate value to all 
 parts of the world during the seven years amounted to 
 376,977,1601 sterling, or annually to 220,800,498 dollars; 
 or, the United States received annually, of the merchandise 
 of every description, exported to all parts of the world from 
 Great Britain, 16.51 per centum, or one-sixth of the aggre 
 gate value thereof. 
 
 On the average of the seven years, from 1805 to 181 1, the 
 aggregate value of the British produce and manufactures an 
 nually exported from Great Britain to the United States, 
 amounted to 35,441,367 dollars; and the annual value of the 
 domestic produce of the United States exported to Great 
 Britain, calculated on the same average, amounted to 
 9,124,941 dollars; leaving an annual balance of 26,316,426 
 dollars in favour of Great Britain. Or the annual value of 
 the exports of every description from Great Britain to the Uni 
 ted States, on the average aforesaid, amounted to 36,470,471 
 
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 165 
 
 dollars; and the aggregate annual value of the exports of every SECT. V. 
 description from the United States to Great Britain and her s^">^^> 
 dependencies, her East India possessions excepted, amounted 
 to 16,438,362 dollars; leavingan annual balance of 20,032,109 
 dollars in favour of Great Britain. 
 
 On the return of peace between the two countries, in 1815, 
 the importation of British goods was great beyond example. 
 From the 1st of January to the 31st of December, 1815, the 
 amount of goods paying duties ad valorem, imported from 
 Great Britain and her dominions, was 71,400,599 dollars. 
 Nearly the whole of this sum was made up from goods coming 
 directly from Great Britain, consisting principally of woollens 
 and cotton. The value of articles paying specific duties, from 
 Great Britain and her dependencies, during the same period, 
 (calculating their value at the place of importation) was 
 11,470,^86.80 dollars, making the whole amount no less 
 than 82,871,185.80 dollars from Great Britain and the coun 
 tries in her possession. 
 
 During the six years from 1802-3 to 1807-8 inclusive, the 
 United Stales exported in bullion to India, only 1,742,682/. 
 sterling, less than had been exported during the same term, by 
 the British East India Company, the officers of the Company s 
 ships, and by the British private trade: the amount which we 
 exported, was more than two-thirds of that exported from 
 Great Britain. 
 
 It appears that the United States, during the six years from 
 1802 to 1808, exported to the British East Indies, in mer 
 chandise, an aggregate of 2,589,589 dollars; or annually, 
 431,598 dollars. The treasure (specie) exported in the 
 same term, in the aggregate, amounted to 17,626,275 dollars, 
 or 2,937,712 dollars per annum. The importations into those 
 settlements, consisting of money and merchandise, from the 
 United States, amounted to 3,369,310 dollars per annum. 
 During the six years aforesaid, there was exported, from the 
 British East Indies, to the United States, merchandise, 
 amounting to 18,633,426 dollars, or annually to 3,105,571 
 dollars. The treasure exported as aforesaid, amounted in the 
 aggregate to 69,500 dollars, or annually to 1 1,583 dollars; 
 leaving an annual balance in favour of India, of 2,662,390 
 dollars. 
 
 During the years 1804, 1805, and 1806, the United States 
 
 supplied the British West India Islands with more than nine 
 
 tenths of their flour, meal and bread, about two-thirds of their 
 
 . Indian corn, oats, peas and beans, about one-half of their beef 
 
166 COMMERCIAL OBLIGATIONS 
 
 P* T ?T i. and pork, more than one-half of their dried fish, and nearly 
 
 V^-N^S*/ the whole of their live stock and lumber. 
 
 The average quantity of staves and heading, sent to the 
 British West Indies, in the years 1805, 1806, 1807, was 
 17,614,000, being nearly one-half of the quantity exported 
 during these years. The quantity of boards and plank, for 
 the same years, on an average was 40,000,000. In 1803, 
 260,555, and in 1807, 251,706 barrels of flour were export 
 ed to these islands. 
 
 The value of flour, bread, and biscuit exported to the Bri 
 tish West Indies, on an average of the years 1802, 1803, 
 1804, was about 2,000,000 dollars; of lumber of all kinds 
 about 1,000,000; of beef, pork, bacon, and lard, about 
 800,000 dollars; and of Indian corn, rye, and Indian meal, 
 about 600,000. The quantity of rum imported, during the 
 same period, was about 4,000,000 gallons annually, and was 
 valued at about 2;500,000 dollars. The quantity imported, 
 in the years 1805, 1806, and 1807, was about 4,614,000 
 gallons annually. 
 
 The average amount of duties upon merchandise, annually 
 imported into the United States from the British West India 
 islands and North American colonial possessions, from 1802 
 to 1816, excluding the period from the commencement of the 
 restrictive system to the termination of the late war, exceeds 
 2,000,000 dollars. The value of the merchandise upon which 
 these duties accrued is supposed to be equal to 7,000,000 
 dollars per annum. The average annual amount of exports 
 to the same places, principally of domestic production, up to 
 1817, excluding the time of the operation of the restrictive 
 system, and the continuance of the war, have exceeded 
 6,500,000 dollars. In 1815, the amount/ of the duties on 
 merchandise imported in American vessels from the British 
 West India Islands and North American colonial possessions, 
 was, to the amount of duties imported in British vessels, as one 
 to four; in 1816, as one to five and a half, or two to eleven. 
 Taking the ratio of 1816, as the basis of calculation, and it is 
 believed to afford the safest and most solid, as past experi 
 ence shows a constant diminution of the amount of duties on 
 goods imported in vessels of the United States it is eslimat- 
 ed, supposing the same proportion exists in the exports, that 
 American vessels are used on the transportation annually of 
 2,177,924 dollars worth of merchandise, and British vessels, 
 of 11,322,076 dollars worth of the most bulky articles of 
 commerce, one-half of which are of the growth, production, or 
 
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 167 
 
 manufacture of the United States. This inequality in the ad- SECT. v. 
 vantages of this commerce, to the navigating interest of 
 country, arises from the rigorous enforcement of the colonial 
 system of Great Britain, as to the United States, while it is 
 relaxed to all nations who are friendly to the British empire 
 and her colonial possessions. 
 
168 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 OF THE RELATIVE DISPOSITIONS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND 
 AMERICA, FROM THE PEACE OF 1763. 
 
 PART I. 1- THE oppression and losses which the colonies had en- 
 v^-v-^/ dured ; the shackles imposed upon them ; the destitution to 
 which they had been so long consigned ; the parsimony and 
 unskilfulness with which aid was finally administered by the 
 mother country ; the faint praise or the bitter sarcasm which 
 attended their noblest exertions ; the despicable character and 
 habitual malversation of their governors;* the immeasurable 
 evils which they could tracf to the indifference, incapacity, or 
 corruption of British ministers ; the general complexion of 
 the domestic government of Great Britain, so livid in the 
 contrast with their own, and so ghastly in the pictures of her 
 party writers ; all, were insufficient to stifle their affections, 
 or shake their allegiance j / In the season of their severest dis 
 tress from the incursions of the Indian and Canadian ; at the 
 height of their dissatisfaction with the restraining and dis 
 franchising system of the mother country; they did not turn 
 their eyes to France, who could have arrested the steps of 
 their savage invaders, and who would gladly have made any 
 compromise, or concession of privileges, to attach them to her 
 empire. Franklin boasted with truth in 1768, " Scotland 
 has had its rebellion; Ireland has had its rebellion; England 
 its plots against the reigning family; but America is free from 
 this reproach." What is related of the Greek colonies, could 
 be more emphatically said of those of Great Britain that 
 they remembered the land of their fathers with filial respect 
 and affection; that they retained an invincible predilection 
 for its laws and customs, for its religion and language; that 
 they followed devotedly its fortunes, and exulted in its glory, 
 The peace of 1763 seemed to banish every chilling recollec 
 tion; to heighten their complacency in the connexion witl, 
 
 * See Note K. 
 
DISPOSITIONS FROM THE, &C. 169 
 
 Great Britain and their admiration of the English constitution. SE^T.vi. 
 They fondly thought the true and highest panegyric and trh 
 umph of the American, to be comprised in the verses of the 
 Poet, 
 
 And English merit his, where meet combin d 
 "Whate er high fancy, sound judicious thought, 
 An ample generous heart, undrooping soul, 
 And firm, tenacious valour can bestow.* 
 
 Testimony of a convincing nature superabounds with re 
 spect to these dispositions. Out of the mass, I will select 
 that of the two men who, by their opportunities of kaow- 
 ledge, and soundness of judgment, were entitled, perhaps, to 
 most weight in the question; Governor Pownall and Dr. Frank 
 lin. The first had been long in some of the highest offices 
 which the crown could confer in America governor and 
 cornmander-in-chief of Massachusetts Bay governor of 
 South Carolina lieutenant-governor of New Jersey, &c.:the 
 second gave the evidence which I shall quote from him, in 
 1785, when he could have no interest in making a false or 
 exaggerated statement. 
 
 U I profess," said Pownall in 1765, u an affection for 
 the colonies, because having lived amongst their people in 
 a private, as well as in a public character, I know them 
 I know that in their private social relations, there is not a 
 more friendly, and in their political one, a more zealously 
 loyal people, in all his majesty s dominions. When fairly 
 and openly dealt with, there is not a people who has a truer 
 sense of the necessary powers of government. They would 
 sacrifice their dearest interests for the honour and prosperity 
 of their mother country. I have a right to say this, because 
 experience has given me a practical knowledge, and this im 
 pression, of them. "f 
 
 " The duty of a colony is, affection for the mother country: 
 here I may affirm, that in whatever form and temper this af 
 fection can lie in the human breast, in that form, by the deep 
 est and most permanent impression, it ever did lie in the breast 
 of the American people. They have no other idea of this 
 country than as their home; they have no other word by which 
 to express it, and till of late, it has constantly been expressed 
 by the name of home. That powerful affection, the love of 
 our native country, which operates in every breast, operates 
 
 * Thompson. 
 
 j- The Administration of the Colonies Dedication to George Gren- 
 ville. 
 
 VOL. I. Y 
 
170 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART I. in this people towards England, which they consider as their 
 **v-^i^ native country: nor is this a mere passive impression, a mere 
 opinion in speculation it has been wrought up in them to a 
 vigilant and active zeal for the service of this country."* 
 
 " The true loyalists," said Franklin, " were the people of 
 America against whom the royalists of England acted. No 
 people were ever known more truly loyal, and universally so, 
 to their sovereigns: the protestant succession in the House of 
 Hanover was their idol. Not a Jacobite was to be found from 
 one end of the colonies to the other. They were affectionate 
 to the people of England, zealous and forward to assist in her 
 wars, by voluntary contributions of men and money, even be 
 yond their proportion." 
 
 In my first and second sections, I have quoted the language 
 of several of the British politicians, imputing to the colonies, 
 even in their infancy, the design of acquiring independence. 
 As it was my purpose there, merely to set the apprehensions of 
 the mother country, and the energetic character of our Ameri 
 can forefathers, in a more striking relief, I did not formally deny 
 the truth of the charge; and it appeared to me that if it were 
 admitted to be true, the circumstances under which the set 
 tlers repaired to this continent, and consolidated their fortunes, 
 would furnish them with an obvious and a complete justifica 
 tion. But it is far from being well-founded; and some obser 
 vations on the subject, in this place, may not be deemed su 
 perfluous. The excessive jealousy of power, and the conscious 
 ness of tyrannical rule, raised the suspicion in the administra 
 tion of the Stuarts and of the Roundheads; the selfish and do 
 mineering spirit of the nation at large rendered her susceptible, 
 at every moment, of lively alarm for her monopoly and sove 
 reignty. Government and people were, from these causes, in 
 the language of Mr. Burke, "too acute; perpetually full of 
 distrusts, conjectures and divinations, formed in defiance of 
 facts and experience." Whenever a natural or chartered 
 right, a local privilege and immunity, was pleaded against 
 the encroachments of their arrogant will or oppressive acts, 
 they at once fancied and proclaimed, that their whole autho 
 rity was denied, and that the litigant provinces either medi 
 tated, or had committed rebellion. They could not perceive 
 that the very assertion of a privilege implied an acknow 
 ledgment of their supremacy; that the eagerness of the co 
 lonists to obtain charters from the crown, and their anxiety 
 to preserve unimpaired those which they^obtained, their 
 
 * Debate on Disturbances in America, 1770* 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 171 
 
 claims to the liberties of Englishmen as defined and pledged SECT. VI. 
 by the British constitution; their perpetual appeals to the 
 authority of Parliament; amounted to a constant renovation of 
 fealty, and indicated any other drift than that of separation. 
 When, after the peace of 1763, the scheme of American tax 
 ation and servitude was matured, and the determination fixed 
 to persist in it at all hazards, its immediate authors and abet 
 tors, in order to render it more acceptable to the nation, 
 exerted themselves particularly, to spread the impression, that 
 New England had constantly aimed at independence; that 
 " the Americans had been obstinate, undutiful and ungovern 
 able from the very beginning." This was the text taken by 
 the orators in Parliament, and the writers out of doors, on the 
 ministerial side, with a view to the conclusion, that all con 
 cession or gentleness to the intractable provincials would be 
 futile; that " they never could be brought to their duty and 
 the true subordinate relation, till reduced to an unconditional, 
 effectual submission."* 
 
 To convict New England of treasonable dispositions in all 
 stages of her existence, is, palpably, the main object of Chal 
 mers, in his Annals; and it would seem, that he, or those in 
 whose service he writes, did not deem it advisable to relin 
 quish the argument, as late as the year 1814. / in the preface 
 to a work published under his name in that year, and entitled 
 " Opinions of Eminent Lawyers, on various points of English 
 Jurisprudence, chiefly concerning the Colonies, &c." I find 
 the "following passage: " None of the statesmen of 1766 or 
 1768, nor those of the preceding nor subsequent times, had 
 any suspicion that there lay among the documents, in the 
 Board of Trade and Patent Office, the most satisfactory 
 proofs from the epoch of the Revolution in 1 668, throughout 
 every reign, and during every administration, of the settled 
 purpose of the revolted colonies, to acquire direct independence: 
 the design had long been entertained of acquiring positive so 
 vereignty."/ 
 
 We have seen what these proofs are, in the extracts which 
 I have made from his Annals. They amount to no more than 
 what was extant in the public history of the colonies; and 
 may be resolved into a determined assertion, on their part, of 
 fundamental liberties, and into acts of sheer necessity. In 
 illustrating their political intrepidity, I have cited many in 
 stances of an inflexible tenacity as to natural and chartered 
 rights, but none of a rebellious or seditious temper. Evidence 
 
 * Earl Talbot, House of Lords, 
 

 172 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART I. is not wanting that they would never have submitted to the 
 v.^-v-^ deprivation of their privileges; but none exists even of a wish 
 for independence, while those privileges could be preserved. 
 If we fix our attention, for a moment, on the situation of the 
 first settlers, particularly the northern, we shall perceive that, 
 to exist at all in order and safety; to constitute a regular and 
 stable common wealth; it was indispensable for them to 
 transcend the letter of the royal patents. They had no alter 
 native in the first instance, but to erect judicatories, and esta 
 blish representative assemblies, in reference to their domestic 
 weal; and, when no hope of protection from abroad could be 
 indulged, to confederate for external defence. 
 
 We may wonder that Dr. Robertson, acknowledging the 
 dereliction of the New England colonies during the civil com 
 motions in the mother country, and the extremity of their peril 
 from the plots of the Indians, should yet censoriously re 
 present their league of 164.^, the only means of their preser 
 vation, as u a transaction in which they seem to have con 
 sidered themselves as independent societies, possessing all the 
 rights of sovereignty, and free from the controul of any supe 
 rior power."* Thrown as they were into a wilderness, rather 
 as reprobates to be sacrificed, than as subjects to.be defended; 
 committed to the exigencies and chances <of a distant settle 
 ment, and pressed with the highest degree of ganger at the 
 season when all was confusion and dissension in the mother 
 country; they must have fallen into anarchy themselves, had 
 they waited to consult her rulers respecting their domestic 
 arrangements; or have perished by the tomahawk of the savage, 
 had they looked to her for a system of defence, and delayed to 
 combine their strength and sagacity, so as to assure a common 
 exertion, whenever it might be wanted, whether for military or 
 civil objects. The institutions and prosperity that arose out of 
 this compulsory exercise of discretion, under such untoward 
 circumstances, excite in me anew, the surprise and admiration 
 which I have more than once expressed. 
 
 The measure of coining money, taken by Massachusetts, dur 
 ing the civil wars, gave a handle to her enernieslin England, 
 which was used eagerly, from the period of the Restoration, to 
 the apparition militant of Chalmers and his numerous associates 
 in the same crusade. That writer lays, as we have seen, 
 the greatest stress upon its sufficiency, as evidence of the 
 early disloyalty of New England; and Dr. Robertson, found it 
 " a usurpation;" an unambiguous indication of" the aspiring 
 
 * Vol. iv. History of America. 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 173 
 
 spirit prevalent among the people of Massachusetts."* I can- SECT. VI. 
 not retrain from offering, in answer to these invidious sugges- s^-v^- 
 tions, a quotation from a paper on the subject published in 
 the English Monthly Magazine for January, 1799. It com 
 prises an anecdote which gives the proper air to the orthodox 
 historian s umbrage u at the tree stampt upon the Boston coin 
 as an apt symbol of its progressive vigour." 
 
 " It seems to be the opinion of Dr. Robertson, that the 
 people of Massachusetts assumed this 4 peculiar prerogative of 
 sovereignty in defiance of, or at least, in opposition to, the 
 Foyal authority. But it ought to be particularly noticed, that 
 the first coinage was made in the year 1652. Instead, there 
 fore, of ascribing this measure to the aspiring spirit of the 
 people of Massachusetts, the Doctor might just as well have 
 said, that the colonists being nearly deserted, at this time, by 
 the rulers at home, on account of the civil wars, and the vari 
 ous forms of government which afterwards followed, were 
 obliged to coin money from absolute necessity. The follow 
 ing extract from the Memoirs of the late truly patriotic Tho 
 mas Hollis, will prove this to have been the principal, if not 
 the only cause, and consequently point out the mistake which 
 Dr. Robertson has inadvertently fallen into." 
 
 " Sir Thomas Temple, brother to Sir William Temple, re 
 sided several years in New England during the interregnum. 
 After the Restoration, when he returned to England, the king 
 sent for him, and discoursed with him on the state of affairs in 
 the Massachusetts, and discovered great warmth against that 
 colony. Among other things, he said they had invaded his 
 prerogative by coining money. Sir Thomas, who was a real 
 friend to the colony, told his majesty, that the colonists had but 
 little acquaintance with law, and that they thought it no 
 crime to make money for their own use. In the course of the 
 conversation, Sir Thomas took some of the money out of his 
 pocket, and presented it to the king. On one side of the coin 
 was a pine tree, of that kind which is thick and bushy at the 
 top. Charles asked what tree that was? Sir Thomas inform 
 ed him it was the royal oak, which preserved his majesty s 
 life/ This account of the matter brought the king into good 
 humour, and disposed him to hear what Sir Thomas had to 
 say in their favour, calling them a l parcel of honest dogs. " 
 
 " The jocular turn which Sir Thomas gave to the story, 
 was evidently calculated to amuse the monarch in his own 
 
 * Vol. iv. History of America. 
 
174 DISPOSITIONS PROM THE 
 
 PART I. way, and had the desired effect, in disposing him to hear with 
 ^^" v ~^- / good humour, that just defence of the colonies which Sir Tho 
 mas was so well qualified to make. We find he pleaded, thai; 
 the colonists thought it no crime to make money for their owr 
 use; at a time too, when the confusions in the mother coun 
 try prevented them from receiving those occasional supplies of 
 coin, which were absolutely necessary for common circula 
 tion. Such an uncommon exigency required an uncommon 
 expedient; and this will account for the proceedings of the 
 people of Massachusetts in a more rational manner, than Dr 
 Robertson has done." 
 
 By the act of 14 Geo. II. c. 37, the Americans were^re 
 strained from creating banks; by that of 24 Geo. II. c.*53, 
 the governors and assemblies of the respective American pro 
 vinces were prohibited from making " any act, order, resolu 
 tion, or vote, whereby paper bills or bills of credit, shall b( 
 created or issued, under any pretence whatever; or from pro 
 tracting or postponing the times limited, or the provisions 
 made, for calling in such as were then actually issued apd sub 
 sisting." After the peace of 1763, most of the colonies were 
 reduced, in consequence of the enforcement of these and other 
 regulations of a like purport, to a situation worse than that of 
 Massachusetts in 1672. It is thus stated by Macpherson in 
 his Annals. " Their foreign trade was almost entirely ruined 
 by the rigorous execution of the new orders against smuggling, 
 and the collection of the duties in hard silver, which soon 
 drained the country of anv little real money circulating in it. 
 And, as if government had intended to prevent the colonists 
 from having even the shadow of money, another act was pass 
 ed, in a few days after that for the new duties, declaring that 
 no paper bills, to be thenceforth issued, should be made a legal 
 tender in payment, and enjoining those in circulation to be 
 sunk (that is, paid off in hard money) at the limited time." 
 
 Had the colonies some of which were driven to the ex 
 pedient of barter, possessed bullion, and proceeded to coin 
 it, on this emergency, it would not have been difficult for any 
 liberal enquirer to decide whether the proceeding was to be 
 interpreted into " an indication of an aspiring spirit," or into a 
 mere and natural effort for temporary relief from an oppressive 
 privation. I find it the more unpardonable in Dr. Robert 
 son to have mistaken or misrepresented the views of the colo 
 nists, since he has himself furnished an explanation of much 
 of their apparent indocility in the following paragraph: " In 
 writing the history of the English settlements in America, it is 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 175 
 
 necessary to trace the progress of the restraining laws with SECT. VI. 
 accuracy, as in every subsequent transaction, we may observe v^-v-^ 
 a perpetual exertion on the part of the mother country, to en- 
 force and extend them; and on the part of the colonies, endea 
 vours no less unremitting to elude or to obstruct their opera 
 tion." 
 
 The inveterate design of the colonies to become indepen 
 dent, continued to be a leading topic in the British parliament, 
 notwithstanding the evidence furnished in their conduct on the 
 repeal of the stamp act in 1766.* We have a specimen of 
 the manner in which the charge was supported, in the argu 
 ment of Sir Richard Sutton, who aid in the House of Com 
 mons, on the 22d April, 1774, 4 If you ask an American 
 who is his master, he will tell you he has none; nor any go 
 vernor but Jesus Christ!" Lord Mansfield was quite sure that 
 the Americans had meditated a state of independency, par 
 ticularly since the peace of Paris, and upon this ground 
 chiefly, he rested his celebrated declaration in the House of 
 Lords, " if we do not kill the Americans, the Americans will 
 kill us." In the quotation which I have made from one of 
 his speeches on the same point, Davenant is brought forward 
 as having " foreseen that America would endeavour to form 
 herself into a separate and independent state, whenever she 
 found herself of sufficient strength to contend with the mother 
 country." The learned judge did not, however, deal fairly 
 with Davenant./ This great political teacher by far the 
 ablest of his time, and whose treatises, according to his edi 
 tor, Sir Cbar]es_ Whit worth, " may be properly called the 
 foundaiion of the political establishment of England" had 
 delivered, in his Discourse on the Plantation Trade, opinions 
 respecting the colonies, "which Lord Mansfield would have 
 been very unwilling to produce in their real shape. The fol 
 lowing, written in 1698, are of this number, and will compen 
 sate for the space they may occupy in these pages, by their his 
 torical value. 
 
 " Generally speaking our colonies while they have English 
 blood in their veins, and have relations in England, and while 
 
 * When the news of the repeal of the stamp act reached America," 
 says Macpherson, " it was, notwithstanding- the disagreeable nature of 
 the concomitant act, received with universal demonstrations of joy. 
 Subscriptions were made for erecting 4 statues to Mr. Pitt, who had ex 
 erted himself for the repeal; and resolutions were made to prepare new 
 dresses made of British manufactures for celebrating the 4th of June, the 
 birth flay of their- most gracious sovereign, and to give jjieir homespun 
 clothes to the poor," &c. 
 
1*76 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART i. they can get by trading with us, the stronger and greater they 
 grow, the more this crown and kingdom will get by them; ant 
 nothing but such an arbitrary power as shall make them despe 
 rate, can bring them to rebel." 
 
 " While we keep a strict eye upon their conduct, ant 
 chiefly watch their growth in shipping of strength and for war, 
 whatever other increase they make, either in wealth or ir 
 number of inhabitants, cannot be turned against us, and car 
 never be detrimental to this nation While we are strong ant 
 they weak at sea, they may be compelled to obey the laws of 
 England, and not to trade directly and upon their own acrounl. 
 with other countries. I do not think the greatness these colo 
 nies may arrive at in a natural course, and in the progress of 
 time can be dangerous to England. To build ships in the way 
 of trade or for their own defence, can administer no true cause 
 of jealousy." 
 
 " It is true, if in New England, or in other parts there, 
 they should pretend to set up manufactures, and to clothe as 
 well as feed their neighbours, their nearness and low price 
 would give them such advantages over this nation, as might 
 prove of pernicious consequence; but this fear seems very re 
 mote, because new inhabitants, especially in a large extent ol 
 country, find their account better in rearing cattle, tilling the 
 earth, clearing it of woods, making fences, and by erecting 
 necessary buildings, than in setting up of manufactures, which 
 is the last work of a people settled three or four hundred years, 
 growing numerous and wanting territory." 
 
 " W 7 hen we contemplate the great increase and improve 
 ments which have been made in New England, Carolina, and 
 Pennsylvania, we cannot but think it injustice not to say, that 
 a large share of this general good to those parts is owing to the 
 education of the planters, which, if not entirely virtuous, has, 
 at least, a show of virtue." 
 
 " And to the sobriety and temperate way of living, prac 
 tised by the dissenters retired to America, we may justly at 
 tribute the increase they have made there of inhabitants, 
 which is beyond the usual proportion to be any where else 
 observed." 
 
 " Had it not been for provinces begun and carried on by 
 people of sobriety, the English empire abroad would be much 
 weaker than it is at present." 
 
 " If ever any thing great or good be done for our English 
 colonies, industry must have its due recompense, and that 
 cannot be, without encouragement to it, which, perhaps, is 
 only to be brought about by confirming their liberties." 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 177 
 
 cc And as great care should be taken in this respect, so, SECT.VI. 
 without doubt, it is advisable, that no little emulations, or pri 
 vate interests of neighbour governors, nor that the petitions of 
 hungry courtiers at home, should prevail to discourage those 
 particular colonies, who in a few years have raised themselves 
 by their own charge, prudence, and industry, to the wealth 
 and greatness they are now arrived at, without expense to the 
 crown: Upon which account, any innovations or breach of 
 their original charters (besides that it seems a breach of the 
 public faith) may, peradventure, not tend to the king s pro 
 fit." 
 
 " We shall not pretend to determine whether the people in 
 the Plantations have a right to all the privileges of English 
 subjects; but the contrary notion is, perhaps, too much en 
 tertained and practised in places which happen not to be dis 
 tant from St. Stephen s Chapel. Upon which account it will, 
 peradventure, be a great security and encouragement to these 
 industrious people, if a declaratory law were made, that 
 Englishmen have right to all the laws of England, while they 
 remain in countries subject to the dominion of this king 
 dom." 
 
 2. On the side of the British government, the bias and im 
 pressions taken after the epoch of 1763, were altogether, and 
 by an almost incredible perversion of heart and of judgment, 
 the reverse of those which I have ascribed to the colonies. It 
 was to be expected that the exertions and sufferings of the 
 latter during the war, and the value of the results to Great 
 Britain, would have warmed the feelings, and relaxed the 
 gripe, of any ministry or parliament, however greedy of reve 
 nue, or tenacious of dominion. The British nation had ac 
 quired, by the war, lands more than equal in value, to the 
 amount of all the expense she had incurred in America from 
 its tirst settlement; and she saw opened to her new avenues 
 of a most beneficial commerce. No share was sought or reap 
 ed by the colonies, in the millions of acres which they had 
 helped to conquer; they seemed to desire no more than the 
 loosening of their fetters so far, as to enable them to recover 
 from their wounds. 
 
 But, to allow them an interval of ease entered not into the 
 imagination or heart of their task-masters. The Lords of the 
 Admiralty issued forthwith, instructions to the commanders on 
 the American station, to enforce all those acts of trade to 
 which I have adverted, in the most rigid manner. " The 
 ministry" says Gordon, " obliged all sea-officers stationed on 
 VOL. I. Z 
 
178 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART I. the American coasts, to act in the capacity of the meanest re- 
 v^v^w/ venue officers, making them submit to the usual custom-house 
 oaths and regulations for that purpose. This proved a great 
 grievance to the American merchants and traders. Many il 
 legal seizures were made; no redress could be had but from 
 Britain. Besides, the American trade with (he Spaniards, by 
 which the British manufactures were vended in return, for 
 gold and silver in coin or bullion, cochineal, &c. as occasion 
 served, was almost instantly destroyed by the armed ships un 
 der the new regulations."* Immediately after the ratifica 
 tion of the definitive treaty, the intentions of the government 
 to quarter ten thousand troops in America, and to support 
 them at the expense of die colonies, were authentically an 
 nounced. Mr. Givnville avowed it, in the House of Com 
 mons, to be his purpose, to raise the money for the support of 
 those troops, by a duty on the foreign sugar and molasses im 
 ported into America, and by stamps on all papers legal and 
 mercantile. In 1764, Parliament passed an act imposing du 
 ties on the two first articles; and to secure its execution, the 
 penalties for the breach of it, or of any other act relating to 
 the trade and revenues of the British colonies, were made re 
 coverable in any court of admiralty in the colony where the of 
 fence should be committed, or at the election of the informer 
 or prosecutor in any court of vice-admiralty, which might be 
 appointed by the crown in any part of Americ a. Thus the 
 trial by jury might be withheld, and the defendant called to 
 support his claim to property seized, at distances which 
 would make the expense of the pursuit more than the value ot 
 the prize. Moreover, the act provided that he could recover 
 neither costs nor damages, if the judge certified that there was 
 probable cause of seizure. 
 
 I do not know of any moral phenomenon which history 
 offers, more hateful than that those who were entrusted in 
 Great Britain with the supreme administration, should not only 
 have proved utterly insensible to the services and distresses 
 of the colonies, but have at once resolved to take advantage 
 of the expulsion of her rival from the American continent, effect 
 ed, in great part, through their vigorous assistance, and of the 
 mighty increase and complete disengagement of the national 
 strength, produced by the same generous co-operation to 
 enforce in all its rigour the whole digest of commercial sub 
 jection; to plunge them into what Mr. Burke so justly describ 
 ed as " a perfect uncompensated slavery, by joining together 
 
 * Vol. i. p. 207. 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 179 
 
 the restraints of an universal internal and external monopoly, SECT. VI. 
 with an universal internal and external taxation." s^^v-^ 
 
 There seems to be now but one voice throughout the 
 world, respecting the expedients employed to establish this 
 cumulative despotism the revenue-acts, stamp-acts, re 
 straining and starving acts, Boston port acts, acts for dis 
 franchising legislatures, for quartering soldiers in private 
 houses, dragging men to England for trial, &c. English 
 writers of every party-denomination, finding that the verdict 
 of Europe was given unanimously and irreversibly, against 
 this headlong career of injustice and folly, have concurred in 
 passing upon it, themselves, the severest sentence of repro 
 bation. They tell us without hesitation that a scheme of 
 new modelling the colonial government, so as to increase the 
 power and patronage of the crown, and enable ministers to 
 enrich their relations and dependents, was the cause of the 
 war, and of the loss of America. They adduce these as the 
 prominent features of the hopeful scheme : 
 
 First, to raise a revenue in America by act of parliament, 
 to be applied to support an army there; to pay a large salary 
 to the governors, another to the lieutenant governors, salaries 
 to the judges of the law and admiralty; and thus to render the 
 whole government, executive and judicial, entirely indepen 
 dent of the people, and wholly dependent on the minister. 
 Second, to make a new division of the colonies, to reduce the 
 number of them by making the small ones more extensive, to 
 make them all royal governments, with a peerage in each, &c. 
 
 Mr. Burke gave to parliament, in his unanswerable speech 
 on American taxation, a full account of the dawn and progress 
 of the new plan of colonial administration. His relation stands 
 as a monument of the genius of that rule, under which the co 
 lonies, by their own admirable energies, and a train of provi 
 dential dispensations, had grown to a strength, and preserved a 
 spirit, too firm to be broken by its utmost pressure, when all 
 other barriers to its natural action were removed. The fol 
 lowing is a part of the testimony of Burke: 
 
 " At the period immediately on the close of the war of 1756, 
 a scheme of government new in many things seemed to have 
 been adopted. I saw, or thought I saw, several symptoms of 
 a great change, whilst I sat in your gallery, a good while be 
 fore I had the honour of a seat in this house. At that period 
 the necessity was established of keeping up no less than twenty 
 new regiments, with twenty colonels capable of seats in this 
 house. This scheme was adopted with very general applause 
 from all sides, at the very time that, by your conquests in 
 
180 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART I. America, your danger from foreign attempts in that part of tire 
 ^^^^- world was much lessened, or indeed rather quite over. Wheis 
 this huge increase of military establishment was resolved on, 
 a revenue was to be found to support so great a burthen. 
 Country gentlemen, the great patrons of economy, and the 
 great resislers of a standing armed force, would not have en 
 tered with much alacrity into the vote for so large and so ex 
 pensive an army, if they had been very sure that they were to 
 continue to pay for it. But hopes of another kind were held 
 out to them; and, in particular, I well remember, that Mr. 
 Townshend, in a brilliant harangue on this subject, did dazzle 
 them, by playing before their eyes the image of a revenue to 
 be raised in America." 
 
 The conduct of the colonies in resisting this scheme did not 
 want for advocates in the parliament; and we may claim for 
 it particularly, the unqualified sanction of Camden and Chat 
 ham, the most enlightened and conscientious among the Bri 
 tish statesmen of that day. " We have been, 5 said the first, 
 " the original aggressors in this business; if we obstinately 
 persist, we are fairly answerable for all the consequences. 
 When we contend that we aim only to defend and enforce our 
 own rights, I positively deny it. I contend that America has 
 been driven, by cruel necessity, to defend her rights from the 
 united attacks of violence, oppression, and injustice. I con 
 tend that America has been indisputably aggrieved. Perhaps, 
 as a domineering Englishman, wishing to enjoy the ideal be 
 nefit of such a claim of taxation, 1 might urge it with earnest 
 ness, and endeavour to carry my point; but if, on the other 
 hand, I resided in America, that 1 felt, or was to feel, the 
 effects of such manifest injustice, I certainly should resist the 
 attempt with that degree of ardour so daring a violation oi 
 what should be held dearer than life itself, ought to enkindle 
 in the breast of every freeman." 
 
 " Pursuing the ideas of a native American, or a person re 
 siding in that country, what must be the sense they feel of the 
 repeated injuries that have for a succession of years past been 
 heaped on them? To have their property, under the idea ot 
 asserting a right to tax them, voted away by one act of parlia 
 ment, and their charters, under an idea of the supreme autho 
 rity of the British legislature, swept away by another vote of 
 parliament. Thus depriving them, or rather claiming a right 
 to dispose of every shilling they are worth, without one oi 
 them being represented by the persons pretending to exercise 
 this right; and thus stripping them of their natural rights, 
 growing out of the constitution, confirmed by charter, and 
 
PEACE OP 1763. 181 
 
 recognized by every branch of the legislature, without exa- SEC 
 mination, or even without hearing."* 
 
 " The Americans," said Chatham, " are a wise, industrious, 
 and prudent people. They possess too much good sense, and 
 too much spirit, ever to submit to hold their properties on so 
 precarious and disgraceful a tenure. They see us, besides, 
 immersed in luxury, dissipation, venality, and corruption; they 
 perceive, that, even if they were willing to contribute, to what 
 purposes their contributions would be applied; to nothing but 
 the extinction of public and private virtue there, as has already 
 been the case here."f 
 
 An American finds not only instruction, but a gratification 
 such as is commonly enjoyed, in looking back upon a hideous 
 evil from which you have lastingly escaped, when he retraces 
 the portraits drawn by near observers, whose title to credit is 
 beyond dispute, of the cabinets and men to whom the English 
 monarch and nation committed the liberties and fortunes of the 
 colonies. Let us see how they are described by three states 
 men of different political views and connexions, and of the 
 fullest and most intimate experience in the ministerial govern 
 ment of the kingdom. In the debate of the House of Lords 
 of Feb. 1st, 1775, Lord Mansfield said " I have seen much 
 of courts, parliaments and cabinets, and have been a frequent 
 witness to the means used to acquire popularity, and the base 
 and mean purposes to which that popularity has been after 
 wards employed. I have been in cabinets where the great 
 struggle has not been to advance the public interest; not by 
 coalition and mutual assistance to strengthen the hands of 
 government; but by cabals, jealousy and mutual distrust, to 
 thwart each others designs, and to circumvent each other T in 
 order to obtain power and pre-eminence." 
 f Lord Chatham, in concluding the defence of his plan of 
 Conciliation at the sitting of the Lords of the 1st February, 
 1775, apostrophized the ministers of the day thus: 
 
 " Yet when I consider the whole case as it lits before me, 
 I am not much astonished; I am not surprised that men who 
 hate liberty should detest those that prize it; or that those who 
 want virtue themselves, should endeavour to persecute those 
 who possess it. Were I disposed to carry this theme to die 
 extent that truth would fully bear me out in, I could demon 
 strate that the whole of your political conduct has been one 
 continued series of weakness, temerity, despotism, ignorance, 
 
 * Debate in the House of Lords, Nov. 15, 1775. 
 t Ibid. 
 
182 
 
 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART i. futility, negligence, blundering, and the most notorious servili- 
 v *^~v-**-^ ty, incapacity and corruption. On reconsideration, I must 
 allow you one merit, a strict attention to your own interests, 
 in that view, you appear sound statesmen and able politicians. 
 You well know if the present measure (of reconciliation with 
 the colonies) should prevail, that you must instantly lose your 
 places. I doubt much whether you will be able to keep them 
 on any terms: but sure I am, that such are your well known 
 characters and abilities, any plan of reconciliation, however 
 moderate, wise, and feasible, must fail in your hands. Such, 
 then, being your precarious situation, who can wonder that 
 you should put a negative on any measure which must annihi 
 late your power, deprive you of your emoluments, and at once 
 reduce you to that state of insignificance, for which God and 
 nature designed you." 
 
 Earlier in the debate respecting the disorders in America.. 
 1770, Lord Shelburne held this language in the same house: 
 
 u My lords, I scarcely remember a period in history, an 
 cient or modern, where the ministers of a state, however dead to 
 the feelings of justice, were so lost to the sentiments of shame, 
 that they gloried to be detested by every honest individual of 
 their country. This pinnacle of profligacy was reserved for 
 the present ministers of Great Britain, who have adopted the 
 principle of the Roman tyrant as far as they were able; and 
 if our heads were beyond their power, have at least cut off all 
 our liberties with a blow." 
 
 3. As the fellowship of enterprise, suffering, and object, 
 during the war of 1756, between the colonies and the mother 
 country, the copious effusion of their blood in the same mili 
 tary operations, and their joint triumph, failed to inspire her 
 even with the sympathies natural to the most common alliance, 
 the more intimate relations with them into which that war 
 brought her; the opportunities which it afforded for a thorough 
 observation of their character and situation; had no effect in 
 curing her profound ignorance on these points. It appears, 
 indeed, the less extraordinary, that the metropolitan councils 
 should have remained in this state, when it is noted, that most 
 of the royal governors in America seemed, with all the advan 
 tages of their situation, to have no clearer insight. Indig 
 nation might relax into mirth, when we read the language 
 which the governor of Massachusetts addressed to his princi 
 pals in 1774. " The colonists talk of fixing a plan of govern 
 ment of their own; and it is somewhat surprising, that so many 
 in the other provinces interest themselves so much in the be- 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 183 
 
 half of Ibis of Massachusetts. I find they have some warm SECT.VI. 
 friends in New York and Philadelphia; and I learn by an offi- ^-^^-^ 
 cer who left Carolina, the latter end of August, that the people 
 of Charleston are as mad as they are here."* 
 
 If any British statesman could be expected to understand 
 thoroughly the nature and condition of the Americans, it was 
 Chatham; yet, he is reported to have spoken in parliament in 
 1776, in this strain: 
 
 "There were not wanting some, when I had the honour to 
 serve his majesty, to propose to me to burn my fingers with 
 an American stamp-act. With the enemy at their back, with 
 our bayonets at their breasts, in the day of their distress, per 
 haps the Americans would have submitted to the imposition; 
 but it would have been taking an ungenerous and unjust ad 
 vantage. A great deal has been said without doors, of the 
 power, of the strength of America. It is a topic that ought to 
 be cautiously meddled with. In a good cause, on a sound 
 bottom, the force of this country can crush America to atoms. 
 I know the valour of your troops. I know the skill of your 
 officers. There is not a company of foot that Jias served in 
 America, out of which you may not pick a man of sufficient 
 knowledge and experience, to make a governor of a colony there." 
 
 In their first projects for subverting the liberties of Ame 
 rica; in every step which they took as they prosecuted their 
 aim; in all that they uttered, the ministry betrayed that they 
 were entire strangers to her spirit and resources. Indeed, the 
 almost universal ignorance of the British on these points, 
 rendered them altogether unfit to hold dominion over the 
 colonies, and constituted, in itself, a sufficient reason why 
 the connexion should be dissolved. We may judge of the de 
 lusions, common to rulers and people, by the following speci 
 mens drawn from the parliamentary debates. 
 
 " My Lords," said the Lord Chancellor Northington to 
 the Upper House, in 1766,f "the colonies are become too 
 big to be governed by the laws they at first set out with. 
 They have therefore run into confusion, and it will be the po 
 licy of this country to form a plan of laws for them. If they 
 withdraw allegiance, you must withdraw protection; and then 
 the little state of Genoa, or the kingdom, or rather republic of 
 Sweden, may soon overrun them." 
 
 " I have the best reasons for thinking," sard the prime mi- 
 
 * Letter from the Hon. Gov. Gage to the Eurl of Dartmouth, dated 
 Boston, 20th Sept. 1774. 
 
 t Debate on disturbances in America. 
 
184 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART i. nister, Lord North, in 1770,* " that the American associations 
 ^>^^~^ J not to buy British goods, must be speedily self-destroyed; be 
 cause the Americans, to distress us, will not injure themselves; 
 because they are already weary of giving an advanced price 
 for commodities they are obliged lo purchase; and because, 
 after all the hardships which they say their commerce groans 
 under, it is still obviously their interest not to commence ma- 
 , nufactures." 
 
 The eloquent Glover, in the speech at the bar of the Com 
 mons, which I have already cited, taught that body a more 
 accurate lesson, while he took an instructive review of the 
 successive delusions of the nation. 
 
 " I would have accompanied others more speculative through 
 their several gr^diinons of hope, still disappointed, and still 
 reviving,, but for one observation, which I have generally kept 
 concealed, but will soon reveal to you. But for this observa 
 tion I might have concurred with the public belief, that the 
 capital of a province, now declared in rebellion, would have 
 submitted on the landing of a few regiments; this failing, that 
 other provinces from ancient jealousy and disgust would not 
 have interfered, and would have rather sought their own ad^ 
 vantage out of that town s distress; this failing, that they never 
 would have proceeded to the length of constituting a certain 
 inauspicious assembly among themselves: this failing, that the 
 members of such assembly would have disagreed, and not 
 framed a single resolution. This last hope having proved abor 
 tive, a new r one is popularly adopted, that the first intelligence 
 of enforcing measures, at least the bare commencement of 
 their execution will tame the most refractory spirits. I will 
 here state the grounds of this, and all the preceding hopes; 
 afterwards with your indulgence the ground of my original and 
 continued doubts. 
 
 u Our trading nation naturally assumed, that the present 
 contention would be with traders in America, The stock of 
 a trader, whether his own, or in part, and often the greatest 
 part, a property of others, confiding in him, is personal, lodged 
 in a magazine, and exposed in seasons of commotion to in 
 stantaneous devastation. The circumstance of such property, 
 the considerations, suggested by common prudence, by the 
 sense of common justice to those, who have given a generous 
 credit, rarely make room for that intrepidity, which meets 
 force with force. Hence I admit, that the mere traffickers 
 would have submitted at first, and will now, whenever they 
 
 * Debate on American tea duty. 
 
PEACE OP 1763. 185 
 
 dare. The reason, why they have not dared, is the foundation SECT. VI. 
 of my doubts. 
 
 " I am speaking to an enlightened assembly, conversant 
 with their own annals. In those ages, the reverse of commer 
 cial, when your ancestors filled the ranks of men at arms, and 
 composed the cavalry of England, of whom did the infantry 
 consist? A race unknown to other kingdoms, and in the pre 
 sent opulence of traffic, almost extinct in this, the yeomanry of 
 England; an order of men, possessing paternal inheritance, 
 cultivated under their own care, enough to preserve indepen 
 dence, and cherish the generous sentiments attendant on that 
 condition; without superfluity for idleness, or effeminate in 
 dulgence. 
 
 " Of such doth North America consist. The race is re 
 vived there in greater numbers, and in a greater proportion to 
 the rest of the inhabitants; and in such the power of that con 
 tinent resides. These keep the traffickers in awe. These, 
 many hundred thousands in multitude, with enthusiasm in 
 their hearts, with the petition, the bill of rights, and the acts 
 of settlement, silent and obsolete in some places, but vociferous 
 and fresh, as newly born, among them; these, hot with the 
 blood of their progenitors, the enthusiastic scourges at one 
 period, and the revolutional expellers, of tyranny, at another; 
 these, unpractised in frivolous dissipation and ruinous profu 
 sion^ standing armed on the spot; possessing, delivered down 
 from their fathers, a property not moveable, nor exposed to 
 total destruction, therefore maintainable, and exciting all the 
 spirit and vigour of defence; these, under such circumstances 
 of number, animation and manners, their lawyers and clergy 
 blowing the trumpet, are we to encounter with a handful of 
 men sent three thousand miles over the ocean to seek such 
 adversaries on their own paternal ground. But these will not 
 fight , says the general voice of Great Britain" &c. 
 
 It was long before the British government and the majority 
 of the British people, could be persuaded that America would 
 have the resolution to look the mother country in the face, and 
 steadily resist its immense power. They supposed a success 
 ful resistance impossible, arguing from considerations natural 
 enough in the frame of mind, and habits of action, almost 
 universal throughout Europe. America consisted, to their eye, 
 only of parts of a nation, and those the meanest in quality, 
 because the least artificial in the modification, and tinselled 
 in the drapery; she had neither standing armies, disciplined 
 forces, fleets nor fortresses; she wanted great and small arms, 
 flints, ammunition; she laboured under a scarcity of coin: she 
 
 VOL. !. As 
 
186 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART i. would have terrible difficulty in procuring clothing, salt, medi- 
 v -^"v-^ cines; jealousies rankled between the several provinces, and 
 must quickly break their precipitate league, &c. When the 
 revolution took a consistent character, and generated resources, 
 its impetus was ascribed, by these sagacious reasoners, to 
 any other cause, than the heroic spirit which informed it, and 
 which easily surmounted all common obstacles. They were 
 never touched by what they could not discern, and their infa 
 tuation continued therefore nearly the same in all points. In 
 1776, their commissioner on the coast of America, Lord 
 Howe, was instructed to offer pardon upon submission; and 
 the letters which passed between this herald of clemency and 
 Dr. Franklin, as one of the committee of conference deputed 
 by Congress, were published the same year, in London, to show 
 the insolence of the insurgents in refusing the offer of pardon 
 upon submission. 
 
 f The following extract from a speech of Lord George Ger 
 main, of May, 1777, in the House of Commons, will furnish 
 still more striking evidence of the manner in which the mi 
 nistry indulged their own spleen, and fed the delusion of their 
 followers. His Lordship said " As to the campaign, he 
 thought he had the greatest reason to expect success from the 
 army of General Howe, being in good order, and more numer 
 ous from recruits than in the last campaign; while that of the 
 rebels was in much worse order, and less numerous: that the 
 fleet was also reinforced with some ships of the line, which 
 were wanting last year; that he thought himself farther found 
 ed in his expectation from the minds of the people turning; 
 from their experiencing the misery of anarchy, confusion, and 
 despotism, instead of the happiness and security they enjoyed 
 under the legal government of this country; that these emo 
 tions had operated so strongly in their minds, that very many 
 deserters had left the rebel army, and come in to General 
 Howe with their arms; many hundreds were coming in every 
 day: that he had formed his opinion from the circumstances oj 
 the Congress having given up the government, confessing them 
 selves unequal to if, and created Mr. Washington dictator oj 
 America; these circumstances, bethought, promised divisions 
 among them. That another circumstance which every day 
 proved of yet greater importance, was, their being disappoint 
 ed in their expectations of assistance from France. They had 
 been buoyed up with that hope, and made to believe, that a 
 superior French fleet would be seen riding on their coasts; in 
 all which they now felt themselves deceived, and resented it 
 accordingly. That they had met with the same disappoint- 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 187 
 
 Siient from Spain; not that he asserted they had not received SECT. VI. 
 underhand assistance from both, in officers, &c. but what they 
 were promised was open avowed assistance. Yet, Sir, added 
 his lordship, for the protection of France they would pay 
 largely; they have offered largely; they have, by their pre 
 tended ambassadors, actually offered to the French court all our 
 West India islands! There is liberality, Sir! There is love of 
 freedom, to consign so readily to French dominion and des 
 potism, the whole West Indies!"* 
 
 It was about the date of this happy effusion, only a few 
 months before the surrender of Bourgoyne, that Lord Stor- 
 mont, the British ambassador at the court of Versailles, being 
 addressed by Messrs. Franklin and Deane, commissioners of 
 the American Congress at the same court, on the subject of an 
 exchange of prisoners, answered in these words u The 
 King s ambassador receives no applications from rebels unless 
 they come to implore his Majesty s clemency!" t 
 
 4. Besides the consideration of the colossal power of the 
 mother country, and the many acknowledged obstacles to suc 
 cessful resistance inherent in the condition and habits of the 
 colonies, other encouragements were wanted by the ministe 
 rial majority in parliament, and still more by the body of the 
 people, for perseverance in the system of tyrannical coercion. 
 In defiance of the fresh experience of the war of 56; of 
 the whole current of the colonial history; of positive evidence 
 of every description; the moral and intellectual character of 
 the colonists was made to furnish those encouragements. They 
 were at once cowards, knaves, and dolts, rebellious and inso 
 lent, whom it would be easy to subdue, and just to bring un 
 der a rigorous discipline. The most was made on every oc 
 casion, of these pretended traits and dispositions, for the sup 
 port of the ministerial policy, the gratification of spleen, or the 
 display of wit, both in and out of parliament. What passed 
 in that body ought not to be forgotten; for, it affords a portent 
 ous and instructive example of national arrogance trampling 
 on all public decorum, all experience and verisimilitude, all 
 self-interest and self-respect; all justice and gratitude; all the 
 most sacred regards, and endearing affinities. 
 
 With respect to the House of Commons, a single extract 
 from the Reports of its debates, may suffice. The tenor of this 
 extract will strike every reader who is familiar with the tone, 
 and favourite topics, of the late English publications concern- 
 
 * See note L. 
 
188 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART i. i n g America. /Colonel Grant said " he had served in Ame- 
 ^^^^^ rica; knew the Americans very well; was certain they would 
 not fight; they would never dare to face an English army; and 
 that they did not possess any of the qualifications necessary to 
 make a good soldier; he repeated many of their common-place 
 expressions; ridiculed their enthusiasm in religion, and drevj a 
 disagreeable picture of their manners and ways of living."* * 
 
 The picture sketched by the gallant colonel is said to have 
 produced much mirth in the House, and obtained implicit cre 
 dit from the majority. The chronicles of the time relate that 
 a suspicion of its accuracy did not arise, until some months 
 after, when news was received in England of the battle of 
 Breeds Hill; and of the expedition to Canada, which, as it is 
 related by Brougham in his Colonial Policy, furnishes an ex 
 cellent comment on the speech of Grant. 
 
 " While the most sanguine friends of American indepen 
 dence scarcely ventured to hope that the colonists would be 
 able to maintain their ground against the forces of the mother 
 country, they astonished the world, by commencing offensive 
 operations. The very first campaign of that unhappy war, was 
 signalized by a successful expedition of the revolvers against 
 the stations of the British forces on the frontiers of Canada; 
 and the gates of that province were thus thrown open to the 
 most formidable invasion, which threatened the total conquest 
 of the country before the end of the same year. The gallant 
 leaders to whom those operations were entrusted, actually re 
 duced the whole of Upper Canada, and were only foiled in 
 their attempts on Quebec, by the ill choice of the season, owing 
 chiefly to the divisions of opinion that constantly attend the 
 offensive measures of governments newly formed upon a popu 
 lar model; the union of the besieged in defence of their large 
 property, which they were taught to believe would be exposed 
 to the plunder of the rebels; and the extensive powers wisely 
 confided by the British government, to General Carleton 
 powers formerly unknown in any of the colonies, and utterly 
 inconsistent with a government bearing the faintest resem 
 blance to a popular form. Thus had the infant republic of 
 America, immediately at the commencement of separate ope 
 rations, and above half a year previous to the formal declara 
 tion of independence, almost succeeded in the conquest of a 
 
 * Debate of JEJeb. 2d, 1775. This Colonel Grant was the same that 
 commanded th"e detachment whose defeat near Fort Duquesne I have 
 noticed in my 4th Section, and which was preserved from utter de 
 struction by the bravery of the Virginia militia. 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 189 
 
 British colony, strong by its natural position, by the vigour of SECT. VI. 
 its internal administration, by the experience of the veteran ^*^-^> 
 troops who defended it, and by the skill of the gallant officer 
 who commanded these forces; while the only advantages of 
 the assailants consisted in the romantic valour of their leaders, 
 the enthusiasm of men fighting in their own cause, and the 
 vigorous councils of an independent community."* 
 
 In the House of Lords, the empyrean of British legislation 
 and senatorial dignity, " that great body of his majesty s brave 
 and faithful subjects with which his American provinces hap 
 pily abounded,"! was still more roughly handled than in St.^ 
 Stephen s Chapel. " A little before I left London, in 1775," 
 says FranklinJ u being at the House of Lords when a debate 
 in which Lord Camden was to speak, and who, indeed, spoke 
 admirably on American affairs, I was much disgusted from 
 the ministerial side, by many base reflections on American 
 courage, religion, understanding, &c. in which we were treat 
 ed with the utmost contempt, as the lowest of mankind, and 
 almost of a different species from the English of Britain; but 
 particularly the American honesty was abused by some of the 
 lords, who asserted that we were all knaves, and wanted only 
 by this dispute to avoid paying our debts; that if we had any 
 sense of equity or justice, we should offer payment of the 
 tea," &c. 
 
 The parliamentary history furnishes copious proof of this 
 statement of Franklin. Such specimens abound as the follow 
 ing: " Earl Talbot said, the noble Earl who spoke last has 
 certainly hit off one leading feature of the Americans. His 
 lordship tells you that even in the midst of their zeal for free 
 dom and independence, they were not able to conquer their 
 natural propensity to fraud and concealment," &c. &c. 
 
 " The duke of Chandos rose, and moved an address of 
 thanks. His grace began with stating the many public and 
 private virtues of the sovereign, and the obstinacy, baseness, and 
 ingratitude, of his rebellious subjects in ^America," &c. &c. 
 
 The extent to which this obloquy was carried on one point, 
 is evidenced, even by a protest of the minority, who adduced 
 it as one of their motives to dissent, in the following remark 
 able language: " We do not apprehend that the topic so much 
 insisted upon by a lord high in office, namely, the cowardice of 
 his Majesty s American subjects, to have any weight in itself, 
 or be at all agreeable to the dignity of sentiment which ought 
 
 Book II. Sect. i. f Vide page 121. * Memoirs, vol. i. 
 
190 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PARTI, to characterize this House. This is to call for resistance, 
 V -* P ~ V ~ N W and to provoke rebellion by the most powerful of all mo .ives 
 which can act upon men of any degree of spirit and sensi 
 bility." 
 
 The lord high in office alluded to in the protest, was the 
 Earl of Sandwich, who presided over the admiralty, and pos 
 sessed a considerable share of influence in the cabinet. His 
 speech is a precious sample, of the general strain of the mother 
 country at this period, respecting her transatlantic offspring. It 
 is a model which has hardly been surpassed in the multitude 
 of similar effusions at our expense, to which almost every 
 year since its date has given birth. Its pleasantry is inimita 
 ble; and the truth of the details, as well as the delicacy of the 
 tone, will be more strongly felt, on a reference to what I have 
 narrated, in regard to the conduct of the provincials at Louis- 
 bourg, and the efficacy of their conquest. 
 
 nf / "The Earl of Sandwich said suppose the colonies do 
 abound in men, what does that signify? They are raw, undis 
 ciplined, cowardly men. I wish, instead of 40, or 50,000 
 of these brave fellows, they would produce in the field at least 
 200,000. The more the better: the easier would be the con 
 quest; if they did not run away they would starve themselves 
 into compliance with our measures. I will tell your lordships 
 an anecdote that happened at the siege of Louisbourg. Sir 
 Peter Warren told me, that in order to try the courage of the 
 Americans, he ordered that a great nusnber of them should be 
 placed in the front of the armv; the Americans pretended at 
 first to be very much elated at this mark of distinction, and 
 boasted what mighty feats they would do upon the scene of 
 action; however, when the moment came to put in execution 
 this boasted courage, behold, every one of them ran from the 
 front to the rear of the army, with as much expedition as their 
 feet could carry them, and threatened to go off entirely, if the 
 commander offered to make them a shield to protect the Bri 
 tish soldiers at the expense of their blood; they did not under 
 stand such usage. Sir Peter finding what egregious cowards 
 they were, and knowing of what importance such numbers 
 would be to intimidate the French by their appearance, told 
 these American heroes, that his orders had been misunderstood, 
 that he always intended to keep them in the rear of the army 
 to make the great push; that it was the custom of generals to 
 preserve the best troops to the last; that this was also the 
 Roman custom, and as the Americans resembled the Romans 
 in every thing, particularly in courage and a love to their 
 rountry, he should make no scruple of following the Roman 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 191 
 
 custom, and he made no doubt but the modern Romans would SECT. VI. 
 show acts of bravery equal to any in ancient Rome. By such 
 discourses as these, said Sir Peier Warren, I made shift to 
 keep them with us, though 1 took care they should be pushed 
 forward in no dangerous conflict. Now, I can tell the noble 
 Lord, that this is exactly the situation of all the heroes in 
 North America; they are all Romans. And are those men to 
 fright us from the post of honour? Believe me, my lords, the 
 very sound of a cannon would carry them off, in Sir Peter s 
 words, as fast as their feet could carry them."*/ 
 
 Although a majority of the noble lords chuckled at the wag 
 gery of the British commodore, and the vis comica of the head 
 of the Admiralty, there was, as the above-mentioned protest 
 teaches, a small minority of the assembly, who neither relished 
 the joke, nor comprehended the manliness of this course of 
 argument in favour of the proscription of a whole people. A 
 generous indignation at the language held in the House of 
 Commons, roused several of the members of that body, to 
 stem the torrent of opprobrium, and I should commit an in 
 justice, if I did not repeat something of what was uttered on 
 the American side. 
 
 /Col. Barre said the Americans had been called cow 
 ards, but the very regiment of foot which behaved so gallantly 
 at Bunkers-hill, (an engagement that smacked more of defeat 
 than victory) the very corps that broke the whole French co 
 lumn and threw them in such disorder at the siege of Quebec, 
 was three parts composed of these cowards."! Governor 
 Johnstone paid the following tribute: " To a mind that loves 
 to contemplate the glorious spirit of freedom, no spectacle can 
 be more affecting than the action at Bunkers-hill. To see an 
 irregular peasantry commanded by a physician; inferior in 
 numbers; opposed by every circumstance of cannon and bombs 
 that could terrify timid minds, calmly waiting the attack of 
 the gallant Howe, leading on the best troops in the world, with 
 an excellent train of artillery, and twice repulsing those very 
 troops who had often chased the battalions of France, and at 
 last retiring for want of ammunition, but in so respectable a 
 manner that they were not even pursued Who can reflect on 
 such scenes and not adore the constitution of government 
 which could breed such men!"J 
 
 The pusillanimity of the provit/cials served as an enliven 
 ing topic for the circles of fashion, and the clubs of the coffee 
 
 * Debate, March 15th, 1775. i Ibid.- See Note M. 
 
 r Debate, October 26th, 1775. 
 
DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART f. houses, as well as for the august body of parliament. Accord- 
 ^"v-^* ing to Franklin,* " every man in England, in the year 1767, 
 seemed to consider himself as a piece of a sovereign over 
 America; seemed to jostle himself into the throne with the 
 king, and talked of our subjects in the colonies." In 1775, 
 almost every man in England thought himself able to conquer 
 America, and talked, in the words of the ministry, of the pali 
 node which the dastardly Americans would sing, at the very 
 appearance of a single British regiment. The English news 
 papers of the day bear me out in this representation; and 
 Franklin has left on record, in one of his letters,* a piece of 
 concurrent testimony sufficiently pointed. It is to be insert 
 ed here, not merely for the sake of the historical fact, but for 
 the concluding observations, which I wish to be taken as a 
 commentary., upon all that 1 have quoted on this head from 
 the British orators. 
 
 " The word general puts me in mind of a general, your 
 general Clarke, who had the folly to say, in my hearing, at 
 Sir John Pririgle s, that with a thousand British grenadiers, he 
 would undertake to go from one end of America to the other, 
 and geld all the males, partly by force and partly by a little 
 coaxing. It is plain he took us for a species of animals very 
 little superior to brutes. The parliament too believed the 
 stories of another foolish general, I forget his name, that the 
 Yankees never felt bold. 
 
 " Yankey was understood to be a sort of Yahoo, and the 
 parliament did not think that the petitions of such creatures 
 were fit to be received and read in so wise an assembly. What 
 was the consequence of this monstrous pride and insolence? 
 You first sent small armies to subdue us, believing them more 
 than sufficient, but soon found yourselves obliged to send 
 greater; these, whenever they ventured to penetrate our coun 
 try beyond the protection of their ships, were either repulsed 
 and obliged to scamper out, or were surrounded, beaten, and 
 taken prisoners. An American planter, who had never seen 
 Europe, was chosen by us to command our troops, and con 
 tinued during the whole war. This man sent home to you, 
 one after another, five of your best generals baffled, their heads 
 bare of laurels, disgraced even in the opinion of their em 
 ployers. Your contempt of our understandings, in compari 
 son with your own, appeared to be not much better founded 
 than that of our courage, if we may judge by this circum 
 
 * Letter to Lord Kames. London, April 1 ith, 1767- 
 f August 19th, 1784. 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 393 
 
 stance, that in whatever court of Europe a Yankey negociator SECT.VI. 
 appeared, the wise British minister was routed, put in a pas* v^v^^ 
 sion, picked a quarrel with your friends, and was sent home 
 with a flea in his ear." 
 
 5. The extreme of acrimony, nay ferociousness, into which 
 the temper of the ministerial party towards the colonies had 
 run in England, before the declaration of independence, and 
 even within three or four years after the peace of Paris, is 
 scarcely conceivable on a review of the many circumstances 
 which tended, with such weight of reason, and force of pa 
 thos, to produce the opposite state of mind. We have seen 
 that, from a mere calculation of interest, or from party-aims, 
 the restoration of Canada was proposed, at the very moment, 
 of the consummation of the common efforts of the mother coun 
 try and the colonies in the struggle with France. When the co 
 lonies had barely ventured to denounce the stamp-act, the idea 
 of a more direct c/iecfc, of vindictive visitation by similar means, 
 was admitted and inculcated. Franklin, writing from London 
 in 1768, tells his correspondent, " I can assure you, that here 
 are not wanting people, not now in the ministry, but that soon 
 may be, who, if they were ministers, would take no step to 
 prevent an Indian war in the colonies; being of opinion, which 
 they express openly, that it would be a very good thing, in the 
 first place, to chastise the colonists for their undutifulness, and 
 then to make them sensible of the necessity of protection by 
 the troops of this country." 
 
 We read in the history of Gordon, where he treats of the 
 discussions in parliament respecting the repeal of the stamp- 
 act, that " the Dukes of York and Cumberland, the Lords of 
 the Bed Chamber, and the officers of the royal household, 
 were for carrying fire and sword to America, rather than re- 
 cal the obnoxious act; and that the bench of bishops joined 
 them."* The unnatural rancour which dictated this fell policy, 
 could readily tolerate that of starving the provinces of New 
 England, by cutting them off from the fishery on their own 
 coast. In extenuation of this measure, and in answer to the 
 objections of the opposition in parliament, who, with the mi 
 nistry, believed it might produce famine, the Solicitor General 
 of Scotland, a ministerial oracle, said, " that though prevent 
 ed from fishing in the sea, the New Englanders had fish in 
 their rivers, to which this act did not prevent them from re 
 sorting; and that, though he understood their country was not 
 
 Vol. ii. p. 139. 
 
 VOL. !.B b 
 
194 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART I. fit ibr grain, jet they had a grain of their own, Indian corn* 
 Na^ ^W on which they might subsist full as well as they deserved."* 
 
 When such language was held on a question of this nature, 
 it is not matter of surprise that, in the same year, the majority 
 in parliament listened, not merely without shuddering, but 
 with complacency, to the significative intimation already no 
 ticed, of one of its members, Governor Lyttleton, respecting 
 the seduction of the American negroes. 
 
 The consoling image of a servile war in the southern colo 
 nies, had even become familiar, to the meditations of the politi 
 cians, and was industriously presented to the nation. " If the 
 obstinacy of the Americans continues without actual hostili 
 ties," said Dr. Johnson, in his Taxation no Tyranny, u it may 
 perhaps be mollified by turning out the soldiers to free quarters, 
 forbidding any personal cruelty or hurt. It has been proposed, 
 that the slaves should be set free, an act which surely the lovers 
 of liberty cannot but commend. If they are furnished with 
 tire-arms, for defence, and utensils for husbandry, and settled 
 in some simple form of government within the country, they 
 may be more grateful and honest than their masters."! 
 
 The Governors of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Florida, in 
 carrying this plan into effect, forgot the utensils of husbandry, 
 but not the fire-arms; and offered them to the negroes, to be 
 used not strictly for personal defence, but in defence of their 
 sovereign! The ministry upheld, in the House of Commons, 
 Lord Dunmore s celebrated proclamation of the 7th Nov. 
 1775, of which the following passage is hardly yet effaced 
 from the memory of the Virginians. " I do declare all indent 
 ed servants, negroes or others appertaining to rebels, free, that 
 are able and willing to bear arms, they joining his majesty s 
 troops as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this 
 tolony to a proper sense of their duty to his majesty s crown and 
 dignity" 
 
 Mr. Burke, referring to this subject in his speech on the 
 Conciliation with America, made some remarks, the last of 
 which may be particularly recommended to the attention of 
 
 * Debate of the Commons, March 6th, 1775. 
 
 f " That this pamphlet (Taxation no Tyranny) was written at the 
 desire of those who were then in power, I have no doubt ; and, indeed, 
 Johnson owned to me, that it had been revised and curtailed by some 
 of them. He told me, that they had struck out one passage, which was 
 to this effect : "That the colonists could with no solidity argue from 
 their not having been taxed while in their infancy, that they should not 
 now be taxed. We do not put a calf into the plough; we wait till he 
 is an ox." He said, " They struck it out either critically as too ludicrous, 
 or politically as too exasperating." (JJosivell.) 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 196 
 
 those British critics, who so often discharge upon us, on account SECT. vi. 
 of our slave-holding, " the splendid bile of their virtuous in- ^^^^^^ 
 dignation." 
 
 a With regard to the high aristocratic spirit of Virginia and 
 the southern colonies, it has been proposed, I know, to reduce 
 it, by declaring a general enfranchisement of their slaves. 
 This project has had its advocates and panegyrists. But I 
 could never argue myself into an opinion of it. Slaves as 
 these unfortunate black people are, and dull as all men are 
 from slavery, must they not a little suspect the offer of free 
 dom from that very nation, which has sold them to their pre 
 sent masters ? From that nation, one of whose causes of quar 
 rel with those masters, is their refusal to deal any more in that 
 inhuman traffic?" 
 
 The manifesto and proclamation which the British commis 
 sioners/or restoring peace, addressed to the Americans in Oc 
 tober 1778, denounced a war of havoc, in terms that occasion 
 ed a motion in parliament for solemn reprobation. In the 
 course of the animated debate on this motion,* the American 
 Congress of that era, now classed by universal assent, with 
 the wisest and most virtuous assemblies of the kind which are 
 mentioned in history, was the particular object of proscrip 
 tion and opprobrium, with members of both parties. Mr. 
 Powys said, " if the Congress could be picked up, man by 
 man, and put to the most exemplary punishment, they should 
 all fall unpitied by him, because they really deserved every 
 severity that could be inflicted on them." 
 
 Governor Johnston^ "approved of the proclamation through 
 out, and condemned the American Congress in the strongest 
 terms. He thought no quarter ought to be shown to them; and 
 if the infernals could be let loose against them he should approve 
 of the measure. He said, the proclamation certainly did mean 
 a war of desolation; it meant nothing else: it could mean no 
 thing else; and if he had been on the spot when it was issued, 
 he would have signed it." 
 
 Mr. Attorney General Wedderburn said, " that the procla 
 mation was as sober, conscientious, and humane a piece of 
 good writing as he ever saw: he explained away the phrase 
 of the c extremes of war, and asserted that nothing could be 
 done but what was necessary to self preservation, which he 
 avowed was a sufficient plea for all the horrors of war." 
 
 * Dec. 4th, 1778. 
 
 f His appointment by the ministry as one of the commissioners to 
 America, explains the contrariety between his tone at this period, and 
 that which he adopted at the beginning of the war. 
 
196 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART i. Mr. Macdonald " understood the part of the proclamation 
 ^~v-^ / which gave such an alarm, to be nothing more than a warning 
 to the rebels not to expect that lenity in future, which we had 
 shown to them during the course of the war, when we looked 
 upon them as our fellow subjects, and whom we wished to 
 reclaim by the most singular mildness and indulgence. By 
 their alliance with France, the natural enemy of our country, 
 they had forfeited all right to clemency; they were therefore in 
 future to be treated no longer as subjects of Great Britain, but 
 as appendages to the French monarchy, whose interests they 
 had preferred to the British: parental fondness should no lon 
 ger sway the breasts of our rulers; war should assume a dif- 
 ierent form from that in which it had been conducted from the 
 beginning of the rebellion; and the Americans might prepare 
 to be treated, not, indeed, like beasts, or savages, but like 
 common enemies, for whom we no longer retained any trace 
 of affection, which their unnatural alliance had absolutely 
 effaced, but which had subsisted longer than it could have 
 prudently been expected, after the many unprecedented pro 
 vocations they had given Great Britain to take off the ties of 
 affection at a much more early period. War now they should 
 have in its full vigour; not such an one as they had been all 
 along accustomed to, and which had been so tempered with 
 peace, that it scarcely deserved the name of war. This he 
 conceived to be the meaning of the words in the proclamation; 
 he hoped it would have the desired effect on the rebels; he 
 flattered himself that it was a happy omen to see the friends 
 of America so alarmed at it; and their terrors he would deem 
 the forerunners of that general consternation in America, which 
 would make the deluded colonists open their eyes before it 
 should be too late, and return to their allegiance to the mother 
 country." 
 
 6. There is still a sort of incredulity of the imagination when 
 we reflect, how soon the parent state resorted to the expedient 
 of annoyance the last which, in the order of penal visitation, 
 would present itself to the fiercest hate against the most de 
 testable object, or to the most just revenge for (he deepest and 
 bitterest injury. It will be at once understood that I mean 
 the employment of the savages as auxiliaries; an enormity of 
 rancour and desperate ambition, which drew down those 
 blasting thunders from the genius of Chatham, that seem to be 
 still heard, when we look at the faint image of them conveyed 
 in the parliamentary history. Two years after the commence 
 ment of the revolution, had this prophetic and generous spirit 
 
PEACE OP 176^. 19? 
 
 to teil bis countrymen, in an agony of shame and grief, tc It is SECT. VI. 
 not a \vild and lawless banditti whom we oppose: the resist- ^^^~**s 
 ance of America is the struggle of free and virtuous patriots." 
 The cruelty and degeneracy of associating to the British arms 
 the tomahawk and scalping-knife of " trafficking at the 
 shambles of every German despot" for the purpose of crush 
 ing that resistance; of butchering a people chiefly descended 
 from British loins, and from whose labours Britain had reap 
 ed so rich a harvest of power and glory, might well produce 
 the " sanctified phrenzy" to which he was wrought. But he 
 recollected, besides, how long that people had struggled with 
 " the merciless Indian" for the possession of the soil, on 
 which they had reared English communities and institutions; 
 and he felt, in seeing the same inveterate enemy led back 
 upon them, by the country for whose benefit nearly as much 
 as their own, they had fought so bravely, and bled so pro 
 fusely, the peculiar hardship and bitterness of their lot, and 
 the unparalleled barbarity and callousness of England. There 
 was enough to rouse all the energies of his humanity and his 
 patriotism, in the item which the treasury accounts presented, 
 of =160,000 sterling, for the purchase of warlike accoutre 
 ments for the savages; in that phrase, as ridiculous as it was 
 ferocious, of Bourgoyne s speech to the congress of Indians at 
 the river Bouquet (June 21st, 1777) " Go forth in the 
 might of your valour and your cause; strike at the common 
 enemies of Great Britain and America, disturbers of public 
 order, peace, and happiness; destroyers of commerce; parri 
 cides of the state;" and in the proclamation of governor 
 Tonyn of East Florida, offering a reward for every American 
 scalp delivered to persons appointed to receive them. 
 
 It is an aggravation of guilt that the utmost efforts of the 
 highest degree of human eloquence, seconded by the most ma 
 ture wisdom and approved patriotism, were wholly without 
 effect. Throughout the war, the mother country displayed as 
 haughty and ruthless a spirit, as if she were in fact engaged in 
 crushing " a wild and lawless banditti," or resisting an here 
 ditary enemy and rival, alien and odious to her by every prin 
 ciple of estrangement and aversion.* The Americans whom 
 she made prisoners in the contest, persisting, as they did, in 
 rejecting all temptations to enter into her service against their 
 country, so far from conciliating kindness by their magnani 
 mity, experienced a more rigorous treatment than the French 
 and Spaniards in the same^situation. After many hundreds 
 
 See Note \f. 
 
198 
 
 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART 1. of them had languished for several years in a cruel captivity, 
 ^*~ v ^*> they petitioned the government in vain for an equal allowance 
 of provision. The earl of Shelburne affirmed in the House ol 
 Lords, in the debate of December 5th, 1777, that " the 
 French officers "taken prisoners going to America, had been 
 inhumanly treated; but that the American prisoners in Eng 
 land were treated with unprecedented barbarity." 
 
 The American Board of War had a conference with Mr. 
 Boudinot, the commissary general of prisoners, at York town, 
 on the 21st of December, 1777, and after having carefully ex 
 amined the evidence produced by him, agreed upon the fol 
 lowing report: " That there are about 900 privates, and 300 
 officers prisoners in the city of New York, and about 500 
 privates and 50 officers in Philadelphia: That the privates 
 in New York have been crowded all summer in sugar-houses, 
 and the officers boarded on Long Island, except about 30, who 
 have been confined in the provost guard, and in the most loath 
 some jails: That since the beginning of October all these 
 prisoners, both officers and privates, have been confined in 
 prison ships, or the provost: That the privates in Philadel 
 phia have been kept in two public jails, and the officers in the 
 state house: That, from the best evidence which the nature 
 of the subject will admit of, the general allowance of prison 
 ers, at most does not exceed four ounces of meat and as much 
 bread (often so damaged as not to be eatable) per day, and 
 often much less, though the professed allowance is from eight 
 to ten ounces: That it has been a common practice with the 
 enemy, on a prisoners being first captured, to keep him three, 
 four, or even five days without a morsel of provisions of any 
 kind, and then to tempt him to enlist to save his life: That 
 there are numerous instances of prisoners of war perishing in 
 all the agonies of hunger from their severe treatment: That 
 being generally stript of what clothes they have when taken, 
 they have suffered greatly for the want thereof, during their 
 confinement." 
 
 Mr. Burke, in one of his publications of the year 1776, 
 sarcastically remarks, " it is undoubtedly some comfort for 
 our disappointments and burdens, to insult the few provin 
 cial officers we take, by throwing them with common men 
 into a gaol, and some triumph to hold the bold adventurer 
 Ethan Allen, in irons in a dungeon in Cornwall." 
 
 This gallant American was taken prisoner, fighting with 
 the utmost bravery, in Canada, under the banners of Mont 
 gomery. He was immediately loaded with irons, and trans 
 ported to England, in that condition, on board of a man-of- 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 199 
 
 war. On some observations being made in the House of SECT. VI. 
 Lords, by the duke of Richmond, concerning his treatment, 
 the earl of Suffolk, one of the ministry, made this reply 
 u The noble duke says, we brought over Ethan Allen in irons 
 to this country, but were afraid to try him, lest he should be 
 acquitted by an English jury, or that we should not be able 
 legally to convict him. I do assure his Grace, that he is 
 equally mistaken in both his conjectures; we neither had a 
 doubt but we should be able to legally convict him, nor were 
 we afraid that an English jury would have acquitted him; 
 nor further was it out of any tenderness to the maw, who, I 
 maintain, had justly forfeited his life to the offended laws of 
 his country. But I will tell his Grace the true motives which 
 induced administration to act as they did. We were aware 
 that the rebels had lately made a considerable number of pri 
 soners, and we accordingly avoided bringing him to his trial 
 from considerations of prudence; from a dread of the conse 
 quences of retaliation; not from a doubt of his legal guilt, or 
 a fear of his acquittal by an English jury."* 
 
 The conduct and temper of the ministry in the case of Ethan 
 Allen, which would have been the same in that of Montgo 
 mery, had he fallen into their hands, deserves to be visited 
 with the contrast, which is afforded in such a trait as the fol 
 lowing, related by general Bourgoyne in the House of Com 
 mons, on the 26th of May, 1778. 
 
 " The district of Saratoga is the property of major general 
 Scuyler of the American troops; there were large barracks built 
 by him which took fire, the day after the British army arrived 
 on the ground. General Scuyler had likewise a very good dwell 
 ing-house, exceeding large store-houses, great saw-mills, and 
 other out buildings, to the value altogether, perhaps, of 10,000/. 
 a few days before the negotiation with general Gates, the enemy 
 had formed a plan to attack me; a large column of troops were 
 approaching to pass the small river, preparatory to a general 
 action, and were entirely covered from the fire of my artil 
 lery by those buildings. Sir, I avow that 1 gave the order to 
 set them on fire: and in a very short time that whole property, 
 I have described, was consumed. But, to show that the per 
 son most deeply concerned in that calamity, did not put the 
 construction upon it, which it has pleased the honourable gen 
 tleman to do, I must inform the House, that one of the first 
 persons I saw, after the convention was signed, was general 
 Scuyler. I expressed to him my regret at the event which 
 
 * 1776. 
 
200 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART i. had happened, and the reasons which had occasioned it. He de 
 -^~v^^ sired me to think no more of it; said the occasion justified it, ac 
 cording to the principles and rules of war, and that he should 
 have done the same upon the same occasion, or words to tha : 
 effect. He did more he sent an aid-de-camp to conduct m< 
 to Albany, in order, as he expressed, to procure me better 
 quarters than a stranger might be able to mid. This gentle 
 man conducted me to a very elegant house, and to my grea . 
 surprise, presented me to Mrs. Scuyler and her family; and 
 in this general s house I remained during my whole stay a: 
 Albany, with a table of more than twenty covers for me and 
 my friends, and every other possible demonstration of hospi 
 tality." 
 
 7. I do not wish to depreciate the value, or detract from 
 the glory, of the exertions made by the great champions of tho 
 American cause in the British parliament. The Chathams, 
 the Camdens, the Shipleys, and the Barres, were animated 
 by a love of justice, and a hatred of oppression; and these 
 noble sentiments predominated equally, in the breasts of many 
 of our less conspicuous friends throughout the British nation 
 But nothing is more certain, than that the opposition, gene 
 rally, to the plans of ministers, had no immediate or princi 
 pal reference to the rights and interests of America. It arose 
 out of pre-existing domestic divisions; and the parties mar 
 shalled themselves accordingly, in the new dispute the torie^ 
 and high churchmen on the side of government; the religioui 
 dissenters and the assertors of the principles of 1688, in the 
 train of the whig-leaders in parliament, candidates for place, 
 and invariable antagonists of those in possession. The old 
 combat was renewed with fresh fury; the oppression of America 
 served as a battery for the minority; while the treasury-bench 
 and the dispensers of crown patronage, made use of the pro 
 spect of her subjection which would open a new exchequer, 
 and a new chapter in the red book, to multiply adherents 
 and fortify themselves in power. Doubtless, had they accom 
 plished their object in America, had their arms and their 
 arts been successful in that quarter, with whatever havoc of 
 free institutions, and noble lives, and fair creations of manly 
 toil they would have attained all their ends at home, and 
 now flourish in British history, as do the Clives and the Hast 
 ings in the annals of the India-House. 
 
 The point is no longer open to controversy, that the ministry 
 had a majority of the British people with them in the begin- 
 
PEACE OP 1763. 201 
 
 ning of the war.* The British nation sanctioned the harshest SECT. VI. 
 measures of coercion through ignorance of the true state of ^^-v-^ 
 the case, and a blind pride of opinion. By degrees, as her 
 agriculture, trade, and manufactures, began to be seriously 
 affected by the expenses and embarrassments of the contest, 
 the classes dependent upon the prosperity of those branches of 
 industry, saw it in a less favourable light; and passing from 
 private disagreements and expostulations with the ministry, to 
 an open approval of the policy urged by an indefatigable par 
 liamentary opposition, determined the peace and the recogni 
 tion of our independence. Circumstances brought the affair to 
 public opinion in the last resort; and that opinion yielded to a 
 calculation of profit and loss. No generous sentiment or broad 
 political reasoning, mingled itself in fact, or had any sensible 
 influence, with the business-like deliberation of its arbiters 
 and immediate instruments. There were none at this crisis, 
 as there were none at any antecedent period, who " hailed it 
 as an extension of British honour and happiness, that great, 
 and happy, and independent communities of British descent, 
 should exist in America, with the best characteristics of 
 British manners and institutions." In parliament, all voices 
 proclaimed the emancipation of the colonies as an evil of the 
 first magnitude.! The question of our independence had, at 
 the outset, to do with the spirit of corruption and tyranny in 
 
 * The testimony of the ministerial party is emphatically positive on 
 this point. Lord North said (May 14th, 1777} "he might justly affirm, 
 that there was a very great majority of the nation at large, who were 
 for prosecuting the war against their rebellious subjects in America, 
 till they should acknowledge the legislative supremacy of parliament." 
 So, Mr. Jenkinson (March 17th, 1778) " All degrees of people arose 
 in one unanimous resentment, and the war became a popular war. I 
 say this war with America has been a popular war," Sec. 
 
 f In the debate of July 10th, 1782, on American Independence, the 
 Earl of Shelburne said, " With respect to America, he had always 
 considered her independence as a great evil which Britain had to dread, 
 and to guard against. He had spoken of it in this manner for years past, 
 and when he believed he tvas joined in sentiment by every man in the country. 
 He had always believed and declared, that the independence of Ame 
 rica was an evil as much to be apprehended and dreaded by America 
 as by Britain ! This had always been his opinion; and he had constantly 
 laboured, by every means in his power, to persuade men, that this was 
 the case, in his applications to private men and to public men, to indivi 
 duals and to bodies of men. He wished to God, that he had been ap 
 pointed to urge that proposition, and to maintain it before congress! 
 He was one of the last men in the country who had been brought over 
 to agree that Britain ought to acknowledge the independence of Ame 
 rica ; but circumstances he confessed, were changed, and he was now 
 of opinion that it was become a necessary evil which the country must 
 pndure to avoid a greater," &c. 
 
 VOL. I Co. 
 
DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART I. the cabinet, and of arrogance and commercial monopoly in the 
 people. In the end, it appeared not merely less dangerous is 
 the monopoly than was thought, but even likely to prove thfc 
 reverse. This consideration abated the fierceness and acceler 
 ated the submission, of pride, which had finally, a severer 
 struggle, in yielding to France and Spain. The opposition 
 leaders who succeeded the authors of the war in the cabinet, 
 were carried onward, irresistibly, to the last concession, by the 
 principles upon which they mounted to power, and by the 
 course of events. As regards the dispositions and personal 
 views of the Shelburne administration, the history, now fully 
 disclosed, of the negotiations for peace, has left few grounds of 
 admiration or gratitude. 
 
 8. It has been said, and it may be true, that, notwithstand 
 ing the addition of one hundred millions sterling made to tho 
 British national debt, the effusion of so much blood, the humi 
 liation correlative to the triumph of France and Spain, the 
 indelible stains left in the national character, not a few 
 of the English politicians finding the trade with America, 
 retained, and even likely to be indefinitely enlarged, were 
 glad, and openly rejoiced, that the struggle with such potent 
 colonies, foreseen to be inevitable in progress of time, had 
 ended on such easy terms. But it is much more certain 
 that with multitudes of all classes, the dismemberment oi 
 the empire left an ulceration, " a galling wakefulness, " 
 which found relief only in the most extravagant or malignant 
 hopes; and that the experience of the war was lost upon the 
 majority of the nation, in regard to the character and destinies 
 of the colonies. On the conclusion of peace, it was confidently 
 announced and believed, that the confederacy of the States 
 would quickly be dissolved; that the forces of Great Britain 
 remaining among them, might be called in to quell the disor 
 ders, which the separation from the mother country must pro 
 duce; that a second revolution would happen, and restore 
 them, penitent and submissive, to her dominion. Indeed, tc 
 induce them to lay their independence at her feet, nothing 
 more would soon be necessary, than to hold out the threat, oi 
 considering and treating them, as a foreign nation in matters 
 of trade. The Americans were still cowards, for the Irish had 
 fought their battles, as well by sea as by land;* and, at all 
 
 * The modesty of this assertion was the more remarkable from the 
 notorious fact, that the Irish and Scotch troops, and the German merce 
 naries, formed the major part of the force which England employed 1 
 
PEACE OP 1763. 203 
 
 events, if they were not driven by intestine confusion and dis- SECT.VI. 
 tress, to return to their allegiance, Spain would involve them 
 in awful difficulties, by the claims she was likely to prefer on 
 that part of Louisiana given up by the treaty. 
 
 Such were the topics of consolation administered by writers 
 of authority, and greedily swallowed by men in office. Lord 
 Sheffield embodied them in a pamphlet soon after the ratifica 
 tion of the definitive treaty, and took, by general consent, the 
 station of oracle, which he ought never to lose, so marvel- 
 ously have events confirmed all his opinions, I cannot resist 
 the temptation of quoting some of the most striking of these, 
 as they show the spirit of the times in England. " It will not 
 be an easy matter to bring the American states to act as a na 
 tion; they are not to be feared as such by us." "We might as 
 reasonably dread the effects of combinations among the Ger 
 man, as among the American states, and deprecate the resolves ^ 
 of the Diet as those of Congress." " Every circumstance 
 proves that it will be extreme folly to enter into any engage 
 ments with them, by which we may not wish to be bound here 
 after."* " There is not a possibility that America will main 
 tain a navy." " That country concerning which writers of a 
 lively imagination have lately said so much, is weakness 
 itself. "f " It is not probable the American states will have a 
 very free trade in the Mediterranean; it will not be the interest 
 of any of the great maritime powers to protect them from the 
 Barbary states. They cannot protect themselves from the 
 latter; they cannot pretend to a navy."J " The authority of 
 the Congress can never be maintained over those distant and 
 boundless western regions, and her nominal subjects will 
 speedily imitate and multiply the examples of independence." 
 " The population of America is not likely to increase as it 
 has done, at least on her coast. "|| " There is no country in 
 Europe which pays such heavy taxes as the American states,"1F 
 &c. 
 
 Looking back to the exasperation and commotions which 
 were raised in America by the stamp-act, and to the total 
 change of the scene on its repeal, Mr. Burke made the just 
 remark that "so sudden a calm recovered after so violent a 
 
 against the colonies. The ministry conceived the plan of hiring twenty 
 thousand Russians besides, to assist in " fighting their battles" on this 
 continent. 
 
 * Observations on the Commerce of the United States, 2d edition, 
 p. 198. 
 
 f Ibid. p. 206. Ibid. p. 190. Ibid. p. 193 
 
 Ibid. p. 204, || Ibid. p. 201 
 
204 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART I. storm was without parallel in history." The colonists almost 
 ^^v-^- universally vied in demonstrations of gratitude, and glowing 
 expressions of loyalty, as if the repeal had been a spontaneous 
 and inestimable boon, and not a retraction, produced by party 
 interests, of an impolitic usurpation. There was something 
 not less remarkable, and admirable, in the transition at the 
 conclusion of the revolutionary war. Notwithstanding the 
 enormity of the provocations on which the Americans had 
 taken up the sword, the severity of their sufferings during tht 
 struggle, and the vindictive and ruthless character of the hos 
 tilities waged against them, the tide of their affections turner 
 rapidly towards the mother country,* and the policy of re 
 newing with her, the closest and most liberal relations com 
 patible with independence, received the sanction of a large 
 majority throughout the confederation. 
 
 Taking the representations of the British writers themselves 
 concerning the merits of the dispute so solemnly terminated, 
 it is impossible to imagine a case, in which natural duty, re 
 tribu ive justice, and the common good, more plainly exacted 
 from the other side,, more even than a mere correspondence of 
 sentiment? arid views. And yet what a contrast! as proved by 
 Tiie vogue of Sheffield s writings and doctrines, and from such 
 statements as the following, made in 1784, by his ablest an- 
 tagonist.f 
 
 " It is sufficient, at this time, to support an opinion of the 
 propriety of endeavouring to restore our broken connexion with 
 America, by those conciliatory means, which best tend to re 
 gain the affections of a people, from whom we have derived, 
 and from whom we may yet derive, the most solid benefits, to 
 be deemed the sacrificers of the interests of Great Britain to 
 those of America. However laudable, however necessary the 
 pursuit, there is a prejudice among us arising from intemperate 
 passion, and the vexation of disappointment, that precludes, 
 obstructs, or, in some shape or other, ultimately destroys it." 
 
 It would lead me too far to detail the facts which have 
 rendered unquestionable and notorious, the continued pre 
 valence of those unworthy dispositions, and the steady pro 
 secution of a scheme of action in itself demonstrative of 
 their inveteracy. I could produce British authority on this 
 
 * This is not, indeed, the opinion of Judge Marshall (Life of Wash 
 ington, vol. v. p. 355); but it is proved, by the victory gained for the 
 politics most favourable to Great Britain in all respects. 
 
 f Champion " Considerations on the present situation of Great 
 Britain," London, &c. 
 
PEACE OP 1763. 205 
 
 head, in the shape of direct confessions and self-reproof, SECT. vi. 
 conveyed in books and parliamentary debates, for every V^N^^/ 
 consecutive year from the peace of 1782 to the present time. 
 From the abundance of this kind of testimony, I will take, at 
 random, some few morsels which no third party at least, will 
 reject as invalid, and which shall have relation to periods so 
 recent as 1808, and 1812. 
 
 " In England, 1 says Mr. Baring, " our insensible mono 
 poly of the American trade does not appear ever to have been 
 properly appreciated: the events of a civil war left naturally 
 deeper impressions on the unsuccessful than the successful 
 party, and while every little state of Europe was courted, that 
 afforded limited markets for our manufactures, we seemed to ^ 
 regret that we owed any thing to our former subjects; and an M 
 increasing commercial intercourse has been carried on under 
 feelings of unsubdued enmity, of which the government, instead 
 of checking sentiments as void of common sense as of magna 
 nimity, has rather set the fashion. To this error, in my opi 
 nion, the present state of the public mind towards America is . 
 in a great measure owing. Her success and prosperity, * 
 though we dare not fairly avow it, have displeased us, a 
 sentiments have been imperceptibly encouraged towards her 
 as ungenerous as they are impolitic."* 
 
 " I know," said Mr. Brougham, in parliament, in 1812, 
 " the real or affected contempt with which some persons in 
 this country treat our kinsmen of the West. I fear some 
 aflgry and jealous feelings have survived our more intimate * 
 connexion with them, feelings engendered by the event of its 
 termination, but which, it would be wiser, as well as more 
 manly to forget." 
 
 " No small part of the English nation," says the Edinburgh 
 Review, " looik with feelings of peculiar hostility towards the 
 people to which they bear the nearest resemblance, and wil 
 lingly abet their rulers in treating them with less respect and I 
 less cordiality than any other nation. Neither the government \ 
 nor the populace of this country have forgiven America for 
 having made herself independent; and the lowest calumnies and 
 grossest abuse are daily employed by a court-faction to keep 
 alive the most vulgar prejudices. (No. 23. 1809.) " The 
 Americans asserted their independence upon principles which 
 they derived from us. Their rebellion was the surest proof 
 of their genuine descent. They are descended from our loins 
 
 * Inquiry into the Causes and Consequences of the Orders in Coun 
 cil. 1808. p. 19. 
 
206 
 
 DISPOSITIONS FROM THL 
 
 PART i. they retain our usages and manners they read our books 
 
 ^*~v^+s they have copied our freedom they rival our courage and 
 
 yet they are less popular and less esteemed among us than the 
 
 base and bigoted Portuguese, and the ferocious and ignorant 
 
 Russians." 
 
 " There is not an individual who has attended at all to the 
 progress of the present dispute with America, (1812) who 
 does not see that it was embittered from the first, and wantonly 
 urged to its present fatal issue, by the insolent, petulant, and 
 preposterous tone of those very individuals who insisted upon 
 that miserable experiment and plunged their own country in 
 wretchedness, only to bring down upon it the reluctant hos 
 tility of its best customers and allies," &c. 
 
 9. The reign of Lord Sheffield s sapient opinions, was natu 
 rally prolonged in Great Britain, by the comparative insignifi 
 cance of the military and naval establishments of the United 
 States under the federal administration; their total disarray 
 after its overthrow; the simplicity of their institutions, and the 
 vehement altercations of the parties into which they were 
 thrown. It became anew a common belief and fond hope 
 with the ministerial politicians, that America might yet be re 
 gained by arms or by arts; and even those of the opposition 
 settled down in a contemptuous commiseration of her weak 
 ness and sinister destinies. The rencontre of the Chesapeake 
 and Leopard made it quite certain, for all parties, that the 
 Americans were cowards; that the Irish had fought their 
 battles in the revolution; and that there was only food for mer 
 riment or pity in the idea of their meeting, at sea, British 
 skill and valour. The Edinburgh Review told confidently 
 of u the feeble and shadowy texture of the federal govern 
 ment;"* it had u little hopes of a system of polity which, in 
 ,an advancing society, offered no prizes to talents, and no dis 
 tinctions to wealth ;"f and foresaw that " the slender tie which 
 held the United States together would burst at once in 
 tumult of war."J * n 1809, the same journal, professing 
 always superior liberality and closeness of observation, as to 
 our affairs, discoursed of us in the following strain: | As it is 
 quite impossible to have too much jealousy of France, so, to 
 wards America we can scarcely have too little. When such 
 reasoners as Mr. Leckie, gravely talk of our being insulted 
 by the Porte, we plainly perceive the errors of a man who 
 lias lived in the immediate neighbourhood of the Turks, until 
 
 flbid. * No. 24 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 207 
 
 he has forgotten their insignificance. But when France is SECT VI. 
 stretching her iron coasts on all sides of us, when her fleets -^^v^s 
 and her camps are within sight and we alone, of all Europe, 
 have not been conquered by her arms; it is almost as ridicu 
 lous to be jealous of America as of Turkey of a nation three 
 thousand miles off scarcely kept together by the weakest 
 government in the world, with no army, and half a dozen 
 frigates and knowing no other means of intercourse with 
 other countries than by peaceful commerce."* i 
 
 In 1812, Mr. Brougham struck the same key in parliament, 
 md displayed an equal mastery of his subject. 
 
 " Jealousy of America! whose armies are yet at the plough, 
 or making, since your policy has willed it so, awkward 
 (though improving) attempts at the loom whose assembled na 
 vies could not lay siege to an English sloop of war: Jealousy 
 of a power which is necessarily peaceful as well as weak, but 
 which, if it had all the ambition of France and her armies to 
 back it, and all the navy of England to boot, nay, had it the 
 lust of conquest which marks your enemy, and your armies 
 as well as navy to gratify it is placed at so vast a distance 
 as to be perfectly harmless! and this is the nation, of which, 
 for our honour s sake, we are desired to cherish a perpetual ^ 
 jealousy, for the ruin of our best interests."! 
 
 The Quarterly Review scarcely deigned even to pass a jest 
 upon the impotency of the states, and would not/" stoop to de 
 grade the British navy by condescending to enter into any 
 comparison between the high order, the discipline, and com* 
 fort, of an English man-of-war, and an American frigate jr 
 it " disdained any such comparison."! This high disdain of 
 all the belligerant capacities of America pervaded, not only 
 the royal councils, but the whole British naval and military 
 service. In the first rencontre at sea, the Alert, with 20 guns 
 mounted, bore down triumphantly upon the American frigate 
 Essex, and fired a broadside, expecting to prove that lt the 
 assembled navies of America could not lay siege to an Eng 
 lish sloop of war:" and though the issue gave an air of para- 
 logy to the business, yet it was soon followed by an instance of 
 the same happy confidence in the case of the frigate Guerriere. 
 
 I must do the two oracular journals which I have quoted on 
 this head, the justice to remark, that, at the end of the con 
 test, although they omitted to remind their readers of their 
 
 * No. 24. 
 
 { Speech on the present state of Commerce and Manufactures. 
 No. 15. Article on Madison s War 
 
208 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE 
 
 PART 1. first opinions, they did not pass by the perplexing facts in ab 
 v^-v ^w solute sjJence. The Quarterly Review could condescend t(> 
 say, /The Americans have fought on the element of Eng 
 land with British spirit. On that element, let it be fairly ac 
 knowl edged, we have much to commend in them, and we havt 
 still something to redeem."* Even before the termination o; 
 hostilities, the Edinburgh Review told of u the discomfiture 
 of the English naval resources by the American marine, o :. 
 which, by a whimsical coincidence, we have learnt the ex 
 istence in the same documents that detail its successes." Ane 
 speedily came out the round, unvarnished tale: ^ 
 
 /* We have been worsted in most of our naval encounters 
 with the Americans, and baffled in most of our enterprises by 
 land with a naval force on their coast, exceeding that of th< 
 enemy in the proportion often to one, we have lost two out o: 
 three, of all the sea-fights in which we have been engaged 
 and at least three times as many men as our opponent; while 
 their privateers swarm unchecked round all our settlements 
 and even on the coast of Europe, and have already madem-iz* 
 of more than seventeen hundred of our merchant vessels.*! 
 
 ft is true, and detracts a little from the force of these ac 
 knowledgments, that we read in the same number of the Jour 
 nal^- 4 the national vanity of the Americans has scarcely any 
 other field of triumph than the discomfiture of Britain in the 
 war of the Revolution. "^ We might produce, by way of re 
 joinder, perhaps, from the same hand, out of a number of 
 passages implying the existence of other fields of triumph, tht 
 following;, 
 
 " History has no other example of so happy an issue to a 
 revolution consummated by a long civil war, as that of the 
 Americans. Indeed, it seems to be very near a maxim in 
 political philosophy, that a free government cannot be obtain 
 ed, where a long employment of military force is necessary to 
 establish it. In the case of America, however, the military 
 power was disarmed by that very influence which makes a 
 revolutionary army so formidable to liberty; for the images of 
 grandeur and power those meteor lights, which are exhaled 
 in the stormy atmosphere of a revolution, to allure the ambi 
 tious and dazzle the weak made no impression upon the- 
 firm and virtuous soul of the American commander.":): 
 
 " In the United States, M. Talleyrand was surprised to 
 observe, that a long and violent civil war had left scarcely an) 
 trace of its existence in the character of the intercourse of 
 
 No. 30. | No. 48. * No. 25. 
 
PEACE OF 1763. 209 
 
 the various factions which divided the people. No hatred or SECT. VI. 
 animosity was perceivable among individuals; no turbulence ^^-^^^ 
 or agitation of character had been permanently engrafted on 
 the sober, solid habits of the colonists. The profound re 
 mark of Machiavel appeared for once to fail, that every revo 
 lution contains the seeds of another, and scatters them behind 
 it."* 
 
 " The spectacle presented by America during the last thirty 
 or forty years, ever since her emancipation began to produce 
 its full effect, and since she fairly entered the lists as an in 
 dependent nation has been, beyond every thing formerly 
 known in the history of mankind, imposing and instructive."! 
 
 Dr. Seybert has introduced into his Statistics a compendious 
 statement of the naval events of the war, which furnishes an 
 edifying commentary upon the first speculations of the British 
 politicians. 
 
 " The American navy triumphed in fourteen engagements, 
 in some of which, the contending forces were nearly equal, 
 and in many of them that of the enemy was decidedly supe 
 rior. The cases of the Chesapeake and the Argus are the only 
 instances in which it can be pretended that the enemy had any 
 fair claims to success, upon the ground of the equality of the 
 respective forces. 
 
 " The superiority of our gunnery is confirmed by the num 
 ber of killed and wounded on board the enemy s vessels, and 
 the condition of their ships afte"r the actions; in several in 
 stances the British vessels were sunk whilst the fight lasted: 
 in most instances they were so materially injured as to make 
 their destruction absolutely necessary; whereas our vessels 
 were commonly, with scarcely any loss of time, ready to com 
 mence another combat." 
 
 The number of British merchant vessels captured by the 
 Americans, and which arrived in port or were destroyed, is 
 determined, by an irrefragable estimate,^ to amount to five 
 thousand five hundred; more, in all probability, than Britain 
 lost in all the wars which grew out of the French revolution. 
 
 Much clamour, it may be recollected, was raised in England, 
 concerning the real amount of force of the American ships, 
 compared with the nominal. But we may judge with what 
 grace this charge was so indignantly made, by the following 
 statement which I copy from the Regulations relative to the 
 Royal Navy, officially promulgated in 1817. 
 
 * No. 11. -j- No. 59. 
 
 i See that very useful work Niles Weekly Register, for Jan. 1816. 
 
 VOL. I. D d 
 
/ 
 /of 
 
 210 DISPOSITIONS FROM THE, &C. 
 
 PART r. " All ships of the second rate, though rated at 98, carry 
 ****r^~^/ upwards of 100 guns, 
 
 u In the third rate, some of the ships rated at 80 guns, 
 carry near 90, and others rated at 74, carry 80 guns. 
 
 u In the fourth rate, of the ships rated at 50 guns, one class 
 (that on two decks) carries 58 guns; another (that on one deck) 
 carries 60 and upwards. 
 
 " The frigates rated at 40 guns, carry 50; and those rated 
 at 38, carry 46 and upwards. 
 
 " The majority of those rated at 36, carry 44; and some of 
 those rated at 32, carry 46 and 48; being more than others 
 that are rated at 38 and 36. 
 
 u Similar differences between the real and the nominal 
 amount of force exists in the fifth rate, but it is unnecessary to 
 specify the details." 
 
 in the article on Michaud s Travels in America, our friends 
 f the Edinburgh Review remarked of the western Ameri 
 cans, with a mixture of contempt and compassion "their 
 generals distil brandy, their colonels keep tavern, and their 
 statesmen feed pigs." But it was discovered, by the progress 
 of events, that these generals and colonels could, notwith 
 standing, pursue the occupation implied by their titles; and the 
 affairs of Plattsburg and New Orleans confounded the critics. 
 "We have actually had to witness the incredible spectacle of 
 a regular well appointed army of British veterans, retiring be 
 fore little more than an equal force of American militia! 
 
 The whole result of the war on the land, to which the gene 
 rals that distil brandy, and the colonels that feed pigs, largely 
 contributed, must have astonished them still more. An aggre 
 gate loss of nearly twelve thousand of his majesty s troops, 
 and the inefficiency of a force of fifty thousand regulars ope 
 rating at one time! And, with respect to the statesmen who feed 
 pififs, there must have been a lively surprise, and some altera 
 tion of sentiment, when the Marquis Wellesley was found 
 declaring in the House of Lords, that, "in his opinion, the 
 American Commissioners at Ghent had shown the most asto 
 nishing superiority over the British during the whole of the 
 correspondence; and that he had little doubt the British papers 
 were communicated from the common fund of the ministers 
 in England."* / 
 
 * Speech respecting the Negotiation for Peace with America, April 
 18th, 1815. 
 
SECTION VII. 
 
 OF THE HOSTILITIES OF THE BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 1. AFTER the Revolution of 1688, and still more after the SEC.vn. 
 establishment of the House of Hanover, the North American v^^w 
 Colonies preferred titles of a peculiar force, to the highest 
 esteem and favour of every Briton, who respected and loved 
 the principles, with which those events were connected. They 
 had been obnoxious to the despotic plans of the Stuarts, and 
 suffered from their tyranny; they had asserted the rights pro 
 claimed in Magna Charta, with more boldness, and maintain 
 ed them with more success, than the mother country; they 
 had limited the ravages, and disappointed the voracity, of des 
 potism and corruption, by furnishing a secure asylum for the 
 persecuted, as well as the distressed from whatever cause.* 
 On these grounds, and the many others developed in the fore 
 going pages, their merits might be supposed to be almost in 
 finite with every English whig of the last fifty years; so great, 
 at least, as to make it, for one of the present day, not only a , 
 perversion of natural feeling, but a political apostacy, to treat 
 of their character and concerns, except upon a system of the 
 utmost liberality and indulgence. Chatham and Charles 
 Fox had given them an irresistible claim to his gratitude and 
 respect, in ascribing to their revolt the salvation of the British 
 Constitution. " The resistance of the Americans to the op 
 pressions of the mother country," said the last of those cano 
 nized statesmen, in the House of Commons, " has undoubt 
 edly preserved the liberties of mankind." 
 
 Our revolution, in its motive, conduct, and conclusion, 
 united in its favour the suffrages of the most enlightened por 
 tion of continental Europe; and there has been of late years 
 hardly an individual in England, holding a certain rank in the 
 literary or political world, who has ventured, directly to deny 
 it, the most exalted characteristics. The writers of the Quar 
 terly Review have, indeed, seemed to refuse it all the felicity 
 with which it had been invested by others, in asserting that, 
 " when America became independent, she had no race of edu- 
 
 * See note N. 
 
HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. cated i$en to fill the situations which used to be respected, 7 * 
 but evn they, the official guardians of tory principles, preju 
 dices, and interests, have yielded to it a tribute of no trifling 
 import. "The anglo- Americans, an active and enlightened 
 people, animated by the spirit and information derived from 
 their mother country, contended, as they had done in the pre 
 ceding century, with pertinacious zeal, for a civil right, the 
 grant of which, in the early part of the contest, might have 
 restored their tranquillity and preserved their allegiance. 
 Happily for them, their patriots were not atheists, nor their 
 leaders robbers; their men of properly, education, and morals, 
 took the lead, and the physical power of the poor and the 
 profligate was not set up to plunder, to expatriate,"! &c. There 
 is here enough of positive and negative praise, to induce us to 
 impute the declaration first quoted, to an honest belief that all dur 
 educated men had perished in the course of the revolution !\ 
 
 The North American settlements presented, from their 
 commencement, what was pre-eminently calculated to en 
 gage the affections, and kindle the benevolence, of the Chris 
 tian and the philanthropist, in the rapid and extensive con 
 quests made on the wilderness, for religion and civilization. 
 Clothing the desert with beauty and reclaiming it to fruitful- 
 ness; enlarging indefinitely the boundaries of polished nature, 
 and opening the way for the existence of millions of freemen 
 of the English race over one of the most favoured portions of 
 the earth, were achievements which, with all their dignity and 
 value, did not more powerfully recommend our American fore 
 fathers to the favour and protection of the good and the wise, 
 than the motives from which they were undertaken, and the 
 manner in which they were performed. " There was no cor 
 ner of the globe," exclaimed Chatham, " to which the ances 
 tors of our fellow subjects in America, would not have fled, 
 rather than submit to the slavish and tyrannical spirit which 
 prevailed in their native country." Of such men, no Eng 
 lishman boasting of his attachment to the present theory of 
 the British constitution, should, to be consistent, think or 
 speak without a glow of admiration. And we, their suc 
 cessors, whose spirit, as far at least as liberty is concerned, 
 cannot be said to have degenerated from theirs; who have 
 preserved their institutions, and continued their labours, so 
 as, with similar dangers and toils, to bring under the dominion 
 of Christianity and civilized art, regions immense beyond the 
 
 * No. 4. Article on Holmes American Annals. 
 | Article on Spain and her colonies. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 213 
 
 grasp 6T their imagination we, constituting now a republic SEC.VH. 
 of u ten millions of British freemen, who may be numbered \^~*^*s 
 among the most intelligent, the most moral, the bravest, and 
 the most happy, of the human race"* might well expect, as 
 we deserve, to find in the philosophers and whigs of the mother 
 country, even though of the class of critics by profession, not 
 scoffers and detracters, but earnest friends and panegyrists. 
 The Scottish tribunal that sits in constant judgment over us, 
 by virtue of a mysterious authority, seems to have been aware 
 of our claims in some of the respects upon which I have 
 touched. Such language as the following, from the thirteenth 
 number of the Edinburgh Review, is in unison with reason 
 and true sentiment, and will make the reproach double, if we 
 should find those who uttered it, acting in contradiction to its 
 spirit. 
 
 i u This immense sphere of activity in America, is the crea- 
 n of yesterday. Even Mr. Ashe, disposed as he is to decry 
 every thing American, is obliged to admit, that she displays, 
 in the wonders of her growing industry, a picture at once 
 striking and exhilarating. It is impossible to contemplate such 
 a scene without exulting in the triumphs of industry. This 
 peaceful power is here subduing regions of growing forests, 
 which conquering armies would fear to enter; and extending, 
 with silent rapidity, the limits of civilized existence. We 
 cannot help wishing that our countrymen, in general, were a 
 little more alive to the feelings which we conceive such a spec 
 tacle is calculated to excite; and that they could be brought to 
 sympathize a little more in the progress of a kindred people, 
 destined to carry our language, our arts, and our interests too, 
 over regions more vast than ever acknowledged the sway of 
 the Caesars of Rome." \ 
 
 Notwithstanding this jJst and obvious view of the case; the 
 commercial obligations of which I have treated; and all the 
 ingratiating points of our history, with which the better in 
 formed among the British writers cannot be supposed to be 
 unacquainted, the United States have invariably experienced 
 from them more obloquy and ridicule, than the nations of the 
 European continent, the farthest removed from Great Britain 
 in their origin, institutions, policy, knowledge, and moral 
 qualities. There has been no period since our revolution at 
 which a liberal Briton, looking to the comparative treatment 
 of the Americans, in the British books and parliamentary dis- 
 
 * Sir James Mackintosh. Speech on the Treaty with America, April 
 llth, 1815. 
 
214 HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PART I. cussions, might not have repeated what Mr. Burke indignant!) 
 ^^^-^^ uttered in 1775 "The faults which grow out of the luxuriance 
 of freedom, appear much more shocking to us, than the base 
 vires which are generated in the rankness of servitude." The 
 periodical publications have served as constant emunctories 
 for those humours, respecting the diffusiveness and virulence 
 of which, I have already produced adequate testimony. It is 
 to the language and temper, of some of the most important oi 
 those publications, that I mean to direct my attention at pre 
 sent. I propose to fill up this Section with quotations of their 
 invidious suggestions, and with cursory observations upon such 
 of these as seem to call for immediate notice. 
 
 2. The Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, confessed!} 
 at the head of all publications of the kind in the world, ant 
 works of great authority wherever letters are cultivated, 
 have taken the lead in the war of defamation and derision 
 against the American people and institutions. They have 
 indeed, carried opposite ensigns, and made their attacks ii 
 modes somewhat dissimilar. The hostilities of the English 
 critics have been more direct and coarse, and accompanied 
 with fewer professions of moderation and good will; those oi 
 the Scottish, having been waged, almost always with protesta 
 tions of friendship, and at times with the affectation o| a for 
 mal defence of the object./ When the one has said,*-J- u pro 
 fessing ourselves among the number of persons who experience 
 no very particular degree of affection for our transatlantic 
 brethren;" and the other "the Americans are not liked in this 
 country, and we are not now going to recommend them as ob 
 jects of our love ; " we are no admirers of the Americans ;"f 
 
 * Quarterly. No. 24. 
 
 j- The pliant Bosvvell set the example to his countrymen, of this form 
 of speech, adding-, however, a maxim which they seem to have over 
 looked. "Well do you know that I. have no kindness for the Bosto 
 nians. But nations or bodies of men should, as well as individuals, 
 have a fair trial, and not be condemned on character alone,." (Letter to 
 Dr. Johnson, Jan. 27, 1775). The Quarterly Review has preferred the 
 more energetic spirit and sousing manner of the Dr. himself; of which 
 a sample is afforded in the following 1 passage of his Biography. " From ;i 
 pleasing subject," says Boswell, "he (Dr. Johnson) I know not how 01 
 why, made a sudden transition to one upon which he was a violent 
 aggressor; for he said, "I am willing to love all mankind, except at 
 American:" and his inflammable corruption bursting into horrid fire- 
 he "breathed out threatenings and slaughter;" Cjdling them, "Rascal 1 
 Robbers Pirates;" and exclaiming, he d "burn and destroy them." 
 Miss Seward, looking to him with mild but steady astonishment, said 
 " Sir, this is an instance that we are always most violent against tlios* 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS, 
 
 215 
 
 they approached near enough in language to betray the iden- SFC. vil. 
 tity of their spirit. Both have canted about the tender for- l *^~*^s 
 bearance due on the two sides of the Atlantic "the sacred 
 bond of blood and language; 1 "the endearing community of 
 religion and laws;" "the inheritance of the same principles 
 of government and morals ;" "the beauty of the example of 
 natural friends among nations, in contradistinction to the too 
 readily admitted division of natural enemies," &^. and they 
 have harped upon these topics, in the sequel of a tissue of the 
 bitterest contumelies and sarcasms. But the Edinburgh Re 
 view particularly, has gone farther, with a modesty which is 
 truly unrivalled. Whilst uttering the most disparaging opi 
 nions, and discharging vollies of sneers, it has inveighed fiercely 
 against " the bitter sneering at every thing in America" by 
 the ministerial writers: reproached them for their insolent, 
 petulant and preposterous tone; wondered profoundly at the 
 little cordiality and respect for America among the British 
 nation; and seemed to take to itself vast credit for the con 
 trary dispositions. 
 
 Recently, it has furnished an instance of this manoeuvre, 
 which outstrips all competition, and has the air of a wanton 
 mockery of the understandings of its readers, as much as of a 
 device of party-strategy. In the body of that article of the 
 61st number, which contains the heaviest denunciations, and 
 some of the most flippant undersaving, ever directed against 
 this country, we read the following phrases, the first of which 
 is, by the way, a fine specimen of purism in style. " Among 
 other faults with which the present English government is 
 chargeable, the vice of impertinence has lately crept into our 
 Cabinet; and the Americans have been treated with ridicule 
 and contempt." "We wish well to America; we rejoice in 
 her prosperity, and are delighted to resist the absurd imperti 
 nence with which the character of her people is often treated in 
 this country, but," &c. 
 
 I have already given, in the quotations which I have made, 
 some evidence of the validity of these pretensions, and of the 
 temper and consistency of the Quarterly Review. But we 
 have not, perhaps, had enough exactly to determine, the degree 
 of authority to which the two bands of critics are respectively 
 entitled, in their judgments concerning America; whether on 
 the score of liberality in their feelings, gravity in their deli 
 berations, or steadiness in their opinions I will, therefore, 
 
 whom we have injured." He was irritated still more by this delicate 
 and keen reproach ; and roared out another tremendous volley, which 
 one mig ht fancy could he heard across the Atlantic." (Vol. ii. p. 12.) 
 
HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PART I. look back upon the complexion of the articles which the) 
 *^~v^** f / have devoted to us, pursuing the design which I have men 
 tioned above. To begin with the Edinburgh critics, those 
 friends and patrons by pre-eminence, who have always beeii 
 " delighted to resist the absurd impertinence with which the 
 character of America has been treated in Great Britain." 
 
 They condescended to notice this republic directly, for 
 the first time, in their fourth number, in the article on Da 
 vis Travels; and certainly we had some reason to drav. 
 encouraging presages from their general tone in this outset. 
 There were but two passages in the article, which had a sinister 
 aspect one which asserted roundly that habitual drunkenness 
 was in no country so prevalent as in the United States an 
 other concerning Franklin, as follows: " It is certain that thi 
 enlightened part of the American community begin now t) 
 consider this boasted character in a very ambiguous point cf 
 view, and to attach much less consequence and veneration t:> 
 his memory than formerly. To him they are certainly in 
 debted for the most important public services, and for his 
 strenuous endeavours to introduce among them a taste for 
 science and literature; but, on the other hand, his canting 
 exhortations to extreme frugality have had their effect in pre 
 venting the expansion of the noblest principles of the mind; and 
 his example, in the dereliction of religion, has certainly lent an 
 unfortunate support to the cause of scepticism and infidelity.^ 
 
 I should be unjust not to acknowledge that full amends were 
 made, at the same tribunal, to the memory of this " boasted 
 character," in two copious articles, devoted entirely to his 
 panegyric, and producing one of those remarkable antinomies 
 in its decisions, which fall within the scope of the present 
 exposition. A few extracts will be sufficient for the intelli 
 gence of the case. 
 
 /"Dr. Franklin, the self taught American, is the most ra- 
 /ional, perhaps, of all philosophers. No individual ever pos 
 sessed a juster understanding. In much of what relates to 
 the practical wisdom and happiness of life, his views will be 
 found to be admirable, and the reasoning by which they are 
 supported most masterly and convincing. Upon the mechanics 
 and tradesmen of Boston and Philadelphia, he endeavoured, wit !i 
 appropriate eloquence, to impress the importance of industr. . 
 sobriety and economy, and to direct their wise and humble 
 ambition to the attainment of useful knowledge and honour 
 able independence. Nothing can be more perfectly and beau 
 tifully adapted to its object than Dr. Franklin s compositions 
 of this sort. The strong sense, clear information, and obviws 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 211 
 
 conviction of the author himself, make most of his moral SEC. vir. 
 exhortations perfect models of popular eloquence, &c.**We <*~-v~^s 
 should think his account of his own life a very useful reading 
 for all young persons of unsteady principle, who have their 
 fortunes to make or mend in this world."* 
 
 " In one point of view, the name of Franklin must be con 
 sidered as standing higher than any of the others which illus 
 trated the last century. Distinguished as a statesman, he was 
 equally great as a philosopher; thus uniting in himself a rare 
 degree of excellence in both those pursuits, to excel in either 
 of which is deemed the highest praise. Each successive pub 
 lication of this great man s works increases our esteem for 
 his virtues, and our admiration of his understanding. We 
 can offer the Americans no better advice than to recommend 
 to them a constant study of Franklin, of his principles, as 
 well as his compositions. The example of this eminent per 
 son teaches that veneration for religion is quite compatible 
 with a sound, practical understanding. Franklin was a man 
 of a truly pious turn of mind. He appears to have been a 
 Christian of the Unitarian school. If his own faith had not 
 gone so far, he at least would greatly have respected the reli 
 gion of his country, and done every thing to encourage its 
 propagation. His moral writings are superior to almost any 
 others, in any language; whether we regard the sound, and 
 striking, and useful truths with which they abound, or the 
 graceful and entertaining shape in which they are conveyed. 
 His piety was sincere and habitual. Feelings of a devotional 
 cast every where break forth in his writings. He is habitually 
 a warm advocate for religion."! 
 
 The article on Davis Travels suggested some kind apolo 
 gies for us, on the important heads of intellect and literature, 
 which augured favourably for the justness, as well as libe 
 rality, of the views, which would be always taken in relation 
 to those subjects. 
 
 " We do not mean to deny the charges against the litera 
 ture and learning of America: literature is one of those finer 
 manufactures which a new country will always find it easier 
 to import than to raise. There must be a great accumulation 
 of stock in a nation, and a great subdivision of labour, before 
 the arts of composition are brought to any great degree of 
 perfection. The great avenues to wealth must be all filled, 
 and many left in hereditary opulence or mediocrity, before 
 
 * No. 16. t No. 57. 
 
 VOL. I. E e. 
 
218 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. there can be leisure enough, among such a people, to relish 
 
 ^-^ ^"^ the beauties of poetry, or to create an effectual demand fo ? 
 
 the productions of genius. These causes may for some time 
 
 retain the genius of America in a slate of subordination t<> 
 
 that of Europe." 
 
 "The truth is, that American genius has displayed itsell, 
 wherever inducements have been held out for its exertion. 
 Their party pamphlets, though disgraced with much intem 
 perance and scurrility, are written with a keenness and spirit, 
 that is not often to be found in the old world; and their ora 
 tors, though occasionally declamatory and turgid, frequently 
 possess a vehemence, correctness, and animation, that would 
 command the admiration of any European audience, and excite 
 the astonishment of those philosophers who have been tauglt 
 to consider the western hemisphere as a grand receptacle fcr 
 ihe degeneracies of nature." 
 
 Afterwards, from time to lime, we found general opiniors 
 uttered in the same quarter, which bespoke a correct apprc - 
 hension of our case, and some of which I think it well to 
 introduce here. 
 
 " Among men, the few who write bear no comparison to 
 the many who read. We hear most of the former, indeed, 
 because they are, in general, the most ostentatious part of 
 literary men; but there are innumerable men who, without 
 ever laying themselves before the public, have made use of 
 literature to add to the strength of their understandings, and to 
 improve the happiness of their lives." 
 
 " We must say, that the Americans are not fairly judged of 
 by their newspapers; which are written for the most part by 
 expatriated Irishmen, or Scotchmen, and other adventurers of 
 a similar description, who take advantage of the unbounded 
 license of the press, to indulge their own fiery passions, and 
 aim at exciting that attention by the violence of their abuse, 
 which they are conscious they could never command by the 
 force of their reasonings. The greater part of the polished 
 and intelligent Americans appear little on the front of public 
 life, and make no figure in her external history." (1814). 
 
 "It is pleasing to learn, that the isolated inhabitants of the 
 western forests of America are cheered and enlightened with 
 the distant literature of Europe; that there are here men capa 
 ble of communicating the benefits of its discoveries; and 
 emulous in their turn, to extend the boundaries of knowledge 
 by new discoveries of their own." (1805). 
 
 u Whenever a taste for literature is created in America, we 
 have no doubt that her authors will improve and multiply t<~- a 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 219 
 
 degree that will make our exertions necessary to keep the start SEC. VII. 
 we now have of them." (No. 29). v^-v^ 
 
 " The great body of the American people is better educated 
 and more comfortably situated than the bulk of any European 
 community, and possess all the accomplishments that are any 
 where to be found in persons of the same occupation and con 
 dition." (No. 25). 
 
 Having represented, or being capable of seeing, the ques- X 
 tion of our literature and intellectual condition in these lights, 
 ^-discerning the general causes which either retarded our 
 advancement, or prevented it from being visible abroad, 
 liberal critics, " well wishers to America," delighted to 
 protect her character from the insults of malice and the 
 judgments of ignorance, might have been expected to abstain, 
 as much as possible, from reciting our unavoidable deficiences 
 or unsuccessful attempts; and especially from making them, on 
 every practicable occasion, the subject of burlesque or oppro 
 brium: They might have been expected to treat our literary 
 performances with the utmost lenity, and to hold out to us what 
 ever degree of positive encouragement was consistent with the 
 true interests of literature; the more as, whatever we may 
 have arrogated to ourselves in other respects, we have rarely 
 set up exorbitant pretensions on the score of our books. Let 
 us see how far such expectations have been fulfilled by the 
 liberals of the Edinburgh Review. > 
 
 The first production of our press brought within their high 
 cognizance, was the fifth volume of the Transactions of the 
 American Philosophical Society. A society of this description, 
 sprung from the most generous aspirations and benevolent 
 aims; formed under the auspices of Franklin and Rittenhouse: 
 arrested in its promising career by the war of the revolution, 
 which required all the exertions of its members in other fields 
 of public service; struggling anew, when the unnatural ag 
 gressor had consented to sheathe the sword, in a community 
 universally engaged in business, and under all the disadvan 
 tages inseparable from a new country, to maintain the ap 
 pearance of vital action, in order to present a rallying point, 
 and nucleus of science, for an infant nation such a society 
 was in itself, independently of the general considerations inti 
 mated above, fitted to conciliate forbearance, and even ten 
 derness and support, from the votaries of knowledge in the 
 old world.* Its first offerings might be composed of no very 
 
 * See Note O 
 
220 
 
 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PARTI, excellent materials; they might be deficient in interest and 
 v ^~ v " >l *- / instruction for an European savant; yet, liberal minds, 
 alive to the excellence of its object, and the remote in 
 fluences of its rude essays, would not fail to receive them 
 with respect, and to rejoice in its very existence, as an auspi 
 cious omen, and a certain source of future good. Whether 
 actuated by reflections of this kind, or a confidence in its po 
 sitive merit, many of the most illustrious of the scientific 
 world of Europe have sought to be ranked among its mem 
 bers; and displayed the title, when obtained, in the front of 
 their works, with evident satisfaction. Of this number, I may 
 cite Dugald Stewart, the most accomplished and enlightened 
 of the countrymen of the Edinburgh critics. 
 
 These, our well-wishers, proceeded, however, with a spirit 
 diametrically opposite. They heaped indignities upon the 
 volume of the American Transactions, and made their ac 
 count of it, the occasion of innuendos and sallies, against th< 
 taste and learning of America in general. The following ex- 
 [racts will speak for themselves. 
 
 " The want of refinement in arts and in Belles Lettres, is. 
 by no means, the only circumstance, that distinguishes om 
 kinsmen in North America, from the inhabitants of the eastern 
 hemisphere. They appear to be proportionally deficient in 
 scientific attainments. The volume now before us, one of the 
 very few that ever issue from the American press, contains the 
 whole accumulation of American discovery and observation, 
 during a course of peaceful years. It extends to 328 pages, 
 and the most interesting communication it has to boast of is 
 the valuable paper of our countryman, Mr. Strickland. 01 
 all the academical trifles which have ever been given to the 
 world, eighty-nine of (he pages, the work of Americans, are 
 the most trivial and dull. Our readers will judge with what 
 difficulty this mite has been collected, when we mention the 
 subject," &c. / 
 
 " Some of the /American philosophers themselves seem to 
 have adopted the language of the ludicrously sentimental 
 class to which M. Dupont de Nemours (the author of one of 
 the papers) belongs, and to have thought it a good substitute 
 for the eloquence and power of fine writing which Providence 
 has denied to their race." "By the manner in which one of 
 the American contributors cites, and more especially by his 
 remarks upon classical learning, we are inclined to suspect 
 that a man who reads the easier Latin poets is not to be met, 
 with every day hi North America." "We cannot resist the 
 temptation of quoting a passage from his paper; the moralizing 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 part of it is truly American. It is only necessary to add, for SEC.Vll. 
 the information of the American Academies, that the Latin v-*-^^- 
 quotation is nothing at all to the purpose," &e. u Meanly as 
 our readers may be disposed to think of the American scienti 
 fic circles, they appear to be highly prized by their own mem 
 bers. The society whose labours we have been describing, 
 attaches to itself the name of Philosophical with peculiar 
 eagerness; and the meeting-house, where the transactions of 
 its members are scraped together, and prepared for being in 
 accurately printed, is, in the genuine dialect of tradesmen, de 
 nominated k Philosophical Hall. " 
 
 "We have dwelt longer upon this article than its merits 
 justify, for the purpose of stating and exemplifying a most 
 curious and unaccountable fact the scarcity of all but mercan- 4^ 
 tile and agricultural talents in the new wo^ ld."* 
 
 3. The American work that next attracted the attention of 
 our patrons, happened to be from the pen of a minister pleni 
 potentiary of the United States on the continent of Europe, 
 the son of the American President. These qualities of the 
 author, although they did not entitle him to deference as 
 such, yet gave him claims to some particular personal fa 
 vour and respect, from critics of the whig-school, and of 
 the hon-ton of European society. And he would have every 
 right to expect the most indulgent dispositions, for his work, 
 if, composed of sketches which were reluctantly permitted to 
 go before the American public in the pages of an American 
 periodical paper, without ulterior destination, it had taken the 
 shape of a distinct volume, through the cupidity of a London 
 Bookseller; if at the same time it was altogether free from 
 pretensions, and professedly limited to certain heads of obser 
 vation, upon which accurate information might be of particular 
 utility to his countrymen. The " Letters from Silesia" of Mr. 
 John Quincy Adams, to which it will be understood that I 
 have been referring, were attended with these circumstances 
 apparent upon the face of the volume into which they were 
 collected. I will venture to affirm, moreover, that they pos 
 sess much absolute, intrinsic merit; that they are greatly above 
 the common standard of applauded English tours, and would 
 have been declared creditable in all respects, had they been 
 the production of an Englishman in a similar station. But the 
 Edinburgh Review was as ungracious and wayward in this 
 instance, as in that of the American Philosophical Society. It 
 
 * Compare this with the quotations in p. 
 
HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART J. not only launched hito broad generalities, and drew iar-1 etche 3 
 ^v-^" analogies, to decry the work of Mr. Adams, but was at muc i 
 pains to disparage his understanding and feelings; and turne J 
 aside from the only proper subject of animadversion, to carp 
 and sneer at the studies and mind of his country. These asser 
 tions might be the more strikingly illustrated here, did not the 
 same tone and design pervade nearly the whole of the article 
 in question; at the same time that the critics cannot effectually 
 conceal the sense, which they really entertain, of the merits of 
 the Letters. A few excerpts from the article will be enough 
 for the occasion. 
 
 "It may appear somewhat hard to subject a work which 
 does not offend by any pretensions to a comparison with the 
 excellent standards of its kind; but when we held this work 
 in our hands, we could not help thinking of the American 
 Presidency, and of the state of learning in that powerful and 
 prosperous commonwealth." 
 
 ^^ Although this author is neither lively nor very instructive, 
 he shows some qualities which makes him a tolerable compa 
 nion for a very short four."**" The feelings of Mr. Adams 
 about his native country more resemble the loyal acquiescence 
 of a subject, than the personal interest and ardour of a repub 
 lican."**" His style is, in general, very tolerable English, 
 which, for American composition, is no moderate praise. "**"A 
 spurious dialect, it is probable, will prevail even at the court 
 and in the Senate of the United States, until that great com 
 monwealth shall become opulent enough to break more dis 
 tinctly into classes," &c. \ 
 
 At the appearance of another American work of the highest 
 possible interest and elevation as to the subject, and proceeding 
 from the first law-dignitary of the American republic, not more 
 respectable by his exalted station, than by his general talents 
 and private virtues I mean the Life of Washington by Chief 
 Justice Marshall a fair opportunity was afforded the Edin 
 burgh illuminati, to resist "the impertinence and vulgar in 
 solence," and the " bitter sneering" of the ministerial party 
 with respect to American concerns, by the force of example, 
 in a generous exposition of the merits which they might dis 
 cover in !he performance; a scrupulous abstinence from harsh 
 and supererogatory reflections on the author or his coun 
 try, and a commemoration of those traits in the American 
 revolution, which distinguish it as the purest and noblest among 
 the most important and celebrated in the history of the world. 
 Nothing would have seemed more remote from probability, 
 than that the disciples of Fox could, on the occasion of re- 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 223 
 
 viewing an authentic biography of Washington, labour mainly SEC. VII. 
 to appear smart and knowing, at the expense of the nation v^-v-^> 
 which had produced this model of heroes, and even insult the 
 faithful and unassuming biographer, who had been his compa 
 nion in arms, had enjoyed his intimate friendship, and shared 
 with him the labours and honours of his civil administration. 
 Whether they pursued so unworthy a course, and how far 
 they improved the opportunity above mentioned, to the very 
 reverse of the proper ends, may be ascertained by the follow 
 ing short extracts from the article under consideration. 
 
 " Mr. Marshall must not promise himself a reputation com 
 mensurate with the dimensions of his work." 
 
 " Mr. Chief Justice Marshall preserves a most dignified and 
 mortifying silence regarding every particular of Washington s 
 private life, &c. Mr. Marshall may be assured that what 
 passes with him for dignity, will, by his reader, be pronounced 
 dullness and frigidity." 
 
 "The Speeches in this work display great commercial 
 knowledge, and a keen style of argument but oratory is not 
 to be looked for in a country which has none of the kindred 
 arts. All the specimens of American eloquence grievously 
 sin against the canons of taste." 
 
 " A more diffuse and undiscriminating narrative we have 
 seldom perused. It is deficient in almost every thing that con 
 stitutes historical excellence," &c. &c. ) 
 
 This last stricture upon the narrative is followed imme 
 diately by the observation / It displays industry, good 
 sense, and, so far as we can juuge, laudable impartiality; and 
 the style, though neither elegant nor impressive, is yet, upon 
 the whole, clear and manly. "J No ingenuity but that of the 
 Edinburgh critics, would be adequate to explain, how a nar 
 rative acknowledged to possess these qualities which Blair 
 indicates " as the primary qualities required in a good histo 
 rian" could yet be justly proclaimed " deficient in almost 
 every thing that constitutes historical excellence." 
 
 They are careful, in the abundance of their tenderness for 
 America, to note, as they proceed with Judge Marshall, " the 
 ludicrous proposition of her Congress to declare herself the most 
 enlightened nation on the globe," This taunt had been so of- en 
 in the mouth of the party stigmatized for an " odious, miserable, 
 vulgar spirit of abuse against America," that the repetition of 
 it by her friends, can be accounted for, only by its egregious 
 pleasantry. I propose to enquire into its justice hereafter, 
 and hope to render this point at least doubtful. Towards the 
 conclusion of the article on the Life of Washington, there is 
 
HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. this invidious remark: / We think it a pretty strong proof of 
 
 ^^^^ the poverty of the liteAry attainments of America, that she 
 
 has not been able to tell the story of her own revolution, and 
 
 to pourtray the character of her hero and sage, in language 
 
 worthy such subjects." 
 
 I do not mean to affirm that the story of our revolution 
 has been told absolutely well by Marshall, or by Ramsa), 
 whose Life of Washington is so unceremoniously consigned by 
 the Scottish reviewers to the circulating libraries. Ramsay s 
 History of the American Revolution, which, it is probable, 
 they had never deigned to open, is, however, a respectable 
 production in all points of view; quite equal, as regards lite 
 rary execution, to any historical essay respecting the affairs cf 
 England, for the last century, and superior, as regards the au 
 thenticity of materials, and opportunities of knowledge. The 
 Somervilles, the Enticks, the Belshams, the Russels, the 
 Adolphus , the GifFords, the Biglands, are certainly below the 
 level of Ramsay. 
 
 To no people whatever can we apply more exactly, than to 
 the American, the observation which I have quoted from the 
 Edinburgh Review, that u among them the few who write 
 bear no comparison to the many who read." According to 
 the drift of the Review in making this observation, it would 
 be unjusi to declare the poverty of the literary attainments of 
 America, on the ground that she has not yet produced a first 
 rate history of her revolution: as, in point of fact, nothing can 
 be more unfounded than the allegation. We are told by a 
 Scottish authority, Blair T that the island of Britain, was not 
 eminent for its historical productions, till within a few years 
 prior to the time at which he wrote; that, during a long pe 
 riod, English historical authors were little more than dull com 
 pilers, when at length the distinguished names of Hume, Ro 
 bertson, and Gibbon, raised the British character in that 
 species of writing.* Now, if the logic of the Edinburgh Re 
 view, in reference to America, be adopted if the circum 
 stance of our not having told well the story of our revolution 
 be " a pretty strong proof of the poverty of our literary attain 
 ments," we have, in the statement of Blair, u pretty strong 
 proof" that Great Britain laboured under the same reproach 
 until the middle of the eighteenth century. And the igno 
 miny would be tenfold, considering the superior advantages of 
 her situation for centuries before that period. The absence 
 of historians of the highest order is, certainly, the last defect 
 
 * Lectures on Rhetoric. Lecture 36. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 in our literature to be censured by a nation whose historical SEC. VII. 
 authors were bui dull compilers, so long alter she had the full w^~v-^^ 
 enjoyment of all those facilities to perfection in the arts of 
 composition, which the Edinburgh Review has justly stated to 
 be necessarily wanting to a new country.* 
 
 There is no part of the matter introduced into the Life of 
 Washington; there are none of the u provincial documents" 
 with which it is peevishly said 10 be loaded, that are not in 
 teresting and important to the American public; and for this 
 public the work was chieHy intended. It became, inevitably, 
 a History of the American Revolution, not only on account of 
 the connexion, more or less immediate, of the hero, with all 
 the great occurrences of the drama, but from the tenor of his 
 manuscripts upon which it was composed, and which the 
 biographer was bound to turn to the fullest account. Its bulk 
 is not, therefore, a well-grounded objection; or might, at least, 
 have found indulgence with those, who could not have been 
 ignorant of the more inordinate size of Clarendon s History of 
 the Rebellion; Roscoe s Life of Leo X.; Gifford s Life of 
 Pitt; Fra-Paolo s History of the Council of Trent; Guicciar- 
 dini s History, and many other similar works of great ce 
 lebrity, of which the subjects are of less real importance and 
 dignity, and extend through no greater portion of time. But, 
 the true, and principally, exceptionable feature, in Marshall s 
 volumes, is one which has never, as far as I know, been 
 observed at home, and which the foreign critics, had they 
 been able to perceive it, would have been careful not to sig 
 nalize. He has given, as historical evidence, determining a 
 general phasis of the revolution, the desponding representa 
 tions made by Washington in his private letters to Congress; 
 representations which took their hue as well from the design 
 of the writer to stimulate that body, to the utmost pitch of a 
 particular kind of effort, as from the engrossing disquietudes 
 natural and common with the firmest minds, under the imme 
 diate pressure, or apprehension, of heavy embarrassments. 
 The biographer has so exhibited the difficulties inherent in our 
 defence, and the momentary impressions which their emergence 
 made upon the Commander in chief, as to lend much colour 
 of reason at least, to the derogatory suggestion of the Edin 
 burgh Review " He must be blind who does not see in this 
 History, that all the array of American patriotism would have 
 been utterly unable, but for the incapacity of her enemy, to 
 
 * Note P. 
 TOL. I. F f 
 
HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. secure her independence." The main idea is certainly coun 
 v -^~ v ~^" tenaneed by some of the letters of Washington; but it is not, 
 therefore, the less unsound, or easy of refutation upon i 
 comprehensive and critical survey of the whole history of 
 the revolution. No British writer will assert, or admit, that 
 the success of the British forces under Wolfe, in the memor 
 able siege of Quebec, was owing to the " incapacity of the 
 enemy:" But the tone of the first despatches of that intrepid 
 leader to the British secretary of state, is quite as desponding;, 
 as the private communications of Washington to the Americas 
 congress, and would equally, upon the principles of the Edin 
 burgh Review, warrant such a conclusion. The British poli 
 tician of an enlarged and sagacious mind, who will look into 
 the parliamentary history for the three first years of our strug 
 gle, will find there, in the facts and views presented by the 
 whig orators, enough to convince him of the error of any hy 
 pothesis, implying, that we could not have worked out our 
 political salvation, but for the mismanagement of the British 
 ministry, and the aid of the French court. 
 
 4. The life of Washington having failed to draw the Edin 
 burgh wits from the course, to appearance so little in unison 
 with their professions, which was pursued with the letters of 
 Mr. Adams, we cannot be surprised if the Columbiad of Bar 
 low wrought no better effect. It seems to have been committed 
 to the Momus of the fraternity for special diversion. Ac 
 cordingly, the American Epic is introduced, with refined 
 humour, as " the goodly firstling of the infant muse of Ame 
 rica;" and, by way, no doubt, of manfully resisting ministe 
 rial impertinence, and generously soothing the feelings of the 
 poet s countrymen for the sentence which it might be necessary 
 to pass upon his work the reviewer immediately salutes them 
 as follows: a These federal republicans are very much such 
 people, we suppose, as the modern traders of Liverpool, Man 
 chester, or Glasgow. They have a little Latin whipped into 
 them in their youth, and read Shakspeare, Pope and Milton, 
 as well as bad English novels, in their days of courtship and 
 leisure." 
 
 I cannot undertake to repeat the exquisite jokes of this 
 article on the Columbiad such, for instance, as the one 
 about " those fluent and venerable personages, the rivers Po- 
 tomak and Delaware," nor the many quips respecting the 
 American diction; but it is proper to quote one er two more 
 phrases, to illustrate the obstinacy of that unlucky mood which 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 would be ever at variance with the most magnanimous de- SEC. vn. 
 signs of patronage. <<^^^> 
 
 " We have often heard it reported that our transatlantic 
 brethren were beginning to take it amiss that their language 
 should still be called English. As this is the first specimen 
 which has come into our hands of any considerable work in 
 the .American tongue, it may be gratifying to our philological 
 readers," &c. 
 
 " These republican literati seem to make it a point of con 
 science to have no aristocratical distinctions even in tlu:ir 
 vocabulary: they think one word just as good as another, 
 provided the meaning be clear," &c. 
 
 Aspersions upon the capacity and literature of the Ameri 
 can people at large, might have been spared by " well- 
 wishers," even in a criticism upon an American work. But 
 it would seem still more incongruous and wanton, to hold 
 them up to contempt, in reviewing a mere book of travels in 
 America, declared, at the same time, to be in the last degree 
 incredible and despicable. This, however, is done in the 
 account of Ashe s Travels, in the 30th number of the Edin 
 burgh Journal; where, while the reviewer affects to reprobate 
 and deride the tales of the wretched impostor and swindler,* 
 he lends himself to his malignant purpose. It is from them 
 that the magnates of Scottish literature take occasion to flout 
 and decry a nation of kinsmen in the following language: 
 
 a We could just as readily believe that the orations of 
 Sheridan are written by a Philadelphia-man, as that the 
 
 * Dr Drake relates, in his "Picture of Cincinnati," the following 
 anecdote of Ashe. 
 
 " In the years 1802-3, Dr. William Goforth, with an ardour of curio 
 sity that deserved a better reward than awaited his exertions, dug up in 
 Kentucky, and transported to Cincinnati, several waggon loads of Mam 
 moth bones. They were, by the Doctor and George Turner, one of the 
 members of the American Philosophical Society, examined attentively, 
 and supposed to be the remains of no less than six non-descript qua 
 drupeds, most of them gigantic! Among the rest, some of the bones 
 of the rhinoceros were thought to be ascertained. Judge Turner made 
 accurate drawings of the most curious of those fossils, but has been so 
 unfortunate as to lose them. 
 
 "In the spring of the year 1803, the Doctor formed the design of 
 transporting these bones to the Atlantic states. They reached Pitts 
 burgh, and were there stored. Early in 1806, Professor Barton made 
 an application to purchase them ; but at that time they had attracted 
 the attention of a foreign swindler, named Thomas Arville, alias Jlshe, 
 who obtained permission of the owner to ship them to Europe, for 
 exhibition ; since which they have not been heard of. To this per 
 sonal injury of a worthy individual, the miscreant has since added a 
 libel on the American people," 
 
HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. speech ol au American orator is the work of a Scotch re 
 
 ^^v-^- porter." 
 
 X u It is no doubt true, that Jlmerica can produce nothing tt 
 bring her intellectual efforts into any sort of comparison vvitl 
 that of Europe. These republican states have never passeo 
 the limits of humble mediocrity, either in thought or expression 
 Noah Webster, we are afraid, still occupies the first place ir 
 criticism, Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow in poetry, ant 
 Mr. Justice Marshall in history: and, as to the physical sci 
 ences, we shall merely observe, that a little elementary trea 
 tise of botany appeared in 1803; and that this paltry contri 
 bution to natural history is chronicled, by the latest Americat 
 historian, among the remarkable occurrences since the revo 
 lution In short, federal America has done nothing, either tc 
 extend, diversify, or embellish the sphere of human know 
 ledge. Though all she has written were obliterated from the 
 records of learning, there would, if we except the works o 
 Franklin, be no positive diminution, either of the useful 01 
 the agreeable. The destruction of her whole literature wouh 
 not occasion so much regret as we feel for the loss of a fev\ 
 leaves from an ancient classic." 
 
 " But, notwithstanding all this, we really cannot agree with 
 Mr. Ashe in thinking the Americans absolutely incapable, or 
 degenerate; and are rather inclined to think, that when their 
 neighbourhood thickens, and their opulence ceases to depend 
 on exertion, they will show something of the same talents to 
 which it is a part of our duty to do justice among ourselves. 
 And we are the more inclined to adopt t\i\s favour able opinion. 
 from considering, that her history has already furnished occa 
 sions for the display of talents of a high order; and that, in 
 the ordinary business of government, she displays no mean 
 share of ability and eloquence." 
 
 u That the Americans have great and peculiar faults, boll 
 in their manners and in their morality, we take to be undeni 
 able. Their manners, for the most part, are those of a scat 
 tered, migratory, but speculating people; and there will be nc 
 great amendment until their population becomes more dense, 
 and more settled in its habits. As the population becomes con 
 centered, and the spirit of adventure is deprived of its objects., 
 the sense of honour will improve with the importance of cha 
 racter." (No. 30.)* ^ 
 
 The relish for the topic of the insignificance of American 
 literature, and for the waggish citation of the names of some 
 
 * See Note Q- 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 229 
 
 of the American literati, proved so keen and lasting, that we SEC. vil. 
 have been recently treated with them again. What archness, v -^^ - ^ 
 sagacity, knowledge, and despatch in the following passage of 
 the article on the travels of Fearon that rightful successor 
 of Ashe, worthy of exciting the same strain in the reviewer! 
 
 "Literature the Americans have cone no native litera 
 ture, I mean. It is all imported. They had a Franklin, 
 indeed; and may afford to live for half a century on his fame. 
 There is, or was, a Mr. D wight, who wrote some poems; and 
 his baptismal name was Timothy.* There is also a small 
 account of Virginia by Jefferson, and an epic by Joel Barlow 
 and some pieces of pleasantry by Mr. Irving. But why should 
 the Americans write books, when a six weeks passage brings 
 them, in their own tongue, four sense, science, and genius, in 
 bales and hogsheads.} Prairies, steam-boats, grist-mills, are 
 their natural objects for centuries to come. Then, when they 
 have got to the Pacific ocean epic poems, plays, pleasures of 
 memory, and all the elegant gratifications of an ancient peo 
 ple who have tamed the wild earth, and set down to amuse 
 themselves!" I 
 
 5. The Edinburgh Review, preluded, as we have seen, 
 with apologizing for our supposed deficiencies in literature, 
 but quickly fell into the habit of emblazoning them to the 
 utmost, whenever America happened to be in question, even 
 as to matters entirely distinct. A similar course has been 
 
 * Dr. Dwight seems to have obtained a permanent niche in the me 
 mory of the critic. Thus we have, on another occasion. " The poetry 
 of Dr. Dwight is evidently the growth of a country where only the 
 coarser sorts of industry yet flourish." (No. 29.) Now, considering 
 this utter umvorthiness of the Connecticut poet, it is rather extraordi 
 nary that Darwin should have ascribed to his Conquest of Canaan 
 " much fine versification." (Botanic Garden, note, line 364, part 1.) ; and 
 that Campbell, whom the reviewers have placed above all the bards of 
 the age, should have borrowed passages from his religious epic to 
 adorn a compilation of the beauties of English poetry. Tn introducing 
 these passages, Campbell remarks, indeed, " Of this American poet 
 I am sorry to be able to give the British reader no account. I believe 
 his personal history is as little known as his poetry, on this side of the 
 Atlantic." But, truly, the British reader might justly complain ; for, 
 Dr. Dwight made so conspicuous a figure in the affairs of New Eng 
 land, and was so diffusively and advantageously famous throughout this 
 country, that it would not have been very difficult to come at his per 
 sonal history, even in London. The President of Yale College, the 
 second in the union in extent and consideration ; an eminent divine, 
 a politician of great influence, a voluminous, popular and able writer, 
 could remain unknown only to those who were entirely ignorant of 
 American affairs 
 
230 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. pursued by the critics in relation to our moral condition, man- 
 V- ^ N ^^ / ners, and general dispositions. Their excuses for their u ki-is- 
 men of the west," on these heads, have almost always h id, 
 more or less, the air of mockery, and carried a sharper sting 
 than their open defamation. The following passages are won 
 derfully kind and encouraging, and furnish a specimen of he 
 sapient, maternal discussions about us in the mother country. 
 " Why the Americans are disliked in this country we ht>ve 
 never been able to understand; for most certainly they re 
 semble us far more than any other nation in the world. They 
 are brave and boastful, and national and factious, like o ir- 
 selves; about as polished as 99 in 100 of our own county- 
 men in the upper ranks and at least as moral and well edu* 
 cated in the lower. Their virtues are such as we ought to 
 admire for they are those on which we value ourselves most 
 highly: and their very faults seem to have some claim to our 
 indulgence, since they are those with which we also are re 
 proached by third parties." (1814). 
 
 " The complaint respecting America is, that there are no 
 people of fashion that their column still wants its Corinthian 
 capital or, in other words, that those who are rich and idle, 
 have not yet existed so long, or in such numbers, as to have 
 brought to full perfection that system of ingenious trifling, and 
 elegant dissipation, by means of which it has been discovered 
 that wealth and leisure may be most agreeably disposed of. 
 Admitting the fact to be so, and in a country where there is no 
 court, no nobility, and no monument or tradition of chivalrous 
 usages and where, moreover, the greatest number of those 
 who are rich and powerful have raised themselves to that 
 eminence by mercantile industry, we really do not see how 
 it could well be otherwise we could still submit, that this is 
 no lawful cause either for national contempt, or for national 
 hostility. It is a peculiarity in the structure of society among 
 that people, which, we take it, can only give offence to their 
 visiting acquaintance; and, while it does us no sort of harm 
 while it subsists, promises, we think, very soon to disappear 
 altogether, and no longer to afflict even our imaginations. 
 The number of individuals born to the enjoyment of heredi 
 tary wealth is, or at least was, daily increasing in that coun 
 try ; and it is impossible that their multiplication, with all 
 the models of European refinement before them, and all the 
 advantages resulting from a free government, and a general 
 system of good education should fail, within a very short 
 period, to give birth to a better tone of conversation and society, 
 and to manners more dignified and refined. Unless we are very 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 231 
 
 much misinformed indeed, the symptoms of such a change may SEC. vn. 
 already be traced in their cities. Their youths of fortune al-. N ^ >ow 
 ready travel over all the countries of Europe for their improve 
 ment; and specimens are occasionally met with even in these 
 islands, which, with all our prejudices, we must admit, would 
 do no discredit to the best blood of the land from which they 
 originally sprung."* 
 
 There would have been too much of consistency in pre 
 serving, on all occasions, the condescension exerted in these 
 passages. The tone of greeting is not so mincing or comfort- 
 able in the following extracts: 
 
 " The public functionaries in America are so poorly pro 
 vided, that no prosperous counsellor, for instance, will accept 
 of the office of judge, and few men of abilities will dedicate 
 them to so unprofitable a task as the management of public 
 affairs. Their legislature is therefore deficient both in talent 
 and authority, and she has already experienced more than one 
 shock from the irregular impulse of that ambition and talent 
 for which no adequate recompense has been provided within 
 the pale of her constitution." (No. 28). 
 
 " The Americans are all jealous republicans, and all out 
 rageously proud of their constitution, and vain of their country. 
 This passion exists, in America, in a degree that is both 
 offensive and ridiculous to strangers!" (No. 40). 
 /" They, of the western country, are hospitable to strangers, 
 because they are seldom troubled with them; and because 
 they have always plenty of maize and smoked hams.j Their 
 hospitality, too, is always accompanied with impertinent 
 questions; and a disgusting display of national vanity. ? 
 (No. 13). 
 
 a" There are no very prominent men at present in America; 
 t least, none whose fame is strong enough for exportation. 
 Munro is a man of plain, unaffected good sense. Jefferson, 
 
 * No. 40. 
 
 f The poor Irish at least, are placed out of the reach of so charitable 
 an explanation; and if the people of England are hospitable, it is not 
 certainly from this cause. I take the following from Bell s Weekly 
 Messenger for Feb. 7th, 1819. 
 
 " On Friday a donation of the Regent gave cheerfulness to the 
 lowly habitations of the indigent of Brighton. A large quantity of 
 prime beef, to the value of one hundred pounds, by royal command, 
 was distributed to the industrious poor with families, in proportions 
 according to their number and necessities, by the parochial officers. 
 The widows and the orphans tears bore testimony of the gratitude felt, and 
 expressions of thankfulness, directed towards their beloved and generoim be 
 nefactor, ivere wiiversal." 
 
HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PARTI. we believe, is still alive; and has always been more remaik- 
 ^^^^^^ able, perhaps, for the early share he took in the formation of 
 the republic, than from any very predominant superiority of 
 understanding." (No. 61). 
 
 It is well to be undeceived, let the nature of the error be 
 what it may. But the Americans had credulously imagined, 
 that the fame of the military and naval commanders by whom 
 the British were, during the last American war, " worsted in 
 most of their naval encounters, and baffled in most of tlnir 
 enterprises by land,"* was " strong enough for exportation." 
 They thought the same, with respect to those u statesm* n, 
 most of whom survive, by whom the affairs of the United 
 States have been administered in times of great difficulty, with 
 a forbearance, circumspection, and constancy, not surpassed 
 in those commonwealths who have been most justly renowned 
 for the wisdom of their councils."! As regards Mr. Jeffer 
 son, it will not be deemed an unaccountable illusion in the 
 Americans to have ascribed to him " a predominant supe i- 
 ority of understanding," when it is recollected that they hid 
 read the following remarks in the article of the Edinburgh 
 Review on Janson s travels: " Mr. Janson drags individuals 
 into notice without ceremony. As for his endless invectives 
 agaiftst Mr. Jefferson, they belong to another class of wrongs, 
 and only obtain their share of the dignified contempt by which 
 that eminently wise ruler has consigned to oblivion all the 
 spoken and written scurrility of his enemies. ^ While them 
 selves engaged in " dragging individuals into notice," the 
 Scottish critics should not have forgotten the names of John 
 Adams, James Madison, John Jay, Rufus King, Thomas 
 Pinckney, De Witt Clinton, John Quincy Adams, and even 
 Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, all of whom, by a diligent per 
 quisition, they could have ascertained to be still on the stage of 
 life. Two of these at least, might be considered as prominent, 
 since they wrote the principal portion of the work called the 
 Federalist, which the Scottish dispensers of renown have 
 themselves described as u a publication that exhibits an extent 
 and precision of information, a profundity of research, and an 
 acuteness of understanding, which would have done honour to 
 the most illustrious statesman of ancient or modern times. " 
 
 * Edinburgh Review. 1814. 
 
 f Ibid. No. 61. Article on Universal Suffrage. 
 
 * No. 29. 
 
 No. 24. Article on Hillhouse s proposed amendment to the Anr*- 
 rican Constitution. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 33 
 
 In the number of this journal, the 61st, which tells us that SEC. Vtf. 
 we have no prominent men, it is obligingly said, " the Ameri- s^v-%* 
 cans are a very sensible, reflecting people, and have conducted 
 their affairs extremely w ell !:" but at the same moment the com 
 pliment is retracted, in a burst of spleen more violent and 
 acrid, than any of the effusions of the Quarterly Review, 
 which I shall soon be called to notice. ^ 
 
 " The great curse of America is the institution of slavery 
 of itself far more than the foulest blot upon their national 
 character, and an evil which counterbalances all the excise 
 men, licensers, and tax-gatherers of England." 
 
 " That slavery should exist among men who know the value 
 of liberty, and profess to understand its principles, is the con 
 summation of wickedness. Every American, who loves his 
 country, should dedicate his whole life, and every faculty of 
 his soul, to efface this foul stain from its character. If nations 
 rank according to their wisdom and their virtue, what right 
 has the American, a scourger and murderer of slaves, to com 
 pare himself with the least and the lowest of the European na 
 tions ? much more with this great and humane country, where 
 the greatest lord dare not lay a finger upon the meanest pea 
 sant? What is freedom, where all are not free? Where the 
 greatest of God s blessings is limited, with impious ctfjirice, 
 to the colour of the body? And these are the men who taunt 
 the English with their corrupt parliament, with their buying 
 and selling votes. Let the world judge which is the most 
 liable to censure we who, in the midst of our rottenness, 
 have torn off the manacles of slaves all over the world, or they 
 who, with their idle purity, and useless perfection, have re 
 mained mute and careless, while groans echoed and whips 
 clanked round the very walls of their spotless Congress. The 
 existence of slavery in America is an atrocious crime, with 
 which no measures can be kept for which her situation affords 
 no apology which makes liberty itself distrusted, and the 
 boast of it disgusting." A.. 
 
 6. It was, perhaps, known to the authors of the Review, 
 that no small part of the American public, in spite of all 
 that I have quoted from it of an earlier date, still credulously 
 relied upon its general professions and character. They mag 
 nanimously determined at length, to dissipate the delusion, or 
 conceived the project of putting it to the last test, by these 
 fierce invectives. 
 
 I will discuss, in another place, the validity of the sweeping 
 VOL. I. G g 
 
<*** HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PART I. charges founded upon the existence of domestic slavery among 
 ^*~*~^~ us, my immediate object being little more than to exemplify 
 the feeling, or the policy, of the leading journals of Great 
 Britain. We may, however, delay a while, to illustrate further 
 the consistency and modesty of the Edinburgh critics. In th? 
 same article which contains the charges just mentioned, they 
 write thus. u Any person, with tolerable prosperity here ia 
 England, had better remain where he is. There are consi 
 derable evils, no doubt, in England; but it would be madness 
 not to admit that it is, upon the whole, a very happy country. 
 Now, it was only in the number of their journal immediately 
 preceding, in the article on Birbeck s travels, that we read 
 the following language. 
 
 " With all its excellencies, the English government is a 
 most expensive one: protection to person and property is no 
 where so dearly purchased; and the follies of the people, and 
 the corruption of their rulers, have entailed such a load of 
 debt upon us, that whoever prefers his own to any other coun 
 try, as a place of residence, must be content to pay an enor 
 mous price for the gratification of his wish. In truth, a 
 temptation to emigrate is now held out to all persons of mo 
 derate fortune, which must, in very many cases, prove altoge 
 ther ^resistible. Nor can any thing be more senseless than 
 the wonder testified by some zealous lovers of their native 
 land, at any family of small income, seeking a more fruitful 
 soil and a better climate, where half their means may not be 
 seized to pay the state and the poor. Mr. Birbeck, as a 
 moderate capitalist, and the father of a large family, may be 
 justified in every point of view for leaving this country." 
 
 In the last pages of the article on Birbeck s Travels, it is 
 elaborately maintained by the reviewer, that the American 
 union will continue: but, in the next number of the Journal, 
 we are told that " it is scarcely possible to conceive that such 
 an empire as the American should very long remain undi 
 vided." The truly sound doctrine of the article on Birbeck 
 furnishes the best answer to this assertion. It is as follows. 
 
 "It might be proper, however, to consider the real ground of stabi 
 lity which the government of America possesses, before we decide in 
 so positive a mariner against it. There can be little doubt, that the 
 whole question turns upon the difference of American and European 
 society, and the total want in the former, of that race of political cha 
 racters which abounds in the latter. In America, all men have abun 
 dant occupation of their own, without thinking of the state. Every 
 person is deeply interested, and perpetually engaged, in driving his 
 trade, and cultivating his land : and little time is left to any one for 
 thinking of state affairs, except as a subject of conversation. As a 
 business they engage the attention of no one except the rulers of th^ 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 235 
 
 country; and even they keep the concerns of the public subordinate SRC. VII. 
 to their own. The governor of a state is generally a large land owner \^"v>^ 
 and farmer of his own ground. A foreign minister is the active mem 
 ber of a lucrative and laborious profession, quitting it for a few months, 
 and returning to its gains and its toils when his mission is ended. The 
 business of the senate occupies but a few weeks in the year; and no 
 man devotes himself so much to its duties, as to leave it doubtful to 
 what class of the industrious community he properly belongs. The 
 race of mere statesmen, so well known a mong us in the Old World, is 
 wholly unknown in the New ; and until it springs up, even the founda 
 tions of a change cannot be considered as laid. The Americans no 
 doubt are, like other freemen, decided partisans, and warm political 
 combatants; but what project or chance can counterbalance, in their 
 eyes, the benefits conferred by the union, of cultivating their soil, and 
 pursuing their traffic freely and gainfully, in their capacity of private 
 individuals ? A preacher of insurrection might safely be left with such 
 personages as the American farmers; and until the whole frame of 
 society alters, even a great increase of political characters will not 
 enable those persons successfully to appeal to the bulk of the commu> 
 nity, with the prospect of splitting the union. The cautious and eco 
 nomical character of the Federal Government seems admirably adapted 
 to secure its hold over the affections of a rational and frugal people. * 
 
 The Edinburgh Review is, doubtless, the last quarter in 
 which we are to look for proof of the assertions that England 
 is " a very happy country, where all are free" " a great and 
 humane country, which has torn off the manacles of slaves 
 all over the world." In the same article in which those asser 
 tions are made, we read that " a very disgusting feature in 
 the present English government is its extreme timidity, and 
 the cruelty and violence to which its timidity gives birth;" 
 that in government-cases the judges are not independent; that 
 " the savage spectacle" is exhibited " of a poor wretch, per 
 haps a very honest man, contending in vain against the weight 
 of an immense government, pursued by a zealous attorney, 
 and sentenced, by some candidate, perhaps, for the favour of 
 the crown, to the long miseries of the dungeon." On the 
 point of England s having " torn off the manacles of slaves 
 all over the world," the several articles of that Journal con 
 cerning the condition of the blacks in the British West Indies, 
 of the Hindoos, of the Irish Catholics, furnish an admirable 
 commentary. The same Number in which that glorious dis 
 tinction is claimed for England, begins with an account of 
 Mills History of British India, and ends with a view of the 
 state of the Irish Catholics; wherein her millions of Irish and 
 Indian subjects are represented as labouring under the most 
 galling and withering tyranny. The language of the follow 
 ing passages, for instance, is tolerably significative, and has 
 the advantage of being undeniably true. 
 
236 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. " We find, at the very outset of the history of the East India Con- 
 pany as a governing body, a series of acts of treachery and unjust vio 
 lence, such as it would not be easy to match in the annals of men whom 
 we are accustomed to consider as the worst of tyrants." 
 
 " We are accustomed to rate very highly the security which is di- 
 rived from being governed by men having the advantages of Englhh 
 education and English feelings. But it affords a lesson of melancho y 
 instruction as to the feebleness of this security, when we see gentleme n 
 eminently possessed of these advantages, and placed far above tLe 
 reach of want, ready to destroy the commerce of a great country, x> 
 break down the administration of justice, to oppress the people, :o 
 violate treaties, to kindle a war, and to depose a monarch, their ally, 
 merely to secure to themselves the profits of an illegal traffic." 
 
 "Such are the melancholy results of the attempts to improve the 
 condition of Bengal, described not by inimical observers or seve -e 
 judges, but by the magistrates who, from the prejudices of their situa 
 tion, would be inclined to behold every indication of improvemei t, 
 under the auspices of a British administration, with a favourable eye. 
 Every person of rank and property reduced to the lowest condition, 
 the cultivator exposed to intolerable exaction, the courts of justice 
 virtually closed against suitors, the most terrible of crimes increased 
 to that extent, that no security for person or property can be said o 
 exist, minor offences not diminished, dissoluteness of morals be 
 come more general, and a police, of which the vices render it, instead 
 of a benefit, a pest to the country: these, according to the highest 
 authorities, are the characteristics of that part of India, where our 
 reforms have had the longest time to operate." 
 
 " To this picture must those open their eyes, who have been con 
 soling themselves, on every act of aggression and conquest, however 
 unjust in itself, with the reflection that the extension of the British 
 power was an extension of benefits and of security to the natives. 
 One advantage has certainly attended the introduction of an English 
 administration : the direct oppression which the superiors exercised, 
 as of right, over their inferiors is lessened; but that oppression was 
 much less terrible than the increased acts of violence and cruelty of 
 the unlicensed plunderers who were kept in awe by the vigilance of 
 the former rulers; nor can the occasional acts of violence, on the 
 part of the native governments, towards its higher subjects, bear a 
 comparison with those regulations, which have produced a greater 
 change in the landed property than was ever known before, and in a 
 few years reduced the majority of the zemindars to distress and beg 
 gary." 
 
 " The lawless habits of the people, in the ordinary and best state of 
 the interior of Ireland, and all the occasional disturbances of a more 
 serious character, are to be traced to the system of law which has 
 divided the inhabitants of Ireland into a Protestant Oligarchy, admi 
 nistering in detail the government of the country over a Catholic mul 
 titude: The one armed with all sorts of arbitrary powers; the other 
 excluded from the constitution, and subjected to every species of 
 penalties." 
 
 " In all former times of peace, the establishment for Ireland has been 
 8000 men. The number voted last year was 22,000. Besides the 
 expense of maintaining this extra number of 14,000 men, there is also 
 the expense of police establishments, prosecutions, and a variety of 
 other charges, which grow out of the system of governing the people 
 on the principle of exclusion from their civil rights. In the last year s 
 public accounts, there is a charge of 38,9521. for police establishments 
 in proclaimed districts ; and another for 12,000/. secret service, in 
 detecting treasonable conspiracies." 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 237 
 
 "In vain have the hands of government been strengthened in Ire- SEC. VII. 
 land, and the terrors of its power let loose, in every form of civil pro- v^-v-x^/ 
 scription and military execution. The evil of an alienated population is 
 not to be so overmastered. They cannot love a constitution from 
 which they are excluded, nor venerate a law which withholds from 
 them the rights which it secures to the more favoured part of the po 
 pulation, by whom it is made and administered." 
 
 With respect to the many hundred thousand blacks of the 
 British West Indies, the manner in which their manacles have 
 been " torn off" is sufficiently illustrated in the following 
 passage, quoted by the Edinburgh Review, with full approba 
 tion, from a Report of the African Institution, for the year 
 1815. " In what country, accursed with slavery, is this sink 
 ing fund of mercy, this favour of the laws to human redemp 
 tion, manumission, taken away! Where, by an opprobrious 
 reversal of legislative maxims, ancient and modern, do the 
 lawgivers rivet, instead of relaxing, the fetters of private 
 bondage, stand between the slave and the liberality of his 
 master, by prohibiting enfranchisements, and labour as much 
 as in them lies, to make that dreadful, odious state of man, 
 which they have formed, eternal? Shame and horror must 
 not deter us from revealing the truth. It is in the dominions 
 of Great Britain. This abuse has been reserved for assem 
 blies, convened by the British crown, and subject to the con 
 trol of Parliament." 
 
 In the article on Birbeck, the negro-slavery of the United 
 States is spoken of, and with great truth, as existing " in a 
 form by far the most mitigated ," and it is unanswerably aksed, 
 " Who can compare the state of the slave in the sugar islands 
 with that in North America?" In the article of the 50th 
 number, on the general Registry of slaves, all idea of emanci 
 pating those of the British West Indies is peremptorily dis 
 claimed, in the name of the English abolitionists; and the 
 Reviewer adds, Unprepared for freedom as the unhappy 
 victims of our oppression and rapacity now are, the attempts 
 to bestow it on them at once, could only lead to their own aug 
 mented misery, and involve both master and slave in one common 
 ruin." The sagacity which provided this just reflection in 
 i avour of Great Britain and the West India legislature, might 
 have discovered the same apology for the southern states of 
 America, and arrested the unqualified sentence pronounced 
 upon them. 
 
 In truth, all this sudden pother about the bare continued 
 existence of domestic slavery in this country, may be at once 
 understood to be mere parade, if not artifice, on a reference 
 to the tenor of the article in the first number of the Review. 
 
238 HOSTILITIES OP TIIL 
 
 PART i. concerning the Sugar Colonies. The object of that artici j 
 v-*~>^^ \vas to show, that u the subdivision of the negroes of the 
 West Indies, under the power of masters armed with abso 
 lute power," had become an indispensable policy r< r Great 
 Britain; that "the regulation of the treatment of th- slaves " 
 ought to be left to the colonial legislatures; and, principal!}, 
 that Great Britain should assist the consular government of 
 France (alias Bonaparte) in the attempt to reduce the negroes 
 of St. Domingo to their previous state of bondage; to " their 
 cane-pieces, coffee-grounds and spice-walks." The cham 
 pions of universal emancipation, who now, in the fervour of 
 their apostleship, proclaim it to be " the consummation of 
 wickedness," on our part, to tolerate even the existence of 
 slavery in our southern states, had, then, so little presentiment 
 of their vocation, or susceptibility to the impressions which 
 slavery, " in the most mitigated form," makes upon them 
 now, as they contemplate this republic, that they were eager 
 for its revival in its severest form, and on a very extensive 
 scale, in St. Domingo; because the independence of the ne 
 groes of that island seemed to threaten the security of tho 
 trade which supplied in part "our (the British) fleet with 
 seamen and our (the British) exchequer with millions." The 
 article in question calculates sanguinely and argumentatively 
 the advantage secured to Great Britain, on the supposition 
 that " France had completely succeeded in her colonial mea 
 sures, and, with whatever perfidy and cruelty, restored the 
 slavery of the negroes." And it is curious to remark the Ian 
 guage held in relation to the beings, for whose fate with us, so 
 profound and resentful a compassion is now expressed. 
 
 " The negroes are truly the Jacobins of the West India 
 islands they are the anarchists, the terrorists, the domestic 
 enemy. Against them it becomes rival nations to combine, 
 and hostile governments to coalesce. If Prussia and Austria 
 felt their existence to depend on an union against the revolu 
 tionary arms in Europe, (and who does not lament that their 
 coalition was not more firm and enlightened?) a closer alli 
 ance is imperiously recommended to France, and Britain, and 
 Spain, and Holland, against the common enemy of civilized 
 society, the destroyer of the European name in the new world." 
 " We have the greatest sympathy for the unmerited suffer 
 ings of the unhappy negroes ; we detest the odious traffic which 
 has poured their myriads into the Antilles; but ice must be per 
 mitted to feel some tenderness for our European brethren, al 
 though they are white and civilized, and to deprecate that incon 
 sistent spirit of canting philanthropy, which in Europe is only 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS, 
 
 239 
 
 r.xcited by the wrongs or miseries of the poor and the profligate; SEC. Yll. 
 and, on the other side of the Atlantic, is never warmed but to- ^-^^^ 
 wards the savage, the mulatto, and the slave!! 
 
 " Admitting all that has been urged against the planters and 
 their African providers, we are much of the opinion which 
 Lord Bacon has expressed in the following sentence : c It is 
 the sinfullest thing in the world to forsake a plantation once 
 in forwardness; for, besides the dishonour, it is the guiltiness 
 of the blood of many commiserable persons. 5 
 
 The Edinburgh Review is as much at variance with itself, 
 touching the points of the felicity and humanity of Great Bri 
 tain, as in that of her being the dispenser of universal freedom. 
 As far as the acknowledgment of overspreading pauperism 
 may be considered as an acknowledgment of national wretch 
 edness, we have it ija repeated instances. In the 58th number, 
 this evil is represented as " the menacing hydra who swells 
 so gigantically and stalks so largely over the face of the British 
 land." That this hydra had left the land, or had ceased to 
 swell and expatiate, when the critic wrote the phrase " it 
 would be madness not to admit England to be a very happy 
 country," no one acquainted with the progress of her affairs 
 could be bold enough to affirm. With respect to her humanity, 
 it is strangely emblazoned in the abstracts and opinions which 
 the Edinburgh Review has given, of the resistance to the abo 
 lition of the slave trade; of her administration of Ireland and 
 India; of her penal code; of the state of her public charities, 
 her prisons, her hospitals, and of the character of the ministry 
 whom she suffers to remain in power. A single passage, which 
 I take from their volume for 1817, may serve to show how 
 the critics vindicate, in the detail, the reputation of superior 
 humanity which they assert in the gross, for their country: 
 
 " The condition of pauper lunatics, in public institutions, 
 is shown sufficiently, by what has been already said. At pri 
 vate mad-houses, the management of the poor was no better. 
 At Talbot s, Bethnal Green, where the number was 230, and 
 at Rhodes s, Bethnal Green, where 275 paupers were crowd 
 ed together, there is proof of circumstances that deserve se 
 vere censure. At Miles, Worston, of 486 patients, 300 were 
 kept wholly without medical attention to their mental disor 
 der. The case is nearly the same throughout the whole of Eng 
 land; and the sheriff of Edinburghshire states, that u in no 
 instance did he find a pauper lunatic treated with kindness; m 
 several, marked inhumanity was observable." 
 
 In remarking, in reference to the United States, that "it is 
 not pleasant to emigrate to a country ef changes and revolv- 
 
940 HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PA in i. /ion," the same critics add, to enforce their observation 
 ^^~>^>w "then we have a parliament of inestimable value." In con 
 firmation of this discovery, I will appeal to the authority of 
 a late leader of the party to which they belong, a man 
 whose superlative judgment and candour they have celebrated 
 without bounds. 
 
 Sir S. Ilomiliy said * "Let us recollect that we are the parliament 
 which, for the first time in the history of this country, twice suspended 
 the habeas corpus act in a period of profound peace. Let us recollect 
 that we are the confiding parliament which entrusted his majesty s 
 ministers with the authority emanating 1 from that suspension, in expec 
 tation that when it was no longer wanted, they would call parliament 
 together to surrender it into their hands which those ministers did 
 not do, although they subsequently acknowledged that the necessit r 
 ibr retaining that power had long ceased to exist. Let us recollect that 
 we are the same parliament which consented to indemnify his majesty s 
 ministers for the abuses and violations of the law of which they had 
 been guilty, in the exercise of the authority vested in them. Let us 
 recollect that we are the same parliament which refused to inquire int 
 the grievances stated in the numerous petitions and memorials with 
 which otir table groaned that we turned a deaf ear to the complaints 
 of the oppressed that we even amused ourselves with their sufferings, 
 Let us recollect that we are the same parliament which sanctioned the 
 use of spies and informers by the British government debasing that, 
 government, once so celebrated for good faith and honour, into a con 
 dition lower in character than that of the ancient French police. Ler 
 us recollect that we are the same parliament which sanctioned the issu 
 ing of a circular letter to the magistracy of the country, by a secretary 
 of state, urging them to hold persons to bail for libel before an indict 
 ment, was found. Let us recollect that we are the same parliament 
 which sanctioned the sending out of the opinion of the king s attorney 
 general and the king s solicitor-general, as the law of the land. Le~ 
 us recollect that we are the same parliament which sanctioned the 
 shutting of the ports of this once hospitable nation to unfortunate fo 
 reigners flying from persecution in their own country. This, Sir, h 
 what we have done ; and we are about to crown all by the present mos: 
 violent and most unjustifiable act (the alien act). Who our successors 
 maybe I know not; but God grant that this country may never sec 
 another parliament as regardless of the liberties and rights of the peo- 
 pie, and of the principles of general justice, as this parliament ha ; 
 been !" 
 
 As an American, I may be excused, if, yielding to the pro 
 vocation of such language as that of the Edinburgh Review. 
 1 dwell a little longer, in this place, upon the evidence of the 
 more perfect freedom and tender humanity of Great Britain, 
 which is to be collected from other sources. It has been the 
 uniform cry of the leading members of the opposition in par 
 liament, as well as of the Scottish journal, that the ministry 
 could at any time find a majority to enable them to suspend 
 the habeas corpus act; and the same authorities have concurred 
 in the assertions that when the habeas corpus act was suspend - 
 
 * Debate of June 15, 1818, House of Commons. 
 
BfclflSH REVIEWS* 
 
 sd, there was no difference between the government of Great 
 Britain and the rule of the most despotic sovereign; that the 
 power which a minister had of committing to prison on such 
 occasions, was quite as great and as dangerous, as that of the 
 lettres de cachet, so celebrated in the annals of France. The 
 last British parliament, dissolved in 1818, suspended the ha 
 beas corpus twice in a time of profound peace with foreign 
 nations, Lord Castlereagh averring on the second occasion, 
 that unless the measure were adopted, "a bloody and disastrous 
 catastrophe was to be expected." 
 
 The state of things during the suspension will be made suf 
 ficiently known, by a few quotations from the debates in Parlia 
 ment on the subject, and will show the real value of the boast 
 for England, that "the greatest lord dare not lay a finger upon 
 the meanest peasant." 
 
 Lord Holland said (Feb. 19th, 1818) "that forty British subjects had 
 been, during the suspension of 1817, immured in prisons and discharged 
 without any trial." 
 
 Lord A." Hamilton said (Feb. 10th, 1818) "that government had 
 avowedly employed spies and informers,* who, it was generally ad 
 mitted, had, in many cases, fomented the evil which it was the object 
 to counteract. And he begged now to notice the lamentable condition 
 to which suspected persons, innocent or guilty, were thus reduced in 
 this frank and/ree country. Any man was liable, on the information ot* 
 these fomenting instead of detecting spies out of malice or to earn 
 their pay to be taken by secret warrant to secret imprisonment to 
 distant gaol all access denied him for fear of tampering* a law 
 officer to threaten or bribe some accomplice to give agreeable evi 
 dence under such circumstances, what chance had he of bare justice, 
 much less of successfully encountering his enemies. Such proceedings 
 were in direct opposition to all that they had been accustomed to vene 
 rate in the British constitution." 
 
 Mr. Fazakerley said (Feb. llth, 1818) "that during the suspension 
 of the habeas corpus, the powers with which it invested government 
 were by no means sparingly used. The gaols were filled with suspect 
 ed individuals, apprehended probably on the information of spies; and 
 many persons were thus, in all probability, made the victims of the 
 crimes of others. The various provinces witnessed the novel sight, of 
 state prisoners, itinerant state prisoners, carried about from one place 
 to another. Not that alone they saw them loaded with irons and 
 placed in close confinement." 
 
 Sir F. Burdett observed (March llth, 1818) "that no contradiction 
 had been attempted of the allegation, that men who had not been 
 found guilty of any offence who were merely accused, and, it was to 
 be presumed, wrongfully, as they were subsequently discharged, 
 were confined in solitary cells, and loaded with irons. In one instance 
 
 * The Earl of Westmoreland, one of the ministry, observed, in the 
 House of Lords, 5th March, 1818, "that spies and informers hud, from 
 the earliest periods of history, been the objects of popular dislike. 
 But he believed that no government had ever existed by which they 
 had not been used, and that hardly any conspiracy or treason had ever 
 been detected and punished without their aid," 
 
 VOL. I. H h 
 
242 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. two of these unfortunate individuals were chained together, compelled 
 v.^"v^x - / mutually to bear all the Infirmities of human nature; a most inhuman 
 practice, and one to which a tyrant of old is said to have resorted as to 
 a refinement of cruelty." 
 
 Sir S. "Romilly referred to "the petitions of the two hooksellers a: 
 Warrington, who being- charged with no higher offence than the pub 
 lishing of a libel, had hail their houses searched, their books and paper? 
 seized, and had been themselves loaded with irons ; ike felons, and 
 committed to the house of correction, and kept to hard labour, befor; 
 any trial had taken place." 
 
 "There was another case of the same kind," he continued, "but rf 
 st dl greater cruelty It was the case of a man of the name of Swir- 
 dells, whose house had been broken open in the dead of night, an<l 
 his books and papers seized His wife was at the time far advance I 
 in her pregnancy; the terror produced a premature labour, whic i 
 caused the death of herself and of the child ; and another infant, thi 
 only remains of the unhappy man s family, was, when he was dragge I 
 to gaol, conveyed to the parish workhouse, and from thence, in a shoit. 
 time, to the parish burying ground. The man, however, had bee i 
 guilty of no crime. His" family was destroyed he was himself du - 
 charged from prison, impoverished, ruined, a widower, and childless, 
 because some unfounded charge had been brought against him." 
 
 Lord Holland said (Feb. 27th, 1818) "that the noble duke who hai 
 introduced the present bill (indemnity bill) had treated the subject 
 rather lightly, by saying, that the government under the suspension act. 
 had merely abstracted a few individuals, for a time, from society 
 So then, you take men from their family, friends, and employments 
 you immure them in dungeons; vou doom them to solitary confine 
 ment for months; you expose their persons to every species of hart.- 
 ship, and their characters to every kind of suspicion, and you call this 
 only abstracting a few individuals from society for a time. " 
 
 In March, 1817, an act was passed by the Parliament, 
 "the seditious meetings hill," declaring in the case of any 
 public meeting, the punishment of death without benefit of 
 clergy, for non-compliance with the order of a simple magis 
 trate to disperse. At that period, there were no less than two 
 hundred crimes, besides murder, treason, and burglary, legally 
 punishable with death; and sixty of them had been made 
 capital in the reign of George III.; seventeen of these by one 
 act; and, of the number, one was for shooting a man; another 
 the killing of a rabbit; a third, trying to kill a man in his bed; 
 and a fourth, cutting down heads of fish-ponds. To this list 
 of capital offences may be added cutting a hop-bine, or an or 
 namental tree in gentlemen s grounds; going to a masquerade 
 with the face blacked, and many others of a similar cast which 
 are detailed in the speeches of Sir Samuel Romilly and Sir 
 James Mackintosh, on the British penal code. 
 
 By the Marriage Act five capital felonies are created in one 
 line. From official evidence presented to the House of Com 
 mons, it appears, that nineteen persons, and occasionally 
 twenty-one, have been executed on the same day in London. 
 We have an instance, within the three years last past, of a 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 243 
 
 woman of the name of Mary R;. an, who had assisted her bus- SFC VH. 
 band in an attempt lo escape iVom Newgate, being brough; to ^^^^^ 
 the bar for this oifence, a few hours after she saw him carried 
 to execution; and tried and condemned with her infant at her 
 breast, no withstanding, as Sir James Mackintosh stated in 
 the House of Commons, that she was, from the delirium of 
 her grief, as incapable of proceeding on her defence, or of ex 
 tenuating her act, as if she were in a state of confirmed insa 
 nity. Mr. Scarlett, a distinguished barrister, and member of 
 the House of Commons, asserted, in his place, without contra 
 diction, (on the 2d March, 1819,) that if there was any coun 
 try more disgraced by sanguinary enactments than another, it 
 was England. To illustrate further the recklessness of the 
 legislature in such enactments, and the nature of the admoni 
 tion to which it has remained insensible, I will extract from 
 the parliamentary history, part of a speecii delivered in .he 
 House of Commons by a member of high standing, the 13ih 
 of May, 1777, on the occasion of a bill for the better securing 
 dock yards, &c. by *he punishment of death. 
 
 Sir William Meredith said, 
 
 " Had it been fairly stated, and specifically pointed out, what 
 the mischief of coining silver in the utmost extent is, the hang 
 ing bill on that subject might not have been so readily adopted; 
 under the name of treason it found an easy passage. I indeed, 
 have always understood treason to be nothing less than some 
 act or conspiracy against the life or honour of the king, and 
 the safety of the state; but what the king or state can suffer 
 by my taking now and then a bad sixpence, or a bad shilling, 
 I cannot imagine. By this nickname of treason, however, 
 there lies at this moment in Newgate, under sentence to be 
 burnt alive, a girl just turned of 14; at her master s bidding 
 she hid some whitewashed farthings behind her stays, on 
 which the jury found her guilty as an accomplice with her 
 master in the treason. The master was hanged last Wednes 
 day; and the faggots all lay ready for her; no reprieve came 
 till just as the cart was setting out, and the girl would have 
 been burnt alive on the same day, had it not been for the 
 humane but casual interference of Lord Weymouth. Good 
 God! Sir, are we taught to execrate the fires of Smithfield, 
 while we are lighting them now to burn a poor harmless child 
 for hiding a whitewashed farthing! And yet this barbarous 
 sentence, which ought to make men shudder at the thought of 
 shedding blood for such trivial causes, is brought as a reason 
 for more hanging and burning," 
 
244 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PARTI. "When a member of Parliament brings in a new hanging 
 *-^~v-^- law, he begins with mentioning some injury that maybe done 
 to private property, for which a man is not yet liable to be 
 hanged, and then proposes the gallows as the specific, infalli 
 ble means of cure and prevention; but the bill in its progress 
 often makes crimes capital, that scarce, deserve whipping. 
 For instance, the shop-lifting act was to prevent bankers and 
 silver-smiths , and other shops, where there are commonly 
 goods of great value, from being robbed; but it goes so far, 
 as to make it death to lift any thing off a counter with ai, 
 intent to steal. Under this act, one Mary Jones was executed, 
 whose case I shall just mention: it was at the time whei 
 press warrants were issued on the alarm about Falkland s 
 Islands. The woman s husband was pressed; their goodr 
 seized for some debts of his, and she, with two small child 
 ren, turned into the streets a-begging. It is a circumstance 
 not to be forgotten, that she was very young, (under nineteen" 
 and most remarkably handsome. She went to a linen-dra 
 per s shop, took some coarse linen off the counter, and sloped 
 it under her cloak; the shopman saw 1 her, and she laid it 
 down: for this she was hanged! Her defence was, (I have 
 the trial in my pocket) c That she had lived in credit, and 
 wanted for nothing, till a press-gang came and stole her hus 
 band from her; but since then, she had no bed to lie on; no 
 thing to give her children to eat; and they were almost naked v 
 and perhaps she might have done something wrong, for she 
 hardly knew what she did. The parish officers testified to 
 the truth of this story; but it seems, there had been a good 
 deal of shop-lifting about Ludgate; an example was thought 
 necessary, and this woman was hanged for the comfort and 
 satisfaction of some shopkeepers in Ludgate-street. When 
 brought to receive sentence, she behaved in such a frantic 
 manner, as proved her mind to be in a distracted and despond 
 ing state; and the child was sucking at her breast when she set 
 out for Tyburn." 
 
 u But for what cause was God s creation robbed of this its 
 noblest work? It was for no injury; but for a mere attempt 
 to clothe two naked children by unlawful means. Compare 
 this, with what the state did, and with what the law did. 
 The state bereaved the woman of her husband, and the child 
 ren of a father, who was all their support; the law deprived 
 the woman of her life, and the children of their remaining 
 parent, exposing them to every danger, insult, and merciless 
 treatment, that destitute and helpless orphans suffer. Take 
 all the circumstances together, I do not believe that a fouler 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 murder was ever committed against law, than the murder of SEC.VH. 
 this woman by law. Some who hear me, are perhaps blam 
 ing the judges, the jury, and the hangman; but neither the 
 judge, jury nor hangman are to blame; they are but ministe 
 rial agents; the true hangman is the member of parliament; 
 he who frames the bloody law is answerable for all the blood 
 that is shed under it. I cannot find in history any example of 
 such laws as ours, except a code that was framed at Athens 
 by Draco." 
 
 Not merely the act of killing, but the mere attempt to kill 
 game at night, in an enclosed place, is felony subject to trans 
 portation for seven years, under the monstrous system of game 
 laws. In 1816, according to official returns made to Parlia 
 ment, twelve hundred persons were immured in various parts 
 of the kingdom, for offences against those laws, to the utter 
 ruin and overwhelming distress of many hundreds of poor 
 families. The preservation of game for the tables of the rich, 
 is the equivalent for this mass of human misery, which, at the 
 same time, confessedly leads to a depravation of morals among 
 the lower orders, considerably greater in the proportion. 
 
 One of the most respectable British Journals, Bell s Weekly 
 Messenger, June 22d, 1818, holds this language : 
 
 " We have often had occasion to say. and we shall repeat 
 it, that in no country in the world is the revenue so mercilessly 
 collected and enforced as in England. In no country in the 
 world is less conceded to private distress." The critics of 
 Edinburgh can hardly claim for Scotland an exemption from 
 this last reproach, if we are to credit the details given in the 
 following extract from the "Proceedings of the House of Com 
 mons" for the 30th April, 1818. 
 
 "Mr. Findlay rose to move for a return of the number of 
 prisoners confined for small debts in the several prisons of 
 Scotland. The House, he was persuaded, could hardly ima 
 gine the degree of misery which the prisoners alluded to were 
 condemned to suffer, and when the numbers who thus suffered 
 were taken into account, combined with the insignificant debls 
 for which they suffered, its astonishment must be excited, 
 while its feelings must be severely afflicted. In the prisons 
 of Glasgow alone, there were last year no less than ninety- 
 three persons confined for sums under one pound, and it was 
 to be recollected that not one of those was likely to come out 
 of prison, without having his morals polluted by the persons 
 he was obliged to associate with, while in prison. The whole 
 number of prisoners thus confined in all the Scottish prisons, 
 amounted, he had reason to believe, to several hundreds, while 
 
246 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I he apprehended that those confined for sums under ^f, 
 amounted to some thousands. He had also to observe tkt 
 none of these poor prisoners were entitled to any prison allow 
 ance or succour, uniil ten days after their committal, while 
 the receipt of each afterwards was only 4rf. per day. Yet 
 the creditor could not commit one of these prisoners, without 
 expending ten shillings, nor could lhe debtor be released with 
 out paying six shillings." 
 
 Some more extracts from the parliamentary debates of the 
 two last years, will restore the balance between England an 1 
 our southern states, according to the mode of account opene-l 
 by the Edinburgh Review, in the article on Fearon s Travele. 
 
 Lord R. Seymour observed (June 17th, 1817) "that gentlemen net 
 conversant with parish workhouses, were not aware how harshly th 3 
 pauper lunatics were treated in them. To prevent their escape, the/ 
 were consigned to the constant wear of the strait waistcoat, and this 
 being 1 , of all instruments of persona! restraint, the most heating an<l 
 irritating 1 , the poor lunatic in it becomes clamorous and noisy ; when t > 
 prevent his annoying his neighbour by his noise, the lancet was applied 
 to him, by which he was not unfrequently reduced to a state of exhaus 
 tion." 
 
 Mr. Bennet presented (Feb. 1st, 1819) "a petition from Dr. Halloran, 
 now under sentence of transportation for seven years, for forging u 
 frank to a letter, complaining of the hardships and cruelties to which 
 he was exposed. This case," the honourable member observed, " had 
 excited a good deal of interest, and very naturally, from the dispropor 
 tion between the offence and the penalty, and in reply, it was said that; 
 Dr. Halloran s character was very questionable, and that he was no 
 clergyman, &c. If the individual had assumed a character to which he. 
 was not entitled, why was he not prosecuted accordingly ? but as the 
 case now stood, it would appear as if the man were tried for one thing, 
 and punished on account of another. After mentioning the severe 
 treatment to which Dr. H. had been exposed before trial, in being con 
 fined among the most horrible characters, the honourable member pro 
 ceeded to give an account of the convict vessel in which this individual 
 was now confined ; a statement, which he begged the House to under 
 stand, he made from his own personal observation. Dr. II. was con* 
 veved to the hulks in an open boat, when extremely ill. and left in what 
 was called a cabin, but what he (Mr. B.) should term a hole or dungeon, 
 for nineteen hours, without any one going to him, saying nothing of the 
 absence of medical aid; he was placed in a hole or dungeon with twenty 
 other convicts the division being twelve feet squaw. In this hole or 
 dungeon were cribs six and a half feet long and five and a half feet 
 broad; and into one of these cribs six human beings were stowed 
 Here they passed the night without the opportunity of turning. 
 
 The honourable member added, that when he examined this vessel. 
 he was compelled to have the aid of a candle ; and he not only found 
 the cabins limited and confined, as already described, but they were 
 dirty and loathsome in the extreme. Such a sight was abominable to i< 
 country calling itself Christian, and particularly so to a government that 
 was peculiarly Christian. The description of the inside of a black 
 slave ship had recently excited a good deal of interest, not only in Eng 
 land, but throughout Europe. But what would the house say when they 
 learned that the inside of this white slave ship was worse than that of ii 
 black slave ship. According to the section of the latter vessel, the 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS, 247 
 
 blacks had one foot six inches breadth of reposing 1 room ; but the white SEC. VII. 
 slave ship only offered one foot one inch. He described what he had ^^^^_ -^_- 
 seen he pledged himself for the truth of what he stated." 
 
 Mr. B. Bathurst (one of the ministry) "did not mean to deny, that 
 there might be merit due to the honourable member for his active and 
 personal interference. Respecting the conditions of the vessels, those 
 who were condemned to them must expect many privations and hard 
 ships, and the ships -were snch as had loiur been used. The arguments 
 were therefore against the system, not against the particular case. The 
 convict ships were now fitted up in the way in which they ahvays had 
 bee?i" 
 
 Mr Bennetsaid (April 3d, 1819) "the House was aware that Ilches- 
 ter returned two members to parliament; it was a patronised place ; or, 
 in other words, if he might be permitted to use them, it was the pro 
 perty of a particular family. It appeared from the petition which he 
 held in his hands, that the proprietor thought a small number of con 
 stituents more advantageous ; and, to accomplish this object, he had 
 pulled down a number of houses, by which about one hundred fami 
 lies had been driven from their homes, and were received into a sort of 
 temporary poor-house, where they were sheltered for a time, yet only 
 eighteen or twenty of them had been paupers, the rest maintaining 
 themselves by honest industry. Notice was however given, in conse 
 quence of prevailing political dissensions, that these unhappy families 
 would be deprived of even that shelter; the parish resisted, and an 
 ejectment being brought, they were finally turned out; thus one hun 
 dred and sixty-three men, women, and children, from extreme infancy 
 to extreme age, had been driven into the open streets in the most in 
 clement season of the year; some had screened themselves from the 
 cold, with straw and hurdles; some had taken refuge in open stalls or 
 in the neighbouring fields; and a considerable number of old and young 
 of both sexes, decrepit old people with helpless infants and women in 
 the last stage of pregnancy, had been huddled together in the Town 
 Hall without distinction. The unroofing of houses had been heard of 
 as an expedient of exclusion; but it remained for the agents of the 
 proprietor of this borough, to drive a man, his wife, and five children 
 from their dwelling, by filling the upper floors with dung and filth, 
 which oozed and dripped through the ceilings." 
 
 7. Few of the persons who may have followed me thus 
 far in this section, will, I apprehend, any longer doubt that 
 " the vice of impertinence 1 has " crept" into the councils of 
 the Edinburgh Review, as well as into the British cabinet; 
 that it has actually " shared in the odious, miserable, vulgar 
 spirit of abuse" which it alleges the opposite political sect to 
 be "fond of displaying against America;" that it has never 
 even appeared to undertake her defence, but from party feel 
 ings and views; and that by perpetually contradicting itself 
 when treating of her concerns or those of England, it has 
 forfeited all claim to authority, on either side of the question. 
 Its readers mav still recollect how severely Cobbett was han 
 dled, in the 20th number, for the " versatility of his succes 
 sive doctrines;" and they will readily apply the following 
 paragraphs, with which it concluded its collation of those 
 doctrines. 
 
248 HOSTILITIES OP THE, &C. 
 
 PART i. " Now, vvliat is it that we infer from this strange altcrtia* 
 v^-v-^ tion of praise and blame in the pages of Mr. Cobbetl? Wly, 
 that nobody should care much for either; that they are he- 
 stowed from passion or party prejudice, and not from any 
 sound principles of judgment; and that it must be the most 
 foolish of all things, to take oiir impressions from a imn 
 whose own opinions have not only varied, but been absolutely 
 reversed, within these four years." 
 
 u By the uncharitable, such a man will always be regarded 
 as a professional bully, without principle or sincerity whose 
 services may be bought by any one who will pay their price 
 to his avarice or other passions; and the most liberal rm st 
 consider him as a person without any steadiness or depth of 
 judgment; accustomed to be led away by hasty views and 
 occasional impressions; entitled to no weight or authority, 
 in questions of delicacy or importance; and likely to he 
 found in arms against his old associates, on every material 
 change in his own condition, or that of the country." 
 
249 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 
 
 1. THE Quarterly Review is an avowed, implacable enemy, SEC. VIII. 
 and somewhat more important to us in its hostilities than the ^~^^~> 
 Edinburgh, on account of its intimate connexion with the Bri 
 tish government. It has constantly argued upon the general 
 question of American concerns, by a reference to the single 
 class of exceptions, and taken as the ground of universal 
 reprobation, those partial irregularities in morals and manners, 
 which are to be found in every country, and which, if they 
 were sufficient to warrant the charge of barbarism or depra 
 vation against a whole nation, would be equally competent to 
 prove that there is no civilization nor virtue left on the earth. 
 
 Mr. Burke said, in his speech on the Conciliation with Ame 
 rica " I do not know the method of drawing up an indict 
 ment against a whole people. I cannot insult and ridicule 
 the feelings of millions of my fellow creatures. I am not 
 ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public bodies entrusted 
 with magistracies of great authority and dignity, and charged 
 with the safety of their fellow-citizens, upon the same title 
 as a member of the British parliament." What this elevated 
 and enlightened personage thus declared himself incompetent 
 to perform, is the frequent and favourite achievement of a 
 junto of poets and politicians in London, who profess to be 
 of the number of his most faithful disciples and enthusiastic 
 admirers. What he pronounced to be " for wise men, not 
 judicious; for sober men, not decent; for minds tinctured 
 with humanity, not mild and merciful;" they can practise 
 without shame, even with ostentation, towards the same coun 
 try, the vilification of which occasioned his remarks. 
 
 Opinions utterly repugnant to each other; the most intem 
 perate and incautious sallies of hate and jealousy; allegations 
 so exorbitant as at once to betray and defeat the purpose of 
 the writers, characterize the articles of the Quarterly Review 
 which relate to the United States. At the same time, nothing 
 is to be found in them of the judgment, humour, knowledge, 
 and elocution, which recommend other parts of the Journal. 
 
 VOL. I. I i 
 
250 
 
 HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PARTI. The Edinburgh Review is jocose at our expense through 
 **^>^w pertnes s and arrogance; the Quarterly from national fears 
 and monarchical antipathy; and the leer of the one is, accord 
 ingly, only smirking, while that of the other is Sardonic. 
 
 It was utterly unworthy of men of high rank in the world 
 of literature, and criticism; of political teachers of the loftiest 
 pretensions; of wits claiming to be the successors of the Swift > 
 and Arbuthnots; to appear speculating, and deciding, and jest 
 ing upon a great country, like America, with such manuals a* 
 the travels of Ashe, Janson, Parkinson, Fearpn, illiterate and 
 interested slanderers, for whom they could not conceal thei 
 own hearty contempt, and whose publications, on any other 
 subject, they would have cast from them in disdainful silence. 
 If it had become necessary, for state purposes, such as th ^ 
 prevention of emigration, the weakening of a contrast unfa 
 vourable to the British order of things, and the counteraction cf 
 a dangerous influence with the nations of the continent, or for 
 the gratification of a prurient wit, a restless arrogance, or pri 
 vate political pique, that the United States should be reviled 
 and derided, self-respect and sound policy exacted an exertion 
 of patience to await, or of ingenuity to contrive, some othe/ 
 occasion than those afforded by reports, the whole cast and 
 tone of which, betrayed to the world, the insufficiency ami 
 venality of the authors. The British reviewers would have 
 consulted their own dignity, and the important object of plau 
 sibility in their expositions of our character and condition 
 more, had they resorted altogether for texts even to the news 
 papers written among us by " the expatriated Irishmen and 
 Scotchmen," of whom the Edinburgh Journal speaks, rathei 
 than to books coarsely manufactured in London, out of the 
 meanest and flimsiest materials brought thither by disappointed 
 or stipendiary Englishmen, whose pursuits and views made i 
 impossible, for any reflecting person to believe, that they hao 
 possessed either the opportunity, capacity, or inclination tc 
 represent the Americans justly and fairly. Other oracles be 
 sides these; or a course of original, and well-adjusted detrac 
 tion, by argument, assertion, and ridicule, were wanting to 
 enable critics, of whatever general authority in their voca 
 tion, to sophisticate the feelings, and bewilder the reason, 
 of mankind, in relation to the United States. I question 
 whether a single auxiliary hits been raised on the continent of 
 Europe, for the crusade against the American name, by the 
 passages which I am about to quote from the Quarterly Re 
 view, as samples of its liberality and veracity. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 " An American s first play-thing is a rattle snake s tail SEC.VIH, 
 he cuts down a tree on which the wild pigeons have built v^-v-^- 
 their nests, and picks up a horse load of young birds." 
 
 " Intoxication with the Americans is not social hilarity be 
 trayed into excess; it is too rapid a process for that interval 
 of generous feeling which tempts the European on. Their plea 
 sure is first in the fiery stimulus itself, not in its effect not 
 in drunkenness, but in getting drunk." 
 
 u Hence the ferocity with which the Americans decide 
 their quarrels: their rough and tumbling: their biting and 
 lacerating each other, and their gouging, a diabolical prac 
 tice which has never disgraced Europe, and for which no 
 other people have ever had a name."* 
 
 " Living in a semi-savage state, the greater part / the 
 Americans are so accustomed to dispense with the comforts of 
 life which they cannot obtain, that they have learned to ne 
 glect even those decencies which are within their reach." 
 
 u They have overrun an immense country, not settled it. In 
 this as in every thing else, the system of things is forced be 
 yond the age of the colonies." 
 
 "The manners are boorish, or, rather, brutal. **In America 
 nothing seems to be respected; there the government is bet 
 ter than the people. The want of decorum among the Ame 
 ricans is notimputable to their republican government; for it 
 has not been found in other republics ; it has proceeded from 
 the effects of the revolutionary war, from their premature in 
 dependence, and from that passion for gambling which infects 
 att orders of men, clergy as well as laity, and the legislators as 
 well as the people."* 
 
 u The state of law in America is as deplorable as that of 
 religion, ami far from extraordinary."! 
 
 " Two millions of slaves are now smarting under the lash 
 in the American states: more than three millions have been 
 imported and sold in those pure regions since the defeat of 
 Cornwallis."| 
 
 * No. 4. Article on Holmes s Annals. See Note R. 
 
 f No. 6. Article on Northmore s Washington. 
 
 t This allegation was made in 1809, only 28 years from the period of 
 the defeat of Cornwallis : so that on an "average more than 10 ! ,000 
 must have been annually imported! By the census of the population 
 of the United States for 1810, the whole number of slaves was then 
 only 1,191,364. Therefore, at least two millions must have perished 
 among us since 1781 ! It is wonderful that the African Association of 
 London has not yet availed itself of this portentous fact, vouched by 
 the Quarterly Review. 
 
HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. " Every free woman is a voter in America."* 
 ^-*~v-^^ " The judges are not independent; but are subservient ti 
 the government, and creatures of ihe President and Senate." 
 
 a No such character as a respectable country gentleman b 
 known in America.":): 
 
 " For the practitioners of law, physic, and surgery, no 
 preparatory course of study, no testimonial of competency, no 
 kind of examination, no particular qualifications, no diploma, 
 no license are required. " 
 
 " Franklin in grinding his electrical machine and flying 
 his kite, did certainly elicit some useful discoveries in a 
 branch of science that had not much engaged the attention of 
 the philosophers of Europe. But the foundation of Franklin s 
 knowledge was laid, not in America, but in London. Be 
 sides, half of what he wrote was stolen from others, and thj 
 greater part of the other not worth preserving. It would be 
 rating his moral writings very high to estimate them at th? 
 same value to the community as his eleemosynary legacy. || 
 
 " The supreme felicity of a (rue born American is inaction 
 of body and inanity of mind. "IT 
 
 " Strange as it may appear, the south western part of the 
 New World has already begun to consider the north eastern 
 as having passed the meridian of /i/e, and accordingly given it 
 the name of old America."** 
 
 " The founders of American society brought to the compo 
 sition of their nation no rudiments of liberal science." 
 
 " America is all a parody a mimicry of her parents; it is, 
 however, the mimicry of a child, tetchy and wayward in 
 its infancy, abandoned to bad nurses, and educated in low 
 habits." 
 
 In the 4th number we were told " there has been little 
 mixture of nations in America, not more than in England;" 
 but in the 90th number, we find the reviewer talking of 
 America as " a nation derived from so many fathers," and 
 explaining " why the thoughtless, dissolute, and turbulent 
 of all nations should in commingling, so neutralize one an 
 other in America, that the result is a people without wit .or 
 fancy." 
 
 At times, this journal has gone into a train of elaborate 
 reasoning to prove the opposition of interests between " Old 
 worn owf," and " New America," and the certitude of their 
 speedy severance. From the same motive political jea- 
 
 *No. 20. tlbid. II Ibid. ** Ibid, 
 
 j Ibid. Ibid. U No. 38. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 253 
 
 lousy and alarm which it has never been able to conceal, it SEC.vm. 
 has dealt in menacing cautions, of which the following will <^^~^- 
 serve as an amusing specimen, and disclose the kind of 
 comfort which is sought among the ministerial literati of 
 London, for ihe increase of our power. 
 
 " It is not in Europe only that the prosperity of Russia is 
 likely to be advantageous to the British monarchy. There 
 is a nation without the limits of Europe, to whom, for the 
 sake of our kindred race and common language, we would 
 gladly wish prosperity, but whose hope of elevation is built 
 on our expected fall; and who, even now, do not affect to 
 conceal the bitterness of their hatred towards the land of their 
 progenitors. Already we hear the Americans boasting that 
 the whole continent must be their own; that the Atlantic and 
 Pacific are, alike to wash their empire, and that it depends 
 on their charity what share in either ocean they may allow to 
 our vessels. They unroll their map and point out the dis 
 tance between Niagara and the Columbia. Let them look 
 to this last point well. They will find in that neighbour 
 hood a different race from the unfortunate Indians whom it is 
 the system of their government to treat with uniformharsJiness!! 
 They will find certain bearded men with green jackets and 
 bayonets, whose flag is already triumphant over the coast from 
 California to the straits of Anian, who have the faculty 
 wherever they advance, of conciliating and even civilizing 
 the native tribes to a degree which no other nation has at 
 tempted, and whose frontier is more likely to meet theirs in 
 Louisiana, than theirs is to extend to the Pacific. These are 
 not very distant expectations, and they are not unfavourable to 
 England." (April, 1818). 
 
 2. Our backwardness in the production of good books, has 
 not been quite so favourite and frequent a topic with the 
 Quarterly Review, as the other assailable points more in the 
 line of the political object. In the midst of the first general 
 denunciation of this country,* we find it admitted, we may- 
 presume inadvertently, that " it is no great reproach to the 
 Americans if they have not yet done more in literature; and 
 that more ought not to be expected from their circumstances 
 and population." Nevertheless, the same writers have not 
 failed to ring all the changes upon the works of Dwight, Bar 
 low, and " Mr. Chief Justice Marshall. 1 " The course pur 
 sued with three of the American publications, Inchiquins s 
 
 * Review of Holme s Annals, No. 4. 
 
254 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. View of the United States, the Travels of Lewis and Clarke, 
 ^r^^s and Colden s Life of Fulton to which they afterwards ex 
 tended their notice, is marked by traits as discreditable ar d 
 disgusting as individuate any case in the annals of British cri 
 ticism. 
 
 The " View of the United States" was a mere vindication 
 of the native country of the author from the aspersions cast 
 upon it abroad; it simply represented the main features jf 
 our character and condition; pourtrayed with an impartial 
 hand some of our most conspicuous statesmen; and asserted 
 the merits of two of the American works, which had be< n 
 traduced in England. It attempted no reprisals upon the 
 English aggressors; used no harsh language; decried no Eu 
 ropean nation. It did not even run into an indiscriminate 
 panegyric of the United States, though it professed to be a 
 "favourable view of them," which might be considered as it 
 least pardonable, after so much had been written in Europe 
 on the opposite side. Its general complexion argued libenl 
 studies, and it was recommended by a diction, liable indeed 
 to some exceptions, but, on the whole, classical, elegant, and 
 vigorous. In short, there was enough about it to soften the 
 national prejudices, and even to win the praise, of a European 
 critic of ordinary liberality. The Quarterly Review, how 
 ever, assailed this, in itself inoffensive and commendable 
 performance, with the utmost asperity; it reviled the author 
 personally; misrepresented his opinions and misquoted his 
 language; and took occasion to rake in all the lampoons and 
 gazettes already noticed, for materials, out of which it framed 
 what it called " a correct portrait of the people of the United 
 States," but what no perspicacious and generous mind can 
 see in any other light than as a malignant libel, and hideous 
 caricature. 
 
 The u History of Lewis and Clarke s Expedition" had not 
 merely nothing in it, to give umbrage, or to rouse national 
 antipathies, but seemed to prefer irresistible claims upon the 
 favour of all the friends of knowledge, and to leave scope 
 only for the most generous sympathies. The book is a sim 
 ple, clear narrative, without reference to any invidious topics; 
 and the expedition itself was alike unexceptionable in the 
 design, conduct, and results, all of which, indeed, bear a 
 salient character of excellence and dignity. It stifled the 
 petulance, and extorted the admiration, of the Scottish critics, 
 who set the proper example to their brethren of London, by 
 pronouncing upon it the following eulogy. 
 
 "We must remark, that this expedition does great credit 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 255 
 
 both to the government by which it was planned, and to the SEC. vill. 
 persons by whom it was executed. The good sense, activity ^^^^^ 
 and perseverance of the commanders cannot be too much 
 commended; their treatment of the natives was humane and 
 kind; and though their mission was in its intention concilia 
 tory, yet this purpose could not have been carried into effect 
 but by men of much good temper and sound understanding, 
 considering how long they were exposed to the vexations aris 
 ing from the suspicion, caprice, and levity of savages. The 
 great harmony that seems to have prevailed, the spirit, steadi 
 ness, and exertion in the midst of so much hardship and dan 
 ger, are highly meritorious; and exhibit a band of active and 
 intrepid men, which no country in the world would not be 
 proud to acknowledge." 
 
 This was a strain worthy of the theory of the critical in 
 stitute, but the spirit of the Quarterly Review could not be 
 exorcised as completely. It relented so far as to admit that 
 Lewis and Clarke " travelled near 9000 miles the longest 
 river voyage undertaken since that of Orellana;" and that 
 " they performed with equal ability, perseverance, and suc 
 cess, one of the most arduous journies that ever was accom 
 plished." Acknowledged merits of such magnitude called 
 for tenderness to the reputation of the individuals in all points; 
 for the kindest interpretation of appearances in the least doubt 
 ful; yet the English Reviewer did not hesitate scornfully to 
 intimate, that they took pleasure in the obscenities of the In 
 dians of the Missouri;* and this affront is given upon no 
 other foundation than that those obscenities are related. The 
 relation, too, is in Latin, uncouth Latin indeed; but such as 
 it is, it evinces, in the use of this veil, a refinement of feeling, 
 the opposite of the imputed grossness. Let the voyages of 
 Captain Cook, Captain Wilson, and other English navigators; 
 or the narratives of any of the English travellers among 
 savage nations, be consulted, and it will be seen that they are 
 much less studious of decorum; and that a charge of the kind 
 might be made against them with more plausibility, if we 
 admit there could be any colour of reason for making it on 
 
 * "The women of the Aricara Indians prostitute themselves publicly, 
 in the intervals of dancing. The writer cannot be charged with offend 
 ing decewcy in describing this abomination, he has related another not 
 less abominable, in Latin, from respect to decorum^ but in both instances it 
 is evident that he and his companion were not men -who felt any pain at 
 beholding tlie degradation of human nature" The very reverse is evident 
 to all who are not of the class of moralists and philanthropists " wil- 
 r inr to love all mankind, except an American" 
 
256 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART i. such a foundation. The personal acquaintance of the two 
 /"V-A-^N gallant leaders of the American expedition, requires no argu 
 ment to be convinced of their uniform elevation of sentimeat 
 and deportment. 
 
 They were, certainly, unfortunate in the choice of names 
 for the natural objects which they were the first to bring to 
 the knowledge of the civilized world. But this merit of dis 
 cover), and the sagacity, fortitude, perseverance, exemplary 
 temper displayed throughout the expedition, rendered doubly 
 vpnial so inconsiderable a fault. A refined classical taste has 
 belonged to very few of the illustrious men to whom we are 
 indebted for the enlargement of geographical science; and tie 
 exploration of the wild creation through which Lewis and 
 Clarke penetrated, presented the case, if ever there was ore, 
 in which the absence of that accomplishment could be consi 
 dered as excusable in itself, or its effects nay even advai- 
 tageous on the whole, and immediately conducive to the more 
 perfect achievement of the gigantic enterprise. Instead of 
 the gentle and courteous reproof which became the occasion, 
 the Quarterly Review made their homely nomenclature the 
 subject of unsparing satire, and turned it into doggerel levelled 
 not only against the heroic adventurers, but their country, and 
 particularly against the high officers of state with whom the 
 expedition originated. If the wretched diatribe to which 
 I refer, coarser by far in its texture than the occasion of it; 
 too low even for a place in "Coleman s Broad Grins," be 
 longs to the pen of the Author of the Baviad and Mreviadj 
 and the Translator of Juvenal; of the scourge of poetasters, 
 and the assayer of English verse, it furnishes a striking ex 
 ample of the power of national prejudice and party-devotion, 
 to work the most violent and pitiable transformations. How 
 capital this stroke at the Americans, on the occasion of their 
 disclosing a new world to the gaze of philosophy and the 
 march of civilization ! 
 
 "Flow, Little Shallow, flow, and be thy stream 
 Their great example, as it will their theme !" 
 
 And how natural and happy the transition from such wit in 
 numbers, to such wit in prose, as the following! u From 
 Big Muddy, they, the explorers to borrow a title of Ameri 
 can extraction proceeded to Jefferson, and with not less feli 
 city to Madison from Little Shallow," &c. 
 
 Before I have done with the article in question, I would . 
 call attention to two more passages as illustrative of the spirit 
 presiding over the American department of the Journal. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 257 
 
 "It was not long before they (Lewis and Clark) reached SEC vm. 
 the remotest source of the Missouri, and drank of the fountain v^v^/ 
 a situation not altogether unworthy of being compared with 
 that of Bruce at the fountain of -the Abyssinian Nile." 
 
 " Langsdorff notices a curious trade which the Americans 
 carry on in this article of fire arms on the North West Coast. 
 He says they send out a gunsmith in every ship, to buy up at 
 one place all the guns which want repairing, and sell them as 
 new pieces at another !" 
 
 I aver, upon the authority of some of the distinguished Ame 
 rican merchants who trade with the North West Coast, that 
 this statement, so kindly copied from Langsdorff, is utterly 
 false. Were it true, it would not enable us as yet, to dispute 
 the palm of fraudulent ingenuity, with our English kinsmen. 
 It falls short of such a practice as the following related by 
 Mr. Southey in "Espriella s Letters;" a better authority than 
 Langsdorff. " A regular branch of trade here, at Birming 
 ham, is the manufacture -of guns for the African market. 
 They are made for about a dollar and a half: the barrel is 
 filled with water; and, if the water does not come through, it 
 is thought proof sufficient: of course they burst ichen fired, and 
 mangle the wretched negro, icho has purchased them upon the 
 credit of English faith, and received them, most probably, as 
 the price of human flesh! No secret is made of this abominable 
 trade; yet the government never interferes; and the persons con 
 cerned in it are not marked, and shunned as infamous. r ^ 
 
 The story from Langsdorff is entitled to about the same 
 credit as the assertion made in the 26ih No. of the Quarterly 
 Review, that Captain Porter of the American frigate Essex, 
 after losing half his crew, was taken by a ship of inferior force. 
 The hardihood of the Reviewer may almost confound those 
 who read the following extract, from the official letter, dated 
 30th March, 1814, of Captain Hillyar of his Majesty s ship 
 Phoebe (the antagonist of Porter) to Commodore Brown, sta 
 tioned at Jamaica. u The defence of the Essex, taking into con 
 sideration our great superiority of force, the very discouraging 
 circumstances of having lost her main top-mast, and being 
 twice on fire, did honour to her defender, and must fully prove 
 the courage of Captain Porter." 
 
 The c Life of Robert Fulton, by, Cadwallader D. Colden 
 of New York, has experienced a treatment from these up 
 right critics, more remarkable still, and, if possible, more 
 
 * See also, on this head, Clarkson s History of the Abolition of the 
 Slave Trade, Vol. II. c. iii, 
 
 VOL. I. K k 
 
HOSTILITIES UP THE 
 
 PART I. shameless. The work of Mr. Golden appears as a mere 
 v ^ v ^ w/ Biographical Memoir, read before the Literary and Philoso 
 phical Society of New York, conformably to one of the prin 
 cipal ends of that respectable institution. It obtained the shape 
 of a book at the request of those to whom it was addressed; 
 and the proceeds of its publication, whatever they might be. 
 were assigned to the erection of a. monument to the memory of 
 the illustrious engineer. The author announced himself, eveia 
 in the title-page, emphatically as his friend, and took charge, 
 avowedly, of his panegyric. This, for one who had known 
 him in relations of the closest intimacy, and when the deceased 
 had left so many titles to the most solemn commemoration- 
 was unexceptionable in itself, and sanctioned, moreover, by 
 abundant precedents in the practice of the European nations. 
 Mr. Golden was not a writer by profession or habit; he be 
 longed to the bar, at which he had established the highest re 
 putation, and filled the highest office. He is now mayor oi 
 the city of New York; a station .of great consequence and 
 dignity. He is the grandson of the Lieutenant Governor Col- 
 den who wrote the celebrated History of the rive Indian Na 
 tions, arid whose merits and honours in the world of science, 
 are second only to those of Franklin, among the men that 
 have flourished on the American continent as politicians and 
 philosophers.* The biographer of Fulton has shown himself 
 worthy of this descent, by an acknowledged, invariable pro 
 bity; a versatile genius; and the assiduous cultivation of the 
 sciences and liberal arts in the midst of extensive professional 
 engagements, and of arduous municipal duties. It was in mo 
 ments snatched from these, that, to gratify his feelings and the 
 wishes of the learned society which ranks him as one of its most 
 useful and erudite members, he framed the Memoir in ques 
 tion, with a full conviction, derived from the nearest observa 
 tion, of the reality of the services and qualities which he cele 
 brated: and, whatever he may have claimed of excellence for 
 the labours of Fulton, it is impossible he could have been 
 more unassuming, or unpretending, as respects his own pro 
 duction. If he has asserted extravagant titles for his subject, it 
 is manifestly without any designs, from no impulses which 
 can lay him open to personal reproach or incivility. The 
 tenor of his book proves his competency to his task; in 
 point of style, arrangement, and general instmctiveness, it is 
 all that could be expected or desired for the occasion. 
 
 He was led by the nature of his theme, and the wonders 
 of steam-navigation which he witnessed about him, to medi- 
 
 * See note Si 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 259 
 
 late much, and lay the utmost stress, upon the magnitude of SEC. vm. 
 its benefits to the human race. It is not surprising <hat these v -^^~^- > 
 should appear of less consequence and sublimity, to an ob 
 server in England, where, from the shortness of the distances 
 and the facilities of canal navigation, so little, comparatively, 
 remained to be done for internal communication; where the 
 small steam-boats, plying on the diminutive streams, and 
 serving only the purpose*of conveying passengers a few miles 
 with greater convenience, are so little imposing either to ihe 
 eye or to the imagination. But in America, the actual and 
 future scene, in this respect, has an engrossing and transport 
 ing influence, and is of a real importance and magnificence, 
 which scarcely leave scope for exaggeration in feeling or repre 
 sentation. 
 
 Mr. Golden saw steam-vessels of four and five hundred tons, 
 constructed as commodiously, arid furnishing as perfect secu 
 rity for merchandise or passengers, as the ware or the dwel 
 ling-house; overcoming with unexampled velocity the power 
 ful currents of our mighty rivers; multiplying indefinitely on 
 the innumerable waters of this vast country, and almost ac 
 complishing the wish of the lover the annihilation of time 
 and space in the domestic intercourse of North America. 
 He could at once extend his view to the southern regions of 
 this hemisphere; to the continents of Europe, Africa, and 
 Asia, and see in prospect the same prodigies wrought there, 
 and the same train of moral and physical advantages ulti 
 mately jealized. He had seen a steam-frigate of gigantic size, 
 moving on the Hudson with the facility and force of motion, 
 and the military faculties, which would assure invulnerability 
 to the seaports of his country, and might give a new and de 
 sirable character to maritime warfare.* He had seen, to use 
 his own words, "the Paragon, of three hundred and thirty- 
 one tons burthen, tow the steam frigate Fulton, which is of - 
 the burthen of two thousand four hundred and seventy-five 
 tons, from the ship yards in the Sound, where she was launch 
 ed, to the clock or the city of Jersey, on the Hudson, where 
 she was to receive her machinery, at the rate of four miles 
 
 * " Every one," says Cuvier, in his brilliant Discourse of 24th April, 
 1816, on the Progress of the Sciences, before the French Institute 
 "every one may see how much this invention of Steam -Boats will sim 
 plify the navigation of our rivers, and how much agriculture will gain 
 in men and horses, that may now return to the fields ; but what we may 
 be also permitted to descry, and what will, perhaps, be more impor 
 tant, is the revolution to which it will lead in maritime warfare and in 
 the power of nations. It is extremely probable that we shall have to 
 reckon this among the experiments, that can be said to have changed 
 the face of the world." 
 
^UU HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. and an half an hour; the same frigate, propelled by that ma- 
 v "^^ v " > ^ chinery alone, make a passage to the ocean and back, a dis 
 tance of 53 miles, in eight hours and twenty minutes th ; 
 Fulton steam boat, which navigates the East river, passing 
 daily through Hell-gate against a rapid frequently running &t 
 the rate of six miles an hour." 
 
 The crossing of the broadest and most rapid rivers, before 
 alike dangerous, difficult, and tedious., had been rendered salt , 
 easy, and expeditious, by the use of steam ferry-boats, capa 
 ble of carrying hundreds of passengers and vehicles at a 
 time, and almost any mere burden. 
 
 From these performances, prospects and hopes naturally 
 opened upon the mind of our author, which would have 
 warmed any fancy; and sentiments of admiration and grati 
 tude towards Fulton were excited, which cannot appear h} - 
 perbolical to an American, especially at this time, when we 
 know that a steam-ship is on her passage across the Atlantic; 
 and that a fleet of steam-vessels are making their way, with a 
 detachment of (he army of the Uniied States, to establish a 
 post at the Yellow Stone, on the Missouri, in the interior of 
 our continent, two thousand miles from the mouth of the 
 Mississippi. These two facts render it not improbable that, 
 by the same means, the passage between Europe and America 
 will be made in less time, and with less inconvenience, than 
 a journey between Edinburgh and London was accomplished 
 half a century ago; and that a commerce between the Atlantic 
 and Pacific Oceans may be maintained, through the Columbia 
 and Missouri, with as much certainty and facility, as it is 
 between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. 
 
 With such ulterior results as likely, and with the incalculable, 
 realized good, before him, Mr. Colden ventured to say of the man 
 whom he considered as its immediate, intelligent author, that 
 "there could not be found in the records of departed worth, 
 the name of a person to whose individual exertions mankind 
 are more indebted, nor one which would live farther into 
 time, if not robbed of the fame due to superior genius, exerted 
 with wonderful courage, industry, perseverance, and success." 
 No impartial and reflecting reader could view this declaration 
 as extravagant, or fail to approve both of the tone and pur 
 port of the passage which immediately follows in the biogra 
 phy. " If the construction of a bridge, or the formation of a 
 canal, has often given a celebrity which has been transmitted 
 through many ages, what fame and what gratitude does not he 
 deserve, who has furnished a means of transportation which 
 may bring the inhabitants of the different quarters of the 
 world nearer to each other than, previously, those of the same 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 261 
 
 territory considered themselves; which will spread with a fa- SEC. VIII. 
 eility before unknown, the influence of religion, civilization, s^^v-^^ 
 and the arts; which will bring the whole human species to 
 an intimate acquaintance with each other; and will unite 
 mankind by the bonds of mutual intercourse." 
 
 Fulton himself had never pretended that he was the first 
 projector or inventor of steam-boat navigation; and his bio 
 grapher is far from having ascribed to him this merit. Mr. 
 Golden admitted that " some ingenious attempts to propel 
 boats by steam had been made long before the time Mr. Ful 
 ton was known to have thought of it;" and that the idea ori 
 ginated with an Englishman, Mr. Jonathan Hulls, who pub 
 lished his scheme in 1737, at London. Our author received 
 implicitly the statement respeeiing Hull s suggestions, which 
 he read in Buchanan s " Treatise on Propelling Vessels by 
 Steam," a work that appeared in Scotland in 1817. What 
 he claimed for Fulton, and what alone Fulton claimed for 
 himself, was, his being the first, who, by improvements on 
 the mere conceptions or vain attempts, of others, established 
 steam-navigation so as to render it perpetually practicable 
 and unboundedly useful improvements effected not by a 
 lucky chance or cunning plagiary, but by a rare combina 
 tion of inventive powers, of mathematical and philosophical 
 science, of mechanical knowledge and experience, and of 
 intrepidity and perseverance. Buchanan, the Scottish writer 
 whom 1 have just mentioned, had owned in his treatise, 
 while vindicating the credit of origination for Hulls, that 
 u the steam-boats of Fulton were the first that succeeded in a 
 profitable way." A more absolute admission, ratifying fully 
 the doctrine of Mr. Golden, has been made in the April num 
 ber of Dr. Thompson s Annals of Philosophy, in an able 
 paper on the origin of steam-boats. The writer holds the 
 following language. " Jt is not a little remarkable in the his 
 tory of the arts, and forms a striking instance of the slow and 
 progressive steps by which they advance, that that most ele 
 gant and useful discovery, the steam-boat, first brought forward 
 in 1736, by Jonathan Hulls of London, and afterwards pub 
 licly investigated and tried by Lord Stanhope and Mr. Miller 
 of Dalswinton, should have been carried to America, and 
 there first have changed its character from mere experiment 
 to extensive practice and utility, and that it should again have 
 been introduced into Britain upon the experience of Americans, 
 only so lately as the year 1813, when it was first employed 
 upon the river Clyde." Even the Quarterly Review, in the 
 article upon which I am about to animadvert, avows it to be 
 
262 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART r. " beyond all question that Mr. Fulton made considerable im- 
 ^-^-v-^ provements in the application of the steam-engine to the navi 
 gation of boats;" and adds u It is quite natural that the 
 Americans should uphold the reputation of their own country 
 men. We cannot blame them for it, and some allowance 
 may reasonably be made for excess of panegyric, in speaking 
 of artists of native growth." 
 
 I have premised all these details, in order to the better un 
 derstanding of the article in question, which I will now cu> 
 sorily examine. It begins thus: 
 
 " Although our readers may be inclined to give us credit 
 for some knowledge of our transatlantic brethren, yet we CBD 
 honestly assure them that we were not quite prepared for such 
 a sally as this of Cadwallader Golden, Esq." &c. alluding o 
 his declaration noticed above of the obligations of mankind to 
 Fulton. We have then a series of sneers at the panegyrics 
 pronounced upon the engineer by others of his countrymen, 
 and at the New York Historical Society. The Reviewers 
 themselves sit in judgment upon Fulton, and describe him rs 
 a a man who possessed just talent enough to apply the inven 
 tions of others to his own purposes." Mr. Golden is taxed with 
 disingenuity and misrepresentation, and ever and anon, with 
 as much urbanity as wit, styled " Mr. Cadwallader Golden," 
 " friend Cadwallader," " the conscientious and consistent 
 friend," &c. The critics, by way. we must suppose, of teach 
 ing him a lesson of ingenuousness and truth, assume, that he 
 had arrogated for Fulton the merit of discovery, in the case of 
 the steam-boat, and proceed laboriously to refute the pretended 
 doctrine. 
 
 It is unlucky, that in setting out, they could find no stronger 
 language in the work of Mr. Golden, than the phrase " We 
 and all the world are indebted to Fulton for the establishment 
 of navigation by steam." With the biography in their hands., 
 and acquainted, no doubt, with what Buchanan had written, 
 they do not scruple to introduce and parade the theory of 
 Hulls, in such a way precisely, as if they were the first to 
 announce it, and Mr. Golden and America to be confounded 
 with the disclosure. They give an account of Mr. Miller s 
 experiments, in the year 1787, on the Forth and Clyde 
 Canal, which they acknowledge " did not succeed to his 
 entire satisfaction;" and they lay great stress upon those of 
 one of his assistants, of the name of Symington, who pursued 
 his ideas, with no better success in the end. We are told by 
 them, that Fulton paid a visit to Symington, and examined 
 his boat; and in the same manner, it is affirmed, equally with- 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 263 
 
 out the production of any evidence, in the paper of Thomp- SEC.vm. 
 son s Annals, to which I have referred, that Fulton saw the ^*~v~^/ 
 experiments of Miller a circumstance highly improbable, 
 since Fulton was born only in 1765, and did not leave this, 
 his native country, until after his majority. 
 
 The very attempts of the Reviewers to invalidate the claim 
 set up for Fulton, tend to show that it is well founded. We 
 may admit, as Mr. Golden has done, that Jonathan Hulls was 
 the first who thought of using the power of steam for naviga 
 tion;* but it is not pretended that he ever proceeded to apply 
 his conception, even so far as to make an experiment. It 
 cannot but be perceived by every one conversant with what is 
 now in practice, that Mr. Hulls scheme would not have been 
 effectual to drive the tow-boat itself, much less to drag " a 
 two-decker." The steerage of balloons, and plans for the 
 purpose, have been often suggested; we have seen repre 
 sentations of them, beating to windward under full sail. 
 Should the art of governing them be hereafter discovered and 
 perfected by the same individual, it will be quite as equita 
 ble to deny him the merit of balloon-navigation, in favour of 
 the first speculators, or of the authors of the drawings, as it is 
 to detrude Fulton from his pedestal, to substitute Jonathan 
 Hulls. 
 
 Patrick Miller never attempted to apply the engine to ves 
 sels. The Reviewers inform us that in a book which he pub 
 lished in 1787, he has said, he had reason to believe that the 
 power of the steam-engine might be employed to work the 
 wheels, so as to give them a quicker motion, and to increase 
 that of the ship. He announced, at the same time, his inten 
 tion to make the experiment, and to communicate the result, 
 if favourable, to the public. No such communication is alleged 
 to have been made, and the conclusion is inevitable, that the 
 result was not favourable. With respect to Symington s boat, 
 the assertion that it was seen by Fulton is wholly gratuitous; 
 there is no trace of the fact in the papers of the latter; it is, 
 however, not impossible, and will be readily admitted. Mr. 
 Colden has furnished proof that Fulton communicated the 
 project of a steam-boat to Lord Stanhope, in the year 1793, 
 seven years previous. The experiment of Symington on the 
 Clyde is mentioned in the biography of Fulton, and it is not 
 
 * This is not, however, precisely the case. Some of the English wri 
 ters claim the merit for captain Savery, who, it is said, published the 
 idea in 1698, and even proposed wheels over the sides of the boat. 
 Hulls took out a patent in 1736, for " towing vessels into harbour by 
 means of a boat with paddles, to be worked by steam." 
 
264 HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PART I. denied in that work, that the American availed himself of the 
 \^-v-*^ hints afforded by the abortive or incomplete experiments of 
 his precursors. Their very errors may have suggested to :iim 
 the means of effecting his object. Scarcely one of the il us- 
 trious men who have the credit of noble discoveries, or im 
 provements, in physics or in morals, but enjoyed this negative 
 kind of aid, or the positive advantage of seminal ideas, and 
 partial schemes. Sir Isaac Newton was indebted to the ex 
 periments and observations of Kepler, and to the discoveries 
 of Grimaldi; Galileo had seen the telescope of Meiius: 
 Watt profited of the labours of Newcomen: Dr. Jenner vvas 
 " not the first who imagined, or suggested, or tried, the pro 
 phylactic power of the vaccine. There is a striking i na- 
 logy, in fact, between the cases of Jenner and Fulton: the 
 glory of vaccination is not more justly due to the one, than 
 that of steam-boat navigation to the other. The question is 
 not who first proposed to connect steam with navigation; but 
 who first and completely succeeded in so doing, and enabled 
 others to succeed. The world will never consent to exalt the 
 genius and merits of him who merely throws out a loose 
 hint, or stops short at a diagram, or finishes with an abortive 
 experiment, over those of the sanguine and accomplished en 
 terpriser, who seizes derelict, and vivifies still-born ideas; who, 
 uniting in himself the aptitude to invent, the sagacity to dis 
 tinguish, and the skill to execute, puts the world in las ing 
 possession of that, which others had essayed, with such results 
 only as tended to arrest the efforts of industry, and discredit the 
 powers of art. 
 
 When the reviewers were dragging forward Mr. Syming 
 ton as the rival of Fulton, and alleging that his boat fully an 
 swered the expectations which had been formed, it would 
 have been well if they had told us, what those expectations 
 were, and how fulfilled. For want of this information from 
 them, I am obliged to look elsewhere for it. I find an 
 account of Mr. Symington s experiment, in the Journals 
 of the Royal Institution, for 1802; a publication which can 
 not be suspected of a bias unfavourable to Mr. Symington. 
 It is there stated that he ascertained that his boat would 
 travel at the rate of two miles and an half an hour; upon 
 the placid surface of a canal, be it understood, where no cur 
 rent was to be breasted. But I will take the language of the 
 Royal Institution itself, that it may be seen how far those 
 who ranked among the best judges in England were, at that 
 date, from clear ideas of the capacities, or fixed hopes of the 
 permanent success, of steam-navigation. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS, 
 
 265 
 
 u Several attempts have been made to apply the force of SEC.VIII. 
 str am to the purpose of propelling boats in canals, and there 
 seems to be no reason to think the undertaking by any means 
 liable to insuperable difficulties. 
 
 "An engine of ihe kind proposed by Mr. Symington, has 
 been actually constructed at the expense of the proprietors of 
 the Forth and Clyde navigation, and under the patronage of 
 the governor, Lord Dundas; it was tried in December last, 
 and it drew three vessels from 60 to 70 tons burden at the 
 usual rate of two miles and a half an hour. Mr. Symington 
 is at present employed in attempting still further improve 
 ments, and when he has completed his invention, it may, 
 perhaps, ultimately become productive of very extensive uti 
 lity." 
 
 Mr. Fulton s first boat went almost from off the stocks at 
 New York, to Albany, a distance of one hundred and sixty 
 miles, and performed the voyage with and against the cur 
 rent of the Hudson, at the rate of Jive miles an hour. When 
 her machinery was more perfectly adjusted, she accomplished 
 the same passage at the rate of eight miles an hour. The 
 vessels built on Mr. Fulton s plan, which are now in opera 
 tion, average ten miles an hour. The difference of speed 
 between Mr. Symington s boat and Mr. Fulton s, alone ar 
 gues some material difference in the machinery. The ac 
 count above mentioned, contains a description of Symington s 
 boat. It is hardly necessary to add that it differs totally 
 from that of Mr. Fulton; or to ask of what use would be Mr. 
 Symington s boat, with a movement of two and a half miles an 
 hour, in the American rivers of the south and west, which 
 are now so successfully navigated by the boats of Fulton, 
 against currents of three and four miles an hour? 
 
 If the experiments made in England were so perfect, it is 
 incomprehensible how it happened, that no vessels were con 
 structed, and put in common use, until about five years 
 after Fulton s boats were seen in successful operation on the 
 Hudson. Nor is it more easy to conjecture, why all the Bri 
 tish boats now in use, are built according to Mr. Fulton s 
 plan, and not according to that of Hulls, or Miller, or Sy 
 mington. 
 
 It is pleasant to compare the pretensions set up for Great 
 Britain by the Quarterly Review, with the confession of a 
 British engineer, Mr. Dodd, a man of eminence in his pro 
 fession, and a skilful architect of steam-boats, that the first of 
 them which succeeded in Great Britain, was built in 1812; and 
 that, although the Americans had given the fullest trial to the 
 VOL. I. L 1 
 
% 6 HOSTILITIES OP THL 
 
 PARTI. British invention during five years previous, it was necessary 
 ^*~v*^s there should be a new one under the eyes of the British nation, 
 to inspire confidence, and induce the building of more boats .* 
 On the whole, no evidence is to be found of the practical uti 
 lity of the British projects; but there exists the most violent 
 presumption to the contrary: and it is impossible, as regards 
 England, to resist the force of the interrogation put by Mr. 
 Golden " If steam-boats had ever been constructed befc re 
 the experiment of Fulton, so near perfection as to show that 
 they might be used to their present advantage, can it be t e- 
 lieved that they would have been abandoned?" 
 
 The unanswerable address of an American to a Briton, 
 on this subject, is u You conceived the idea of propelling 
 boats by steam, as early as 1698 you afterwards employed 
 yourselves repeatedly in devising methods and making tri ils 
 to carry that idea into effect you could never succeed to your 
 satisfaction, that is, to any advantageous extent you rel n- 
 quished your impotent endeavours one of my countrymen 
 appropriated your conception; new modelled your plans; 
 scanned and detected your mistakes; and, as you confess, 
 changed in America the character of your invention from 
 mere experiment to extensive practice and utility: the steam 
 boat issued from his hands as Minerva did from the head of 
 Jupiter a mature creation; you were content to receive it, 
 some years afterwards, upon the experience of the Ameri 
 cans, neglecting entirely your own boasted constructions of 
 the same name, the utility of which, if not all sufficient for 
 you, upon your narrow geographical scale, could be nothing 
 for the rest of the world. Far, then, from holding so over 
 weening a language, from taking all the credit, you should 
 rather take some shame, to yourselves, that you were not able 
 to improve your notions to the point of general utility. If, 
 with the advantage of discovery, you accomplished, virtually, 
 nothing, in the lapse of more than a century, what must be 
 the merit of the stranger who, in America, accomplished 
 every thing at the first cast? If you did not adopt this mode 
 of navigation, until five years after its complete triumph in 
 America, and then received it with hesitation and a sort of 
 incredulity, when would it have been turned to any account 
 among you, had he not established it there? How long might 
 not the world have remained without this master-piece?" 
 
 * An Historical and Explanatory Dissertation on Steam-Engines and 
 Steam-Packets, by George Dodd, Civil Engineer. London. 1818. See 
 Note T. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 267 
 
 If the degree of merit claimed by Fulton could be con- SEC.VIII. 
 tested with success any where, it is in America, for Ameri- ^^^-^s 
 cans, who preceded him and the British mechanicians, in the 
 attempt to propel vessels by steam. Miller made his experi 
 ments on the Forth and Clyde Canal, and published his book, 
 in 1787; Symington put his scheme to the test in the same 
 canal in 1801. If Miller, as it is said in Thompson s An 
 nals, communicated his plan to General Washington in 1787, 
 an American had previously imparted a more perfect one to 
 the general. This person, James Rumsey, of Virginia, con 
 structed a boat to be navigated by steam, in the summer of 
 1 785, after having obtained an exclusive right to the use of 
 his invention from two states; in the following year he 
 made an experiment with her in the Potowmac; and by 
 the force of steam alone, propelled her against the current 
 of that river at the rate of four miles an hour. In 1787, he 
 published a pamphlet on the subject, which I have now before 
 me, bearing this title " A Short Treatise on the Application 
 of Steam, whereby it is clearly shown, from actual Experi 
 ments, that Steam may be applied to Propel Boats or Vessels 
 of any burthen against Rapid Currents, with Great Velocity." 
 His main positions in this pamphlet are, to use his own words, 
 u that a boat might be so constructed, as to be propelled 
 through the water, at the rate of ten miles an hour, by the 
 force of steam; and that the machinery employed for that 
 purpose, might be so simple and cheap, as to reduce the price 
 of freight at least one half in common navigation; likewise 
 that it might be forced, by the same machinery, with consi 
 derable velocity, against the constant stream of long and rapid 
 rivers." Another passage may be quoted, as not less pointed 
 and remarkable. 
 
 " In the course of the autumn and winter of 1784, I made 
 such progress in the improvement of some steam engines 
 which I had long conceived would have become of the great 
 est consequence in navigation, that I flattered myself this 
 invention, if it answered my expectation (the truth whereof 
 experiments have now established) would render my labours 
 more extensively useful, by being equally applicable to small 
 boats, or vessels of the largest size, to shallow and rapid 
 rivers, or the deepest and roughest seas." 
 
 In his communication to General Washington, of March 
 10th, 1785, he remarks, " I have quite convinced myself that 
 boats of passage may be made to go against the current of 
 the Mississippi or Ohio rivers, or in the gulf stream, from 60 
 to 100 miles per day." 
 
268 
 
 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. In Thompson s Annals it is said that Miller appears 10 
 M^-V^/ have been exclusively the inventor of the double boat; but the 
 first which Rumsey devised in 1784, was of that description 
 
 Another American of the name of Fitch engaged in a coune 
 of experiments of the same nature with those of Rumsey, 
 about (he same time, and a sharp controversy arose between 
 them with respect to priority.* What can be put beyond 
 question, is, that Fitch laid his plan before Congress in 
 1785; navigated the river Delaware up and down, in tie 
 year 1786, with a steam-boat, which was brought, before 
 it was abandoned in 1791, to the celerity of eight miles 
 an hour; and that he obtained from the legislatures of New 
 Jersey, Delaware, New York, and Pennsylvania, an exclusive- 
 privilege for those states, in the years 1786, 7. There is 
 not the least probability that either of these highly ingenious 
 men had even heard of the suggestions of Savery and Hulls; 
 there can be no doubt, indeed, of their total ignorance of 
 whatever had been proposed or attempted in Europe. Their 
 plans and experiments, besides possessing the merit of origi 
 nality, have the advantage over those of Miller and Syming 
 ton in all other respects. A scientific comparison does rot 
 lie within my province; but I feel myself authorized to assert, 
 that the result would be in favour of the Americans. Their 
 views were more extensive; their experiments bolder; and 
 they accomplished much more, with machinery of such work 
 manship as could be procured in this country, at a time when 
 it lagged far behind Great Britain in the mechanical arts. 
 
 With respect, then, to the point of intention,* exclusive of 
 that of establishment which is conceded to her, America would 
 seem to have stronger claims, in the matter of steam-naviga 
 tion, than Great Britain. The mere priority of time in the 
 conception, where no communication can be presumed, will 
 be viewed by none as the main consideration or determi 
 nate title. Mr. Golden has mentioned in some detail, in the 
 Life of Fulton, the attempts of Fitch and Rumsey, on our 
 rivers, and also the subsequent one of Rumsey on the Thamt s, 
 in England, whither he repaired, in the expectation of find 
 ing greater facilities, and more opulent patronage, for his 
 plans; but those attempts are passed over in silence in the 
 
 * Fitch published a pamphlet also, in 1788, which he entitled " The 
 Original Steam-Boat supported, or a Reply to Rumsey." He states 
 therein that he conceived his plan of steam-navigation in 1785; but dis 
 covered afterwards, that two Americans, Mr. Henry, and Mr. Andrew 
 Ellicot, both of Pennsylvania, had thought of it as early as 1775, and 
 1778. See Note T. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. W 
 
 British publications to which I have adverted.* The writer SEC. Mil 
 of the article Steam-Engine, in Rets 7 New Cyclopedia, ob- v^~v^w 
 serves, indeed, that steam-boats had been used in America, 
 before the introduction of them by Fulton; and " were be 
 gun there by Mr. Symington!" a fact very creditable to Scot 
 land, but altogether new in America, which is without record 
 or tradition of the labours of this missionary. 
 
 To heighten the contrast between their fairness and the 
 disingenuity of Mr. Golden, the Reviewers treat of the tor- 
 pedos of Fulton, in a strain, which would imply, that his 
 biographer had represented him as the first to propose the 
 explosion of gunpowder under water. It might also be in 
 ferred from their language, that he had sought to vindicate the 
 offer of the torpedos to the different governments of Europe, 
 Novr, as to the point of discovery, nothing can be more posi 
 tive and unambiguous, than the renunciation in the biography 
 "It would," says Mr. Golden, "be doing injustice to the me 
 mory of Mr. Fulton, not to notice, that Mr. Fulton did not 
 pretend to have been the first who discovered that gunpowder 
 might be exploded with effect under water; nor did he pretend 
 to have been the first who attempted to apply it in that wa} 
 as the means of hostility. He knew well what had been don<, 
 by another ingenious native American, Bushnell, in our revo 
 lutionary war." The Reviewers repeat, from this passage, 
 the instance of Bushnell with all formality, and the air of 
 drawing it from their own store of knowledge! 
 
 With regard to the conduct of Fulton in proffering his tor 
 pedos to various governments, his biographer goes no farther, 
 in substance, than to assert, that Fulton reconciled it to his 
 
 * Brissot de Warville had noticed them in his Travels through the 
 United States, in the following manner: 
 
 Sept. 1788. 
 
 " J went this day to see an experiment near the Delaware, on a boat, 
 the object of which was to ascend rivers against the current. The in 
 ventor was Mr. Fitch, who had formed a company to support the ex 
 pense. The machine which I saw appears well executed and well 
 adapted to the design. The steam-engine gives motion to three large 
 oars of considerable force, which were to give sixty strokes per mi 
 nute. Since writing this, I have seen Mr. Rumsey in England. He is 
 a man of great ingenuity ; and by the explanation which he has given 
 me, it appears that his discovery, though founded on a similar principle 
 with that of Mr. Fitch, is very different from it, and far more simple in 
 its execution. Mr. Rumsey proposed then (Feb. 1789) to build a vessel 
 which should go to America by the help of the steam-engine, and without sails. 
 It tuas to make the passage in fifteen days. I perceive with pain that he 
 has not yet executed his project, which, when executed, will introduce 
 into commerce as great a change as the discovery of the Cape of Good 
 
270 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. own ideas of propriety, and acted from honest impressions , 
 ^-* ~v-^> whether false or correct. The proceeding of Mr. Fulton is 
 certainly supported by European examples without number, 
 and may be considered as natural in every sanguine projector 
 I cannot easily see how an American, pursuing mechanical 
 inventions in Europe, would be, prima facie, culpable for 
 offering to France and England indiscriminately, a destructive 
 engine of war. The success of the one or the other power, is 
 to be supposed indifferent to his feelings. I grant that, if the 
 engine could be turned against his own country, he would never 
 be justifiable. The talents and contrivances of English engi 
 neers have been lent indiscriminately to aid the hostilities of 
 all the principal nations of Europe; with the sanction of the 
 government, when the interests of England were noi likely to 
 be affected. The Count de Bonneval and others of his descrip 
 tion were never blamed, in Europe, for the mere fact of de 
 voting their genius and skill to the improvement of the Turk 
 ish armies and fortifications. Britain is now enriching herself 
 by supplying both Spain and her colonies with the means 
 of warfare; from her manufactories issued the weapons and 
 ammunition, with which the nations of Africa assailed and 
 slaughtered each other for the purpose of filling her slave 
 ships. 
 
 I note these circumstances, to emblazon the modesty of the 
 Reviewers in raising an outcry against the conduct of Fulton, 
 and the character of his expedient of submarine explosion. 
 They are, forsooth, filled with horror at this " succinct mode 
 of murder en masse;" these "infernal machines;" forgetting 
 the machines called Congreve rockets, which, while the 
 torpedos can be directed only against armaments, have been 
 principally used by the British against the towns and domestic 
 dwellings of their enemies; sometimes, as in the instance of 
 Stonington, to envelope in flames, houses in which unoffend 
 ing American women and children were placed for shelter. 
 It may be proposed, as a problem for their consideration, 
 whether the destruction of one of the bomb-vessels employed 
 on that occasion, by a torpedo, would have been more atro 
 cious, than the act of the British general Sheaffe at the town 
 of York in Canada, who left in the fortification from which he 
 was driven by the American army, a secret mine, that ex 
 ploded a moment too soon, or it would have " blown whole 
 , regiments into the air;" and, as the case was, killed many 
 brave soldiers, among them, the lamented Pike. 
 
 " Lord St. Vincent," say the Reviewers, " appears to have 
 set his face against this unworthy mode of warfare, the tor 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 271 
 
 pedo; feeling, as we believe every British officer would feel, SEC. vm. 
 that setting aside the intent, such devices were for the weak and **^~*~**s 
 not for the strong. In his own mind, Mr. Pitt did, we dare 
 say, condemn it, as every man of sense and honour would." 
 Now, it is on record, that these two eminent personages, and 
 every British officer, rejoiced in the Congreve rockets; and 
 that a board of British officers of the highest rank reported 
 them, after their trial at Boulogne and Flushing, a most 
 eligible auxiliary to the British arms. To show how innocent 
 and generous a device they are, when compared with that 
 "succinct mode of murder en masse," the torpedo, I will copy 
 some passages of the ample and able account of them which 
 is given in Rees Cyclopedia, article Rocket. 
 
 " The Congreve Rocket. These rockets are of various 
 dimensions, and are differently armed, according as they are 
 intended for the field, or for bombardment; carrying in the 
 first instance either shells or canister shot, which may be ex 
 ploded at any part of their flight, spreading death and de 
 struction amongst the columns of the enemy; and in the se 
 cond, where they are intended for the destruction of buildings, 
 shipping, stores, &c. they are armed with a peculiar species 
 of composition which never fails of destroying every com 
 bustible material with which it comes in contact." 
 
 " The carcass rocket has been used in almost every one of 
 our expeditions. They did incredible execution at Copenhagen. 
 At the siege of Flushing, general Monnet, the French com 
 mandant, made a formal remonstrance to Lord Chatham re 
 specting the use of them in that bombardment. A small 
 corps of rocketeers, in the memorable battle of Leipsic, 
 gloriously maintained the honour of the British arms. All the 
 more minute and important particulars of this weapon, both 
 of construction and composition, are very properly kept a pro 
 found secret. The largest rocket that has yet been construct 
 ed, has not, we believe, exceeded three hundred weight; but 
 Sir William Congreve seems to have in contemplation others 
 weighing from half a ton to a ton." 
 
 " By means of the rocket, the most extensive destruction, 
 even amounting to annihilation, may be carried among the 
 ranks of an advancing enemy, and that with the exposure of 
 scarcely an individual For this purpose, the rockets are laid 
 in batteries, &c. They facilitate the capture of a ship by 
 boarding, by being thrown into the ports, &c.; the confusiou 
 and destruction which thence inevitably ensue, facilitate, &c. 
 They are peculiarly adapted to add to the dreadful effect of 
 fire ships, which, if they were supplied each with a sufficient 
 
HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. number of rockets, such an extensive and devastating fhe 
 N^~V-^/ would be spread in every direction, as to invoke every vessel j/ 
 the enemy in that destructive element, The floating rocket car 
 cass, another of the inventor s applications, may be thrown 
 in great quantities by a fair wind, against any fleet or arsenal, 
 without the smallest risk, or without approaching within range 
 of guns, &c." 
 
 u Little more need be said in reference to the general im 
 portance and utility of the rocket system, &c." 
 
 The inconsistency of the Reviewers, as Englishmen, is fur 
 ther manifested by the facts, so well attested as to be unde 
 niable, that the British ministry conceived strong alarms :it 
 the negociations between Fulton and the French government 
 respecting the adoption of the torpedo; that they made ove> 
 tures to him, and drew him to England; that they encouraged 
 his experiments with a view to employ his " infernal ma 
 chines," if found effectual, against the enemies of GreU 
 Britain; that they actually made an attempt to destroy lie 
 Boulogne flotilla by his means; and that, after appointing a 
 committee to decide upon the expediency of adopting his 
 " devices," they finally rejected them altogether as imprac.- 
 ticable, not as cruel, immoral, or dishonourable. From 
 what passed, it is not uncharitable to suspect, that the true- 
 key to the rejection, is furnished in the saying of Lord St. 
 Vincent, the authenticity of which the Reviewers do not dis 
 pute. " Pitt is the greatest fool that ever existed to encou 
 rage a mode of war w ? hich they who command the seas do 
 not want." Mr. Pitt, it would seem from the statement of 
 Mr. Golden, remarked, when he first saw a drawing of the 
 torpedo, with a sketch of the mode of applying it, and un 
 derstood what would be the effects of the explosion that " if 
 introduced into practice, it could not fail to annihilate all 
 military marines," an effect which Great Britain could no! 
 feel it her interest to promote. 
 
 The occasion of the establishment of steam navigation, 
 appeared to the Reviewers, as that of the exploration of our 
 western regions had done, very suitable for the vilification ot 
 the American people at large. Accordingly, they proceed iu 
 this exalted language " The vagrant adventurer, Fulton, hav 
 ing failed in selling his infernal machines, sets himself to 
 prove, in a high strain of moral pathos, that c blowing up 
 ships of war (so as not to leave a man to relate the dreadful 
 catastrophe) are humane experiments. We ought not to wonder 
 after this, perhaps, that the character of Mr. Fulton has sur 
 vived in America as that of an honest, conscientious, and con- 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 273 
 
 sistent man, especially as Mr. Cadwallader Colden has sup- SEC. vm. 
 ported his claim to it," &c. ^^~^*~ 
 
 Having painted the American engineer in the blackest co 
 lours, and denied to him all original genius, they have not, 
 with the London Critical Journal, deemed it advisable to 
 represent him as " a native of Paisley, in Scotland,* where 
 he had steam-boats constructed, actually employed both for 
 experiment and use." But the author of the article in 
 Thompson s Annals, being more kindly in his language con 
 cerning the merits of Fulton, and therefore not under the 
 same restraint, clinches him and his offspring thus " The 
 experiments by Mr. Miller on the Forth and Clyde Canal, we 
 have been informed, were either seen by, or communicated 
 to, the late Mr. Fulton, engineer of America, who, it is be 
 lieved, was a native, or at least resided in this part of Scot 
 land, but afterwards went to America, where he had the merit 
 and the honour, of introducing the steam-boat, upon an ex 
 tensive scale, on the great rivers and lakes of that country: so 
 that we can trace this invention most indisputably to a British 
 origin." We cannot suppose that a " civil engineer," treat 
 ing of the history of steam-boats, in the month of April, 
 1819, was ignorant of the existence, or had not opened the 
 volume, of Fulton s biography, where his birth place is so 
 distinctly and authentically stated. The misrepresentation 
 which I have just quoted, is, therefore, unpardonable, and 
 dishonours the valuable Journal in which it is found. There 
 is a littleness, besides, in some of the arts practised by the 
 Reviewers to gratify their spleen in this business of steam 
 boat navigation, which is truly pitiable. For instance, in the 
 index to the nineteenth volume of the Quarterly Review, at 
 the word c Colden, we read, " The Life of Robert Fulton 
 Us bombastic exordium;" and at the word c Fulton " his 
 ingratitude to England," &c. making the index, in this man 
 ner, the vehicle of reproaches of a particular nature, more 
 direct than are hazarded in the body of the volume. 
 
 The Reviewers have not been content, in the article under 
 consideration, with mangling the reputation of Fulton and his 
 performances, but have turned aside to assail another Ameri 
 can, for whom his country has claimed the merit of an im 
 portant invention. I allude to Godfrey, who is contemptu- 
 
 * They have, however, in their twentieth number made Rittenhouse 
 an Englishman. The astronomer was born within seven miles of Phir 
 ladelphia; and never absent from his native, country. His ancestors 
 were of the banks of the Rhine- 
 
 VOL. I.M m 
 
274 
 
 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. ously mentioned in a note, and then introduced in the te? 4 
 "-^^v^x with greater indignity. The note is as follows ^ Ji man 
 of the, name of Logan, we think, as obscure as Godfrey himself* 
 claimed for the latter, the invention of Hartley s Quadrant !-- 
 two years after the description of it had, as he says, appeared 
 in the Philosophical Transactions" The reference to Godfrey, 
 in the text, is in this strain " We are almost malicious enoug:i 
 to wish Franklin were alive, to see with what little ceremony 
 his admiring countrymen have dove-tailed him in betwee.i 
 two worthies, one of whom (Godfrey) he has himself desig 
 nated, in his correspondence, as a most dogmatical, overbear 
 ing, and disagreeable fellow, who gave himself airs because 
 he had acquired a smattering of mathematics." 
 
 Before I proceed to comment upon the note, which is to J 
 choice a specimen of the temper and knowledge which thes- 
 Reviewers bring to the discussion of American affairs, to be 
 suffered to remain without elucidation, I will beg leave t3 
 quote what Franklin has really said of Godfrey, in order that 
 my reader may compare it at once with their report, and 
 better understand the degree of reliance to be placed on their 
 citations. Tt is not in his Correspondence, but in his Memoirs, 
 that Franklin speaks of Godfrey, and it is in these words: 
 " Among the first members of our Junto, was Thomas God 
 frey, a self-taught mathematician, great in his way, and after 
 wards inventor of what is now called Hadky s Quadrant. But: 
 he knew little out of his way, and was not a pleasing com 
 panion; as, like most great mathematicians I have met with 
 he expected universal precision in every thing said, and war 
 for ever denying or distinguishing upon trifles, to the disturb 
 ance of all conversation. I continued to board with God 
 frey, who lived in part of my house, with his wife and child 
 pen, and had one side of the shop for his glazier s business, 
 though he worked little, being always absorbed in mathema 
 tics." So much for the smattering of mathematics. And wen 
 the other parts of the pretended designation verified, it would 
 be difficult to perceive, what the habits of the mathematician 
 in society, have to do with the question of the invention oi 
 the quadrant. 
 
 The " man of the name of Logan, as obscure as Godfrey," 
 can be no other than "the honourable and learned Mr. Logan* 
 of whom Franklin also speaks in his Memoirs, and who, nex? 
 to William Penn, makes the most considerable figure in the 
 History of Pennsylvania: whom the proprietary entrusted 
 with the management of all his affairs in the province, and 
 cherished through life as the ablest and most faithful of Im 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS, 275 
 
 friends; who marie valuable communications to the Royal srcr vill. 
 Society, three of which are to be found in one volume of s -^" v ^* 
 its Transactions, the 38th;* whose charges as Chief Justice, 
 of Pennsylvania were reprinted and read with admiration, 
 in London: who corresponded regularly with the most 
 eminent among the scientific worthies of his time; such as 
 Linnaeus, Fabricius, Dr. Mead, Dr. Halley, Sir Hans 
 Sloan, Dr. Fothergill, Peter Collinson, William Jones (fa 
 ther of Sir William): and whom all consulted with the de 
 ference due to a mind of the first order, in the variety and 
 strength of its powers, and of indefatigable activity in the 
 cultivation and advancement of nearly every branch of know 
 ledge. There is a striking similarity in the talents, studies, 
 and vocation of Dr. Colden and James Logan; and of the 
 latter I think I may say, without exaggeration, that he was 
 excelled in no respect by any one of the Europeans who set 
 tled on this continent; and that if he is obscure, none was 
 better entitled to the most brilliant illustration. An honest 
 chronicler, Proud, with whose History of Pennsylvania, 
 the labourers for the American department in the Quarterly 
 Review, ought not to be unacquainted, has spoken of his 
 * 4 living actions," and made a summary exposition of his 
 character and career, which I will copy for their instruction, 
 vouching myself, from personal inquiry, for the accuracy of 
 all the particulars. 
 
 " James Logan was descended of a family originally from 
 Scotland, where, in the troubles of that country, occasioned by 
 the affair of Earl Gowrie, in the reign of James the VI. his 
 grandfather, Robert Logan, was deprived of a considerable 
 estate; in consequence of which, his father, Patrick Logan, 
 being in reduced circumstances, removed into Ireland, and 
 fixed his residence at Lurgan, the place of his son James 
 birth. Patrick Logan had the benefit of a good education, in 
 the university of Edinburgh; where he commenced master of 
 arts; but afterwards joined in religious society with the 
 Quakers. This, his son, James Logan, being endowed with 
 a good genius, and favoured with a suitable education, made 
 considerable proficiency in divers branches of learning and 
 science; after which he went to England; from whence, in 
 the year 1699, and about the 25th of his age, he removed to 
 
 * For the years 1733, 1734. One of the papers is entitled " Some 
 experiments concerning- the Impregnation of the Seeds of Plants;" 
 another " Some thoughts concerning the Sun and Moon, when near 
 the horizon, appearing larger than when near the zenith." See Note U 
 
276 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. Pennsylvania, in company with William Penn, in his latter 
 *^~v^*s voyage to America; and in 1701, he was, by commissio.i 
 from the Proprietary, appointed secretary of the province, an ,1 
 clerk of the council for the same." 
 
 u He adhered lo what was deemed the proprietary interes! ; 
 and exerted himself with great fidelity to it. He held tho 
 several offices of provincial secretary, commissioner of pro 
 perty, chief justice, and for near two years, governed the pro 
 vince, as president of the council." 
 
 u Many years before his death, he retired pretty muc i 
 from the hurry and incumbrance of public affairs, and spert 
 the latter part of his time, principally at Stanton, his countr/ 
 seat, near Germantown, about five or six miles from Philadel 
 phia; where he enjoyed, among his books, that leisure i i 
 which men of letters take delight, and corresponded with the 
 literati in different parls of Europe. He was well versed i i 
 both ancient and modern learning, acquainted with the ori 
 ental tongues, a master of the Latin, Greek, French, an 1 
 Italian languages; deeply skilled in the mathematics, and in 
 natural and moral philosophy; as several pieces of his owi 
 writing, in Latin, &c. demonstrate; some of which have gon<^ 
 through divers impressions in different parls of Europe, am! 
 are highly esteemed. Among his productions of this nature, 
 his Experimenta Jlleletemata de Plantarum Gencratione, or his 
 Experiments on the Indian Corn or JWaize of America, with 
 his observations arising therefrom, on the generation of plants, 
 published in Latin, at Leyden, in 1739, and afterwards, ii; 
 1747, rcpublished in London, with an English version on th< 
 opposite page, by Dr. /. Fothergill, are both curious and in 
 genious. Along with this piece was likewise printed, h 
 Latin, at I^eyden, another treatise, by the same author, en 
 titled, Canonumpro invcniendis rcfractionum, turn simplicium, 
 turn in lentibus dupliciwrtfocis, demonstrationes geometrical^ 
 " t/fotore Jacobo Logan, Judice supremo et Prxside provincio 
 Pensilvaniensis, in .America." And in his old age, he trans 
 lated Cicero s excellent treatise, De senectutc, which, with his 
 explanatory notes, was printed in Philadelphia, with a pre 
 face or encomium, by Benjamin Franklin, afterwards Dr. 
 Franklin, of that cily, in 1774. He was one of the people 
 called Quakers, and died on the 31st of October, 1751, aged 
 about 77 years; leaving as a monument of his public spirit 
 and benevolence to the people of Pennsylvania, a library, 
 which he had been 50 years in collecting; (since called the 
 Loganian Library) intending it for the common use and bene 
 fit of all lovers of learning. It was said to contain the best 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 277 
 
 editions of the best books, in various languages, arts and SEC.Vlll. 
 sciences, and to be the largest, ami by far the most valuable, \^-N-^^ 
 collection of the kind, at that time, in this part of the world." 
 
 The reputation which James Logan deservedly enjoyed for 
 a profound acquaintance with the mathematics, led Godfrey 
 to seek his notice and aid, and to consult him on his projects 
 in mechanical philosophy. That of the improvement of Da 
 vis Quadrant struck Logan as of the greatest ingenuity and 
 importance; and as Godfrey was then unknown beyond his 
 native province, he undertook to be the herald and voucher of 
 his invention with the philosophers of London. In the month 
 of May, 1 732, he addressed a letter on the subject, to Dr. 
 Edmund Halley; in which he described fully the construc 
 tion and uses of Godfrey s instrument. The following pas 
 sages of this letter explain his views of the case, and tiie mo 
 tives and objects of his interposition. 
 
 " I shall presume from thy favour shown to me in England, 
 in 1724, to communicate an invention that, whether it answer 
 the end or not, will be allowed, I believe, to deserve thy re 
 gard. I have it thus." 
 
 " A young man born in this country, Thomas Godfrey by 
 name, by trade a glazier, who had no other education than to 
 learn to read and write, with a little common arithmetic, 
 having in his apprenticeship with a very poor man of that 
 trade, accidentally met with a mathematical book, took such 
 a fancy to the study, that, by the natural strength ot his genius, 
 without any instructor, he soon made himself master of that, 
 and of every other of the kind he could borrow or procure in 
 English; and finding there was more to be had in Latin books, 
 under all imaginable discouragements, applied himself to the 
 study of that language, till he could pretty well understand an 
 author on these subjects; after which, the first time I ever 
 saw or heard of him, to my knowledge, he came to borrow 
 Sir Isaac Newton s Principia of me. Inquiring of him here 
 upon, who he was, I was indeed astonished at his request; 
 but after a little discourse, he soon became welcome to that 
 or any other book I had. This young man about 18 months 
 since, told me he had for some time been thinking of an in 
 strument for taking the distances of the stars by reflecting 
 speculums, which he believed might be of service at sea; 
 and not long after he showed me a common sea quadrant, to 
 which he had fitted two pieces of looking-glass in such a 
 manner as brought two stars at almost any distance to coin 
 cide. (Then follows a description of the instrument.) 
 
 " But I am now sensible I have trespassed in being so par- 
 
278 
 
 HOSTILITIES OK THL 
 
 PART I. ticular when writing to Dr. Halley; for I well know thai 10 
 Vu^-v^/ a gentlemen noted for his excellent talent of reading, appre 
 hending, and greatly improving, less would have been suffi 
 cient; but as this possibly may be communicated by thee, I 
 shall crave leave farther to add, that the use of the instrument 
 is very easy," &c. 
 
 u If the method of discovering the longitude by the moon is 
 to meet with a reward, and this instrument, which, for all tint 
 I have ever read or heard of, is an invention altogether new, 
 be made use of, in that case I would recommend the inventor 
 to thy justice and notice. He now gets his own and family s 
 bread (for he is married) by the labour of his own hands only, 
 by that mean trade. He had begun to make tables of the moo i, 
 on the very same principles with thine, till I lately put a copy if 
 those that have lain so many years printed, but not published, 
 with W. Innys, into his hands , and then highly approving thet.i y 
 he desisted." 
 
 In the same year, 1732, Godfrey prepared himself, an ac 
 count of his invention, addressed to the Royal Society; but 
 it was not then transmitted, from the expectation which he 
 entertained of the effect of the letter to Halley. No notice, 
 however, was taken of it by Halley, and after an interval of 
 a year and a half, Logan resolved to have the matter submitted 
 immediately to the Royal Society. For this purpose he trans 
 mitted a copy of the letter, together wilh the paper of God 
 frey, to Mr. Peter Collinson, an eminent botanist and member 
 of the society, engaging him to lay them before that body. 
 The result is detailed in the following authentic letter* to 
 Logan, from his respectable friend, Captain Wright, who took 
 charge of his communications to Collinson. 
 
 London, Feb. 4th, 1734. 
 MR. JAMES LOGAN. 
 
 Sir Your favour of December 4th I have received, and 
 immediately carried that inclosed to Mr. Collinson (Jan. 26) 
 \vho with pleasure received that, as he had done the former; 
 and after reading it, with an agreeable smile, he said, " I mak<; 
 no doubt of removing the uneasiness our good friend is under, 
 which is all caused by some of Dr. Halley^ cunning." He 
 very much referred to the management of Mr. Jones s inte 
 rest, as well as using his own, to have your letters communi 
 
 * Taken from the original, in the possession of Dr. George Logan, 
 he grandson of James Logan, and who forms one pretty notable excep 
 tion, at least, to the rule of the Quarterly Review that " there is no 
 >such person known in America as a respectable country gentleman " 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 279 
 
 cated to the Royal Society in the most proper and likely man- SEC. Viu. 
 ner to have effect. v*-^v^ 
 
 I soon found means to take a glass with Mr. Jones,* who 
 gave me his company a whole afternoon; when he often hinted 
 (it Dr. Halley^s ungenerous treatment of you, but said that ivas 
 not the only time, for the doctor had been guilty of such things 
 to others. He very strongly believes Mr. Hadley was the 
 inventor of his own instrument, and gives these reasons to 
 support it: That as he had dwelt so long on improving and 
 bringing to perfection the reflecting telescope, he could not 
 miss of knowing how to bring two objects to coincide by spe- 
 culums; and he as firmly believes Thomas Godfrey was the 
 inventor of his instrument by the strength of his genius as Had 
 ley was of his by his help from the reflecting telescope, and 
 says each one ought to have the merit of his own instrument. 
 He then asked me the use of the bow I brought him last year, 
 and in what respect it exceeded Davis s quadrant? I told him 
 as far as I could, but that for my own part I had never used 
 it. He was pleased with the invention, and said it deserved 
 notice, if it answered what was proposed, and desired I would 
 get one made; for it would signify nothing to mention it to the 
 society, without a model; and that, being produced, would be 
 a strong voucher for Thomas Godfrey, to show that he had a 
 capacity and a genius tending that way; and it would be a 
 very good introduction for the reading of your letter to Dr. 
 Halley. I got one made in two days, and carried it to Mr. 
 Collinson (30th Jan.) who sent it to Sir Hans Sloan s; where 
 it underwent an examination by four or five members, one of 
 which was Mr. Hadley, who, with the others, highly approved 
 of it. The next day it was produced to the Royal Society, 
 where Mr. Norris and myself were introduced by Mr. Collin 
 son; and upon reading the description of the bow, I had the 
 pleasure of hearing your first letter to Dr. Halley read, which 
 was all that was then read; and when done, Mr. Machen ad 
 dressed the president (or the gentleman who supplied his 
 place; for Sir H. Sloan was not there, being absent upon ac 
 count of his brother-in-law s death), and said he had the 
 vouchers ready on the table for any one^s perusal, who might 
 doubt of the truth of that letter, or the instrument being ge 
 nuine, and no ways taken from Mr. Hartley s, but found out 
 about the same time that his was, or rather prior to it, if the 
 vouchers were true; and if they are not, then, said he, " we 
 
 * Father of the celebrated Sir William Jones, and an eminent ma- 
 hematician. 
 
280 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. must believe that all the people of Pennsylvania are combined 
 v -^" v ~v^ to impose on the society which no reasonable man can do," 
 He said some shrewd things of Dr. Halley^ and concluded with 
 saying that the inventor claimed the justice of having that 
 description registered, which he thought no one could deny 
 him; and should that instrument be the park for the longitude, 
 the inventors of the rest must dispute their priority before ihe 
 learned in law. No person said any thing against it, so that 
 it will be registered. Mr. Williams has been under seme pain 
 for these two transactions, as miscarried in Jones s hands, but 
 hope he has cleared it up to your satisfaction. If not, I am 
 certain of doing it on my arrival. 
 
 My hearty desires for yours and your good family s health, 
 to whom my best respects. I am, dear sir, 
 
 Your obliged humble servant, 
 
 EDWARD WRIGHT. 
 
 In the month of June, 1734, Mr. Logan addressed to the 
 Rojal Society, "A further Account of Thoraas Godfrey s 
 Improvement of Davis s Quadrant transferred to the Marinei s 
 Bow," which, under this title, was inserted implicitly in the 
 volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society for the same 
 year.* I proceed to extract some parts of Logan s paper, 
 which develop further the history of the case. 
 
 " Being informed that this improvement, proposed by God 
 frey, of this place, for observing the sun s altitude at sea,- with 
 more ease and expedition than is practicable by the common 
 instrument in use for that purpose, was last winter laid before 
 the Royal Society, in his own description of it, and that some 
 gentlemen wished to see the benefit intended by it more fully 
 and clearly explained, I, who have here the opportunity of 
 knowing the author s thoughts on such subjects, being per 
 suaded in my judgment, that, if the instrument, as he pro 
 poses it, be brought into practice, it will in many cases, be of 
 great service to navigation, have, therefore, thought it proper 
 to draw up a more Cull account of it than the author himself 
 has given," &c. 
 
 " Some masters of vessels, who sail from hence to the West 
 Indies, have got some of them made, as well as they can be 
 done here, and have found so great advantage in the facility 
 and the ready use of them in those southerly latitudes, that 
 they reject all others. It is now four years since Thomas 
 Godfrey hit on this improvement: for his account of it, laid 
 
 * Month of December. Article 3d. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 281 
 
 before the society last winter, in which he mentioned two SEC.vm. 
 years, was wrote in 1732, and in the same year, 1750, after >-^-v-^^ 
 he was satisfied in this of a real improvement in the quadrant, 
 he applied himself to think of the other, viz. the reflecting 
 instrument by speculums, for a help in the case of longitude, 
 though it is also useful in taking altitudes; and one of these, 
 as has been abundantly proved by the maker, and those who 
 had it with them, was taken to sea, and there used in observ 
 ing the latitude, the winter of that year, and brought back to 
 Philadelphia before the end of February, 1731, and was in 
 my keeping some months immediately after." 
 
 " It was indeed unhappy, that, having it in my power, see 
 ing he had no acquaintance nor knowledge of persons in Eng 
 land, that I transmitted not an account of it sooner. Bui I had 
 other affairs, of more importance to me; and it was owing to 
 an accident which gave me some uneasiness, viz. his attempt 
 ing to publish some account of it in print here, that I trans 
 mitted it at last, in May, 1732, to Dr. Halley, to whom I made 
 no doubt but the invention would appear entirely new; and 
 I must own I could not but wonder that our good will at least 
 was never acknowledged. This, on my part, was all the merit 
 I had to claim, nor did I then, or now, assume any other in 
 either of these instruments. I only wish that the ingenious 
 inventor himself might, by some means, be taken notice of, 
 in a manner that might be of real advantage to him." 
 
 In his letter to the Royal Society, Godfrey expresses him 
 self in the simple and natural manner which bespeaks en 
 tire sincerity. He begins thus "Gentlemen: As none are 
 better able than the Royal Society to prove and judge whether 
 such inventions as are proposed for the advancing useful 
 knowledge will answer the pretensions of the inventors or not; 
 and as I have been made acquainted, though at so great a dis 
 tance, of the candour of your learned Society in giving en 
 couragement to such as merit approbation, I have, therefore, 
 presumed to lay before the Society, the following, craving par 
 don for my boldness." He then states that finding with what 
 difficulty a tolerable observation of the sun was taken by 
 Davis s quadrant; he, therefore, applied his thoughts for up 
 wards of two years, to find a certain instrument. After de 
 scribing his improvement and the extent of its utility, he con 
 cludes with the following phrase " I hope Dr. Halley has 
 received a more full account of this from J. Logan, Esq.; 
 therefore I shall add no more than that I am, &c." 
 
 Neither Logan nor Godfrey knew at the date of these com 
 munications, that Mr. John Hadley, the vice-president of the 
 
 VOL. I. N n 
 
28% HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. Royal Society, had presented a paper to that body, dated M ty 
 k ^-*^^**^ 13ih, 1731,* containing a full description and rationale of a 
 reflecting quadrant of ihe same character, which he clainud 
 as his invention, and that his paper was inserted in the volui 10 
 of the Philosophical Transactions, for that year. This com 
 munication of Hadley is the foundation of his title to the in 
 vention. There is no direct proof, whi( h I can discover, of 
 his having seen or heard of Godfrey s instrument; but t!ie 
 quotations which I have made establish the following facts 
 that Godfrey, without the advantage of a hint, or of aid, frcrn 
 any quarter, completed it in the year 1730; that it was taken 
 to sea soon after, and there used, in the course of the winier 
 of that year, in observing the latitude, and brought back Le- 
 fore the end of February, 1731: that there was, therefore a 
 possibility of its being made known to Hadley, within goad 
 time for the preparation of his paper of the month of May. 
 
 The tradition in Philadelphia is, that it was carried to Ja- 
 rnaica by a captain of Godfrey s acquaintance, and shown there 
 to a captain of a ship just departing for England, who gave 
 information of it to Hadley, as a person distinguished for his 
 skill and ingenuity in the construction and improvement of 
 optical instruments. Be this as it may, the merit of priority, 
 such as it is, lies manifestly with Godfrey; his invention was 
 as complete, and passed quickly into use among the American 
 masters of vessels. Mr. Logan could have no imaginable 
 motive except benevolence and the promotion of science, for 
 producing and urging the claims of Godfrey; he expressly dis 
 avows any pretension to a share in the invention; his eminent 
 capacity to judge of its character, precludes all idea of his 
 having been deceived, as the elevation of his nature and sta 
 tion does that of his having stooped to practise a deception. 
 It will be seen, by an extract which I am about to make from 
 one of his letters, of a later date, to the mathematician Wm. 
 Jones, that he retained his persuasion of Godfrey s title, and 
 was not without suspicion of foul play. 
 
 " I have very little to say on the subject of instruments, but 
 as in thy teaching, I formerly observed thy methods greatly 
 excelled in neatness, so one instrument may for speed and 
 certainty very much exceed another; and Thomas Godfrey s 
 inventions were, I think, truly valuable, that by the reflecting 
 speculums appears extremely so. I have here seen two of 
 them as made by Hadley s direction, who enjoys both the re- 
 
 * The y.lume of the Transactions in which it is contained, was not, 
 in fact, published, until after the date of Logan s Letters. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 283 
 
 putation and profit of them, and I cannot but admire at it. SEC. VIII. 
 Thomas Godfrey has indeed a fine genius for the mathema- ^-^^^^ 
 tics, and it would, for the sake of his birth place, which is 
 the same as that of my own children, be a great pleasure to 
 me to see him rewarded." 
 
 The quotation which I have made from Franklin, shows 
 that he ascribed the quadrant called Hadley s, to Godfrey; and 
 as he at one time lived under the same roof with the mathe 
 matician, and constantly took an interest in his affairs, his 
 testimony is of no little moment. We have a decided opinion 
 to the same effect, from another of his cotemporaries, Dr. 
 John Ewing, a former provost of the University of Pennsyl 
 vania, and one of the most acute and learned mathematicians 
 whom this country has produced.* Dr. Rittenhouse, when 
 requested to pronounce in the matter, stated in writing, that 
 he knew Mr. Godfrey and his quadrant, and had no doubt 
 both Godfrey and Hadley were original inventors; that both 
 instruments depended upon the same principles," &c. A 
 weight of authority is thus found in favour of Godfrey s merit, 
 sufficient to satisfy us on this side of the Atlantic. If we 
 claim no more for him than the having accomplished simulta 
 neously the same as is ascribed to Hadley, we shall have 
 reason to be proud of his name; and, in comparing the cir 
 cumstances of his education and situation with those of the 
 vice-president of the Royal Society, be entitled to attribute 
 to him a superior, nay almost unrivalled natural genius. It 
 is related that when Newton s Principia Mathematica made 
 their appearance, " the best mathematicians were obliged to 
 study them with care, and those of a lower rank durst not 
 venture upon them, till encouraged by the testimonies of the 
 learned." The American glazier, without encouragement 
 from any quarter, wholly self-taught in the mathematics and 
 in the Latin, ventured upon, and mastered this great work at 
 an early age; and finally, with the embarrassments of an hum 
 ble trade, and extreme poverty, produced the most useful of 
 
 * See a paper of Dr. Ewing in the 1st vol. of the Transactions of A. 
 P. S. ; describing an improvement of his own in the construction of 
 Godfrey s quadrant. He calls it the most useful of all astronomical in 
 struments, the world ever knew. There is, also, inserted in the Ame 
 rican periodical work, the Port Folio, for Dec. 1817, a letter of Dr. 
 Ewing, in which he says, " Logan gives a full description of the re 
 flecting instrument Mr Godfrey constructed, which appears to be the 
 very instrument now in common use; some very trifling differences in 
 the construction only excepted; which might have been made by Mr. 
 Hadley, and which are hardly worth the mentioning in the invention of 
 such an excellent and uncommon instrument." 
 
284 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. astronomical instruments. He may have been, in the courtly 
 s ^ v ~^ / language of the Quarterly Review, " a dogmatical, overbearing 
 and disagreeable fellow;" but he must still attract the highest 
 admiration for the strength of his intellectual powers, and the 
 resolution and perseverance of his spirit. Let his countrymen, 
 universally, attach his name to the quadrant, and in the course 
 of a few ages, the race between the names of Had ley and God 
 frey will end in the same manner as the rivalry of the British 
 and American nations in numbers, power, and consideration. 
 There is not the least colour, even for the supposition, lhat 
 the American mathematician drew the notion of his improve 
 ment upon Davis s quadrant, from an external source; every 
 circumstance imposes the belief that it was entirely the pro 
 duct of his own genius and combinations. This is not the 
 case, however, with respect to Hadley, though we should dis 
 miss from the question, the possibility of his being indebted to 
 Godfrey s labours. I do not know but that the Quarterly iie- 
 viewers may consider the authority which I am about to oite 
 Dr. Hutton, F. R. S. of London and Edinburgh, md 
 Emeritus Professor of mathematics in the Royal Military 
 Academy at Woolwich quite as obscure as Logan and God 
 frey. Nevertheless, I will venture to appeal to his Mathema 
 tical and Philosophical Dictionary, in which, at the article 
 Quadrant, I find the following statement. 
 
 " Hadley s Quadrant. So called from its inventor John 
 Hadley, Esq. is now universally used, as the best of any, for 
 nautical and other observations. It seems the first idea of this 
 excellent instrument was suggested by Dr. Hooke; for Dr. 
 Sprat, in his History of the Royal Society, p. 246, mentions 
 the invention of a new instrument for taking angles by reflec 
 tion, by which means the eye at once sees the two objects 
 both as touching the same point, though distant almost to a 
 semi-circle; which is of great use for making exact observa 
 tions at sea. This instrument is described and illustrated by j 
 a figure in Hooke s posthumous works, p. 503. But as it ad- j 
 mitted of only one reflection, it would not answer the pur 
 pose. Tlie matter, however, was at last effected by Sir Isaac I 
 Newton, who communicated to Dr. Halley a paper of his own I 
 writing, containing the description of an instrument with two I 
 reflections, which soon after the doctor s death was found f 
 among his papers by Mr. Jones, by whom it was communi 
 cated to the Royal Society, and it was published in the Phi 
 losophical Transactions for the year 1742. How it happened 
 that Dr. Halley never mentioned this in his life time, is difficult 
 to account for; more especially as Mr. Hadley had described.. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 285 
 
 in the Transactions for 1731, his instrument which is construct- SEC.VIII. 
 ed on the same principles.* Mr. Hadley, who was well ac- ^^^-^^ 
 quaintecl with Sir Isaac Newton, might have heard him say, 
 that Dr. Hooke s proposal could be effected by means cf a 
 double reflection; and perhaps in consequence of this hint, 
 he might apply himself, without any previous knowledge of 
 what Newton had actually done, to the construction of his in 
 strument. Mr. Godfrey, too, of Pennsylvania, had recourse 
 to a similar expedient; for which reason some gentlemen of 
 that colony have ascribed the invention of this excellent in 
 strument to him. The truth may probably 6e, that each of 
 these gentlemen discovered the method independent of one an 
 other," 
 
 The opinion thus liberally and decorously expressed by Dr. 
 Button, was, without doubt, that of the Royal Socieiy in 
 1733, when the whole matter was brought under their con 
 sideration. Otherwise, they never would have consented to 
 admit into the volume of their Transactions, the paper of 
 Logan, after they had published that of Hadley. The Quar 
 terly Review has attributed to Logan how accurately let the 
 reader now decide the avowal that two years had elapsed 
 since the appearance of Hadley s paper, when he preferred 
 the claim of Godfrey. But, admitting the interval to be so 
 great, if we admit also, the facts, of whuh there can be no 
 doubt, that Godfrey s instrument was completed in 1730, 
 and that Logan, when he communicated the invention to Dr. 
 Halley, in 1732, believed, as he asserts, that it would appear 
 entirely new to Halley the delay in the communication of it, 
 which Logan at the same time satisfactorily explains, can fur 
 nish no argument nor presumption against the validity of God 
 frey s claim. The dispute between Sir Isaac Newton and 
 Leibnitz, concerning the invention of the method of fluxions, 
 
 * If we consider the character which Halley bore, according to the 
 statement of captain Wright; his silence with respect to. Newton s 
 paper; and the suppression of Logan s letter the conviction forces 
 itself upon the mind that he hud resolved to secure the credit of the 
 invention to Hadley. By the History of the Royal Society, we find 
 that on the 1st of September, 1732, after the receipt oi Logan s letter, 
 Halley volunteered to attend, on the part of the Society, a trial at sea, 
 of Hadley s quadrant, and reported in its favour, without giving the 
 least intimation of his knowledge of the conception or completion of 
 the instrument in any other quarter. The paper of Newton is inserted 
 in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 465. p. 155, with the descrip 
 tion " A true copy of a paper, in the hand writing of Sir Isaac New 
 ton, found among the papers of the late Dr Halley, containing a de 
 scription cfan instrument for observing the moon s distance frena the 
 fixed stars at sea." 
 
286 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. presents a case, similar to the present, in several respects 
 ~^^~^ Newton published his method only in 1704, after Leibnib 
 had given his Differential Calculus to the world. The former 
 traced his invention to the years 1665, 1666; and the Roya 
 Society decided in his favour upon this ground. The scientific 
 world at large has acquiesced in the opinion, that the credi 1 
 of origination is due to both these illustrious philosophers, 
 and such, in all likelihood, will be its conclusion in regarc 
 to Godfrey and Hadley. 
 
 3. We might have expected from the Quarterly Review 
 about the same degree of scrupulosity in eulogizing England 
 and its condition, as in defaming the United Slates. But i; 
 was natural to look for more consistency in the one case thai 
 we have found in the other. Here we shall be disappointec 
 to an extent which is truly marvellous, and which destroys al. 
 confidence in any of the generalities so profusely sown in the 
 pages of that journal. I must be permitted to bring together 
 some of the many passages establishing the instructive tact. 
 
 " Since man has ceased to exist in the patriarchal state, 
 he has no where, nor at any period, existed in so favourable a 
 condition, as in England at the present time." " England is 
 of all parts of the world, the most prosperous and the most 
 happy, blest above all countries, either of the ancient or the 
 modern world." (No. 31, 1817.) 
 
 " England is basking in the broad sunshine of peace and 
 prosperity. England wants nothing but thankfulness; nothing 
 but a due sense of the mercies which are heaped upon her 
 with an unsparing hand." (No. 37, 1818.) 
 
 u England, in the full glory of arts and arms, in the pleni 
 tude of her strength and exuberance of her wealth, in her 
 free government and pure faith, just laws and uncorrupted 
 manners, public prosperity and private happiness; England, in 
 each and all of these respects, presents an object not to be 
 paralleled in past ages or in other countries, an object which 
 fills with astonishment the understanding mind, and which the 
 philosopher and the Christian may contemplate not only with 
 complacency, but with exultation, with the deepest gratitude 
 to the Giver of all good, and the most animating hopes for the 
 further prospects and progress of mankind." (April, 1816. y 
 
 "The great mass of our population is in a state which renders then 
 the easy dupes of every mischievous demagogue." "The English 
 are an uneducated people." (No. 31, 1816.) "The abuse of the pres? 
 is the curse of English liberty." (Ibid.) 
 
 "The London theatres are disgraced by open and scandalous immo 
 jBlities." (Ibid.) 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 "The next generation may see grass growing in the now populous SEC. VIII. 
 city of Nottingham, from the outrages of the Luddites." (Ibid.) V^^F-V-^^. 
 
 "Those who suffered, for the agricultural riots, under the sentence 
 of the law, were men of substance." 
 
 "The men who grow corn are never the men who set fire to it. A 
 large proportion of the misled multitude, who have been burning barns 
 and corn-stacks, would have been aiding the civil power to repress 
 these frantic outrages, if they had had their own little property to 
 defend Let us not deceive ourselves ! Governments are safe in pro 
 portion as the great body of the people are contented, and men cannot 
 be contented, when they work with the prospect of want and pauperism 
 before their eyes, as tvhat must be their destiny at last. 3 (April, 1816 ) 
 
 " In the road which the English labourer must travel, the poor-house 
 is the last stage on the way to the grave. Hence it arises, as a natural 
 result, that looking to the parish as his ultimate resource, and as that to 
 which lie must come at last, he cares not how soon he applies to it. 
 There is neither hope nor pride to withhold him : why should he deny 
 himself any indulgence in youth, or why make any efforts to put off 
 for a little while that which is inevitable at the end? That the labour 
 ing poor feel thus, and reason thus, and act in consequence, is beyond 
 all doubt." (No. 29.) 
 
 "There can be no doubt, that Christian slaves are subject to much 
 harsh treatment, and especially in Algiers : but no Englishman has been 
 made a slave: and before we go out of the way to seek for objects of 
 misery abroad, it would be wise and humane to relieve those which we 
 have at home. One would think that the general distress in the agri 
 cultural and manufacturing classes ; the state of the poor the prisons 
 the hospitals and mad houses ; would supply us with abundant objects 
 to relieve the plethora of philanthropy with which we seem to be 
 bursting." (Ibid.) 
 
 " If adversity be favourable to the development of our virtues, 
 (and indeed manv of our noblest qualities would never be developed 
 under any other discipline), there is a degree of misery which is fatal 
 to them, and which hardens the heart as much as manual labour indu 
 rates the skin, and destroys all finer sense of touch. (Ibid.) 
 
 "Mournful as this is, it is far more mournful to contemplate the 
 effects of extreme poverty in the midst of a civilized and flourishing 
 society. The wretched native of Terra del Fuego, or of the northern 
 extremity of America, sees nothing around him which aggravates his 
 own wretchedness by comparison ; the chief fares no better than the 
 rest of the horde, and the slave no worse than his master; the priva 
 tions which they endure arft common to all ; they know of no state 
 happier than their own, and submit to their miserable circumstances as 
 to a law of nature. But in a country like ours, there exists a contrast 
 which continually forces itself upon the eye and upon the reflective 
 faculty. There was a Methodist dabbler in art who, in the days of our 
 childhood, used to edify the public with allegorical prints from the 
 great manufactory of Carrington Bowles; one of these. curious com 
 positions represented a human figure, of which the right side was 
 dressed in the full fashion of the day, while the left was undressed to 
 the very bones, and displayed a skeleton The contrast in this worse 
 than Mezentian imagination is not more frightful, than that between 
 health and squalid pauperism, who are every clay jostling each other in 
 the street." (Ibid.) 
 
 " It is but too true we fear, that, within the last thirty years, a con 
 siderable degradation of moral character, has been observable among 
 the lower ranks of society; we wish we could say that it mounted no 
 higher. The ostentatious display of charitable donations, posted in 
 
288 
 
 HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PART I. front of the public newspapers, would seem to have subdued that price 
 V^-v~^/ and independence of feeling, which would once have shrunk from being 
 held up as the objects of such charity." 
 
 " The labouring people of Scotland live chiefly on potatoes and oat 
 meal. In the northern counties of England, these furnish theprincipd 
 part of every meal, and it is well known that nine-tenths of the popu 
 lation of Ireland subsist almost entirely upon them." (No 24.) 
 
 " The article offish is a luxurv in all the great cities and towns )f 
 
 (Ibid.) 
 kept up by m > 
 
 " The sudden stoppage of any particular branch of manufacture 
 usually sends multitudes to the poor-house." (Ibid.) 
 
 " In some parts of England, the paupees average nearly one-fourih 
 of the population." (Ibid.) 
 
 " The recent parliamentary enquiry has shown that there are from 
 120 to 130,000 children in the metropolis without the means of educa 
 tion, 4,000 of whom are let out by their parents to beggars, or emplo /- 
 ed in pilfering. Jl like proportion -would be foimdin all our large cities, 
 and throughout the manufacturing districts a far Beater." (No. 29. ) 
 
 " When we have stated upon the authority of Parliament that the re 
 are above 130.000 children in London, who are at this time without the 
 means of education, and that there are from three to four thousand 
 who are let out to beggars and trained up in dishonesty, even this re 
 presents only a part of the evil ,- if the children are without education the 
 parents are without religion; in the metropolis of this enlightened na 
 tion, the church to which they should belong has provided for them no 
 places of worship ; and two-thirds of the lower order of people in Lon 
 don, Sir Thomas Bernard says, live as utterly ignorant of the doctrines 
 and duties of Christianity, and are as errant and unconverted pagans, as if 
 they had existed in the ivildest part of Jifrica. The case is the same, in 
 Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield, and in all our large towns , the 
 greatest part of our manufacturing populace, of the miners and colliers, are 
 in the same condition* and if they are not universally so. it is more owing 
 to the zeal of the methodists than to any other cause." (Ibid.) 
 
 Most of the paragraphs just quoted refer to the year 181G: 
 and lest it should be supposed that the representation of this 
 journal concerning the state of English affairs at home, might 
 be, at a later period, altogether of an opposite complexion, I 
 will moke some further quotations from the number for Sep : 
 tember, 1818, and take them from the article immediately 
 preceding the one in which it is said that u England wants ab 
 solutely nothing but thankfulness." 
 
 " Children are daily to be seen in hundreds and thousands about the 
 streets of London, brought up in misery and mendicity, first, to every 
 kind of suffering, afterwards to every kind of guilt, the boys to theft, 
 the girls to prostitution, ^nd this not from accidental causes, but from 
 an obvious defect in our institutions! Throughout all our great citi<:s, 
 throughout all our manufacturing counties, the case is the same as in the i:a* 
 pital. And this public and notorious evil, this intolerable reproach, has 
 been going on year after year, increasing as our prosperity has increas 
 ed, but in an accelerated ratio. If this were regarded by itself alone, 
 distinct from all other evils and causes of evil, it might well excite 
 shame for the past, astonishment for the present, and apprehension for 
 the future ; but if it be regarded in connection with the increase of 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 289 
 
 pauperism, the condition of the manufacturing- populace, and the inde- SEC. VIII 
 
 fatigable zeal with which the most pernicious principles of every kiiid v^^_.^^^ 
 
 are openly disseminated, in contempt and defiance of the law and of all 
 
 things sacred, the whole would seem to form a fnnd of vice, misery, 
 
 and wickedness, by which not only our wealth, power, and prosperity, 
 
 but all that constitutes the pride, all that constitutes the happiness of 
 
 the British nation is in danger of being absorbed and lost." 
 
 " The sternest republican that ever Scotland produced was so struck 
 by this reflection, that he did not hesitate to wish for the re-establishment 
 of domestic slavery, as a remedy for the squalid wretchedness and auda 
 cious guilt with which his country was at that time overrun." 
 
 " So little provision has been made for religious and moral educa 
 tion in our institutions, and so generally is it neglected by individuals 
 as well as by the state, that the youth in humble life, who has been 
 properly instructed in his duty towards God and man, may be regarded 
 as unusually fortunate. The populace in England are more ignorant of 
 their religious duties than they are in any other Christian country." 
 
 " They who reflect upon the course of society in this country cannot, 
 indeed, but perceive that the opportunities and temptations to evil 
 have greatly increased, while the old restraints, of every kind, have as 
 generally fallen into disuse. The stocks are now as commonly in a 
 state of decay as the market-cross; and while the population has 
 doubled upon the church establishment, the number of ale-houses has in 
 creased tenfold in proportion to the population." 
 
 " What then are the causes of pauperism? misfortune in one instance, 
 misconduct in fifty ; want of frugality, want of forethought, want of 
 prudence, want of principle ; want of hope also should be added. * 
 
 " To work a reformation in the metropolis, indeed, is a task that 
 might dismay Hercules himself ; a huge Augean stable, which the whole 
 Thames hath not water enough to cleanse! Yet the greater the evil, 
 the more urgent is the necessity and duty of setting about the great 
 business of removing it as far as we may. The points to be consider 
 ed are, in what manner we may hope to effect (.he greatest alleviation 
 of human misery, to mitigate the sufferings of the poor, to amend their 
 morals, and to redress their wrongs. Let no man think the expression is 
 overcharged. If any human creatures, born in the midst of a highly civi 
 lized country, are yet, by the circumstances of their birth and breeding, 
 placed in a worse condition both as physical and moral beings, than 
 they would have been had they been born among the savages of Ame 
 rica or Australia; the society in which they live has not done its duty 
 towards thena : they are ag-grieved by the established system of things, 
 being made amenable to its laws, and having received none of its bene 
 fits ; till this be rectified, the scheme of polity is incomplete, and while 
 it exists to any extent, as it notoriously does exist at this time, in this coun 
 try, the foundation of social order is insecure." 
 
 " It is said among the precious fragments of king Edward, that when 
 prayers had been, with good consideration set forth, the people must 
 continually be allured to hear them ; instead of this, a great proportion 
 are actually excluded, for all the churches in the metropolis, with all the 
 private chapels and conventicles of every description added to them, are not 
 sufficient to accommodate a fourth part of the inhabitants, upon the present 
 system of conducting public worship." 
 
 " Forty or fifty years ago, murder was so rarely committed in this 
 country that any person who has amused himself with looking over the 
 magazines or registers of those times, might call to mind every case 
 that occurred during ten or twenty years, more easily than he could re 
 collect those of the last twelve months; for scarcely a weekly news 
 paper comes from the press without its tale of blood. And as the cri- 
 
 VOL. !. o 
 
290 HOSTILITIES t)V THE 
 
 PART I. sis becomes more frequent, it has been marked, if that be possibly 
 ^^^^^^ with more ferociousness, as if there were not only an increase of crim - 
 nals, but as if guilt itself was assuming a more malignant and devilis i 
 type." 
 
 " Looking, however, to those causes which are within reach of disc - 
 pline and law, certain it is that the increase of crimes is attributable i\ 
 no slight degree to the abominable state of our prisons, which, for the 
 most part, have hitherto been nurseries of licentiousness, and schools of 
 guilt, rather lhan places of correction, so that the young offender comes 
 out of confinement in erery respect worse than he went in." 
 
 9. The two presiding reviews of Great Britain having pit 
 the American people under the ban, those of the second ran i 
 naturally followed so grateful an example. I do not know 
 whether I ought to apply this description to the " British Re 
 view, or London Critical Journal," a quarterly pubiicatior, 
 which, in general, is marked by nearly an equal degree of 
 learning and ability with its predecessors. It maintains the 
 same principles, religious and political, as the Quarterly, and 
 has, of course, entered the lists against the American repub 
 lic. The number for May, 1819, contains a copious article 
 headed " Actual Condition of the United States," and pre 
 tended to be drawn from some of the late works on this coun 
 try. I have only to cull some passages from the article, to 
 show what a rich source of correct information and benevo 
 lent temper has been opened to the British Public, in the 
 London Critical Journal. 
 
 " The government of Washington, identifying extent of 
 territory with actual power and future greatness, continues to 
 add lands to the immense provinces which it already pos 
 sesses; it eagerly embraces every opportunity, arising from 
 the weakness or misfortunes of its neighbours, to provide fields 
 for remote generations, who, it flatters itself, will one day out 
 strip all other nations in warlike exploits and commercial 
 wealth, under the auspicious stars of the Union. The pre 
 sent rulers of America appear to think that they shall favour 
 most successfully the rising fortunes of their country by pro- 
 curing soil whereon American heroes and lawgivers may 
 spring up in their order to fulfil their high destinies." 
 
 u In the United States, a debt contracted in one state can 
 not be sued for in the next; and a man who has committed 
 murder in Virginia cannot be apprehended if he make his 
 way into the neighbouring lands of Kentucky."* 
 
 * " The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges 
 and immunities of citizens in the several states. 
 
 " A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, 
 who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall, on the 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 " The states of America can never have a native literature SEC. 
 any more than they can have a native character. Even their ^* 
 wildernesses and deserts, their mountains, lakes, and forests, 
 will produce nothing romantic or pastoral; no native wood- 
 note wild will ever be heard from their prairies or savan 
 nahs; for these remote regions are only relinquished by pagan 
 savages to receive into their deep recesses hordes of discon 
 tented democrats, mad, unnatural enthusiasts, and needy or 
 desperate adventurers." 
 
 " The steam-boat was hatched in Great Britain, and only 
 acquired some sw// additional strength of pinion upon its mi 
 gration across the Atlantic." 
 
 " We are informed that experiments of sailing ships by 
 means of steam were publicly exhibited on the Forth and 
 Clyde canal in 1787; and were either actually witnessed by 
 Mr. Fulton, or communicated to that engineer, who was then 
 a resident in that part of Scotland, of which he was understood 
 to be a native. In answer to some enquiries which we have 
 made personally on this subject; we were told that Fulton was 
 a native of Paisley, in the neighbourhood of which place, he 
 had steam-boats constructed, actually employed both for ex 
 periment and use, and that he afterwards carried the inven 
 tion to America," &c. 
 
 " In the southern parts of the Union, the rites of our holy 
 faith are almost never practised." 
 
 " When the American captains could not fight to advan 
 tage, during the last war, they ran away, and in some instances 
 most shamefully. Their Frolic for instance, after vainly en 
 deavouring to escape by flight, surrendered to the Orpheus 
 and Shelburne without firing a single shot."* 
 
 " The Americans may become a powerful people, but they 
 
 demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be 
 delivered up, to be removed to the state having 1 jurisdiction of the 
 crime." Constitution of the United States, Article IV. Sect. 2. 
 
 * On the 28th of October, 1812, the United States sloop of war, 
 Wasp, commanded by captain Jacob Jones, took, in forty-three mi 
 nutes after the first fire, the British sloop of war, Frolic, superior in 
 force by exactly four twelve-pounders. The gallantry displayed by the 
 American ship in the action, could not be exceeded, and she was much 
 crippled in her rigging and braces. Two hours after possession was 
 taken of the British vessel, His Majesty s ship Poictiers, of seventy-four 
 guns, fell in with and captured them both. The disabled state of the 
 Wasp, and the disparity of force, would have rendered any attempt at 
 resistance on the part of the Americans, as ridiculous as the charge 
 brought against them by the British Review. Let the reader now 
 judge of the candour or the accuracy of this high-toned journal, when 
 it talks of" their Frolic," and of the*Orpheus and Shelburne, kc 
 
29x2 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PART I. want the elements of greatness; they may overrun a portion 
 *^*^^s of the world, but they will never civilize those whom they 
 conquer; they may become the Goths of the Western Conti 
 nent, but they can never become the Greeks. The mass o; 
 the North Americans are too proud to learn, and too ignorant 
 to teach, and having established by act of Congress that they 
 are already the most enlightened people of the world, they bid 
 fair to retain their barbarism from mere regard to consist - 
 ency," &c. 
 
 The barkings of the innumerable minor Reviews and Ma 
 gazines are incessant, and may be compared to those of tin 
 prairie dog, of which we read in the accounts of the Missouri 
 region. They deserve as little to be heeded. I will, how 
 ever, advert to one of them the British Critic co-ordinate 
 with the Monthly Review, and long in the enjoyment of great 
 consideration with the ministerial and high-church party. It 
 has recently had a paroxysm of exprobration, on the occasion 
 of reviewing Mr. Bristed s " Resources of America." Thi 5 
 gentleman, a Briton by birth, educated at home, it has, likr 
 the London Critical Journal, mistaken, or affected to mistake , 
 for an American, and in reviling the diction of his book, 
 has held him forth as a sample of American writers. If at 
 author so affectionately and reverentially disposed toward*- 
 England, fared so ill, for allowing some virtue and prosperity 
 to the United States, these unlucky States had nothing less tc 
 expect than a merciless visitation. I would not undertake tc 
 repeat any part of the pasquinades of the critique, were it not 
 that they form a proper sequel to those of the Quarterly Re 
 view, and complete the idea to be entertained of the strain ir. 
 which we are celebrated in the British journals generally 
 The following extracts will suffice. 
 
 "J% " The Americans debated in Congress, during three suc 
 cessive days, whether they were not the greatest, the wisest 
 bravest, most ingenious, and most learned of mankind." 
 
 " The North American republicans are the most vain, 
 egotistical, insolent, rodomontade sort of people that are an} 
 where to be found. They give themselves airs." 
 
 " The Americans have no history; nothing on which to ex 
 ercise genius and kindle imagination." 
 
 41 One third of the people have no church at all. Threr 
 and an half millions enjoy no means of religious instruction 
 The religious principle is gaining ground in the northern part? 
 of the Union: it is becoming fashionable among the better or 
 ders of society to go to church." 
 
 " The greater number of states declare it to be unconstitu 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 293 
 
 tional to refer to the providence of God in any of their public SEC. vm. 
 acts." 
 
 " The Americans make it a point of conscience never to 
 pay a single stiver to a British creditor." 
 
 " America is like a dissipated boy, combining the feeble 
 ness of early youth, with the libertinism of manhood; the cal 
 culating selfishness of declining years, with the decrepitude 
 and disease of old age." 
 
 " America is easy to conquer, but difficult to keep," &c. &c. * 
 
 Ribaldry of this description, which, by its absurdness, 
 softens the indignation it is fitted to excite, can require 
 no annotation. But I think it well to examine; at once the 
 topic of the first paragraph, quoted from the British criuc, 
 one which has now the additional disrelish of triteness, in 
 any English publication; so often has it exercised the wit, or 
 provoked the spleen, of parliamentary orators, and periodical 
 censors. We have seen that the Edinburgh Review talks of 
 " the ludicrous proposition of the American Congress to de 
 clare herself the most enlightened nation on the globe." The 
 Quarterly Review also, in the critique of Inchiquin s letters, 
 descants scoffingly on this supposed proposition, and avers 
 that it was withdrawn " only through fear of giving umbrage 
 to the French Convention." Mr. Alexander Baring refers to it, 
 in his pamphlet on the Orders in Council, saying, that "the 
 Americans gravely debated once in Congress, whether they 
 should style themselves the most enlightened people in the 
 world;" but he tempers the pungency of the allusion, by re 
 lating how a distinguished member of the House of Commons, 
 Mr. Wilberforce, seriously declared in his place, and was no 
 doubt as seriously believed, " that Great Britain was too ho 
 nest to have any political connexions with the continent of 
 Europe." By a natural progression, or diversity of reading, the 
 story now goes, as the British critic has it " that the Ame 
 ricans debated during three successive days, whether they 
 were not the greatest, wisest, bravest, most ingenious, and most 
 learned of mankind!" This is the shape in which it will, 
 doubtless, be embalmed by the British historians. 
 
 Let us attend now to the facts of the case, as they are ap 
 parent upon the face of the printed debate, and remain noto 
 rious to all who followed the course of our public affairs at 
 the time. 
 
 The French revolution had divided the American people 
 into two great parties; the one disposed for an intimate alli 
 ance with France; the other averse from any connexion with 
 the new republic, and more amicably affected to Great Britain 
 
294 
 
 HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PART I. General Washington, by adopting and maintaining the policy 
 ^-^v-^ of neutrality between the belligerent powers of Europe, and 
 by giving his countenance and official sanction to Jay s treaty, 
 so called, of 1795, with Great Britain, had rendered himself 
 obnoxious to the leaders of that division of our politicians who 
 favoured her enemy, and would have renounced her trad-3. 
 Their antagonists in Congress were fortified in their dislike 
 and dread of the French republic, and their predilection for 
 the most friendly political intercourse and free commercial 
 relations, with Great Britain, by the ill-judged machinations 
 and intemperate language of the French representatives in 
 this country, and the open support which the French govern 
 ment lent to the most insulting trespasses upon our national 
 sovereignty. 
 
 General Washington having announced his resolution to 
 retire into private life, an election for a successor to the chief 
 magistracy look place in 1796, and gave new animation to the 
 feelings and plans just mentioned. At the close of the yeer, 
 while this election was raging^ if I may be allowed the term, 
 Washington delivered his farewell address to the federal legis 
 lature, and in the house of representatives a committee compos 
 ed of five members, three of whom were friends of his adminis 
 tration, was appointed to prepare an answer to his speech. The 
 draught of an answer which this committee reported, contained 
 the following paragraph. " The spectacle of a whole nation, the 
 freest and most enlightened in the world, offering, by its repre 
 sentatives, the tribute of unfeigned approbation to its first citi 
 zen, however novel and interesting it may be, derives its lus 
 tre from the transcendant merit of which," &c. The phrase 
 which I have put in italics found its way into the draught, from 
 the desire of the committee to place Washington at the highest 
 elevation possible, in opposition to the designs of some zealots 
 of party in Congress, who aimed at diminishing the lustre of 
 his personal reputation, and the credit of his system of politics. 
 Moreover, France had not long before asserted for herself the 
 pre-eminence over all nations in freedom and political intelli 
 gence; and the authors of the draught, with those of the same 
 side in Congress, were eager to countervail this, as well as 
 every other overweening pretension, which might enhance her 
 influence in the United States. 
 
 Mr. Sitgreaves, one of the most distinguished members of 
 the anti-gallican party, explained to the house that " the light 
 spoken of was political light, and had no reference to ai\s. 
 science, or literature; that it was intended to make the com 
 pliment stronger to General Washington, and was to be re- 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 295 
 
 yarded as a matter entirely domestic, and not as a public act SEC. VIII. 
 for foreign nations." 
 
 The answer at large brought into view the main political 
 questions which agitated the country, and expressed an un 
 qualified approval of Washington s official career. A debate 
 arose upon the general strain of it, which lasted two days. It 
 turned chiefly upon the point of u the wisdom and firmness" 
 of his administration, in reference to England and France, 
 and embraced the investigation of all our relations with the 
 latter power. Objection had been immediately made to the 
 phrase which has furnished so much sport to the British wits, 
 not only by the opposition, but by several of the most decided 
 federal members. One of these, Mr. Thatcher, finding that 
 it interfered with the principal purpose of obtaining an ap 
 pearance of unanimity in the homage to Washington and his 
 course of policy, moved, at length, after it had been discussed 
 with some copiousness, though incidentally, that the words 
 " spectacle of a whole nation the freest and most enlightened," 
 should be amended so as to read "the spectacle of a free and 
 enlightened nation," which ivas carried without a division. 
 In the course of the debate, a suggestion was, indeed, made, 
 in the way of exception, that the use of the superlative would 
 give umbrage to France; but this consideration must have 
 proved the reverse of dissuasive for the majority, in the state 
 of their feelings towards that power, with whom they so soon 
 afterwards came to open war. They concurred in the amend 
 ment with such readiness, from the two-fold motive of facili 
 tating the adoption of the material parts of the answer, and 
 avoiding what might have the air of national arrogance. 
 
 Thus we see that the famed "proposition of congress to de 
 clare America the freest and most enlightened nation on the 
 globe," the " act of congress by which the Americans esta 
 blished that they are the most enlightened people of the world," 
 was no more than an occasional phrase, hazarded by a com 
 mittee in the draught of a domestic paper, for purposes dis 
 tinct from that of glorifying the nation; which phrase, though 
 equally suited to favourite aims of the majority of congress, 
 was disavowed and rejected by that majority, chiefly because 
 it savoured of presumption, and seemed to infringe upon strict 
 national decorum. The transaction argues, on the whole, in 
 the congress, sentiments opposite to those which it has fur 
 nished the English writers occasion to impute; and, when we 
 advert to the nature of the dispositions towards England, 
 which were mingled with its origin, we must find their re 
 presentations still more ungracious and illiberal. An instance 
 
HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PART I. of the same scrupulousness is certainly not to be found in th 3 
 annals of the British parliament. I refer to the answers cf 
 that body to the speeches from the throne, and to the votes 
 of thanks as presented by the speaker, particularly the last, 
 Mr. Abbot, to the public servants whom it has distinguished, 
 for self-applause and claims of national superiority, beyon 1 
 which, no intoxication of pride, or reason of state can ever, i.i 
 the civilized world, carry national pretensions. This refer 
 ence from an American will, perhaps, be thought a very defi 
 cient measure of recrimination; but it is to be borne in mine, 
 that, however transcendant may be the British nation, in ail 
 respects, in the comparison with her " kinsmen of the west, 
 her pre-eminence, in valour and science at least, over the 
 other nations of Europe, is not so far incontrovertible and no 
 torious, as that, while constantly asserting it herself, she can, 
 without inconsistency or assurance, make a standing jest (<f 
 the single example of exaltedness which she charges upon the 
 American congress. 
 
 The obnoxious phrase in the draught of the American com 
 mittee was, in fact, warrantable in itself, and might have been 
 adopted, as it was meant, with perfect propriety. The com 
 mittee had in view civil and religious freedom combined, and 
 the diffusiveness of political light, and elementary knowledge 
 points in which I think it hardly possible to contest the su 
 premacy of the United States. For proclaiming this supre 
 macy, there were strong motives derived from the peculiar 
 situation of the country in regard to France, at the juncture. 
 The confidence of a part of the American people in their own 
 institutions and political wisdom, seemed to be shaken in some 
 degree by the pretensions of French democracy, and to stand 
 in need of such confirmation as the body of their representa 
 tives could furnish, for their protection against the most mis 
 chievous delusions. 
 
 Although I may appear to have allotted already too much 
 space to this topic, I must claim permission to introduce the 
 observations which were made by Fisher Ames, in congress, 
 on the occasion. They belong, in strictness, to its history. 
 
 Mr. Ames said "If a man were to call himself more free 
 and enlightened than his fellows, it would be considered as 
 arrogant self-praise. His very declaration would prove that 
 he wanted sense as well as modesty; but a nation might be 
 called so by a citizen of that nation, without impropriety, be 
 cause in doing so, he bestows no praise of superiority on him 
 self; he may be in fact, sensible that he is less enlightened 
 than (he wise of other nations. This sort of national eulogium 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 may, no doubt, be fostered by vanity and grounded in mistake: SEC. 
 it is sometimes just; it is certainly common, and not always ^-^^ 
 either ridiculous or offensive. It did not say that either France 
 or England had not been remarkable for enlightened men; 
 their literati are more numerous and distinguished than our 
 own. 
 
 " The general character with respect to this country, was 
 strictly true. Our countrymen, almost universally, possess 
 some property and some portion of learning, two distinctions 
 so remarkably in their favour as to vindicate the expression 
 objected to. But go through France, Germany, and most 
 countries of Europe, and it would be found that out of fifty 
 millions of people, not more than two or three had any pre 
 tensions to knowledge, the rest being, comparatively with 
 Americans, ignorant. In France, which contains twenty-five 
 millions of people, only one was calculated to be in any re 
 spect enlightened, and perhaps under the old system there 
 was not a greater proportion possessed of property; whilst in 
 America, out of four millions of people, scarcely any part of 
 them could be placed upon the same ground with the rabble 
 of Europe. 
 
 " That class called vulgar, canaille, rabble, so numerous 
 there, does not exist here as a class, though our towns have 
 individuals of it. Look at the Lazzaroni of Naples: there arc 
 20,000 or more houseless people, wretched and in want! He 
 asked whether where men wanted every thing, and were in 
 the proportion of twenty-nine to one, it was possible that they 
 could be trusted with power? Wanting wisdom and morals, 
 how could they use it? It was therefore that the iron hand of 
 despotism was called in by the few who had any thing, to 
 preserve any kind of controul over the many. This evil, as it 
 truly was, rendered real liberty hopeless. 
 
 u In America, out of four millions of people, the proportion of 
 those who cannot read and write, and who, having nothing, arc 
 interested in plunder and confusion, and disposed for both, is 
 exceedingly small. In the southern states he knew there were 
 people well informed; he disclaimed all design of invidious 
 comparison; the members from the south would be more capa 
 ble of doing justice to their constituents; but, in the eastern 
 states, he was more particularly conversant, and knew the 
 people in them could universally read and write, and were 
 well informed as to public affairs. In such a country, liberty 
 is likely to be permanent. It is possible to plant it in such a 
 soil, and reasonable to hope, that it will take root and flourish 
 
 VOL. I. Pp 
 
 297 
 
298 
 
 HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PARTI, long, as we see it does. But can liberty such as we under 
 ^^ v "* w stand and enjoy, exist in societies where the few only have 
 property, and the many are both ignorant and licentious? 
 
 -Was there any impropriety, then, in saying what was a 
 fact? As it regards government, the declaration is useful. It 
 is respectful to the people to speak of them with the justice 
 due to them, as eminently formed for liberty and worthy t i 
 it. If they are free and enlightened, let us say so. Congress 
 ought not only to say this because it was true, but because 
 their saying so would have the effect to produce that self-re 
 spect which was the best guard of liberty; and most condt* 
 cive to the happiness of society. It was useful to show when 
 our hopes and the true safety of our freedom are reposed. ;t 
 procured in return from the citizens a just confidence; it che 
 rished a spirit of patriotism unmixed with foreign alloy, and 
 the courage to defend a constitution which a people really er - 
 lightened knows to be worthy of its efforts." 
 
 The American Congress has had its full share of maternal 
 abuse. It has been visited with the wrath and the pleasantry 
 of the British writers, on other grounds than the one of which 
 I have just treated. With the Fullers and the Lord Coelj- 
 ranes before their eyes, with the Wilkes and the Gordons fresi* 
 in their recollection, they have yet been bold enough to single, 
 for the purpose of general detraction, out of our legislative an 
 nals, instances of disorderly deportment in individuals. That 
 of Mathew Lyon and Roger Griswold, the only flagrant case, 
 is vamped up in all the reviews and books of travels, as if 
 personal violence were a new species of irregularity in the 
 history of legislative assemblies; and as if the British parti 
 cularly furnished no case of the kind for admonishment. But 
 we have only to open the parliamentary annals, to find pre 
 cedents of an early date, which might have sufficed for all 
 purposes. Take, for example, the rencontre narrated in the 
 following extract from the history of the House of Commons 
 of the year 1678, in the reign of Charles 11. 
 
 " Debate on Sir J. Trelawney s calling Mr. Ash a rascal. "" 
 Sir J. Trelawney said " I rise up the earlier to speak, be 
 cause I wish this had been in another place: but perhaps in a 
 more sacred place than this* if any man should call me rascaL 
 
 * The Quarterly Review is (maugre the example of Sir J. Trelawney) 
 greatly scandalized at the story related by Birbeck, of a citizen of the 
 state of Indiana having 1 declared before a spiritual tribunal, that he 
 should not wish to live longer than he had the right to knock down ths 
 man who told him he lied. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 J should call him rebel, and give him a box on the ear. The SEC. VIII. 
 cause of the quarrel that happened was this. Colonel Birch V^-VN^ 
 was saying lose (his question, and he would vote for a ge 
 neral toleration. No, said I, I never was for that. And Ash 
 said I am not for popery: said I nor I for presbytery. I 
 came to Ash and told him he must explain his words. Said 
 Ash, I am no more a presbyterian than you are a papist. 
 Upon which I said, Ash was a rascal, and I struck him, and 
 1 should have done it any where." 
 
 Sir Wm. Harbord said " Sir John Trelawney has behav 
 ed himself like a man of honour." Sir John was only slightly 
 reprimanded by the speaker. 
 
 The nature of this proceeding and the general spirit which 
 gave rise to it, and made the punishment so light, is as little 
 creditable, as the affair of Mathew Lyon, who was, be it re 
 membered, spurned by the whole American Congress. And 
 it is quite as fair in me to go back to the case of Trelawney, 
 as it is in an English writer to recur to that of Lyon. Our 
 party-heats at the period when this happened, were also ex 
 treme, although not indeed fed by religious bigotry. 
 
 If, however, a recent case is wanted, it can be furnished 
 without difficulty. It is from the applauded Travels of Simon, 
 in England, of 1809, that I extract the following history: 
 
 " The House of Commons has exhibited lately a very cu 
 rious tragi-comic scene. An honourable member, a country 
 gentleman, and, I believe, a county member, took offence at 
 some slight he had experienced during the late examination 
 in Parliament; and having made some intemperate remarks, 
 supported by oaths, there was a motion, that the words of the 
 honourable member should be taken down. ThU produced 
 another explosion from the honourable member, who was or 
 dered by the Speaker to leave the house, which he obeyed 
 with some difficulty. The House then decided that he should 
 be put into the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. This reso 
 lution was no sooner announced to him, than he burst in 
 again, furiously calling to the Speaker that he had no right to 
 send him into confinement; and that the little fellow in the 
 great wig was the servant, and not the master of the House of 
 Commons. The Speaker, in consequence of the vote of im 
 prisonment, was obliged to order the sergeant-at-arms to do 
 his duty; and the latter, with the assistance of some other 
 officers, succeeded in carrying off his prisoner after an obsti 
 nate combat, the honourable member being an Hercules! 
 What would the Parisians say to an affair like this in their 
 
300 
 
 HOSTILITIES OF THE 
 
 PARTI. Senat Conservatif, and one of the members in grand costume, 
 <^~v***-s giving battle to the door keeper on the senatorial floor?"* 
 
 Lyon, the aggressor in the affair of the American House cf 
 Representatives, was not an American, and it is .probable that 
 those who sent him to the American legislature were chiefly 
 foreigners. The right of suffrage in the United States is sub 
 ject to few restrictions; it is acquired, after a few years resi 
 dence, without much difficulty, by Europeans of every order. 
 It would not, therefore, be matter of surprise, if men of vulge r 
 manners and unruly spirit strangers, with the slough of the r 
 native grossness and virulence, were occasionally found in 01 r 
 Congress. Besides, the American representatives belong to 
 professions, and circles of society, in which the more elaborai e 
 and delicate courtesies cannot be supposed to be practised, 
 nor self-controul to be acquired in the same extent as in what 
 is called the fashionable and polished company of the British 
 islands, where the legislators are boastfully said, to be trained 
 to habitual politeness, under a discipline suited to their her* - 
 ditary gentility and affluence. Yet, it has so happened, that in 
 stances of members such as I have described above, are rare in 
 the annals of Congress; and that as much decorumhas prevailed 
 in that body at all times, as in any similar institute of modem 
 days. Since the era of our federal assemblies, the British 
 parliament has exhibited more scenes of turbulence and inde 
 cency; a strain of personal reflection has been immemorially 
 indulged in it, which would not be borne in the former. Mr. 
 Canning complains, in one of his late speeches, of u the prac 
 tice in the House of Commons, of calumniating public men 
 on either side of the house, by imputing to them motives of 
 action, the insinuation of which would not be tolerated in the 
 intercourse of private life." This gentleman allowed him 
 self, on the floor, to stigmatize Mr. Lambton, one of the most 
 distinguished orators of the opposition, as " a dolt and an 
 ideot." In Feb. 1817, Mr. Bennet exclaimed, in his place, 
 against " such ministers as the noble lord, Castlereagh, who 
 had already imbrued their hands in the blood of their coun 
 try, and been guilty of the most criminal cruelties." Lord 
 Castlereagh replied by giving the lie direct to his accuser. Up 
 on another occasion in the same year, when vilified by Mr. 
 Brougham, the noble lord described the speech of the honour- 
 able and learned gentleman as " a strain of black, malignant, 
 and libellous insinuation." In reading the invectives of Mr. 
 Tierney, and the bitter taunts of Mr. Canning, we feel a two- 
 
 * Vol. I. p. 63. 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 301 
 
 told wonder at the licentiousness of the parliamentary tongue, SEC. Tin. 
 and at the impunity with which such cruel insults are oSer- ^^v^^ 
 ed on so conspicuous a theatre.* 
 
 The general style of altercation in both houses of Parliament 
 during the American war, and at some periods of the admi 
 nistration of the younger Pitt, has never, I am sure, been 
 equalled in the American congress at any stage of our party 
 irritations. If I open the volumes of parliamentary debates, 
 i fall at once upon such specimens of senatorial temperance 
 as the following: 
 
 "Lord Mansfield rose in great passion, he charged the 
 last noble lord, (Earl of Shelburne,) with uttering gross false 
 hoods." Almond s Parliament ary Debates, Feb. 7f/i, 1775. 
 
 "The Earl of Shelburne returned the charge of falsehood 
 to Lor J Mansfield in direct terms," Ibid. 
 
 "The Duke of Richmond animadverted in very severe 
 terms, on an expression which fell in the heat of debate from 
 a noble lord (Lord Lyttleton). He said no man could impute 
 littleness, lowness, or cunning to any member of that assembly 
 (alluding to what his lordship had pointed at Lord Camden) 
 for delivering his sentiments freely, unless he drew the picture 
 from something he felt within himself, as by illiberally charg 
 ing others with low and sinister designs, the charge could only 
 properly be applied to the person from whom it originated.^ 
 Ibid. 
 
 * The following, of so late a date as June 7th, 1819, is a fair speci 
 men. 
 
 " Mr. Canning said : The shuffling, otnoartffy, and evasive course recom 
 mended by the right honourable gentleman, Mr. Tierney, showed what 
 was his real object, &c. 
 
 " Mr. Calcraft here rose to order. He could not listen in silence to the 
 foul, offensive, and almost unparliamentary aspersions which the right ho 
 nourable gentleman had passed on his right honourable friend, on him 
 self, and on all his friends around him, &c. 
 
 " Mr. Canning here interrupted the honourable gentleman. He 
 thought that in debate there was tolerably fair room to give and to take , 
 and whenever the terms indecent and atrocious, which had been 
 applied to the proposal of ministers were retracted, then, and not till 
 then, should he retract the epithets which he had applied to the con 
 duct of the gentleman opposite. 
 
 "Mr. Calcraft rejoined. Cowardly, erasive, and shuffling! from a 
 man too, who when he looked on one side on the honourable friends 
 whom he had betrayed, and at the other side on the honourable friends 
 whom he had lampooned, but with both of whom he was now united in 
 place, might reflect, perhaps, on a more exact illustration of such qua 
 lities. (Hear, hear, hear.)" 
 
302 HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PART r. Mr. Edmund Burke said: 
 
 " Sir, the noble lord who spoke last (Lord North) af tei 
 extending his right leg a full yard before his left, rolling 1m 
 flaming eyes, and moving his ponderous frame, has at length 
 opened his mouth. I was all attention. After these portents 
 I expected something still more awful and tremendous: I ex 
 pected that the Tower would have been threatened in articu 
 lated thunder; but I have heard only a feeble remonstrance 
 against violence and passion: when I expected the powers of 
 destruction to cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war, an over 
 blown bladder has burst, and nobody has been hurt by the 
 crack." CobbetPs Debates, 1770. 
 
 In one particular form of indecorum, I might almost call il 
 enormity, the British parliament has gone far beyond what is 
 known to our experience in America. I refer to the jocularity 
 indulged on occasions the most pathetic in the facts, or the 
 most solemn in the consequences for the interests and honoui 
 of the nation. 
 
 During the debates on the slave trade in the years 1791 
 and 1792, when disclosures were made of crimes commit 
 ted by British captains in that trade, so dreadfully atro 
 cious, that even now they wring the heart, and overpower the 
 imagination of a cursory reader, laughter resounded from 
 time to time in the House of Commons; and that body listen 
 ed complacently to a speech, from Lord Carhampton, to which 
 nothing can be compared, considering the occasion and sub 
 ject, except, perhaps, the show of dancing- dogs under the 
 guillotine at Paris, so eloquently stigmatized by Burke. I 
 will take, from the debate of 1791, a more particular exam 
 ple of this almost incredible levity which has distinguished 
 the British parliament. 
 
 "Mr. William Smith related the following anecdote upon the authority 
 of eye witnesses. * A child of about ten months old took sick on board 
 of a British slave-ship, and would not eat. The captain took up the 
 child, and flogged him with a cat ; D n you, said he, I ll make you 
 eat, or I ll kill you. From this, and other ill treatment, the child s 
 legs swelled, and the captain ordered some water to be made hot for 
 abating the swelling. But even his tender mercies were cruel ; for the 
 cook putting his hand into the water, said it was too hot. D n him, 
 said the captain, * put his feet in. The child was put into the water, 
 and the nails and skin came all off his feet. Oiled cloths were then put 
 round them. The child was then tied to a heavy log, and two or three 
 days afterwards the captain caught it up again and said, I will make 
 you eat, or I will be the death of you. He immediately flogged the 
 child again ; and, in a quarter of an hour, it died. One would imagine, 
 that the most savage cruelty would here have been satiated; but, ex 
 traordinary as it might appear, of this detestable transaction, the most 
 detestable part yet remained. After the infant was dead, he would not 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 
 
 303 
 
 suffer any of the people on deck to throw the body over, but called the SEC. VIII. 
 wretched mother, to perform this last sad office to her murdered child. \^-v~w/ 
 Unwilling 1 as it might naturally be supposed she was to comply, he 
 beat her till he made her take up the child and carry it to the side of 
 the vessel, and then she dropped it into the sea, turning her head the 
 other way, that she might not see it !" Mr. Smith asked the committee 
 of the House if ever they had heard of such a deed, on -which some of 
 the inconsiderate laughed, and on hearing it, he declared with great in 
 dignation, that he should not have thought it possible for any one man 
 jn that committee to have betrayed such a total want of feeling, and 
 that he -was almost ashamed of being a member of the assembly, in which so 
 disgraceful a circumstance had happened." 
 
 We were told by Sir S. Romilly (March llth, 1818) that, 
 " in the violence of party, cruelties which could not be heard 
 without shuddering, had been treated in a British House of 
 Commons with such levity, that it had been facetiously said, 
 that the outcry which had been raised, was only for a Catho 
 lic s having got a sore back." 
 
 When the question of abolishing the use of climbing boys 
 in the sweeping of chimneys (the white negro slaves of England, 
 as they are called by the Quarterly Review) was brought be 
 fore the House of Lords in the present year, (1819,) accom 
 panied with harrowing details of cruelty and suffering, Lord 
 Lauderdale, who opposed the bill for their relief, got into 
 a facetious mood, and put his brother peers in the same, by 
 the following, among other appropriate and refined anecdotes: 
 " In some parts of Ireland," the noble lord said, " it had been 
 the practice, instead of employing climbing-boys, to tie a rope 
 round the neck of a goose, and thus drag the bird up a chim 
 ney, which was cleaned by the fluttering of its wings. This 
 practice so much interested the feelings of many persons, that, 
 for the sake of protecting the goose, they were ready to give 
 up all humanity towards other animals. A man in a country 
 village having one day, according to the old custom, availed 
 himself of the aid of a goose, was accused by his neighbours 
 of inhumanity. In answer to the remonstrance of his accuser, 
 he observed that he must have his chimney swept. Yes, re 
 plied the humane friend of the goose, to be sure you must 
 sweep your chimney, but you cruel baist you, why dont you 
 take two ducks, they will do the job as well." [Laughing]. 
 
 Whoever was present in the gallery of the House of Com 
 mons, during the examination of Mrs. Clarke, in the affair 
 of the Duke of York, can well remember the sportfulness 
 of the House, exercised in loose allusions, and pushed, from 
 time to time, to clamorous merriment. We have witnessed 
 no such edifying spectacle, whether as to the cause or the 
 effect, in the American congress. Before I finish with this 
 
304 
 
 HOSTILITIES OP THE 
 
 PART i. topic, I will offer one case more of parliamentary inseus.- 
 v " x ~ v ^- bility, which, together with what I have already produced, 
 may soften the horror of the Quarterly Review at the occur 
 rence of "one member s striking at another" in the American 
 congress. I quote from the proceedings of the House of Con 
 mons for April 7th, 1819: 
 
 Mr. Bennet said 
 
 "That from the year 1781 to the year 1818, two thousand nil e 
 hundred and eighty-seven women convicts, being in the proportion of 
 one-seventh of the men transported during 1 the same period, had been 
 sent out of the country. Of two hundred and twenty women sent fro n 
 the year 1816 to 1818, one hundred and twenty-one were sentenced 10 
 the limited term of seven years transportation. Few of these women 
 ever returned. Their only means of returning was prostitution. Mary 
 of the convicts had received judgment for capital offences, and many 
 for minor ones. Now the act of the 9th of the King, chap. 74, had been 
 drawn up on the principle, that persons convicted of minor offences 
 ought to be confined to penitentiaries, and not sent at a great expense 
 to a distant settlement. A learned and distinguished judge had told 
 him, that on the last circuit he was about to sentence a woman to be 
 transported, when his resolution was changed by the clerk of the peace 
 informing him that it was nearly impossible for women to return. No 
 classification existed on board, but petty offenders were compelled to 
 herd and associate with capital convicts and hardened delinquents. 
 This appeared to him in the light of a gratuitous infliction of pain, 
 which was unworthy of, and discreditable to, a great country. He must 
 complain also of the manner in which women were brought from coun. 
 try gaols to one spot, for the purpose of being put on board the vessels 
 destined for New South Wales. One unfortunate girl had been brought 
 from Cambridge, so bound in chains that it was necessary to saw them 
 asunder; and another girl from Carlisle, sent up in the same way, on 
 the top of a coach, had had her child torn form her breast ! When she 
 was brought to Newgate, she was in the utmost state of torture. When 
 once on board, no distinction was observed between the small and the 
 great offender; the girl whose passion for finery had prompted her to 
 commit a petty theft, was placed in the same bed with the shameles^ 
 prostitute who robbed on system. He held in his hand a letter written 
 by Mr. Marsden, Chaplain-general in New South Wales, and stating 
 that promiscuous intercourse between the seamen and female convicts 
 had prevailed on board a ship which had carried out a great number of 
 women previously trained under the care of Mrs. Fry and others, to 
 habits of morality and decorum. 
 
 "Whether the new system of this year, with respect to the regula 
 tions on board female convict ships, would be better than that of last 
 year, he should not inquire ; but he objected to a system under which, 
 when the women arrived at New South Wales, they had no place when- 
 they could lay their heads." 
 
 Mr. Wilberforce said " that in the present state of the colony, every 
 fresh addition to the number transported, while there was no increase 
 of accommodation, must add to the misery and vice of those who were 
 at present there, besides plunging the new comers into the same 
 wretched state." 
 
 " Mr. F. Buxton conceived that the case of the unfortunate female 
 convicts deserved particular consideration. It already appeared that 
 out of one hundred and sixty women employed in one manufactory, 
 t here were one hundred and twenty turned out every night, and obliged 
 
BRITISH REVIEWS. 305 
 
 to depend, not to say for comforts, but for necessaries, upon the casual SEC. VIII. 
 wages of prostitution " . ^^^ -^_- 
 
 Mr. Bathurst (one of the ministry) said "that before he examined 
 the speech of the honourable mover, he should allude to the argument 
 of his honourable friend (Mr. Wilberforce), who had argued that no 
 female convicts should be sent off until the report of the committee 
 was made, and he supposed, till some regulation was founded upon it. 
 Now, if this argument were followed out consistently, it would go 
 much beyond the present motion, as it would apply not to one vessel, 
 but to all convicts, male or female. But then it was argued by the ho 
 nourable mover, that it was* difficult to keep men, but that females 
 might be kept with great convenience, &c." 
 
306 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 OF THE EXISTENCE OF NEGRO SLAVERY IN THE UNITEL 
 STATES, AND OF THE BRITISH ABOLITION OF THE SLAVE 
 TRADE. 
 
 PART i. 1. I HAVE reserved for the concluding section of this first 
 t *x-v^w part of my Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain, the 
 topic of our negro slavery, the side on which we appear most 
 vulnerable, and against which the reviewers have directed 
 their fiercest attacks. With respect to their reproaches on 
 all other grounds, enough, I think, has been adduced to show 
 how strangely they have overlooked the lesson of the gospel 
 he that is without sin let him first cast the stone. They 
 have aggravated the offence of malevolence by extreme foliy : 
 in selecting heads of accusation which may be retorted with 
 complete success. This is as much the case in relation to 
 the existence of domestic slavery among us, as in any other 
 instance; and I shall not hesitate to avail myself on this oc 
 casion, as heretofore, of an error in reasoning, which springs 
 as well from a corruption of political morals, as from an 
 eclipse of the understanding. Of all Europeans, an English 
 man is the one, who should have most cautiously abstained 
 from venting reproaches, that brought Africa and the slave 
 trade into view: If there is any nation upon which pru 
 dence and shame enjoined silence in regard to the negro 
 bondage of these States, England is that nation; but it hap 
 pens precisely as in all the other questions open to the most 
 direct recrimination, that it is from her the loudest outcries 
 and the sharpest upbraidings have come. 
 
 We experienced this particular injustice, even during our 
 colonial dependence, while she was actively supplying us 
 with slaves, and endeavouring by the most jealous precau 
 tions, to secure this favourite branch of her monopoly. Her 
 writers drew invidious comparisons between the situation 
 and prospects of the mother country and those of the con 
 tinental colonies, founded upon the presence in the latter, 
 of the multitude of blacks whose number and miseries sh< 
 
NEGRO SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE. 30*7 
 
 was daily and forcibly augmenting. When her merchants SECT ix 
 and travellers returned from this reprobate land, they insti- ^*^^- 
 tuted similar contrasts; stigmatized the colonial slave-holders; 
 and could not pardon the atrocity of retaining in bondage even 
 the white convicts whom she had thrust into their hands. They 
 spread, concerning the habitual state of the latter, as well as 
 of the ->laves, tales of horror, of the nature of which we may 
 form some idea from the following passage, dated 1720, of 
 the preface to Beverley s History of Virginia. u It hath been 
 so represented to the common people of England as to make 
 them believe, that the servants in Virginia are made to draw 
 in cart and plow as the oxen do in England, and that the coun 
 try turns all people black who go to live there; with other such 
 prodigious phantasms." The worthy and intelligent histo 
 rian, whose life had been spent in that colony, under circum 
 stances the most favourable to extensive and accurate obser 
 vation, bore a very different testimony, which may serve 
 equally well for the present day " I can assure with great 
 truth that generally the slaves in Virginia, are not worked 
 near so hard, nor so many hours in a day, as the husbandmen 
 and day labourers in England; that no people more abhor the 
 thoughts of cruel usage to servants than the Virginians."* 
 
 Since our independence, slave holding has seemed to be 
 fairly let loose to the Briton for the purposes of self-congratu 
 lation, and of the execration of American existence; as if, in 
 deed. England retained no longer a connexion with the West 
 Indies; frequented no more the coast of Africa; and had ac 
 tually u in the midst of her rottenness, torn off the manacles 
 of slaves all over the world." The negro has invariably 
 figured in the reports of the writers of that nation who have 
 condescended to visit this country, as a "goblin damn d;" he 
 is the chief bugbear which Lord Sheffield set up, in 1784, to 
 deter Irishmen from exchanging the blessings of their domes 
 tic condition, for the miseries of the American; which Fearon 
 was instructed to put forward to correct that " most mischiev 
 ous evil" the emigration of English artisans; and which Bir- 
 beck has employed to draw into his own neighbourhood in 
 the Illinois, such of his countrymen as persist in seeking these 
 shores, in spite of Lord Castlereagh, and of the effigies of 
 that evil " which counterbalances all the excisemen, licensers, 
 and tax-gatherers of England." 
 
 The Edinburgh Review having, in the 60th number, in the 
 article on Birbeck s Travels, presented views tending to en- 
 
 * Book IV c. X. 
 
NEGRO SLAVERY AN& 
 
 PART I. courage this disposition to emigrate, would seem to have dis 
 covered that it had gone too far, and suddenly resolved 10 
 counteract the effects of its first representations. This is tie 
 natural explanation of the patriotic mood in which we find it 
 in the 61st number, where every thing in Britain is repn - 
 sented as inspiring confidence, and inviting contentment; 
 while all in America is made to wear a sinister and repulsive 
 aspect. Tile zeal of a proselyte is proverbially ardent. Hav 
 ing in a rapid evolution, set itself against emigration, this 
 journal could, of course, " keep no measures" with negn- 
 slavery in America. Here was the yawning gulph of crime 
 and perdition, at which an Englishman should pause, as he 
 was blindly rushing onward from the tax-gatherer, and tie 
 " menacing hydra (pauperism) that stalked over his native 
 land. ? Belter remain where he was, safe from the demoral 
 izing effects of commanding slaves^ and with the consolation 
 at home, that he had " an inestimable parliament;" that u tie 
 next twenty years might bring a great deal of internal im 
 provement;" that " the apprentice laws had been swept 
 away," and u the strong fortress of bigotry rudely assailed." 
 Care was taken at the same time not to inform him how large 
 a portion of our vast country, is wholly without the institution 
 of slavery; how small a part of our white population is indebt 
 ed to the labour of slaves; that considerably more than a 
 moiety of our whole population, inhabiting distinct portions of 
 terjitory, is altogether free from the reproach and the detri 
 ment of commanding slaves, while a great probability obtains 
 that within " the next twenty years," no inconsiderable part 
 of the remainder will enjoy the same exemption. 
 
 Nor were these considerations, or the facts which I propose 
 presently to adduce, allowed to interfere with the design of a 
 sweeping ban against the American people, which should put 
 every Englishman in a better humour with the u rottenness" 
 of England, by exhibiting her in contradistinction, as the tute 
 lary genius of freedom, and the country after which he han 
 kered, as marked with fouler stains, and doubly gangrened 
 to the very core. I have already quoted literally the passage 
 of the Review, which composes the grand arraignment, and 
 will now repeat the several weighty allegations into which it 
 is resolvable. They are as follows: The institution of slavery 
 is the foulest blot in the national character of America; its 
 existence in her bosom is an atrocious crime the consumma 
 tion of wickedness, and admits of no sort of apology from 
 her situation; the American, generally, is a scourger and 
 murderer of slaves, and therefore below the least and lowest of 
 
SLAVE TRADfc. 
 
 the European nations in the scale of wisdom and virtue; and, SECT.IX. 
 above all, he sinks, on this account, immeasurably in the com- s -^~ v ^^ ( 
 parison with England, who, become the agent of universal 
 emancipation, may challenge the world to decide which of 
 the two people is the most liable to censure, upon a general 
 consideration of their demerits. These propositions imply, 
 and may be converted into, others of this purport that Ame 
 rica is chiefly to blame for the establishment and continuance 
 of her negro slavery; that she could have suppressed it either 
 before or since her independence, even with safety and ease; 
 that it is a system of flagellation and murder, with which she is 
 universally chargeable; that her congress has remained in 
 different to its enormities; that on her own part it is incom 
 patible with soundness of heart or understanding, and with 
 the love or the possession of political freedom; that no nation 
 of Europe, not the lowest and least, presents a similar or 
 equally revolting spectacle of servitude; that England exhi 
 bits, within the pale of her power, a clear and glorious sun 
 shine of personal liberty and security; that she is in no wise 
 implicated in the guilt of the American; that her dispositions 
 have always been benign, and her hands pure, in relation to 
 the unhappy race, whom we conspire to oppress and extermi 
 nate; or at least, that if she has not always been busy in 
 "tearing oft" their manacles," and assuaging their sorrows, if 
 she has ever been taxable with a part of their wrongs, and 
 stained with a/etc drops of their blood, she has, by her subse 
 quent temper aud conduct, purged away the taint, and made 
 ample amends to them, and to the cause of justice and freedom 
 America and Britain are here put at direct issue, on 
 points which vitally affect national character; the American 
 is cited, officiously and triumphantly, before the world, by a 
 British literary tribunal on the Areopagus of Edinburgh, to 
 measure himself upon them with the Briton. For the sake ol 
 historical truth, as well as for our own honour, and the repulse 
 of arrogant and invasive pretensions, we are bound to appear, 
 and answer in the best way we can, towards our own vindi 
 cation, and the confusion of the aggressor. There is no keen 
 ness or latitude of retaliation which will appear excessive after 
 such provocation; and indulgence will be readily granted, for 
 the same reason, should details of fact be reproduced, eithei 
 familiar to most readers, or harrowing for the feelings of hu 
 manity. 
 
 2. I am not sorry to have an opportunity, at length, of 
 pleading the apology of the early American colonists, on a 
 
310 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. score left untouched in the pages which I have devoted to 
 *~*~^-^s them in particular. What then is the first general fact which 
 offers itself in the question? It is this that England, who 
 had been actively, eagerly, engaged in the slave trade since 
 the year 1562, herself supplied her North American colonists, 
 from the outset, with negroes whom she sought, and seize}, 
 and manacled, on the coast of Africa, and dragged and sold 
 into this continent. The institution of negro slavery, " the 
 great curse of America," lies, indisputably, at her door. 
 What was her motive? The alleviation of the lot of hor 
 sons whom she had driven into the distant wilderness? No 
 British writer has counted so far upon the simplicity of man 
 kind as to hazard this explanation. The motive was sheor 
 love of gain; omniverous avarice; looking not merely to the 
 immediate profit upon the cargo of human flesh, but to the 
 greater, and permanent productiveness of the settlements 
 whose staples were to be monopolized by the mother country. 
 Let it be conceded, that the colonists received the auxiliaries 
 thus brought to their hands, and whom they durst not reject, 
 without repugnance, perhaps with avidity. But, considering 
 the nature of their respective motives and situation, does the 
 guilt of the receiver in this case bear any proportion to that 
 of the trader? Can the seduced be brought down, by any 
 principle of reasoning, to the level of the seducer? If the 
 colonists, the souihern particularly, in a new climate noxious 
 to the white labourer, but favourable to the African constitu 
 tion; exposed to much physical suffering from other causes, 
 and to so many additional influences depressing for the mini 1 .; 
 liable to be called off from the culture of the soil by the 
 irruptions of the savage native; yielded to the temptation so 
 immediate, of being relieved from the wasting labours of the 
 field, and enabled to provide more effectually for their defence 
 against the Indian; if we suppose them even to have gone in 
 quest of the negro slave, in a few instances, after the mother 
 country had set them the example, and given them a taste of 
 the relief which he could afford, are they not to be considered 
 quite as excusable as we can conceive men to be by any possi 
 bility, in any instance of the adoption of domestic servitude, 
 or, indeed, of the commission of any wrong? 
 
 It is a contested point whether the constitution even of the 
 native white is equal to the task of cultivating the earth suc 
 cessfully in our southern states, in the actual condition of -its 
 surface; but in the first century of settlement, when the forest 
 was still to be felled, and the climate, more noxious in itsejfs 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 Jll 
 
 exercised a more fatal influence, the service of the negro was -SECT. ix. 
 more important, and would naturally be thought indispensable v-*~>^w 
 by the colonists. 
 
 This plea, too, may be urged for them, that, in common 
 with the wisest men of the age, numbers believed slavery to 
 be strictly lawful in itself, both according to natural and re 
 vealed religion. The same plea has, indeed, been advanced 
 in favour of the slave-dealing nation; but, though we can sup 
 pose the conscience of the colonist, with the bible in his hands, 
 to have remained at rest upon the mere purchase, and appro 
 priation of the negre, at his door, with the mode of whose 
 acquisition in Africa he was unacquainted, it is impossible to 
 imagine so entire a perversion and torpor of human reason and 
 feeling, as is implied by the supposition that the former, while 
 exciting intestine wars in Africa, trepanning the unwary, 
 tearing the native from the centre of the dearest ties, exer 
 cising, in short, the most nefarious arts, and fell cruelties, to 
 secure the African victim, could remain insensible to the cri 
 minality of the pursuit. Another bondage, the guilt of which 
 oone have had the hardihood to palm upon the colonists, I 
 mean that of men of their own colour and nation, objects, for the 
 most part, of the injustice and vengeance of faction and bigotry 
 in the mother country, tended to reconcile them the more to 
 the subjection of the negro whom she taught them, at the 
 same time, to regard as of an inferior species. In every way 
 did she familiarize and train them to that institution which she 
 now charges upon their descendants as " the consummation 
 of wickedness." 
 
 3. It has been shown, in my second section, that the colo 
 nists became dissatisfied, at an early period, with the intro 
 duction of the British convicts among them, and endeavoured, 
 though ineffectually, both by remonstrance and edicts, to arrest 
 the practice. They conceived, also, before the expiration ot 
 the seventeenth century, both disgust and apprehension at the 
 importation of the negro slaves, and took, with no better suc 
 cess, similar ^ measures for its repression. Some few of th<. 
 merchants of the northern colonies had embarked in the trade, 
 and a comparatively small number of the victims was held in 
 servitude there; but only a very short time elapsed, before 
 scruples arose among the conscientious puritans and quakers, 
 and the whole system fell into disrepute and reprobation. 
 Clarkson has not been able to show for Great Britain, its 
 chief patroo and agent, so early and pointed an expression of 
 just views aud feelings on the subject, from any quarter, as is 
 
312 
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY ANti 
 
 PART I. found in the following facts, which I adduce upon the autho- 
 ^^^^^ lily of public records, and in the language of Dr. Belknao, 
 the historian of New Hampshire: 
 
 " In 1645, the General Court of Massachusetts, which then 
 exercised jurisdiction over the settlements at Pascataqm, 
 4 thought proper to write to Mr. Williams, residing there, 
 understanding that the negroes which a Captain Smyth had 
 brought, were fraudulently and injuriously tak- n and brought 
 from Guinea, by Captain Smyth s confession, and the rest, of 
 the company that he forthwith send the negro, which he h \d 
 of Captain Smyth, hither; that he may be sent home; whi ;h 
 the Court do resolve to send back without delay. And if you 
 have anything to allege, why you should not return him, to je 
 disposed of by the Court, it will be expected you should 
 forthwith make it appear, either by yourself or your agent. " 
 , About the same time, viz. 1645, a law was made, "pro 
 hibiting the buying and selling of slaves, except those taken 
 in lawful war, or reduced to servitude for their crimes, by a 
 judicial sentence; and these were to have the same privileges 
 as were allowed by the law of Moses." 
 
 ct Among the laws for punishing capital crimes, enacted in 
 1649, is the following c 10. If any man stealeth a man or 
 mankind, he shall be surely put to death. Exodus, xxi. 16. "* 
 
 In 1703, the legislature of Massachusetts imposed a heavy 
 duty on every negro imported, for the payment of which both 
 the vessel and master were answerable. In 1767, they made 
 a more direct attempt to effect the object of that impost. A 
 bill was brought into the House of Representatives u to pre 
 vent the unnatural and unwarrantable custom of enslaving man- 
 kind, and the iftiportation of slaves into the province." In its 
 progress it was changed, in consequence of the utter improba 
 bility of the success of one of that scope, with the royal go 
 vernor, into " an act for laying an impost on negroes imported." 
 Even this was so metamorphosed and mutilated by the council, 
 that the house refused to proceed in the business. It must 
 have failed with the governor, had it passed both assemblies, 
 and in whatever shape, as all the royal governors had it in ex 
 press command from the British cabinet to reject all laws of t hat 
 description. The original instructions, afterwards published, 
 of the date of June 30th, 1761, to Benning J. Wentworth, 
 Esquire, governor of New Hampshire, contained this clause 
 
 * See the 4th vol. Massachusetts Histor. Coll. for Dr. Belknap s 
 account of Slavery in that province. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 313 
 
 ; You are not to give your assent to, or pass any law, impos- SECT rx. 
 ing duties on negroes imported into New Hampshire."* 
 
 The legislature of Massachusetts persisted, in defiance of 
 the known policy of the British rulers; and in January, 1774, 
 framed a bill, entitled " An act to prevent the importation of 
 negroes, and others, as- slaves into this province." It passed 
 through all the forms in both houses, and was laid before 
 governor Hutchinson, for his sanction. On the next day, 
 the assembly received a harsh answer, and notice of pro 
 rogation. The negroes of the province had deputed a com 
 mittee respectfully to solicit the governor s consent; he told 
 them that his instructions forbade it. His successor, General 
 Gage, when solicited in the same way, gave the same answer. 
 The courts of justice in Massachusetts went farther than 
 the legislature. Several blacks sued their masters for their 
 freedom, and for wages for past service, upon the grounds, 
 that the royal charter expressly declared all persons born or 
 residing in the province to be as free as the king s subjects 
 residing in Great Britain; that by the laws of England no 
 man could be deprived of his liberty but by the judgment of 
 his peers; that the laws of the province relating to an exist 
 ing evil, and attempting to mitigate or regulate it, did not 
 authorize it; that though the slavery of the parents should Ue 
 admitted to be legal, yet no disability of the kind could de 
 scend to children. The first trial took place in 1770, and ter 
 minated in favour of the negroes. Other suits were instituted 
 between that period and the revolution, and the juries invaria 
 bly gave their verdict for the plaintiffs. The case of the 
 negro Somerset has been the subject of unceasing boast and 
 compliment for England. Yet, if we consider the circum 
 stances on both sides, it must appear less creditable than the 
 judgment of the Massachusetts court in 1770. The latter 
 preceded the British decision by two years; it was given upon 
 equally broad principles, in the midst of a long established 
 practice of negro slavery; and in defiance of the system of 
 the British colonial administration. We are told by Clarkson 
 that, in 1768, an African slave prosecuted, in England, a per 
 son of the name of Newton, for kidnapping his wife, and 
 sending her to the West Indies; and obtained uo more, upon 
 the conviction of the defendant, than one shilling cdw^ges, 
 and an order for the restitution of the woman within six 
 months; that, with respect to the doctrine of the immediate 
 disenthralment of the African slave on his arrival in England, 
 
 * See Gordon, Hist, of Am. Rev. vol. v. letter % 
 
 VOL. I. Rr 
 
314. JSEGRO SLAVERY ANB 
 
 PART T. Judge Blackstone discountenanced it when bis opinion wiis 
 ^~^>w sought by Granville Sharp; that no satisfactory answer could 
 be obtained from the lawyers to whom this philanthropist 
 applied; that Lord Mansfield wavered, or rather inclined 10 
 the adverse sentiment; and that, until the trial of the Somer 
 set case, the great question had been studiously avoided. 
 
 Legislative proceedings in relation to the exclusion of slaves, 
 similar to those of Massachusetts, are recorded in the annals 
 of the other New England provinces. Pennsylvania and New 
 Jersey trod in their footsteps, and early displayed a stroi g 
 desire, arising from the same considerations, to plant en 
 effectual barrier against the evil of continued importation; but 
 their enactments were regularly overruled in England.* 
 
 The condition of the slaves, in all the provinces north Df 
 the Susquehannah, was more exempt from hardship and abjec 
 tion than negro slavery had ever been known to be elsewhere, 
 in modern times. In New England particularly, their lot wis 
 far from being severe. They were often bought by conscien 
 tious persons, for the purpose of being well instructed in the 
 Christian religion. They had, universally, the enjoyment of 
 the Sabbath as a day of rest or of devotion. No greater toil 
 was exacted from them than from the white labourers, who 
 worked in common with them. In the maritime towns, they 
 served either in families, as domestics, or at mechanical em 
 ployments; and in neither case did they fare worse than their 
 white comrades. In the country, where they were much less 
 numerous, altogether, and in no instance exceeded three 
 or four in the hands of one proprietor, they lived as well as 
 their masters, and not unfrequently sat down to the same 
 table, as their emancipated brethren do at this day, in the 
 interior of Pennsylvania, and the eastern states. For se 
 rious offences they were committed to the common houses of 
 correction, to which disorderly persons of all colours were 
 sent. To be sold to the West Indies, was the most formi 
 dable punishment, with which they could be threatened or vi 
 sited. 
 
 Popular opinion early and spontaneously proscribed the 
 slave trade; disgrace attached to the character of those who 
 were engaged in it principally or ministerially; cases of sea 
 men perishing by the homicidal climate of Guinea, or in con 
 tests with the natives; and of death bed repentance at home, 
 rendering audible and unequivocal the voice of conscience. 
 
 * The law of Pennsylvania, of 1728, imposing- a duty upon the im 
 portation of negroes, allows a drawback on re-exportation. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 315 
 
 confirmed the public antipathy. Had there been a general SECT.ix. 
 readiness to engage in the traffic, the opportunity could not ^^^~^r 
 have been found. The British merchants, and the Royal 
 African Company in particular, which I shall mention further 
 by and by, were too eager for the exclusive enjoyment, to 
 allow the provincials to share in it in a material degree. The 
 American vessels which appeared on the African coast, were 
 regarded as interlopers, infringing a precious monopoly. The 
 Reports of the u Proceedings in the House of Commons on 
 the state of the African Company and of the Trade to Africa," 
 inform us that " proofs were given by the Company of some 
 ships trading directly from Virginia, and other parts of America, 
 and disposing of their cargoes of tobacco and other commodi 
 ties, the produce of that country, on the coast, and in return 
 purchasing slaves and returning whence they came, under the 
 suffrance or rather open toleration of the governors and oiher 
 subordinate persons in command. 75 This fact of the tolera 
 tion of Americans was brought forward "to prove the injury 
 the forts and governors were to the trade to Africa;" it being 
 also in evidence that " the governors were all traders on their 
 own account, or factors for principals in England, and endea 
 voured to forestall the market." In stating the value of the 
 British exports to America, Lord Sheffield remarks, in his 
 Observations, that there was to be added " between two and 
 three hundred thousand pounds sterling, sent to Africa annu 
 ally for the purchase of slaves which were chiefly imported by 
 British merchants into the American provinces." But it is 
 superfluous to adduce testimony of this kind, since no histori 
 cal fact is more notorious, than that by far the greater portion 
 of the negroes introduced into North America, was brought by 
 British vessels, on account of British merchants, and under 
 the special sanction of the British parliament. 
 
 4. If the government of the mother country, to favour the 
 British trade with Africa, laboured to prevent the exclusion 
 of negro slaves even from New Hampshire, its policy on this 
 head would naturally be of a most determined and jealous 
 character in reference to the southern provinces. The history 
 of Virginia furnishes illustrations as creditable to her, as dis 
 graceful to the British councils; and, though that history m 
 general may never have been examined by the writers of the 
 Edinburgh Review, they cannot be supposed to have been 
 ignorant of the following passage of Brougham s Colonial Po 
 licy. u Every measure proposed by the Colonial Legislatures, 
 that did not meet the entire concurrence of the British Cabinet, 
 
316 NEGHO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PARTI, was sure to be rejected, in the last instance, by the crown 
 --^v-^ In the colonies, the direct power of the crown, backed by all 
 the resources of the mother country, prevents any measure 
 obnoxious to the crown from being carried into effect, even b v " 
 the unanimous efforts of the colonial legislature. If example:; 
 were required, we might refer to the history of the abolition 
 of the slave trade in Virginia. A duty on the importation of 
 negroes had been imposed, amounting to a prohibition. One 
 assembly, induced by a temporary peculiarity of circumstances, 
 repealed this law by a bill which received the immediate sanc 
 tion of the crown. But never afterwards could the royal 
 assent be obtained to a renewal of the duty, although as we 
 are told by Mr. Jefferson, all manner of expedients were tried 
 for this purpose, by almost every subsequent assembly that 
 met under the colonial government. The very first assembly 
 that met under the new constitution, finally prohibited the 
 traffic. 7 * 
 
 I have suggested the circumstances which would greatly ex 
 tenuate any degree of eagerness, on the part of the first inhabi 
 tants of the southern provinces, in receiving the British slave 
 ships. Whatever this may have been in Virginia, the opposite 
 disposition certainly manifested itself in her legislature, befon 
 the expiration of the seventeenth century, The learned Judge 
 Tucker, of that state, whose notes on the Commentaries of 
 Blackstone are so highly and justly valued among us, fur 
 nishes a list of no less than twenty-three acts, imposing duties 
 on slaves imported, which occur in the various compilations 
 of Virginia laws. The first bears date in the year 1699; and 
 the real design of all of them was, not revenue, but the re 
 pression of the importation. In general, the buyer was charged 
 with the duty, in order to secure a better reception for the acts 
 in England, and particularly to render them less obnoxious 
 to the African Company. The royal assent was first ob 
 tained, not without great difficulty, to a duty of five per cent 
 in this shape. Requisitions for aids from the crown, on par 
 ticular occasions, furnished pretexts for increasing the duty 
 from five to ten, and finally to twenty per cent. In 1772, most 
 of the duties previously imposed were re-enacted, and the 
 assembly transmitted, at the same time, a petition to the throne, 
 which speaks almost all that could be desired for the confu 
 sion of our slanderers. Judge Tucker has made the follow 
 ing extract from it, in his Appendix to the 1st vol. pt. 2. of 
 Blackstone: 
 
 * Book II. Sect. i. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 317 
 
 { We are encouraged to look up to the throne, and im- SECT, ix, 
 plore your majesty s paternal assistance in averting a cala- ^^^^^s 
 mity of a most alarming nature. 55 
 
 u The importation of slaves into the colonies from the coast 
 of Africa, hath long been considered as a trade of great inhu 
 manity, and under its present encouragement, we have too much 
 reason to fear, will endanger the very existence of your ma 
 jesty s American dominions." 
 
 " We are sensible that some of your majesty s subjects of 
 Great Britain may reap emoluments from this sort of trattic, 
 but when we consider that it greatly retards the settlement ot 
 the colonies, with more useful inhabitants, and may in time 
 have the most destructive influence, we presume to hope, that 
 the interest of a few will be disregarded when placed in com 
 petition with the security and happiness of such numbers of 
 your majesty s dutiful and loyal subjects," 
 
 " Deeply impressed with these sentiments, we most humbly 
 beseech your majesty to remove all those restraints on your 
 majesty^ governors of this colony, which inhibit their assent 
 ing to such laws as might check so very pernicious a com 
 merce." 
 
 The petition proved unavailing. In the first clause of the 
 independent constitution of Virginia, "the inhuman use of 
 the royal negative" in this matter, is enumerated among 
 the reasons of the separation from the mother country. 
 Mr. Burke, as we have seen in one of the quotations 
 which I have made from his speech on the Conciliation 
 with America, recognized her " refusal to deal any more in 
 the inhuman traffic of the negro slaves, as one of the causes 
 of her quarrel with Great Britain." I must claim permission 
 to connect here with the petition, a statement subjoined to it 
 by Judge Tucker, which shows that it did not cost the British 
 government a moment s deliberation to sacrifice "the secu 
 rity and happiness of such numbers of his majesty s dutiful 
 and loyal subjects" to "the interest of the few" in England, 
 " I have lately been favoured with the perusal of a manu 
 script copy of a letter from Granville Sharp, Esq. of London, 
 to a friend of the prime minister, dated March 25th, 1794, in 
 which he speaks of the petition thus: "I myself was desired, 
 by a letter from America, to inquire for an answer to this 
 extraordinary Virginia petition. I waited on the Secretary of 
 State, and was informed by himself that the petition was re 
 ceived, but that (he apprehended) no answer would be given." 
 
 That the inclination to impose the yoke of perpetual bon 
 dage on any part of their fellow creatures, if it ever existed 
 
318 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. among the majority of the Virginia planters, soon subsided, H 
 v-*-v-^/ manifest from an act which is traced to 1662, declaring that 
 a no Englishman, trader, or other, who should bring in any 
 Indians as servants, and assign them over to any other, should 
 sell them for slaves, nor for any other time than English of like 
 age could serve by act of assembly. 1 Thus early was the 
 state of slavery prohibited, where it was not exacted by the 
 higher authority: and the first opportunity was taken, after tin; 
 declaration of independence, to extinguish the detestable com 
 merce so long forced upon the province. In October, 1778, 
 during the tumult and anxiety of revolution, the general as 
 sembly passed a law, prohibiting, under heavy penalties, the 
 further importation of slaves, and declaring that every slave 
 imported thereafter, should be immediately free. The example 
 of Virginia was followed at different times before the date of 
 the federal constitution, by most of the other states. 
 
 While the mother country withheld from the provinces thf 
 power of arresting importation, and incessantly added to tht 
 number of the blacks, the abolition of slavery itself was 
 wholly out of the question. It was rendered impossible for 
 the southern colonists, consistently with their own preserva 
 tion; and had it seemed practicable, and been attempted 
 by any of the colonial legislatures, the royal negative would 
 have been still more readily and vigorously exercised than in 
 the case of importation. Even the West India Islands en 
 deavoured, from time to time, to limit the importation ot 
 slaves into their ports; and were counteracted by the African 
 interest, as it was called, in England. In 1744, the legislature 
 of Jamaica laid duties amounting nearly to prohibition; in 
 1774, they made a similar experiment, alleging as their mo 
 tive, the apprehension excited in the island by the numbers ot 
 the negroes imported; the merchants of England engaged in 
 the trade, took the alarm on their side, petitioned against the 
 duties, and obtained a royal order to the governor of Jamaica 
 to discontinue the levy. 
 
 In the history of the relations of Great Britain with the 
 American colonies in general, there is no circumstance more 
 abundantly evidenced, than her steady determination to main 
 tain her slave trade in the greatest activity and extent, what 
 ever might be their feelings of disgust or apprehension; and 
 however gloomy the aspect which the continuation of it gave 
 to their destinies. Their permanent welfare, their immediate 
 comfort, weighed as nothing in the balance with the prosperity 
 of the Royal African Company, and the plenty of American 
 products. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 319 
 
 All that the English writers now pour forth about the in- SECT. IX. 
 trinsic horrors and miseries of negro slavery; its obvious and s^^/-*-> 
 certain destructiveness to the morals of the masters; and its 
 equally manifest and inevitable tendency to quench the spirit 
 of liberty, and banish social order and domestic peace; all, if 
 we admit it to be true, recoils upon Great Britain, who, having 
 these things before her eyes, yet, from the thirst of gain, 
 in order that her commerce and revenue should receive every 
 possible increase opened this even worse than Pandora s box, 
 upon the race of her offspring in this hemisphere, and re 
 morselessly continued to replenish it, in spite of their remon 
 strances and terrors, as long as they remained subject to her 
 controul. 
 
 The act which dissolved the indentures of servants enlisting 
 in his majesty^ service in America, is the only one in the re 
 cords of the British parliament, that looked to the " tearing 
 off manacles" here. Not a single step was ever taken by the 
 British government, towards the suppression or mitigation, of 
 any form of bondage in the North American provinces. 
 
 5. From the facts which I have adduced, we may confi 
 dently infer, that the North American provinces would, but 
 for the oppressive and avaricious opposition of the mother 
 country, have put a stop to the importation of negroes at a 
 much earlier period than the era of their independence. We 
 may even believe, that, with their general dispositions and 
 views, they would have gone further; since the multiplica 
 tion of the slaves presented, next to the will of the British 
 government, the most serious obstacle to abolition. We 
 have scarcely room to doubt of the course which New Eng 
 land, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, in particular, would 
 have pursued, in their more favourable domestic situation, 
 and under the influence of their more rigorous principles, had 
 they been free to act as these must have prompted. As little 
 doubt can be entertained, that, if their colonial connexion 
 with Great Britain had continued, they would have been com 
 pelled lo submit to the continuance of the evils in question. 
 
 The voice of religion and humanity crying out against the 
 traffic in human flesh, was heard at an earlier period, and more 
 distinctly, from the bosom of these colonies, than from any other 
 part of the British dominions. Clarkson has narrated at 
 large, in his History of the Abolition, the systematic efforts 
 towards that end, of benevolent individuals on this side of the 
 Atlantic. He was unacquainted with the pamphlet of George 
 Keith, A^ritten before the end of the seventeenth century; but 
 
320 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. lie has celebrated the labours of Lay, Sandiford, Woolman, 
 s -^~^^> Benezet, and Rush. The Scottish critics might have learned 
 from him, that the writings which gave the first impulse, and 
 exerted the widest influence, in the cause which they have 
 united with him in exalting to the skies, issued from this 
 quarter;* that a numerous society devoted to that cause, and 
 composed of men of all religious denominations, was organ 
 ized here twelve years before any association for the same 
 purpose had existed in England. There, a multitude of wri 
 ters and speakers have contended for the justice, humanity, 
 and evangelical character of the slave trade: here, we havj 
 had no instance of a formal vindication of it, in any shape. I 
 have never heard of an American speech or pamphlet on ths 
 subject, that did not acknowledge its atrocity. 
 
 England renounced the slave trade on the 25th of March, 
 1807, by a law which enacted, that no vessel should clear out 
 for slaves from any port within the British dominions after th: 
 1st of May, 1807, and that no slave should be landed in th<; 
 colonies after the 1st of March, 1808. She has claimed the me 
 rit of having set the example of this renunciation to the world 
 Lord Caatiereagb boasted, in the House of Commons, on the 
 9th of February, 1818, that, on the subject of making the slave 
 traffic punishable as a crime, Great Britain had led the way 
 Virginia was, however, a sovereign and independent state, 
 when she abolished the traffic in 1778. Pennsylvania, Mas 
 sachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, had the same cha 
 racter, when they prohibited it to their citizens, in whatever 
 degree or form, and under the severest penalties, in the years 
 1780, 1787, 1788. On the 16th of March, 1792, Denmark 
 promulged a law on the subject of the slave trade, which pro 
 vided for its total cessation on the part or in behalf of Danish 
 subjects, at the beginning of the year 1803; and which prescrib 
 ed that all importations of slaves into the Danish dominions 
 should cease at the same period. This law was carried into 
 complete execution, according to the letter, and has been 
 faithfully observed. It established, besides, some very salu 
 tary regulations for the improvement of the mind, morals, and 
 general condition of the blacks in the Danish Islands. 
 
 The American continental Congress, so called, passed a re* 
 solution against the purchase of slaves imported from Africa; 
 and published an exhortation to the colonies to abandon the 
 
 * Scarcely any suggestion on the subject, of real importance, has 
 been made in England, which is not to he found in Anthony Benezet s 
 work, entitled " Some Historical Account of Guinea," 
 
SLAVE TRAHE. 321 
 
 trade altogether. The third Congress of the United States, SEOT.IX. 
 under the present federal constitution, prohibited the carrying v^-v^*^ 
 on of the slave trade from our ports. But in order to show 
 more fully, the grounds upon which the American govern 
 ment may contest the merit both of priority and zeal with 
 the British, I will transcribe from the general index to the 
 laws of the former, the abstract of what it had done in this 
 respect, before the date of the British prohibition. 
 
 1. No citizens or others to build or fit out vessels, &c. to carry on the 
 slave trade to or between foreign countries, &c. Vessels fitted out, 
 &c. to cany on the slave trade, to be forfeited, Sec. (22d March, 1794.) 
 
 2. Two thousand dollars forfeit for persons fitting out vessels, or aid- 
 ^ ing, &c. 
 
 3. Owners, &c. of foreign vessels, suspected of intention to trade in 
 slaves, &.c. to give bond, Stc. 
 
 4. Forfeit of two hundred dollars by citizens, for every person received 
 on board for the purpose of being sold as a slave, &c. A moiety to 
 the person suing, c. 
 
 5. The importation of slaves into the Mississippi territory from foreign 
 parts prohibited, under penalty of three hundred dollars for each 
 one ; and slaves imported entitled to freedom. (7th April, 1798.) 
 
 6. Citizens or residents prohibited from holding any right or property 
 in vessels employed in transporting slaves from one foreign country 
 to another, on pain of forfeiting their right of property, and also 
 double the value of that right in money, and likewise double the value 
 of the interest in the slaves. 
 
 7. Citizens or residents not to serve on board vessels of the United States 
 employed in the transportation of slaves from one foreign country 
 to another, &c. on pain of fine and imprisonment, Sec. (10th May, 1800.) 
 
 8. Citizens voluntarily serving on board foreign ships employed in the 
 slave trade, liable to disabilities, penalties, &c. 
 
 9. Commissioned vessels of the United States may seize vessels employ 
 ed contrary to this act, &c. 
 
 10. Vessels seized for trading in slaves, contrary to this act, together 
 with tackle, guns, goods on board, &c. except slaves, forfeited, &c. 
 
 11. Commanders of commissioned vessels to take officers and crews of 
 vessels employed contrary to this act, 8tc. into custody, &.c. 
 
 12. District and circuit courts to have cognizance of offences against the 
 prohibitions of this act. 
 
 13. Nothing in this act to authorize the bringing into any state prohibit 
 ed persons. 
 
 14. A moiety of forfeitures to informers, except where the prosecution 
 is first instituted on behalf of the United States. 
 
 15. After the 1st of April, 1803, masters of vessels not to bring into any 
 port, where the laws of a state prohibit the importation, any negro, 
 mulatto, &c. not a native, a citizen, registered seaman, &c. under the 
 penalty of one thousand dollars. (28th Feb. 1803.) 
 
 16. The persons sued under this act, may be held to special bail. 
 
 17. Nothing in this act to prohibit the admission of Indians. 
 
 18. Vessels arriving with negroes, mulattoes, or other prohibited per 
 sons on board, not to be admitted to entry, &c. 
 
 19. If any negro, Sec. be landed in any prohibited port or place, Sic. 
 the vessel, &c, to be forfeited : A moiety of the forfeiture to the in 
 former. 
 
 20. The officers of the customs to notice and be governed by, the laws 
 of states prohibiting the admission of negroes, &c. swid vigilantly to 
 carry them into effect, &e 
 
 VOL. L S s 
 
NEGRO SLAVERY ANft 
 
 PARTI. 21. The importation of slaves prohibited after the 1st of Januarf 
 v^x-v^W 1808. (2d March, 1807.) 
 
 22. Vessels fitted out or sailing, after the 1st of January, 1808, for the 
 purpose of transporting slaves to any port or place within the jur s- 
 diction of the United Stales, may be seized, condemned, &c. in any 
 of the circuit or district courts, for the districts where the vessels m \y 
 be found or seized. 
 
 23. Persons fitting out vessels, See. to be employed in the slave trade, 
 after the 1st of January, 1808, or aiding or abetting, 8cc. to forfeit se 
 verally, twenty thousand dollars. A moiety of the forfeiture to the 
 person prosecuting. 
 
 24. Five thousand dollars forfeit for taking on board from any of t. ic 
 coasts or kingdoms of Africa, after the 1st of January, 1808, any negi o, 
 mulatto, &c. for the purpose of selling them as slaves within the juris 
 diction of the United States, &c. A moiety of the forfeiture to t.ie 
 person prosecuting, &c. 
 
 25. Vessels in which negroes, &c. have been transported, their tack e> 
 apparel, &c. to be forfeited, &c. 
 
 26. Neither the importer, nor persons claiming under him, to hold a iv 
 right to any negro, &c. brought within the United States, &c. in v o- 
 lation of this law, but such negro, &c. to remain subject to the regu 
 lations of the legislatures of the several states, &c. 
 
 27. Citizens or residents taking on board, after the 1st of January, 18( 8, 
 from the coasts or kingdoms of Africa, &c. any negro, mulatto, &.c. 
 and transporting and selling them within the jurisdiction of the United 
 States, as slaves, &c. to suffer imprisonment from Jive to ten yea^s, 
 and pay a fine, from one to ten thousand dollars. 
 
 28. Forfeit of eight hundred dollars for selling any negro, &c. import/Hi 
 from any foreign kingdom, &c. after the 31st of December, 1807, &.c 
 A moiety of the forfeiture to the person prosecuting, &c. The for 
 feiture not to extend to the seller or purchaser of any negro, &.c. dis 
 posed of by virtue of any regulations of the legislatures of the several 
 states, in pursuance of this act and the constitution of the United 
 States. 
 
 29. Vessels found, after the 1st of January, 1808, in any river, port, 
 bay, &c. within the jurisdictional limits of the United States, .c. 
 having on board any negro, &c. for the purpose of selling them as 
 slaves, &c. to be forfeited, together with their tackle, goods on 
 board, &c. 
 
 30. The president may employ armed vessels to cruizre on any part of 
 the coast where he may judge attempts will be made to violate this 
 act, and instruct commanders of armed vessels to seize and bring in 
 vessels found on the high seas contravening the provisions of this law, 
 &.c. Masters of vessels seized, &.c. liable to prosecution, and to a 
 fine, not exceeding ten thousand dollars, and to imprisonment from 
 tivo to four years. The proceeds of vessels, &c. seized, prosecuted, 
 and condemned, to be divided eqtially between the United States and 
 the officers and men, &c. whether of the navy or revenue cutters, and 
 distributed as in the case of prizes, Sec. The officers and men thus 
 entitled are to safe keep every negro, mulatto, &c, and deliver them 
 to persons appointed to receive them, &c. 
 
 31. Masters of vessels of less than forty tons burden, not to take on 
 board, after the 1st of January, 1808, nor transport, any negro, fee. 
 to ny port or place whatever, for the purpose of disposing of him at> 
 a slave, on penalty of forfeiting eight hundred dollars. A moiety of 
 the forfeiture to the person prosecuting, &c. But nothing in this 
 section to prohibit the transporting, on any river or inland bay of the 
 sea, within the jurisdiction of the United States, any negro, &.c. not 
 imported contrary to the provisions of this act, in any vessel or species 
 of craft whatever. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 32. Masters of vessels, of the burden of forty tons or more, after the 1st SECT. IX. 
 of January, 1808, sailing coastwise, Stc and having on board any negro, ._^^^_. 
 &c. to be transported and sold as slaves, &c. to make out and subscribe 
 duplicate manifests of every negro, &c. and deliver the manifests to 
 
 the collector or surveyor, &c. The master, owner, &c. to swear that 
 the persons were not imported after the 1st of January, 1808, &c. 
 The collector or surveyor to certify, Sic. grant a permit to pro 
 ceed, &c. 
 
 33. Vessels departing without the master s having made out and sub- 
 scribed duplicate manifests of every negro, Sec. on board, &c. or tak 
 ing on board any other negro, &c. than those specified in the mani 
 fests, to be forfeited, together with tackle, apparel, &c. 
 
 34. The master, &c. to forfeit one thousand dollars for every negro, &c. 
 transported, Stc. contrary to this act. A moiety of the forfeiture to 
 the person prosecuting, &c. 
 
 35. The master, &c. of every vessel of forty tons or more, sailing coast 
 wise after the 1st of January, 1808, and having on board any negro, 
 &c. to sell, &c. arriving in one port of the United States from another, 
 to deliver the certified manifest, &c. and swear to the truth of it, See. 
 If the collector, &c. is satisfied, &c. he is to grant a permit for the 
 landing of the negro, &c. 
 
 36. Masters, &c. neglecting or refusing to deliver the manifests, or land 
 ing any negro, &c. before delivering manifests, &c. to forfeit ten 
 thousand dollars. A moiety of the forfeiture to the person prose 
 cuting, &c. 
 
 It is seen by the foregoing abstract, that federal America 
 interdicted the trade from her ports, thirteen years before 
 Great Britain; that she made " it punishable as a crime," 
 seven years before; that she fixed, four years sooner, 
 the period for non-importation which period was earlier 
 than that determined upon by Great Britain for her colonies. 
 We ought not to overlook the circumstance, that these mea 
 sures were taken, by a legislature composed in considerable 
 part, of the representatives of slave-holding states; slave 
 holders themselves, in whom, of course, according to the doc 
 trine of the Edinburgh Review, conscience had " suspended 
 its functions," and u justice, gentleness, and pity" were ex 
 tinguished. What are we to think of the British parliament, 
 which suffered itself to be outstripped thus by such men? and 
 when would it have abolished the trade, had it contained 
 an equal proportion of slave-holders from the West In 
 dies?* 
 
 In truth, the representatives from our southern states have 
 been foremost in testifying their abhorrence of the traffic; au 
 abhorrence springing from a deep sense not merely of its ini 
 quity, but of the magnitude of the evil which it has entailed 
 upon their country. It was only at the last session of the 
 
 * Mr. Pitt said (1792) that the " Parliament being now fully convin 
 ced of the cruelty and injustice of the slave trade, it was their duty to 
 put an end to it. Were the West India planters to be consulted they 
 might think differently," &c. (Parliamentary History.) 
 
MEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PARTI. American Congress (March 1st, 1819) that a member frcm 
 ^^^^^^ Virginia proposed the following regulation, to which t ic 
 House of Representatives agreed without a division. u Every 
 person who shall import into the United States, or knowingly 
 aid or abet the importation into the United States, of any 
 African negro, or other person, with intent to sell or use such 
 negro or other person, as a slave, or shall purchase any such 
 slave, knowing him or her to be thus imported, shall, on coa- 
 viction thereof, in any circuit court of the United States, be 
 punished with death." The rarity of capital punishment in 
 the penal code of the United States, and the extreme aver 
 sion from a recourse to it, universally prevailing, make this i.i- 
 stance a potent proof, of the sincerity of the dispositions, whi< h 
 we profess respecting the slave trade. Additional evidence 
 not less striking, is afforded by the act which passed and be 
 came a law at the same time, and of which the printed abstract 
 is as follows: 
 
 " 1. An act in addition to the acts prohibiting the slave 
 trade. (3d March, 1819.) 
 
 "The president may employ the armed vessels of the United 
 States to cruise on the American coast, or coast of Africa, to 
 enforce the acts of congress prohibiting the slave trade. Ves 
 sels employed, contrary to law, in the Uaffic of slaves, may be 
 seized by the armed vessels, and brought into port. The pro 
 ceeds to be equally divided between the United States and 
 the captors, whether by an armed vessel or revenue cutter. 
 The captors to safe keep and deliver the negroes, &c. to the 
 marshal, &c. transmitting a descriptive list to the president; 
 and the commanders are to apprehend every person found on 
 board the offending vessels, being officers and crew, and deli 
 ver them over to the civil authority. The president to make 
 regulations for the safe keeping, support, and removal out of 
 the United States, of the negroes, &c. delivered and brought 
 withhi their jurisdiction, and may appoint agents on the coast 
 of Africa, to receive negroes, &c. A bounty of twenty- 
 five dollars to the officers and crews of commissioned vessels 
 and revenue cutters, for every negro, &c. delivered to the 
 marshal, &c. Prosecution, by information, against persons 
 holding negroes, &c. unlawfully introduced. Fifty dollars to 
 informant for each negro, &c. thus delivered to the marshal 
 from the unlawful holder, by judgment of the court, besides 
 the usual penalties." 
 
 6. If there be any two pieces of history which Great Bri 
 tain should wish to see extinguished, in particular, they are 
 the accounts of tbe African slave trade itself, and of her abo 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 325 
 
 Htion of that trade. Clarkson s relation of the Abolition is a SECT.IX. 
 memorial which, though it has left nothing that is any way v -^ v ^~ 
 creditable in the progress of the affair, unemblazoned, and 
 magnifies inordinately the lustre and utility of the result, still 
 presents a balance of infamy, which, in my opinion, renders 
 it desirable that the whole were expunged, for the honour of 
 human nature. The enormity of the system of crime and 
 cruelty which he lays open; the hardened depravity of the 
 sea-ports which he visited; the pusillanimity and prevarica 
 tion of witnesses; the effrontery and security of culprits; the 
 mean and wicked arts practised by the highest and the lowest 
 of the kingdom, to defeat his purpose; the long resistance of 
 parliament, after the fullest proof of the facts; the tenor of 
 the speeches delivered there by some of the members in oppo 
 sition; and many other similar traits salient in his book, are 
 far from being redeemed by the act of abolition, especially 
 when attention is given to some of the grounds upon which 
 it was obtained, and to the sequel, which I propose to notice in 
 due time. We Americans would trust it to the bitterest ene 
 my of these States, to deduce a narrative of their abolition of 
 the traffic; challenge him to lay on what colours he pleased; 
 and, provided he would take the facts as his ground work, re 
 main assured that while the world possessed Clarkson s work, 
 we could but rise in its estimation. 
 
 As a general proposition, it is undeniable, that the nation 
 which wrested the African from his home, and sold him into 
 perpetual bondage, is as criminal at least, as those by whom he 
 was purchased, and who may have retained him in that state: 
 It is no less evident, that after having thrown millions of ne 
 groes into one quarter of the world, and reaped the profits of 
 the horrible traffic, it is not for her to upbraid the purchasers 
 for using their bargain, and to summon them, in the name of 
 justice, humanity, and natural rights, to relinquish at once 
 their hold, at whatever loss and risk to themselves. Yet this 
 is what is done towards the Americans, by the writers of the 
 Edinburgh Review, in their character of Britons, and upon the 
 foundation of the British abolition of the slave trade. It is 
 therefore fair to pass in review the facts which go to show, 
 that they have no such privilege, but are obnoxious to the 
 maxims which I have just stated. 
 
 The English embarked in the slave trade in the year 1562. 
 In that year they carried slaves to Hispaniola; and the first 
 cargo was obtained with circumstances of abominable fraud.* 
 
 * See the History of Hawkins s Voyage in Hackluyt s Collection, or 
 in the 4th Book, c. Vi. of Edwards s History of the West Indies. Haw- 
 
NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. It proved lucrative, and immediately, associations were forni- 
 \^~v^s ed in England, among the most opulent and distinguished men 
 of the country, to follow up the adventure. Soon, the obje ot 
 began to be considered as of national importance, and so early 
 as the 16th of James I. a royal charter was granted to a num 
 ber of eminent citizens of London, as a joint stock company, 
 to carry on a trade to Africa, with an exclusive privilege 
 The private merchants, envious of the harvest which seemed 
 to await the company, interloped upon the African coast, and 
 so embarrassed the trade that the charter was abandoned. 
 Another company was created by Charles I.; but itshartd 
 the same fate, from the same cause, the cupidity aid 
 misconduct of the unlicensed adventurers. U 0n the acces 
 sion of Charles II." says Davenant,* " a representation beii g 
 soon made to him, that the British plantations in America 
 were, by degrees, advancing to such a condition as necessarily 
 required a greater yearly supply of servants and labourers than 
 could well be spared from England, without the danger of 
 depopulating his majesty s native dominions, his majesty did 
 (upon account of supplying these plantations with negroes) pub 
 licly invite all his subjects to the subscription of a new joint 
 stock, for recovering and carrying on the trade to Africa. " 
 
 His majesty s subjects obeyed the call with alacrity; and 
 some of the most imposing names of the kingdom appear at 
 the head of the ample subscription list. But poachers swarm 
 ed again, and pleaded their natural right, and parliament found 
 it expedient, in 1697, to lay open the trade for a term of years. 
 The recrimination between the privileged and the interloping 
 traders, unfolds abuses and enormities committed before the 
 commencement of the 18th century, similar to those which 
 were proved to parliament, when the question of abolition 
 was agitated. It would be needless for me to detail the pro 
 gress of the African trade to the highest consideration and 
 favour with the government; the contest maintained with the 
 commercial nations of the continent for the monopoly of that 
 
 kins was afterwards knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and made Treasurer 
 of the Navy. " The success which attended the first expedition to 
 Guinea," says Edwards, "appears to have attracted the notice and ex 
 cited the avarice of the British government. We find Hawkins in the 
 following- year, appointed to the command of one of the queen s ships, 
 the Jesus, of 700 tons, and with the Solomon^ the Tiger, and the Swallow, 
 sent a second time on the same trading expedition. In regard to Haw 
 kins, he was, I admit, a Murderer and a Robber. His avowed purpose 
 in sailing to Guinea was to seize by stratagem, or force, and carry away 
 the unsuspecting natives, in the view of selling them as slaves, &c." 
 * Reflections on the African Trade, vol. v. of his Works. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 327 
 
 Irade, and the successful advances made to this " consumma- SECT. IX. 
 tion of wickedness." Factories were formed on the African ^~v^-s 
 coast; forts built; grants of money obtained from parliament** 
 and in the year 1792, twenty-six acts of that body, encou 
 raging and sanctioning the trade, could be enumerated by its 
 friends. 
 
 In the year 1689, England made a regular convention with 
 Spain, for supplying the Spanish West Indies with negro slaves 
 from the island of Jamaica. The twelfth article of the treaty 
 of Utrecht (1713) "grants to her Britannic majesty and to 
 the company of her subjects appointed for that purpose (the 
 South Sea Company) as well the subjects of Spain as all 
 others being excluded the contract for introducing negroes 
 into several parts of the dominions of his Catholic majesty in 
 America (commonly called El pacto de el assiento de negros) 
 at the rate of 4,800 negroes yearly, for the space of thirty 
 years successively." 
 
 To this compact there have been two pointed references of 
 late in the British parliament, which I will repeat here in fur 
 ther explanation of its character. " By the treaty of Utrecht," 
 said Mr. Brougham (16th June, 1812) " which the execrations 
 of ages have left inadequately censured, Great Britain was 
 content to obtain, as the whole price of Ramillies and Blen 
 heim, an additional share of the accursed slave trade." 
 
 Mr. C. Grant, jun. said (Feb. 9th, 1818) "that in the be 
 ginning of the last century, we deemed it a great advantage to 
 obtain by the Assiento contract, the right of supplying with 
 slaves the possessions of that very power which we were now 
 paying for abolishing the trade. During ihe negociations which 
 preceded the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, we higgled for four 
 years longer of this exclusive trade; and in the treaty of Ma 
 drid, we clung to the last remains of the Assiento contract." 
 
 By degrees the English merchants engrossed permanently 
 two-thirds of the whole African exportation, and became the 
 carriers for the European world. They either supplied the 
 French Islands directly, or served as the factors of the French 
 trader on the coast of Africa. They occasionally freighted 
 their ships to France, to be manned and equipped in the 
 French ports. They stocked Trinidad, and the province of 
 Caraccas, by contract with the Spanish government; and, in 
 the years 1786 and 1788, the Havannah. The Philippine 
 
 * From 1739 to 1744, it annually voted to the African company 10,000t 7 . 
 sterling, to pay their dents; in 1744, the grant was doubled by reason 
 of fche war with France and Spain. 
 
328 
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PARTI. Company of Spain, when invested with the privilege of in> 
 ^*~^^s porting slaves into South America, employed, by coutrac , 
 British vessels, manned by British seamen. The re-exporta 
 tion from the British West Indies, for double profit, was so for 
 encouraged, that by the West India free port act of 1766, fo 
 reign vessels were allowed to carry from the free ports, ne 
 groes imported in British ships. England established a higher 
 reputation than any other power for skill in the managemei t 
 of the trade, and in the choice and preparation of the articles 
 of barter. Among her chief exports to Africa were British 
 spirits, rum and brandy, guns, cutlasses, and ammunition. Of 
 three millions of pounds of gunpowder, which she exported i i 
 one year, one half was sent to the West Coast alone; and, as I 
 have already had occasion to remark, several thousand persons 
 were exclusively employed in Birmingham, in manufacturing 
 guns for that market. In a Report of the Board of Trade 
 dated 1775, stress is laid upon the necessity of encouraging 
 the trade of fire-arms to Africa. 
 
 England employed from one hundred and fifty to two hun 
 dred ships in the slave trade, and carried off, on the average, 
 forty thousand negroes annually; at times one .half more, 
 in the year. In 1768, the number which she took from tin; 
 coast between Cape Blanco and the Rro Congo, reached 
 59,400, more than double the share that fell to all the other 
 traders. Mr. Pitt said, in 1792, that Jamaica had imported 
 one hundred and fifty thousand negroes in the course of twenty 
 years, and that this was admitted to be only one-tenth of the 
 traffic. Mr, Dundas said, on the same occasion, that, " ifi 
 1791, the whole British importation consisted of 74,000, not 
 less than 34,000 of which were exported for the service oi 
 foreign nations." 
 
 The Parliamentary Report of 1789, on the slave trade,, 
 states, that the whole number of negroes brought to Jamaica 
 from the year 1655 to 1787, amounted to 676,276, of whom 
 31,181 died in the harbour, from the noxious quality of the 
 drugs employed in making them up for sale. The Edinburgh 
 Review made the following statements in the years 1805 and 
 1806. 
 
 " Before the American war, the Dutch used to carry, ii; 
 their own bottoms, from Africa to Guiana, ten thousand ne 
 groes annually; and it is proved, by papers laid before par 
 liament, but which, we believe, have not yet been printed, 
 that this importation was greatly increased during the lasl 
 war, when those possessions were in the hands of Great Bri 
 tain. It is certainly not over-rating its present amount, tc 
 
SLAVE TRADE* 
 
 329 
 
 estimate the yearly supply of negroes carried <o our conquered SECT.ix. 
 colonies at fifteen thousand, about one half the supply of s-* r v-N> 
 our own islands, which is the subject of the abolition ques 
 tion."* 
 
 u The 38,000 slaves exported annually from Africa in Bri 
 tish vessels, are only in a small proportion destined for the use 
 of the colonies; above 22,000 are stated by the friends of the 
 trade to be intended for the foreign settlements. To this must 
 be added a large number of slaves carried by British vessels 
 under cover of a neutral flag. From certain documents which 
 we have had an opportunity of consulting, we cannot estimate 
 these at less than 8000; and the supply of the conquered co 
 lonies considerably exceeds 10,000 annually."! 
 
 Authority is to be found for much higher estimates than 
 these. I take the following from Anthony Benezet s Historical 
 Account of the Slave Trade. 
 
 " In a book printed in Liverpool, called, The Liverpool 
 Memorandum, which contains, amongst other things, an ac 
 count of the trade of that port, there is an exact list of the 
 vessels employed in the Guinea trade, and of the number of 
 slaves imported in each vessel; by which it appears, that in 
 the year 1753, the number imported to America by one hun 
 dred and one vessels belonging to that port, amounted to up 
 wards of thirty thousand, and from the number of vessels em 
 ployed by the African company, in London and Bristol, we 
 may, with some degree of certainty, conclude, there are one 
 hundred thousand negroes purchased and brought on board 
 our ships yearly from the coast of Africa. This is confirmed 
 in Anderson s History of Trade and Commerce, lately print 
 ed; where it is said, "that England supplies her American 
 colonies with negro slaves, amounting in number to above one 
 hundred thousand every year." When the vessels are full 
 freighted with slaves, they sail for our plantations in America, 
 and may be two or three months in the voyage, during which 
 time, from the filth and stench that is among them, distem 
 pers frequently break out, which carry off commonly a fifth, a 
 fourth, yea sometimes a third or more of them: so that taking 
 all the slaves together, that are brought on board our ships 
 yearly, one may reasonably suppose that at least ren thousand 
 of them die on the voyage. And in a printed account of the 
 state of the negroes, in our plantations, it is supposed that a 
 fourth part more or less die at the different islands, in what is 
 
 * No. 13 f No. 16. 
 
 VOL. I. T t 
 
330 KEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. called the seasoning. Hence it may be presumed, that at ; 
 ^ moderate compulation of slaves who are purchased by oui 
 African merchants in a year, near thirty thousand die upon tin 
 voyage and in the seasoning. Add to this, the prodigies 
 number who are killed in the incursions and intestine wars 
 by which negroes procure the number of slaves wanted U 
 load the vessels." 
 
 The Edinburgh Review has declared that England is the 
 nation which "had most extensively pursued and most so 
 lemnly authorized the slave trade;" that she had been " prin 
 cipally instrumental in barring out from benighted Africa the 
 blessings of Christianity and the comforts of civilization;" tha . 
 it is she who had u checked or rather blasted in its bud the 
 improvement of the African continent." The same strain is 
 familiar in the speeches of Fox and Wilberforce. The latte: 
 reminded his countrymen, in 1814, in parliament, that they 
 had enjoyed the largest share of the guilty profits of the slave 
 trade. Mr. Pitt declared in 1792, that parliament ought to 
 consider themselves as the authors of it. His more emphati 
 cal language of the year preceding is recorded by Clarkson 
 u The truth is, there is no nation in Europe which has plungec- 
 so deeply into this guilt as Britain. We stopped the natural 
 progress of civilization in Africa. We cut her off from the 
 opportuniiy of improvement. We kept her down in a state oi 
 darkness, bondage, ignorance, and bloodshed. We have there 
 subverted the whole order of nature; we have aggravated even 
 natural barbarity, and furnished to every man motives foi 
 committing under the name of trade, acts of perpetual hostility 
 and perfidy against his neighbour. Thus had the perversior- 
 of British commerce carried misery instead of happiness tc 
 one whole quarter of the globe. False to the very principles 
 of trade T unmindful of our duty, what almost irreparabk 
 mischief had we done to that continent! We had obtained av 
 yet only so much knowledge of its productions as to show, that 
 there was a capacity for trade, which we checked." Thai 
 capacity was, indeed, checked, not incidentally alone, but 
 directly; for, in order to obviate all obstruction to the slave 
 trade, pains were taken to prevent the Africans from culti 
 vating with success, the staples of their soil, cotton, tobacco, 
 sugar, and indigo. In this point, the English were, as in all 
 others, pre-eminently culpable, since the number of forts 
 which they possessed along the coast, with districts round 
 each of them, afforded them better means, than any other 
 European nation possessed, of giving the natives a taste fo 
 agriculture and the true objects of commerce, 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 331 
 
 7. The general character of the British slave trade has been SECT ix. 
 so pourtrayed by the highest and ablest men of the British ^^^~^ f 
 nation, that in describing it, I am supplied, in their language, 
 with the strongest which I could wish 10 employ. The suffi 
 ciency of the following testimony will hardly be questioned. 
 In the Debate on the Abolition in the year 1792, Mr. Wil- 
 berforce said, " that of all the trades that disgraced human 
 beings, this was the very worst. In others, however infa 
 mous, there were traits of something like humanity, but in 
 this there was a total absence of them. It was a scene of uni 
 form, unadulterated, unsophisticated wickedness; never was 
 there a system so big with wickedness and cruelty." In the 
 same debate, Mr. Beaufoy said 
 
 " Who does not recollect, that, by the evidence which the 
 slave merchants themselves have given at your bar, it appears, 
 that sucli, on board an African vessel, is the rate of mortality, 
 that if the march of death were the same in the xvorld at 
 large, the whole human race would be extinguished in four 
 teen years, and the earth itself be converted into one vast 
 charnel house. Show me a crime of any sort, and in the 
 slave trade I will show you that crime in a state of tenfold 
 aggravation. Give me an instance of guilt atrocious and ab 
 horred, and the slave trade will exhibit instances of that guilt, 
 more inveterate, more strongly rooted in all, diffusing a more 
 malignant poison, and spreading a deeper horror. All other 
 injustice, all other modes of desolating nature, of blasting die 
 happiness of man, and defeating the purposes of God, lose, in 
 comparison with this, their very name and character of evil. 
 Their taint is too mild to disgust, their deformity is too slight 
 to offend. The shrieks of solitary murder; what are they, 
 when compared with the sounds of horror that daily and 
 nightly ascend from the hatchway of the slave ship! I have 
 heard of the cruelties of the Inquisitions of Portugal and Spain; 
 but what is their scanty account of blood, when compared 
 with that sweep of death, that boundless desolation which 
 accompanies the negro traffic! Superstition has been called 
 man s chief destroyer: but superstition herself is less obdu 
 rate, less persevering, less stedfast in her cruelty, than this 
 cool, reflecting, deliberate, remorseless commerce." 
 
 In the debate of 1807, Sir Samuel Romilly s aid, "The 
 cruelty and injustice of the slave trade had been established 
 beyond a doubt. It had been shown to be carried on by ra 
 pine and robbery and murder; by fomenting and encouraging 
 wars; by false accusations and imaginary crimes. The un 
 happy victims were torn away not only in the time of war. 
 
332 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. but of profound peace. They were then carried across thr. 
 v^-v-^/ Atlantic in a manner too horrible to describe, and afterwards 
 subjected to perpetual slavery." 
 
 Lord Henry Petty said, " The slave trade produced in 
 Africa, fraud and violence, robbery, and murder. It gave birtL 
 to false accusations and a mockery of justice. It was the 
 parent of every crime that could at once degrade and afflici 
 the human race. After spreading vice and misery all over a 
 continent, it doomed its unhappy victims to hardships and 
 cruelties which were worse than death. Cruelty begat cruelty 
 the system, wicked in its beginning, was equally so in its pro 
 gress," &c. 
 
 The tone of the Edinburgh Reviewers has been in unisor 
 with that of the eloquent members of parliament. They have 
 described the trade as "one long continuous crime involving 
 every possible definition of evil; combining the wildest phy 
 sical suffering with the most atrocious moral depravity ;" as 
 one "which condemned a whole quarter of the world to un 
 ceasing and ferocious warfare; which annually exterminated 
 more than fell during the bloodiest campaigns of Europeai 
 hostility; which regularly transported every six months, ii 
 circumstances of unparalleled affliction, more innocent persons 
 than suffer in a century from the oppression of all the tyran 
 nies in the world." In the 24th number of the Review, r, 
 picture was presented so hideous and so faithful, that the re 
 collection of it would seem sufficient to have stayed any ham: 
 from hazarding, in the same frame, a comparison between tin 
 humanity of England and that of any other nation, in refer 
 ence to the sons of Africa. 
 
 " The history of the slave trade is the history of a war oi 
 more than two centuries, waged by men against human na 
 ture; a war too, carried on, not by ignorance and barbarism 
 against knowledge and civilization; not by half famished 
 multitudes against a race blessed with all the arts of life, an<< 
 softened and effeminated by luxury; but, as some strange non 
 descript in iniquity, waged by unprovoked strength againsf: 
 uninjuring helplessness, and with all the powers which long 
 periods of security and equal Jaw had enabled the assailants 
 to develop, in order <o make barbarism more barbarous, 
 and to add to the want of political freedom the most dreadful 
 and debasing personal suffering. Thus all the effects and in 
 fluences of freedom were employed to enslave; the gifts of 
 knowledge to prevent the possibility of illumination; and 
 powers, which could not have existed but in consequence of 
 morality and religion, to perpetuate the sensual vices, and to 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 ward off the emancipating blo\v of Christianity; and, as if SECT. IX. 
 this were not enough, positive laws were added by the best ^^-~^~ 
 and freest nation of Christendom, and powers entrusted to the 
 basest part of its population, for purposes which would almost 
 necessarily make the best men become the worst." 
 
 8. However strong these general representations, they are 
 more than confirmed, by the details of which the world had 
 the fullest proof. It was remarked with great truth by Mr. 
 William Smith in the debate of 1792, in the House of Com 
 mons, that numberless facts had been related by eye witnesses, 
 to Parliament, so dreadfully atrocious, that the very magni 
 tude of the crimes rendered them incredible to others. I will 
 select some of the particular features in the character of the 
 trade, and a few of the single incidents, as they were related 
 in Parliament, upon such evidence as no longer to admit of 
 contradiction. Mr. Wilberforce said, " it was well known 
 that it was customary to set fire to whole villages in Africa, 
 for the purpose of throwing the inhabitants into confusion, and 
 taking them as they fled from the flames. Every possible, 
 fraud was put in practice to deceive the ignorance of the na 
 tives, by false weights and measures, adulterated commodi 
 ties, and other impositions of the sort." 
 
 " On the windward coast an agent was sent to establish a 
 settlement in the interior country, and to send down to the 
 ships such slaves as he might be able to obtain; the orders he 
 received from his captain were a very model of conciseness 
 and perspicuity; he was to encourage the chieftains, by 
 brandy and gunpowder, to go to war, and make slaves. 5 He 
 punctually performed his part, the chieftains were not back 
 ward on theirs; the neighbouring villages were ransacked, 
 being surrounded arid set on fire in the night; their inhabitants 
 were seized when making their escape, and being brought to 
 the agent, were by him forwarded, men, women, and chil 
 dren, to his principal on the coast. Mr. How, a botanist, 
 who, in the service of government, visited that country with 
 captain Thomson, gave in evidence, that being at one of the 
 subordinate settlements on the Gold Coast, on the arrival of 
 an order for slaves from Cape Coast Castle, the native chief 
 immediately sent forth his armed parties, who, in the night, 
 brought, in a supply of all descriptions, and the necessary as 
 sortment was next day sent off, according to the order. The 
 wide extent of the African coast furnished but one uniform de 
 tail of similar instances of barbarity." 
 
 " The exciting of wars," added the same speaker, " be 
 tween neighbouring states, is almost the slightest of the evils 
 
334 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 TART I. Africa is doomed to suffer from this trade. Still more inlo- 
 ^-*~v-^ lerable are those acts of outrage which we are continually sti 
 mulating the kings to commit on their own subjects. A 
 chieftain, to procure the articles for the gratification of appe 
 tites which we have diligently and too successfully taught 
 them to indulge, being too weak or too timid to attack his 
 neighbours, sends a party of soldiers by night to one of his 
 own defenceless villages; they set fire to it, and hurry the in 
 habitants to the ships of the traders, who, hovering like vul 
 tures over these scenes of carnage, are ever ready for their 
 prey. We are perpetually told of villages half consumed, 
 and bearing every mark of recent destruction. Whitherso 
 ever a man goes, be it to the watering place or to the field, he 
 is not safe. He can never quit his house without fear of 
 being carried off by fraud or by force. When the chieftains 
 are going up the country to make war in order to procure 
 slaves, they are supplied with muskets and cutlasses by llu: 
 traders." 
 
 Mr. Pitt said on the same occasion " Can we hesitate in 
 deciding whether the wars in Africa ore their wars or ours. 
 It was our arms in the river Cameroon put into the hands oi 
 the negro trader, that furnished him with the means of push 
 ing his trade, and I have no more doubt they are British arms 
 put into the hands of Africans, which promote universal war 
 and desolation, than I can doubt of their having done so, in 
 that individual instance." 
 
 , . Mr. Wilberforce related that in the year 1789, in the 
 neighbourhood of the river Cameroon, the master of a Liver 
 pool ship of the name of Bibby, fraudulently carried off thirty- 
 two relations of one of the chiefs of the country, who had been 
 iut on board as pledges for goods: and to illustrate the fami- 
 iarity of the practice, he quoted the following anecdote 
 u When General Rooke commanded in his majesty s settle 
 ment at Goree, some of the subjects of a neighbouring king, 
 with whom he was on terms of amity, came to pay him a 
 friendly visit; there were from 100 to 150 of them, men, w r o~ 
 men, and children; all was gaiety and merriment, it was ;< 
 scene to gladden the saddest, and to soften the hardest 
 heart: but a slave captain, ever faithful to the interest of his 
 employers, is not so soon thrown off his guard; with what 
 astonishment would the House hear, that in the midst of this 
 festivity, it was proposed to general Rooke to seize the whole 
 of this unsuspecting multitude, hurry them on board the ships, 
 and carry them off to the West Indies. It was not merely one 
 man, but three, who were bold enough to venture on such i 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 335 
 
 proposal. Three English slave captains preferred it as their SECT.IX. 
 joint request, alleging the precedent of a former governor, who ^^^^^ 
 in a similar case, had consented! &c. 
 
 One more of the numberless authenticated occurrences of 
 this nature, will suffice. u Mr. Wilberforce said that these 
 enormities were increasing; for, no longer ago than last Au 
 gust, (1791) when that House was debating on the subject of 
 this very trade, six British vessels had anchored off the town 
 of Calabar, in Africa, a town which seemed devoted to mis 
 fortune. It appeared, from the report, that the natives had 
 raised the price of slaves. The captains consulting together, 
 agreed to fire on the town, to compel them to lower the price 
 of their countrymen. To heighten, if possible, the shame of 
 this .proceeding, they were prevented for some time, from 
 effecting their purpose, by the presence of a French captain, 
 who refused to join in their measures, and purchased at the 
 high price which had been put upon the slaves." 
 
 u However, in the morning they commenced a fire which 
 lasted for three hours. During the consternation, the wretch 
 ed inhabitants were seen making their escape in every direc 
 tion. In the evening, the attack was renewed, which con 
 tinued until they agreed to sell their slaves at the price stipu 
 lated by the captains. In this attack upwards of twenty per 
 sons were destroyed." 
 
 The situation of the slaves on board ship, or what is com 
 monly called the middle passage, even surpassed in horror the 
 depravity and cruelty exhibited in the original acquisition. 
 Lord Grenville declared in 1806, in the House of Lords, 
 " that in the transportation of the negroes, there was a greater 
 portion of misery condensed within a smaller space, than had 
 ever existed in the known world. This he had said on a for 
 mer occasion, and would repeat." Mr Fox observed, in the 
 House of Commons, that " the acts of barbarity, proved upon 
 the slave captains in the course of the voyages, were so extra 
 vagant that they had been attributed to insanity." The single 
 instance of the British ship Zong, in 1781, from which the 
 captain threw into the sea one hundred and thirty-two slaves, 
 alive, in order to defraud the underwriters in England, gives a 
 truly demoniac character to the temper and conduct of the 
 commanders of the slave ships. The assertion of Lord Gren 
 ville, just quoted, would seem to be warranted by the facts 
 which were in undeniable evidence before the committees of 
 Parliament. With respect to the middle passage apart from 
 the administration of the sbijrs officers, still more barbarous, 
 than the situation was deplorable, the principal features of 
 
330 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. it arc these, according to the testimony of witnesses produced 
 
 v^v^s.x on the side of the trade. 
 
 Every slave, whatever his size might be, had only five feet 
 six inches in length, and sixteen inches in breadth, to lie in. 
 The floor was covered with bodies stowed or packed accord 
 ing to this allowance. But between the floor and (he deck or 
 ceiling were platforms, or broad shelves, in the midway, which 
 were covered with bodies also. The height from the floor to 
 the ceiling, within which space the bodies on the floor and 
 those on the platforms lay, seldom exceeded five feet two 
 inches, and in some cases it did not exceed four feet. 
 
 The men were chained, two and two together, by their 
 hands and feet, and were chained also by means of ring-bolts, 
 which were fastened to the deck. They were confined in this 
 manner at least all the time they remained upon the coast, 
 which was from six weeks to six months, as it might happen 
 Their allowance consisted of one pint of water a day to each 
 person, and they were fed twice a day with yams and horse- 
 beans. Instruments were kept on board to force them to eat, 
 when sulky. 
 
 After meals, they jumped up in their irons for exercise. 
 This was so necessary for their health that they were whipped 
 if they refused to do it, and often danced thus under the lash, 
 They were usually fifteen or sixteen hours below deck out of 
 twenty-four. In rainy weather they could not be brought up 
 for two or three days together. If the ship was full, their 
 situation was then inexpressibly distressing. They drew their 
 breath with anxious and laborious efforts. Thus crammed 
 together, some died of suffocation, and the filth and noisome- 
 ness occasioned putrid and fatal disorders; so that the officers 
 who inspected them in a morning, had occasionally to pick dead 
 slaves out of their rows, and to unchain their carcases from 
 the bodies of their fellow-sufferers, to whom they were fas 
 tened. 
 
 The scenes and practices in the next stage of the sacrifice, 
 the sale in the West India port, rivalled those of the 
 transportation. The slaves who survived the passage, fro 
 quen ly arrived in a sickly and disordered state, and then they 
 were made up for the market, by the means of astringents,, 
 washes, mercurial ointments, and repelling drugs, so that 
 their wounds and diseases might be hid. Many people in the 
 islands, in Jamaica particularly, were accustomed to speculate 
 in the purchase of those who were left after the first day s 
 sale. They then carried them out into the country, and re 
 tailed them there. A most respectable witness declared theft 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 337 
 
 he had seen these landed in a very wretched state, sometimes SECT. IX, 
 in the agonies of death, and sold as low as a dollar, and that v^v-^ / 
 he had known several to expire in the piazzas of the vendne- 
 master. 
 
 9. In the list of the evils and atrocities accompanying this 
 trade, one of the most certain and shocking, was the extensive 
 mortality, independent of that inseparable from the wars and 
 devastations in Africa, to which it gave rise. We read in 
 Macpherson s Annals, that the whole number of negroes de 
 livered, fell short of the number shipped, twenty or thirty per 
 cent; that in Jamaica, if fifteen out of twenty new negroes 
 bought, were alive at the end of three years, the purchaser was 
 thought very lucky. We are told by the Edinburgh Review 
 (No. 8) that upon an average no less than seventeen in an 
 hundred died before they were landed, and that there was a 
 further loss of thirty-three in the seasoning, arising chiefly 
 from diseases contracted during the voyage. u Of the Afri 
 cans," says Dr. Dickson, in his Mitigation of Slavery, " above 
 one-fourth perished on the voyage to the West Indies; and 4| 
 per cent, more, being nearly the annual mortality of London, 
 died on an average, in the fortnight intervening between the 
 day of entry and sale. To close this awful triumph of the king 
 of terrors, between one-third and one-half, or about two in five 
 were lost in " the seasoning," within the three first years." 
 The representations of Mr. Wilberforce on this head were never 
 invalidated, and are as follows. " It would be found," he 
 said, u upon an average of all the ships, upon which evidence 
 had been given, that, exclusively of such as perished before 
 they sailed from Africa, not less than twelve and a half per 
 cent, died on their passage; besides these, the Jamaica report 
 stated, that four and a half per cent, died while in the har 
 bours, or on shore, before the day of sale, which was only 
 about the space of twelve or fourteen days after their arrival 
 there, and one-third more died in the seasoning, and this in a 
 climate exactly similar to their own, in which they were ac 
 knowledged to be healthy. Thus out of every lot of one hun 
 dred shipped from Africa, seventeen died in about nine weeks, 
 and not more than fifty lived to become effective labourers in 
 our islands." 
 
 Mr. Wilberforce adduced, on another occasion, upon the 
 authority of indisputable evidence, some cases of particular 
 mortality, of which I will transcribe his relation, because it 
 brings into view additional attributes of the trade. 
 
 "It was no longer ago than in the vear 1788, that Mr. 
 VOL. I. -U u 
 
358 NEGRO SLAVEHY AND 
 
 PART I. Isaac Wilson, whose intelligent and candid manner of giving 
 ^* N<> * his evidence, could not but impress the committee with a high 
 opinion of him, was doomed to witness scenes as deeply dis 
 tressing as almost ever occurred in the annals of the slav 
 trade." 
 
 "His ship was a vessel of three hundred and seventy tons, 
 and she had on board six hundred and two slaves, a number 
 greater than we at present allow, but rather less, I think, than 
 what was asserted by the slave merchants to be necessary, in 
 order to carry on their trade to any tolerable profit. Out ci 
 these six hundred and two she lost one hundred and fifty-five . 
 I will mention the mortality also of three or four more vessels , 
 which were in company with her, and belonged to the same 
 owner. One of them brought four hundred and fifty, ani 
 buried two hundred; another brought four hundred and sixtj- 
 six, and buried seventy-three; another brought five hundred 
 and forty-six, and buried one hundred and eighty-eight: be 
 sides one hundred and fifty-five from his own ship, his num 
 ber being six hundred and two; and from the whole four, 
 after the landing of their cargoes, there died two hundred ami 
 twenty. He fell in with another vessel, which lost three 
 hundred and sixty-two: the number she had brought was net 
 specified. To thes actual deaths, during and immediately 
 after the voyage, and the subsequent loss in what is called 
 the seasoning, I consider that this loss would be greater than 
 ordinary in cargoes landed in so sickly a state. Why, sir, 
 were such a mortality general, it would, in a few months, de 
 populate the earth. We asked the surgeon the causes of these 
 excessive losses, particularly on board his own ship, where he 
 had it in his power to ascertain them. The substance of his 
 reply was, that most of the slaves appeared to labour under a 
 fixed dejection and melancholy, interrupted now and then 
 by lamentations and plaintive songs, expressive of their con 
 cern for the loss of their relations and friends and native 
 country. So powerfully did this operate, that many attempted 
 various ways of destroying themselves; some endeavoured to 
 drown themselves, and three actually effected it; others obsti 
 nately refused to take sustenance, and when the whip and 
 other violent means were used to compel them to eat, they 
 looked up in the face of the officer, who unwillingly executed 
 this painful task, and said, in their own language, 4 Presently 
 we shall be no more. Their state of mind produced a ge 
 neral state of languor and debility, which were increased, in 
 many instances, by an unconquerable abstinence from food, 
 arising partly from sickness, partly, to use the language of 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 339 
 
 slave captains, from sulkiness. These causes naturally SECT IX. 
 produced the dysentery; the contagion spread, numbers were ^.x-v^w 
 daily carried off, and the disorder, aided by so many powerful 
 auxiliaries, resisted all the force of medicine. 
 
 " The ship in which Mr. Claxton, the surgeon, sailed, since 
 the regulating act, afforded a repetition of all the same horrid 
 circumstances I have before alluded to. Suicide, various 
 ways, was attempted and effected, and the same barbarous 
 expedients were resorted to, in order to compel them to con 
 tinue an existence too painful to be endured: the mortality 
 also was as great" 
 
 10. Bryan Edwards, in his History of the West Indies,* 
 computes the total import of negroes, in British vessels, into 
 all the British colonies of America and the West Indies, from 
 1 680 to 1 786, at 2, 1 30,000, being on an average of the whole, 
 20,095 annually. He acknowledges that this estimate " is 
 much less than is commonly supposed," and that he had not 
 ic sufficient materials to enable him to furnish an accurate 
 statement." There can be no doubt that he is far short of the 
 peal number. It is calculated, as we have seen, by Ander 
 son, that the annual British export from Africa was one hun 
 dred thousand, and the annual mortality twenty thousand. 
 Mr. Long confesses, in his History of Jamaica, that twenty- 
 seven thousand were imported into that island in two years and 
 an half; and Mr. Edwards puts down the Jamaica importa 
 tion at one-third of the whole. The Dutch colonies of De- 
 merara, Guiana, and Berbice fell into the hands of Great 
 Britain in 1797: and immediately called for a great number 
 of negroes, having been prevented from supplying themselves 
 during the war. It is averted in the Edinburgh Review 
 (No. 24) that the British slave trade then rose to fifty-seven 
 thousand, and continued at that standard for eight years; that 
 is, until 1805, when the importation into the Dutch colonies 
 was terminated by an order in council, to appease the jealou 
 sies and clamours in the old islands. 
 
 Taking the data which the statements quoted in the preced 
 ing pages afford, I should not certainly transcend the mark, if I 
 added ten thousand to the average of Edwards. If we state it, 
 in round numbers, at thirty thousand, we shall have, for the one 
 hundred and six years, three millions one hundred and eighteen 
 thousand negroes imported into the British possessions alone. 
 But to have the whole number which Great Britain obtained 
 
 * B. IV. c.2. 
 
340 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. from Africa, we must bring into (he account those whom she 
 <-^-v-*w procured antecedent to the year 1080, and after the year 178t>: 
 those whom she imported directly into the foreign possessions 
 under her contracts, and otherwise; and also, those who perish 
 ed on her hands on the coast of Africa, and in the transportation. 
 The aggregate of her immediate prey must have exceeded sis 
 millions, and we may rate the direct mortality for which she is 
 answerable, at two millions, for the century of the trade pre 
 ceding the abolition.* If we call to mind, besides, the general 
 physical suffering undergone by the survivors, before they 
 reached their ultimate, most calamitous lot; the mental agony 
 implied in their divulsion from their native soil and the bonds 
 of kindred and friendship; we must stand aghast at the accouni 
 of crime which remained open against the British nation at 
 the time of the abolition. In addition to the items mentioned, 
 those are of no small moment which are suggested in Mr 
 Pitt s apostrophe to the House of Commons. " Do you think 
 nothing of the ruin and the miseries in which so many othei 
 individuals, still remaining in Africa, are involved, in conse 
 quence of carrying off so many myriads of people? Do you 
 think nothing of their families which are left behind; of the 
 connexions which are broken; of the friendships, attachments, 
 and relationships that are burst asunder? Do you think nothing 
 of the miseries, in consequence, that are felt from generation 
 to generation, of the privation of that happiness which might 
 be communicated to them by the introduction of civilization, 
 and of mental and moral improvement?" 
 
 From the foregoing exposition, it may be asserted, with 
 confidence, that the British slave trade caused immediately, 
 during the two centuries of its legal prosecution, the destruc 
 tion of more negroes than have existed, altogether, in North 
 America, since the first settlement. The leaders of the abo 
 lition, the Pitts, the Foxes, the Horsleys, did not hesitate to 
 bestow upon that destruction the most fearful of epithets. 
 a What is it," exclaimed Lord Grenville, u but murder to 
 
 * This is much below the calculations of her own writers. "The 
 number," says one of these, " of slaves which the ships profess to 
 take is not an exact criterion of the number actually taken. The pub- 
 lie number does not include the quota, allowed to the respective 
 officers of the ship ; nor do the owners confine themselves to any exact 
 number, if, on the arrival of the ship in Africa, the commodity is 
 cheaper than they expected." For obvious reasons, the mortality ot 
 the negroes in the transportation would not be disclosed in all its ex 
 tent. The number smuggled by the British into the Spanish posses 
 sions, while they enjoyed the assicnto, was not inconsiderable. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 341 
 
 pursue a practice which produced annually untimely death to SECT. ix. 
 thousands of innocent and helpless beings!" Now, I w r ould v-^^w 
 ask, which it is, the Briton or the American, that can, with 
 most propriety, be stigmatized, nationally, as " a murderer 
 of slaves?" 
 
 If we admitted as true all that the British writers have re 
 lated of the condition and treatment of the slaves in this 
 country, we could yet defy them to make out an amount of 
 injustice, and suffering, and cruelty, in any way equal to that 
 which they have charged and proved upon their African trade. 
 In portentous individual instances of inhuman conduct, whe 
 ther as to enormity or multitude, that trade far outstrips the 
 North American negro slavery; the history of which presents, 
 indeed, no authenticated case of barbarity which does not ap 
 pear almost venial, in the comparison with the monstrous pro 
 ceedings consigned in the parliamentary minutes of evidence. 
 
 1 1 . The thirst of gain and the ambition of commercial su 
 premacy, which engaged and animated the British people and 
 government in this detestable traffic, inspired them with the 
 aim of monopolizing every market for human flesh. The 
 cargo of negroes was carried with equal readiness to Caraccas 
 or to Jamaica, to Pennsylvania or to Guiana. No discrimi 
 nation was made as to the character of the masters to whose 
 absolute will they were to be consigned, or to the nature of 
 the climate or the toil, which they were to undergo. The 
 French and the Spaniards had, like ourselves, their full share 
 of obloquy from the English traveller, on account of the seve 
 rity of their rule over the very slaves whom the English trader 
 had sold to them; and the French and Spanish character 
 stood degraded, on the same account, in elaborate contrasts 
 with the British, when the French and Spanish ports were 
 crowded with British slave ships, and the British ministers 
 struggling for the prolongation of the Assiento-contract. 
 
 Doubtless, Great Britain was answerable for the fate of the 
 whole number of beings whom she delivered over to perpe 
 tual bondage in this hemisphere; knowing the temper and 
 habits of the Spanish and French planters, she partook in the 
 guilt of their excesses of cruelty towards the slaves whom 
 they had received from her ships. In the case of the slavery 
 in her own islands she was more than an accessary; and it 
 could not be surpassed in hardship and inhumanity. That 
 in the Spanish and French, or even the Dutch possessions, 
 was not worse; and in the American provinces universally 
 acknowledged to be much more mild. While every where in 
 
342 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. the latter, there was an excess of births over deaths among 
 >*-^v^/ the negroes, and in some, a rapidity of increase; in the Bri 
 tish West Indies, the whole stock required renewal in less 
 than fifteen years.* 
 
 I had intended to copy from the parliamentary statement* 
 some of the facts illustrative of this additional waste of the 
 human species, and of the condition and treatment of the ne 
 groes, under British dominion; but I have already dealt ii 
 (details of this nature, as much as is compatible with my 
 limits, and the tenderness due to the feelings of my readers 
 It is enough to refer to the debates in the British parliament 
 on the abolition, and on the slave registry bills. The tone <K 
 the British writers has often been such on these subjects, a > 
 if they considered the conscience of England clear with re 
 spect to the slave trade and to slavery, because these were 
 unknown in her own immediate territory. This miserable 
 casuistry was noticed in Parliament in the year 1792, in tin; 
 following pointed and just remarks. 
 
 " Mr. Robert Thornton said, the people of England wer^ 
 called a humane set of people. Liberty was the boast of ou 
 island; and it was said, that no African was landed on our 
 soil, who did not instantly become free. They were guilty, 
 however, of a contradiction, as long as they sent those miser 
 able wretches elsewhere into slavery; they were governed by 
 a selfish principle; they could send these wretches out of 
 their sight to be vilified, and disgraced, and scourged, but 
 they did not themselves, like to witness their cries, their tears, 
 and all their degradation. He recollected an old motto, 
 c Qui facit per alium, facit per se. 
 
 Neither the Parliament nor nation could, at any time, plead 
 ignorance of the character of the trade, and of West India 
 slavery. The collections of early voyages; the reports of tra 
 
 * "According to Sir Isaac Newton," says Dr. Dickson, "mankind di<: 
 off, and are renewed every thirty-three or thirty-four years. But tlu: 
 slaves collectively, bought and bred, die off, and are renewed, in about 
 fifteen years; and therefore more than twice as fast as the rest of tlu; 
 species; and the bought alone more than four or Jive times as fast. ^ 
 When the whole number of slaves in the British West India Islands 
 was computed at 265,666, the annual consumption of them was esti 
 mated at 23,743. Mr. Mai thus remarks in the Appendix to his Essay 
 on Population, that if the slaves in the West Indies had been only in 
 a tolerable condition ; if their civil condition and moral habits had been 
 made only to approach to those which prevail among the mass of the 
 human race in the worst governed countries in the world, it is contrary 
 to the general laws of nature to suppose, that they would not have been 
 able by procreation fully to supply the effective demand for labour 
 
SLAVE TRAIiE. 343 
 
 vellers; the mutual, printed accusations of the Royal African SECT ix. 
 Company, and the private adventurers: the inevitable noto- V-^-VN^ 
 riety of facts where considerable cities were almost entirely 
 devoted to the traffic; the constant intercourse with the West 
 Indies, through ail ranks of life; the solemn admonitions of 
 the writers whom Clarkson has cited; the insurance cases 
 which were brought into the courts of justice; preclude the 
 charitable supposition that mercy, and justice, and honour 
 were unconsciously trampled upon in the race of commercial 
 competition. Mr. Wilberforce, after displaying, in his speech 
 of 1792, the enormities of which 1 have mentioned a small 
 part, added, " nor do we learn these transactions only from 
 our own witnesses; they are proved by the testimony of slave- 
 factors themselves, whose works were written and published 
 long before the present enquiry." 
 
 I have observed that, until the year 1786, no society was 
 formed among any description of persons in England, which 
 had for its object the abolition of the trade. The callousness 
 of the government too is almost inconceivable. Clarkson 
 relates that Granville Sharp communicated all the facts of the 
 hideous case of captain Zong, with a copy of the trial to the 
 Lords of the Admiralty, as the guardians of justice upon the 
 seas, and to the duke of Portland, as principal minister of 
 state; but that no notice was taken by any of them, of the 
 information thus imparted. When the Quakers presented, in 
 1783, their petition to Parliament against the slave trade, 
 the first of that purport ever presented, Lord North ad 
 mitted, in the House of Commons, the grievousness of the 
 evil, and only u regretted that the trade against which the 
 petition was so justly directed, was, in a commercial view 
 become necessary to almost every nation in Europe." In 
 17*6, the estimable David Hartley, after exposing to the 
 House of Commons, the abominations of the slave trade, and 
 laying on the table of the House some of the fetters and other 
 instruments of torture employed on board of the slave ships, 
 made a motion u that the slave trade was contrary to the laws 
 of God and the rights of man." This motion was seconded 
 by the patriot and philanthropist, Sir George Saville, who 
 lives so brilliantly in the splendid eulogy of Burke; and yet 
 it failed utterly. The proceedings of the Commons the year 
 following (1777) on the state of the African Company, are 
 remarkable on account of the tone which prevailed in the dis 
 cussion. It was such, as if the trade were not only unimpeach- 
 ed, but unimpeachable. Nothing betrayed the business to be 
 considered in any other light than as an ordinary one, except. 
 
344 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART 1. perhaps, the following remarks of Mr. Temple Lutlreil, whx> 
 v ^~ v ~ > - / had (he charge of unfold ing the case of the Company and tin 
 interests of the trade. " Some gentlemen may, indeed, ob 
 ject to the slave trade as inhuman and impious, but, hard a;; 
 the case of a negro slave may appear to a free born Briton a 
 first view, I conceive him to be far less an object of commi 
 seration, (his native state and local birthright being taken into 
 the comparison,) than a poor impressed sailor within thi;> 
 island," &c. Another extract from the speech of Mr. Lut 
 trell, which passed without animadversion, will show the pre 
 vailing temper and policy on the subject; how coolly and 
 nicely the comparative value of human flesh was calculated in 
 an assembly of u free born Britons. 1 
 
 "In the slave trade also, there might be prodigious im 
 provements; but the attention of the Board of Trade and 
 plantations in this matter has been too much limited: the ne 
 groes from the gold coast suit our West India islands remark 
 ably well; they are laborious, bold, hardy, and live upon littlo 
 besides salt fish and roots, which they meet with in Jamaica. 
 The negroes from Congo, Angola, and the lower Guinea, ar<; 
 of a more soft, voluptuous, and effeminate nature, and their 
 women chiefly till the ground; so that upon being transplant 
 ed to the hardships of our sugar colonies, they commit suicide 
 rather than endure them: hence it is that one Gold Coast negro 
 is worth, for sugar plantations, two of the others; but in Nortli 
 *flmerica, where they meet with food and entertainment, and 
 I .sage better adapted to their habits, they do perfectly well." 
 
 12. At length, in 1787, through the indefatigable exertions 
 of a few humane individuals in the middle ranks of life, th<: 
 enormities of the slave system, in all its stages, were forced 
 upon the attention of the government and nation. A member 
 of parliament of great personal consideration, took up th<- 
 subject of abolition with the zeal of an apostle, and the reso 
 lution of a martyr. He announced his intention to summon 
 the government to the performance of its duty; and at once a 
 din of protestation and fierce defiance arose from every quar 
 ter. The slave trade, says Clarkson, appeared, like the fabu 
 lous hydra, to have a hundred heads; the merchant, the plan- 
 ter, the mortgagee, the manufacturer, the politician, the legis 
 lator, the cabinet minister, lifted up their voices against its 
 annihilation." The humanity and patriotism of Mr. Pitt, Mr. 
 Fox, and of some other distinguished orators of parliament, 
 were, however, enlisted with Wilberforce; and no inconsider 
 able number of auxiliaries had been gained throughout thfc 
 
SLAVE TRADE, 
 
 345 
 
 country, by the diffusion of the tracts of Benezet, Sharp, and SECT. IX, 
 Clarkson; of pathetic songs, and moving pictures, and what- ^*~*^- 
 ever could vivify public feeling and excite national shame. 
 Among the higher classes, little real progress would seem to 
 have been made; since, according to Clarkson, most of the 
 persons of rank and fortune in the west end of the metropolis, 
 were converts to a pamphlet from the pen of a Liverpool 
 champion, entitled, "Scriptural Researches on the Licitness 
 of the Slave Trade," in which the holiness of the trade was 
 stoutly maintained. 
 
 In 1788, when a sufficiently marked excitement had been * 
 produced in the country, and the imposing shape of evidence 
 before the privy council given to facts, a bill was brought into 
 the House of Commons for the mere regulation of the trade, 
 so as to diminish the miseries of the middle passage. At this 
 day, it is scarcely credible what resistance was made, both in 
 doors and out, to this bill, which common humanity seemed 
 to exact; what dilution it underwent in its progress; and how 
 narrowly it escaped extinction, notwithstanding the earnest 
 support of the minister, and a phalanx of the ablest rhetori 
 cians who have ever existed. It was bandied several times 
 in new forms, between the two houses, and at length passed 
 the Lords, through an ordeal, says Clarkson, as it were of 
 fire. He adds, that it was "the first bill which ever put fetters 
 upon the destructive monster the slave trade;" but the fact 
 soon transpired, that it missed its aim, and was interpreted by 
 the slave merchants into an additional charter, or recognition 
 of their pursuit as a lawful branch of commerce. 
 
 In 1789, Mr. Wilberforce ventured to lay upon the table 
 of the House of Commons, as subjects for future discussion, 
 twelve historical propositions founded upon the evidence in 
 the case of the slave trade, reported by the privy council. 
 Matters were not ripe for the proposal of abolition to parlia 
 ment, until 1791, when Mr. Wilberforce made his first grand 
 motion to hat effect. After a vehement and protracted debate, 
 in v.-.ich the leaders of the cause exerted their utmost ability, 
 it wv.s lost by a considerable majority. For the opinion to be 
 entertained of this result, I need only refer to the language of 
 Mr. Fox ancl the Edinburgh Review. Mr. Fox said, in the de 
 bate, that " iht- irade was defensible upon no other ground than 
 that of a highwayman; and that if tht- house, knowing as they 
 did by the evidence, what it was, did not by their vote mark to 
 all mankind their abhorrence of a practice so savage, so enor 
 mous, so repugnant to all laws human and divine, they would 
 consign their character to eternal infamv-" The Edinburgh 
 VOL. I Xx 
 
346* 
 
 IN EGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. Review has told us, that " the question of the slave trade was 
 v^-v^w always one in which interest, or an apprehension of interest 
 stood more daringly and nakedly opposed to humanity and 
 justice, than any other on record." Certainly, never was a 
 question of such awful import, so treated as this was, by the 
 numerous advocates of the slave trade in Parliament. " On 
 the occasion just mentioned, Mr. Grosvenor said, " that gentle 
 men had exhibited a great deal of eloquence in exhibiting in 
 horrid colours, the traffic in slaves. He acknowledged it was 
 not an amiable trade; but neither was the trade of a butcher 
 an amiable trade; and yet a mutton chop was., nevertheless, a 
 good thing."* 
 
 Another and equally strenuous effort was made, the ensu 
 ing year, in the House of Commons, by the abolitionists, 
 The house rejected the proposition of Mr. Wilberforce, but 
 manifested a disposition to vote a gradual abolition. So much, 
 after the admissions extorted by the testimony, from the leader* 
 of the majority, and with the prospect of an effervescence 
 of public sentiment from the cogent arguments and elo 
 quent pictures of the speakers in the affirmative, could not, 
 in decency or policy, be refused. Mr. Pitt, who, on this oc 
 casion, put forth all the energies and beauties of his unrivalled 
 oratory, afterwards expressed himself in his place, in these 
 terms: "I feel the infamy of the trade so heavily, and see tin 
 impolicy of it so clearly, that I am ashamed I have not been 
 able to convince the house to abandon it altogether at an in 
 stant to pronounce with one voice (he immediate and total 
 abolition. There is no excuse for us, seeing this infernal 
 traffic as we do. It is the very death of justice to utter a 
 syllable in support of it." 
 
 Mr. Dundas, one of the antagonists of immediate abolition, 
 in a short time, brought in a bill for a gradual one, with some 
 singular additions. He proposed that, for the future, nom 
 but young persons should be allowed to be taken from Africa, 
 and that a bounty should be given upon the importation or 
 young negresses into the West Indies. On this latter point. 
 Mr. Fox, in his overwhelming answer to Mr. Dundas, bore 
 with particular severity. " A right honourable gentleman- 
 proposes a bounty on the importation of females, or, in other 
 
 * In the final debate in the House of Lords, in 1807, Earl St. Vin 
 cent said, "He was surprised at the proposition of abolition before tin- 
 house, and considering the high character and intelligence of the no 
 ble proposer, Lord Grenville, he declared he could account in no othei 
 way for his having brought it forward, but by supposing that some 
 Obiman had cast his spell upon him !" (.# laugh.") 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 347 
 
 words, he proposes to make up the deficiency in the propor- SECT.IX. 
 tion of sexes, by offering a premium to any crew of unprin- v -^~ v " > *" 
 cipled and savage ruffians, who will attack and carry off any 
 of the females of Africa! a bounty from the parliament of 
 Great Britain, that shall make the fortune of any man, or set 
 of men, who shall kidnap or steal any unfortunate females 
 from that continent! who shall bring them over as slaves, in 
 order that they may be used for breeding slaves!" In the 
 course of the debate, Mr. Dundas declared that these United 
 States would, if Great Britain abandoned the slave trade, 
 purvey for the West Indies; ^nd he added " Is it to be ima 
 gined that the Americans are so favourably disposed towards 
 this country, as to resist the temptation of forming so valuable 
 a connexion with our colonies? A connexion once begun by 
 Supplying them with negroes would not end there; and we 
 might lose the West Indies without accomplishing our object." 
 
 Mr. Fox replied, that he was not so much alarmed by the 
 possibility of the British Islands getting into habits of intimacy 
 with foreigners. Though the apprehension of Mr. Dundas 
 concerning our assumption of the British slave trade has, no 
 doubt, vanished from the minds of his successors in office, we 
 may suspect, that the alarm at the possible consequences of an 
 intimacy between these States and the West Indies, is one of the 
 motives of the present rigorous system of commercial exclusion. 
 
 The Commons voted a gradual abolition, and the Lords 
 refused to concur. The next year, 1793, the former refused 
 to renew their vote, and rejected a motion of Mr. Wilberforce, 
 to abolish that part of the British trade, by which the British 
 merchants supplied foreigners with slaves. This motion, how 
 ever, being revived in 1794, was finally carried in a verv 
 thin house; but lost with the Peers by a majority of forty-five 
 to four. I need not recite the annual and fruitless attempts of 
 the abolitionists between this period and the year 1807, when 
 they finally succeeded. The degree of merit for the interval, 
 to which the Parliament and nation are entitled, may be col 
 lected from the following passage of the Edinburgh Review.* 
 
 " The vast and general sensation produced by the first de 
 velopment of the horrible traffic in human flesh, speedily 
 gave place to a much more sober and partial sentiment of re 
 probation; no small difficulty was experienced in attracting 
 the attention of the public to the discussion for many years; 
 it was pretty uniformly debated among empty benches, in those 
 august assemblies, whose walls can scarce contain their crowds, 
 
 * No.4f. 
 
348 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. when a person of honour is to be attacked, or a female of easy 
 ^^"v w virtue is to give evidence." 
 
 The degree of success obtained at any time with the pub 
 lic, and the final triumph of the question, were owing in no 
 small measure to considerations of expediency. It was found 
 important to give quite as extensive a circulation to Clarkson s 
 Essay on the Impolicy of the Slave Trade, as to the pam 
 phlets on its criminality, and the abstracts of the evidence re 
 specting its unparalleled barbarities. In Parliament, the 
 abolitionists laboured mainly to prove, that instead of being 
 advantageous to Great Britain, it was most destructive to her 
 interests; w r as the ruin of her seamen; prevented the extension 
 of her manufactures; was no longer necessary for the mainte 
 nance of the due number of labourers in the West Indies; 
 that a much more lucrative intercourse with Africa might be 
 substituted for it; that the other powers of the world would 
 either relinquish it, or be unable to carry it on, so that all 
 would remain upon a footing, &c. Mr. Wilberforce, in his 
 first speech, admitting, for argument s sake, that " the rivals 
 of Britain, the French might take it up, asked " Would they 
 not then be obliged to come to us, in consequence of the 
 cheapness of our manufactures, for what they wanted for the 
 African market?" We find the Edinburgh Reviewers rebuking 
 the great abolitionist, in their 47th number, for talking, in 
 his printed letter to M. Talleyrand, of the great sacrifice 
 which England had made in the abolition, after he and all 
 his coadjutors had uniformly, and so efficaciously, pleaded the 
 mischievousness of the traffic to her, whether as a nursery for 
 seamen, or a channel for the employment of capital. 
 
 In the final debate of 1807, on the abolition, Mr. Whit- 
 bread, one of its most zealous advocates, said u It was com 
 plained that too much feeling and too much passion had been 
 carried into this discussion. He complained on the contrary, 
 that it had been made too little a question of feeling, and that 
 it had been made almost entirely a matter of cold calculations 
 of profit and loss between English money and African blood." 
 Lord Castlereagh, indeed, did, in his first interview with the 
 emperor of Russia, on the subject of general abolition, expa 
 tiate upon what the British parliament had done in spite of the 
 suggestions of national interest;* but, in the general confer 
 ences on the same subject, at Vienna, u Lord Castlereagh," says 
 the protocol of the sitting of 20lh January, 1815, " communi- 
 
 * See Letter of Lord Castlereagh to Earl Bathursl, dated Vienna, 
 January 2d, 1815, among the papers laid before Parliament, April, 
 1815. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 349 
 
 cated authentic documents to prove that in the affair in ques- SECT.IX. 
 tion, the interest of the powers of Europe went hand in hand ^^^^ 
 with their duty; that the abolition was particularly for the 
 real advantage, and even indispensable for the security, of the 
 colonial countries," &c.* 
 
 On all hands, there must be an immediate concurrence in 
 the general allegation of the Edinburgh Review, that " for the 
 long space of twenty years, Mr. Pitt could persuade about 
 three-fourths of the members of Parliament to adopt any 
 scheme of finance, or of external policy which he chose to 
 countenance, but did never once prevail against the slave tra 
 ders and consignees of sugar in Bristol and Liverpool."! 
 The Reviewers have made this failure, considered in con 
 nexion w 7 ith the prompt success of the Fox administration, the 
 ground of a most atrocious charge against the memory of Mr. 
 Pitt that he was not sincere in the cause of abolition, as a 
 minister, although he might have been as a man. The dis 
 tinction would not save him, if this were true, from being re 
 garded as the vilest of hypocrites, nor the genius of the Bri 
 tish government from appearing as the most entirely artificial 
 and selfish ever known. The strain of Mr. Pitt s speeches 
 absolves him, however; and Clarkson has borne the strongest 
 testimony to his good faith. His colleagues in the ministry, 
 particularly the lord chancellor, Thurlow, exerted themselves 
 indefatigably, in opposition to the measure, and weakened the 
 impression of his station. The stigma does not attach to 
 him, but to the Parliament, if he could make a majority in 
 such a case; if he could bring them to act properly on a 
 question the most important for humanity, and the reputation 
 of the British name, only by using his influence as minister; 
 that is, as the head of a party, and the dispenser of place and 
 patronage. There is another question which neither Mr. 
 Pitt nor Mr. Fox could have carried through both houses of 
 Parliament, even as ministers that of catholic emancipation; 
 and the reader will remark that it is alone on two points of this 
 description, in which the freedom of millions was involved, 
 ministerial influence has been found ineffectual in the British 
 legislature. 
 
 In the course of the present parliamentary session, (1819,) 
 Mr. William Smith of Norwich to whom the cause of abo 
 lition is as much indebted as to any other parliamentary ad 
 vocate, except Mr. Wilberforce stated to the House of Com 
 mons, that even at last in 1807, after the twenty years discus- 
 
 * Pieces Officiellesde Schoell. vol. vii. f No. 24. 
 
350 
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. s i ollj it required all the efforts of almost every member oi that 
 v - x " v ~ x - house, who had any title to the character of an orator or a 
 statesman, to carry the act through the Parliament. In fact, 
 in the final debates, the justice and humanity of the trade we re 
 maintained as boldly as they ever had been; arguments of 
 counsel were heard at the bar, and petitions received, agaiiist 
 the abolition; Lord Castlereagh, Lord Sidmoulh, Lcrd 
 Hawkesbury, Lord Eldon, Lord Westmoreland, Mr. Rose, 
 Mr. Bathurst, spoke in opposition. These were the men who, 
 immediately after the abolition became a law, took the pkce 
 of its patrons in the government. Clarkson remarks, that 
 though the bill had now passed both houses, u there was an 
 awful fear lest it should not receive the royal assent, before 
 the Grenville ministry was dissolved." This awful fear was 
 founded upon the conviction that, with a ministry adverse to 
 the measure, no parliament could be found to adopt it at the 
 instigation of a member out of office. There is nothing, 
 therefore, forced, or illiberal, in the conclusion, that it was 
 a general party movement; an act of subserviency in the 
 old routine to the will of an administration firmly united and 
 inextricably entangled in the object; that, had that ministry 
 been dissolved before the royal assent was given, the slnve 
 traffic would be at this day a lawful branch of British com 
 merce.* As the case was, seventeen years had elapsed since 
 superabundant, irrefragable evidence of the history and cha 
 racter of the traffic was officially before Parliament: within 
 that interval it had been allowed to flourish on an enlarged 
 scale. Sir Samuel Romilly told the House of Commons, in 
 1806, that "since the year 1796, no less than three hundred 
 and sixty thousand Africans had been torn away, under the 
 continued sanction of Parliament, from their native land." 
 This estimate is certainly too low, for the annual exportation 
 of the British, according to the Edinburgh Review, rose to 
 57,000, after the acquisition of the Dutch colonies in 1707. 
 The Report of the African Institution for the present year 
 
 * The following 1 extract from the debate of the House of Commons 
 of June 27th, 1814, will shew that I am not alone in this conjecture. 
 "Mr- Philips said 
 
 " I cannot forget that the public voice had been raised even more 
 loudly against the slave trade before the administration of Mr. Fox, 
 than during its brief existence ; and to such a degree do I think the 
 gratitude of the friends of justice and humanity due to that short-lived, 
 and much misrepresented administration, that I do in my conscience be - 
 Heve, but for them, the Jiritish slave trade -would at tlda moment have been 
 continued to the disgrace of the country, to the outrage of public feeling, o.ntf 
 -in violation of every principle of policy, justice, and humanity." 
 
SLAVE TRAD, 351 
 
 (!Sl9) states ttye average at 55,000, and admits fiiat the num- SECT. ix. 
 ber taken from Africa in 1806 and 1807, in the prospect o/^^^-^^ 
 the approadiing abolition of the trade, teas very considerable. 
 From the period when Mr. Pitt declared to Parliament that 
 they had examined sufficiently into the nature of the trade to 
 enable them to decide, and must be now convinced of its 
 cruelty and injustice, until the date of the cessation of im 
 portation into the British colonies, the number of negroes car 
 ried into slavery by the British merchants with the authority 
 of the nation, could not have been less than one-third of the 
 whole number now existing in the United States. 
 
 13. My readers may already understand, that the British 
 abolition is not quite so abundantly creditable, as to render it 
 an adequate foundation for invidious reflections on the United 
 States. But I will suppose that the motives were altogether pure 
 and magnanimous; that it was the immediate fruit of Chris 
 tian conviction; a national act of contrition and atonement. 
 The questions then arise, was it in itself a sufficient repara 
 tion for the wrongs done to Africa? and if not, has Great 
 Britain performed her utmost to make full amends? The ad 
 vocates of the abolition admitted universally, what all must 
 perceive, that by it she had merely stopped the increase oi 
 her vast debt to that continent and to humanity; that she was 
 bound to go further; to rectify the condition of the negroes 
 within her dominions, and, if possible, to withdraw all the 
 other nations from the slave trade. Everyone saw that unless 
 her example were imitated by the slave-dealing powers of 
 Europe, her proceeding, however useful to her own commerce 
 and character, would be productive, comparatively, of little 
 advantage to Africa, and followed by an extensive clandestine 
 trade in her own dependencies. 
 
 Reviewing the statements of those who brought about the 
 abolition, respecting the immensity of the crime she had com 
 mitted, and the misery and mischief she had caused; and on the 
 other hand, the estimates made by the anti-abolitionists, of the 
 vast emolument and general advantages which she had gained, 
 in the prosecution of the trade, closet- moralists thought it in 
 cumbent upon ber, to interpose her whole strength in favour of 
 the region she had so long desolated, and of the portion of its 
 offspring within the limits of her empire, in any way that might 
 be found necessary to give efficacy to her intervention, and at 
 any risk. For the sake of an addition to her revenue, she had 
 hazarded and incurred the loss of thirteen flourishing colonies; 
 for the acquisition of slips of territory in America, and of sugar 
 
352 
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. islands filled with black slaves, for points of honour and ma; 1- 
 - ^v^^- time prerogative; for security from possible dangers, she h id 
 waged long and destructive wars. She might, then, to make 
 her atonement for the enormity and havoc of the slave trace, 
 in some degree commensurate with her guilt ro prevent t ic 
 continuance of a system subversive of the law of nations, and 
 of the principles of Christianity; superlatively baneful and in- 
 moral, she might, if no other means would suffice, unsheath 
 her sword, and be assured in so doing of the favour of the God 
 of battles, and of all the friends of humanity and justice DII 
 earth. On such an occasion it became her, when convinced 
 of the futility of every other expedient., to exert her maritine 
 superiority, regardless of all forms and obstacles a course of 
 proceeding not without precedent in her history. 
 
 At the period of her abolition, France and Spain being at 
 war with her, had long been cut off from the trade. Tiie 
 only power engaged in the prosecution of it, was Portugil, 
 whose government depended upon her for its existence. 
 Scarcely a year elapsed, when Spain returned to a stote 
 of amity with her, under such circumstances, as rendered 
 it impossible she should be refused any boon she might oe 
 pleased to ask. But I will leave it to an English writer to 
 explain the nature of the conjuncture, and to state the result. 
 I find the following exposition in a remarkable work publish 
 ed the last year (1818) in London, and entitled, "A View of 
 the present Increase of the Slave Trade, by Robert Thorpe, 
 L. L. D. Jatc Chief Justice of Sierra Leone, and Judge of the 
 Vice Admiralty Court in that Colony." 
 
 " At the moment England abolished the slave trade, all Eu 
 rope was most favourably circumstanced to ensure an univer 
 sal abolition. The royal family of Spain threw themselves 
 into the arms of France, and were handed to a prison. The 
 royal family of Portugal sought the protection of England, and 
 were safely conveyed to their Brasil dominions. We only 
 wanted the co-operation of these powers to establish a perfect 
 abolition; we upheld them as kingdoms; we had a right to 
 insist on their abolishing the slave trade; every principle of 
 justice and humanity called for such a demand, while the po 
 licy and professions of this nation should have made compli 
 ance necessary. Such a requisition could not have been con 
 sidered as interfering with the independence of those govern 
 ments, nor with the rights of their subjects. Independence is 
 not comprised in a power to enslave^ nor do the.lawful rights of 
 any people consist in their ability to invade the natural rights of 
 man. While England was exhausting her blood and treasure 
 
SLATE TRADE. 
 
 353 
 
 m defence of the liberty of Spain and Portugal, she was not SECT. IX. 
 warrantable in diminishing the resources of her wealth, to ex- v *^^^- 
 tend the cruelty of their commerce; but the most fortunate coin 
 cidence was criminally neglected."* 
 
 Nothing can be more just than all this representation. Every 
 one acquainted with the history of the era of Bonaparte s in 
 vasion of the Peninsula, must be convinced, that it was in the 
 power of England, to extort from Portugal and Spain the 
 abolition of their slave trade. " It would have been," said 
 Mr. Canning, palliating the omission in the House of Com 
 mons, "unwise to have taken a high tone with them in the day 
 of their distress; a strong remonstrance on this subject would 
 have gone with too much of authority, and have appeared 
 insulting. ! So fastidious a delicacy, where the object was, 
 according to the British theory, of immeasurable importance 
 to the repose of the national conscience, and to humanity! 
 The day of the absolute dependence of those powers upon 
 England, was the only day, in which there was any likelihood 
 of the accomplishment of that object with them; and a strong 
 remonstrance against the prosecution of a system so exorbi 
 tantly wicked and pernicious, could not in itself have worn 
 the air of insult, but would rather have appeared an act of 
 noble friendship and resolute philanthropy. With the lives 
 and happiness of millions of Africans, and all the other mo 
 mentous considerations attached to the extinguishment of the 
 slave trade, at stake, the opportunity was to be improved de- 
 terminately, though at a greater cost than a little violence 
 done to perverted feelings, and the excitement of an impotent 
 discontent. If Spain and Portugal could be induced to com 
 ply at once, then, as no lawful trade in slaves would exist dur 
 ing the war, Great Britain ruling the seas and exercising the 
 belligerent right of search, might repress all illicit trade, and 
 take much more effectual precautions against its revival in 
 any shape. In this point of view, the opportunity seemed 
 doubly precious, and irretrievable. 
 
 The coincidence was, to repeat the language of Dr. Thorpe, 
 " criminally neglected." The British abolition took the cha 
 racter of a division of the British share of the trade between 
 foreign powers, and a number of British subjects upon whom 
 the act of Parliament would not serve as a restraint. The 
 anti-abolitionists predicted this, and contributed to the fulfil 
 ment of the prediction. Portugal was left at liberty to supply 
 not nly her own dependencies, but those of Spain; and to the 
 
 * Page 24 f Debate on the Treaty of 1814. 
 
 VOL, I.Y y 
 
354 JSEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. latter, cargoes were incessantly carried under the Portuguese 
 s^-vx^ flag, untjl at length the British cruizers were authorized to 
 bring in for adjudication, such Portuguese ships as might be 
 found carrying slaves, to places not subject to the crown of 
 Portugal. It was discovered, within the year after the ter 
 mination by law of the British exportation, that the trade 
 itself had not suffered the least abatement; but, on the con 
 trary, was plied with greater activity, to a greater extent, and 
 with aggravated barbarity, under the Spanish, Swedish, and 
 Portuguese flags. "The slave trade," says the Report, dated 
 1810, of the commissioners of African inquiry, u is at pre 
 sent carried on to a vast extent. By the autumn of 1809, 
 the coast of Africa swarmed with contraband vessels; and it 
 was not until the arrival of a small squadron of his majesty s 
 vessels, early the next year (1810!) that any interruption 
 could be given to their proceedings." In 1810, Great Britain 
 concluded a treaty with Portugal, by which she secured to 
 herself great commercial advantages, and consented that Por 
 tugal should carry on the trade in slaves from the African do 
 minions (claimed or in possession) of the Portuguese crown, 
 precisely the great marts of the trade Portugal announcing, 
 at the same time, with what sincerity will soon be seen, her 
 resolution to co-operate with his Britannic majesty in the 
 cause of humanity and justice, &c. 
 
 To display the efficacy of the British abolition for the first 
 years, I will here make a. few extracts from the Reports of the 
 London African Institution a society which boasts of the 
 most illustrious names, and is the centre of information re 
 specting African affairs. 
 
 "Circumstances," says the Report of 1809, "have come 
 to the knowledge of the directors of this institution, which 
 leave them no room to doubt that means are at this moment 
 employed by persons formerly engaged in the slave trade, for 
 eluding the salutary provisions of the abolition act, and per 
 petuating the guilt and misery of that traffic." 
 
 "No foreign states," says the Report of 1810, "have hi 
 therto followed the example set them by the legislatures of 
 Great Britain and the United States of America. The flags of 
 Spain and of Sweden have of late been extensively employed 
 in covering and protecting a trade in slaves. Nor is this all, 
 Jt has been discovered that, in defiance of all the penalties 
 imposed by act of Parliament, vessels under foreign flags 
 have been fitted out in the ports of Liverpool and London, for 
 the purpose of carrying slaves from the coast of Africa to the 
 Spanish and Portuguese settlements in America. Some car- 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 35,5 
 
 goes from that coast have been landed at St. Bartholomews, SECT. IX. 
 and smuggled thence into English islands. The discovery of s^v-^* 
 one transaction has likewise discovered to the directors facts, 
 which tend to implicate persons of some consideration in so 
 ciety in the guilt of these and similar practices." 
 
 "On the coast of Africa," says the Report of 1811, "the 
 same melancholy scene has been exhibited during the last 
 year, which the directors had the pain of describing in their 
 former report. The coast has swarmed with slave ships, 
 chiefly under Portuguese and Spanish colours, &c. Suffice it 
 to say, that accounts from various quarters concur with certain 
 judicial proceedings which have taken place in this country, 
 to prove, that a very considerable trade in slaves has been car 
 ried on of late, and a large portion of it by means of the capi 
 tal and credit of British subjects.*** After the length to which 
 the report has already run, the directors are unwilling to enter 
 into minute details, with regard to the means which have been 
 practised in the West Indies, to elude the laws prohibiting the 
 importation of slaves. Suffice it to say, that they have re 
 ceived information which satisfies them that those laws have 
 "been grossly, and in some instances openly, violated, by the 
 importation of slaves, to a considerable extent, into our own 
 West India colonies." 
 
 cc There is a large class of contraband slave ships fitted out 
 chiefly from London or Liverpool, destined in fact to the coast 
 of Africa," &c. 
 
 "The representations," says the Report of 1812, "which 
 the directors made in their last report, of the extent to which 
 the slave trade had revived on the coast of Africa, appear to 
 have fallen short of the truth. The result of the intelligence 
 which they have since received is, that, during the year 1810, 
 no less than from 70 to 80,000 Africans were transported as 
 slaves from the western coast of Africa to the opposite shores 
 of the Atlantic. The greatest proportion is either a British 
 or an American trade, conducted under the flags of Spain and 
 Portugal. 
 
 " What," says the Report of 1813, " has been represented 
 as a bona fide Spanish or Portuguese slave trade, has turned 
 out, upon strict examination, to be, in many instances, a trade 
 in slaves, illegally carried on by British capital and British 
 subjects, and in some instances by American subjects." 
 
 " The directors have to bring before the general meeting a 
 new species of slave trade, carried on, it should seem, between 
 Egypt and the island of Malta. They have received informa 
 tion on which they are disposed to rely, stating that several 
 
356 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. slaves have been brought from Alexandria to that island, and 
 *^*~*^*s there sold to Englishmen, as well as to Maltese inhabitants. 
 These poor creatures consist principally of negro children, 
 brought from countries bordering on the upper Nile," &c. 
 
 u It is with extreme regret that the directors are again 
 obliged to state the want of success which has attended their 
 repeated, earnest, and urgent representations to government 
 respecting the slave trade, carried on by means of the Por 
 tuguese island of Bissao," &c. 
 
 " The condition of the slaves, in the new British conquests, 
 the Isles of France and Bourbon, is wretched in the extreme, 
 It is with feelings of deep regret that the directors, in pro 
 ceeding to advert to the condition of slaves in the West In 
 dies, express their belief that most flagrant abuses continue tc 
 exist in the administration of the law, as far as regards those 
 unhappy beings, if, indeed, they can be said to be under tin 
 protection of any law." 
 
 " The directors cannot close, their observations on the state 
 of Africa, without adverting to the exportation of arms anc , 
 gunpowder to that continent. It is well known that before the. 
 passing of the act for the abolition of the slave trade, these 
 were exported thither in very large quantities. Letters re 
 ceived from persons in Africa, whose veracity is unquestion 
 able, assert the fact, that the slave traders are supplied will, 
 these necessary implements of their traffic, solely from thi? 
 country -, and that, indeed, they were to be obtained no where 
 else." 
 
 " A very considerable slave trade," says the Report of 1814 
 u is still carried on to the islands of France and Bourbon." 
 
 " There is too much reason to believe that a considerable 
 traffic of slaves still exists on the north coast of Africa." 
 
 "The board have still to lament the continuance of flagrant 
 abuses in several of the West India islands," &c. 
 
 14. On the triumph of the allied arms over the power of Bo - 
 naparte, in the spring of 1814, another crisis seemed to present 
 itself, propitious to the object of universal abolition. Great 
 Britain had the chief share of the glory and profit of that 
 event; it was to her, in the language of all her subjects, that 
 Europe owed its deliverance; she had rescued Portugal and 
 Spain; restored Ferdinand to his throne, and reinstated 
 the house of Bourbon in France. Hence, it would be im 
 possible for the governments of those countries to resist her 
 solicitations in favour of Africa; or, at all events, to brave 
 her power, in case she manifested a determination to interpose 
 
SLAVE TRADE, 
 
 357 
 
 it as a shield between that continent and their ruthless cupi- SECT. IX. 
 dity. The African Institution, in the Report which I have v^~*~w 
 last quoted, did not overlook the new turn of affairs. " The 
 directors," said the Report, u have long been persuaded, that 
 all that can be effected, in inducing particular states to re 
 nounce the traffic in slaves, however important in itself, will 
 produce but a very partial benefit to Africa, unless, on the 
 conclusion of a general peace, the renunciation should be 
 come general, and be adopted as a part of the standing policy 
 of the great commonwealth of Europe. While the war con 
 tinues, it is a matter of no moment whether the slave trade 
 is abolished in France; but it is obvious, that, if a general 
 peace should leave the merchants of that country at liberty to 
 renew their former traffic in their fellow-creatures, little com 
 paratively will have been achieved for Africa by all the gene 
 rous efforts of this country. The present moment having 
 appeared to the directors to be peculiarly favourable to the 
 hope of obtaining a recognition of the great principles of the 
 abolition, and even the entire and unqualified renunciation of 
 this nefarious traffic by all the great powers of Europe, they 
 have endeavoured to impress upon the minds of his majesty s 
 ministers, the unspeakable importance of establishing a gene 
 ral convention among the European powers, for that purpose." 
 To aid the British negotiators at Paris, the two houses of 
 Parliament voted unanimously on the 2d of May, addresses to 
 the Prince Regent, representing the importance of a general 
 abolition, and their conviction, that unless it took place, the 
 practical result of the restoration of peace would be " to open the 
 sea to swarms of piratical adventurers who would renew and 
 extend, on the shores of Africa, the scenes of carnage and ra 
 pine in a great measure suspended by maritime hostilities; to 
 kindle a thousand ferocious wars," &c. In supporting the 
 address of the House of Commons, Mr. Wilberforce truly re 
 marked, that " with regard to France, the war had practically 
 abolished the trade, and therefore, if carried on by her, it 
 would be creating it anew." 
 
 On the 30th May, 1814, the treaty between Great Britain 
 and France was signed at Paris; and lo! France was allowed 
 a term of five years in which to pursue the traffic in human 
 flesh, and his Britannic Majesty restored to his most Christian 
 Majesty all the colonies, factories, and establishments, of what 
 ever kind, which France possessed the 1st of January, 1792, 
 in the seas and upon the continents of America, Africa, and 
 Asia, with the exception of the islands of Tobago and St, 
 Lucia, and of the Isle of France and its dependencies. This 
 
358 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. was an electric shock for the abolitionists upon principle, and 
 v-^-v-^ the signal for a vigorous party assault upon the ministry. 
 
 It seemed impossible to doubt that France would have 
 yielded, had the immediate and total prohibition of the tradu 
 been made the sine qua non of the restitution of her colonies; 
 or had she been tempted with the Mauritius. Her utter ina 
 bility to renew the war, and the certainty that the allies would 
 not have passed over to her side to enforce her pretensions to 
 the slave trade, were points on which even the most credu 
 lous could not be deceived. 
 
 The African Institution passed resolutions of reprobation , 
 petitions without number were got up throughout the country 
 motions made in Parliament; and the stir had on the whole 
 an imposing character. The following is part of the repre 
 sentations of the African Institution on the occasion. "A 
 provision is contained in the recent treaty of peace with 
 France, the consequence of which must be the revival of tin 
 slave trade on a large scale, and to an indefinite extent. This 
 revival is attended with circumstances of peculiar aggravation. 
 Great and populous colonies, in which, during the last seven 
 years, the importation of slaves has been strictly prohibited, 
 have been freely ceded to France, not only without any stipu 
 lation for the continuance of that prohibition, but with the 
 declared purpose on the part of that country, of commencing 
 a new slave trade for their supply." 
 
 The apprehensions of the Institution did not receive much 
 relief on the appearance of the French slave trade ordinance. 
 By a circular letter from the administration of the customs, 
 dated 29th August, the merchants of France were apprized, 
 that " the traffic was restored in all its privileges, and might 
 be carried on from every port having a public bonding ware 
 house: -That all the goods, foreign as well as domestic, in 
 cluding arms and ammunition, required for this trade, might be 
 shipped for the coast of Africa, duty free: That the same pro 
 vision extended to the ship s provisions, both for the crew and 
 negroes: That the cargoes or provisions were not to be em 
 ployed, except in the purchase and conveyance of negroes: 
 That French ships only could engage in the trade; and, that 
 they might import into all the French colonies, of which the 
 government should recover possession, as well as those ceded 
 by the treaty." 
 
 The language held in Parliament was no less emphatical 
 than that of the African Institution. As a specimen, I will 
 offer some extracts from the speech of Lord Grenville. 
 " That the immediate and total abolition of the slave trade 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 359 
 
 might, in this treaty, if pursued with zeal, have been with cer- SECT.IX. 
 taiuty obtained, is, unless I am greatly misinformed, the gene- v^v-^ 
 ral sentiment of all who are conversant in foreign negotiation; 
 the concurrent and decided judgment-of enlightened statesmen 
 in every country in Europe." 
 
 "What credulity will acquiesce in the pretence, that to extort 
 from France the surrender of her conquest, was easy; to dis 
 suade her from the revival of the slave trade impracticable?" 
 
 u This treaty has secured to our country commercial profits, 
 and colonial acquisitions, at the expense of France; inconside 
 rable in value, I admit it, but still sufficient to brand our na 
 tional character with the dishonour of interested guilt. To 
 France the renewal of the slave trade is conceded; into her 
 hands we deliver up the wretched inhabitants of Africa; and 
 from her in return we receive back those advantages; the con 
 tract is reciprocal; the transactions simultaneous; included in 
 the same treaty, never will they be separated in the opinion of 
 mankind." 
 
 "We have consented to revive and guarantee the slave trade, 
 not because we feared war, but because we thirsted for more 
 extended possessions. Such will be the just judgment, both of 
 the present time, and of posterity; the opinion of impartial men 
 in all ages. If, they will tell us, you could not otherwise refuse 
 yourselves to a dishonourable contract for guilt, you might 
 have proffered in exchange for it the abandonment of these ac 
 quisitions; an exchange which France most certainly would 
 gladly have accepted," 
 
 " You are fully sensible also, how difficult it will be to pre 
 vent the application of British capital to this wickedness when 
 authorized by France. How large a portion of this trade will 
 really be carried on in her name by your own subjects; how 
 much of it will be diverted to the supply of your own colonies, 
 under a pretended destination to those with which they are so 
 closely intermixed in the West Indian seas." 
 
 The subject was taken up officially in the Edinburgh Re 
 view, and treated with as little reserve. The Reviewers 
 cried out against u the vile mockery of an abolition in rever 
 sion, expectant upon a five years term of unstinted, nay en 
 couraged slave trade." "England," they added, "has no 
 manner of difficulty in obtaining Malta, Tobago, St Lucia, 
 the Isle of France, (not to mention the Cape); in short, any 
 thing which may serve her interests; she surrenders Guada- 
 loupe, that her islands may be supplied by smuggling. " 
 
 Lord Castlereagh defended the treaty, upon the grounds 
 of "the strong objection" of the French rulers to immediate 
 abolition, because they would appear to submit to English die- 
 
369 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PARTf. talion! of the importance of ending the negotiation in mutual 
 respect and confidence; of the danger of prolonging the war by 
 insisting upon a concession which France felt to he dishonour 
 able to her character as a nation, &c. He was " ready to 
 admit, that Guadaloupe and Martinique heing permitted to be 
 points of depot, did, to a certain degree, increase the probabi 
 lity of an illicit trade being carried on from those islands with 
 the British colonies. But if France had even consented to 
 abolish the trade, the number of depots which would hu ir e 
 otherwise existed, was sufficiently numerous for the illegal 
 introduction of slaves into the islands belonging to Great Bii- 
 tain. . From the Havanna and Porto Rico, the possessions of 
 Spain, slaves might very easily find their way into the British 
 colonies." His lordship remarked, too, a point of delicacy is 
 to pressing the abolition: "However disposed he and the Bii- 
 tish nation might be to make sacrifices for it, he could assu-e 
 the house that such was not the impression in France, and 
 that even among the better classes of people there, the British 
 government did not get full credit for their motives of acting. 
 The motives were not there thought to arise from benevolence, 
 but from a wish to impose fetters on French colonies and injure 
 their commerce." 
 
 This misgiving of the French was of no fresh date, and 
 could not have been altogether unknown to Parliament. In 
 1807, Lord Lauderdale, whom Mr. Fox sent to negotiate with 
 Bonaparte the preceding year, made the following statement 
 in the House of Lords. " On my urging to the French minis 
 ters the abolition of the slave trade, I was answered, that it 
 could not be expected that the French government, irritated 
 as it had been by the negroes in St. Domingo, would readily 
 agree to the abolition of the trade. I answered that the abo 
 lition would have been the only effectual means of preventing 
 the horrors which had occurred in that island. Then the 
 truth came out. I was told that England, with her colonies 
 well stocked with negroes, and affording a larger produce, 
 might abolish the trade without inconvenience; but that 
 France, with colonies ill-stocked, and deficient in product, 
 could not abolish it without conceding to us the greatest ad 
 vantages, and sustaining a proportionate loss."* 
 
 The transactions in England, and the fundamental policy 
 in the case, prompted the British ministry to renew their in 
 stances with the French government. An island, or if pre 
 ferable, a pecuniary indemnity to the French planters, was 
 offered for the immediate abandonment of the trade, or the 
 
 * Cobbett s Parliamentary Debates, vol. viii. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 rtbridgment of the term stipulated by the treaty. It was pro- SECT.IX, 
 posed to France to establish a system of license, so as to pre 
 vent the importation into her colonies of more negroes than 
 would be necessary for the existing plantations, and to preclude 
 the cultivation of new lands. Lord Wellington discovered 
 that there was no disposition among the French statesmen to 
 relinquish the trade at once; but, finally, after a negotiation, 
 the particulars of which are not a little curious, means were 
 found by England to persuade the French government to put 
 restrictions upon it; particularly that of confining it to the south 
 of Cape Formosa. 
 
 The first attempts upon the Spanish government bear date 
 in 1814; but Ferdinand was upon his- throne, and Spain 
 clear of the French. The Spanish monarch consented to 
 forbid his subjects to carry slaves to foreign possessions; no 
 thing more could then be obtained, in the way and upon the 
 terms which suited the views of England. 
 
 Lord Castlereagh made his main effort, within the limits 
 prescribed, at the Congress of Vienna. He succeeded, not 
 withstanding the opposition of the Spanish and Portuguese 
 plenipotentiaries, in rendering the eight principal powers, par 
 ties to the settlement of the question. Four sittings were 
 specially assigned to its discussion. The fruit of the first, 
 the only fruit of the whole arrangement, was the celebrated 
 declaration of the 8th of February, 1815, in which all the 
 powers proclaimed their detestation of the character, and their 
 desire to accomplish the abolition, of the slave trade; at the 
 same time that they acknowledged the right of each to take 
 its own time for the total relinquishment on its own part. 
 Talleyrand would not consent to abridge the term granted to 
 France; Spain would make no acceptable concession: Por 
 tugal professed her readiness to limit the duration of her trade 
 to eight years, provided his Britannic majesty would on his 
 side acquiesce in certain material changes in the commercial 
 relations between her and Great Bri ain. Some of the general 
 observations made by the Spanish and Portuguese plenipo 
 tentiaries, in reply to Lord Castlereagh, are worth repeating. 
 The first, Count Labrador, said, " if the Spanish colonies of 
 America were, as to the supply of negroes, in the same state 
 as the English colonies, his Catholic majesty would not hesi 
 tate a moment in decreeing an immediate abolition: But, 
 the question having been before the British parliament from 
 1788 to 1807, the English traders and planters had full time 
 to make extraordinary purchases of slaves; ancl, in lact, they 
 did so. This was proved by the case of Jamaica, which, 
 VOL. I. Z z 
 
362 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 TART I. in 1787, had only two hundred and fifty thousand slave?. 
 v - x "" v " Nto * whereas, at the period of the abolition, in 1807, she possess 
 ed four hundred thousand. During the long war with Eng 
 land, Spain had been deprived of the faculty of procuring ne 
 groes for herself. Jamaica had ten blacks to one white; ii 
 the island of Cuba, the best provided with slaves of all the 
 Spanish colonies, there were two hundred and seventy-foui 
 thousand whites, and only two hundred and twelve thousant 
 slaves. 55 
 
 The representative of Portugal alleged that " the position 
 of Brasil was particularly delicate in this matter; it was ai 
 immense country, which was far from possessing the numbc 
 of hands necessary for its cultivation; that a sudden stoppage 
 in the importation of negroes would be of incalculable mis 
 chief, as well for Brasil as for the Portuguese establish 
 ments on the coast of Africa; that the treatment of the slave > 
 in Brasil was notoriously mild; and that these consideration; 
 made the case of Portugal an exception; at all events sh . 
 might be excused if she proceeded leisurely and cautiously m 
 the affair, since, in the instance of England, so long an inter 
 val had occurred between the proposal and the adoption of 
 the measure. 55 
 
 The primary object of Lord Casllercagh was to secure from 
 the intrusion of foreign slave vessels, that part of the African 
 coast, which England had marked out for her general trade. In 
 the interval between the first and second general conference. 
 (21st and 22d of January, 1815,) he signed two conventions 
 with the plenipotentiary of Portugal, by which Great Britain 
 released the balance due upon an old English loan to Portugal, 
 and allotted three hundred thousand pounds sterling as a fund 
 of indemnity for the owners of the Portuguese slave ships which 
 her cruizers had captured before the 1st of June, 1814, on the 
 ground of their being engaged in the trade illegally: She agreed 
 at the same time to the abrogation of the treaty of 1810: Por 
 tugal, on her part, covenanted to prohibit her subjects from 
 carrying on the slave trade, in any way, to the north of the 
 equator, it being understood that they were to pursue it unmo 
 lested to the south of the line, as long as it should be at all 
 permitted by the Portuguese laws. 
 
 In a secret and confidential letter of Lord Castlereagh to the 
 duke of Wellington, at Paris, of August, 1814,* his lordship 
 stated, that it was become necessary to consider how far cer 
 tain Powers might be brought to do their duty in the matter 
 
 * See the Pieces Officielles Ue Schoell, vol. vii. p. 90. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 353 
 
 of abolition, by a sense of interest; or, in other words, how SECT. IX. 
 they might be deprived of the undue advantage which they ^^^^^ 
 enjoyed over the states who, by a feeling of moral obligation, 
 renounced the trade. Nothing, he suggested, appeared mort: 
 likely to work the effect, than a concert among those states to 
 exclude from their dominions the colonial produce of the 
 refractory powers. Duke Wellington was instructed to sound 
 the prince of Benevento on the subject. The true motives of 
 this plan did not, we may presume, escape the penetration of 
 the latter. Lord Castlereagh proposed it anew at Vienna 
 to the emperor of Russia, in his formal interview with that 
 monarch, on the subject of the slave trade. The abolition 
 states could not, he urged, do less than adopt it: Unless they 
 gave a preference to such colonial products as were not raised 
 by slaves newly introduced, they would be partakers in the 
 scandal and crime accompanying the growth of such as were! 
 The British negotiator was indiscreet enough to submit the 
 project for adoption, at the conferences of the plenipotentia 
 ries; with the modification that the products of the colonies 
 in which the trade was forbidden, should be alone receiv 
 ed, or those of the vast regions of the globe furnishing the 
 same articles by the labour of their own native inhabitants, 
 meaning, says Schoell,f the British possessions in the East 
 Indies. The ministers of Spain and Portugal protested against 
 this expedient of coercion, and threatened that their courts 
 would exclude in turn the most valuable export of the countries 
 by which it should be adopted. 
 
 What England could not persuade the Bourbons to do in 
 1814, Bonaparte did spontaneously on his return from the 
 Island of Elba. He interdicted the French slave trade at 
 once, from motives of personal interest which few were at a 
 loss to detect. When Louis was replaced on his throne, no 
 thing remained for him but to submit, apparently, to the will 
 of the British minister who escorted him into Paris, and who 
 required him not at least to retract the only favour granted by 
 the arch-tyrant to humanity. Accordingly, on the 30th of 
 July, 1815, Talleyrand announced to Lord Castlereagh that 
 the slave trade was thenceforward, forever, and universally, 
 forbidden to all the subjects of his most Christian majesty. 
 The tenor of the correspondence on the subject between the 
 two viziers is among the curiosities of that day. 
 
 In 1816, England resumed her negotiation with Spain, 
 
 f Histoire abregee des Traites de Fan, vol. xi. 
 
3(M IsEGKO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. and, finally, availing herself of the necessities of the latter, 
 ^~~v^> effected the treaty of Madrid of the 23d Sept. 1817. By 
 this treaty, Spain, for a sum of four hundred thousand pounds 
 sterling, stipulated to renounce the slave trade at once to 
 the north of the line, and to prohibit it entirely, in all her do 
 minions, from the 30th May, 1820. The sum of four hun 
 dred thousand pounds bore a small proportion, indeed, to the 
 wealth which Britain had drawn from the traffic in human 
 flesh; or to that which she expected to derive from the ac 
 complishment of her views on Africa.* Bat the new sacri 
 fice was emblazoned in Parliament, and the rescue of the 
 northern part of that continent declared to be consummated. 
 
 " We have now," said Lord Castlereagh, " arrived at the 
 last stage of our difficulties, and the last stage of our exertions. 
 One great portion of the world was rescued from the horrors 
 of the traffic. The approval of the grant amounted to this, 
 whether the slave trade should be abolished or not." 
 
 Lord Castlereagh announced, on the same occasion, the 
 conclusion of a treaty with the Portuguese ambassador in Lon 
 don, for the final suppression of the Portuguese slave trade; 
 and the certainty of its ratification: But his lordship s assu 
 rance was premature. The court of Brasil could not be drawn 
 into any further retrenchment, than was stipulated in the 
 treaty of Vienna to which I have adverted. Sweden, who 
 had never authorized the trade, readily consented to prohibit 
 it, on receiving Guadaloupe in 1813, in deposit. The king 
 of the Netherlands accepted of the condition of a total renun 
 ciation, attached to the restitution of the Dutch colonies in 
 1814. 
 
 15. Before I proceed to exhibit the actual, and what it 
 is to be feared from late British statements, which I shall 
 produce, may be considered as the final result of all these 
 boasted triumphs for Africa, I wish to illustrate further the 
 English sins of commission. We have seen that the 
 African Institution acknowledges the participation of Bri~ 
 
 * In the debate in the House of Commons, (Feb. 9th, 1818,) Mr. 
 Wilberforce said, " He could not but think that the grant to Spain 
 would be more than repaid to Great Britain in commercial advantages, 
 by the opening of a great continent to British industry; an object 
 which would be entirely defeated, if the slave traffic was to be carried 
 on by the Spanish nation. Our commercial connexion with Africa will 
 do much more than repay us for any pecuniary sacrifices of this kind. 
 He himself would see Great Britain deriving the greatest advantages 
 from its intercourse with Africa. 1 Hansard s Parl Deb. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 365 
 
 tish subjects in the trade, to a great extent. The same SECT. ix. 
 admission has been made repeatedly in Parliament, by the ^^~^^*^ 
 highest authority. Before the establishment of the peace of 
 1814, Mr. Whitbread stated in the House of Commons, that 
 "there were, to his knowledge, persons in England base 
 enough to wish for the return of peace, on account of the 
 facilities it would afford for carrying on the slave traffic under 
 another flag."* On the 18th April, 1815, Mr. Barham alleged 
 in the same place, " that it was a well known fact that a large 
 British capital was employed in British ships, in the slave 
 trade." And on the 9th of February, 1818, Lord Castle- 
 reagh held this language to Parliament. " It would be a great 
 error to believe that the reproach of carrying on the slave 
 trade illegally, belonged only to other countries. In numberless 
 instances, he was sorry to say, it had come to his knowledge, 
 that British subjects were indirectly and largely engaged." 
 
 With respect to the British West India islands, it is of 
 notoriety that they have been replenished with negroes 
 since the British abolition. In the quotations which I have 
 made from the Reports of the African Institution, the con 
 traband trade of those islands is formally denounced. The 
 Report of that Society for 1815, is more pointed and circum 
 stantial in its declarations on the same head, in relation to all 
 of them. It gives us to understand that twenty thousand ne 
 groes had been yearly smuggled into them, and avers that 
 44 all of the settlements were confident of having the means of 
 providing themselves still with slaves in the proportion of their 
 actual demand;" that " insular laws, whose policy plainly de 
 pended on the permanence of the slave trade, remained unre- 
 pealed;" that u the assemblies still looked to Africa for the 
 supply of their wasting population." The Edinburgh Review, 
 in expressing some incredulity with respect to the amount of 
 the illicit importation, intimated in the Report, remarks, 
 however, that u to question the fact of clandestine importation 
 would prove extreme ignorance of West Indian morals, and of 
 the state to which the administration of the law is of neces 
 sity reduced, where nine persons in ten of the inhabitants are 
 incompetent witnesses, and are, moreover, the property of the 
 remaining tenth. "f 
 
 The same Report denies that the slaves, in any one 
 island, had, in regard to their legal condition, then derived the 
 least benefit from the abolition acts. It represents them, also, 
 as suffering the same miseries; as equally cut off from all 
 
 * Debate of "May 2d, 1814. f No. 50, 
 
366 WEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. means of mental and religious improvement. In their article 
 ** upon this Report, the Edinburgh Reviewers ratify its exposi 
 tion, and speak thus of their u sugar planting brethren:" 
 " They not only have taken no steps to encourage religions 
 instruction, but have again and again attempted to prevent the 
 black population from receiving it, in the only form in which 
 it ever can reach them, as things are at present constitute I, 
 namely, by missionary preachers. The zeal of pious nu n 
 was beginning to carry the blessings of the gospel into tl c 
 settlements, not sectaries merely, but Church-of-Englai d 
 missions. The wisdom of colonial legislation took the alarm; 
 acts were regularly and in all the forms, passed, to stop, I y 
 main force, all such attempts at illuminating the hundreds of 
 thousands of their Pagan subjects. The royal assent has be< n 
 refused, but they are of sufficient efficacy in the interval, ai d 
 as often as one is annulled, another is passed. In some of the 
 colonies, the impediments to manumission are enormous. The 
 tax imposed by the policy of the law in those enlightened lati 
 tudes, forever closes the door to emancipation. In Jamaica, 
 the negroes are prohibited from being taught," &c. 
 
 The work of Dickson and Steele, entitled Mitigation of 
 Slavery, of which I have already availed myself, is one of 
 great and deserved authority on these subjects. It was pub 
 lished in London, in 1814, and the writers, who had long re 
 sided in the West Indies in high stations, go even beyond the 
 African Institution in their representations of the nature of the 
 slavery, and of the futility of the abolition acts, in that quarter. 
 " The abolition," says Dr. Dickson, "of what is called the 
 African slave trade, was, in itself, an object every way wor 
 thy of the long and arduous struggle which effected it. But 
 its relative value, as a corrective of West Indian abuses, hath 
 been greatly overrated. The reader of this volume will ste 
 distinctly that, as many of the worst evils of the W r est Indian 
 slavery were owing to other causes than the African slave 
 trade, those evils could not possibly be remedied by the aboli 
 tion of that trade. This important position, so solidly esta 
 blished in the first part of the following collection, hath been 
 deplorably exemplified, since the date of the abolition act, in 
 the accounts of respectable individuals; and in the correspond 
 ence of the secretary of state with the West Indian governors. 
 The facts alluded to, though but a mere specimen of the 
 W T est Indian slavery, clearly show, that they flowed from a 
 source inherent in that slavery itself. An additional proof is, 
 that, notwithstanding the abolition of the slave trade, the low 
 price of produce, and the exorbitant price of slaves, (all strong 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 367 
 
 motives for economizing their lives,) the deaths among the SECT.IX. 
 slaves of one island, in 1810, exceeded the births by above ten ^^^^^^ 
 thousand. No cause of any extraordinary mortality is alleged; 
 but ibat surplus of deaths appears to have happened in the 
 common course of business. On the whole, we may safely 
 affirm, that the general treatment of the slaves, in the old su 
 gar islands, has not received any material improvement for a 
 century and a half. The new islands have but copied the 
 old; with the difference, that the hardships inseparable from 
 the clearing of fresh lands have, in all cases, deplorably ag 
 gravated the mortality." 
 
 " Facts leave not a doubt in the mind, that the harshness of 
 the slave laws is but little softened by the lenity of the general 
 practice in any of the sugar islands. Bad is the best treat 
 ment which the negroes experience in the West India colo 
 nies. They all perform their labour under the whip. Mr. 
 Mathison, that sensible and candid planter, states broadly, in 
 1811, the general practice of under-feeding from one end of 
 Jamaica to the other. He also believes that excessive labour 
 is one of the prevailing causes of depopulation among the 
 slaves on that island." 
 
 The registry system for the West Indies, is grounded 
 upon the inefficacy of the abolition there; and, so far as 
 appears by the facts disclosed in the House of Commons, the 
 one has be.cn found as nugatory as the other.* We may take 
 an instance from the mouth of Mr. Wilberforce, of the state 
 of things in Barbadoes, where, according to Dr. Dickson,f 
 slavery, is not near so bad as in most of the other islands. 
 
 " Mr. Wilberforce said, (April 22d, 1818,) that the situa 
 tion of the slaves in Barbadoes was most wretched. Lord 
 Seaforth, when governor of the island, endeavoured to improve 
 it by procuring a law to render the murder of a slave capital. 
 The island was at first enraged with the governor for pro 
 posing such a measure. When it was consented to, and the 
 friends of humanity in this country were led to believe that 
 the condition of the slaves in that island was much bettered, 
 what was their surprise and disappointment, to find in two 
 years after, when this law was laid upon the table of the 
 house, that it was rendered entirely nugatory by a condition 
 annexed to it; for it was provided, that the murder to bo 
 capital must be unprovoked." 
 
 * See, on this head, the Twelfth Report of the African Institution, 
 p. 42. 
 
 f- Mitigation of Steven , p. 51? 
 
3G8 
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. " There were cases," Mr. Wilberforce continued, u in whic i 
 v - >F ^ r>l *- / a negro had purchased his freedom, and the freedom of his 
 children, and trained them up with the most exemplary care, 
 yet his offspring had afterwards been seized on by the creditors 
 of his deceased master, because he had died an insolvent, and 
 had been thus transported even to the mines of Mexico."* 
 
 With such testimony as we have seen, notoriously extant, 
 concerning the importation of negroes into the British West 
 Indies, and their general condition, after the abolition act, 
 the British minister, Lord Castlereagh, ventured, in his cor 
 respondence with the foreign powers in the year 1814,1 to 
 make the following representation. " The experience of eight 
 years which have elapsed since the total abolition of the slavo 
 trade, as far as that depended on Great Britain, by the Par 
 liament of the United Kingdom, has furnished complete proof 
 that the settlements in the West Indies have not suffered by 
 the want of fresh supplies of African labourers. These colo 
 nies continue to be in a flourishing condition, and since there, 
 has been no new importation of slaves, the treatment of those 
 already possessed has improved, and tJie lights of religion and 
 civilization have been diffused among them." 
 
 Another striking case of ministerial hardihood is furnisher* 
 in the following extract from a speech of Mr. Goulbourn, or- 
 the production of the Registry returns to the House of Com 
 mons, on the 9th June, 1819. "The apparent increase ol 
 negro population had not arisen from any illegal importation 
 of slaves into our colonies, but was attributable to othei 
 causes. It might appear extraordinary that in one island the. 
 colonial slaves had increased, in the course of two years, up 
 wards of five thousand. Some of these might be the produce 
 of certain captures;^, but he was perfectly convinced that the 
 augmentation was not attributable to any illegal traffic!" 
 
 Representations of this sort, in the face of those of the 
 African Institution, in defiance of all fact and reason, belong 
 to the old system which is exemplified in the following passage 
 of Mills History of British India. 
 
 " When the opinions which Lord Cornwallis expressed ol 
 the different departments of the Indian government, at the 
 time when he undertook his reforms, (1790,) are attended to. 
 it will not be easy to conceive a people suffering more intensel) 
 
 * Hansard s Parliamentary Debates. 
 
 f Official letter to the British minister at Madrid, 15th July, 1814. 
 t That is to say, of foreign slave ships, whose cargoes have been sole 
 in the British islands. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 369 
 
 by the vices of government. The administration of justice SECT.iX. 
 through all its departments in a state the most pernicious and ^-^-^ 
 depraved; the public revenue levied upon principles incompati 
 ble with the existence of private property; the people sunk in 
 poverty and wretchedness; such is the picture on the one hand: 
 Pictures of an unexampled state of prosperity were, neverthe 
 less^ the pictures held forth at this very moment, by speeches in 
 parliament, to the parliament and the nation, and the flattering 
 pictures, as they were the pictures of the minister, governed the 
 belief of parliament, and through parliament that of the nation"* 
 
 16. The strain of the communications of the British go 
 vernment, respecting the slave trade, to the foreign powers, 
 down to the conclusion of the treaty with Spain, in 1817, 
 implied that every thing would be accomplished for the por 
 tion of Africa north of the line, when the abolition was uni 
 versal with regard to that portion. At every new arrangement, 
 a descant was chaunted in Parliament, to the triumphant and 
 generous zeal of the ministry, who, by the progressive deca 
 pitation of " the hydra," had nearly crowned all the generous 
 sacrifices of Britain with the expected reward, in the security 
 of Africa and the reformation of Europe. But there was 
 reason to suspect that Louis XVIII. would not so easily have 
 made a virtue of necessity in 1815; nor Ferdinand, urgent 
 as were his pecuniary wants, and comparatively unimportant 
 as the acquisition of negroes had become to Spain from the 
 revolt of her colonies, have prescribed so near a term to the 
 legal slave trade of his subjects; had not these monarchs been 
 assured of an abundant and ready supply where it should be 
 wanted, whatever anathemas and engagements might be ex 
 torted from them by the ascendant position and plausible re 
 clamations of Great Britain. All that circumstances made it 
 natural to suspect, and rendered, indeed, obviously certain, 
 has been realized, and is now at length proclaimed by the 
 British government itself. As the political scheme has reach 
 ed a crisis when a full and vivid disclosure of the truth is ne 
 cessary for progression and complete success, it is acknow 
 ledged outright, and vehemently bewailed, that nothing has as 
 yet been accomplished for Africa, practically; that the slave 
 trade has been constantly increasing, and that no limits can 
 be descried to its duration or its depredations. Such is the 
 purport of the thirteenth Report, dated 24th March, 1819, of 
 the African Institution; a report which bears intrinsically the 
 
 * Book VI. vol. iii.p. 334. 
 
 VOL. I. 3 A 
 
370 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. character of a government-manifesto ; and which furnishes 
 v-^-v-^ materials to complete a skeleton of the history of I he abolition 
 I will use it freely in detailing the result of the British ma 
 nagement as respects France, Spain, and Portugal, severally, 
 and the main ostensible object of retribution to Africa. 
 
 And first, with regard to France. In the Appendix to the 
 Report, there is an eloquent, address on the subject of the 
 slave trade, to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, which is said 
 to have been distributed there by Mr. Clarkson, during the 
 sittings in November, 1818. This address is evidently the 
 work of the African Institution, under the direction of the 
 British ministry; and the distribution of it an expedient of 
 both for their joint and several purposes. It contains the fol 
 lowing statement as to the French trade. 
 
 " No sooner was peace proclaimed, than the traders in hu 
 man blood hastened from various quarters to the African 
 shores, and, with a cupidi*y sharpened by past restraint, re 
 newed their former crimes." 
 
 " Among the rest, the slave merchants of France, who had 
 been excluded for upwards of twenty years, from any direct 
 participation in this murderous traffic, now eagerly resumed 
 it; and to this very hour, they continue openly to carry it on, 
 notwithstanding the solemn renunciation of it by their own 
 government, in 1815, and the prohibitory French laws which 
 nave since been passed to restrain them." 
 
 " The revival and progress of the French slave trade have, 
 in one respect, been peculiarly opprobrious, and attended with 
 aggravated cruelty and mischief." 
 
 u During the ten years which preceded the restoration oi 
 Senegal and Goree to France, no part of the African coast } 
 Sierra Leone excepted, had enjoyed so entire an exemption 
 from the miseries produced by the slave trade as those settle 
 ments, and the country in their vicinage." 
 
 " The suppression of the traffic was there nearly complete, 
 and, in consequence, a striking increase of population and oJ 
 agriculture in the surrounding districts, with a proportionate 
 improvement in other respects, gave a dawn of rising prospe 
 rity and happiness, highly exhilarating to every benevolent 
 mind." 
 
 " It was in the month of January, 1817, that these interest 
 ing settlements were restored to France; and melancholy., 
 indeed, had been the effects: no sooner was the transfer com 
 pleted, than, in defiance of the declarations by which the kina 
 of France had prohibited the slave trade to his subjects, tha f 
 trade was instantly renewed, and extended in all directions 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 371 
 
 The ordinary excitements to the native chiefs, have produced SECT. IX. 
 more than the ordinary horrors. In the short space of a single s^-v^*-- 
 year, after the change of flags, the adjoining countries, though 
 previously tiourishing in peace and abundance, exhibited but 
 one frightful spectacle of misery and devastation." 
 
 " Now, let it here be recollected, that France had profess 
 ed, in the face of the civilized world, her abhorrence of this 
 guilty commerce. In the definitive treaty of the 30th of No 
 vember, 1815, she had pledged herself to the entire and 
 effectual abolition of a traffic so odious in itself, and so highly 
 repugnant to the laws of religion and nature. As early as 
 the 30th of July, 1815, she had informed the ambassadors of 
 the allied powers, that directions had actually been issued, 
 c in order that on the part of France the traffic in slaves might 
 cease from that time, every where and for ever. She had, 
 even previously to this, assured the British government, that 
 the settlements of Senegal and Goree, restored to her by treaty, 
 should not be made subservient to the revival of the slave 
 trade. Yet, notwithstanding all this, no sooner do these set 
 tlements revert to her dominion, than the work of rapine, and 
 carnage, and desolation commence; every opening prospect of 
 improvement is crushed; thousands of miserable captives, of 
 every age and sex, are crowded into the pestilential holds of 
 slave ships, and subjected to the well known horrors of the 
 middle passage, in order to be transported to the French colo 
 nies in the West Indies. There, such of them as may survive, 
 are doomed to pass their lives in severe and unremitting labour, 
 exacted from them by the merciless lash of the cart-whip in 
 the hands of a driver. It would admit of proof, that proba 
 bly at no period of the existence of this opprobrious traffic, 
 has Africa suffered more intensely from its ravages than dur 
 ing a part of the time which has elapsed since the re-establish 
 ment of the peace of the civilized world." 
 
 In another part of the Appendix, it is averred, and sufficient 
 ly proved to the date of September, 1818, that the French 
 authorities in Africa allow the slave trade to be carried on to 
 any extent, under their command; that in Senegal and Goree, 
 they themselves are interested in carrying it on; and that the 
 French vessels of war connive at the departure of slave ships. 
 In the body of the Report, positive information to the same 
 effect, is announced in this language " The subscribers to 
 the Institution will no doubt recollect the painful task which 
 devolved upon the directors last year, in detailing the state of 
 the slave trade on the coast of Africa, and more particularly 
 that part of it which lies in the neighbourhood ef the French 
 
-** NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. settlements of Senegal and Goree. Of the statements then 
 v "^ v "" x> * / made, ample confirmation has since been received, accompa 
 nied by additional information of a similarly distressing na 
 ture. A considerable slave trade appears also to have been 
 carried on by French subjects at Aliredra, and other places in 
 the river Gambia. The information, indeed, which the direc 
 tors have received subsequently to their last Report, confirms 
 the statement therein contained, of the existence, to a great 
 extent, of this traffic in the French settlements on the coast 
 of Africa," &c. 
 
 So much for the unconditional restoration of the French 
 possessions, and the five years charter for organized kidnapping 
 and murder! 
 
 In the debate in the House of Commons, of February 9th, 
 1818, which I have already mentioned, some curious particu 
 lars were disclosed respecting the French slave trade, that de 
 serve to be known, in addition to the above. I will report 
 them as they were stated by Sir James Mackintosh. " It 
 being discovered that the trade was still carried on by France 
 with great vigour, application was made by Sir Charles 
 Stewart, the British ambassador, in January, 1817, for co 
 pies of Laws, Ordinances, Instructions, and other public 
 acts, for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The Due de 
 Richelieu had nothing to communicate but a mere colonial 
 regulation passed eight days before, prohibiting the importation 
 of slaves into the French colonies. Notwithstanding the as 
 sertion of Prince Talleyrand s letter, in spite of the more 
 solemn affirmation of the treaty, it appears that France had 
 taken no legal measure for the abolition, during eighteen 
 months, after she professed she had adopted it. What she did 
 at that time was imperfect, and it did not appear that she had 
 done any thing since." So little had she done, indeed, that Sir 
 William Scott found himself obliged to release, in 1817, a 
 French slave ship detained by a British cruiser, on the ground 
 that there was no sufficient proof that the French vessel, in 
 carrying on the slave trade, had violated the laws of France. 
 
 Let us now see how the case stands with respect to Spain 
 and Portugal, whom it would have been so easy to subdue to 
 the purpose of abolition, ten years ago, and the mischiefs of 
 whose legal appearance in the trade, might, therefore, have 
 been averted. The Appendix to the Report contains a series 
 of queries, dated December, 1816, addressed by Lord Castle- 
 reagh to the Institution, respecting the state of the trade during 
 the preceding twenty-five years. Part of the information com 
 municated in reply is as follows: "The number of slaves 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 373 
 
 withdrawn from western Africa during the last twenty-five SECT.IX. 
 years, is necessarily involved in much uncertainty. There is ^^-**s 
 reason to believe that the export of the Portuguese was much 
 more considerable than the amount supposed, 15,000. Pre 
 vious to the British abolition, the Portuguese had confined their 
 trade almost entirely to the Bight of Benin, and the coast to the 
 southward of it, but in consequence of the reduction in the 
 price of slaves on the Windward and Gold Coasts, they were 
 gradually drawn thither. The whole of the slave trade, whe 
 ther legal or contraband, passes, with very few exceptions, 
 under the Spanish and Portuguese flags. The Spanish flag is 
 a mere disguise, and covers the property of unlawful traders, 
 whether English, American, or others." 
 
 " Since the Portuguese have been restricted by treaty from 
 trading for slaves on certain parts of the African coast, they 
 have resorted to similar expedients for protecting their slave 
 trade expeditions to places within the prohibited district. 
 And at the present moment, there is little doubt, that a consi 
 derable part of the apparently Spanish slave trade, which is 
 carrying on to the north of the equator, where the Portuguese 
 are forbidden to buy slaves, is really a Portuguese trade." 
 
 " A farther use is now found for the Spanish flag, in pro 
 tecting the French slave traders; and it is affirmed, that the 
 French ships fitted out in France, for the slave trade, call at 
 Corunnafor the purpose of effecting a nominal transfer of the 
 property engaged in the illegal voyage, to some Spanish house, 
 and thus obtaining the requisite evidence of Spanish owner 
 ship." 
 
 " In consequence of these uses to which the Spanish flag 
 has been applied, a great increase of the apparently Spanish 
 slave trade has taken place of late. And as the flag of that 
 nation is permitted to range over the whole extent, of the Afri 
 can coast, it seems to keep alive the slave trade in places 
 from which it would otherwise have been shut out; and it has 
 of late revived that trade in situations where it had been pre 
 viously almost wholly extinguished." 
 
 " The Portuguese flag is now chiefly seen to the south of 
 the equator, although sometimes the Portuguese traders do 
 not hesitate still to resort to the rivers between Whydaer and 
 the equator, even without a Spanish disguise. The only two 
 cruisers which have recently visited that part of the coast, 
 found several ships under the Portuguese flag openly trading 
 for slaves, in Sago and the Bight of Benin." 
 
 "The slave trade has certainly been carried on during the 
 last two years, to a great extent north of the equator. The 
 
374 
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. native chiefs and traders who began to believe at length that 
 ^^v-^x the abolition was likely to be permanently maintained, have 
 learnt from recent events to distrust all such assurances. 
 Notwithstanding all that has been said and done, they row 
 see the slave traders again sweeping the whole coast without 
 molestation. It would be difficult fully to appreciate the deep 
 and lasting injury inflicted on northeVn Africa, by the trans 
 actions of ihe last two or three years. An abolition on the 
 part of Spain would at once deliver the whole of northern 
 Africa from the slave trade, provided effectual measures uere 
 taken to seize and punish illicit traders. By the prolongation 
 of the Spanish slave trade, on the contrary, not only is the 
 whole of northern Africa, which would otherwise be exempt, 
 given up to the ravages of that traffic, and the progress already 
 made in improvement sacrificed, but facilities are afforded of 
 smuggling into every island of the West Indies; which could 
 not otherwise exist, and which, while slave ships may law 
 fully pass from Africa to Cuba, it would, perhaps, be impos 
 sible to prevent." 
 
 This was the state of things, according to the Institution, 
 at the end of 1816. We will now see what it was at the 
 beginning of the present year, notwithstanding the conven 
 tions signed with Spain and Portugal in the interval. " The 
 African slave trade," says the Report itself, " is still unhappily 
 carried on to an enormous extent under the foreign flags, with 
 aggravated horrors. The directors have to lament the enor 
 mous extent, not of the French slave trade only; that of Spain 
 and Portugal appears also to have greatly increased. Not 
 withstanding the great pecuniary sacrifices made by Great 
 Britain to these nations, their subjects are stated by the go 
 vernor of Sierra Leone to be now deeper in blood than ever." 
 The Report mentions the fact, that at the distance of more 
 than a year from the date of the Spanish and Portuguese con 
 ventions, the British naval commander in chief on the African 
 coast had received no instructions as to the measures to be 
 taken in pursuance of them, nor as yet had any commission 
 been established, as they prescribed. 
 
 The estimate which the directors make in the Appendix 
 to the Report, of the number of negroes transported of late 
 years from Africa under the Spanish and Portuguese flags, 
 falls greatly short of the real amount. Dr. Thorpe, whose 
 testimony, on this head, is certainly entitled to weight, has 
 made some statements which agree better with the direct 
 knowledge which we have in this country, of the importation 
 into the Spanish islands and into Brasil. He alleges that the 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 375 
 
 commissioners appointed by the British government to survey SECT. IX. 
 the West Coast of Africa, three years after it had abolished ^^~^*~ 
 the trade, reported eighty thousand as the number of negroes 
 annually carried away, and divided equally between (he Por 
 tuguese and Spaniards. He computes, himself, from returns 
 made by persons residing in the Havanna, in the Brasils, and 
 on the coast of Africa, that the Spaniards carried from the 
 West Coast, in 1817, one hundred thousand; and the Portu 
 guese not less. He adds forty thousand as the number taken 
 by other nations, and from other parts of that quarter of the 
 globe. There is something almost overpowering for a real 
 philanthropist in the observations with which this writer con 
 cludes his calculations. "As it appears that in 1807, about 
 sixty thousand inhabitants of Africa were annually enslaved, 
 and in 1817 two hundred and forty thousand, we may judge 
 of her present deplorable condition, when the very cause of 
 her barbarous and degraded state has increased four-fold; we 
 should recollect the unshaken testimony presented to Parlia 
 ment, which established her miserable condition before 1807; 
 and we cannot but lament that all the professions for her hap 
 piness, and promises for her civilization, reiterated since that 
 time, have been perfectly delusive."* 
 
 Dr. Thorpe asserts, also, that at the time Great Britain had 
 the right of search, nineteen out of twenty of the contraband 
 slave vessels escaped. One cannot but think that their success 
 would not have been quite so great, had her cruizers exercised 
 the same zeal and vigilance in pursuing them, as they did in 
 hunting down the commerce of the United Slates, under the 
 Orders in Council. 
 
 In the first negotiations respecting the trade, which Lord 
 Castlereagh opened with the French cabinet after the treaty 
 of 1814, he suggested, as a desirable arrangement, the con 
 cession of a mutual right of search and capture in certain 
 latitudes, between France and Great Britain, in order to pre 
 vent an illicit exportation from the coast of Africa. The 
 Duke of Wellington made the proposition to the Prince of 
 Benevento, but soon discovered that it was " too disagreeable 
 to the French government and nation, to admit of a hope of 
 its being urged with success."! I do not find from the history 
 of the conferences at Vienna in 1815, that it was more than 
 hinted in those conferences. Spain and Portugal, however, * 
 in their mock renunciation of the trade north of the equinoc- 
 
 * P. 13. View of the Increase of the Slave Trade. 
 
 f See his letter to Lord Castlereagh of the 5th Nov. 1814. 
 
376 
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART r. tial line, acceded to a stipulation of like tenor. Great satis- 
 ^^^^*" / faction was expressed in Parliament with the arrangement, 
 when the Spanish treaty came under discussion. " The >n- 
 troduction of the right of search and bringing in for condem 
 nation in time of peace," was declared to be u a precedent of 
 the utmost importance." Of this precedent the British rai- 
 nister resolved to avail himself at once. There is a quasi 
 official exposition of his proceedings in the thirteenth Report 
 of the African Institution, of which I will abstract as much 
 as may convey a sufficient idea of the new turn given to ihe 
 question of abolition. 
 
 The ministers of the great powers were assembled in Lon 
 don to confer on the subject: all attended readily except the 
 representative of Portugal, who consented to appear only on 
 condition of a perfect freedom of action being left to his so 
 vereign. At a meeting held in February, 1818, Lord Castle- 
 reagh produced a note, which alleged, among other things, 
 That, since the peace, a considerable revival of the slave trade 
 had taken place, especially north of the line, and (that the 
 traffic was principally of the illicit description: That, as 
 early as July, 1816, a circular intimation had been given to 
 all British cruizers, that the right of search (being a bellige 
 rent right) had ceased with the war: That it was proved be 
 yond the possibility of a doubt, that unless the right to visit 
 vessels engaged in the slave trade should be established by 
 mutual concessions on the part of the maritime states, the 
 illicit traffic must not only continue to subsist, but increase: 
 That even if the traffic were universally abolished, and a single 
 state should refuse to submit its flag to the visitation of vessels of 
 other states, nothing effectual would have been done: That the 
 plenipotentiaries should, therefore, enter into an engagement 
 to concede mutually the right of search, ad hoc, to their ships 
 of war, &c. They did not deem themselves authorised to 
 proceed so far, but undertook to transmit the proposition to 
 their respective courts. 
 
 It does not appear that the American minister was invited 
 to be a party to these conferences. To him, however, Lord 
 Cas lereagh addressed a special letter in the month of June, 
 1818, enclosing copies of the treaties made with Spain and 
 Portugal, and inviting the government of the United States 
 * to enter into the plan digested in those treaties, for the repres 
 sion of the slave trade, which must, otherwise, prove irreduci 
 ble. The answer of the American government, communicated 
 at the end of December by ihe American ambassador, is de 
 tailed in the Report of the Institution. It asserts the deep and 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 377 
 
 unfeigned solicitude of the United States, for the universal SECT. IX. 
 extirpation of the slave trade; but, with all due comity, de- ^~^~^ 
 clines the proposed arrangements, as being of a character 
 " not adapted to the circumstances or institutions of the Uni 
 ted States. 5 Truly, the United States had sufficiently proved 
 the British right of search in time of war, to be careful not 
 to create one for the season of peace. 
 
 No answer had been received from the courts whose minis 
 ters attended the conferences in London, when the congress 
 of Aix-la-Chapelle furnished the British government with the 
 fairest opportunity of pushing the adoption of its whole pro 
 ject. Thither, on the heels of Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Clark- 
 son repaired with the memorial, which I have already cited. 
 It stated to the assembled sovereigns That, u in point of fact, 
 little or no progress had been made in practically abolishing 
 the slave trade:" That " all the declarations and engagements 
 of the European powers as to abolition, must prove perfectly 
 unavailing, unless new means were adopted:" That the only 
 means left were the universal concession of the mutual 
 right of search and detention; and the solemn proscription of 
 the slave trade, as Piracy under the law of nations. 
 
 Lord Castlereagh s official representations were of the same 
 purport, and were answered in separate notes from the pleni 
 potentiaries of Russia, France, Austria, and Prussia. The 
 respondents profess their readiness to make a combined address 
 to the court of Brasil, in order to engage it to accelerate, as 
 much as the circumstances and necessities of its situation may 
 permit, the entire abolition of the trade; but all reject the 
 proposition of a mutual right of search, that new sine qua nan 
 of the salvation of Africa. France, whose concurrence, ac 
 cording to Lord Castlereagh, was, " above all others, import 
 ant," gave the most peremptory refusal; and suggested, on 
 her side, a plan of common police for the trade, which would 
 enable the several powers to know the transactions of each 
 other, and would keep each government well apprized of all 
 abuses within its jurisdiction. Upon the emperor Alexander, 
 both Lord Castlereagh and the directors of the African Insti 
 tution had counted, as a sure and irresistible auxiliary. The 
 " unkindest cut," however, would seem to have come from 
 his Russian Majesiy. The answer of his plenipotentiary was 
 fitted to produce a double disconcertion; and might be sus 
 pected of a little malice in the design. Besides alleging that 
 it appeared to the Russian cabinet, beyond a doubt, that ihere 
 were some states which no consideration would induce to 
 submit their navigation to a principle of such high importance 
 
 VOL. I. 3 B 
 
378 
 
 NEGRO SLAVER* AND 
 
 PART I. as the i ight of visit," he proposed an expedient to effect the 
 v ^ v "^ common purpose, which went to deprive England of her sway, 
 and unembarrassed action, on the west coast of Africa. This 
 expedient consisted in " an institution, the seat of which 
 should be a central point on that coast, and in the forma 
 tion of which all the Christian states should take a part." 
 It is thus particularly described in the Russian note: a De 
 clared for every neutral, to be estranged from all political and 
 local interests, like the fraternal and Christian alliance, ot 
 which it would be a practical manifestation, this institution 
 would pursue the single object of strictly maintaining the 
 execution of the law. It would consist of a maritime force, 
 composed of a sufficient number of ships of war, appropri 
 ated to the service assigned to them; of a judicial power, 
 which should judge all crimes relating to the trade, according 
 to a legislation established upon the subject, by the common 
 wisdom; of a supreme council, in which would reside the au 
 thority of the institution, which would regulate the operation? 
 of the maritime force would revise the sentences of the tri 
 bunals would put them in execution would inspect all tin 
 details, and would render an account of its administration to 
 the future European conferences. The right of visit and de 
 tention would be granted to this institution, as the means of 
 fulfilling its end; and perhaps no maritime nation would 
 refuse to submit its flag to this police, exercised in a limited 
 and clearly defined manner, and by a power too feeble to 
 allow of vexations; too disinterested on all maritime and 
 commercial questions, and, above all, too widely combined 
 in its elements, not to observe a severe, but impartial jus tict 
 towards all." 
 
 Neither the French plan of surveillance, nor the Amphyc- 
 tionic Institution of his Imperial Majesty, suited the views oi 
 Lord Castlereagh, who could not be persuaded of the practi 
 cability of either. His lordship finally proposed to qualify 
 the d( sired right of search, by limiting its duration to a certain 
 number of years; and by this and other modifications, " he flat 
 ters himself," says the thirteenth Report of the African Institu 
 tion, " that he has made a considerable impression in remov 
 ing the strong repugnance which was at first felt to the mea 
 sure." But the directors themselves do not appear to be so 
 sanguine, if we may judge from the following passage of thr 
 Report: " Thus ended the conferences, and proceedings at 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, respecting the more effectual abolition of the 
 African slave trade, and thus have the directors been disap 
 pointed in the hopes which they had entertained, of seeing thr 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 379 
 
 noble principles, announced to the world by the congress at SECT. IX. 
 Vienna, carried into complete effect, by the sovereigns and v-x~v^w> 
 plenipotentiaries assembled in the course of the last autumn. 
 Whether such another opportunity of bringing those principles 
 into action, may ever again occur, cannot be foreseen; but the 
 directors must be allowed to express their unfeigned regret, 
 that so very favourable a combination of circumstances has 
 led to such unimportant results," 
 
 The plan of England to obtain from the congress a sen 
 tence of piracy upon the slave trade, appeared to the sove-i 
 reigns rather wanting in courtesy towards their royal brother 
 of the Brasils, while he persisted in authorizing his subjects 
 to prosecute it indefinitely as to number. It was evident, 
 said the emperor of Russia, that the general promulgation 
 of such a law could not take place, until Portugal had 
 totally renounced the trade. At the same time, the con 
 gress might not have been able to discern the consistency, 
 of proclaiming that a capital crime in the subjects of one 
 nation, which those of another might do with impunity, 
 under the sanction of recent treaties. It was certainly an 
 awkward duty for an English ministry, to solicit the denun 
 ciation of piracy against the slave trade, which the English 
 nation had, for two centuries, struggled to monopolize. The 
 reflection upon all the generations of that whole tract of time, 
 was rather too strong, in the use of such language as this 
 " Slave-trading always involves man-stealing and murder. 
 Even on the passage its murders are numerous,"* &c. The 
 Lord Chancellor Eldon could not have thought so, when, op 
 posing the British abolition in 1807, "he entered into a 
 review* of the measures adopted by England, respecting 
 the trade, which, he contended, had been sanctioned by Par 
 liaments in which sat the wisest lawyers, the most learned 
 divines, and the most excellent statesmen."! Nor could 
 Lord Hawkesbury, when he moved that the words " in 
 consistent with the principles of justice and humanity," 
 should be struck out of the preamble of the British abo 
 lition bill.J Nor could Lord Sidmouth, when he said, 
 " to the measure itself he had no objection, if it could be 
 accomplished without detriment to the West India islands :" 
 Nor the Earl of Westmoreland, in declaring that " though 
 he should see the presbyterian and the prelate, the metho- 
 dist and field preacher, the jacobin and murderer, unite in 
 
 * The Memorial, f Hansard s Debates, vol. viii. } Ibid. Ibid, 
 
389 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. favour of the measure of abolition, he would raise his voict 
 
 ^*^^s against it in Parliament."* 
 
 Throughout- the conferences and negotiations above men 
 tioned, we find the continental powers betraying a rooted 
 distrust of the motives of the British government. The 
 vehemence of its execrations upon the trade; the intensity of 
 its present zeal for the welfare of Africa, contributed to excite 
 suspicion, when compared with the language I have just 
 cited, and with the toleration of the Spanish and Portuguese 
 traffic before the peace; with the treaty of 1814, by which 
 England, having secured for herself, in the general distribution 
 of spoil, some favourite objects of interest, delivered over to the 
 miseries now so pathetically described, whole provinces which 
 she boasted of having entirely relieved with the free export 
 of tire-arms and ammunition from the British ports to the 
 coast of Africa; and with the existence of slavery in its 
 worst form, in all the British settlements, including those of 
 Asia Minor and the East Indies. It was remarked that, as 
 soon as it was seen in England, in 1806, that her trade 
 would be abolished, Parliament petitioned the king to nego 
 tiate with foreign powers for the abolition of theirs; but that 
 nothing was vigorously attempted in this way, all had been 
 languor and connivance, until the conclusion of peace, when 
 the restitution took place, of considerable colonies, which, 
 being stocked regularly and cheaply with slaves, while those 
 retained by England received only a precarious and dear sup 
 ply, might speedily outgrow the latter, and supplant them in 
 the markets of the world; and when on other grounds avowed 
 and pressed in Parliament, the commercial interests of Eng 
 land evidently required, if not universal abolition, at least the 
 restriction to the south of the equator. 
 
 France knew that it was with British capital and shipping 
 that her merchants had embarked in the trade, immediately 
 after the peace; Spain and Portugal, that the greater part of 
 the trade carried on under their flags was on British ac 
 count; and they were somewhat incredulous, when they 
 were told of the British negotiators being u the organs of 
 a people unanimous in its condemnation; apprized of all 
 it? horrors; impressed with all its guilt; foremost in re 
 moving its pollution from themselves, and waiting with con 
 fident, but impatient hope, the glad tidings of its universal 
 abolition." None of the powers had ever found those organs 
 disposed to make a sacrifice for this object, beyond an island, 
 
 * Ibid. 
 
SLAVE TRADE, 
 
 381 
 
 a subsidy, or a largess; which might be considered as offered SECT. ix. 
 with a view to ample compensation in lucre; for Mr. Wilber- v - ^v^-/ 
 force was implicitly to be believed, when he said, in the- 
 House of Commons, in addition to what I have already quoted 
 from him of a like tenor, that, " in a commercial point of 
 view, it was of incalculable advantage to have the supply of 
 that large tract of country, from the Senegal down to the 
 Niger, an extent of more than 7500 miles, with the necessa 
 ries and gratifications which British manufactures and com 
 merce afford."* Parliament still contained several of the 
 hitherto inflexible anti-abolitionists, who had harangued with 
 out end to prove the justice and humanity of the trade at 
 large; its very unanimity, therefore, where that of foreign 
 powers was concerned, had the effect of lessening confidence 
 abroad. Such a phenomenon as the union of General Gas- 
 coyne with Mr. Wilberforce, of Lord Westmoreland wiih 
 Lord Grenville, in proclaiming the unequalled guilt and in 
 famy of the slave traffic, could be viewed by the Talleyrands 
 and the Nesselrodes only as indicating a universal sense, of 
 the great importance of the end in view, to the commercial 
 ascendancy of Great Britain. 
 
 It is easily seen, from the strain of the diplomatic notes ad 
 dressed to Lord Castlereagh at Aix la-Chapelle, that the con 
 gress had a common jealousy of the designs of England upon 
 the African coast, and acted in concert in disappointing the 
 hopes, and alarming the policy, of her plenipotentiary. To 
 maintain a fleet upon that coast would obviously be in the 
 power of none but England, so that the idea of reciprocity in 
 the right of search was illusive; and it was not contrary to 
 the entire analogy of British maritime administration, to sup 
 pose, that, in this case, it might be perverted to the ends of 
 rapacity, oppression, or monopoly. 
 
 The invidiousness of the proceedings of the English states 
 men, and the incredulity which they have rendered inveterate 
 in the foreign cabinets, as to their professions, in this matter 
 of the slave trade, make it doubtful whether the cause of real, 
 universal abolition has not suffered by the intervention of 
 England. Had the appeal to the justice, humanity, magnani 
 mity, and true interests of France, Spain, or Portugal, come 
 from a quarter where no selfish or hostile views could be sus 
 pected to lurk; had it been urged with steady effort, with 
 the directness of conscious benevolence, and with only a part 
 of that eloquence and sagacity which Great Britain has dis- 
 
 * February 11, 1818. 
 
KEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. played in the argument, it might, in the end, have effectually 
 v^*^ ^** reclaimed those powers, or have raised against them such a 
 combination of influence as would have led to the same happ/ 
 result. But, in dealing with Great Britain, the calculation 
 with them has been, how to avoid a suspected snare; to coun 
 teract an insidious rival policy; to preserve the interests which 
 they ostensibly sacrificed in compliance with the particular 
 necessities of their situation Hence a more eager and obsti 
 nate purpose of rilling their colonies with negroes in every 
 practicable mode; a greater callousness to the shame and 
 criminality of the traffic hence on the part of other powers, 
 giving the same construction to the instances of England, 
 little disposition to adopt any system that should cut off the r 
 supplies, or second her aims. Hence, too, the unmeaning er- 
 gagements about abolition after a certain period of enjoyment, 
 which only serve to stimulate the exertions of the slave trade-, 
 and aggravate the immediate desolation of Africa; "the vows 
 of future amendment coupled with present perseverance in 
 guilt;" sacrifices promised to be made, with a determination 
 to prove faithless; solemn assurances of future rectitude, fc-r 
 whose accomplishment we are to wait until commercial jea 
 lousy shall cease, avarice be satiated, or the sword drawn to 
 enforce performance. 
 
 More of cant, hypocrisy, and inconsistency, has never dis 
 graced any occasion, than this of the abolition of the slave 
 trade. While it is admitted universally, and solemnly pro 
 claimed by the potentates, to be the opprobrium of Christen 
 dom, and the bane of Africa; " repugnant to the principles of 
 humanity and essential morality,"* they enter into compacts 
 among themselves for guaranteeing to one or the other, the 
 unmolested prosecution of it, during such a term as the con 
 venience of the party may require; and in no case is there an 
 intention of observing the limitation prescribed. France de 
 mands, to use the language of Lord Grenville, five years of 
 injustice and rapine, of murder and violence, laying waste a 
 whole quarter of the globe, that she may recruit her colonial 
 vigour, and particularly that she may have the facility of re- 
 peopling St. Domingo with slaves, in case of the reduction of 
 that island; England, the tutelary genius of Africa, specially 
 ratifies this demand: Portugal and Spain must have eight 
 years of the same horrible career, and will not agree to desist 
 even then, unless their commercial relations with England 
 
 * See the Declaration of the Congress of Vienna, 8th Feb. 1815. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 383 
 
 shall undergo a particular change: they acknowledge the SEC1MX. 
 teeming wickedness of the traffic; but, unluckily, they have ^^~v^ 
 the prosperity of their dominions to promote: England dis 
 claims all idea of giving the law on the subject, or pushing- 
 matters to an extremity:* Russia, Austria, and Prussia, cau- 
 not undertake to coerce any power, either as to time or space; 
 and decide that each is to be left to consult " the prejudices, 
 habits, and interests of its subjects, and the circumstances of 
 its situation:" All pledge themselves, in the last place, to make 
 every possible effort to accelerate the triumph of the magnifi 
 cent cause of universal abolition! 
 
 The only governments, in fact, which have acted sincerely 
 and independently, in relation to it, are those of Denmark and 
 the United States. I am free to confess that no small share 
 of the illicit trade has been carried on by Americans, or by 
 persons assuming the character; and that no inconsiderable 
 number of negroes has been clandestinely imported into the 
 most southern parts of our territory. Perhaps the Federal 
 Government has not exerted all the vigilance in repressing 
 these abuses, which their enormity required; but the heartiest 
 detestation of them is common to it and to the majority of the 
 nation. The least participation in the slave traffic is certainly 
 a deep stain, and a heinous guilt. The violence which this 
 traffic does, in its very conception, to the rights and obliga 
 tions of human nature; its effect in brutalizing those who 
 pursue it; the flagitious and ferocious practices with which it 
 is attended; the ineffable, accumulated woes which it inflicts 
 upon its defenceless victims; the immeasurable evils of every 
 kind with which it overspreads the continent of Africa, and 
 threatens that of America conspire to invest it with a charac 
 ter of greater deformity, scandal, depravity, and pernicious- 
 ness, than belongs to any other general crime of the civilized 
 world. I have been the more liberal of details concerning 
 the horrors of the British trade, in order to attract a more 
 earnest attention to our own late offences of the sort, about 
 which we have been too supine; and against which the voice 
 of every good citizen and moral man, as well as the voice and 
 the arm of the government, should be perpetually raised. 
 
 17. Widely different, under the circumstances in which we 
 find ourselves, is the case of retaining the wretched race of 
 Africa in bondage. The most zealous of the English philan- 
 
 * See the Protocol of the third conference at Vienna, Feb. 4th, 
 1815. 
 
384 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. thropists have not carried their aims so far, with respect lo 
 ^*^^~> West India slavery, as its immediate or speedy abolition. I 
 have quoted, in my seventh section, the protest entered l>y 
 the Edinburgh Review, against the imputation of such a de 
 sign, either to the Reviewers or any of the adversaries of the 
 slave trade. That journal has returned several times to (he 
 topic; in the eighth number, for instance, in the following lan 
 guage: " It is scarcely necessary to premise, that the advo 
 cates for the abolition of the slave trade most cordially repro 
 bate all idea of emancipating the slaves that are already in 
 our plantations. Such a scheme indeed is sufficiently answered by 
 the story of the galley slaves in Don Quixotte, and we are 
 persuaded, never had any place in the minds of those eit- 
 lighiened and judicious persons, who have contended in this 
 cause." 
 
 So late as 1817, Lord Holland, one of the most devoted 
 among the associates of Mr. Wilberforce, moved, in tl e 
 House of Peers, a petition to the Prince Regent, prayirg 
 that the idea of emancipating the West India slaves might 1. e 
 disowned by royal proclamation throughout the islands; 
 which was done accordingly. Their unfitness for freedom, 
 no less than the danger to the white inhabitants, has been al 
 leged as the motive for discarding all projects implying their 
 liberation. This has always been treated in England as a 
 question of practicability, not of strict justice. To give a 
 specimen of the mode of reasoning on the subject, I will ex 
 tract a passage from a speech of Mr. W. Grant in the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 u Mr. W. Grant said, he had ever conceived that the end 
 of legislation was to do good, and to consider justice in our 
 means of doing it. Now, there were some occasions on 
 which it was impossible to do so; and there the greatest good 
 must be the object even in violation of strict justice. He 
 would illustrate his meaning by an instance. Let them sup 
 pose a case of emnncipation. Wherever slavery existed, 
 there necessarily existed oppression, and the continuance of 
 slavery was consequently a continuance of oppression. If he 
 had professed to do justice, and a slave were to ask him, how 
 could he account for the use he had in view in making him a 
 slave; if he meant to do justice, he should not continue him a 
 slave? he should answer, that his means were circumscribed, 
 and hat it was true philanthropy to effect the greatest good, 
 which the nature of the case would admit. If he forbore to 
 do nn act, abstractly an act of humanity, but which would 
 produce a different consequence, he surely acted rightly; 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 385 
 
 were he to act otherwise, he should not satisfy his con- SECT. IX. 
 science, because he should not diminish the misery he wish- v-^v-^- 
 ed to relieve." 
 
 Expediency is thus justified, and allowed on all hands to 
 prevail, touching the existence of slavery in the West Indies. 
 That the British government possesses the pmcer to suppress 
 it, no one ventures to deny. The Edinburgh Review has 
 scouted the supposition of armed resistance on the part of the 
 islands, to any exertion of the supreme authority of the 
 mother country. u If," says the 50th number, " a threat of 
 following the example of America, that is, of rebelling, be 
 held out, then the answer is, that what was boldness in the 
 one case, would be impudence in the other, and England 
 must be reduced very low, indeed, before she can feel greatly 
 alarmed at this threat from a Caribbee island." She is, 
 therefore, responsible for the existence of slavery in the West 
 Indies, as much as if it-existed within her own bosom, and we 
 might retort upon her the phrase of the Edinburgh Review 
 directed against us, u That slavery should exist among men 
 who know the value of liberty, and profess to understand its 
 principles, is the consummation of wickedness ." 
 
 Were the question of the abolition of West India slavery to 
 be treated as one of strict justice, England could have no 
 escape from its fullest pressure. The circumstance of her 
 having created and fostered the slavery itself; of her having 
 been chiefly instrumental in making it the fate of so many 
 millions of the race of its victims there, would give every 
 possible degree offeree and solemnity to the abstract obliga"- 
 tion in the case. While, therefore, slavery continues to ex 
 ist undisturbed in the West Indies, the Briton who approves 
 of the policy of maintaining it, cannot deny to the United 
 States, the benefit of the plea of expediency in regard to the 
 emancipation of their blacks. To avert a personal danger 
 from her planters, and to maintain her lucrative connexion 
 with the islands, England abstains from " tearing off the 
 manacles," the most galling that ever were imposed from 
 nearly a million of that race; she even abstains, upon consi 
 derations of possible disadvantage, as the postponement of the 
 Registry Bill shows, from measures adapted merely to the 
 amelioration of their condition. 
 
 I have, I think, proved in the first pages of this sec 
 tion, that but a slight degree of blame attaches to the co 
 lonists, respecting the existence of slavery in this country; 
 and that their descendants were in no measure culpable, as 
 far down as the declaration of our independence. They 
 
 VOL. I. 3 C 
 
386 
 
 NKGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. were no more so, than they would have been, for an heredi- 
 **^~*~>*s tary gout or leprosy, ascribable in its origin to the vices oi 
 the parent state, and which the authors of it should have stu 
 diously prevented them from curing. The continuation of 
 the system of slavery among us, during the Revolution, was as 
 much a matter of necessity, as it ever had been before. It 
 was not the time for the southern states, to make the experi 
 ment of a fundamental alteration in the whole economy of 
 their existence, when they were contending with a ruthless 
 foe who sought to array the whole body of negroes against the 
 whites, and who would have availed himself of the greater 
 freedom of action which emancipation must have afforded thr 
 latter, to accomplish his diabolical purpose. 
 
 But the northern and middle states, more auspiciously cir 
 cumstanced, began the work of extirpating the evil from their 
 own bosom, even before the termination of the revolutionary 
 struggle. In 1780, Pennsylvania decreed a gradual aboli 
 tion; in the same year an immediate one was virtually effect 
 ed in Massachusetts; the example of Pennsylvania was fol 
 lowed throughout New England at the distance of a few 
 years; all that portion of the Union, north of the state of De 
 laware, has since pursued the same course. 
 
 It was more than a practical moralist could expect or ex 
 act, that the southern states, retaining sovereign governments 
 of their own, should trust the federal councils with the 
 determination of such a question, as the emancipation of 
 their slaves, on which their highest interests of property and 
 safely were immediately dependent. No power to decide for 
 them on this question could be communicated, according to 
 the drift and nature of our union, either to the Revolutionary 
 Confederation, or to the actual government. The power of 
 legislating in all respects for the territory belonging to the 
 United States, accrued necessarily, however, to both; and it 
 was exercised in relation to slavery, by the first, in a manner 
 to evince the rectitude of the general spirit on the subject, ren 
 dered impotent in the south by the strongest of impulses, if not 
 the first of duties self-preservation. The ordinance enacted 
 by the Congress of the United States, in 1787, for the go 
 vernment of the territory north west of the river Ohio, con 
 tains the following article a There shall be neither slavery 
 nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than 
 in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been 
 duly convicted." This vast region was thus scrupulously 
 preserved from the evil; and the states of Ohio, Indiana, and 
 Illinois formed out of it, make an integral part of that consi- 
 
SLAVE TRADE, 381 
 
 derable and most prosperous division of our empire, into SECT. IX. 
 which, happily, an Englishman may emigrate without " ex- *~*~^*+s 
 posing his own character or the character of his children to 
 the demoralizing effect of commanding slaves." 
 
 18. The question of the existence of slavery is not, as I have 
 intimated, could not be, put within the jurisdiction of the 
 present government of the United States. The condition of 
 things assuring, for a long time, to the part of the country ex 
 empt or soon to be exempt from the evil, a numerical majo 
 rity in the federal legislature, this domestic interest of the 
 southern members of the Union, vital and pre-eminently de 
 licate in its nature, would have been placed at the mercy of 
 men incapable, like the Edinburgh Reviewers, of understand 
 ing it thoroughly; liable to an undue bias resulting from the 
 action of good principles; and who, whatever their general 
 spirit of forbearance, considerateness of character, and warmth 
 of political friendship, might, from ignorance and prejudice 
 combined, through a mistaken patriotism and philanthropy, 
 or in obedience to a sentimental clamor of their constituents, 
 seconded by a generous zeal in their own breasts, hastily take 
 a step which would sooner or later involve both master and 
 slave, in the south, in one common ruin. 
 
 As regards, then, the existence of slavery within the limits 
 of the Union, the federal government has no responsibility 
 such as that of the British parliament, in its omnipotence, 
 with respect to the whole internal economy of the British pos 
 sessions. The eleven of these American states, in which 
 slavery is now abolished, are not implicated in the demerits 
 of the question. To break loose from the confederation, and 
 thus to risk their own political independence, because the 
 other members do not perform that which is impracticable; 
 because these happen, without their own fault, to be afflicted 
 with the curse of negro slavery; or to attempt to enforce by 
 arms, an abolition; is what no sane person will consider as 
 incumbent upon them, and what would hardly be advised by 
 England, who neither coerces nor discards the West Indies; 
 and who would not " give the law" to Spain, Portugal, or 
 France, with respect to the slave trade infinitely the more 
 detestable crime and destructive evil when those powers 
 were at her beck. 
 
 The eastern and middle states have not been backward in 
 discharging any duty in the way of exhortation and aid, which 
 their political and Qther ties with the slave-holding countries 
 might seem to create. Their doctrine as to human rights is ae 
 
388 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. broad, as sincerely adopted, and as loudly proclaimed, as thai 
 **^~^~**s of England; abolition societies abound in them, who do not 
 yield in point of zeal to the African Institution, and have no 
 compromise to make with any government.* The citizens of 
 those states, in emigrating to the west, as they do constantly in 
 great numbers, manifest the soundness of their feelings and 
 principles on this subject, by settling in preference, in the 
 parts from which negro slavery is excluded. Hence the asto 
 nishing growth of the states of Ohio and Indiana, the first of 
 which has outstripped, in advances of every kind, whatever 
 the world had seen in the spontaneous formation of commu 
 nities. 
 
 But, those members of the Union, of which I am now 
 speaking, while they have inculcated without reserve, in tht 
 national councils, every truth, either abstract or practical, ap 
 pertaining to the question of our negro slavery, have not been 
 blind to the just sentiments of their southern associates, who 
 alone are accountable; nor have they overlooked, though they 
 may not have always fully measured, the difficulties inherent in 
 the situation of the latter. They, who have better opportunities 
 of understanding it than the British reviewers, are far from 
 thinking that it " affords no apology for the existence of sla 
 very." They see it in the same light, in this respect, as they 
 see that of the West Indies, which the Reviewers have declar 
 ed a complete justification: for, though the negroes in our 
 slave-holding states are not near so numerous in the propor 
 tion to the whites, as in the West Indies; and though, from 
 the superiority of their condition, they are better prepared for 
 freedom, yet they are in sufficient number to assure, in the 
 event of insurrection, the most horrible disasters, before they 
 could be subdued, with the earliest possible aid from the other 
 states; and, they are still, from inevitable causes, far from 
 the point of being prepared to exist here, out of the bonds of 
 slavery, with advantage to themselves, or safety to the whites. 
 
 19. Before the American revolution, the British policy of 
 multiplying their numbers by importations from Africa, closed 
 the door against an attempt to qualify them, by moral and po 
 litical instruction, for that state. Such an attempt would ap 
 pear to have been equally impracticable, in the course of the 
 revolutionary war, if we look only to the engrossing avoca- 
 
 * See the writing s of Dr. Thorpe for an explanation of thisinuendo. 
 He roundly charges Mr. Wilberforce and the Institution, with playinp 
 into the hands of the ministry. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 tionsof the struggle, and to the belligerent system of the mo- SECT.JX. 
 ther country. But it was so then, and has been ever since, v *^ v ^^ / 
 from other causes; more obviously, as the numbers of the- 
 blacks increased. An effectual training of the kind is incom 
 patible w r ith their very being as slaves, and with the nature of 
 the toil incident to their situation. It presupposes their eman 
 cipation, or such a modification of their existence as would 
 be equivalent, in reference to their value as property, or to 
 the danger threatened by their exemption from restraint. The 
 doctrine so long popular and pursued in England, and main 
 tained openly by some of her most distinguished statesmen,* 
 that the labouring classes should not be enlightened, lest they 
 might become unwilling to perform the necessary drudgery of 
 their station in life, and prone to rise against the monarchical 
 scheme of social order, was not, perhaps, in her case, altoge 
 ther without foundation as to the latter topic of apprehension. 
 Now, though the very reverse is the soundest policy for us, 
 with our institutions, as respects the whites, that doctrine, if 
 the right of the southern American to consult his own safety 
 and the ultimate happiness of his slaves, be admitted, is un 
 questionably just in relation to the body of the southern ne 
 groes. You could not attempt to improve and fashion their 
 minds upon a general system, so far as to make them capable 
 of freedom in the mass and apart, without exposing yourself, 
 even in the process, or in proportion as they began to under 
 stand and value their rights, to feel the abjection of their 
 position and employment, calculate their strength, and be fit 
 for intelligent concert to formidable combinations among 
 them, for extricating themselves from their grovelling and se 
 vere labours at once, and for gaining, not merely an equality 
 in the state, but an ascendancy in all respects. The difference 
 of race and colour would render such aspirations in them, 
 much more certain, prompt, and active, than in the case of a 
 body of villeins of the same colour and blood with yourselves, 
 whom you might undertake to prepare for self-government. 
 The Duke of Wellington, in the late debate on Catholic 
 emancipation in the British House of Peers, expressed his 
 belief that the Catholics of Ireland, if relieved from their 
 disabilities, would endeavour to put down the reformed reli 
 gion, and this because of the feelings which must accompany 
 the recollection, that that religion had been established in their 
 country by the sword. What consequences, then, might we 
 not expect in the case of our slaves, from the sense of recent 
 
 * See page 69, Sect, ii. 
 
390 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. suffering and degradation, and from the feelings incident 10 
 <^~^**~ the estrangement and insulation growing out of the indelible 
 distinctions of nature? 
 
 I know of but one mode of correcting those feelings at d 
 preventing alienation, hostility, and civil war; of making the 
 experiment of general instruction and emancipation with ar y 
 degree of safety. We must assure the blacks of a perfect 
 equality in all points with ourselves; we must labour to in 
 corporate them with us, so that we shall become of one flesh 
 and blood, and of one political family! It is doubtful even 
 whether we could succeed in this point, so gregarious are (hey 
 in their habits, and so strong in their national sympathy. Mo 
 sublime philanthropist of Europe has, however, as yet, in I is 
 reveries of the impiety of political distinctions founded upon 
 the colour of the body, or in his lamentations over our injustice 
 to the blacks, exacted from us openly this hopeful amalgam i- 
 tion. It would, no doubt, suit admirably the views of o ir 
 friends in England, who would then have full scope for plei- 
 sant comparisons between the American and English intellect, 
 and the American and English complexion.* 
 
 I could suggest another consideration, alone sufficient io 
 have deterred our southern states from hazarding, since our 
 revolution, the measure of a general abolition of negro slavery, 
 accompanied with the continuance of the negroes within their 
 limits. It would have put those states especially, and this 
 federal union, at the mercy of Great Britain. The facility 
 of tampering with the blacks, and of exciting them to insur 
 rection, would have been increased for her, incalculably, in 
 their new condition, in time of war. Let her conduct on this 
 head during the revolutionary struggle, and in our late contest, 
 in relation both to the Indians and negroes, determine the 
 point whether she would not have availed herself of the op 
 portunity. 
 
 On the subject of the abolition of the negro slavery of the 
 south, Judge Tucker, whom I have already cited, has made 
 some remarks which cannot fail to have great weight with 
 every dispassionate and candid mind. 
 
 " it is unjust," he says, "to censure the present generation 
 for the existence of slavery in this country, for I think it un 
 questionably true, that a very large proportion of our fellcw- 
 citizens lament that as a misfortune, which is imputed to them 
 
 * See the Quarterly Review of May, 1819, on the point of com 
 plexion. "The white men, women, and children, are all sallow in 
 America," &c. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 391 
 
 as a reproach; it being evident that, antecedent to the revolution, SECT. IX. 
 no exertion to abolish, or even to check the progress of slavery, v^-v-w 
 could have received the smallest countenance from the crown, 
 without whose assent the united wishes and exertions of every 
 individual here, would have been wholly fruitless and ineffec 
 tual: it is, perhaps, also demonstrable, that at no period since 
 the revolution, could the abolition of slavery in the southern 
 states have been safely undertaken, until the foundations of 
 our newly established governments had been found capable of 
 supporting the fabric itself, under any shock, which so ardu 
 ous an attempt might have produced." 
 
 " The acrimony of the censures cast upon us must abate, 
 at least in the breasts of the candid, when they consider the 
 difficulties attendant on any plan for the abolition of slavery, 
 in a country where so large a proportion of the inhabitants 
 are slaves, and where a still larger proportion of the cultiva 
 tors of the earth are of that description. The extirpation of 
 slavery from the United Slates is a task equally momentous 
 and arduous. Human prudence forbids that we should pre 
 cipitately engage in a work of such hazard as a general and 
 simultaneous emancipation. The mind of man is in some 
 measure to be formed for his future condition. The early im 
 pressions of obedience and submission, which slaves have re 
 ceived among us, and the no less habitual arrogance and as 
 sumption of superiority among the whites, contribute equally 
 to unfit the former for freedom, and the latter for equality. To 
 expel them all at once from the United States would, in fact, 
 be to devote them only to a lingering death, by famine, by 
 disease, and other accumulated miseries. To retain them 
 among us, would be nothing more than to throw so many of 
 the human race upon the earth, without the means of subsist 
 ence; they would soon become idle, profligate, and miserable. 
 They would be unfit for their new condition, and unwilling to 
 return to their former laborious course." 
 
 These observations were published in 1803; but they art 
 equally applicable to the succeeding period. Our foreign re 
 lations were always such in the interval between the com 
 mencement of the late war with England and the year just 
 mentioned, as to give an aspect of extreme danger to imme 
 diate abolition; and there was no room for the question during 
 the continuance of the war. The difficulties of the case in 
 creased, indeed, with the great increase of the negroes, in 
 dependently of our general political embarrassments, both 
 internal and external, sufficient to absorb our care and fa 
 culties. 
 
392 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. It was by gradual, voluntary enfranchisement, not by legis- 
 v-^-v~*w lative abolition, that an end was put to the villeinage of Eng 
 land, a bondage as complete and degrading as that of our ne 
 groes, and which lasted until the reign of Elizabeth. But the 
 villein, when emancipated, being of the same race, colour, anil 
 general character with the master, was assimilated and con 
 ciliated at once; intermarriage neither debased the blood, ncr 
 destroyed the identity, of the nation; but added to its strengt i 
 and security. The gradual emancipation of the negroes of 
 our southern states, if we supposed them to remain, woulc, 
 in the end, produce the same inadmissible condition of things 
 as the immediate, a two-fold, or a motley nation; a perpetuai, 
 wasting strife, or a degeneracy from the European standard of 
 excellence, both as to body and mind. As far as it has bee a 
 tried, it has inspired no confidence, whether as regards the 
 happiness of the blacks, or the security of the whites. Vir 
 ginia took advantage of her independence to authorize manu 
 mission, which the policy of the mother country discounte 
 nanced. Judge Tucker calculates that upwards often thousan i 
 obtained freedom in Virginia in this way, in the interval be 
 tween 1782, when she passed her law, and the year 1791. 
 In 1810, according to the census, the number of her free 
 negroes amounted to thirty thousand five hundred and seventy. 
 In Maryland, there were forty thousand; the increase having 
 been near twenty-six thousand since 1790. In the states south 
 of Virginia, this class was not so numerous, but yet not incon 
 siderable. We find, by Dr. Seybert s tables, that the free 
 negroes and mulattoes increased 185.05 per centum, from 
 1790 to 1800; and from 1790 to 1810, 313.45. This ex 
 traordinary increase he ascribes to emancipations of slaves by 
 their masters. Thus the experiment has been ample; and now 
 let us see what is the result in the slave-holding states. It is 
 fully given in the following representations which come from 
 the pen of a politician well known, and most deservedly and 
 highly respected, in Europe. 
 
 "You may manumit a slave, but you cannot make him a 
 white man. He still remains a negro or a mulatto. The 
 mark and the recollection of his origin and former state still 
 adhere to him; the feelings produced by that condition, in his 
 own mind and in the minds of the whites, still exist; he is 
 associated by his colour, and by these recollections and feel 
 ings, with the class of slaves; and a barrier is thus raised be 
 tween him and the whites, that is, between him and the free 
 class, which he can never hope to transcend. The authority 
 of the master being removed, and its place not .being supplied 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 393 
 
 by moral restraints or incitements, he lives in idleness, and SECT. IX. 
 probably in vice, and obtains a precarious support by begging ^^-v-^/ 
 or theft. If he should avoid those extremes, and follow some 
 regular course of industry, still the habits of thoughtless im 
 providence which he contracted while a slave himself, or has 
 caught from the slaves among whom he is forced to live, who 
 of necessity are his companions and associates, prevent him 
 from making any permanent provision for his support, by pru 
 dent foresight and economy; and in case of sickness, or of 
 bodily disability from any other cause, send him to live as a 
 pauper, at the expense of the community." 
 
 u But it is not in themselves merely that the free people of 
 colour are a nuisance and burden. They contribute greatly 
 to the corruption of the slaves, and to aggravate the evils of 
 their condition, by rendering them idle, discontented, and dis 
 obedient This also arises from the necessity under which the 
 free blacks are, of remaining incorporated with the slaves, of 
 associating habitually with them, and forming part of the 
 same class in society. The slave seeing his free companion 
 live in idleness, or subsist, however scantily or precariously, 
 by occasional and desultory employment, is apt to grow dis 
 contented with his own condition, and to regard as tyranny 
 and injustice the authority which compels him to labour. 
 Hence he is strongly incited to elude this authority by neglect 
 ing his work as much as possible; to withdraw himself from 
 it altogether by flight, and sometimes to attempt direct resist 
 ance. This provokes or impels the master to a severity which 
 would not otherwise be thought necessary; and that severity, 
 by rendering the slave still more discontented with his condi 
 tion, and more hostile toward his master, by adding the senti 
 ments of resentment and revenge to his original dissatisfac 
 tion, often renders him more idle and worthless, and thus in 
 duces the real or supposed necessity of still greater harshness 
 on the part of the master. Such is the tendency of that com 
 parison which the slave cannot easily avoid making, between 
 his own situation and that of the free people of his own colour, 
 who are his companions, and in every thing except exemption 
 from the authority of a master, his equals: whose condition, 
 though often much worse than his own, naturally appears bet 
 ter to him; and being continually under his observation, and 
 in close contact with his feelings, is apt to chafe, goad, and 
 irritate him incessantly. This effect indeed is not always pro 
 duced, but such is the tendency of this state of things; and it 
 operates more extensively, and with greater force, than is 
 commonly supposed." 
 VOL. L 3 D 
 
394 
 
 XEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. B u t this effect, injurious as it must be to the character 
 ^~*^+s an( ] conduct of the slaves, and consequently to their comfort 
 and happiness, is far from being the worst that is produced by 
 the existence of free blacks among us; a majority of the free 
 blacks, as we have seen, are, and must be an idle, worth 
 less, and thievish race. It is with this part of them that the 
 slaves will necessarily associate, the most frequently and the: 
 most intimately. Free blacks of the better class, who gain a 
 comfortable subsistence by regular industry, keep as much as 
 possible aloof from the slaves, to whom in general they regard 
 themselves as in some degree superior. Their association is 
 confined, as much as possible, to the better and more respect 
 able class of slaves. But the idle and disorderly free blacks 
 naturally seek the society of such slaves as are disposed to be 
 idle and disorderly too; whom they encourage to be more and 
 more so, by their example, their conversation, and the shelter 
 and means which they furnish. They encourage the slaves to 
 theft, because they partake in its fruits. They receive, secrete, 
 and dispose of the stolen goods; a part, and probably much 
 the largest part, of which they often receive, as a reward for 
 their services. They furnish places of meeting and hiding 
 places in their houses, for the idle and the vicious slaves; 
 whose idleness and vice are thus increased and rendered more 
 contagious. These hiding places and places of meeting arc 
 so many traps and snares, for the young and thoughtless slaves, 
 who have not yet become vicious; so many schools in which 
 they are taught, by precept and example, idleness, lying, de 
 bauchery, drunkenness, and theft. The consequence of all 
 this is very easily seen, and I am sure is severely felt in all 
 places, where free people of colour exist in considerable num 
 bers."* 
 
 The experience of the states north and east of the Snsque- 
 hannah, with regard to this class of persons, is not, on the 
 whole, much more encouraging. The number of respectable 
 individuals is considerably greater indeed, but the character 
 of the mass nearly the same. Nor can it be urged that 
 they are debarred here, access to the ordinary means of moral 
 and intellectual regeneration. On the contrary, schools are 
 established for them; they are aided in procuring the conve 
 niences for religious instruction and divine worship; they are 
 united in societies adapted to produce self-respect, and men 
 tal activity; exemplary attention is paid, in numerous in- 
 
 * Letter of Robert Goodloe Harper, Esq. to the Secretary of the 
 American Colonization Society. August 20tli, 1817. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 395 
 
 stances, to the regulation of their habits and principles. They SECT.IX. 
 have every facility which is enjoyed by the labouring classes ****~v~**s 
 among the whites, of acquiring a plain education, and a com 
 fortable subsistence, and of making provision for their chil 
 dren. They have the same legal security in person and pro 
 perty, and generally, the same political rights as the rest of 
 the community. 
 
 In the slave-holding states, they do, indeed, labour under 
 civil incapacities ; and the policy of denying them the 
 higher privileges of citizenship, is imperative. We have felt 
 the inconvenience of naturalized Europeans exercising those 
 privileges in distinct bodies, collected and animated by na 
 tional feeling; the risk of the African race voting and legis 
 lating with the esprit de corps, is too serious to be incurred, 
 even where all of the race might be free, provided they should 
 be at all numerous; and to incur it would be madness, where 
 a considerable number of them should, as slaves, remain to be 
 irritated and goaded to revolt, by the invidiousness of the ex 
 ample, and the inevitable conspiracy of the others for the uni 
 versal release of their brethren. If we suppose that the mul 
 titude of free blacks whom Virginia, for instance, has now in 
 her bosom, would exercise the privileges of citizenship, were 
 these granted to them; and if we then assume the natural 
 consequences, the elevation of some of their number to the 
 legislature, and a concert of views and action among the whole, 
 we must see that she would have to prepare herself at once 
 for the alternative of a general extinction of her negro sla 
 very, whatever might be the catastrophe; or of the establish 
 ment of a restraining code and police which, if it proved 
 effectual to prevent that danger, must aggravate the condition 
 of the slave, and defer the period at which his emancipation 
 might otherwise take place. " The experiment, so far as it 
 has been already made among us," says Judge Tucker, 
 " proves that the emancipated blacks are not ambitious of 
 civil rights. To prevent the generation of such an ambition, 
 appears necessary; for if it should ever rear its head, its par- 
 tizans, as well as its opponents, will be enlisted by nature her 
 self, and always ranged against each other," 
 
 20. The complaints which the British travellers and 
 reviewers have made of the unjust disfranchisement of the 
 free blacks, have then no foundation in fact, as regards the 
 eastern states; nor in sound speculation, in reference to the 
 southern. The disfranchisement which exists in the latter, 
 cannot be said to be unjust, if injustice in the business of life, 
 
396 . NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PARTI, be not a mere abstraction, and have any thing to do with the 
 v -* p ~v~^ ^ consideration of self-preservation, and the welfare of the ma 
 jority. All qualifications of property in the matter of election 
 and legislation would be unjust, and the doctrine of universal 
 suffrage, which the Edinburgh Review has so stoutly com 
 bated, the only true one, if the above mentioned complaints 
 were admissible. 
 
 With what an ill grace does reproach on the subject of 
 disfranchisement, come from an Englishman! One-fourth of 
 the whole united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 
 four-fifths of the population of Ireland separately are inca 
 pable of sitting in Parliament, and of holding various civil and 
 military stations. The motive for continuing this system of 
 exclusion is avowed to be expediency. A large portion of the 
 most intelligent politicians of Great Britain deny the fact 
 of the alleged expediency; and surely, in the case of the 
 Catholics of England, a small body, confessedly qualified in 
 point of understanding, morals, property, tried loyalty; there 
 could be no practical inconvenience, as there is not even pre 
 tended to be the least direct danger, in admitting them to all 
 the benefits of the British constitution; except only that their 
 admission might render the Catholics of Ireland more earnest 
 and importunate in seeking the same level. The case of the 
 latter even, which wears a more plausible air as to expediency, 
 is, in this respect, in no degree so strong as that of the negroes 
 in our southern states, and infinitely beyond it in point of 
 practical hardship and moral deformity.* England disfran 
 chises, not a race of men of a different complexion from her 
 own, and of inveterate heterogeneity; degraded, in the gene 
 ral estimation of the European race, and who had been forced 
 upon her hands by another country; insensible to the value 
 of political rights, and incompetent to exercise them benefi 
 cially; but a people in whose favour all the natural sympa 
 thies, and most endearing natural affinities plead to her heart; 
 whom she and all the civilized world acknowledge to be their 
 equals in the choicest endowments of mind and body; whose 
 country she invaded and whose independence she crushed; 
 among whom she established by the sword that reformed re 
 ligion, the dissent from which is the pretext for their disfran 
 chisement; to whom she owes a boundless retribution for ages 
 of acknowledged misgovernment and oppression, and gratitude 
 for the most important services and aids rendered to her in 
 every branch of her public business. 
 
 * See Note V. 
 
SLAVE TRADE, 
 
 397 
 
 21. Nothing can be more false than the representations of SECT. IX. 
 the English travellers concerning the treatment of the free v^"v>^ 
 blacks by the whites in the middle and eastern states. It is . 
 not true that they are " excluded from the places of public 
 worship frequented by the whites; 7 that " the most degraded 
 white will not walk or eat with a negro;" or that they are 
 u practically slaves."* Their situation as hired domestics, 
 mechanics, or general labourers, is the same in all respects as 
 that of the whites of the same description; they are fed and 
 paid as well; equally exempt from personal violence, and free 
 to change their occupation or their employer. They approach 
 us as familiarly as persons of the correspondent class in England 
 approach their superiors in rank and wealth; and, in general, 
 betray much less servility in their tone and carriage. They 
 do not make part of our society, indeed; they are not invited 
 to our tables; they do not marry into our families; nor would 
 they, were they of our own colour, with no higher claims 
 than they possess, on the score of calling, education, intelli 
 gence, and wealth. I confess that whatever claims they 
 might possess in these or other respects, those are advantages 
 from which they would be excluded; there must remain, in 
 any case, a broad line of demarcation, not viewed as an incon 
 venience by them, but indispensable for our feelings and inte 
 rests. Nature and accident combine to make it impassable. 
 Their colour is a perpetual memento of their servile origin, 
 and a double disgust is thus created. We will not, and 
 ought not, expose ourselves to lose our identity as it were; to 
 be stained in our blood, and disparaged in our relation of 
 being towards the stock of our forefathers in Europe. This 
 may be called prejudice; but it is one which no reasoning 
 can overcome, and which we cannot wish to see extinguished. 
 We are sure that it would prevail in an equal degree with 
 any nation of Europe who might be circumstanced like our 
 selves; we do not find it so gross in itself, or so hurtful and 
 unjust in its operation, as those of an analogous cast which we 
 see prevailing in England. " Men of true speculation," says 
 Mr. Burke, u instead of exploding general prejudices, employ 
 their sagacity to discover the latent wisdom which prevails in 
 them. If they find what they seek, they think it more wise 
 to continue (he prejudice, with the reason involved, than to 
 cast away the coat of prejudice, and leave nothing but the 
 naked reason." 
 
 * These are the allegations of Fearon ; worthy of notice only so fur 
 as they have been employed as texts by the Reviewers. See Note W. 
 
398 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. 22. The unfortunate condition and character of the free 
 ^~v-^> blacks generally, are not imputable to the whites; but to the 
 existence itself of negro slavery among us, and to the circum 
 stance of a distinctive colour. The iirst is the work of Erg- 
 land; the other of nature. As the case is, we need not be sur 
 prised, nor can we much lament, that some of the southern 
 states have passed laws to discourage manumission. The 
 enactment of such laws proves that the practice prevailed, or 
 was likely to prevail, notwithstanding the injuriousness of (tie 
 effects. We know lhat many thousands of the planters of t le 
 old states in the souih, are restrained, not by the laws, but >y 
 a tenderness and sense of duty to the negroes themselves, a id 
 to the commonwealth. There are few Americans capable of 
 reasoning calmly and from experience, on this subject, who lo 
 not concur, in reference to the southern states at least, in tie 
 following sentiments of the enlightened and benevolent e i- 
 quirer, whose accurate representation of the condition of t ic 
 free blacks I have quoted above. 
 
 "The considerations stated in the first part of this letUr, 
 have long since produced a thorough conviction in my min>l, 
 that the existence of a class of free people of colour in this 
 country is highly injurious, to the whites, the slaves, and the 
 free people of colour themselves: consequently, that all eman 
 cipation, to however small an extent, which permits the per 
 sons emancipated to remain in this country, is an evil, which 
 must increase with the increase of the operation, and would 
 become altogether intolerable, if extended to the whole, or 
 even to a very large part, of the black population. I an), 
 therefore, strongly opposed to emancipation, in every shape 
 and degree, unless accompanied by colonization." 
 
 Colonization is, in fact, the only reliance in this great ques 
 tion. Without it, no plan of abolition can be effectual for 
 the security of the whiles, or the good of the blacks; since 
 the permanence of the latter, free or enslaved, within the 
 abode, or the neighbourhood, of the former, is the main dan 
 ger. Colonization is, no doubt, itself attended with appalling 
 difficulties. The aspect of these difficulties prevented the 
 legislature of Virginia from adopting, at an early period, a bill, 
 prepared by a committee, for gradual emancipation in that 
 state. Jt was thought, and not without reason, that to plant 
 a nation of negroes in the American territory, would be to lay 
 the foundation of intestine wars which could terminate only 
 in their extirpation or final expulsion; that to assign them a 
 country beyond the settlements of the whites, would be to put 
 them on a forlorn hope against the Indians. The expense of 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 399 
 
 their transportation and establishment presented itself, also, as SECT.ix. 
 an obstacle little short of insurmountable.* v^^-^x 
 
 The expedient of transplanting the free blacks to the coast 
 of Africa; of opening there a receptacle for our black popula 
 tion at large; occurred to the Virginia legislature in the be 
 ginning of the present century. At the solicitation of that 
 body, the federal government endeavoured, in 1802, through 
 Mr. King, the American minister in London, to negotiate with 
 the Sierra Leone Company, for the admission of the American 
 blacks into their colony. But the application did not succeed; 
 and the same fate attended a similar attempt, which was made 
 with Portugal, to obtain an establishment for them within her 
 South American dominions. 
 
 While the British slave trade continued, no hope could be 
 entertained of the prosperity of such an establishment on the 
 coast of Africa. u To account," said the Edinburgh Review, 
 in 1805, u for the failure of the Sierra Leone plan, it is quite 
 sufficient to reflect, that it was undertaken in 1791, on the 
 supposition then so natural, of the slave trade being about to 
 cease; that, instead of this expectation being realized, the 
 traffic in question increased daily and hourly in growth; that 
 the company in vain besought Parliament to check the trade, 
 at least in the narrow district where the colony was planted." 
 In sending our negroes thither, we should only have been fur 
 nishing aliment for that insatiable passion which occasioned 
 the introduction of the race into our own country. Constantly 
 expecting a rupture with Great Britain, or actually engaged 
 in hostilities with her, from the period of her abolition of the 
 slave trade, it is only of late that we could again look to the 
 coast of Africa. The project of making a settlement in that 
 quarter, for the purpose of gradually restoring our black popu 
 lation to their native region, and thus extirpating the slavery 
 which we detest, and fear, has been revived. As soon after 
 the conclusion of the peace in 1815, as our political circum 
 stances would permit, a society, styled the American Coloni 
 zation Society, was formed in the south, on the most liberal 
 plan, and under the most distinguished auspices. It enjoys the 
 particular patronage of the legislature of Virginia; has the 
 countenance and aid of the federal government; and appears 
 to be viewed with an eye of favour by the slave-holding 
 states. Auxiliary societies have been organized in different 
 parts of the country, and will, probably, multiply fast, and 
 excite every where an interest in the important object, which 
 
 * Tucker s Notes on Blackstone. 
 
400 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART r. will greatly facilitate its success. The principal society has 
 V^N~^/ already caused the western coast of Africa to be explored, and 
 is sanguine as to the practicability of the plan of settlement 
 in some district of that coast. I must confess that I have 
 no hope of its success. The British government, whatever 
 may be its professions, will not allow any establishment to 
 thrive and be perpetuated, which may interfere with its par 
 ticular views in that direction. As long, moreover, as the 
 slave trade is prosecuted in its present frightful extent, or. in 
 deed, until it shall be contracted within very narrow limits, 
 no colony which we may form, can be prevented from be 
 coming, either its prey, or one of its factories. The act ng 
 attorney-general of Sierra Leone declared in 1813, on he 
 trial of certain persons for an infraction of the British aboli 
 tion laws, that the town itself, Sierra Leone, was " the heart 
 from which all the arteries and veins of the slave-trading sys 
 tem had for years been animated and supplied."* The direc 
 tors of the African Institution}, in their answers to the queries 
 of Lord Castlereagh, already cited, hold the following h n- 
 guage. " Sierra Leone, and its immediate neighbourhood, 
 may be considered as the only part of the African coast where 
 plans of improvement can be pursued without immediately 
 encountering the malignant influence of the slave trade. It is 
 almost necessary, therefore, to confine within that sphere, at 
 least for the present, any direct efforts made for the civilization 
 and improvement of Africa. Even the establishment formed 
 in the Rio Pongas, for the instruction of the natives, it is fear 
 ed, must be withdrawn, in consequence of the revival of the 
 slave trade." 
 
 Though, from the commercial jealousy of Great Britain, 
 the prevalence of the slave trade, or our liability to be involved 
 in wars with the European nations, which would interrupt 
 our communication with Africa, we should be obliged to with 
 draw our aims from that continent, the plan of colonization 
 may, I think, still be pursued on our own, with equal conve 
 nience and less risk of final miscarriage. I will not undertake 
 to point, out the spot for its execution; this does not belong to 
 my subject; but there cannot be wanting a spot within our 
 reach, free from all invincible objections. The object is of 
 infinite importance; it calls for the earnest attention of the 
 whole nation, and the unanimous agency of the federal 
 
 * See Dr. Thorpe s View of the present increase of the Slave 
 Trade, p. 71, 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 401 
 
 government. "The alarming danger," says General Harper,* SECT. IX. 
 " of cherishing in our bosom a distinct nation, which can ne- ^^-v^^> 
 ver become incorporated with us, while it rapidly increases 
 in numbers; a nation which must ever be hostile to us, from 
 feeling and interest; the danger of such a nation in our bosom, 
 need not be pointed out to any reflecting mind. It speaks not 
 only to our understanding, but to our very senses." 
 
 23. In defiance of the lessons of history and of the true 
 philosophy of the human mind, the British writers have in- 
 sisied, that freedom must be altogether an empty name in the 
 country where domestic slavery is established. Their doc 
 trine would deprive Greece and Rome of the distinction, upon 
 which the admiration of mankind for those republics has 
 been chiefly built. Freedom would be just born, as it were, 
 in the world. u In every age and country," says Hallam, in 
 his History of the Middle Ages, " until times comparatively 
 recent, personal servitude appears to have been the lot of a 
 large, perhaps the greater portion of our species. We lose a 
 good deal of our sympathy with the spirit of freedom in 
 Greece and Rome, when the importunate recollection occurs 
 to us, of the tasks which might be enjoined, and the punish 
 ments which might be inflicted, without control either of law 
 or opinion, by the keenest patriot of the Comitia, or the 
 Council of Five Thousand. A similar, though less powerful 
 feeling, will often force itself on the mind, when we read the 
 history of the middle ages." 
 
 The institution of slavery in the ancient republics was at 
 tended with every circumstance which might appear incom 
 patible with the prevalence of true liberty, or of the moral and 
 political virtues of the highest class. f But who can deny to 
 Greece and Rome an ample share of those honours? "We 
 feel," says Ferguson, in his Essay on the History of Civil 
 
 * Letter to the American Colonization Society. 
 
 -{ " In the ancient states, 3 says the Scottish philosopher, Millar, in 
 his Origin of Ranks, "so celebrated upon account of their free govern 
 ment, the bulk of their mechanics and labouring 1 people were denied 
 the common privileges of men, and treated upon the footing of inferior 
 animals. In proportion to the opulence and refinement of those nations, 
 the number of their slaves was increased, and the grievances to which 
 they were subjected became the more intolerable." 
 
 " Allowing five persons to each family, the Athenian slaves exceeded 
 the freemen in the proportion of between two and three to one In 
 the most nourishing periods of Rome, when luxury was earned TO so 
 amazing a pitch, the proportion of the inhabitants reduced into servi 
 tude was in all probability greater." 
 
 VOL. I.3 E 
 
402 
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. Society, " the injustice of the institution of slavery at Sparta. 
 ^^^-^ We suffer for the helot; but we think only of the superior or 
 der of men in this state, when we attend to that elevation an \ 
 magnanimity of spirit, for which danger had no terror, interest 
 no means to corrupt; when we consider them as friends or as 
 citizens, we are apt to forget, like themselves, that slaves hav2 
 a title to be treated like men." 
 
 Hallam, in the work which I have quoted above, has con 
 tended for the freedom of the English consiiiuiion during the 
 days of English villeinage, and ascribed to the commons cf 
 those days a proud sense and tenaciousness of equality in civil 
 rights. In what manner the villeins were treated, and in whst 
 light viewed, will be understood from the following passage cf 
 this author. 
 
 "By a very harsh statute in the reign of Richard II. m 
 servant or labourer could depart, even at the expiration of his 
 service, from the hundred in which he lived, without permis 
 sion under the king s seal; nor might any one who had beei 
 bred to husbandry, till twelve years old, exercise any other 
 calling. A few years afterwards, the commons petitioned 
 that villeins might not put their children to school, in order to 
 advance them by the church; and this for the honour of ail 
 the freemen of the kingdom. In the same parliament they 
 complained, that villeins fly to cities and boroughs where their 
 masters cannot recover them, and prayed that the lords might 
 seize their villeins in such places, without regard to the fran 
 chises thereof."* 
 
 If the traits which I have cited in the second section of this 
 volume, from the early political history of the southern states, 
 were not enough to convince the mother country of the compa 
 tibility of the love and possession of the broadest civil liberty, 
 with the institution of domestic servitude, the part which they 
 took as colonies in asserting and maintaining the rights of 
 America against her scheme of usurpation, ought to have dis 
 pelled all her doubts on the subject. One of her statesmen, 
 at least, an adept in the science of human nature, did not 
 remain in error; but placed the question before her in the 
 just and full light, as an admonition against perseverance in 
 her perilous career. It is strange that it should be necessary 
 to repeat, for the instruction of some of her most witted wri 
 ters of the present day, the following passage of Burke s speech 
 on the conciliation with America. 
 
 " There is a circumstance attending these southern Ameri 
 
 * Vol. ii. c. viii. 
 
SLAVE TRADE, 403 
 
 can colonies, which makes the spirit of liberty still more high SECT. IX. 
 and haughty there than in those to the northward. It is that, ^^^-^ 
 in Virginia and the Carolinas, they have a vast multitude of 
 slaves. Where this is the case in any part of the world, those 
 who are free, are by far the most proud and jealous of their 
 freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment, but a 
 kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there, that freedom, 
 as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad 
 and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil t 
 with great misery, uiih all the exterior of servitude, liberty 
 looks, amongst them, like something that is more noble and 
 liberal. I do not mean to commend the superior morality of 
 this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; 
 but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and these 
 people of the southern colonies are much more strongly, and 
 with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty 
 than those of the northward. Such were all the ancient 
 commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such in our 
 days were the Poles; and such will be all masters of slaves, 
 who are not slaves themselves. In such a people the haughti 
 ness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, forti 
 fies it, and renders it invincible." 
 
 All our experience in America, since the revolution, con 
 firms the opinion of the orator; or, at least, assures us, that 
 the citizens of the slave-holding states understand quite as 
 well, and cherish as fondly, the principles of republicanism, 
 as those of the other members of our union. Bryan Edwards 
 has indicated in the character and demeanour of the West ; 
 Indians, what we find universal among our south and south 
 western brethren. " Of the character," says this author. 
 " common to the white residents of the West Indies, it ap* 
 pears to me that the leading feature is an independent spirit, 
 and a display of conscious equality, throughout all ranks and 
 conditions. The poorest white person seems to consider him 
 self nearly on a level with the richest, and, emboldened by 
 this idea, approaches his employer with extended hand, and 
 a freedom which, in the countries of Europe, is seldom dis 
 played by men in the lower orders of life towards their supe* 
 riors. It is not difficult to trace the origin of this principle. 
 It arises, without doubt, from the pre-eminence and distinction 
 which are necessarily attached even to the complexion of a 
 white man, in a country where the complexion, generally 
 speaking, distinguishes freedom from slavery."* 
 
 * History of the West Indies, ch, i. b- iv 
 
404 
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PARTI. I m ay apply in the same way the following representations 
 v -^ vr>w which Edwards makes in continuation. u Possibly too, the 
 climate itself, by increasing sensibility, contributes to create 
 an impatience of subordination. But, whatever may be tha 
 cause of this consciousness of self-importance in the Weft 
 Indian character, the consequences resulting from it are, o i 
 the whole, beneficial. If it sometimes produces an ostenta 
 tious pride, and a ridiculous affectation of splendour, it more 
 frequently awakens the laudable propensities of our nature 
 frankness, sociability, benevolence, and generosity. In no 
 part of the globe is the virtue of hospitality more generally 
 prevalent, than in the British sugar islands. The gates of 
 the planter are always open to the reception of his guests. To 
 be a stranger is of itself a sufficient introduction." 
 
 24. There is some plausibility in the theory of the Edin 
 burgh Review concerning the effects of commanding slaves 
 upon ihe heart and the morals. But it is not established by 
 our experience, as true in the general. The native citizen 
 of the slave-holding state displays, specifically, as much sen 
 sibility, justice, and stedfastness, in all the domestic and social 
 relations, as the European, of whatever country. He is as 
 strongly influenced by the ties of kindred and friendship; as 
 open to the impressions which attemper and refine our nature. 
 He has had a large share in the formation and administration 
 of our institutions and laws; in all the executive offices, civil 
 and military; and we have never discovered in him any parti 
 cular proneness to tyranny or inhumanity; a torpid conscience, 
 or an imperfect sense of equity. In none of the nobler vir 
 tues ant! qualities has he ever proved deficient, in the compa 
 rison with the individual born and fashioned among freemen 
 alone. If there be any thing contradistinguishing in his man 
 ners and disposition, it is certainly not ferocity or even harsh 
 ness. The planter of our old southern states has always been 
 rather remarkable for his urbanity and facility, as well as for 
 the dignity and liberality of his sentiments. Morals, it is said, 
 are more loose in the slave-holding states. If we admitted this 
 to be the case, it would by no means follow that the institution 
 of slavery is the principal cause of the relaxation. An original 
 difference of religious institutions, and maxims of conduct; of 
 soil and climate; of modes of livelihood and materials of 
 traffic; of circumstances attending the connexion with the 
 mother country; might give the same result. Domestic sla 
 very continues in Germany and the northern parts of Europe; 
 it has disappeared from the southern; but the dissoluteness of 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 405 
 
 these is notoriously greater. Hungary is more in the odour of SECT. IX. 
 sanctity than the kingdom of N iples. The institution in v-*~v~w 
 question is to be abhorred, on account of the violence which 
 it offers to human rights, and the abjection to which it reduces 
 human nature: a priori it would seem to exert a fatal influ 
 ence on the character of the master; but our experience at 
 least, I repeal it, would not justify us in adopting the theory. 
 When we investigate the dispositions and morals of the Eu 
 ropean nations, it is not with the u lowest and least" of them 
 alone, but with the highest and greatest that we venture to 
 compare the white population of our slave-holding states. It 
 is not unknown to us, that in Russia the number of slaves 
 held as property, and subject to absolute will, is sextuple that 
 of our negroes:* That, in the other parts of Europe, where 
 the institution of slavery does not exist, there are other insti 
 tutions generating an hundred fold more vice, misery, and 
 debasement, than we have ever witnessed in the same com 
 pass in America. 
 
 25. The laws of the slave-holding states do not furnish a 
 criterion for the character of their present white population, 
 or the condition of the slaves. Those laws were enacted, for 
 the most part, in seasons of particular alarm, produced by 
 attempts at insurrection; or when the black inhabitants were 
 doubly formidable by reason of the greater proportion which 
 they bore to the whites, in number, and of the savage state 
 and unhappy mood in~which they arrived from Africa. The 
 real measure of danger was not understood but after long 
 experience; and in the interval, the precautions taken, were 
 naturally of the most jealous and rigorous aspect. That these 
 have not been all repealed, or that some of them should be 
 still enforced, is not inconsistent with an improved spirit of 
 legislation; since the evils against which they were intended to 
 guard are yet the subject of just apprehension. England in 
 undated South Carolina, for instance, with barbarians, and 
 now reproaches her with the measures which she took for her 
 security against their brute force. 
 
 There is no Code Mir which surpasses in atrocity that 
 
 * See the Appendix to Storch s Course of Political Economy/ St. 
 Petersburg 1 , 1815. This writer states, that in 1782, the number of 
 male peasants, or serfs, of the crown, amounted to 4,675,000; that they 
 could be hired out, sold, given away, &c. ; and the number of male 
 slaves, the property of subjects, he estimates at 6,678,000; equally at 
 the disposal of the masters. 
 
406 
 
 NEGRO SLAVERY ANi> 
 
 PARTI, part of the British statute book relating to Roman Catholics.* 
 **~ >r >* What Englishman will allow us to make this, as it stood be 
 fore Sir George Saville s act, or even as it now stands, th; 
 index to British humanity and justice? Acts of proscription 
 are still suffered to remain in terrwem, ready for a barely pos 
 sible emergence. "The laws against the Catholics," said the 
 Bishop of Worcester, in the House of Lords, (May 19th 
 1819,) " had hitherto been administered tenderly and sparing 
 ly; they would, doubtless, continue to be so administered 
 unless some event should occur to render their strict enforcement 
 necessary." 
 
 Since the revolution, most of the southern codes have beer; 
 softened in regard to the slave police; and the murder of a 
 negro is now capital throughout our union, except in one 
 staie. I have already quoted the assertion of Dr. Dickson. 
 that "the harshness of the slave laws is but little softened bv 
 the lenity of the general practice in the British sugar islands. 1 - 
 The reverse of this is notoriously true of the American states. 
 The patrol laws, for example, of South Carolina, which con 
 tain the most oppressive of her regulations, are rarely put in 
 execution. In Virginia, the interdict laid, at the time of what 
 is called Gabriel s insurrection, upon the assemblage of ne 
 groes, a " seditious meetings bill," like that passed by the 
 British parliament in 181 7,f is wholly neglected. No re 
 straint in this respect is imposed upon them by their masters, 
 except such as may be necessary for purposes of domestic or 
 der and labour. 
 
 Before our revolution, the negro slavery of this country was, 
 as we have seen, acknowledged to be universally less severe 
 than that of any other part of the world. It has undergone, 
 since that event, a great and striking amelioration. To this 
 fact, all who have witnessed and compared the former and 
 present lot of the slaves of our southern states, bear the most 
 confident testimony. What was once deemed a moderate 
 treatment, would now be a rigid one; and the tolerated rigour 
 
 * "Laws," says Mr. Burke, in his speech at Bristol, previous to the 
 election, " were made in this kingdom against Papists as bloody as any 
 of those which had been enacted by the Popish princes and states ; 
 and where those laws were not bloody, they were worse ; as they were 
 slow, cruel, outrageous on our nature, and kept men alive, only to insult 
 in their persons every one of the rights and feelings of humanity." 
 
 f By the standing Riot Jlct of England, not more than twelve per 
 sons are allowed to continue together, after it has been read by the 
 magistrate. Lord Castlereagh said in Parliament in 1817, that "there 
 was not on the statute book a law which had been more beneficial tc 
 the country." 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 407 
 
 of the first period could find no countenance at the present. SECT.ix. 
 The negro has gained nearly as much by our separation from ^-^-^w 
 Great Britain as the white. The causes of this undeniable 
 fact are various and obvious. 
 
 With the importation of the Africans, ceased much of the 
 dread, which the slave population inspired, while it was con 
 tinually receiving large accessions of strangers. At this time 
 by far the greater part of the slaves of the old states, have 
 been born and brought up by the side of the whites. In pro 
 portion as the indigenous character predominated, the propen 
 sity on the one hand to shake off the yoke, and the mistrust on 
 the other, which occasioned its aggravation, regularly di 
 minished. Another circumstance tended to render the slaves 
 in a much less degree objects of terror, and to make room for 
 the kindlier dispositions of our nature to operate; the whites 
 came soon to exceed them considerably in number, from emi 
 gration added to natural increase. Brougham has speculated 
 in his Colonial Policy, in conformity to the facts in our case. 
 "There can be little doubt," he says, " that the fatal dis 
 proportion of the two classes, the great proportion of the im 
 ported negroes, and the cruel treatment of the slaves in gene 
 ral, would be all materially altered by any revolution that 
 should separate the colonies from the parent state, while the 
 more rigorous administration of an independent community, 
 would lessen the danger arising from such a mixture of ne 
 groes, or such abuses of the slave system as might still re 
 main." 
 
 Not only does the proportion which the slaves bear to the 
 free part of the community, contribute to determine their con 
 dition, but, in general, the greater or smaller numbers in which 
 they belong to individuals. The abolition of entails and the 
 rule of primogeniture, together with the evaporation of those 
 old prejudices which fettered parental affection in the testa 
 mentary distribution of estates, have, since the establishment 
 of our independence, led to the subdivision of every kind of 
 property, in the southern communities. The negroes, being 
 more widely apportioned, exist in smaller bands, and are of 
 course more under the immediate care and inspection of the 
 masters, in whose eyes they must at the same time have, 
 singly, more value. The interest of the master in the welfare 
 of the slave is not to be urged as a full security against ill 
 usage; but it cannot fail to have a considerable influence; and 
 it has been constantly increasing from the enhancement of 
 the price of negroes, occasioned by the demand for their la- 
 hour in the new states, and the insufficiency of the supplie? 
 
406 
 
 iNEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. which the illicit importation from Africa can furnish. Ti fc 
 ^^^ ^*- more abundant production of food, the increase of wealth 
 with the planters, and more strictness of principle and regi - 
 larity of habits, (for these too can be proved to be among the 
 effects of the revolution,) have redounded likewise to the ad 
 vantage of the slaves. 
 
 It is not to be doubted, but that the political discussion *, 
 which preceded our revolution, the spirit of the institutioi s 
 which grew out of it, and the diffusion of education, excited 
 a greater sensibility to human rights; a quicker sympathy 
 with human sufferings; a more general liberality of sentimen ; 
 and a higher pride of character, in the slave-holding part of 
 our population. Hence a new public opinion sprung up, rt- 
 quiring a system of lenity and generosity in the government 
 and sustentation of the slaves; and repressive, not only of 
 barbarity, but of habitual severity in any marked degree, 
 and of what may be equivalent in its effects, habitual indif 
 ference and estrangement. These abuses have become dif - 
 reputable; they expose the man who is guilty of them to tht 
 disdain and reprobation of his neighbours; and in this way 
 are more efficaciously checked than they could be by any 
 legislative enactments. The master who should deprive his 
 negro of his peculium, the produce of his poultry house or 
 his little garden; who should force him to work on holidays 
 or at night; who should deny him the common recreations, 01 
 leave him without shelter or provision in his old age, would 
 incur the aversion of the community, and raise obstacles to 
 the advancement of his own interests and external aims. 
 
 26. The American negro slavery is almost wholly free from 
 two of the grievances which characterize that of the West 
 Indies under-feeding and over-working. With regard to the 
 great article of food, the American negroes are, assuredly, 
 better supplied than the free labourers of most parts of 
 Europe. Flesh meat is not attainable for the latter in the 
 same quantity which is commonly given to the first; it would 
 seem, (on this head I refer to the quotations which I have 
 made from the Quarterly Review,*) not to be attainable at all 
 for the poorer classes of Great Britain and Ireland. In respect 
 to clothing and lodging, the comparison would give nearlv 
 the same result. On the score of fuel, the want of which 
 occasions so much suffering in particular counties of Great 
 Britain, and, as to the point of labour, the advantage is greatly 
 
 * Seepage 228. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 4Q9 
 
 f on the side oi the American negroes in general. I cannot, SECT. IX, 
 here, enter into the details of the system, upon which they are ^^^^^^ 
 worked on the southern plantations; but I can say of it, that 
 it involves nothing like the same intensity, duration, or con 
 tinuity of exertion, which would appear to be indispensable 
 in Great Britain, in almost all the lower walks of mechanical 
 industry, for the mere support of animal life. The average 
 number of hours of daily toil exceeds there by nearly one 
 half that which is exacted under the system just mentioned. 
 A few extracts from recent debates of Parliament will deter 
 mine the validity of this assertion. 
 
 In the House of Commons, (April 29th, 1818,) "Mr. 
 Peel said, in Manchester alone, 11,600 children were em 
 ployed in the cotton factories, and the average time of labour 
 thirteen hours a day. Most of these poor children, after the 
 thirteen hours of labour, were obliged to go to school to learn 
 to write." 
 
 " Sir Robert Peel said, it was proved that in Lancashire, 
 children were employed fifteen hours a day, and after any 
 stoppage, from five in the morning until ten in the evening, 
 seventeen hours, and this often for three weeks at a time. On 
 Sunday they were employed from six in the morning until 
 twelve in cleaning the machinery." 
 
 "Mr. Peter Moore said, (May 13th, 1819,) in the town 
 which he had the honour to represent, (Coventry,) there 
 were five classes of manufacturers, each working ninety-six 
 hours in the week, or sixteen hours in the day. The first of 
 these classes gain, in return for their labour, ten shillings a 
 week, or two pence halfpenny an hour, which is but a very- 
 trifling share of what they were formerly in the habit of ac 
 quiring. The second class gained 55. 6rf. a week. The third 
 2s. 9d., which is labouring four hours for five farthings. The 
 two remaining classes receive 2s. and Is. 6d. a week, which 
 is working at the rate of seven and nine hours for a single 
 halfpenny." 
 
 " Mr. Mansfield said, (March 25th, 1819,) that he had at 
 tended a committee that day, before whom a case was proved 
 of a great number of labourers, who, by working fifteen or 
 sixteen hours a day, could not earn above seven shillings per 
 week." 
 
 The physical condition of the American negro is, on the 
 
 whole, not comparatively alone, but positively good, and he 
 
 is exempt from those racking anxieties the exacerbations of 
 
 despair, to which the English manufacturer and peasant are 
 
 VOL. I. 3 F 
 
410 
 
 JNLGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. subject in the pursuit of their pittance.* The old age of the 
 ^-v^^- negro, in Virginia and the Carolinas particularly, is by no 
 means one of cheerlessness or destitution. He is not tasked 
 beyond his strength; he is sure of nutriment; he remains in 
 the midst of his comrades; and, in most cases, has a family 
 about him with the feelings and attractions of legitimacy: for, 
 the polygamy, and promiscuous intercourse between the sexes, 
 which crown the abominations of West India slavery, are not 
 common features in the North American. 
 
 We have it upon the authority of the Quarterly Review, 
 \that the great body of the British people "work with tht 
 prospect of want and pauperism before their eyes as what 
 must be their destiny at last;" that " in the road in which the 
 English labourer must travel, the poor house is the last stage 
 on the way to the grave."! If we are entitled to form an 
 opinion from the Parliamentary Reports, no mean authority, 
 this final stage of the English labourer is worse than any 
 stage in the career of the American negro. The victim ot 
 American barbarity" finds in his "quarter" comforts which 
 the tenant of the British poor house might envy, and can ne 
 ver hope to enjoy. 
 
 From the minutes of evidence before the parliamentary com 
 mittee on the state of the poor, it would appear, that the treat 
 ment experienced in the receptacles provided for them, is 
 wretched and barbarous almdst beyond credibility. By way 
 of example, the witnesses stated ihat in one room 28 feet long 
 by 15 wide, there were two and twenty persons sleeping; that 
 
 * I appeal to the petitions presented to Parliament by bodies often, 
 and twenty thousand agriculturists and manufacturers at a time. The 
 following representation, made by Mr. Brougham in the House of Com 
 mons, may be taken as a specimen of their condition. 
 
 " Mr. Brougham observed that the weavers, in consequence of the 
 reduction of their wages, were compelled first, to part for their suste 
 nance with all their trifling property by piece-meal, from the little fur 
 niture of their cottages to the very bedding and clothes that used to 
 cover them from the weather. They struggled on with hunger, and 
 went to sleep at night-fall, upon the calculation that if they worked an 
 hour or two later, they might indeed earn three halfpence more, one 
 of which must be paid for a candle, but then the clear gain of a penny 
 would be too clearly bought, and leave them less able to work the next 
 day. To such a frightful nicety of reckoning are human beings reduced, 
 treating themselves like mere machines, and balancing the produce 
 against the tear and wear, so as to obtain the maximum that their phy 
 sical powers can be made to yield! At length, however, they must 
 succumb ; the workhouse closes their dismal prospect; or, with a re 
 luctance that makes their lot a thousand times more pitiable, they sub 
 mit to take parish relief ; and, to sustain life, part with the indepen 
 dent spirit, the best birthright of an English peasant." 
 
 f See page 287. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 411 
 
 idiots lived promiscuously with the other paupers; that the SECT, ix 
 fowls and chickens were kept in the pantries where the food ^-^v^^ 
 for the poor was kept; that they were in general extremely .ill 
 clothed, &c. The parishes contracted with individuals for 
 keeping their poor at so much a head, and made them thus 
 victims of avaricious speculation. It was shown that one in 
 dividual farmed the poor of no less than forty parishes, re 
 ceiving six shillings a week for each pauper; and spending of 
 course as little as possible of this stipend for the accommoda 
 tion of his guests. London had eighteen thousand poor in the 
 different workhouses in England. I refer to the Report of 
 the House of Commons on Mendicity, for a general picture 
 of the condition of the paupers in those work-houses. 
 
 " Your committee," says the Report, " cannot hesitate to 
 suggest that there are not in the country a set of beings more 
 immediately requiring the protection of the legislature than 
 the persons in a state of lunacy and mendicity, a very large 
 proportion of whom are entirely neglected by their friends and 
 relations. If the treatment of those in the middling or in the 
 lower classes of life, shut up in hospitals, private mad-houses, 
 or parish work-houses, is looked at, your committee are per 
 suaded that a case cannot be found, where the necessity for a 
 remedy is more urgent." 
 
 The details of the Report recall to mind, but with features of 
 tenfold patheticalness, the touching lament of the poet Crabbe : 
 
 " Then too I own, it grieves me to behold 
 Those ever virtuous, helpless now and old, 
 By all for care and industry approv d, 
 For truth respected, and for temper lov d; 
 And who, by sickness and misfortune try d, 
 Gave Want its worth and Poverty its pride : 
 I own it grieves me to behold them sent 
 From their old home ; tis pain, tis punishment, 
 To leave each scene familiar, every face, 
 For a new people and a stranger race ; 
 For those who, sunk in sloth and dead to shame, 
 From scenes of guilt with daring spirit came ; 
 Men, just as guileless, at such manners start, 
 And bless their God that time has fenc d their heart, 
 Confirm d their virtue and expelFdthe fear 
 Of vice in minds so simple and sincere. 
 
 Here the good pauper, losing all the praise 
 By worthy deeds acquir d in better days, 
 Breathes a few months, then to his chamber led, 
 Expires while strangers prattle around his bed."* 
 
 27. The religious instruction of the slaves cannot be said 
 to be an object of immediate care with the majority, or any 
 
 * See Note X. 
 
412 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I great proportion, of the American masters; but they are fai 
 ^ from refusing them access to it, in any form. It is left at the 
 option of the negroes to frequent the churches and meeting 
 houses, which, in the country, have universally a compart 
 ment for their occupation. The old, or infirm, or those whose 
 conduct has been exemplary, are indulged with horses to 
 ride to sermons. They have, in numerous instances, houses 
 of worship for their separate use, where individuals of their 
 own number, empowered by the white elders, preach, and 
 discharge the other functions of the ministry. Itinerant mis 
 sionaries of the gospel have formed congregations of them in 
 almost every district; and though the Christian lecture cannot 
 be otherwise than rare, and the attendance upon it loose, yet 
 enough is done to leave a salutary impression, and to make it 
 utterly inconsistent with the truth to say of them, what the 
 Quarterly Review says, no doubt with great truth, of two-thirds 
 of the lower order of people in all the large cities and towns of 
 England, and of "the greatest part of her manufacturing po 
 pulace, and her miners and colliers," that they live as utterly 
 ignorant of the doctrines and duties of Christianity, and are as 
 errant and unconverted Pagans, as if they had existed in the 
 wildest part of Africa."* 
 
 South Carolina has had a great share of the obloquy of the 
 British travellers, on this subject. Their outcry will riot be si 
 lenced, but the friends of justice and humanity will be gratified, 
 by the following facts which I extract from an official Report, 
 dated the 14th June, 1819, of a committee of the Board of 
 Managers of the Bible Society of Charleston, respecting the 
 progress and present state of Religion in South Carolina. 
 * From the best information the committee have been able to 
 obtain, they find that the Gospel is now preached to about six 
 hundred and thirteen congregations of Protestant Christians; 
 that there are about two hundred and ninety-two ordained 
 clergymen who labour amongst them, besides a considerable 
 number of domestic missionaries, devoted and supported by 
 each denomination, who dispense their labours to such of the 
 people as remain destitute of an established ministry. From 
 actual returns, and cautious estimates where such returns have 
 not been obtained, it appears that in the state there are about 
 46,000 Protestants who receive the holy communion of the 
 Lord s supper. In the city of Charleston, upwards of one- 
 fourth of the communicants are, slaves or free people of colour: 
 and it is supposed that in the other parts of the state, the 
 
 * See page 288. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 413 
 
 proportion of such communicants may be estimated at about SECT. ix. 
 one-eighth. In every church they are freely admitted to attend ^^^^- 
 on Divine service in most of the churches distinct accommo- 
 dations are provided for them, and the clergy in general make 
 it a part of their pastoral care to devote frequent and stated 
 seasons for the reliious instruction of catechumen from 
 
 
 amongst the black population." 
 
 This train of affairs in South Carolina is somewhat more 
 creditable than that in the British West Indies, where scarcely 
 any thing has been done for the conversion of the negroes. If 
 we did not see by the statements of the Quarterly Review 
 and the parliamentary papers, to what a deplorable extent the 
 initiation of the people of England into Christianity has been 
 neglected,* we should find it difficult to believe that her 
 established church had, in the course of nearly two centu 
 ries, attempted nothing towards the regeneration of the mil 
 lions of heathens who have been held in bondage in her 
 islands. To this effect, however, is the testimony of all the 
 best authorities concerning the affairs of those islands. Mo 
 ravian missionaries alone had sought to introduce the light of 
 the Gospel among a population requiring its lessons and con 
 solations, more, perhaps, than any other on earth. At length 
 the late Bishop Porteus founded a a Society for the conversion 
 of negro slaves," which has been nearly inoperative. With 
 respect to the British planters themselves, it is asserted in a 
 recent work entitled to full credit, that u there is not, and ne 
 ver was, either worship or instruction of any kind provided 
 by them for their numerous slaves."! The number of ne 
 groes in the British West Indies, baptized and endoclrinated, 
 bears no assignable proportion to those in the United States. 
 
 28. The British philanthropists, in making their appeal in 
 favour of the former, have seemed to consider every thing 
 as gained, if only " the humblest and coarsest necessaries of 
 /i/e, the protection of law, and the assistance of labouring cattle. 
 could be secured to them 4 It is long since so much and more 
 has been secured to the great majority of the North American 
 negroes: and the irresistible proof offers itself in the increase 
 of their numbers. The Edinburgh Reviewers would, with 
 all their ingenuity, find it difficult to reconcile the aspersions 
 
 * See Note Y. 
 
 f Letters on the West Indies, by James Walker, London, 1818 
 Letter VI. 
 
 t Dickson s Mitigation of Slavery. Preface- 
 
414 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART I. which they cast upon the American as the murderer and scaur- 
 "-^v-^^ ger of slaves, with the fact that, according to the rate of in 
 crease from 1790 to 1810, the number of years required tor 
 the duplication of our slave population is only 25.99. The 
 allowance to be made on account of importations, would not 
 extend this term to twenty-eight at the utmost, for the nat i- 
 ral increase. The population of Great Britain, as appears by 
 authentic documents, does not double in less than eighty years* 
 Even in the most unhealthy districts of South Carolina, whe -e 
 rice is cultivated, and the labour of the negroes comparatively 
 severe, they do not diminish in numbers. A benevolent pra > 
 tice prevails among some of the rice planters, of paying to the 
 overseers, in addition to their regular emoluments, a cert an 
 sum per head (usually ten dollars) for the annual increas 3; 
 and it has proved no insignificant source of revenue to the 
 latter. 
 
 "The increase of the American slaves and people of co 
 lour," says the Quarterly Review of May, 1819, " appears o 
 have been in a much greater proportion than that of the whle 
 population, and it is not improbable, that in a few generations, 
 the negro race will exceed the whites in all except the eastern 
 states. The number of slaves in the United States, is now 
 above two millions, and including the free negroes, the black 
 population of America constitutes more than one-fourth part 
 of the whole." If all this were accurate, it would refute at 
 once the tales which the orthodox journal has so often repeat 
 ed con amore, respecting the treatment of that black popula 
 tion. It is marked, however, by the usual ignorance, or spirit 
 of exaggeration, where America is in question. Our census 
 of 1810 teaches, that, according to the ratio of increase for 
 the twenty years preceding, the number of years required for 
 the duplication of the whites was 22.48; and that required 
 for the slaves, as I have mentioned, 25.99. The whites in 
 creased from 1790 to 1810, 85.26 percent.; the slaves 70.75. 
 The mere natural increase is not, however, shown exactly 
 by this calculation. We should deduct the annual addition 
 made to the numbers of both from without, which would 
 probably leave the proportion the same. The whole number 
 of slaves in 1810, was 1,191,364: and of free people of co 
 lour, 186,466. Together they did not equal one-fourth of 
 
 * "It appears by Mr. Pickman s tables," says the Quarterly Review, 
 "that the population of England and Wales has nearhj doubled in the 
 last hundred years," a term nearly four times longer than that require? 
 for the duplication of the American negroes. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 415 
 
 the white population, which was 5,862,092; nor make but SECT.IX. 
 little more than one-sixth of the whole. At present, the *^-*^*s 
 proportion must be still less, as the raiio of increase for the 
 white population is undoubtedly greater.* In 1810, the white 
 population of the nine slave-holding states of that period, 
 amounted to 2,153,455; that of the coloured, free and en 
 slaved, to 1,242,862. The census of 1820 will give three 
 millions at least of white population in the slave-holding coun 
 tries of the union; and not more than 1,700,000 of black, 
 allowing for the addition made to the number of the last by 
 illicit importation. Should we admit the ratio of increase to 
 be the same for both, the political arithmetician of the Quar 
 terly Review would find it difficult to solve the problem, in 
 how many generations " the negro race will exceed the whites," 
 especially if he be confined to his own limitation "in all 
 except the eastern states," under which denomination he 
 could not mean to include Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois; con 
 taining nearly a million of whites, without the alloy of a slave. 
 
 29. The removal of considerable numbers of the slaves 
 from the old slave-holding states, to the south and souUj-vest, 
 tends materially to increase the relative majority of the whites 
 in those states, and is likely to continue, so as greatly to lessen 
 the danger to which they may be held to be exposed. The 
 slaves emigrate either with their original owners, or with per 
 sons of the same or an adjoining state, to whom they are sold, 
 and who purchase them for their own use; or with the negro 
 traders as they are called. The greater number go with the 
 two first descriptions of persons, to a more fruitful soil; to a 
 climate equally or more favourable to their constitutions; alto 
 gether they suffer but little, if at all, by the change of position. 
 They are not, in general, committed to a new master, who is 
 unknown; or who does not possess the best teslimonials as to 
 his views, and the respectability of his character. It had been 
 long the practice to sell the intractable slaves, and such as were 
 guilty of crimes, to the traders, who disposed of them to the 
 planters of South Carolina and Georgia. This disposition 
 even of culprits may scandalize the writers of the Quarterly 
 Review; but it is not quite so harsh as that of selling them to 
 
 * The operation of it may be understood from the following state 
 ment. 
 
 In 1790, for every 100 free persons, there were 22.13 slaves. 
 
 In 1800 - ditto 20.29 do. 
 
 In 1810 ditto - - ,-- .- 19.69 do. 
 
416 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. the Key of Tripoli* would have been; nor worse than tin; 
 
 ^-^^w transportation of the British convicts to Botany Bay, accord- 
 ing to the description of it which I have already given in tho 
 language of members of Parliament;! or to the character of 
 it which is implied in the following extract from the volume 
 of Parliamentary Debates for the year 1793. " Mr. Fox no 
 ticed the mention that had been made of the transportation of 
 convicts to Botany Bay, and said, that the hardships of tin; 
 passage would appear less extraordinary, when it was known, 
 that the transportation was undertaken by slave merchants, 
 and slave captains, and that a part of the misery of the con 
 victs was the effect of slave fetters being used instead of thos; 
 employed in general for convicts. "J 
 
 The proportion of slaves of good character, whom the tra 
 ders obtain, is small comparatively: The severance or disper 
 sion of families is by no means so common as might be sup 
 posed from the tales of the English travellers. This evil is 
 produced in England in a hundred instances to one that oc 
 curs among our negroes, and with tenfold affliction, by tho 
 extensive emigration which the public burdens occasion, and 
 
 * The Report of the Parliamentary proceedings of April, 1819, fur 
 nishes the following-. 
 
 "Mr. Bennet said (House of Commons) he had no high opinion of 
 the tender sympathies of ministers on these subjects. He had in his 
 recollection what passed on the subject of convicts in the year 1789, 
 when they were first sent out; when (the house would scarcely believe 
 it) it ivas proposed and discussed in the Privy Council, -whether the convict^ 
 at that time should not be sold to the Bey of Tripoli as slaves ! This propo 
 sition (the proposition of, as we understood, Lord Auckland) was con 
 sidered, though of course rejected; though it showed how little dis 
 posed the government were at that time to attend to the situation of 
 the convicts. At the same time, a ship that was sent out with them had 
 not any settled destination ; and the sentences of some of the convicts 
 had expired before they reached the colony to which they were a! 
 length consigned." 
 
 -[ See page 304. 
 
 i "From the year 1785 to 1801, of 3833 convicts embarked, 385 died 
 on board the transports, being nearly one in ten." O //am*5 History of 
 JV*. S. Wales. 
 
 " The difficulties, which for a long course of years attended the plan, 
 for sending our convicts to New South Wales, gave rise to the convict, 
 establishments at Woolwick, Sheerness, and Portsmouth : where grea 
 numbers of criminals were crowded together to await the hour of their 
 deportation, under circumstances of the most afflicting nature : many, 
 who have been sentenced to transportation, having passed the wholr 
 period of their punishment in a state of wretched and useless impri 
 sonment at home. Such was then the condition of these establish 
 inents, that they were pronounced in the House of Commons, by om: 
 of the best and greatest men that ever entered its walls, to be a hot be<i 
 of vice and wickedness." Roscoe, Observations on Penal Jurisprudent 
 1819. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 417 
 
 ihe operation of the poor laws; to say nothing of the cases so SECT.IX. 
 common in time of war, of seamen impressed when returning ^^~v-^*" 
 from distant voyages, and that even without being allowed . 
 the comfort of seeing their families. 
 
 Kidnapping is frequent; but the states have universally 
 subjected it to the severest penalties; some of them to that of 
 death. As great an abhorrence for it pervades the whole 
 country, as any crime can be supposed to excite among a 
 moral people. The flagellation of the slaves for misdemeanors, 
 or from the impulses of anger, or churlishness in the masters, 
 is, no doubt, too common; but it would be every way unjust 
 to judge of the conduct of the Americans in this respect, by 
 what passes hi the West Indies. In the use of the lash 
 the discipline of the southern plantations is contradistin 
 guished from that of the West Indian, as much as in the de 
 gree of labour and the supply of food. Public opinion, 
 and all the other causes of reformation which I have no 
 ticed, operate equally in this matter. But it is not for an 
 Englishman to complain of the use of the lash among fo 
 reigners. The hysterical indignation of the British Reviewers 
 and travellers on this head, appears even ludicrous, when we 
 advert to the fact, that no nation employs the scourge more se 
 verely or generally than the British. Education with her is con 
 ducted with the birch; whipping is almost her sum of discipline 
 in the army and navy; the seaman is flogged from ship to ship; 
 the soldier, tied up to the halberds and exposed in the most 
 shameful and ignominious manner, dies under the stripes of the 
 drummer, or is withdrawn only when the surgeon who watches 
 his ebbing pulse, declares that nature can bear no more. The 
 number of apprentices in Great Britain is, probably, little less 
 than that of our negroes; corporal punishment is as familiarly 
 inflicted upon them, and as frequently to a brutal excess: I 
 attest the Old Bailey calendar, when I assert, that they 
 are oftener maimed and murdered by the hand of the mas 
 ters. So horrid and multiplied were the enormities of this 
 kind, which accident or private feeling brought to light, that 
 the legislature was compelled to interfere; but with how little 
 effect the records of the Assizes and the tenor of the late 
 Parliamentary Reports, will show. In short, there is no form 
 of human suffering which an Englishman is so much accus 
 tomed to witness, to hear and to read of, in his own country, 
 as flagellation in all its varieties and degrees. I do not wish 
 to pursue this odious topic, on which reprisals might have no 
 end, further than to quote a passage of some significancy from 
 
 VOL. I. 3G 
 
418 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 PART i. a late and excellent work of Mr. Roscoe of Liverpool 
 ^-^vx*/ u It has frequently been observed, with some degree of exul 
 tation, that torture is not permitted in this country. If b] 
 torture be meant the subjecting a person to the rack, for the 
 purpose of compelling him to give evidence, or to confess ait 
 impufed crime, this country is certainly not chargeable wit! 
 so diabolical a practice. But, if the lacerating and scourging 
 the person of an individual, as a punishment for his offences, 
 be torture, it is a proceeding not only well known to our laws, 
 but of frequent occurrence. There are, in fact, few mutilations 
 or sufferings to which the human frame can be subjected, tha 
 Iflave not, in this country, at one time or another, been resort 
 ed to, as a punishment for offenders; nor does there appear to 
 be any obstruction, other than such as arises from the more 
 improved and humanized spirit of the times, to similar punish 
 ments being again inflicted; but independent of these barba 
 rities, the use of the whip is general throughout the prisons of 
 the kingdom, where prisoners, for small offences, are whipped 
 and discharged. 1 * 
 
 Those advertisements for the recovery of runaways, whicl 
 are copied into the English Reviews, and books of Travels 
 with exclamations of such horror and reproof, as though Eng 
 lish newspapers contained nothing to chafe the feelings oi 
 humanity, and rouse the spirit of freedom, are incident to the 
 existence itself of negro slavery; and I think I have shown 
 that this is an evil which could neither be avoided nor remov 
 ed by America. Negroes cannot be held as property, without 
 being subject to alienation. A mortmain would be impracti 
 cable, and if it could be established, mischievous to all par 
 ties. The proclamation of the intention to sell, while it give^ 
 effect to the necessary and useful right of alienation, affords 
 the subject of it a better chance of being transferred into good 
 hands. At all events, it is an inevitable incident of an inevi 
 table institution. Slaves who abscond from the master must 
 be reclaimed, or there would be an end to all slavery in the 
 most mischievous of all forms of abolition. Without the aid 
 of the public, the master would be unable to recover the fugi 
 tive. And it is to be presumed that the latter is, quite as often, 
 a delinquent seeking independence for the sake of licentious 
 ness, or from a refractory disposition, as a victim escaping the 
 exactions of avarice, or the lash of tyranny. Unfortunately, 
 the character of the negro race with us, and indeed the charac 
 ter which is produced in all cases of bondage, might warrant, 
 
 * Observations on Penal Jurisprudence, 1819. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 419 
 
 a presumption more unfavourable to the slave. His flight is, SF.CT IX. 
 in a general point of view, a violation of the order of society, s^"v^* 
 which it is the interest, and, abstractedly, the duty, of every, 
 citizen to repress and correct. 
 
 The Quarterly Review of May, 1819, after transcribing 
 from Fearon s Travels a couple of plain advertisements of 
 negroes for sale or hire, which that missionary had extracted 
 from a New York paper, proceeds thus u What, subjoins 
 Mr. Fearon with an amiable warmth, should we say, if in 
 England we saw such advertisements in the Times newspaper? 
 Should we not conclude that freedom existed only in words? 
 Such would, indeed, be a legitimate conclusion." Alas, then, 
 for the freedom of England herself, as late as the year 1772, 
 notwithstanding the boasts of the Britons of that day! Clark- 
 son and Granville Sharp have kept a record which, upon the 
 principles of Mr. Fearon and the Quarterly Review, invali 
 dates all their pretensions. Clarkson, having mentioned the 
 opinion given in 1729. by the great law officers of the crown 
 that a slave coming from the West Indies into Great Britain 
 did not become free, and that the master might legally compel 
 him to return again to the plantations, makes the following 
 statement: 
 
 " The cruel and illegal opinion was delivered in the year 
 1729. The planters, merchants, and others, gave it of course 
 all the publicity in their power. And the consequences were 
 as might easily have been apprehended. In a little time slaves 
 absconding were advertised in the London papers as runaways, 
 and rewards offered for the apprehension of them, in the same 
 brutal manner as we find them advertised in the land of sla 
 very. They were advertised also, in the same papers, to be 
 sold by auction, sometimes by themselves, and at others with 
 horses, chaises, and harness. They were seized also by their 
 masters, or by persons employed by them, in the very streets, 
 and dragged from thence to the ships; and so unprotected now 
 were these poor slaves, that persons in no wise concerned with 
 them began to institute a trade in their persons, making agree 
 ments with captains of ships going to the W 7 est Indies to put 
 them on board at a certain price." 
 
 Granville Sharp, unmindful, like the British Reviewers, 
 that the domestic slavery which Britain had planted in our 
 soil, and so assiduously cultivated, could not be exscinded, 
 nor divested of its essential properties, also suffered him 
 self to be fired by some New York advertisements. When 
 he has recited them, in his "Representation of the Injus- 
 
420 NEGRO SLAVERY AND 
 
 P\RTT. tice of Slavery,"* he proceeds, however, in a difierenr. 
 
 " But hold! perhaps the Americans may be able, with too 
 much justice, to retort this severe reflection, and may refer us 
 to newspapers published even in the free city of London, 
 which contain advertisements, not less dishonourable than 
 their own. See <he following advertisement in the Public 
 Ledger of 51st December, 1761. 
 
 "FOR SALE, 
 
 " A healthy Negro GIRL, aged about 1 5 years; speaks good 
 English, works at her needle, washes well, does household 
 work, and has had the small pox. By I. W. &c." 
 
 Another advertisement, not long ago, offered a reward for 
 stopping a female slave who had left her mistress in HattoL 
 Garden. And in the Gazetteer of 18th April, 1769, appear 
 ed a very extraordinary advertisement, with the following 
 title. 
 
 " HORSES, TIM WHISKEY, AND BLACK BOY. 
 
 " To be sold, at the Bull and Gate Inn, Holborn, a very 
 good Tim Whiskey, little the worse for wear, &c." After 
 wards, "Achesnut Gelding" Then, "A very good grey 
 Mare." And last of all, (as if of the least consequence) "A 
 well made good tempered Black Boy; he has lately had the 
 small pox, and will be sold to any gentleman. Enquire as 
 above." 
 
 Another advertisement in the same paper, contains a very 
 particular description of a negro man, called Jeremiah - 
 and concludes as follows: " Whoever delivers him to captain 
 M u y, on board the Elizabeth, at Prince s stairs, Rother- 
 hithe, on or before the 31st instant, shall receive thirty guineas 
 reward, or ten guineas for such intelligence as shall enable 
 the captain or his master, effectually to secure him." 
 
 " A creole Black Boy is also offered to sale in the Daily 
 Advertiser of the same date." 
 
 " Besides these instances, the Americans may perhaps 
 taunt us with the shameful treatment of a poor negro servant 
 who not long ago was put up to sale by public auction, toge 
 ther with the effects of his bankrupt master. Also, that the 
 
 * London, 1769. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 421 
 
 prisons of this free city have been frequently prostituted of SECT. ix. 
 Jate by the tyrannical and dangerous practice of confining \~*~v~*^ 
 negroes, under the pretence of slavery, though there has been 
 no warrant whatsoever for their commitment." 
 
 It may be said that these practices were arrested in Eng 
 land. They were indeed, and so have they been wherever 
 this could be done, in the United States. But they were 
 more wanton and malignant in that country, since they 
 did not spring out of a general and long established system of 
 slavery; and they show how the people of England would 
 have acted, if the old law had not proved to be, upon labo 
 rious investigation, peremptory upon the subject. The Bri 
 tish merchant, however, continued to fit out his ship at Liver 
 pool, or London, for the coast of Africa; the British factory 
 supplied him with troops of kidnapped negroes; his captain 
 transported them, with every refinement of cruelty, to the 
 British West Indies, and there advertised and sold them, un 
 der the sanction of the British government, in the name of his 
 owner, a great stickler, perhaps, for liberty and universal 
 emancipation; who railed each day against American incon 
 sistency and barbarity in holding and advertising slaves, and 
 repealed complacently the well known verses of Cowper. 
 " slaves cannot breathe in England," c. 
 
 30. We do not deny, in America, that great abuses and evils 
 accompany our negro slavery. The plurality of the leading 
 men of the southern states, are so well aware of its pestilent 
 genius, that they would be glad to see it abolished, if this were 
 feasible with benefit to the slaves, and without inflicting on 
 the country, injury of such magnitude, as no community has 
 ever voluntarily incurred. While a really practicable plan of 
 abolition remains undiscovered, or undetermined; and while 
 the general conduct of the Americans is such only as neces 
 sarily results from their situation, they are not to be arraigned 
 for this institution. If, as I have no doubt is the case, it 
 produces here much less misery and vice, than it produces 
 in the other countries which are cursed with it, it fur 
 nishes occasion rather for praise than blame. The native 
 Americans claim the distinction of abusing less the dangerous 
 power with which it invests the slave holder; of consulting 
 more the comfort and general welfare of its victims; than the 
 foreigners, Britons not excepted, who so readily participate in 
 that power on associating themselves to this nation. We are 
 
NEGRO SLAVERY AN1> 
 
 T. told by an English writer, Ramsay,* who is supported in tht 
 asseriion by Edwards, that, with respect to the West India sla 
 very, " adventurers from Europe are universally more cruel 
 and morose towards the slaves han the Creoles or native Wesl 
 Indians." The analogy is perfect in our case, and of notoriety. 
 It is a matter of old experience in Virginia and the Carolinas: 
 and the American planter appears to Hike advantage at present 
 in Louisiana, in the contrast, on this head, with the French and 
 Spanish, who have pursued, but who are gradually abandon 
 ing under the salutary influence of our political and social 
 spirit, an hereditary system of rigour. 
 
 In admitting the deformity and evil of our negro slavery, 
 we are far from acknowledging, that any nation of Europe is 
 entitled, upon a general comparison between our situation ae 
 it is thus unluckily modified, and her own, with all appen 
 dages and ingredients, to assign to herself the pre-eminence 
 in felicity, virtue, or wisdom. On the contrary, we know of 
 none with which we would make a general exchange of" in 
 stitutions," and are assured that there is none, whose mode oi 
 being on the whole, is not much more unfavourable than ours, 
 to the attainment of the great ends of society. Who can 
 say that the negro slavery of these states, combined even with 
 every other spring of ill, existing among us, occasions, propor 
 tionally, as much of suffering, immorality and vileness, as the 
 unequal distribution of wealth and the distinctions of rank, the 
 manufacturing system, the penal code, the taxes, the tythes, 
 the poor rates, the impressment, in England ? Are there not 
 as many of her inhabitants, as the whole number of our blacks, 
 as effectually "disfranchised;" as entirely uninstructed; in 
 the last stage of penury and distress; whose physical con 
 dition universally, is hardly better than that of the most lowly 
 plantation slave, and who are heart-struck and broken-spirit 
 ed, if not hardened and enraged? 
 
 Let us examine for a moment how the case stands with the 
 people of England, as to one of the worst of the effects, with 
 which our, and all other domestic slavery, is properly re 
 proached, the abasement of the human character. Lord 
 Sheffield is a witness who will never be suspected of a dispo 
 sition to disparage his country. In 1818, he published a 
 pamphlet, entitled Observations on the Poor Laws; which 
 contains the following, among other striking representations: 
 
 "There is much truth in the remark that a small additional 
 increase of the assessments would, in many instances, render 
 
 * Essay on the treatment and conversion of slaves, &c. 
 
SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 the land productive of no rent at all. The very aggravated SECT. IX. 
 situation of our little farmers is deplorable; il is ruinous." v^vx*/ 
 
 " In many parishes, three-fourths, sometimes four-fifths of 
 the parish, actually receive relief: the greatest part of the po 
 pulation have hecome beggars, and often insolently insist upon 
 relief depending rather upon their clamorous demands than on 
 their industry, foresight, or economy." 
 
 " The prevailing abuses have brought the country to such 
 a pass, and havt so demoralized and vitiated a great propor 
 tion of the people, that, notwithstanding the ruinous expense 
 incurred by the poor rates, the misery of the lower ranks is so 
 far from being alleviated, that it is virtually created and ex 
 tended by it." 
 
 In the House of Commons, March 3d, 1818, Mr. Curwen 
 said, that u the inadequacy of wages and the practice of sup- 
 plving the deficiency of them from the parish funds, had de 
 stroyed the spirit of independence among the poor." In the 
 month of March of the year preceding, Lord Castlereagh re 
 marked to the house, that " it must be aware that a great 
 proportion of the wages of the country was paid out of the 
 poor rates." On the 19th May, 1819* Lord J. Russell said, 
 in the same place, " he must refer to the conduct of the mi 
 nistry on the important subject of the poor laws, the discus 
 sion of which subject not one of his majesty s ministers had 
 attended. A lamented friend of his, whose loss was felt every 
 day more and more he meant Mr. Horner had observed 
 that by the present poor laws, the people were returning fast 
 to a state of villeinage. The observation was true; they were 
 returning to a state of villeinage, and to a state of villeinage 
 that was incalculably more dangerous than that which existed 
 six centuries ago in an age of darkness and superstition. 
 Sorry was he to say that the once manly peasantry of this 
 country, were now becoming lazy and riotous, and disrespect 
 ful to their superiors, and that they were beginning to look 
 up to the laws with no other view than that of obtaining by 
 them a temporary subsistence." 
 
 We have the curious confession of Lord Sidmouth, made 
 in the House of Peers, on the 3d June, 1818, that " it was 
 notorious the dread of transportation had almost subsided, 
 and perhaps had been succeeded by the desire to emigrate to 
 New South Wales." This desire, which indicates so clearly 
 the state of things at home, would not appear, however, to 
 have been always indulged. Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, in her 
 evidence before the committee of the House of Commons on 
 the state of the prisons, mentioned that " several persons. 
 
424 NEGRO SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE. 
 
 PART I. husbands in anxiety to follow their wives, and vice versa, were 
 ^-^v-^ induced to commit crimes. She instanced one woman who 
 lately suffered death, viz. Charlotte Newman, actuated by <. 
 desire to follow her husband to Botany Bay, who had com 
 mitted the same offence; but it was thought proper to make 
 an example of her, and she was executed!" 
 
 I could produce lamentations without end, uttered in Par 
 liament and in the British pamphlets on domestic affairs, re 
 specting this prostration of character among the body of the 
 English people. It is one view of the state of society in Greal 
 Britain, which excites grief and commisseration; but then 
 are numberless others which fill the mind with horror, and 
 bring unequalled disgrace upon human nature. The extent 
 and variety of the disorder, corruption, oppression, and bar 
 barity; in short, of every species of guilt, misery, and degra 
 dation, which we find unveiled in the late Parliamentary Re 
 ports concerning the poor laws; the state of ihe prisons; the 
 lunatic asylums, and work houses; the charitable trusts; the 
 mendicity and vagrancy, particularly of London; the igno 
 rance of the lower orders; the administration of the penal code, 
 could not be believed, if they were not so authenticated: 
 and can as yet scarcely be conceived to exist in a community 
 professing to be well governed, and styling itself the "best 
 and most enlightened" in the world.* America will be con 
 tent to admit all that the British travellers have written of her 
 negro slavery; to u hold each strange tale devoutly true;" and 
 then to stand the comparison with Gr^at Britain, provided the 
 disclosures of these Reports, the practice of impressment, the 
 system of discipline in the army and navy, the proceedings 
 during the suspension of the habeas corpus act, the excise, and 
 the hulksi be kept in view by the umpire. 
 
 * See Note Z. 
 
NOTES 
 
 (NOTE A. p. 35.) 
 
 TIIE character of the American Indians is too apt to be underrated PART 1 
 by the historians, and the proper degree of credit to be, therefore, 
 withheld from the European settlers in North America, as regards the 
 issue of the struggle. I select from writers, who may be considered as 
 of the highest authority, some general views of Indian hostilities. 
 
 " The Indians," says Ramsay, in his History of South Carolina, " in 
 their military capacity, were not so inferior to the whites as some may 
 imagine. The superiority of muskets over bows and arrows, managed 
 by Indians, in a woody country, is not great. The savage, quick-sighted 
 and accustomed to perpetual watchfulness, springs from his hiding 
 place, behind a bush, and surprises his enemy with the pointed arrow- 
 before he is aware of danger. He ranges through the trackless forest 
 like the beasts of prey, and safely sleeps under the same canopy with 
 the wolf and bear. His vengeance is concealed, till he sends the tidings 
 in the fatal blow." 
 
 " The Indians go to war," says Franklin, in his Canada Pamphlet, 
 " as they call it, in small parties, from fifty men down to five. Their 
 hunting life has made them acquainted with the whole country, and 
 scarce any part of it is impracticable to such a party. They can travel 
 through the woods even by night, and know how to conceal their 
 tracks. They pass easily between your forts undiscovered ; and pri 
 vately approach the settlements of your frontier inhabitants. They 
 need no convoys of provisions to follow them ; for whether they are 
 shifting from place to place in the woods, or lying in wait for an oppor 
 tunity to strike a blow, every thicket and stream furnishes so small a 
 number with sufficient subsistence. When they have surprised sepa 
 rately, and murdered and scalped a dozen families, they are gone with 
 inconceivable expedition through unknown ways: and it is very rare 
 that pursuers have any chance of coming up with them." 
 
 Po-wnaWs Administration of tlie Colonies. 
 
 " Our American frontiers," says governor Pownall, in his Adminis 
 tration of the Colonies, " from the nature of advancing settlements, 
 dispersed ajong the branches of the upper parts of our rivers, and 
 scattered in the disunited vallies, amidst the mountains, must be always 
 unguarded, and defenceless against the incursions of Indians. And 
 were we able, under an Indian war, to advance our settlements yet far 
 ther, they would be advanced up to the very dens of those savages. A 
 settler, wholly intent on labouring on the soil, cannot stand to his arms. 
 
 VOL. I.-3 H 
 
NOTES, 
 
 PART I. nor defend himself against, nor seek his enemy. Environed with wooes 
 \^-v^^ an( l swamps, he knows nothing of the country beyond his farm. Th? 
 Indian knows every spot for ambush or defence. The farmer, drive"! 
 from his little cultured lot into the woods, is lost: the Indian in the wooc ? 
 is every where at home ; every bush, every thicket, is a camp to thf 
 Indian, from whence, at the very moment when he is sure of his blov , 
 he can rush upon his prey. The farmer s cow or his horse, cannot go 
 into the woods, where alone they must subsist : his wife arid childrer , 
 if they shut themselves up in their poor wretched log-house, will be 
 burned in it : and the husbandman in the field will be shot down while 
 his hands hold the plough. An European settler can make but mo- 
 mentarv efforts of war, in hopes to gain some point, that he may by t 
 obtain a series of security, under which to work his lands in peace 
 The Indian s whole life is a warfare, and his operations never discoi,- 
 tinued. In short, our frontier settlements must ever lie at the mercy of 
 the savages : and a settler is the natural prey to an Indian, whose sole 
 occupation is war and hunting. To countries, circumstanced as ovr 
 colonies are, an Indian is the most dreadful of enemies. For, in a WIT 
 with Indians, no force whatever can defend our frontiers from being a 
 constant wretched scene of conflagrations, and of the most shocking 
 murders. Whereas, on the contrary, our temporary expeditions again it 
 these Indians, even if successful, can do these wanderers little harn 
 Every article of their property is portable," &c. 
 
 " The Indians," says Loskiel, in his History of the Indian Missions 
 "need not much provocation to begin a war with the white people ; a 
 trifling occurrence may easily furnish a pretence They frequent; , 
 first deiermine upon war, and then wait a convenient opportunity, to 
 find reasons for it : nor are they much at a loss to find them. 
 
 " It has occasioned much surprise, that, notwithstanding the prevailing 
 fear of the Six Nations, lest the Europeans should become too powerful, 
 they have sold them one tract of land after the other. Some thought a 
 was* done merely for the sake of the presents offered by the purchas 
 ers. But experience has shewn, that this settling of land proved the- 
 best pretence for a war. For when the white people had settled upon 
 the purchased territory, they drove them away again. They have fre 
 quently continued their hostilities against the white people, even during 
 the settling of the peace, or renewed them soon after. In such a cr. 
 tical juncture, the Europeans cannot sufficiently guard against the In 
 dians, especially against the Iroquois. They will treat a white person. 
 who is ignorant of their evil designs, with all apparent civility, and giv : 
 him victuals and drink, but before he is aware, cleave his skull with ?.- 
 hatchet." 
 
 (NOTE B. p. 42.) 
 
 THE first constitution of South Carolina was framed by Locke. M 
 Verplank, in the beautiful Anniversary Discourse, from which I have 
 made a long extract in the text, celebrates him among "the illustrious 
 dead, the rich fruits of whose labours we are now enjoying;" as one 
 of the "original legislators of the country, who gave to our political 
 character its first impulse and direction." It appears 1 ! me, that the 
 great philosopher is not entitled to these distinctions, as far, at least, as 
 his fundamental constitutions for Carolina are concerned. M. Verplank, 
 in claiming for them " many excellent provisions," acknowledges that 
 they were " in all respects, unnecessarily complicated and artificial. 1 
 I see but two provisions in them worthy of particular approbation to 
 
421 
 
 wit, the biennial parliament, and the perfect freedom in religion. On PART I. 
 the whole, it is wonderful how Locke, so practical and sober in his v^-v^^ 
 speculations generally, could have fallen upon a scheme of govern 
 ment so fanciful, and indeed so preposterous, when viewed in refer 
 ence to the character and situation of the colonists for whom it was 
 intended. " Nothing," says Chalmers, " can show more clearly the 
 fallibility of the human understanding than the singular fate of these 
 constitutions. Discovered instantly to be wholly inapplicable to the 
 circumstances of an inconsiderable colony, and in a variety of cases, to 
 be altogether impracticable, they were immediately changed. The 
 identity of them was debated by those to whom they were offered as a 
 vule of conduct, because they had not been consulted in the formation 
 of them. They gave rise to the greatest dissentions, which long dis 
 tracted the province, and engendered civil discord. And, after a 
 little period of years, the whole, found inconvenient and even danger 
 ous, were laid aside, and a much simpler form established."* 
 
 * Locke," adds this author, " was, in the year 1670, created a land 
 grave, as a reward for his services ; and, like the other Carolinian no 
 bles created under this constitution, would have been consigned to 
 oblivion, but for those writings that have enlightened the world, while 
 they have immortalized himself." Those admirable writings had, un 
 doubtedly, a sensible influence over the minds of the American legis 
 lators of a subsequent period. Their impress is distinguishable in our 
 present federal constitution particularly. His fundamental principles 
 were, however, embodied in political statutes, and put into steady 
 action, in the midst of the North American wilderness, even before 
 the era of his birth. If we compare his constitutions for Carolina 
 with those which the New England settlers framed for themselves, 
 we will not have so much to complain of " the fallibility of the 
 human understanding," as to mock at the pride of philosophy, and 
 to question the competency of the highest talents in speculation, to the 
 business of devising the true rule of action for communities of men. 
 The French philosophers succeeded for their country, no better than 
 Locke for Carolina : Jeremy Bentham s " Codification" is a master- 
 piece of absurdity, &c. 
 
 (NOTE C. p. 48.) 
 
 THE body of Roman Catholic gentlemen, who settled Maryland 
 in 1633, appear to me to be clearly entitled to the merit of priority in 
 the establishment of religious freedom for all Christian sects. Lord 
 Baltimore, as we have seen in the text, by his original plan of polity, 
 established Christianity agreeably to the old common law, with the ex 
 press denial of pre-eminence to any sect. His associates recognized 
 this principle, and acted upon it from the outset. The first assemblies 
 of the freemen of the province, held in 1634-5-7-8-9, all admitted it as 
 fundamental. That of 1649, promulged a statute concerning religious 
 equality and freedom, which is not only prior in date, as a charter for 
 all Christian sects, to any other legislative act of the kind, of which this 
 country can boast, but provides more minutely and anxiously than any 
 ether extant, for the protection of the rights of conscience, and the 
 preservation of religious harmony. I know of no law on the subject 
 
 * Annals, p, 528, 
 
425 NOTES, 
 
 PART I. bespeaking so tolerant a spirit as to the divisions of Christianity ; so 
 , ^_ t prudent and sound a judgment, and so generous a solicitude. It is to 
 
 be noted, that among the early settlers, were several priests. The num 
 ber of these had increased at the date of the act, and their concur 
 rence in its regulations, is ascertained from unquestionable evidence. 
 The toleration of the Church of England might have been unavoidable 
 for the founders of Maryland, and at all events, tended obviously to 
 keep them well with the English government. But no motive of thi i 
 nature existed with respect to the sectaries, whose familiar appella 
 tions they enumerated, as far as it was practicable, in the law, in order to 
 their greater security even from insult. The favour of the English go 
 vernment was, on the contrary, to be gained by the persecution of tho 
 Quakers and Puritans. 
 
 Roger Williams began his plantation in Providence in 1636. Rhode 
 Island was settled in 1638. In these settlements, a system of universal 
 toleration would seem to have been pursued from the beginning. 
 
 But there is no specific law on the subject of religious freedom in th-> 
 first code of Rhode Island, of 1647, although the concluding paragraph 
 of that code implies universal toleration. It is said in the Political Annah 
 of Chalmers,* that among the ordinances of the Rhode Island assembly 
 of 1663, there is one which enacts, that " all men professing Christianity , 
 and of competent estates and civil conversation, Roman Catholics out / 
 excepted, shall be admitted freemen, or may choose or be chosen cole 
 nial officers." Holmes has repeated this statement in his very useful 
 Annals; and its correctness does not appear to have been questioned b/ 
 any of our historians. This disfranchisement of Roman Catholics wa 
 so little iu unison, however, with the doctrines previously asserted ami 
 acted upon by Rhode Island and her illustrious founder, Roger Williams, 
 that it was natural to doubt of the existence of the alledged exception 
 The attention of the public having been drawn to the subject, last win 
 ter, by Mr. Verplank s Discourse, James Burrill, jun. Esq., the distin 
 guished senator from Rhode Island, in the federal congivss, zealous for 
 the honour and credit of Roger Williams, as the earliest apostle of 
 unlimited toleration, solicited Mr. Samuel Eddy, the secretary of 
 elate of Rhode Island, to make research into her records, with a view 
 to the solution of the difficulty. Mr. Eddy had occupied the station 
 of secretary from October 1797, until May 1819, and acquired a tho- 
 rough acquaintance with the archives and antiquities of Rhode Island. 
 He is, besides, a gentleman of a discriminating mind and scrupulous 
 veracity, who must inspire the fullest confidence in every point of 
 view. 
 
 Mr. Burrill has had the goodness to communicate to me the answer of 
 Mr. Eddy, containing the results of a diligent investigation. I am induced 
 to make it part of this note, notwithstanding its length, being assured 
 that it will be considered as interesting and valuable, by all who are 
 curious or concerned about American history. It affords a fine lesson 
 of state liberality, and establishes the singular facts that the restriction 
 in the law, to those only who professed Christianity, and the exception 
 of Roman Catholics, were introduced after the year 1688, by some 
 committee who prepared a new digest of the laws; that if the restric 
 tion, with the exception, was ever approved of by the Rhode Island 
 Assembly, this approbation must have been given after 1688 ; and that 
 the object of its introduction and continuation was solely to win favour 
 in England in the reigns of William and Anne. The bigotry of the 
 mother country is set in a striking light, by the necessity of such ? 
 feint for the acquisition of her good will. 
 
NOTE3, 
 
 P \RT I 
 
 Statement of Mr. Eddy. 
 
 The first settlers in Providence, (1636) and in the island of Rhode 
 Inland (1638) were governed by voluntary associations until 1647. Re 
 ligious liberty was fully enjoyed in these associations. In March 16-1-3-4, 
 a charter was obtained by Roger Williams from " the Governor in 
 Chief, Lord Admiral, and Commissioners for foreign plantations," au 
 thorising the inhabitants to adopt " such a form of civil government ;,- 
 by voluntary consent of all or the greater part of them, they should 
 find most suitable to their estate and condition," " and to make and or 
 dain such civil laws," &c. " as they or the greater part of them should 
 by free consent agree unto," " to be conformable to the laws of Eng 
 land so far as the nature and constitution of the place would admit." 
 
 Pursuant to this charter, in May 1647, a form of government and a 
 body of laws were agreed to. The laws are thus introduced : 
 
 " And now to the end that we may give each to the other (notwith 
 standing our different consciences, touching the truth as it is in Jesus, 
 whereof upon the point we all make mention,) as good and hopeful as 
 surance as we are able, touching each man s peaceable and quiet en- 
 joyment of his lawful right and liberty, We do agree unto, and by 
 the authority abovesaid enact, establish, and confirm these orders fol 
 lowing." 
 
 Among others, "That no person in this colony shall be taken or im 
 prisoned, or be disseised of his lands or liberties, or be exiled or any 
 otherwise molested or destroyed, but by the lawful judgment of hi* 
 peers, or by some known law, and according to the letter of iV, ratified 
 and confirmed by the major part of the General Assembly, lawfully met, 
 and orderly managed." 
 
 " For as much as the consciences of sundry men truly conscionable, 
 may scruple the giving or taking of an oath, and it would be no ways 
 suitable to the nature and constitution of our place, (who profess 
 ourselves to be men of different consciences, and not one willing to 
 force another,) to debar such as cannot so do, either from bearing office 
 among us, or from giving in testimony in a case depending. Be it 
 enacted," Sec. " that a solemn profession be accounted of as full force 
 as an oath." &c. This body of laws is concluded by these memorable 
 words, " These are the law r s that concern all men, and these are the 
 penalties for the transgressions thereof, which, by common consent, are 
 ratified and established throughout the whole colony. And otherwise 
 than thus, what is herein forbidden, all men may walk as their con 
 sciences persuade them, every one in the name of his God. And let 
 the lambs of the Most High walk in this colony without molestation, in 
 the name of Jehovah their God, for ever and ever." 
 
 These are all the laws relating to this subject under the charter of 
 1643-4. The second charter bears date July 8, 1663, was brought over 
 (by Capt. George Baxter,) and presented to the Court of Commission 
 ers November 24, 1663, and the next day to " a very great meeting 
 and assembly of the freemen of the colony." The day following, the 
 Court of Commissioners resigned their authority, and declared them 
 selves dissolved. 
 
 The preamble to this charter recites, " that whereas in their hum 
 ble address, they have freely declared, that it is much in their hearts (if 
 they may be permitted) to hold forth a lively experiment, that a most 
 flourishing civil state, may stand, and best be maintained, and that among 
 our English subjects, with a full liberty in religious concernments," and 
 then declares, " That no person within the said colony at any time 
 hereafter shall be any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in 
 question, for any differences in opinion in matters of religion, who do 
 
430 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. not actually disturb the civil peace of our said colony, but that all anc 
 s_^-V"^/ every person and persons may from time to time, and at all times here 
 after freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments am 
 consciences in matters of religious concernments, they behaving them 
 selves peaceably and quietly, and not using this liberty to licentiousness, 
 and profaneness, nor to the civil injury or outward disturbance o 
 others." 
 
 The first meeting of the General Assembly under this charter, wa^ 
 March 1, 1663-4, when the government was organized. They repealec 
 certain laws, which were " contradictory to the form of the present 
 government," and " ordered and enacted that all other laws be of 
 force, until some other course be taken by a General Assembly foi 
 better provision therein." 
 
 The proceedings of this session are all entire, and there is not a -wora 
 on record, of the act referred to by Chalmers, Political Annals, c. xi 
 and contained in the revision of 1745, purporting to have been passed 
 the session of 1663-4. 
 
 Nor is there any thing on record, at either of the sessions this year 
 which has any relation to the subject, unless the following may be sc 
 considered. At May session, the inhabitants of Block Island, being 
 incorporated into a town, the recorder (secretary) was desired to fur 
 nish them with " a transcript of the body of laws," (enacted under 
 the first charter) and " at present," to communicate to them the fol 
 lowing words of the charter, to wit, " That no person within the said 
 colony at any time hereafter, shall be any wise molested, punished, dis 
 quieted, or called in question for any difference of opinion in matters ol 
 religion, who do not actually disturb the civil peace of the said colony." 
 At the same time, John Sands and Joseph Kent, freemen of Block 
 Island, presented a petition in behalf of a number of the inhabitants oi 
 that island, praying that the latter might be admitted freemen of the 
 colony, " and being demanded, if they did know, that all the aforesaid 
 persons were men of peaceable and good behaviour, and likely to prove 
 worthy and helpful members in the colony, they answered yea." 
 Wherepon they were admitted. No where have I discovered any en 
 quiry respecting religion, on the admission of freemen. 
 
 At the session, in May, 1665, three of the king s commissioners, Carr, 
 Cartwright, and Maverick, presented to the General Assembly five 
 propositions or proposals as they are called in the records ; the first and 
 second of which are in these words, 1st. " That all householders inha 
 biting this colony, take the oath of allegiance, and that the administra 
 tion of justice be in his majesty s name " 2d. " That all men of com 
 petent estates, and civil conversation, who acknowledge, and are obedi 
 ent to the civil magistrate, though of different judgments, may be ad 
 mitted freemen, and have liberty to choose and to be chosen officers 
 both civil and military." 
 
 In answer to the first, after saying much about liberty of conscience 
 in relation to oaths, &c. (See Hist. Collections Massachusetts, vol. 7. 
 2d series, p. 95 ) they enacted, that an " engagement of allegiance" 
 should be given (the form of which is prescribed) " by all men capable, 
 within their jurisdiction." 
 
 In answer to the second, they enacted, "That so many of them that 
 take the aforesaid engagements, and are of competent estates, civil 
 conversation, and obedient to the civil magistrate, shall be admitted 
 freemen of this colony, upon their express desire therein declared to 
 the General Assembly, either by themselves, with sufficient testimony 
 of their fitness and qualifications, as shall by the Assembly be deemed 
 satisfactory, or if by the chief officers of the town or towns where they 
 live, they be proposed and declared as abovesaid, and that none shall 
 have admission to vote for public officers or deputies, or enjoy any pri- 
 
NOTES. 
 
 431 
 
 vilege of freemen, till admitted by the Assembly as aforesaid, and their PART I. 
 names recorded in the general records of the colony." v^x^v^x* 
 
 To the third proposal (See Hist. Coll. Mass. p. 99.) they say, " This 
 Assembly do -with all gladness of heart and humbleness of mind, ac 
 knowledge the great goodness of God, and favour of his Majesty in 
 that respect, declaring, that as it hath been a principle held forth and 
 maintained in this colony from the very beginning thereof, so it is much in 
 their hearts to procure the same liberty to all persons within this colony 
 forever, as to the worship of God therein, taking care for the preserva 
 tion of civil government, to the doing of justice, and preserving each 
 other s privileges from wrong and violence of others." 
 
 Among other reasons assigned in a law allowing compensation to the 
 members of Assembly, to enable them the better to discharge their 
 duties, passed September, 1666, is this, " So as in some good measure 
 to answer one main ground of his Majesty s grant, which was to hold 
 forth a lively experiment, that a most flourishing civil state may stand 
 and best be maintained, and that among his English subjects, with a 
 full liberty in religious concernments." 
 
 A militia law, passed May, 1677, is concluded with the words, " Pro 
 vided always, that this Assembly do hereby declare, that it is their full 
 and unanimous resolution, to maintain a full liberty in religious concern 
 ments, relating to the worship of God, and that no person inhabiting 
 within this jurisdiction shall be in any wise molested, punished, dis 
 quieted or called in question for any difference in opinion in matters 
 of religion, who do not actually disturb the civil peace of this colony." 
 I have formerly examined the records of the state, from its first set 
 tlement, with a view to historical information, and lately, from 1663 to 
 1719, with a particular view to this law, excluding Roman Catholics 
 from the privileges of freemen, and can find nothing that has anv re 
 ference to it, nor any thing that gives any preference or privileges to 
 men of one set of religious opinions over those of another, until the 
 revision of 1745. 
 
 It remains now to account for the law quoted by Chalmers, as con 
 tained in this revision of 1745. To do this, it may be proper to state, 
 that the general practice was, and which continued under different re 
 gulations till 1798, (the date of the last revision,) either for the secre 
 tary or others united with him, to draw up in form the laws and pro 
 ceedings at the close of each session, and for the secretary to record 
 the same, and until 1747, to send copies in manuscript under the seal of 
 the colony, to the several towns. The first order for printing the pro 
 ceedings of the General Assembly, was in October, 1747. The first 
 edition of the Laivs was printed in 1719.* This was attended with so 
 many errors, that a committee was appointed to correct them, in a sup 
 plement that was to be printed and annexed to the edition. The second 
 was printed in 1730, by whom, or at what place I have not learnt 
 Neither of these editions is in the secretary s office, nor have I been 
 able to find them. The third was printed in Newport, in 1745, and 
 from which I imagine Chalmers quoted. 
 
 The laws have been uniformly revised by committees. Their prac- 
 tice has been to embody in one all the different laws on the same sub- 
 ject previously passed, with such additions and amendments as they 
 thought proper, confirmed however, before publication, by the General 
 Assembly. The two last revisions (1767 and 1798,) give no date to the 
 several laws, other than by figures in the margin, generally opposite the 
 title or first section of the law, referring to the years when the different 
 laws embodied in one are supposed to have been passed. These refer 
 ences are inaccurate and deficient. 
 
 * Bv Nicholas Boone in Boston. 
 
432 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. * n l ie revision of 1745,* the -whole of every law purports to liavo 
 \^*v~^t been passed at a particular session, though composed of a number oi 
 acts passed in different and subsequent years, and which, in many in 
 stances are referred to in the margin. None of them are dated before 
 March, 1663 4, the time of the first meeting under the second charter, 
 and of those which bear this date not one section of any one of them ivat 
 passed at this session. The following act, bearing this date, is traced 
 from its origin, as a specimen of the inaccuracy of the dates in this 
 revision of 1745. "Be it enacted," &c. "That there be one seal 
 made for the public use of the colony, and that the form of an anchor 
 be engraven thereon, and the motto thereof shall be the word Hope." 
 In the laws of 1647, " It is ordered that the seal of the Province shall 
 be an anchor." There is nothing more on this subject till March, 
 1663-4, when " ordered that for the present, the old seal that hath 
 been the seal of the colony, shall be the present seal," until a new one 
 be procured. May 1664, " ordered, that the seal with the motto 
 llhode Island and Providence Plantations, with the word Hope, ovet 
 the head of the anchor, is the present seal of the colony." This con 
 tinued to be the seal till 1686, when on the surrender of the charter, it 
 was broken by Sir Edmund Anclros, and in February, 1689, the chartei 
 having been resumed, it was " ordered that the seal brought in by Mr, 
 Arnold Collins, being the anchor, with the motto Hope, is appointed to 
 be the seal of the colony, he having been employed by this Assembly to 
 make it." This is now in the secretary s office, and has ever since beer 
 the seal of the colony and state, is the onlv one of this description the 
 colony ever had, and is the same pointed out in the before mentioned 
 act (revision of 1745) purporting to have been passed in 1663-4. 
 
 The intention in this revision appears to have been either to date the 
 laws at or after the time when the operations of government com 
 menced under the second charter, as having derived all their validity 
 from that, or to let the whole of each law compiled as before men 
 tioned, bear date when the first act on the subject was supposed |to 
 have existed under the second charter. For although the " body of 
 laws," as enacted under the first charter was continued under the 
 second, yet in no instance do our printed laws imply or express 
 an existence before 1663-4.f Whatever the intention was, great 
 inacuracy exists as to their true date. Thus the law particularly re 
 ferred to by Chalmers, the greater part of which is from Magnr- 
 Charta, was in substance passed in 1647, as will appear by an extrac; 
 on the former part of this communication. The latter part of the law, 
 and which has occasioned this inquiry, is in these words, " And that al! 
 men professing Christianity, and of competent estates, and of civil con 
 versation, who acknowledge, and are obedient to the civil magistrate, 
 though of different judgments in religious affairs, Roman Catholics 
 only exccpted, shall be admitted freemen, and shall have liberty to choose 
 and be chosen officers in the colony, both military and civil." Nou 
 that this law was not passed in 1663-4 is most certain, for not only doe*, 
 it make no part of the record of either session this year, but omittim; 
 the words professing Christianity, and Roman Catholics only excepted, 
 they are the very words of the second proposition of Carr, Cartvvright 
 and Maverick, made to the General Assembly in May 1665, and 
 which at the same time were enacted into a law. 
 
 In addition to this, these commissioners, in a narrative of their pro- 
 
 * There have been five 1719, 1730, 1745, 1767, and 1798. 
 
 j- Policy might have suggested the imprudence of noticing an au 
 thority derived from an act of the Long Parliament, under which th< 
 first charter was granted. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 433 
 
 eeedings, under their commission, (Hulchinson s Col. 412.) expressly PART. I. 
 stale tliat this colony " admit all to be freemen that desire it, they allow ^^^ - > _. 
 liberty of conscience and worsliip to all who live civilly." They fur 
 ther say, that " this colony, which admiis of all religions, even Quakers 
 and Generalists, was begun by such as the Massachusetts would not 
 suffer to live among them, and is generally hated by the other colonies, 
 who endeavoured several ways to suppress them." 
 
 The answer of the colony in 1680, to the enquiries of the commis 
 sioners for foreign plantations as stated by Chalmers, is a farther con 
 firmation of the correctness of this statement, in which they say, that 
 all of different persuasions and principles " enjoy their liberty accord 
 ing to his Majesty s gracious charter." " \W leave every man to walk 
 as God shall persuade their hearts, and do actively, impassively yield 
 obedience to the civil magistrate." Though Chalmers, supposing the 
 law relative to Roman Catholics to have been passed in 1663-4, consi 
 ders this answer to have been a designed concealment of that act. 
 
 Thus you have positive and indubitable evidence, that the law ex 
 cluding Roman Catholics from the privileges of freemen was not passed 
 in 1663-4, but that they were, by law, at this time, and long after, en 
 titled to all the privileges of other citizens ; and satisfactory evidence, 
 that these privileges were continued by law until 1719, when, or in one 
 of the subsequent revisions, the words "professing Chiistianity," and 
 " Roman Catholics only excepted," were inserted by the revising commit 
 tee. These words may possibly have been inserted in a manuscript 
 copy of the laws sent over in 1699, but of this the words afford no evi 
 dence. 
 
 Roger Williams was an assistant (member of the upper house) in the 
 years 1664, 1670, and 1671. He was chosen in 1677, but refused to 
 serve. He was also a deputy (member of the lower house) in May, 
 1667. These are the only years in which he was in office under the 
 second charter. He died in 1682 ; " When he was buried with all the 
 solemnity the colony was able to shew." (Gallender.) Most of the first 
 settlers were dead at this time. Indeed, that such a law should have 
 been passed in the lifetime of the first settlers, is hardly credible. Re 
 ligious liberty was their pride and boast. The records abound with 
 allusions to it. (See Coll. Mass. Hist. Society, vol. vii. 2d series, pp. 83, 
 85, 88, 103-4. See also, Hutch. Coll. 154.) The legal enjoyment of it 
 was granted and secured at their special request ; and, notwithstanding 
 this distinguishing feature in their government was stigmatized with 
 the most reproachful and opprobrious epithets, they considered it as 
 their highest honour ; and themselves in the enjoyment of a natural 
 right, denied to the great body of mankind. 
 
 I acknowledge that this account does not exhibit a very flattering view 
 of the legislative accuracy of Rhode Island; but I believe it exhibits a 
 true one, and that is my object. It may be proper to add, that each 
 revision of the laws appears to have been attended with delays and dis 
 appointments. It was nearly twenty years after the appointment of the 
 first committee, for revising and printing the laws, before the publica 
 tion of the first edition. There was no printing press in the colony till 
 1745, and no newspaper printed till 1758. The colony was frequently 
 pressed by the government in England for copies of the ir laws and other 
 proceedings, and, in 1699, they sent over a copy of the laws in manu 
 script. How, or from what originals they were made up, does not ap 
 pear. As usual, it was done by a committee. A list of the laws was 
 ordered to be left in the secretary s office, but is not now to be found. 
 
 I would also suggest, that it appears at all times to have been an im 
 portant object with the colony to be on the best terms with the mother 
 country. Being poor, of small extent of territory, and in contention 
 vith the bordering colonies, both on account of its boundaries and to- 
 
 Voi, I, 3 I 
 
434 NOTES, 
 
 PART I. lerating principles, it required the special protection of the British go- 
 \^y**W ve > n ment. 1 am inclined to think, that the exception of Roman Catho 
 lics in the printed luvvs (1745), was inserted with the view of ingratiating 
 the colony the more with the mother country. I have no evidence of 
 this hul the general tenor of the laws, and the spirit of liberality which 
 they always manifest on religious subjects. In 1696, a letter was re 
 ceived from William Blaithwait, containing a form of association, recom 
 mended to be entered into, to defend the king against the conspiracies 
 of the papists, "in consequence of the discovery of the late horrid con 
 spiracy against his majesty," (the assassination plot). It does not ap 
 pear, however, that the general assembly took any steps about it. Why 
 a law should be passed to exclude from the privileges of freemen, those 
 who were not inhabitants, by those who believed all to be equally enti 
 tled to their religious opinions, is difficult to conceive, unless for the 
 purpose above suggested. There were no Roman Catholics in the co 
 lony in 1680. (Chalmers, 284.) That this colony was an asylum for the 
 persecuted of all religions, as well of those of none, is evident from 
 Cotton Mather, who says, anno 1695, " Rhode Island colony is a collec 
 tion of Antinomians, Familists, Antisabbatarians, Arminians, Socinians, 
 Quakers, Ranters, and every thing but Roman Catholics and true Chris 
 tians." Douglas, vol. ii. 110, 112. The same fact is established by the 
 testimony of others of the old writers, who speak of the colony with the 
 * utmost contempt on that account, and also by the evidence of the colo- 
 nial records. In the proceedings of June session, 1684, is this entry, 
 "In answer to the petition of Simon Medus, D*vid Brown, and associ 
 ates, being Jews, presented to this assembly, bearing date June 24, 
 1684, we declare they may expect as good protection here as any 
 stranger, not being of our nation, residing among us, in this his majesty s 
 colony, ought to have, being obedient to his majesty s laws. " These 
 Jews are supposed to have been Portuguese. 
 
 On the revocation of the edict of Nantz, many of the Hugonots set 
 tled in this colony. In the proceedings of February session, 1689-90, 
 is this entry : " Ordered, that the Frenchmen that reside at Narragan- 
 sett be sent for by Major John Greene, to what place in Warwick he 
 shall appoint, to signify unto them the king s pleasure, in his proclama 
 tion of war (against France), and his indulgence to such Frenchmen as 
 behave themselves well, and require their engagements thereunto." 
 
 It is observable, that the laws of the colony never made any provision 
 for ascertaining any other qualification of a freeman, than competency 
 of estate, and that no test or oath could ever be required by law of any 
 man in any case. 
 
 There is one trait in the laws of the first settlers of this colony, which 
 places them, as advocates for the equal rights of all men in matters of 
 religion, on an elevation above their contemporaries The liberality 
 of the most liberal of the latter is confined to Christians, believers in Je 
 sus holy church, (Chalmers, 213, 215, 218, 235.) ; that of the former is 
 extended to all men of civil conversation, without regard to their opi 
 nions, whether Christians or Jews, believers in Moses, or Jesus, or Ma 
 homet, or neither. The life only, being of competent estates, furnished 
 to the former evidence of the fitness to be freemen. Chalmers justly 
 contends for the equal rights of the Roman Catholics with other Chris 
 tians, and he ought, for the same reasons, to have contended for the 
 equal rights of Jews, Mahometans, and all others, whether believers or 
 not believers ; for their natural rights are certainlv equal. 
 
 N B The records of the colony from 1663 to 1686 are entire. From 
 the latter period to 1715, the proceedings of the General Assembly are 
 not recorded ; but manuscript copies of the proceedings during this 
 period, under the seal of the colony, are in the town clerk s office, and 
 some of them in the secretary s office, and have been examined^ except 
 
NOTES. 
 
 435 
 
 tor the year 1692, in which I have found the proceedings of one session PART. I. 
 
 The foregoing is a copy of a communication from Mr. Samuel Eddy, 
 secretary of this state from October, 1797, to May, 1819, and now re 
 presentative in Congress, in reply to enquiries made by me relative to 
 the correctness of the assertion of Chalmers, (Political Annals, p. 276,) 
 that the toleration of Roger Williams and the first settlers, at Provi 
 dence and Rhode Island, did not extend to Roman Catholics. 
 
 JAMES BUR RILL, JTWB. 
 
 Providence, May 12, 1819. 
 
 (NOTE D. p. 51.) 
 
 IT will be thought extraordinary, that Mr. Brougham, who appears to 
 have read our history, and not to be unacquainted with that of England, 
 should have hazarded such a statement as the following, in his Colonial 
 Policy. " Long after the moiher country had relinquished for ever the 
 arts of persecution, they found votaries in the constituted authorities ot 
 the colonies; and the northern states, at the end of the seventeenth 
 century, afforded the disgraceful example of that spiritual tyranny, from 
 which their territories had originally served as an asylum !"* The per 
 secutions for witchcraft, of which I have given a full explanation in the 
 text, are the only instances of spiritual persecution, if they can be so 
 denominated, which disgrace the annals of New England at so late a 
 period as the close of the seventeenth century. None took place after 
 wards in any of the colonies, except in New York, where the royal go- 
 vernor, Lord Cornbury, of detested memory, attempted to stifle the 
 Presbyterian worship ;f and in Maryland, against the Catholics, at the 
 instigation of the British government. It is true, that the legislatures 
 of Massachusetts and New York passed each, in the first year of the 
 eighteenth century, a law proscribing Catholic priests ; but the motive 
 was political; it being believed that those priests laboured uniformly 
 to excite the Indians to hostilities against the Anglo-Americans. No 
 doubt, the spirit of intolerance continued for some time to prevail, in a 
 greater or less degree, against popery, alternately the bugbear and the 
 stalking-horse of the British rulers. They, however, not only studiously 
 fomented, but exacted that spirit in the colonies; where, as we have 
 seen in the last Note, it was even thought necessary to counterfeit per 
 secution, in order to retain their favour. 
 
 The author of the Colonial Policy has not specified the period at which 
 the mother country relinquished for ever the arts of persecution ; and 
 after which the constituted authorities of the colonies cultivated them ; 
 but he is to be understood as referring to the end of the seventeenth 
 century. His accuracy, or his candour, will be illustrated by the follow 
 ing extracts, which I make from an article of the Edinburgh Review,^ 
 commonly ascribed to his pen. 
 
 " The arms of William III. overthrew the last remnant of Catholic 
 government or ascendancy in Britain and Ireland ; and, by the articles 
 in Limerick, which closed the scene of hostility in 1691, it was ex 
 pressly stipulated, that the Roman Catholics should enjoy such privi 
 leges, in the exercise of their religion, as are consistent with the laws 
 
 * B. I. p. 1. f See Smith s History of New York, vol. iii, p. 119, 
 
 * Volume for 1807. Article on Catholic Question, 
 
436 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 PART 1. of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles II. ; and their 
 \^-v~^/ majesties, as soon as they can summon a parliament in this kingdom, 
 will endeavour to procure the said Roman Catholics such farther secur it i 
 in that particular as may pi-eserve them from any disturbance on account 
 of their religion. This solemn instrument of pacification, granted in 
 the moment of victory, was ratified and published in letters patent, un 
 der the great seal, in the fourth year of king William ; and in three 
 years thereafter, was passed, in direct violation of it, the famous act for 
 preventing the growth of popery, the foundation and model of the many 
 barbarous enactments by which that race of men were oppressed for 
 little less than a century thereafter." 
 
 " By this barbarous act, and the satutes by which it was followed up, 
 Catholics were disabled from purchasing or inheriting land, from being 
 guardians to their own children, from having arms or horses, from 
 serving on grand juries, from entering in the inns of court, from prac 
 tising as barristers, solicitors, or physicians, &c. Stc." 
 
 " At the close of the reign of Queen Anne, in short, when the privi 
 leges and liberties of Englishmen stood on so triumphant a footing, 
 nothing remained to two-thirds of the inhabitants of Ireland, by which 
 they could be distinguished from slaves or aliens, but the right of voting 
 at elections. Of this, too, they were deprived wider the succeeding 
 sovereigns." 
 
 The following account of the above mentioned act, and of some of 
 its effects, given in Mr. Burke s speech of 1780, at Bristol, previous to 
 the election, is a still more pointed commentary upon the assertion that 
 the arts of persecution were relinquished in Great Britain, for ever, at 
 the end of the seventeenth century. 
 
 "A statute was fabricated," says Mr. Burke, "in the year 1699, by 
 which the saying mass (a church-service, in the Latin tongue, not ex 
 actly the same as our liturgy, but very near it, and containing no offence 
 against the laws, or against goo 1 morals,) was forged into a crime pu 
 nishable with perpetual imprisonment. The teaching school, an useful 
 and virtuous occupation, even the teaching in a private family, was, in 
 every Catholic, subjected to the same unproportionate punishment 
 Your industry, and the bread of your children, was taxed for a pecuniary 
 reward to stimulate avarice to do what nature refused, to inform and 
 prosecute on this law Every Roman Catholic was, under the same act, 
 to forfeit his estate to his nearest Protestant relation, until, through a 
 profession of what he did not believe, he redeemed, by his hypocrisy, 
 what the law had transferred to the kinsman as a recompense of his 
 profligacy. When thus turned out of doors from his paternal estate, 
 he was disabled from acquiring any other by any industry, donation, or 
 charity ; but was rendered a foreigner in his native land, only because 
 he retained the religion, along with the property, handed down to him 
 from those who had been the old inhabitants of that land before him." 
 
 " The effects of the act have been as mischievous, as its origin was 
 shameful. From that time, every person of that communion, lay and 
 ecclesiastic, has been obliged to fly from the face of day. The clergy, 
 concealed in garrets of private houses, or obliged to take a shelter 
 (hardly safe to themselves, hut infinitely dangerous to their country) 
 under the privileges of foreign ministers, officiated as their servants, 
 and under their protection. The whole body of the Catholics, con 
 demned to beggary and to ignorance in their native land, have been 
 obliged to learn the principles of letters, at the hazard of all their other 
 principles, from the charity of your enemies. They have been taxed to 
 their ruin, at the pleasure of necessitous and profligate relations, and 
 according to the measure of their necessity and profligacy. Examples 
 of this are many and affecting. Some of them are known by a friend 
 who stands near me in this hall. It is but six or seven years since ? 
 
NOTES. 437 
 
 clergyman, of the name of Malony, a man of morals, neither guilty, nor PART I. 
 accused of any thing noxious to the state, was condemned to perpetual v ^^_^^^ 
 imprisonment for exercising the functions of his religion; and, after 
 lying in jail two or three years, was relieved by the mercy of govern- . 
 ment from perpetual imprisonment, on condition of perpetual banish 
 ment. A brother of the earl of Shrewsbury, a Talbot, a name respect 
 able in this country, whilst its glory is any part of its concern, was 
 hauled to the bar of the Old Bailey, among common felons, and only 
 escaped the same doom, either by some error in the process, or that 
 the wretch who brought him there could not correctly describe his 
 person ; I now forget which," &.c. (See on this subject Note V.) 
 
 (NOTEE. p. 86.) 
 
 "On the 14th of December, 1795," says Bryan Edwards (Hist, of W. 
 Indies, b. ii.) "the British commissioners who went to the Havanna^br 
 assistance, arrived at Montego Bay with forty chasseurs or Spanish 
 hunters (chiefly people of colour) and about one hundred Spanish dogs." 
 Their number was really one hundred and twenty according to Dallas, 
 and a great proportion of them not regularly trained, so that the fugi 
 tive whom they overtook could not escape being torn in pieces by them. 
 The following compact is copied from Dallas s History (vol. ii. ) 
 
 " Articles of Agreement between his Britannic Majesty s Commissary 
 and the undersigned Spanish Chasseurs. 
 
 " 1st. We, the undersigned, oblige ourselves to go to the island of 
 Jamaica, taking each three dogs for the hunting and seizing negroes. 
 2d. That, when arrived at the said island, and informed of the situation 
 of the runaway or rebellious negroes, we oblige ourselves to practice 
 every means that may be necessary to pursue, and apprehend -with our 
 dogs, said rebellious negroes. 3d. Our stay in the island shall be three 
 months. 4th. If, at the expiration of our being three months in the 
 island of Jamaica, government should consider our residence there for 
 a longer time necessary, it then shall be at our option to make a new 
 agreement," &c. [Here follow the signatures, &c."| 
 
 (NOTE F. p. 92.) 
 
 "To his most excellent majesty George, King of Great Britain, &c 
 &c. 
 
 "The humble petition of his subjects the late French inhabitants of 
 Nova Scotia, formerly settled on the Bay of Minas and rivers thereunto 
 belonging; now residing in the province of Pennsylvania, on behalf of 
 themselves and \e rest of the late inhabitants of the said bay, and also of 
 those formerly settled on the river of Annapolis-Royal, wheresoever 
 dispersed. 
 
 " May it please your Majesty, 
 
 " It is not in our power sufficiently to trace back the conditions upon 
 which our ancestors first settled in Nova Scotia, under the protection of 
 your majesty s predecessors, as the greatest part of our elders who 
 were acquainted with these transactions are dead, but more espechrfly 
 because our papers which contained our contracts, records, &c. were 
 by violence taken from us, some time before the unhappy catastrophe 
 
438 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. which has been the occasion of the calamities \ve are now under, bit 
 ^^~^-*^/ we always understood the foundation thereof to be from an agreement 
 made between your majesty s commanders in Nova Scotia, and our for; 
 fathers, about the year 1713, whereby they were permitted to remu u 
 in the possession of their lands, under an oath of fidelity to the Briti; !> 
 government, with an exemption from bearing arms, and the allowance 
 of the free exercise of their religion. 
 
 "It is a matter of certainly (and within the compass of some of our 
 memories) that in the year 1730, general Philips, then governor of No - a 
 Scotia, did in your majesty s name confirm unto us, and all the inhabi 
 tants of the whole extent of the bay of Minas and rivers thereunto b i- 
 longing, the free and entire possession of those lands we were the a 
 possessed of, which by grants from the former French government \ve 
 held to us and our heirs forever, on paying the customary quit-rents, &,:, 
 And on condition that we should behave with due submission and fideliiy 
 to your majesty, agreeable to the oath which was then administered ;o 
 us, which is as follows, viz. 
 
 " We sincerely promise and swear by the faith of a Christian, th it 
 " we shall be entirely faithful, and will truly submit ourselves to h ; s 
 * majesty king George, whom we acknowledge as sovereign lord of 
 "New Scotland, or Arcadia; so God help us." 
 
 " And at the same time, the said general Philips did in like mann<;r 
 promise the said French inhabitants in your majesty s name, That they 
 should have the true exercise of their religion, and be exempted fro.n 
 bearing arms and from being employed in war either against the French 
 or Indians. Under the sanction of this solemn engagement we held oi.r 
 lands, made further purchases, annually paying our quit-rents, &c. and 
 we had the greatest reason to conclude that your majesty did not disap 
 prove of the above agreement : and that our conduct continued during 
 a long course of years to be such as recommended us to your gracious 
 protection, and to the regard of the governor of New England, appears 
 from a printed declaration made seventeen years after this time, by his 
 excellency William Shirley, governor of New England, which was pub 
 lished and dispersed in our country, some originals of which have 
 escaped from the general destruction of most of our papers, part of 
 which is as follows. 
 
 " By his Majesty s command, 
 
 " A declaration of William Shirley, Esq. captain-general and governor 
 in chiefi in and over his majesty s province of Massachusetts Bay, &.c. 
 
 "To his majesty s subjects the French inhabitants of his province of 
 Nova Scotia: Whereas upon being informed that a report had been pro 
 pagaled among his majesty s subjects the French inhabitants of his 
 province of Nova Scotia, that there was an intention to remove them 
 from their settlements in that province, I did, by my declaration, dated 
 16th September, 1746, signify to them that the same was groundless, 
 and that I was on the contrary persuaded that his majesty would be gra 
 ciously pleased to extend his royal protection to all such of them as 
 should continue in their fidelity and allegiance to him, and in no wise 
 abet or hold correspondence with the enemies of his crown, and there 
 in assured them that I would make a favourable representation of their 
 state and circumstances to his majrsty, and did accordingly transmit a 
 representation thereof to be laid before him, and have thereupon re 
 ceived his royal pleasure, touching his aforesaid subjects in Nova Scotia, 
 with his express commands to signify the same to them in his name : 
 Now by virtue thereof, and in obedience to his majesty s said orders, I 
 do hereby declare in his majesty s name, that there is not the least fotin ^ 
 dstion for any apprehensions of his majesty s intending to remove them, 
 the said inhabitants of Nova Scotia, from their said settlements and ha 
 
NOTES, 
 
 439 
 
 citations within the said province, but that on the contrary, it is his ma- PART I. 
 jesty s resolution to protect and maintain all such of them as have ad- v^^-v^*^ 
 hered to and shall continue in their duty and allegiance to him in the 
 quiet and peaceable possession oi their respective habitations and set 
 tlements, and in the enjoyment of their rights and privileges as his sub 
 jects, &.C. &C. 
 
 " Dated at Boston, the 21st of October, 1747. 
 
 " And this is farther confirmed by a letter dated 29th June in the same 
 year, wrote to our deputies by Mr. Mascarine, then your majesty s chief 
 commander in Nova Scotia, which refers to governor Shirley s first do 
 claration, of which we have a copy legally authenticated, part of which 
 is as follows, viz. 
 
 " As to the fear you say you labour under on account of being threat- 
 
 * ened to be made to evacuate the country you have in possession, hi? 
 excellency William Shirley s printed letter, whereby you may be made 
 easy in that respect: you are sensible of the promise I have made to 
 you, the effects of which you have already felt, that I would protect 
 
 * you so long as by your good conduct and fidelity to the crown of Great 
 4 Britain you would enable me so to do, which promise I do again repeat 
 to you. 
 
 "Near the time of the publication of the before mentioned declara 
 tion, it was required that our deputies should, on behalf of all the peo 
 ple, renew the oath formerly taken to general Philips, which was done 
 without any mention of bearing arms and we can with truth say, that 
 we are not sensible of any alteration in our disposition or conduct since 
 that time, but that we always continued to retain a grateful regard to 
 your majesty and your government, notwithstanding which we have 
 found ourselves surrounded with difficulties unknown to us before. 
 Your majesty determined to fortify our province and settle Halifax; which 
 the French looking upon with jealousy, they made frequent incursions 
 through our country in order to annoy that settlement, whereby we came 
 exposed to many straits and hardships; yet from the obligations we were 
 under, from the oath we had taken, we were never under any doubt but 
 that it was our indispensible duty and interest to remain true to your go 
 vernment and our oath of fidelity, hoping that in time those difficulties 
 would be removed, and we should see peace and tranquillity restored : 
 and if, from the change of affairs in Nova Scotia, your majesty had 
 thought it not consistent with the safety of your said province, to let us 
 remain there upon the terms promised us by your governors, in your 
 majesty s name, we should doubtless have acquiesced with any other 
 reasonable proposal which might have been made to us, consistent with 
 the safety of our aged parents and tender wives and children ; and we 
 are persuaded if that had been the case, wherever we had retired, we 
 should have held ourselves under the strongest obligations of gratitude 
 from a thankful remembrance of the happiness we had enjoyed undei* 
 your majesty s administration and gracious protection. About the 
 time of the settlement of Halifax, general Cornwallis, governor of Nova 
 Scotia, did require that we should take the oath of allegiance without 
 the exemption before allowed us, of not bearing arms; but this we ab 
 solutely refused, as being an infringement of the principal condition 
 upon which our forefathers agreed to settle under the British govern 
 ment. 
 
 " And we acquainted governor Cornwallis that if your majesty was 
 not willing to continue that exemption to us, we desired liberty to eva 
 cuate the country, proposing to settle on the island of St. John s, where 
 the French government was willing to let us have land, which proposal 
 he at that time refused to consent to, but told us he would acquaint your 
 Tiajesty therewith, and return us an answer. But \ve never received 
 
440 NOTES. 
 
 PART 1. an answer, nor was any proposal of that made to us until we were mace 
 S^Vs*/ prisoners. 
 
 "After the settlement of Halifax, we suffered many abuses and in 
 sults from your majesty s enemies, more especially from the Indians JR 
 the interest of the French, by whom our cattle was killed, our hous( s 
 pillaged, and m.my of us personally abused and put in fear of our lives 
 and some even carried away prisoners towards Canada, solely on account 
 of our resolution steadily to maintain our oath of fidelity to the English 
 government, particularly lie re Leblanc (our public notary) was taken 
 prisoner by the Indians when actually travelling in your majesty s ser 
 vice, his house pillaged, and himself carried to the French fort, from 
 whence he did not recover his liberty but with great difficulty, after four 
 years captivity. 
 
 * We were likewise obliged to comply with the demand of the enemy 
 made for provision, cattle, &c. upon pain of military execution, which 
 we had reason to believe the government was made sensible was not an 
 act of choice on our part, but of necessity, as those in authority appear, 
 ed to take in good part the representations we always made to them 
 after any thing of that nature had happened. 
 
 "Notwithstanding the many difficulties we thus laboured under, ytt 
 we dare appeal to the several governors, both at Halifax and Annapolis- 
 Royal, for testimonies of our being always ready and willing to obey 
 their orders, and give all the assistance in our power, either in furnisl - 
 ing provisions and materials, or making roads, building forts, &c. agree 
 able to your majesty s orders, and our oath of fidelity, whensoever calle 1 
 upon, or required thereunto. 
 
 "It was also our constant care to give notice to your majesty s com 
 manders of the danger they from time to time have been exposed to by 
 the enemy s troops, and had the intelligence we gave been always 
 attended to, many lives might have been spared, particularly in the un 
 happy affair which befel major Noble and his brother at Grand-Pray, 
 when they, with great numbers of their men, were cut off by the enemy, 
 notwithstanding the frequent advices we had given them of the dange.- 
 they were in ; and yet we have been very unjustly accused as parties in 
 that massacre. 
 
 " And although we have been thus anxiously concerned to manifest 
 our fidelity in these several respects, yet it has been falsely insinuated, 
 that it had been our general practice to abet and support your majesty s 
 enemies; but we trust that your majesty will not suffer suspicions and 
 accusations to be received as proofs sufficient to reduce some thousands 
 of innocent peoplt, from the most happy situation to a state of the 
 greatest distress and misery! No, this was far from our thoughts; we 
 esteemed our situation so happy as by no means to desire a change 
 We have always desired, and again desire that we may be permitted to 
 answer our accusers in a judicial way. In the mean time permit us Sir, 
 here solemnly to declare, that these accusations are utterly false and 
 groundless, so far as they concern us as a collective body of people 
 It hath been always our desire to live as our fathers hath done, as faith 
 ful subjects under your majesty s royal protection, with an unfeigned 
 resolution to maintain our oath of fidelity to the utmost of our power. 
 Yet it cannot be expected, but that amongst us, as well as amongst other 
 people, there have been some weak, and false-hearted persons suscepti 
 ble of being bribed by the enemy so as to break the oath of fidelity. 
 Twelve of these were outlawed in governor Shirley s proclamation be 
 fore mentioned ; but it will be found that the number of such false 
 hearted men amongst us were very few, considering our situation, the 
 number of our inhabitants, and how we stood circumstanced in several 
 respects : and it may easily be made appear that it was the constan 
 
NOTES. 441 
 
 care of our deputies to prevent and put a stop to such wicked conduct PART I. 
 when it came to their knowledge. ^^~v~^~s 
 
 " We understood that the aid granted to the French by the inhabi 
 tants of Chignecto has been used #s an argument to accelerate our ruin ;. 
 but we trust that your majesty will not permit the innocent to be in 
 volved with the guilty; no consequence can be justly drawn, that be 
 cause those people yielded to the threats and persuasions of the enemy, 
 we should do the same. They were situated so far from Halifax as to be 
 in a great measure out of the protection of the English government, 
 which was not our case; we were separated from them by sixty miles 
 of uncultivated land, and had no other connexion with them than what 
 is usual with neighbours at such a distance; and we can truly say we 
 looked on their defection from your majesty s interest with great pain 
 and anxiety. Nevertheless, not long before our being made prisoners, 
 the house in which we kept our contracts, records, deeds, &c. were in 
 vested with an armed force, and all our papers violently carried away, 
 none of which have to this day been returned us, whereby we are in a 
 great measure deprived of means of making our innocency and the just 
 ness of our complaints appear in their true light. 
 
 " Upon our sending a remonstrance to the governor and council of 
 the violence that had been offered us by the seizure of our papers, and 
 of the groundless fears the government appeared to be under on our 
 account, by their taking away our arms, no answer was returned us ; but 
 those who had signed the remonstrance, and some time after sixty 
 more, in all about eighty of our elders, were summoned to appear be 
 fore the governor and council, which they immediately complied with, 
 and it was required of them that they should take the oath of allegiance 
 without the exemption, which, during a course of near fifty years, had 
 been granted to us and to our fathers, of not being obliged to bear 
 arms, and which was the principal condition upon which our ancestors 
 agreed to remain in Nova Scotia, when the rest of the French inhabi 
 tants evacuated the country, which, as it was contrary to our inclination 
 and judgment, we thought ourselves engaged in duty absolutely to re 
 fuse. Nevertheless, we freely offered, and would gladly have renewed, 
 our oath of fidelity, but this was not accepted of, and we were all im 
 mediately made prisoners, and were told by the governor, that our 
 estates, both real and personal, were forfeited for your majesty s use. 
 As to those who remained at home, they were summoned to appear 
 before the commanders in the forts, which, we showing some fear to 
 comply with, on the account of the seizure of our papers, and impri 
 sonment of so many of our elders, we had the greatest assurance given 
 us that there was no other design but to make us renew our former oath 
 of fidelity; yet as soon as we were within the fort, the same judgment 
 was passed on us as had been passed on our brethren at Halifax, and 
 we were also made prisoners. 
 
 " Thus, notwithstanding the solemn grants made to our fathers by 
 general Philips, and the declaration made by governor Shirley and Mr. 
 Mascarine in your majesty s name, that it was your majesty s resolution 
 to protect and maintain all such of us as should continue in their duty 
 and allegiance to your majesty, in the quiet and peaceable possession of 
 their settlements, and the enjoyment of all their rights and privileges, 
 as your majesty s subjects; we found ourselves at once deprived of 
 our estates and liberties, without any judicial process, or even without 
 any accusers appearing against us, and this solely grounded on mistaken 
 jealousies and false suspicions that we were inclinable to take part with 
 your majesty s enemies. But we again declare that that accusation is 
 groundless ; it was always our fixed resolution to maintain to the utmost 
 of our power the oath of fidelity which we had taken, not only from a 
 sense of indispensable duty, but also because we were well satisfied with 
 
 VOL. I. 3 K. 
 
442 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. our situation under your majesty s government and protection, and did 
 v^^"V^^/ not think it could be bettered b\ any change which could be proposed 
 to us. It has also been falsely insinuated that we held the opinion that 
 we might be absolved from our oath -so us to break it with impunity ; 
 but tins we likewise solemnly declare to be a false accusation, and which 
 we plainly evinced, by our exposing 1 ourselves to so great losses and 
 sufferings, rather than take the oath proposed to the governor and 
 council, because we apprehended we could not in conscience comply 
 therewith. 
 
 " Thus we, our ancient parents and grand parents, (men of great in 
 tegrity and approved fidelity to your majesty,) and our innocent wives 
 and children, became the unhappy victims to those groundless fears: 
 we were transported into the English colonies, and this was done in so 
 much haste, and with so little regard to our necessities and the tenderest 
 ties of nature, that from the most social enjoyments and affluent cir 
 cumstances, many found themselves destitute of the necessaries of life: 
 Parents were separated from children, and husbands from wives, some 
 of whom have not to this day met again ; and we were so crowded in the 
 transport vessels, that we had not room even for all our bodies to lay 
 .down at once, and consequently were prevented from carrying With us 
 proper necessaries, especially for the support and comfort of the aged 
 and weak, many of whom quickly ended their misery with their lives. 
 And even those amongst us who had suffered deeply from your majesty s 
 enemies, on account of their attachment to \our majesty s government, 
 were equally involved in the common calamity, of which He;.e Lablane, 
 the notary public before mentioned, is a remarkable instance He was 
 seiz. !, confined, and ^roight away ,mong lie rr-st of the people, and 
 his family, consisting of twenty children, and about one hundred and fifty 
 grand children, -were scattered in different colonies, so that he was pvt 
 on shore at New York with only his wife and two youngest children, in 
 an infirm state of health, from whence IK joined three more of his 
 children at I hiladelphia, where he died without any more notice being 
 taken of him than any of us, notwithstanding his many years labour and 
 deep sufferings for your majesty s service. 
 
 "The miseries we have since endured are scarce sufficiently to be 
 expressed, being reduced for a livelihood to toil and h*r>l labour in u 
 southern clime, so disagreeable to our constitutions, that most of us 
 have been prevented by sickness from procuring the necessary subsist 
 ence for our families, and therefore are threatened with that which we 
 esteem the greatest aggravation of all our sufferings, even of having 
 our children forced from us, and bound out to strangers, and exposed 
 to contagious distempers unknown in our native country. 
 
 "This, compared with the affluence and ease we enjoyed, shows our 
 condition to be extremely wretched. We have already seen in this 
 province of Pennsylvania two hundred and fifty of our people, which is 
 more than half the number that were landed here, perish through misery 
 and various diseases. In this great distress and misery, we have, under 
 God, none but your majesty to look to with hopes of relief and redress: 
 We therefore hereby implore your gracious protection, and request you 
 may be pleased to let the justice of our complaints be truly and impar 
 tially enquired into, and that your majesty would please to grant us such 
 relief as in your justice and clemency you will think our case requires, 
 and we shall hold ourselves bound to pray," &c. 
 
 This pathetic appeal of the Acadians had not the least effect with tin- 
 British government. When Jasper Mauduit, agent of the province of 
 Massachusetts, represented to Mr. Grenville, the British minister, that 
 his most Christian majesty, looking upon the Acadians as of the number 
 of those who had been his most faithful subjects, had signified his \vil- 
 
NOTES. 
 
 443 
 
 hngness to order transports for conveying them to France, from the PART I. 
 British provinces, Mr. Grenville immediately said "that cannot be -_^- . -^_- 
 that is contrary to our acts of navigation how can the French court 
 send ships to oiir colonies?" (See letter of Jasper Mauduit, dated Dec: 
 1768, to the Speaker of she Massachusetts House of Representatives 
 in the vol. of the Mass. Hist. Coll. for 1799.) 
 
 (NOTE G. p. 113.) 
 
 " THE English made, in 1745, an important conquest, which they 
 considered as an ample indemnification for the losses which the allies 
 had Buffered in the low countries: it was that of Cape Breton," &c. 
 Koch. Histoire Abregee des Trait es de Puix. Vol. ii. 
 
 In the negotiations of 1/48, France prescribed the restitution of Louis- 
 bourg as the first article of a pacification. It was the first point taken 
 up by the plenipotentiaries at A;x la Chapelle ; and the British minister 
 stated at once the readiness of England to restore it, for certain equi 
 valents. We have the following Account in that instructive work, His- 
 toire de la Diplomatic Frungaise. (b. v. vol. 5 ) 
 
 " A memoir was sr nt by the French court to the Count St. Se>erin, 
 its minister at Aix la Chapelle, upon the indispensable necessity of Cape 
 Breton to France, and upon the fatal consequences of leaving that 
 island in the hands of the English, in relation to the free trade of Canada 
 and Louisiana, and the general trade of the other powers of Europe." 
 "It will be the more necessary," said the official instructions, " to shew 
 merely a moderate wish to recover the island, as \ve know that England 
 has it not much at heart to retain her cojiqnest. The Count St. Severin 
 may then give the Earl of Sandwich to understand, that the loss of 
 Cape Breton is less important in itself, than on account of the stress 
 laid upon it by the public opinion in France ; and that the king does 
 not attach so much consequence to the matter himself, as not to prefer 
 an equivalent in the low countries," &c. 
 
 It is stated in the work from which I have made these quotations, 
 that the British court proposed to France, in 1755, that the whole 
 southern bank of the river St. Lawrence should remain uninhabited, and 
 the lakes unappropriated. " The pretext of the war of 1756," *iys the 
 same work, "on the part of England, was the encroachment of the 
 French on the limits of Acadia, and some acts of violence committed on 
 the Ohio ; but the real motive was to avail herself of the supposed 
 weakness of the cabinet of Versailles, to destroy the French navy, and 
 to avenge the defeats of Fontenoy and of Lawfeldt. (Vol. vi. b. 1.) 
 
 (XOTE H. p. 119 ) 
 
 BRABDOCK S papers all fell into the hands of the French. In the year 
 1757, there was made and published in Philadelphia, a translation of 
 three French volumes found on board a French privateer, and contain 
 ing authenticated copies of those papers. They throw great light upon 
 the origin of his expedition, and do not redound to the credit of tha 
 British government for good faiih in its negotiation with France, preli 
 minary to the war of 1756. A few extracts from the instructions given 
 to Braddock, and his correspondence with his government, may serve 
 to amuse the American reader. 
 
444 NOTES. 
 
 PART 1. " His lloyal Highness the Duke of Cumberland," says the letter of in 
 v,^-v~^/ structions of November 25, 1754, " recommends to you that it be con 
 stantly observed among the troops under your command, to be particu 
 larly careful that they be not thrown into a panic by the Indians, with 
 which they are yet unacquainted, whom the French will certainly em 
 ploy to frighten them. His Royal Highness recommends to you the visit 
 ing your posts night and day, that your colonels and other officers be 
 careful to do it, and that you yourself frequently set them the example, 
 and give all your troops plainly to understand "that no excuse will be ad- 
 mittedfor any surprise -whatsoever." 
 
 Part of a letter from General Jlraddock, to the Hon. Thomas Robinson. 
 
 "Alexandria, 19th of April, 1755 
 
 "Governor Shirley will acquaint you, sir, of the expense of JVet Eng- 
 land upon the prodigious levy of men that has been made in these go- 
 vernments,/ur the enterprises of the north, the other governors have done 
 very little, or rather nothing. I cannot but take the liberty to repre 
 sent to you the necessity of laying a tax upon all Jiis majesty s dominions 
 zn America, agreeably to the result of council, for reimbursing the great 
 sums that must be advanced for the service and interest of the colonies 
 in this important crisis." 
 
 From the same to the same. 
 
 11 Fort Cumberland, (at Will s Creek) 
 
 June 5th, 1755. 
 
 ** I have at last assembled all the troops destined for the attack of 
 Fort du Quesne, which amount to two thousand effective men, of which 
 there are eleven hundred furnished by the southern provinces, who havr 
 so tittle courasre and disposition, that scarce any military service can be ex 
 pected from them, though I have employed the best officers to form 
 them." 
 
 "I desired Mr. B. Franklin, Post-Master of Pennsylvania, who lias 
 great credit in the provinces, to hire me one hundred and fifty wag 
 gons and the number of horses necessary, which he did with so much 
 goodness and readiness, that it is almost the first instance of integrity. 
 address, and ability that I have seen in all these provinces." 
 
 (NOTE I. p. 125..) 
 
 His Excellency the Commander in Chief, the Earl of London, though 
 of a very lordly carriage towards the provincials, was unable to stifle 
 the petulance of their press. The newspapers of their large towns 
 carped and sneered at his operations, in a manner that might have pro 
 voked the master of fewer legions to exert a vigour beyond the law. 
 The following piece published in a New-York gazette, during his pre 
 sence in that city, shows the boldness of the censorship exercised over 
 the management of the British commanders, and furnishes a good 
 sketch of the first campaigns of the war. 
 
 Extract of a letter from J\*ew York, to a gentleman in London, dated New - 
 York, August 26, 1757 
 
 * The situation of affairs in America, grow more and more danger 
 ous ; and what makes us despair of seeing things mend, is that, by I 
 
NOTES. 445 
 
 know not what fatality of conduct in our commanders, the more we are PART I. 
 strengthened with land forces from Great Britain, the more ground we \^~y~<^*> 
 lose against the French, whose number of regular troops is, according 
 to the best information we can get here, much inferior to ours. 
 
 "To give you some idea of this, all the success we can pretend to 
 boast of in the course of this war, happened in the two/rsJ years of it, 
 when we had not a fourth part of the regular troops we now have, and 
 the French had at least an equal number in Canada and Louisbourg. 
 
 "Our campaign in 1755, opened with an exped .tion against the en 
 croachments of the French in Nova-Scotia, with about four hundred 
 troops of the three regiments posted there, and two thousand New- 
 England irregulars, fitted out from Boston ; which was conducted in 
 such a manner, that the French forts upon the isthmus were soon sur 
 rendered to us ; their garrisons transported to Louisbourg ; one of their 
 forts upon the river St. John, abandoned by them, and their settlements 
 about it broken up ; and in the same year our own fortifications were 
 advanced towards Montreal as far as lake St. Sacrament, now lake 
 George, as in the preceding year they had likewise begun to be upon 
 the river Kennebeck, towards the metropolis of Canada : And the 
 French general Deiskau, who came from France that year with about 
 three thousand troops, and had begun his march to invest Oswego, was 
 prevented from making an attempt upon it, and defeated in his attack 
 upon our camp at Lake George ; and in the year 1756, a large party of 
 French regulars, Canadians and Indians, which attacked by surprise a 
 party of our batteaux men, upon the river Onondago, were entirely de 
 feated by an inferior number of them. 
 
 " No sooner were our forces increased by those which arrived here 
 from Europe with general Abercrombie, in June, 1756, but things took 
 a very different turn. Though timely information was given, that a 
 large French camp was formed within about thirty miles of Oswego, 
 with intent speedily to attack it ; yet, by some unaccountable delay to 
 send it a reinforcement, that most material place was lost ; General 
 Webb, who did at last embark with one for its relief, not setting out 
 till two days before it was taken. 
 
 " Our next misfortune, which followed close upon the heels of this, 
 was, that when our general had got as far as the great carrying-place, 
 at Oneida, (a pass in the country of the Six Nations,) which was so 
 strongly fortified, and so inaccessible to the enemy s artillery, that it 
 might have defied the whole French army to take it, he demolished 
 the fort and works there in a few days, and retired with his forces to a 
 place called the German-Flats, which is sixty miles nearer Albany, and 
 soon after to Schenectady, which is no more than seventeen miles from 
 that city ; and thereby not only abandoned the Six Nations of Indians, 
 and their country, to the enemy, but left the French a free passage 
 from Oswego, through the Mohawks river, to Schenectady. And what 
 is still more extraordinary in this, is, that whilst the general was de 
 molishing the works at this carrying-place, and retiring back to Sche 
 nectady, the French were as busy in demolishing the works at Oswego, 
 and retiring from thence back towards Montreal. 
 
 " This precipitate retreat was immediately followed by as fatal a de 
 lay ; for though we had a sufficient force ready to have proceeded that 
 year in our expedition against Crown-Point, yet we wasted the whole 
 season in entrenching at Lake George, and fortifying Fort William- 
 Henry there ; the consequence of which was, that we not only lost a 
 favourable opportunity for making an attempt against Crown-Po int, but 
 paid for that neglect, by the loss of Fort William-Henry itself, this 
 year. 
 
 " This closed our operations in 1756 : The beginning of this year was 
 spent in making preparations for the expedition against Louisbourg, 
 
446 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. which took us up till the latter end of June ; then our transports sailed 
 V^-v-^,/ from lience for Halifax, with about six thousand regular troops; and in 
 their passage most miraculously escaped being taken by the French 
 ships, which, we are informed, had been about five days before cruiz 
 ing oil that harbour. After spending about five weeks at Halifax in 
 holding councils of war, the result of them was, to Jay aside the expedi 
 tion against Louisbourg. 
 
 " Whilst we were employed in making this dangerous passage to Ha 
 lifax, and holding councils of war there, Mons. Montcalm took the op 
 portunity of lord London s absence, and proceeded from Quebec to 
 Crow n- Point, with about ten thousand men, consisting of regular troops, 
 Canadians, and Indians; from whence he made Fort William-Henry a 
 visit, which he took, after a siege of about five or six days, and demo 
 lished : disabled the garrison, which consisted of about two thousand 
 three hundred men, from serving against the French for the space of 
 eighteen months; made himself master of our magazines of provision 
 and stores ; the former of which were of very great service to the ene 
 my ; and secured the entire possession of the lakes between Lake- 
 George and Montreal; finish* d this business, and retired with his 
 army, before the return of lord London with his troops from Halifax, 
 which are expected here every day. 
 
 " Such is the present state of our affairs, the fruits of our two last 
 years inactive campaigns, of our wans of proper intelligence, and the 
 little use we make of what we do get ! we find by woful experience, 
 that our great numbers of regular iroops have been of no service, foi 
 want of proper management ; the French carry all before them: and 
 what the next year will produce, God only knows ; I tremble te 
 think." 
 
 (NOTE J. p. 131.) 
 
 EVKKT account of these campaigns, which was published in England, 
 contained some fabricated or distorted anecdotes, tendii.g to bring ri 
 dicule or contempt upon the provincials In Knox s Historical Jour 
 nal,* for instance, the most considerable and esteemed work respecting 
 the operations in America from 1756 to 1760, 1 find such stories as the 
 two which I am to quote, and which have neither verisimilitude nor 
 poignancy to compensate for their falsehood. 
 
 " March 29, 1758 Two sail of ships were discovered to cross the 
 basin below, and run up Moose and Bear rivers, which being unusual 
 for British ships, a boat was sent down for intelligence and to watch 
 their motions. The boat returned, and brought up the masters of the 
 two vessels; they came from fort Cumberland, and are bound to Boston; 
 by them we are informed there is an embargo laid on all the ports of 
 New England, New York, Halifax, &.c. .c. We hear of great prepa 
 rations for opening the campaign, that there are more troops expected 
 from Europe, and that the province of Massachusetts is raising a large 
 body of provincials lo co-operate with the regulars; the masters of 
 these sloops say, that ;.ll is well at Chegnecto, and also at Fort Edward 
 and Fort Sackville, where they have lately been; these men farther add, 
 that it was reported at Boston, that the particular department of the 
 
 * Historical Journal of the Campaigns in Xorth America for the 
 years 1757, 1758 1759, and 1760, by e.iptain John Knox : dedicated by 
 permission, to General Amherst. 2 vols. 4to. 
 
NOTES. 447 
 
 New England troops this campaign, would be the reduction of Canada; PART I. 
 this was mutter of great minh to us, and an officer who uas present, ^^ r ^ r -^ m ^- 
 humorous!) replied, Jlnd let the regulars remain in the different forts and 
 garrisons, to hew wood and dig sand, &c then the French ivill dejine/i/ hum- 
 died in America" Vol. i. p. 112. 
 
 " December 1st. 1758. We weighed this morning about eight 
 o clock, and attempted to get out into the bay ; but not consulting the 
 proper time of tide, we were obliged to put back, and come to an an 
 chor ; about noon we weighed again with the tide of ebb, and little 
 wind falling, with an agitated sea, occasioned by conflicting currents, 
 our transport missed stays, and we narrowly escaped being wrecked 
 upon a lee shore, where the vessel would probably have becMi dashed 
 to pieces, the western side of the entrance being a complete ledge of 
 rocks, the master instantly fell upon his knees, crying out What 
 shall we do ? I vow I fear we shall all be lost, let us go to prayers ; what 
 can we do dear Jonathan ? Jonathan went forward muttering to him 
 self, do I vow Ebenezer, I don t know what we shall do any more 
 than thyself; whc-n fortunately one of our soldiers, who was a thorough 
 bred seaman, and had served several years on board a ship of Wi-r, and 
 after wards in a privateer, hearing and seeing the helpless state of mind 
 -.i hich our poor J\ ew England men were under, and our sloop driving to 
 wards the shore, called out, why d your eyes and limbs, down 
 with her sails and let her drive a e foremost ; what the devil signifies 
 your canting and praying now ? Ebenezer quickly taking the hint, 
 called to Jonathan *o lower the sails, saying, * he vowed he believed 
 that young man s advice was very good, but wished he had not deli 
 vered it so profanely. However, it answered to our wish; every thing 
 that was necessary was transacted instantaneously ; the soldier gave di 
 rections, and seizing the helm, we soon recovered ourselves, cleared 
 the straight, and drove into the bay stern foremost." 
 
 Knox s Hist. Journal, vol. i. p. 217-18. 
 
 The London newspapers were never without " extracts of letters 
 from officers serving in the British army in America," which surpassed 
 the formal relations of the war, in ridicule and obloquy of the Ameri 
 cans. A lampoon of this description, published in the London Chroni 
 cle of May, 1759, drew an answer from Dr. Franklin, which was in 
 serted in the same paper a few days afterwards. 1 have not seen thi< 
 characteristic production in any collection of his works, and I therefore 
 give it place in this volume, with the aim of which it so happily co 
 incides. It evidences the staleness, as it explodes the absurdity ol 
 those contumelious allegations against us, which the same spirit that 
 gave them birth at the earliest period, and has never since declined, 
 now reproduces in the British Journals. 
 
 From the London Chronicle. 
 " MR. CHRONICLE, 
 
 " SIR, while the public attention is so much turned towards America, 
 every letter from thence that promises new information, is pretty ge 
 nerally read ; it seems therefore the more necessary that cure should 
 be taken to disabuse the public, when those letters" contain facts false 
 in themselves, and representations injurious to bodies of people, or 
 even to private persons. 
 
 " In your paper, No. 310, I find an extract of a letter, said to be from 
 a gentleman in general Abercrombie s army. As there are several 
 strokes in it tending 1 to render the colonies despicable, and even odious 
 to the mother country, which mav have ill consequences ; and no no 
 tice having been taken of the injuries contained in that letter, other 
 
448 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. letters of the same nature have since been published ; permit me tt* 
 
 ^^~ -m^j make a few observations on it. 
 
 "The writer says, New-England was settled by Presbyterians and 
 Independents, who took shelter there from the persecutions of Arch 
 bishop Laud ; they still retain their original character, they generally hati 
 the Church of England J says lie. It is very (rue, that if some resentmiMV 
 still remained for the hardships their fathers suffered, it might perhaps; 
 be not much wondered at; but the fact is, that the moderation of tlu 
 present Church of England towards dissenters in old as well as New 
 England, has quite effaced those impressions; the dissenters too are be 
 come less rigid and scrupulous, and the good will between those differ 
 ent bodies in that country, is now both mutual and equal. 
 
 " He goes on : They came out with a levelling spirit, and they retain it . 
 They cannot bear to tldnk that one man should be exorbitantly rich-, and ano 
 ther poor ; so that, except in the sea port towns, there are few great estate, 
 among them. This equality produces also a rusticity of manners i for in theii 
 language, dress, and in all their behaviour, they are more boorish than an} 
 thing you ever saw in a certain northern latitude. One would imagine fron 
 this account, that those who were growing poor, plundered ihose wh< 
 were growing rich, to preserve this equality, and that property had IK 
 protection ; whereas, in fact, it is no where more secure than in UK 
 ]N r ew England colonies, the law is no where better executed, or justic? 
 obtained at less expence. The equality he speaks of, arises first fron 
 a more equal distribution of lands by the assemblies in the first settle 
 ment than has been practised in the other colonies, where favourites o! 
 governors have obtained enormous tracts for trifling considerations, to 
 the prejudice both of the crown revenues and the public good ; and se 
 condly, from the nature of their occupation; husbandmen with snul: 
 tracts of land, though they may by industry maintain themselves and fa 
 milies in mediocrity, having few means of acquiring great wealth, espe 
 cially in a young colony that is to be supplied with its cloathing, and 
 many other expensive articles of consumption from the mother coun 
 try. Their dress the gentleman may be a more critical judge of, than 
 I can pretend to be : all I know of it is, that they wear the manufacture 
 of Britain, and follow its fashions perhaps too closely, every remark 
 able change in the mode making its appearance there within a feu 
 months after its invention here; a natural effect of their constant inter 
 course with England, by ships arriving almost every week from the ca 
 pital, their respect for the mother country, and admiration of every 
 thing that is British. But as to their language, I must beg this gentle 
 man s pardon, if I differ from him. His ear, accustomed perhaps to the 
 dialect practised in the certain northern latitude he mentions, may not be 
 qualified to judge so nicely what relates to pure English. And 1 appeal 
 to all Englishmen here, who have been acquainted with the colonists, 
 whether it is not a common remark, that they speak the language with 
 such an exactness both of expression and accent, that though you may- 
 know the natives of several of the counties of England, by peculiarities 
 in their dialect, you cannot by that means distinguish a North Ameri 
 can. All the new books and pamphlets worth reading, that are pub 
 lished here, in a few weeks are transmitted and found there, where 
 there is not a man or woman born in the country but what can read . 
 and it must, I should think, be a pleasing reflection to those who write 
 either for the benefit of the present age or of posterity, to find their 
 audience increasing with the increase of our colonies ; and their lan 
 guage extending itself beyond the narrow bounds of these islands, to a 
 continent larger than all Europe, and to a future empire as fully peo 
 pled, which Britain may probably one day possess in those vast western 
 regions. 
 
 " But the gentleman makes more injurious comparisons than these 
 
NOTES, 449 
 
 That latitude, he says, has this advantage over them, that it has pro- p RT I. 
 rluccd sharp, acute men, fit for war or learning-, whereas, the others are 
 remarkably simple or silly, and blunder eternally. We have 6000 of 
 their milit.b, which the general would willingly exchange for 2000 re 
 gulars. They are for ever marring some one or other of our plans, 
 when sent to execute them. They can, indeed, some of them at least, 
 range in the woods; hut 300 Indians with their yell, throw 5000 of 
 them in a panic, and then they will leave nothing to the enemy to do, 
 for they will shoot one another; and in the woods our regulars are 
 afraid to be on a command with them on that very account* I doubt, 
 Mr. Chronicle, that this paragraph, when it comes to be read in Ame 
 rica, will have no good effect; and rather increase that inconvenient 
 disgust which is too apt to arise between the troops of different corps, or 
 countries, who are obliged to serve together. Will not a New-England 
 officer be apt to retort and say, what foundation have you for this odi 
 ous distinction in favour of the officers from your certain northern lati 
 tude ? They may, as you say, be fa for learning ; but, surely, the return 
 of your first general, with a well appointed and sufficient force, from 
 his expedition against Louisbourg, without so much as seeing the 
 place, is not the most shining proof of his talents for -war. And no one 
 will say his plan was marred by us, for we were not \vith him. Was his 
 successor who conducted the blundering attack, and inglorious retreat 
 from Ticonderoga, a New-England man, or one of that certain latitude ? 
 Then as to the comparison between regulars and provincials, will not 
 the latter remark, that it was 2000 New-England provincials, with 
 about 150 regulars, that took the strong fort of Beausejour, in the be 
 ginning of the war; though in the accounts transmitted to the English 
 Gazette, the honour was claimed by the regulars, and little or no no 
 tice taken of the others. That it was the provincials who beat general 
 Dieskau, with his regulars, Canadians, and yelling Indians , and sent 
 him prisoner to England. That it was a provincial-born officer,* with 
 American batteauxmen, that beat the French and Indians on Oswego ri 
 ver. That it was the same officer, with provincials, who made that 
 long and admirable march into the enemy s country, took and destroy 
 ed fort Frontenac, with the whole French fleet on the lakes, and 
 struck terror into the heart of Canada. That it was a provincial offi- 
 cer,f with provincials only, who made another extraordinary march 
 into the enemy s country, surprized and destroyed the Indian town of 
 Kittanning, bringing off the scalps of their chiefs. That one ranging 
 captain of a few provincials, Rogers, has harrassed the enemy more on 
 the frontiers of Canada, and destroyed more of their men, than the 
 whole army of regulars. That it was the regulars who surrendered 
 themselves, with the provincials under their command, prisoners of 
 war, almost as soon as they were besieged, with the forts, fleet, and all 
 the provisions and stores that had been provided and amassed at so im 
 mense an expence, at Oswego. That it was the regulars who surren 
 dered fort William-Henry, and suffered themselves to be butchered 
 and scalped with arms in their hands. That it was the regulars under 
 Braddock, who were thrown into a panic by the * yells of 3 or 400 In 
 dians, in their confusion shot one another, and, with five times the 
 force of the enemy, fled before them, destroying all their own stores, 
 ammunition, and provision! These regular gentlemen, will the provin 
 cial rangers add, may possibly be afraid, as they say they are, to be on a 
 command ivith us in the woods ; but when it is considered, that from all 
 past experience, the chance of our shooting them is not as one to a 
 hundred, compared with that of their being shot by the enemy ; may it 
 
 * Colonel Bradstreet. f Colonel Armstrong 1 , of Pennsvlvania, 
 
 VOL. I. 3 L 
 
450 NOTES. 
 
 PARTI, not be suspected, that what they give as the very account of their fear 
 .^^^^^ j and unwillingness to venture out with us, is only the very excuse ; and 
 that a concern for their scalps \veighsmore with them than a regard for 
 their honour. 
 
 " Such as these, Sir, I imagine may be the reflections extorted by such 
 provocation, from the provincials in general. But the New-England 
 men in particular, will have reason to resent the remarks on their re 
 duction of Louisbourg. Your writer proceeds, Indeed they are all 
 very ready to make their boast of taking Louisbourg, in 1745; but if 
 people were to be acquitted or condemned according to the propriety 
 and wisdom of their plans, and not according to their success, the per 
 sons that undertook the siege, merited little praise : for I have heard 
 officers, who assisted at it, say, never was any thing more rash ; for had 
 one single part of their plan failed, or had the French made the for- 
 tieth part of the resistance then that they have made now, every soul of 
 the New Englanders must have fallen in the trenches. The garrison 
 was weak, sickly, and destitute of provisions, and disgusted, and there 
 fore became a ready prey ; and, when they returned to France, were 
 decimated for their gallant defence. Where then is the glory arising 
 from thence ? After denying his facts, * that the garrison was weak, 
 wanted provisions, made not a fortieth part of the resistance, were de 
 cimated, Sac. the New-England men will ask this regular gentleman, if 
 the place was well fortified, and had ( ;s it really had) a numerous gar 
 rison, was it not at least brave to attack it with a handful of raw undii- 
 ciplined militia ? If the garrison was, as you say, * sickly, disgusted, des 
 titute of provisions, and ready to become a prey, was it not prudent to 
 seize that opportunity, and put the nation in possession of so important 
 a fortress, at so small an expence ? So that if you will not allow the en- 
 terprize to be, as we think it was, both brave ami prudent, ought you 
 not at least to grant it was either one or the other ? But is there no merit 
 on this score in the people; who, though at first so greatly divided, as 
 to the making or forbearing the attempt, that it was carried in the af 
 firmative, by the small majority of one vote only ; yet when it was once 
 resolved on, unanimously prosecuted the design, and prepared the 
 means with the greatest zeal and diligence; so that the whole equip 
 ment was completely ready before the season would permit the execu 
 tion ? Is there no merit of praise in laying and executing their plan so 
 well, that, as you have confessed, not a single part of it failed ? If the 
 plan was destitute of propriety and wisdom/ would it not have re 
 quired the sharp acute men of the northern latitude to execute it, that by 
 supplying its deficiencies they might give it some chance of success? 
 But if such remarkably silly, simple, blundering mar-plans, AS you 
 say we are, could execute this plan, so that not a single part of it failed, 
 does it not at least show that the plan itself must be laid with some wis 
 dom and propriety ? Is there no merit in the ardour with which all de 
 grees and ranks of people quitted their private affairs, and ranged 
 themselves under the banners of their king, for the honour, safety, and 
 advantage of their countn ? Is there no merit in the profound secrecy 
 guarded by a whole people, so that the enemy had not the least intelli 
 gence of the design, till they saw the fleet of transports cover the sea 
 before their port ? Is there none in the indefatigable labour the troops 
 went through during the siege, performing the duty both of men and 
 horses; the hardships they patiently suffered for want of tents and 
 other necessaries ; the readiness with which they learnt to move, direct, 
 and manage cannon, raise batteries, and form approaches; the bravery 
 with which they sustained sallies; and finally, in their consenting tc> 
 stay and garrison the place after it was taken, absent from their busi 
 ness and families, till troops could be brought from England for that 
 purpose, though they undertook the service on a promise of being di f . 
 
 
NOTES. 
 
 451 
 
 charged as soon as it was over, were unprovided for so long an ab- PART I. 
 
 sence, and actually suffered ten times more loss by mortal sickness, .^_ ^ _^_. 
 
 through want of necessaries, than they suffered from the arms of the 
 
 enemy ? The nation, however, had a sense of this undertaking different 
 
 from the unkind one of this gentleman. At the treaty of peace, the 
 
 possession of Louisbourg was found of great advantage to our affairs in 
 
 Europe; and if the brave men that made the acquisition for us were 
 
 not rewarded^ at least they were praised. Envy may continue awhile to 
 
 eaval and detract, but public virtue will in the end obtain esteem ; and 
 
 hoiu-st impartiality in this and future ages, will not fail doing justice to 
 
 merit. 
 
 " Your gentleman writer thus decently goes on. The most substantial 
 men of most of the provinces, are children or grandchildren of those 
 that came here at the king s expence ; that is, thieves, highwaymen, 
 and robbers. Being probably a military gentleman, this, and therefore 
 a person of nice honour, if any one should tell him in the plainest lan 
 guage, that what he here says is an absolute falsehood, challenges and 
 cutting of throats might immediately ensue. I shall therefore only re 
 fer him to his otvn account in this same letter, of the peopling of New-Eng 
 land, which he sa\s, with more truth, was by Puritans \vho fled thither 
 for shelter from the persecutions of Archbishop Laud. Is there not a 
 wide difference between removing to a distant country to enjoy the ex 
 ercise of religion, according to a man s conscience, and his being trans 
 ported thither by a law, as a punishment for his crimes ? This contra 
 diction we therefore leave wegtntieman and himself to settle as well as 
 they can between them. One would think from nis account, that the 
 provinces were so many colonies from Newgate. The truth is, not 
 only Laud s persecution, but the other public troubles in the following 
 reigns, induced many thousand families to leave England, and settle in 
 the plantations. During the predominance of the parliament, many 
 royalists removed or were banished to Virginia and Barbadoes, who af 
 terwards spread into the other settlements : The Catholics sheltered 
 themselves in Maryland. At the restoration, many of the deprived non 
 conformist ministers, with their families, friends and hearers, went over. 
 Towards the end of Charles the Second s reign, and during James the 
 Second s, the Dissenters again flocked into America, driven by persecu 
 tion, and dreading the introduction of popery at home. Then the high 
 price or reward of labour in the colonies, and want of artisans there, 
 drew over many, as well as the occasion of commerce ; and when once 
 people begin to migrate, everyone has his little sphere of acquaintance 
 and connections, which he draws after him, by invitation, motives of in 
 terest, praising his new settlement, and other encouragements. The 
 most substantial men are descendants of those early settlers ; new 
 comers not having yet had time to raise estates. The practice of send 
 ing convicts thither, is modern ; and the same indolence of temper and 
 habits of idleness that make people poor and tempt them to steal in 
 England, continue with them when they are sent to America, and must 
 there have the same effects, where all who live well, owe their subsist 
 ence to labour and business ; and where it is a thousand times more diffi 
 cult than here, to acquire wealth without industry. Hence the instances 
 of transported thieves advancing their fortunes in the colonies, are ex 
 tremely rare ; if there really is a single instance of it, which I very much 
 doubt ; but of their being advanced there to the gallows, the instances 
 are plenty. Might they not as well have been hanged at home ? \\ T e 
 call Britain the. mother country ; but what good mother besides, would in 
 troduce thieves and criminals into the company of her children, to cor 
 rupt and disgrace them ? And how cruel is it, to force, by the high 
 hand of power, a particular country of your subjects, who have not de 
 served such usage, to receive your outcasts, repealing all the laws they 
 
452 
 
 JSOTES. 
 
 PART I. make to prevent their admission, and then reproach them with the do 
 . ^^ . tested mixture you have made : * The emptying their jails into our set 
 
 tlements, 5 says a writer of that country, * is an insull and contempt, the 
 crudest perhaps that ever one people offered another; and would not 
 be equalled even by emptying their jakes on our tables. 
 
 "The letter I have been considering, Mr. Chronicle, is followed by 
 another, in your paper of Tuesday the 17th past, said to br from an officer 
 who attended Brigadier-general Forbes, in his march from Philadelphia to 
 fort Du Quesne; but written probably by the same gi ntleman who wrote 
 the former, as it seems calculated to raise the character of the officers of 
 the certain northern latitude, at the expence of the reputation of the colo 
 nies, and the provincial forces. According to this letter-writer, if the 
 Pennsylvanians granted large supplies, and raised a great body of troops 
 for the last campaign, it was not obedience to his majesty s commands, 
 signified by his minister, Mr. Pitt, zeal for the king s service, or even a 
 regard for their own safety ; but it was owing to the general s proper 
 management of the Quakers, and other parties in the province. The 
 withdrawing of the Indians from the French interest by negotiating a 
 peace, is all ascribed to the general, and not a word said to the honour 
 of the poor Quakers, who first set those negotiations on foot, or of 
 honest Frederick Post, that compleated them with so much ability and 
 success. Even the little merit of the Assembly s nuking a law to regu 
 late carriages, is imputed to the general s multitude of letters. Then 
 he tells us, innumerable scouting parties had been sent out during a 
 long period, both by the general and Col. Bouquet, towards fort Du 
 Quesne, to catch a prisoner if possible, for intelligence, but never got 
 any. How happened that ? Why, it was the provincial troops, that 
 were constantly employed in that service, and they, it seems, never do 
 any thing they are ordered to do That, however, one would think, 
 might be easily remedied, by sending regulars with them, who of course 
 must command them, and may see that they do their duty- Ab / The 
 regulars are afraid of being shot by the provincials in a panic Then send 
 all regulars. Jlye ; That ivas ivhat the colonel resolved upon. Intelli 
 gence was now wanted, (says the letter-writer) colonel Bouquet, whose 
 attention to business was [only] very considerable [that is, not quite so 
 great as the general s, for he was not of the northern latitude] was deter - 
 mined to send NO MOIIE provincials a scouting. And how did he exe 
 cute his determination ? Why, by sending Major Grant of the High 
 landers, with seven hundred men, three hundred of them Highlanders, 
 THE BEST Americans, Virginians, and Pt nnsylvanians! N" blundei- ih is, 
 in our writer; but a misfortune ; and he is nevertheless one of those 
 
 * acute sharp men who are Jit for learning / And how did this major 
 and seven hundred men succeed in catching the prisoner? Why, their 
 
 * march to fort Du Quesne was so conducted the surprize was cotnpleut. 
 Perhaps you may imagine, gentle reader, that this was a surprize of the 
 enemy. No such matter. They knew every step of his motions, and 
 had, every man of them, left their fires and huts in the fields, and re 
 tired into the fort. But the major and his 700 men, they were sur 
 prized,- first to find no body there at night, and next to find themselves 
 surrounded and cut to pieces in the morning; two or three hundred 
 being killed, drowned, or taken prisoners, and among the latter the 
 major himself. Those who escaped were also surprized at their own 
 good fortune; and the whole army was surprized at the major s bad 
 management. Thus the surprize was indeed compleat ; but not the dis 
 grace ; for provincials were thereto lay the blame on. The misfortune 
 (we must not call it misconduct) of the major was owing, it seems, to an 
 un-named, and perhaps, unknown provincial officer, who, it is said, 
 
 * disobeyed his orders and quited his post. Whence a formal conclu 
 sion is drawn, that a planter is not to be taken from the plough and 
 made an officer in a day. Unhappy provincials ! If success attends 
 
NOTES. 453 
 
 where you are joined with the regulars, they claim all the honour, PART I. 
 though not a tenth part of your number. If disgrace, it is all yours, v _^^ -^ . 
 though you happen to be but a small purt of the whole, and have not 
 :he command ; as if regulars were in their nature invincible, when not 
 mixed with provincials, and provincials of no kind of value without re 
 gulars! Happy is it for you that you were neither present at Preston 
 Pans nor Fullurk, at the faint attempt against Rochtbrt, the rout of St. 
 Cas, or the hasty retreat from Martinico. Every thing that went wrong, 
 or did not go right, would have been ascribed to you. Our commanders 
 would have been saved the labour of writing long apologies for their 
 conduct. It might have been sufficient to sa> , pi ovincials -were with 
 tor/ 
 
 A NEW-ENGLANDMAN." 
 May 9, 1759. 
 
 (NOTE K. p. 168.) 
 
 WITH respect tothe character of the royal governors, See Franklin s 
 piece on the Causes of the American Discontents, Burke s Speech on 
 Am. Taxation, and most of the English Histories passim, in which our 
 colonial affairs are introduced. The royal governors were, in several 
 instances, detected in vhe grossest peculation, and almost universally 
 involved themselves, by their spirit of tyranny, religious bigotry, or 
 rapacity, in quarrels with the provinces over which they were placed. 
 The frequent and sudden prorogation, or dissolution, of the colonial 
 assemblies, by which they vainly endeavoured to worry the people into 
 submission, was one of the causes of those quarrels. They transmitted 
 to the British ministry, accounts of their provinces, either entirely 
 false, or miserably imperfect. " Governments," says Smith, the histo 
 rian of New York, addressing the earl of Halifax, 1756, " have been 
 too often bestowed upon men of mean parts, and indigent circumstances. 
 The former were incapable of the task, and the latter too deeply en 
 grossed by the sordid views of private interest, either to pursue or 
 study our common weal. The worst consequences have resulted from 
 this measure, &c. All attempts for conciliating the friendship of the 
 Indians, promoting the fur trade, securing the command of the lakes, 
 protecting the frontiers, and extending our possessions far into the in 
 land country, have too often given place to party projects and contracted 
 schemes, equally useless and shameful. If the governors of these plan 
 tations had formerly been animated by generous and extensive views, 
 the long projected designs of our common enemy might have been 
 many years ago supplanted at a trifling expense," &c. I should sug 
 gest another source of oppression and disaffection, akin to that of the 
 conduct of the governors, which is thus stated by Stokes, a zealous 
 royalist, in his View of the Constitution of the British Colonies in Ame 
 rica, (1 vol. 8vo. Lond. 1784:) " There was a fatal practice, from the first 
 establishment, which greatly weakened the king s cause in all the Ame 
 rican colonies, I mean the bestowing almost every lucrative office in 
 America, that could be exercised by deputy, on some person residing 
 in Great Britain, who employed a deputy, with a slender allowance, to 
 execute the office for them : this deputy had neither weight in the pro 
 vince, nor any interest in the government under which he lived," &c. 
 The altercations between Lord Cornbury, as governor of New Jer 
 sey, and the legislature of that state, at the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century, may be cited as examples of the treatment to which the colo- 
 
454 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. nial assemblies were exposed, as well as of the spirit with which the 
 ^^^^^ character and station of the American freeman were maintained. Corn 
 bury attempted encroachments and oppressions ; the assembly resiste< 
 and complained. In their first strong remonstrance, they hold this Ian 
 guage : " Liberty is too valuable a thing to be ensily parted with ; anc 
 when such mean inducements procure such violent endeavours to tea" 
 it from us, we must take leave to say, they have neither heads, hearts, 
 nor souls, that are not moved with the miseries of their country, and 
 are not forward with their utmost power lawfully to redress them. Wo 
 conclude, by advising the governor to consider what it is that princi 
 pally engages the affections of a people, and he will find no other arti 
 fice needful than to let them be unmolested in the enjoyment of wha: 
 belongs to them of right ; and a wise man, that despises not his own 
 happiness, will earnestly labour to regain their love." 
 
 The remonstrance, which ended with this passage, was presented in 
 form to the governor, by Samuel Jennings, the speaker of the house of 
 assembly. Smith, the historian of New Jersey, gives an amusing ac 
 count of the interview.* 
 
 * Jennings was undaunted, and Lord Cornbury, on his part, exacted 
 the utmost decorum ; while, as speaker, he was delivering the remon 
 strance, the latter frequently interrupted him with a stop, -what s that - 
 &c. at the same time putting on a countenance of authority and sterr- 
 ness, with intention to confound him. With due submission, yet h rrr- 
 ness, whenever interrupted, he calmly desired leave to read the pas 
 sages over again, and did it with an additional emphasis upon thosj 
 most complaining; so that, on the second reading, they became more 
 observable than before ; he at length got through ; when the governor 
 told the house to attend him again on Saturday next, at 11 o clock, to 
 receive his answer. After the house was gone, Cornbury, with some 
 emotion, told those with him, that Jennings had impudence enough to face 
 
 The governor produced his answer, after some days ; and, as he as 
 cribed the resistance which he experienced, to the Quakers, he assailed 
 them with a grossness of invective, which that society could hardly 
 have expected to hear from any mouth, and much less from that of a 
 chief magistrate, bred at the court of St. James. " I am of opinion," 
 said his lordship, "that nothing has hindered the vengeance of just 
 heaven from falling on this province long ago, but the infinite mercy, 
 goodness, long suffering, and forbearance of Almighty God, who has 
 been abundantly provoked by the repeated crying sins of a perverse 
 generation among us, and more especially by the dangerous and abomi 
 nable doctrines, and the ivicked lives and practices of a number of peo 
 ple ; some of whom, under the pretended name of Christians, have 
 dared to deny the very essence and being of the Saviour of the -world. 
 
 " We find, by woful experience, that there are many men who have 
 been permitted to serve on juries here, who have no regard for the 
 oaths they take, especially among a sort of people, who, under a pretence 
 of conscience, refuse to take an oath ; and yet many of them, under the 
 cloak of a very solemn affirmation, dare to commit the greatest enor 
 mities, especially if it be to serve a friend, as they call him. 
 
 * See his " History of the Colony of New Jersey, to the year 1721," 
 for the entertaining details of the controversy between the governor 
 and the assembly. The early history of this state is as edifying as that 
 of any other of our confederacy. It yields the most animating lessons 
 of energetic freedom and philanthropic liberality. It deserves to be 
 more read than I presume it to be, and to be better digested than it is 
 in the work of Smith. 
 
NOTES, 
 
 455 
 
 . " Of all the people in the world, the Quakers ought to be the last to PART I. 
 complain of the hardships of travelling a few miles, who never repine -^- T ~^- 
 at the trouble and charges of travelling several hundred miles to a 
 yearly meeting, where it is evidently known, that nothing was ever done for 
 the good of the country, but, on the contrary, continual contrivances are car 
 ried on for the undermining of the government, both in church and state." 
 
 The courteous governor railed passionately at the assembly itself; 
 gave them the lie direct, and signalized the speaker, and another mem 
 ber, as men " known neither to have good morals, nor good principles :" 
 " mean and scandalous, seditious, fraudulent, &c." The assembly did 
 not omit to reply, and to repay his excellency without stint. It was a 
 noble spirit of independence, that, uniNv the circumstances of the co 
 lony at that period, dictated such language as the following ; which, 
 strong as it is, does not convey an adequate idea of the keenness and 
 energy of the whole address. 
 
 " We are apt to believe, upon the credit of your excellency s asser 
 tion, that there may be a number of people in this province, who will 
 never live quietly under any government, nor suffer their neighbours 
 to enjoy any peace, quiet, nor happiness, if they can help it; such peo 
 ple are pests in all governments; have ever been so in this; and -we 
 know of none who can lay a fairer claim to these characters than many of 
 your excellency s favourites." " Our juries here are not so learned or 
 rich as, perhaps, they are in England ; but we doubt not, full as honest." 
 " Notwithstanding those soft, cool, and considerate ttrms, of malicious, 
 scandalous, and frivolous, with which your excellency vouchsafes to 
 treat the assembly of this province, they are of opinion, that no judi 
 cious or impartial man will think it reasonable that the inhabitants of 
 one province should go into another to have their wills proved." 
 
 " It is the general assembly of the province of New Jersey that com 
 plains, and not the Quakers, with whose persons (considered as Qua 
 kers) or meetings, we have nothing to do, nor are we concerned in what 
 your excellency says against them ; they, perhaps, will think themselves 
 obliged to vindicate their meetings from the aspersions which your ex 
 cellency so liberally bestows upon them, and evince to the world how 
 void of rashness and ^consideration your excellency s expressions are, 
 and how becoming it is for the governor of a province to enter the lists of con 
 troversy, with a people who thought themselves entitled to his protection of 
 them in the enjoyment of their religious liberties ; those of them who are 
 members of this house, have begged leave, in behalf of themselves and 
 friends, to tell the governor, they must answer him in the words of 
 Nehemiah to Sanbal lat, contained in the 8th verse of the 6th chapter of 
 Nehemiah, viz. * There are no such things as thou sayest, but thoufeignest 
 them out of thine own heart? 
 
 " These bold accusers of your excellency, the members of this assem 
 bly, are a sort of creatures called honest men, just to the trust reposed in 
 them by the country, who will not suffer their liberties and properties 
 to be torn from them by anv man, how great soever, if they can hinder 
 it." 
 
 (NOTE L. p. 187.) 
 
 LORD George Germain is said to have left the ministry, still persuad 
 ed (after the capture of Cornwallis), of the practicability of subduing 
 America in another campaign. General Lloyd, the great tactician, had 
 suggested a plan of operations, by which this might be easily done ! 
 The deceptive assurances quoted in the text, from lord George Ger- 
 
466 NOTES, 
 
 PART I. main s speech, were rivalled in the speeches of the other members o; 
 ._^_ -^. the government. The following extracts from the debates of the 
 ^ House of Lords, of 1778, belong to the same blind system of ministerial 
 tactics. 
 
 "The Earl of Suffolk said, that it had been strongly relied upon in 
 debate, that America would spurn the offers held out in those bilk 
 (American conciliatory bills). For his part he was of a very different 
 opinion. He had the most undoubted information, that the Americans 
 were in the greatest distress, and would therefore embrace any reason 
 able propositions of peace and civil security." 
 
 "Viscount Weymouth said with regard to what the Duke (of Graf 
 ton) had thrown out respecting a treaty between France and America, 
 the most convincing way of reply would be not to argue upon it, but to 
 come immediately to the point, for which reason he would fullv and 
 fairly speak to it ; he did therefore in the plainest and most precise 
 manner, assure their lordships, that he knew not of any such treatu having 
 been signed or entered into, between the court of France and the deputies oj 
 CongrrsN and he hoped their lordships would not fail to remember, that it was 
 on the 5th of March (1778), likewise, that he- stood up in his place, and 
 declared he knew nothing of any such thing, nor had any authentic in 
 formation of any such treaty being either in contemplation or exist 
 ence."* 
 
 (NOTE M. p. 191.) 
 
 THE charge of cowardice against the Americans was discussed, pro 
 and con, with considerable earnestness, in both houses of parliament. 
 With a view to the amusement of the American reader, and the more 
 complete development of my subject, I propose to insert here a collec 
 tion of loose quotations from the debates of that body, respecting this to 
 pic of cowardice, and the employment of Indians and European foreign 
 ers in the British service. 
 
 Lord Chat ham said (1777) "Ministers have been in error; experience 
 has proved it; but what is worse, they continue in it. They told you in 
 the beginning that 15,000 men would traverse America without scarcely 
 the appearance of interruption ; two campaigns have passed since they 
 gave us this assurance ; treble that number has been employed ; and 
 one of your armies, which composed two thirds of the force by which 
 America was to be subdued, has been totally destroyed, and is now led 
 captive through those provinces you call rebellious. Those men whom 
 you call cowards, poltroons, runaways, and knaves, are become victori 
 ous ovi-r your veieran troops ; and in the midst of victory, and flush of 
 conquest, have set ministers the example of moderation and of magna 
 nimity worthy imitation. 
 
 " My lords, no time should be lost, which may promise to improve this 
 disposition in America ; unless, by an obstinacy founded in madness, we 
 wish to stifle tho?e embers of affection, which, after all our savage treat 
 ment, do not seem as yet to be entirely extinguished. While, on one 
 side, we must lament the unhappy fate of that spirited officer, Mr. Bur- 
 goyne, and the gallant troops under his command, who were sacrificed 
 to the wanton temerity and ignorance of ministers, we are as strongly 
 r lied, on the other, to admire and applaud the generous, magnani- 
 
 * The Treaty of Alliance was signed a month previous the 6th of 
 February, 1788, 
 
NOTES, 
 
 457 
 
 mous conduct, the noble friendship, brotherly affection, and humanity PART I. 
 
 of the victors, who, condescending 1 to impute the horrid orders of mas- y^-v^^/ 
 
 sacre and devastation to their true authors, supposed that, as soldiers 
 
 and Englishmen, those cruel excesses could not have originated with, 
 
 the general, nor were consonant to the brave and humane spirit of a 
 
 British soldier, if not compelled to it as an act of duty. They traced 
 
 the first cause of these diabolical orders to their source, and by that 
 
 wise and generous interpretation, granted their professed destroyers 
 
 terms of capitulation, which they could only be entitled to as the makers 
 
 of fair and honourable war." 
 
 " His grace, the Duke of Richmond, turned his attention (1775) to what 
 a noble earl (Sandwich), early in the debate, had said respecting the 
 cowardice of the Americans. He begged leave to remind his lordship, 
 that he did not speak conditionally ; there was no if at the time the 
 charge was made, it was a positive one, and could not now be explained 
 away by conditions introduced for the first time ; yet, however positive 
 the noble lord might have been then, or guarded he might be now, he 
 could inform his lordship that the New England people were brave ; 
 that they had proved it ; that the general who had commanded at Bun 
 ker s Hill had confessed it ; that another (General Burgoyne), no less 
 celebrated for his talents than zeal for the cause, had confirmed it ; that 
 an officer, a particular friend of his, on the spot had united in the same 
 opinion." 
 
 Col. Ban e said " The Americans have been branded in this house 
 with every opprobrious epithet that meanness could invent termed 
 cowardly and inhuman. Let us mark the proof. They have obliged 
 as brave a general as ever commanded a body of British troops to sur 
 render; such is their cowardice ! And, instead of throwing chains upon 
 these troops, they have nobly given them their freedom ; such is their 
 inhumanity ! I only wish, from this single circumstance, to draw this fair 
 conclusion, that, instead of a set of lawless, desperate adventurers, we find 
 them, by experience, to be men of the most exalted sentiments; in 
 spired by that genius of liberty which is the noblest emotion of the 
 heart, which it is impossible to conquer, impracticable to dismiss." 
 
 Mr. Burke observed "The Americans had been always represented 
 as cowards; this was far from being true ; and he appealed to the con 
 duct of Arnold and Gates towards General Burgoyne, as a striking 
 proof of their bravery. Our army was totally at their mercy. We had 
 employed the savages to butcher them, their wives, their aged parents, 
 and their children ; and yet, generous to the last degree, they gave our 
 men leave to depart on their parole, never more to bear arms against 
 North America. Bravery and cowardice could never inhabit the same 
 bosom ; generosity, valour, and humanity are ever inseparable. Poor 
 indeed the Americans were, but in that consists their greatest strength. 
 Sixty thousand men had fallen at the feet of their magnanimous, because 
 voluntary poverty." 
 
 The Duke of Richmond said (1775) "The transportation of 20,000 
 Russians would cost government 500,000/. An equal number of 
 British troops should be sent at the same period, or ministry might 
 find, that the Russians, instead of conquering America for England, 
 would take possession of it themselves, in virtue of that law of conquest, 
 acknowledged by all freebooters. That the Russians would gladly emi 
 grate to America, no person could doubt, who was in the smallest de 
 gree acquainted with the dispositions of those people. Shoals of Cos 
 sacks were continually deserting their country, to seek more comforta 
 ble settlements in the north of China. Seventy thousand of these Cos 
 sacks proceeding on such a plan, had lately bidden adieu to the Rus 
 sian empire. It could not, therefore, be imagined, that twenty thou 
 sand Russians would have the least objection to be sent, free of expense, 
 YOT, I. 3 M 
 
458 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. to America; but there was much reason to suspect, that, when there, 
 V^-v^/ they might think the advantages resulting from submitting to the Ame 
 rican congress preferrable to those they could derive from defendine 
 the measures of a British parliament. 
 
 The Earl of Shelburne, (1775) With respect to the 20,000 Rus 
 sians, his lordship addressed the ministers in the following terms 
 There are powers in Europe who will not suffer such a body of 
 Russians to be transported to America. I speak from information. 
 The ministers know what 1 mean. Some power has already interfered 
 to stop the success of the Russian negotiation. As for expecting neu 
 trality from France, that was idle. 
 
 The Earl of Sandwich said (1775) "If Russian auxiliaries were ne 
 cessary in the former war, as he was convinced they were, they might 
 be so now, they might be so on any future occasion." 
 
 The Earl of Chatham said (1777) "Your ministers have gone to Ger 
 many ; they have sought the alliance and assistance of every pitiful, 
 beggarly, insignificant, paltry prince, to cut the throats of their legal, 
 brave, and injured brethren in America. They have entered into mer 
 cenary treaties with those human butchers, for the purchase and sale 
 of human blood. But, my lords, this is not all ; they have entered into 
 other treaties. The} have let the savages of America loose upon their 
 innocent, unoffending brethren; loose upon the weak, the aged, and 
 defenceless ; on old men, women, and children ; on the very babes 
 upon the breast; to be cut, mangled, sacrificed, broiled, roasted; nay, 
 to be literally eat. These, my lord, are the allies Great Britain now 
 has; carnage, desolation, and destruction, wherever her arms are car 
 ried, is her newly adopted mode of making war. Our ministers have 
 made alliances at the German shambles ; and with the barbarians oi 
 America, with the merciless torturers of their species; where they will 
 next apply, I cannot tell Was it by setting loose the savages of Ame 
 rica, to imbrue their hands in the blood of our enemies, that the duties 
 of the soldier, the citizen, and the man, came to be united ? Is this ho 
 nourable warfare, my lords ? Does it correspond with the language oi 
 the poet ? The pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war, that 
 make ambition virtue. " 
 
 The Duke of Richmond said (Nov. 18, 1777) " But, my lords, I wish 
 you to turn your eyes to another part of this business. I mean the 
 dreadful inhumanity with which this war is carried on ; shocking, be 
 yond description, to every feeling of a Christian, or of a man. When 
 we have heard of the cruelties of other civil wars, we used to rejoice, 
 not to have the age, or the country we lived in, the scene of such mi 
 sery ; but, to see England, formerly famous for humanity, coolly 
 suffering the worst of barbarities to be exercised on her fellow subjects, 
 and appearing untouched by the woes she causes, because they are at 
 a distance, and she does not experience any of them herself, must be- 
 truly mortifying to any man who is in the smallest degree possessed oi 
 national pride. If ever any nation shall deserve to draw down on hei 
 the Divine vengeance of her sins, it will be this, if she suffers such hor 
 rid war to continue. To me, who think we have been originally in the 
 wrong, it appears doubly unpardonable : but even supposing we were 
 right, it is certainly we who produce the war ; and I do not think anv 
 consideration of dominion or empire sufficient to warrant the sacrifices 
 we make to it. The best rights may be bought too dear ; nor are all 
 means justifiable in attaining them. To arm negro slaves against their 
 masters, to arm savages, who we know will put their prisoners to death 
 in the most cruel tortures, and literally eat them, is not, in my opinion, 
 a fair war against fellow subjects. When we are unfortunately obliged 
 to war with other nations, mutual esteem soon takes place between the 
 voops, and reciprocal humanity prevails, which greatly alleviates the 
 
NOTES. 459 
 
 too many miseries of all wars; but, in the present contest, every mean PART I. 
 artifice has been used, to encourage the soldiery to act with asperity, s^-v~^^ 
 or alacrity, as it is now the fashion to call it. 
 
 " Instead of taking prudent measures to restrain the military within the 
 closest bounds of discipline ; instead of making them sensible, that, as 
 :hey were to act against their countrymen, every possible means of saving 
 their lives, and sparing their property, should be used, and every de 
 gree of compassion shown to men who only erred from mistaken notions, 
 and were still to be considered as subjects of the same king, they have 
 been encouraged, by authority, to look upon their opponents as cow 
 ards, traitors, rebels, and every thing that is vile ; and their property 
 has been, by law, declared lawful plunder. The natural effects have 
 followed. A military thus let loose, or rather thus set on, have given 
 vent to that barbarity which degrades human nature, and a total want 
 of discipline and good order is said to prevail." 
 
 The Earl of Suffolk said (Nov. 18, 1777) The noble earl, the Earl 
 of Chatham, with all that force of oratory for which he is so conspicu 
 ous, has charged administration as if guilty of the most heinous crime, 
 in employing Indians in General Burgoyne s army ; for my part, whe 
 ther foreigners or Indians, which the noble lord has described by the 
 appellation of savages, I shall ever think it justifiable to exert every 
 means in our power to repel the attempts of our rebellious subjects. 
 The congress endeavoured to bring the Indians over to their side ; and 
 ;f we had not employed them, they would most certainly have acted 
 against us ; and I do freely confess, I think it was both a wise and ne 
 cessary measure, as I am clearly of opinion, that -we are fully justified in 
 rising every means which God and nature has put into our hands. I think 
 it was a very wise and necessary step, on many accounts; nor can I 
 ever be persuaded, whoever was the adviser, but his conduct will 
 stand the full test of public enquiry." 
 
 Lord Lyttleton said, (Dec. 5, 1777,) " he was much astonished at 
 the great parade the noble- earl had made respecting the tomahawk and 
 scalping knife : was an Indian s knife a more dreadful weapon than an 
 Englishman s bayonet? In the present war, the chief of the blood that 
 had been shed, was shed by the point of the bayonet ; yet, who talked 
 of the bayonet as a savage instrument of war r" 
 
 The earl of Dunmore declared, (Dec. 5, 1777,) that " the Virgini 
 ans finding themselves disappointed in obtaining the aid of the Indians, 
 had dresstd up some of tlieir own people like the Indians, with a view to 
 terrify the forces under him ; and his lordship declared, he heartih wish 
 ed more Indians were employed ; that they were by no means a cruel 
 people f that they never exercised the scalping knife, or were guilty of 
 a barbarity, but by way of striking terror into their enemies, and by 
 that means putting an end to the further effusion of blood* 9 
 
 Mr. Burke said (1778) "The savages were now only formidable 
 from their cruelty ; and to emplo} them was merely to be cruel our 
 selves in their persons : and thus, without even the lure of any essen 
 tial service, to become chargeable with all the odious and impotent 
 barbarities which they would inevitably commit, whenever they were 
 ailed into action. 
 
 " No proof whatever had been given of the Americans having at 
 tempted an offensive alliance with any one tribe of savage Indians. 
 Whereas the imperfect papers already before the house demonstrated, 
 that the king s ministers had negotiate* , and obtained such alliances 
 from one end of the continent of America to the other. That the 
 Americans had actually made a treaty on the footing of neutrality with 
 the famous Five Nations, which the ministers had bribed them to vio 
 late, and to act offensively against the colonies. That i.o attempt had 
 been made in a single instance on the part of the king s ministers, to 
 
NOTES. 
 
 PART I. procure a neutrality ; and, that if the fact had been, (\vhat he denied it 
 Sa^V*^/ t( > be,} that the Americans had actually employed those savages yet the dif 
 ference of employing them against armed and trained soldiers, embodied ami 
 encamped, and employing them against the unarmed and defenceless men, 
 women, and children, in the country, -widely dispersed in their habitations, 
 ivas manifest ; and left those ivho attempted so inhuman and unequal a re 
 taliation, without a possibility of excuse" 
 
 (NOTE N. p. 211.) 
 
 WHOEVER has read the dissertation of Talleyrand, upon the advan 
 tage of forming colonial establishments for the French, after their late 
 revolution, will be at once aware of the acknowledgments which Eng 
 land owes to the first emigrants, who prepared this continent for the 
 reception of that portion of her population, whom she could not retain 
 with safety, or who could not exist with comfort or freedom, at home. 
 The enlightened author of the European settlements in America readily 
 discerned and recognized the bench t. " In the various changes which 
 our religion and government have undergone, which have in their turns 
 rendered every sort of party or religion obnoxious to the reigning 
 powers, this American asylum, open in the hottest times of our perse 
 cutions, has proved of infinite service, not only to the present peace of 
 England, but to the prosperity of its commerce, and the establishment 
 of its power." 
 
 Dr. Davenant had taken a similar view of the subject in his Tract on 
 the Plantation Trade. 
 
 " Such as found themselves disturbed and uneasy at home, if they 
 could have found no other retreat, must have gone to the Hans towns, 
 Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, or Holland, (as many did before 
 the plantations flourished, to our great detriment,) and they who had 
 thus retired to the European countries, must have been forever lost 
 to England. 
 
 " But Providence, which contrives better for us than we can do for 
 ourselves, has offered in the new world, a place of refuge for these, 
 peradventure, mistaken and misled people, where, (as shall be shown 
 by and by,) their labour and industry is more useful to their mother 
 kingdom, than if they had continued among us. 
 
 " And as to malcontents in the state, perhaps it is for the public safety, 
 that there should always be such an outlet or issue for the ill humours, 
 which, from time to time are engendered in the body politic." 
 
 (NOTE O. p. 219.) 
 
 AT the instigation of Franklin, a society was instituted in PhiladeJ- 
 phia, in the year 1743, which took the name of The American Philoso 
 phical Society. It pursued, modestly and privately, for the improvement 
 of the members, of whom Franklin and Ilittenhouse were the most 
 active and distinguished, enquiries into most branches of physical sci 
 ence. In 1766, another society was formed in the same city, with the 
 title of The American Society for promoting and propagating useful 
 knowledge. It was composed of unpretending men of all professions, 
 anxious to increase the stock of their own information, and to be in- 
 
NOTES; 
 
 461 
 
 strumental in enlarging that of their country. The test which they PART I. 
 established, does them the highest honour, for the liberality and purity \^~v^>^, 
 of the principles of which it enacted the acknowledgment. They 
 confined themselves to the discussion of practical questions, and the 
 investigation of matters of immediate utility. The perusal of their 
 Minutes must inspire every unprejudiced person with a high idea of 
 their intelligence and zeal ; 1 might say, with admiration, when the 
 range of their study and research, is considered in connection with the 
 attention and drudgery, required by the active professions, in which 
 they were universally engaged Points of social economy and general 
 politics were often discussed at their sittings, and determined upon 
 the broadest principles of reason and humanity. The following ques 
 tion, for example, was taken up by them on the 3d September, 1762, 
 " Is it good policy to admit the importation of negroes into America r" 
 Their views of the subject were in conformity with the true theory of 
 national welfare and moral obligation. 
 
 They could show, in the list of their foreign correspondents, who did 
 justice to their enlightened character and benevolent aims, British phi 
 lanthropists and statesmen of the first rank. 1 might name Sir George 
 Saville, as one of the several distinguished whigs with whom they car 
 ried on a commerce of enquiry and speculation, creditable to the sense, 
 patriotism, and catholic spirit of both parties. 
 
 The two Philadelphia associations were amalgamated by common 
 consent in 1769 : and, in 1780, incorporated, as the American Philoso 
 phical Society, by an act of the Pennsylvania Legislature. 
 
 I have admitted by implication in the text, to give greater force to the 
 charge of illiberality against the Reviewers, that the Transactions of the 
 present insulate are not of much intrinsic worth. They deserve, how 
 ever, a higher character; and have never been decried any where but 
 in Great Britain. The astronomical papers of the first volume drew 
 lofty compliments and eager enquiries, from several of the most cele 
 brated savans of Europe. Dr. Maskelyne bore, in letters preserved in 
 the records of the society, the strongest testimony to the genius of 
 Kittenhouse, and to the merit of his Observations on the Transit of 
 Venus, which were republished in the Transactions of the Royal So 
 ciety. 1 happen to have now under my eyes, a communication to the 
 American Society, from Zach, Director of the Observatory of Saxe 
 Gotha, and an eminent astronomer; in which compliments are paid to 
 its labours, indicating a sense of their value, somewhat different from 
 that of the Edinburgh Review. A short, extract from Dr. Zach s com 
 munication may not be unacceptable here. 
 
 " Last year I received the 3d. vol. of the Transactions of the A. P. 
 Soc., which I perused with great satisfaction. The observation of the 
 annular eclipse of the sun, April 3, 1791, made at Philadelphia by Dr. 
 Rittenhouse, has given me great pleasure, and was of very great use 
 in ascertaining the true diameters of the O and the Moon; and also 
 of thetn/facfen and irradiation of light several astronomers of Europe 
 have inferred by it very satisfactory results ; so has the celebrated 
 French astronomer, M. de la Lande found, that the observed duration of 
 the ring 4 17" agrees perfectly well, with his diameter Q < , assumed 
 in his Astronomical Tables, (iii. edit. 1792.) 
 
 The American Philosophical Society has always been more studious 
 of doing good within itself, than ambitious of publishing volumes for 
 the approbation of the world. A much more favourable idea of its indus 
 try, learning, and usefulness, is conveyed by the private records of its 
 proceedings, than by the six quartos of its Transactions, reputable as 
 these are, and must be confessed to be, when impartially considered. 
 It was early marked by public spirited designs. Witness the appoint 
 ment in 1763, of committees of its members to make, in different 
 
462 NOTE-S. 
 
 PART I. places, observations on that rare phenomenon, the transit of Venus 
 V^v x^ over the Sun s Disk. The expense of this undertaking 1 it defrayed, 
 though possessed, as at present, of no other regular funds than those aris 
 ing from an annual contribution of two dollars from each of its resident 
 members. It has given a particular and steady attention to the re 
 sources open to us in the three kingdoms of nature, and to plans ot 
 improvement in our physical economy. Its functions were suspended 
 necessarily during the revolution, as all of its members were more or 
 less ardent in the cause of independence, and fitted to act a servicea 
 ble part in the struggle. There has not been displayed since, the de 
 gree of vivacity and earnestness in its proper career, which could have 
 been wished ; but, as much, perhaps, as was reasonably to be expected 
 under all the circumstances of the country, and in the absence of all 
 pecuniary patronage. The hopes to be entertained of it now, are 
 considerable, from the numbers, particularly among the rising genera 
 tion, who have imbibed a relish for scientific studies, and from the 
 greater importance which it is likely to acquire in the public estima 
 tion, as education and knowledge spread and ripen over the land. Its 
 library consists of about four thousand volumes, comprising the best ele 
 mentary treatises in science and the technical arts. It has exchanged 
 Transactions with most of the academies of Europe, and has been en 
 riched with many valuable works, bestowed spontaneously and with ex 
 pressions of lively esteem, by their authors, such as the Bullions, the La- 
 voisiers, the Hunters,* whose vision was either less distinguishing, or 
 less clouded, (1 leave the world to decide which,) than that of the 
 British reviewers. Its Museum of Natural History, though not exten 
 sive, contains a number of rare specimens, chiefly in mineralogy. Its; 
 " meeting hunse" to use the language of the Edinburgh Review, 
 where, according to this liberal and courteous journal, its "transactions 
 are scraped together" is a commodious and handsome edifice, and the 
 room in which it assembles, is, certainly, styled " Philosophical Hall." 
 The remark of the Review, that this denomination is in the genuine 
 dialect of tradesmen, bespeaks as much of effrontery as ill nature ; 
 since the Reviewers must have known, that the place of assembling of 
 most of the learned societies and professions of Great Britain bears the 
 same title of Hall ; and that a term exactly correspondent is used re 
 spectively by almost every one of the Academies of Europe: Salle dc 
 Plnstitut, &c. 
 
 The imagination of these critics might be supposed to be affect 
 ed with regard to "tradesmen." It will be recollected, that in their 
 first review of Franklin s Works, they complained of his indulging, in 
 his Memoirs, in too many details and anecdotes concerning that class of 
 persons " obscure individuals." In Zenuphon s Memorabilia, we read 
 the following as part of one of the dialogues: " Critias, interrupting 
 Socrates, said And I, Socrates, I can inform thee of something more 
 thou hast to refrain from ; keep henceforth at a proper distance from 
 the carpenters, smiths, and shoemakers, and let us have no more of your 
 examples from them? Must I likewise give up the consequences, said 
 Socrates, * deducible from these examples, and concern myself no longer 
 with justice and piety, and the rules of right and wrong. Thou must, 
 by Jupiter, replied Charicles. " &.c. 
 
 * I might add the names of Ingenhauz, Hiiiy, Humboldt, De la 
 Lande, Cuvier, Ebeling, Adelung, Maseres, Biot, Delambre, Campo-* 
 
NOTES. 463 
 
 (XOTE P. p. 225.) PAR T 
 
 A just account of the character of General Marshall and of his 
 work, is given in the Letters of Inchiquin, (letter 8). The following 
 parts of it I could wish to be read in connexion with my text. 
 
 " During- the war of the revolution, the present chief justice accom 
 panied the American forces in the capacity of deputy judge advocate, 
 which situation afforded him the best means of becoming practically 
 conversant with the details of that contest, its difficulties and resources; 
 the character and views of those on whom it mainly devolved; and the 
 construction, movements, and engagements of the armies. In process of 
 time he attained to situations of more importance, and successively 
 filled several of the first offices. Possessed with these advantages, en 
 dowed with a masculine, versatile, and discriminating genius, and hold 
 ing a place, calculated to give weight to whatever he should publish, 
 lie was selected to compile from the manuscripts of Washington, and 
 from the public records and papers, the joint annals of Washington and 
 his country. 
 
 " The objects of the work were to furnish a correct and honourable 
 memorial of national events, and to immortalize Washington. His 
 biography is therefore prefaced with a full account of the discovery 
 and advancement of North America, down to the period when he ap 
 pears upon the scene. After which period, till his death, it is natu 
 rally interwoven with the transactions of the revolution, which his 
 achievements so largely contributed to effect, and with the formation of 
 the government, at the head of which he was placed. 
 
 " The public documents of which the chief justice had the disposi 
 tion, would be inestimable, even if arranged by inferior hands, without 
 any attempt at shaping tiiem into a connected narrative. But wrought 
 as they have been by him, into a clear, manly, systematic and philosophi 
 cal history, without a grain of merit on the score of composition, they 
 would outweigh the most beautiful composition that ever was formed. 
 There is not another national history extant, which is composed entirely 
 of authentic, public materials, by a cotemporary and a participator. 
 
 " Nor is the composition so unworthy of the subject. The commen 
 taries and reflections are simple, natural and just. The style plain, 
 nervous, unaffected ; perhaps too bare of ornament, and sometimes 
 liable to the imputation of verbosity, but never rough, irksome, or in- 
 elegant. 
 
 As great expectations were entertained of this performance, con 
 siderable disappointment has been expressed at some of its alleged de 
 fects : particularly by those who, vitiated by the malevolent system of 
 criticism that prevails in England and this country, are never "satisfied 
 with nature and plain sense, but incessantly crave the amazing and ro 
 mantic. In every department of letters, standard^ are erected, to 
 which fresh publications are referred for their estimate. But is it fail- 
 to condemn an American historian to oblivion, because he is less enter 
 taining than Hume or Gibbon, or an epic poet, because he falls short of 
 Milton ? 
 
 " The American historian had neither anomalies nor miracles to deal 
 with. The recent discovery of a new world; the still more recent 
 struggles of an infant people to shake off the trammels of colonization ; 
 late events, of little except moral interest ; partial, procrastinated, and 
 seldom signalized warfare ; the adjustment of treaties and formation of 
 republican institutions ; though highly interesting to modern contem 
 plation, are much less malleable, than remote a nd doubtful traditions 
 of astonishing transactions, into the magazine of entertainment, which 
 seems to be looked for in modern history. But whatever the present 
 ag-e may desire, facts soon become vastly more important than disserta- 
 
464 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. tions ; nor can moral results ever be fairly taken, unless readers may 
 implicitly rely on the truth of the details. 
 
 "The narrative of the Life of Washington might perhaps, have been 
 enlivened with more biographical and characteristic sketches. But it 
 must be remembered, that to draw living characters is an arduous and 
 invidious task. And when the whole subject matter is well considered, 
 the author will be found well entitled to our approbation for the cau 
 tion he has exercised in this particular. As to Washington himself, the 
 uniformity of his life, and taciturnity of his nature, precluded any suf 
 ficient funds for this minor scene : though I cannot refrain from observ 
 ing that his unaffected and warm piety, his belief in the Christian reli 
 gion, and exemplary discharge of all its public and private duties, might 
 have been enlarged upon with more emphasis and advantage. 
 
 " At such a period as the present, when the press is converted 
 into a powerful engine of falsehood, proscription and confusion ; when 
 letters are perverted to the most treacherous and unworthy pur 
 poses, it behoves every American, who admires the history of his 
 country, it behoves, indeed, every man who loves truth, to uphold 
 an authentic national work, like Marshall s, against its malign enemies 
 and lukewarm friends, and to cherish it as a performance whose sub 
 ject and authenticity alone, independent of any other merits, should 
 preserve and magnify it for ever." 
 
 (NOTE Q. p. 228.) 
 
 IT is curious to find a journal published in Scotland, complaining oi 
 ihe Americans as a " scattered, migratory, and speculating people," and 
 attributing to them as such, a system of manners and morality below the 
 European standard. M. Brougham lately asked in Parliament a ques 
 tion which we may repeat in what part of the world is it in which 
 Scotchmen are not to be found in numbers ? and, we may add, in which 
 they do not appear as adventurers and speculators ? We do not, how 
 ever, tax them, on this account, with having "great and peculiar faults," 
 but on the contrary, we respect in them that spirit of enterprise, and 
 pride of independence, which prompt them to incur all the hazards and 
 hardships of distant emigration, rather than groan in poverty, and 
 crouch under hereditary superiors, at home. I think it would be diffi 
 cult to show the process by which the sense of honour improves, as " the 
 spirit of adventure is deprived of its object, and as population thickens 
 and becomes crowded." It is in this state of things that poverty and ser 
 vility are engendered ; that crimes multiply from the impulses of des 
 peration ; that turpitude and brutality are kept in countenance by the 
 multitude of examples. The operation of hope upon the mind; the very 
 career itself of seeking and compassing a more, comfortable, independ 
 ent condition, are favourable to the manners and morals. The sense of 
 honour improves with the sense of personal importance, which grows 
 out of self-reliance, and equality of rank. 
 
 The second number of " The Old Bachelor," a work which, in gene 
 ral, is creditable to our literature, contains a keen retort for the pa 
 ragraphs of the Edinburgh Review, to which this note refers. "They 
 exhibit," says the Virginian essayist, " a palpable and ludicrous struggle 
 between the object and the conscience of the critic; between the con 
 flicting 1 purposes of lashing Mi 1 . Ashe, for lampooning the Americans, 
 and at the same time of inflicting the lash on them himself." See No. 
 J, 1st volume of Old Bachelor, for a full exposition of the absurdity oi 
 hose paragraphs. 
 
NOTES. 465 
 
 PART I. 
 (NOTE R. p. 251.) . v^^^, 
 
 THK whole concentrated reproach of this and the succeeding 1 page of 
 the text is capable of being 1 fully refuted ; and will be so, I trust, by the 
 simple annunciation of facts, in my intended exposition of the actual 
 state of this country. It may be also retorted, and this is the proper 
 mode of dealing with it at present. We shall convict ^ie English writer 
 of the most hardy disingenuousness, in describing, as peculiar to the 
 United States, dispositions and practices which notoriously prevail 
 around him, in England, to an unparalleled extent ; which had their 
 origin there ; and are almost daily aggravated in amount and malignity. 
 
 The determination on the part of the Reviewer to calumniate the 
 Americans, is immediately betrayed by the preposterous and arbitrary 
 refinement of distinguishing between their feeling in getting drunk and 
 that of the European. The pleasure of the one is sensual and brutal, 
 while that of the other is liberal-minded and somewhat sentimental ! 
 And hence it is, according to the critic, that the Americans decide their 
 quarrels in ways which, we are given to understand, are unknown in 
 Europe, rough and tumbling ; biting and lacerating, &c. 
 
 I will not refer to the Parliamentary statements respecting the quan 
 tity of whiskey, licensed and unlicensed, consumed in Ireland ; and the 
 prevalence of intoxication in that unhappy country. The vice there is 
 not merely " social hilarity betrayed into excess," but the desperation 
 of want and abjection, springing from selfish misgovernment by the 
 ruling kingdom. We will confine ourselves to England, and leave it to 
 the common sense of the reader to determine whether she is entitled 
 to boast of her superior sobriety ; and whether there is much that is 
 .sentimental and generous in the process of intoxication with the topers 
 mentioned in the extracts which I am about to offer. 1 take the follow 
 ing from the late Reports of the Committee of the House of Commons 
 on ihe Police of the Metropolis. 
 
 "Question put to one of the most respectable witnesses 
 
 "Do you think there has been an increased consumption of giu 
 within these few years ? I have no doubt of it, as the increase of beg 
 gars is visible : almost all these persons about the streets drink, and 
 they train up their children in drinking. I have seen them at the door 
 of the gin-shops, giving their children in arms the draining of a glass. 
 There are five large gin-shops, or wine-vaults, as they are called, close 
 to the Seven Dials, which are constantly frequented. There is one where 
 they go in at one door and out at another, to prevent the inconvenience 
 of their returning the same way, where there are so many. A friend of 
 mine, who lived opposite, had the curiosity to count how many went in 
 in the course of one Sunday morning, before he went to church, and 1; 
 was 320." 
 
 Statement of another respectable witness. 
 
 " On a Sunday morning, from April to Michaelmas, on Holburn Hill, 
 there is nothing but riot and confusion, from Hatton Garden to the 
 Market, from four o clock in the morning till eight ; the gin-shops open 
 so early that they get drunk, and are rioting and fighting about. I should 
 ihink that there must be two, or three, or four hundred it is quite like 
 a market loose, disorderly people of both sexes I have seen as much 
 as three or four fights on a Sunday morning. Thompson s gin-shop is 
 what they call the best. I should not wonder if there were a thousand 
 customers on a Sunday morning, before the time of service the place is 
 full from four in the morning till eleven." 
 
 These are simple specimens, which do not, by any means, convey an 
 adequate idea of the enormity and diffusiveness of the evil. It is to 
 Colquhoun s Treatises on the Police of the Metropolis, and on Indigence, 
 
 VOL. T. 3 N 
 
466 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. that I would refer on this head. His statements, in those works, are 
 s^-V^^/ made for 1806 ; and the late Parliamentary reports do not merely con 
 firm them, but show an increase of the vice of tippling in a ratio far 
 greater than that of the population. He bears the following testimony. 
 " The quantity of beer, porter, gin, and compounds, sold in public 
 houses in the metropolis and its environs, has been estimated, after be 
 stowing considerable pains in forming a calculation, at nearly 3,300,000 
 pounds sterling a year, a sum equal to double the revenue of some of the 
 kingdoms and states *of Europe." 
 
 In the year ending July 1st, 1806, the quantity of porter, strong ale, 
 and small beer brewed in London by 20 principal, and 126 lesser brewers, 
 amounted to 68,228,432 gallons, valued, at the sale price, at 4,440,384f, 
 The annual consumption of this beverage must now exceed 12,000,000^., 
 and of home-made spirits about 5,000,000/. There are about fifty thou 
 sand licensed ale-houses in England and Wales, furnishing facilities not 
 only for intoxication, but every other kind of brutal excess. In the 
 whole of the metropolis and its environs, it is calculated that there is 
 about one public house to every thirty-seven families. The prevailing 
 habit among the labouring 1 people, in every district in England and 
 Wales, is to spend the chief part of their leisure time in ale-houses. In 
 vulgar life, it is the first ambition of the youth, when approaching to 
 wards an adult state, to learn to smoke tobacco. When this accom 
 plishment is acquired, he finds himself qualified to waste his time in 
 the tap-room. But the evil does not rest here. Numerous families of 
 labourers lodge with their wives and children in common ale-houses, 
 in the metropolis, and probably in most of the large cities and towns in 
 different parts of the kingdom; while, of late years, the females indis 
 criminately mix with the males, and unblushingly listen to all the lewd, 
 and often obscene discourse which circulates freely in these haunts ot 
 vice and idleness " 
 
 The duties upon the liquor brewed by the eleven principal porter 
 breweries of London, amounted, in 1818, to 900,000/. sterling. The ex 
 cise upon malt, beer, and British spirits, throughout Great Britain, to 
 nine millions sterling; to which two millions have been added in the 
 late addition to the general taxation. 
 
 Mr.Bennet, in asking leave, at the beginning of the last year (1818), 
 in the House of Commons, to bring in a bill for the better regulation of 
 ale-houses, made the following statement. " A large proportion of the 
 vice and immorality which prevails may be traced to the bad system 
 acted upon at present in licensing and regulating public houses. It 
 would be seen by the evidence in the report of the committee on the 
 subject, not only that houses of the most nefarious kind were permitted 
 to exist, but that they existed with the full countenance and concurrence 
 of some of the police officers, who frequented them, and who had a 
 fellow feeling with the persons assembled in them. There were above 
 two hundred houses of that description in London, in which a nightly and 
 promiscuous assemblage took place, not only of men and women, but ot 
 boys and girls of eight, nine, ten, and eleven years of age. In some ol 
 them there was established a sort of regular court of justice, at the 
 head of which a Jew presided ; before whom was brought all the pil 
 lage and profits of the day and night, and who superintended their re 
 gular distribution. He knew one instance of a boy, not thirteen yean 
 old, who, in the course of one night, disposed of property to the amoun 
 of 100/." 
 
 Lest it should be still supposed that London has a monopoly of the gen 
 try whom " social hilarity betrays into excess" of potation, or that the 
 race may be extinct, I will quote a passage on the subject from a ver) 
 recent work of unquestionable authority the " Observations of Williarr 
 Koscoe, Esq. of Liverpool, on Penal Jurisprudence." " In taking a sur 
 
NOTES, 
 
 467 
 
 vey of society around us," says this eye witness, and zealous patriot, PART I. 
 one of the most striking objects which attracts our attention, and v^-v-^* 
 which particularly excites ihe observation and surprise of every stranger, 
 is the shocking 1 habit of intoxication, which is exhibited, not only in the 
 metropolis, but in most other parts of the kingdom, and which if not actu 
 ally encouraged, is openly permitted to the most alarming and incredible 
 extent. Let the reader who doubts this assertion examine the reports 
 of the committee of the House of Commons, appointed to inquire into 
 the police of the metropolis; he will there find such a representation 
 of the dreadful effects of this vice, as cannot fail to call the public atten 
 tion to a subject, in which, not only the interests of morality and reli 
 gion, but the personal and individual safety of every member of the 
 community is in some degree involved. It is principally to this source 
 that the committee have traced up the increased depravity of the pre 
 sent times ; and they have shown, by the most authentic evidence, that 
 most of the horrible crimes which have of late been committed, in and 
 about the metropolis, have been occasioned by the brutalizing effect 
 of spirituous liquors ; by which the criminal is rendered insensible to 
 the milder feelings of his nature, and regardless of all consequences, 
 whether as affecting this world or another. To the same cause a very 
 respectable witness attributes the spirit of insubordination and sedition, 
 which has manifi sted itself in some districts, and the murders to which 
 it has given rise." 
 
 As for the practice of gambling which the Quarterly Review, with 
 monstrous injustice, charges upon " all orders of men, clergy as well as 
 laity" in the United States, 1 will again refer to Colquhoun s book,* for 
 a sketch of the sins of the British metropolis on this score. The details 
 are such, both in that work and in the Parliamentary Reports, as I do 
 not wish to repeat ; but no one who has read them, and who knows 
 America, will deem me extravagant, when I assert, that the gambling of 
 London alone far exceeds that of the whole United States, whether as to 
 the variety and odiousness of its forms; the depravity of spirit with 
 which it is pursued ; the knavery with which it is accompanied ; the 
 crimes and miseries to which it leads ; or the amount of the sums staked 
 within the year. Colquhoun estimated this amount at 7.225. OOO/. ster 
 ling, besides 3,135,0001. for fraudulent insurances in the lottery.^ M. 
 Roscoe, in the work of his which I have just quoted, ailedges that 
 one of the principal causes of the unexampled frequency of crimes in 
 the present day, in England, is the open and unrestrained practice of gam 
 bling, which, originating in the higher classes, has infected the lower, 
 till it has become the habitual occupation even of children of the low 
 est ranks, who are seen in the streets of the metropolis, on the Sunday 
 particularly, in gaming parties, fifty or sixty in a gang."t 
 
 Let us now attend to the pretended effects of the anomalous inebria 
 tion of the Americans : their rough and tumbling ; their biting and la 
 cerating each other, and their gouging. The last named practice is the 
 thrusting out of the antagonist s eye in a pugilistic combat. No in 
 stance of it has ever been known in the states north of Maryland ; it 
 has occurred in some of the southern ; but is now rare, and become dis 
 honourable even among that class of persons, the vulgarest and most 
 licentious, to which it was confined. But, admitting it to be a ground 
 of national reproach, is it in itself more savage or disgraceful than the 
 
 * P. 142 3d sec. Police of the Metropolis. 
 
 f In his Treatise on Indigence, Colquhoun estimates at 10,000, the 
 class of persons whom he calls lottery vagrants, employed in London in 
 procuring insurances during the lottery drawings. 
 
 t Page 30, 
 
kOO NOTES. 
 
 PART I. knobbing, fibbing, milling, and all the other modes of injury in fight, for 
 sx"V"^/ which the English have invented a technical vocabulary ? Is there any 
 thing 1 worse in it, than what we read in almost all the accounts of the 
 set and mercenary battles, at which the English of all ranks attend in 
 thousands with the keenness of passion to wit : that such a one, and 
 such a one, "the champion of England," " the cock of the nation," af 
 ter having demolished one of his antagonist s eyes, " made continual 
 play at the other !" Is the spectacle which the gouged combatant may 
 be supposed to offer, indicative of more ferocity in the combat, or more 
 shocking to the memory, or more offensive to the sight, than that of 
 the vanquished party in the affair described in the following extract 
 from Bell s Weekly Messenger, of Dec. 7, 1818. 
 
 " The great battle between Turner and Randall, at Copthorn, on 
 Saturday. 
 
 "This match for one hundred guineas aside was fought on Saturday 
 at the above spot, amidst thousands of spectators. 
 
 " Turner from the seventh round exhibited a head like a red night 
 cap, not a slice of flesh, (for it was hit in all directions) but what was 
 covered with bloo 1. There was no knock down till the fourteenth 
 round, when Randall, after a hit in every round, to keep the blood in 
 motion, floored him by a clean right handed body hit." 
 
 Gouging is abhorred by every man of this country who pretends to 
 character: seeking to witness it as an entertainment is not imaginable in 
 the -habits or tastes of any such person. But the head like a red jiight- 
 Crt/>,- the fainting pugilist covered with blood, blinded and mangied, and 
 finally, when incapable of all further offence or resistance, deliberately 
 laid senseless, perhaps lifeless, with " a clean right-handed body hit" 
 This is the exhibition in which men of rank and fashion in England de 
 light; over which they preside, and which can draw togetherjtwenty thou 
 sand spectators of all classes, as to a festival not only yielding gratifica 
 tion, but furnishing an opportunity for gambling speculations.* Horri 
 ble as these prize fights are, they are thought worthy of encourage 
 ment as a substitute for the modes in which the English peasantry and 
 populace were and are wont " to decide their quarrels." In the vo 
 lume for 1806, of Nicholson s Philosophical Magazine, there is a disser 
 tation written by Ur. Bardsley, of Manchester, * On the Use and Abuse 
 of popular Sports and Exercises;" which discloses to us what, doubt 
 less, the Quarterly Review must have considered as a secret, that those 
 modes are precisely the rough and tumbling, biting and lacerating which 
 it would represent as peculiar to the Americans. Even the gouging is 
 included, virtually, if not by name, and very frequently manslaughter, a 
 term sufficiently familiar in England. We are outdone by the very mo 
 dels of civ ilization, as will appear by the following statements of the 
 Manchester writer. 
 
 " Even in France, and most parts of Germany, the quarrels of the 
 people are determined by a brutal appeal to force, directed in any man 
 ner, however perilous, to the annoyance or destruction of the adver- 
 
 * (BOXING.) Bell s Weekly Messenger, May 10th, 1819. 
 " The match between Randall and Martin, took place on Tuesday, 
 on Crawley Downs, more than thirty miles from London, and the spec 
 tators were at least twenty thousand in number ; they fought nineteen 
 rounds in about fifty minutes, when Martin resigned the contest. Ran 
 dall was matched 150/. to 100/., betting was seven to four upon him. 
 Spring and Carter next entered the ring. A worse fight has not been 
 seen for many years, Spring won it in an hour and three quarters. 
 There -was very little money betted on thisjightin London. Many weje of 
 opinion that the whole was a trick upon the knowing ones." 
 
Noias. 469 
 
 sary. Sticks, stones, and every dangerous kind of weapon, are resorted PART I. 
 to tor the gratification of passion or revenge But the most common .^ f . ^ -^. 
 and savage method of settling quarrels upon the continent is the adop- 
 tion of the Roman pancratium. The parties close, and struggle to throw 
 each other down ; at the same time the teeth and nails are not unem 
 ployed. In short, they tear each other like wild beasts, and never de 
 sist* from the conflict till their strength is completely exhausted; and 
 thus, regardless of any established laws of honour which teach forbear 
 ance to a prostrate foe, their cruelty is only terminated by their inability 
 to inflict more mischief." 
 
 " The mode of fighting in Holland, among the seamen and others, is 
 well known by the appellation of snicker-snee. In this contest sharp 
 knives are used ; and the parties frequently maim, and sometimes de 
 stroy each other. The government deems it necessary to tolerate this 
 savage practice." 
 
 " 1 is a singular though striking fact, that in those parts of the king 
 dom of England where the generous and manlysystem of pugilism is least 
 practised, and where, for the most part, all personal disputes are decided 
 by the exertion of savage strength and ferocity a fondness for barbarous 
 and bloody spons is found to prevail. In some parts of Lancashire, 
 bull-baiting and man-slaying are common practices. The knowledge of 
 pugilism as an art is, in these places, neither understood nor practised 
 There is no established rule of honour to save the weak from the strong-, 
 but every man s life is at the mercy of his successful antagonist. The 
 object of each combatant in these disgraceful contests, is, to throw each 
 other prostrate on the ground, and then with hands and feet, teeth and 
 nails, to inflict, at random, every possible degree of injury and torment. 
 This is not an exaggerated statement of the barbarism still prevailing in 
 many parts of this kingdom. The country assizes for Lancashire afford 
 too many convincing proofs of the increasing mischiefs arising from these 
 and other disgraceful combats." 
 
 " A. disgusting instance of this ferocious mode of deciding quarrels, 
 was not long since brought forward at the Manchester sessions. It ap 
 peared in evidence, that two persons, upon some trifling dispute, at a 
 public house, agreed to lock themselves up in a room with the landlord 
 and * fight it out according to the Bolton method. This contest lasted 
 a long time, and was only terminated by the loss of the greatest part of 
 the nose and a part of the ear, belonging to one of the parties, which 
 were actually bitten off by the other, during the fight. The sufferer 
 exhibited at the trial part of the ear so torn ofT; and upon being asked 
 by the counsel what had become of that part of his nose which waf 
 missing he replied with perfect naivete* that he believed his anta 
 gonist had swallowed it !* It has happened to the writer of these re 
 marks to witness, in more than one instance, the picking up in the 
 streets, lacerated portions of ears and fingers, after these detestable 
 and savage broils." 
 
 " The judges, on the occasions above mentioned, have frequently de 
 clared in the most solemn and impressive charges to the grand jury, 
 that the number of persons indicted for murder, or manslaughter, in 
 consequence of the bestial mode of fighting practised in this country, 
 far exceeded that of the whole northern circuit ; and that, in future, 
 they were determined to punish with the utmost rigour of the law, 
 offenders of this description But, alas ! these just denunciations have 
 little availed at one assize, no less than nine persons were convicted 
 of manslaughter, originating from these disgraceful encounters." 
 
 The reader would fain believe, I presume, that these "diabolical 
 practices," recited from Bardsley, have ceased ; but I cannot give him 
 this consolation, or in any way disguise the truth, as long as the principal 
 London Journals present paragraphs like the following : 
 
470 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. Courier, Jan. 18th, 1819 
 
 V^-v^^/ "MIDDLESEX SESSIONS. 
 
 " D, Donovan was found guilty of biting off the nose of M. Donovan 
 in a fight which they had. J. J. Wakeman was sentenced to six months 
 imprisonment, having been found guilty of seizing It. Cotton by the 
 throat, and forcing out his tongue, half of which he bit off, and the 
 next day bragged of having eaten." 
 
 Bell s Weekly Messenger, May 31, 1819. 
 "EPSOM RACES, Friday Third day, May 28, 1819. 
 
 "Several races of minor importance took place this day, and afforded 
 considerable amusement and interest to the sporting gentry. When the 
 races \vcre concluded, they endeavoured to amuse themselves by a view 
 of a ruffianly sort of fight between Oliver, and a black by the name oi 
 Kenrich, in which the former obtained the victory." 
 
 Sporting Magazine, April, 1819. 
 
 " A pugilistic combat for 100 guineas a side, and 10 guineas, took 
 place on Forest H.-ath, a few miles from Stony Stratford, on Wednes 
 day, Aprjl 7th, between George Dunkeley, a giant of 17 stone, and 6 
 feet 4 inches in height, and Harry Foreman, a miner from Oxfordshire, 
 of nearly equal weight. Many thousand spectators were present. They 
 fought nine rounds in the most slaughtering and ferocious manner, and 
 in the latter Dunkeley broke his adversary s left jaw, and was declared 
 the victor. Dunkeley was so much injured by body hits, that he was 
 carried off the ground in a dangerous state." 
 
 Sporting Magazine, May, 1819. 
 "PUGILISM. 
 
 " Battle between Carter and Spring, on Crawley Downs, 30 miles from 
 London, on Tuesilay, May 4. 
 
 "It is supposed if the carriages hud all been placed in one line, they 
 would have reached from London to Crawley. The amateurs were of 
 the highest distinction ; and several noblemen and foreigners of rank 
 were upon the ground. 
 
 " The signal was given for stripping, and a most extensive ring was 
 immediately beat out ; and among the crowd numbers of females were 
 to be seen, anxious to get a peep at these famous heroes," &c. 
 
 Sporting Magazine, May, 1819. 
 " COCKING CHESTER. 
 
 " During the races, a main of cocks was fought between the gentle 
 men of Cheshire, (Gilliver, feeder,) and the gentlemen of Lancashire, 
 (P <riridge, feeder,) for ten guineas a battle, and two hundred guineas 
 the main." 
 
 " The great main of cocks, between the gentlemen of Norwich and 
 Cambridge, was fought this month, at the Swan Inn, in Norwich, and 
 was won by the former one battle a-head." 
 
 "On Monday, May 3, and two following days, the match of cocks 
 between the gentlemen of Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, took place 
 at the cockpit, Holywell, in Oxford, when the former were victors, 
 three in the main, and six in the bye battles,* &c. 
 
 " Pugilistic contest, near Barnesley, Yorkshire. This battle was for 
 sixty guineas a side, between John Wike, the chamj/u-n of the latter 
 place, and an amateur of the name of Green, a pupil of the scientific 
 Oeorge Head, on Wednesday, April 14. This contest excited consi- 
 
NOTES. 471 
 
 derable interest for miles round Barnesley, and the battle took place at PART I. 
 the Full-dews, about four miles from Barnesley, in the presence of -_^- T -^ 
 some thousands of spectators. For one hour and fifty two minutes the 
 heat of battle raged, and during which period 94 rounds were severely 
 contested. 
 
 " Wike s head was materially changed, one of his ogles was closed, 
 and the other fast verging to durkness. In the 94th and last round, 
 "Wike was floored from a tremendous hit upon his throat," 5cc. 
 
 The Sporting Magazine, April, 1819. 
 "PUGILISM. 
 
 " Between Purcell and Warkley, for a purse of 501. given by the 
 amateurs of Norwich, on Thursday, April 1. 
 
 " The above contest excited considerable interest among the provin 
 cial fancy, and no less than 10,000 persons assembled on the above spot 
 to witness the battle. 
 
 ROUNDS. 
 
 "7. Warkley got Purcell s head under the rope, and made some 
 heavy hits with his right hand. Purcell s head appeared truly terrific, 
 being one mass of blood. 
 
 " 8. Purcell showed a severe cut under the before contused eye 
 which appeared closed, and bled profusely." 
 
 " 17. After retreating to his old corner, he fought most dreadfully, 
 and no feature of Purcell s face could be distinguished from the flowing 
 of blood," &c, 
 
 I have had occasion to remark, in the second Section of this volume, 
 that the legislators of New England prohibited the vulgar sports com 
 mon in the mother country. Bull and bear-baiting, horse-racing, and 
 cock-fighting, have never been practiced in our northern States ; in the 
 middle, they have not, with the exception of horse-racing, often oc 
 curred? and it is only in the south that bull and bear baiting is now 
 known ; even there it occurs but very seldom. The baiting of horses, 
 of which I have quoted an instance, in the text, from the Memoirs of 
 Evelyn, appears to have been a favourite sport in the mother country. 
 Strutt has recorded it in his amusing volume on "the Diversions and 
 Pastimes of the people of England," and given a plate of the manner 
 in which it was performed. Asses were treated with the same inhuma 
 nity. With respect to this useful animal, and the more noble one the 
 horse, the Americans are altogether free from the reproach of having 
 followed the ignominious example of torturing and destroying them at 
 the stake. Nor do our annals afford an instance of the British refine 
 ment of whipping a blinded bear. This popular practice consisted, to 
 use the language of Strutt and Bardsley, " in several persons at the 
 same time scourging with whips, a blind-folded bear round the ring, 
 whose sufferings and awkward attempts at revenge highly gratified the 
 noble as well as ignoble spectators." The duck-hunting described by 
 Strutt, is equally without example in this country, and so I believe to 
 be the favourite English amusement of throwing at tacks, of which he 
 treats in his third book. But the English traveller, .Fearon, has disco 
 vered that the Kentuckians have a pastime called gander -pulling, that 
 is, twisting of! at full gallop the head of a gander tied to a tree. Fea 
 ron does not allege that he saw it himself. There are, certainly, very 
 few Kentuckiuns who have even heard of it. It is, however, eagerly 
 seized upon by the Quarterly Reviewers, who affect to shudder, and to 
 be scandalized infinitely, as if the feelings of an Englishman at home 
 were virginal in respect to acts of brutality towards animals. Dr. Bards- 
 ley shall inform us specifically whether this be the fact. The following 
 
472 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. passages of his Dissertation might have taught the Reviewers a little 
 Y^*y*^. . caution. 
 
 " If the Romans set us the example in devising these sports, (the 
 baiting and torturing of animals.) it must be confessed, we have * bet 
 tered the instructions. For to English refinement and ingenuity, may 
 be ascribed the noble invention of the gaffle or spur ; by the aid of 
 which, the gallant combatants of the cockpit mangle, torture, and de 
 stroy each other ; no doubt to the great satisfaction and delight of ad 
 miring spectators. Another instance of our barbarous ingenuity must 
 not be omitted No other nation but the British has contrived to put 
 in practice the battle-royal and the Welch-main. In th.> former, the 
 spectator may be gratified with the display of numbers of game-cocks 
 destroying each other at the same moment, without order or distinction. 
 In the laiter, these courageous birds are doomed to destruction in a 
 more regular, but not les certain manner. They fight in pairs, (sup 
 pose sixteen in number,) and the two lust survivors are then match 
 ed against each other; so that out of thirty-two birds, thirty-one must: 
 be necessarily shughtered. 
 
 " Throwing at cocks, is another specimen of unmeaning brutality, 
 confined solely to our own country. After being familiarized to the 
 barbarous destruction of this courageous bird in the cockpit, it was 
 only advancing one step further in the progress of cruelty, to fasten tins 
 most gallant animal to a stake, in order to murder him piece-meal. 
 
 " Bull-bailing, during the 16th and early part of the 17th century, 
 was not confined within the limits of a bear garden, but was universally 
 practised on various occasions, in all the towns and villages throHgh nit 
 the kingdom. In many places the practice was sanctioned by law, and 
 the bull-rings, affixed to large stones driven into the ear h, remain to 
 this clay, as memorials of this legalized species of barbarity. 
 
 "Numbers of bulls were, and still continue to be, regularly trained 
 and carried about from village to village, to enter the lists against dog? 
 bred for the purpose of the combat. To detail all the barbarities com 
 mitted in these encounters would he a disgusting and tedious tafk. All 
 the had passions which spring up in ignorant and depraved minds, arc 
 here set afloat. 
 
 " At a bull baiting in Staffordshire, in 1799; after the animalhad been 
 baited by single dogs, he was attacked by numbers, let loose upon him 
 at once. Having escaped from his tormentors, they again fastened him 
 to the ring; and with a view either of gratifying their savage revenge, 
 or of better securing their victim, they actually cut off his hoofs, and 
 enjoyed the spectacle of his being worried to death on his bloody 
 and mangled stumps." 
 
 " The practice of bull-baiting," says the author of Espriella s Letters, 
 " is not merely permitted, it is even enjoined by the municipal law in 
 some places. Attempts have twice been made in the legislature to 
 suppress this barbarous custom : they were baffled and ridiculed ; and 
 some of the most distinguished members were absurd enough, and hard 
 hearted enough to assert, that if such sports were abolished, there 
 would be an end of the national courage. The bear and the badger 
 are baited with the same barbarity ; and, if the rabble can get nothing 
 else, they will divert themselves by worrying cats to death." 
 
 The boldness of the traveller Fearon, and of the Quarterly Review, 
 in attempts to degrade the American character, by stories of gander 
 pulling in Kentucky, and bear-baiting at New Orleans, must be apparent 
 from the quotations I have just made ; but I wish to show further, to 
 what they expose the British nation by authorizing requital. In open 
 ing by accident, the English Monthly Magazine, for Sept. 1803, I fell 
 upon the article which I am about to transcribe. The character of the 
 
NOTES. 
 
 473 
 
 anthor is unknown to me ; but he is not a foreign witness, and cannot PART I. 
 be suspected of a wish to disparage his own country. ^^^-^^ 
 
 " To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
 
 " SIR, 
 
 " It has been remarked by some author, that the English nation is 
 more addicted to cruelty than any other enlightened people of Europe, 
 and though we must naturally be reluctant in admitting a charge of 
 so disgraceful a nature, yet a little attention to what is passing around 
 us, particularly in respect to our own indifference to the sufferings of 
 the brute creation, will, I fear, rather corroborate than refute the asser 
 tion. I shall confine my remarks to two instances of diabolical cruelty. 
 
 " A gentleman of my acquaintance was eye witness to an instance of 
 this horrid propensity, near Buxton ; a fellow exhibited a bear which was 
 tied to a stake, with a small length of chain allowed ; the bear was not, 
 however, attacked by dogs, as usual, but by monsters in human shape, 
 who diverted themselves by trundling a wheel barrow at it if this ma 
 chine struck the animal, the bear-ward paid 6d. to him who twirled the 
 barrow, and if it missed, (which was oftener the case, as the poor bear, 
 from woeful experience, had acquired considerable dexterity in avoid 
 ing the blow,) then the bear-ward received 6d. 
 
 " The other instance, which fell within my own observation, seems 
 to me to combine more associations of a kind disgraceful to human 
 nature, than any other I remember ever to have heard of. 
 
 " As I passed through a lane, a few days before last Shrove Tuesday, 
 I observed a considerable crowd in an adjoining field, enjoying some 
 game, in which a number of boys were busily engaged ; on a nearer ap 
 proach, I saw ten or twelve boys, with their hands tied, pursuing a 
 cock, the wings of which had been previously clipped, to retard its 
 escape ; on enquiry, I learnt this poor creature was to be the prize of 
 him who could carry it off to a certain part of the field, in his teeth; this, 
 unfortunately for the object of their pursuit, was no easy task, and the 
 scene I witnessed in its prosecution was such, as surely was never 
 equalled in the annals of brutality. 
 
 " The^cock, as in most such sports, had a little start allowed, when 
 on a signal, all its pursuers gave chace ; the first who came up with it, 
 endeavourecf to stun it with his foot, and if that failed, his next re 
 source was to fall upon it with his body, full length, in which position he 
 contrived to^o: his teeth in some part, but the head was usually prefer 
 red, as the animal could not easily retaliate in this situation ! sometimes 
 all these bloodhounds were down upon or near the pooT cock at the same 
 time, one pulling it by the feet, another by the wings, and a third tugg 
 ing at its head, till the weakest part gave way, and the strongest teeth 
 bore away the prize in triumph ; whilst the poor creature struggled so 
 violently, as at times, by its convulsions, to escape for a moment, the 
 monster s jaws ; but if the conqueror proved too strong to prevent this 
 momentary escape, his triumph was of Very shojft duration, for by the 
 rules of this game, the unsuccessful followers were permitted to trip 
 the heels of the hero who was thus bearing away the prize, which they 
 generally contrived to do, and before he could arrive at the goal, he 
 was usually overthrown by his pursuers, who, falling upon him and 
 each other, with the wretched animal in the midst of them, resumed 
 this inhuman struggle. 
 
 " To the disgrace of human nature, most of the less cruel diversions 
 which I have mentioned, are conducted by men; but in their refine 
 ments upon all former species of cruelty, boys are selected, and en 
 couraged by the men, and taught to make use of their teeth like canni- 
 ibals." 
 
 (Signed,) " EGERTON SMITH, 
 " of Liverpool. 
 
 VOL. I. 3 O 
 
474 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. We may suppose Mr. Fearon, but not the Quarterly Review, to be ig- 
 "s^*v^^ norant of the speech of Lord Erskine, on the bill which he introduced 
 into the House of Lords in 1809, respecting 1 cruelty 10 animals. The 
 Reviewers ought to have recollected also, the fate of that bill in the 
 House of Commons, where, notwithstanding the disclosure of the most 
 horrid barbaritu s, a quorum could not be kept to secure a decent re 
 jection in the forms. The speech of Lord Erskine to the Peers, fur 
 nishes a kind of evidence which cannot be got over; for the facts ad 
 duced to demonstrate the necessity of his bill, are vouched upon the 
 highest responsibility. The humane mover said, 
 
 " He could bring the most unexceptionable testimony to their lord 
 ship s bar, to prove the existences of such practices as were a disgrace 
 to humanity, to a civilized nation ; one barbarous practice was, the cut 
 ting and tearing out the tongue of so noble an animal as the horse."* 
 
 I will confine myself to an extract in addition, from this speech, in 
 relation to the treatment of that "noble animal, the horse," which 
 treatment, generally, I believe to be more savage in England, than in 
 any other country on earth. The following sta ement of lord Erskine, 
 will illustrate also, what kind of meat it is such of the poor of England 
 as aspire to that luxury, usually obtain. 
 
 " A very general practice prevails of buying up horses still alive, buc 
 not capable of being further abused by any kind of labour. Thes>; 
 horses, it appeared, were carried in great numbers to slaughter house. , 
 but not killed at once for their flesh and skins, but left without suste 
 nance, and literally starved to death, that the market might be gradually 
 fed. The poor animals in the mean time, being induced to eat theii* 
 own dung, and frequently knawing one another s manes in the agonies 
 of hunger."| 
 
 I cannot refrain from noting here a circumstance connected with the 
 treatment of horses in England, which I find stated thus in one of the 
 principal newspapers of London. 
 
 * See the number of the English Sporting Magazine, for June, 1819, 
 for an atrocious instance of this practice. 
 
 j" Some humane person has returned to this subject, in the Sporting 
 Magazine, for April, 1819, and given the following account of the same 
 hideous abomination : 
 
 " Let me most earnestly, and with a heart affected by sadness ami 
 melancholy, and indignant with sensations of shame, call the attention 
 of men to the last and dreadful stage of the life of the laborious jhorse, 
 which has spent the whole of his strength, and \vasted his spirits and 
 his blood in the most painful, perhaps the most excruciating services. 
 He is, in the metropolis more especially, sold in his aged, worn out, and 
 unpitied state, to a set of brutal, unfeeling infernal savages! as any 
 that disgrace and shan^e the bosom of their mother earth the Hacker*, 
 or horse butchers : men whose fierce and hardened features, and blood 
 stained hands and bodies, are an appalling representation of their horrid 
 calling. Their places are dens of famine, animal misery, and torture, 
 which might make humanity weep tears of blood ! Here are seen 
 horses worn out with age and labour, in every possible state of decrepi 
 tude and disease, kept alive as long as possible for the convenience of 
 market, lingering under all the horrors of famine, to the degree of de 
 vouring 1 each other s manes, from excessive hunger, and at last sinking 
 to the earth, one after the other, from emptiness and weakness ! Some 
 of them may have been purchased in the country, and driven longjour- 
 nies, with barely food enough, and that of the most sordid and worth 
 less kind, to enable them to stand upon their legs." 
 
NOTES. 
 
 475 
 
 "December 29th, 1818. This clay were shot at the Queen s stables,- PART I, 
 five horses belonging to her late majesty. They had been in the queen s s w x"VX 
 service between thirty and forty years, and were now despatched (being 
 no longer able to do hard work) to prevent their falling to the work of 
 dust carts, &c. &c." 
 
 Among the ancients (barbarians and pagans !) the beasts that had 
 been employed in the building of certain temples, were ever afterwards 
 released from drudgery, and delicately fed. They were not "des 
 patched to prevent their falling to the work of dust carts." When 
 Julius Caesar, in passing the Rubicon, devoted a number of horses to the 
 divinity of that river, he set them free to rove in the abundant pastures 
 in its neighbourhood. Was there no field at Frogmore, in which the 
 five horses which had served her majesty for thirty or forty years, could 
 have been permitted to enjoy the remnant of their existence ; if not as 
 a debt of humanity to them, at least as a mark of respect to the memory 
 of their mistress ? The lines of old Ennius furnish a lesson to her ma 
 jesty s executors. 
 
 Sicutfortis equus, spatio qui ssepe supremo 
 Vicit Olympia, mine senio confectu guiescit 
 
 (NOTE S. p. 258.) 
 
 Dn. Mitchell, of New York, has made the following mention of Go 
 vernor Golden, in his Anniversary Discourse of 1813, before the New 
 York Historical Society. 
 
 "Cadwallader Golden had a large share in the provincial administra 
 tion of New York. He sent to Sweden, for his correspondent, the dis 
 tinguished professor at Upsal, a collection of the plants growing in Ul 
 ster county of New York, and accompanied the herbarium with de 
 scriptions. The great author of the sexual system caused the descrip 
 tions to be printed, and in his several publications referred to them as 
 authorities. Colden s Catalogue may be seen in the Upsal Transactions 
 for 1743. This performance displays great industry and skill, and justly 
 places the author among the botanical worthies of North America." 
 
 Linnaeus named a plant of the tetrandous class, Coldeniu, in honour 
 of the daughter of Golden. The historian cultivated mathematics with 
 distinguished success, and maintained a correspondence on various 
 branches of science with several of the most eminent savans of Europe. 
 In the year 1743, he suggested and explained in detail, in a letter to Dr. 
 Franklin,* the stereotype method of printing. The process which he 
 recommended, is the same as that practised, and said to have been in^ 
 ented, by Mr. Herhan at Paris. 
 
 (NOTE T. p. 266.) 
 
 THE first steam boat launched in the Hudson was at once crowded 
 with passengers, and in no part of the United States where the same 
 mode of conveyance appeared, did the inhabitants manifest the least 
 hesitation about making immediate use of it. Not so in Great Britain. 
 
 See the letter in the 1st vol. of the New York Medical Register 
 
476 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. We read in an article OH steam boats, in the 45th vol. ot" Tillock s Phi 
 .^^^ -^ losophical Magazine, the following statement : 
 
 " At first, owing to the novelty and apparent danger of the convey 
 ance, when the first steam boat appeared in the Clyde in 1812, the 
 number of passengers was so very small, that the only steam boat or 
 the river could hardly clear her expenses; but the degree of success 
 which attended that attempt soon commanded public confidence." 
 
 I take the following additional illustrations of this subject from a mas 
 terly review of Colden s Life of Fulton, published in the Analectu 
 Magazine for Sept. 1817. 
 
 * To show how little pretensions the English have to this discovery , 
 we lay before our readers the following extracts from the best and mos : 
 popular of the monthly publications of that country. 
 
 In the London Monthly Magazine for October, 1813, p. 244, it i ; 
 said, " We have made it our special business to lay before the public, all 
 the particulars we have been able to collect relative to the invention of 
 steam passage boats in America, and their introduction into Great Bri 
 tain ; because we consider this invention as worth to mankind more than 
 a hundred battles gained, oi- towns taken, even if the victors were en 
 gaged in a war, which might have some pretence to be called defensive 
 and necessary. It affords us great satisfaction to be able to lay before 
 our readers a correct description of the Clyde steam boat, obliging! 
 communicated to us by Messrs. Woods, ship builders in Port Glasgow . 
 It is but justice, however, to those gentlemen, to state, that they candid 
 ly consider the steam boats, as they are at present constructed, (that u. 
 on the Clyde) to be in a very rude state, and capable of great improve 
 ment. 
 
 "The boat runs in calm weather four or four and a half miles pe- 
 hour ; but against a considerable breeze, not more than three." 
 
 In the Monthly Magazine for November, 1813, vol. 36, p. 385, an 
 account is given of the New York steam boats running on an average, 
 with or against the tide, at the rate "of six miles an hour, with the 
 smoothness of a Dutch Streckshute." 
 
 In the same page is a wooden cut of the Clyde boat ; and a note of 
 the editors, stating, "that the inhabitants of the populous banks of the 
 Thames are not at present acquainted with steam boats, only through 
 our descriptions of them." 
 
 In the same Magazine for January 1814, p. 529, is a proposal to 
 erect a company for the purpose of building steam boats to navigaU 
 the Thames. 
 
 In the Magazine for February 1814, p. 29, is a further description of 
 the American steam boats, as an interesting article of information. 
 
 In the same Magazine for April 1814, a further account of American 
 steam boats is given by Mr. Ralph Dodd, engineer, who had visited 
 them in this country. He states that there were then two places i;s 
 Great Britain where steam boats had been employed, to wit, on the 
 river Braydon, between Yarmouth and Norwich, and on the river Clyde., 
 between Glasgow and Greenock : and at the close of his account, he 
 mentions that he had been urging the use of this mode of conveyance 
 for two years past, and was happy to find his recommendations realized. 
 
 By the Monthly Magazine for 1814, p. 358, it appears, that the above 
 named Ralph Dodd had succeeded in forming a company to build steam 
 boats to be used on the Thames ; and in the same page it is stated, that 
 the Clyde steam boat had run for eighteen months past : that is, the first 
 steam boat began to run in America under Fulton s direction in 1807, 
 and the first steam boat began to run in Great Britain in or about tin- 
 month of May, in the year 1813, six years after they had been in full 
 operation in this country ; in all probability, if it had not been for Ful 
 ton s enterprise and ingenuity, Great Britain would not have had a ste*" 1 . 
 
NOTES. 
 
 477 
 
 boat for these twenty years to come. He showed them how to succeed. PART I. 
 Yet is the account in Rees s Encyclopaedia so drawn up, as if the whole v^"V*x^ 
 of the invention was owing to English skill and enterprise. 
 
 " We hear much (say the editors of the Monthly Magazine for April 
 1813, vol. 35, p. 243) of the proven success of the steam passage boats 
 against the rapid streams of the great rivers in America : yet nothing of 
 the kind lias yet been adopted in Great Britain. Are we to succumb to 
 America in the mechanic arts i" This was true ; for the Clyde boat had 
 not begun to run when that paragraph was written, nor, we believe, till 
 at least a month after it was published. 
 
 "The general index to the first twenty volumes of the Edinburgh 
 Review, comprehending the month of October 1812, has not an article 
 relating to steam boats. Yet no one can complain that the editors of 
 that work are not sufficiently alive to their national claims." 
 
 (NOTE U. p. 275.) 
 
 in the Discourse of Dr. Mitchell, of New York, to which I have re 
 ferred in Note S., there is the following notice of James Logan. 
 
 " I have a copy of James Logan s Experimenta, et Meletemata circa- 
 generationem plantarum. They were printed at London in Latin and 
 English. He relates experiments made on Indian corn to prove the 
 prolific nature of staminal dust. He quotes Dr. Grew, as ascribing to 
 Mr. Thomas Millington the original idea, as long ago as 1676, that plants 
 have sexes. It is not a little remarkable, that this small ti*act is more 
 likely to perpetuate the author s fame, than all the judicial acts of his 
 life." 
 
 I would observe, on the last phrase of this quotation, that, if the 
 learned author of the discourse meant to disparage the judicial acts 
 of Logan, he has committed a signal injustice, or spoken without due 
 knowledge. Logan s judicial career was one of great integrity, and 
 utility to the state. As Pennsylvania was divided into parties for 
 and against the Proprietary, and as this early friend of Penn took the 
 lead on the side of his family, he became obnoxious to keen enmities, 
 and unsparing detraction. This accounts for the angry proceedings of 
 the House of Assembly towards him from time to time, and for the co 
 lours in which he is painted in the Historical Review of Pennsylvania,, 
 published in London to counteract the Proprietary interest there . I am 
 well informed that Franklin, the author of the Review, acknowledged, at 
 a distant period, that Logan had been represented in the work pursuant 
 to party feelings and aims, and not in conformity with his real charac 
 ter and services. The charges which Logan delivered, as chief justice 
 of Pennsylvania, to grand juries, are of singular excellence. He appears 
 in them not only as a watchful guardian of the domestic weal, and as a 
 sagacious director, but as a profound moralist, and beautiful writer. 
 Such subtile disquisition, and lofty speculation, such variety of know 
 ledge, and richness of diction, are seldom found in compositions of any 
 kind. Of the practical lessons which he inculcated, I am induced to 
 quote the following, from a charge dated April 13, 1736, because it has 
 a curious appositenessto the present times in this country, and contains 
 maxims of universal and perpetual validity. 
 
 " As poverty, and the want of money, has of late been the great cry 
 in this place (Philadelphia) ; and riches have been shown to be the na 
 tural effects of sobriety, industry, and frugality; the true causes of this 
 poverty may justly deserve a more near and strict inquiry : upon which, 
 
478 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. the case, if I mistake not, will appear as follows. It is certainly with i*. 
 v^~v*^/ state, as with a private family ; if the disbursements or expenses are 
 greater than the income, that family will undoubtedly become poorer. 
 And, in the same manner, if our importations are greater than our ex 
 ports, the country in general will sink by it. This has been our case 
 for some years past, owing, in a great measure, not only to the badness 
 of the commodity we exported, to the great injury of our credit, (which, 
 notwithstanding, is now in some degree retrieved, by the diligence of 
 one officer, and the country will undoubtedly reap the advantages of it,) 
 but also to our using more European and other goods than we can pay 
 for by our produce, or perhaps really want; and then the balance must 
 be paH (if tis ever done) in money. 
 
 " These are the open and avowed reasons, th it may be given, for our 
 scarcity of coin : but as to our poverty, it may be inquired, whether 
 there be not yet a cause ? And every man who complains, may ask 
 himself, whether he has been as industrious and frugal, in the manage 
 ment of his affairs, as his circumstances required ? whether credit has 
 not hurt him, by venturing into debt, before he knew how to pay ? and 
 whether the attractions of pleasure and ease have not been stronger 
 than those of business ? but Solomon says, He that loveth pleasure, shall 
 be a poor man : and he that loveth wine and oil, (that is, high living,) 
 shall not be rich, Prov. 21, 17. He tells us also, elsewhere, who they 
 are that shall come to poverty, and what it is that clothes a man with 
 rags, Prov. 23, 21. ; and shows, very clearly, that the ways to get wealth 
 were the very same, near three thousand years ago, that they are at 
 this day, and, probably, they may continue the same to the end of the 
 world. 
 
 "If people of substance cannot employ men to build, or by other means 
 to improve the country, but at higher rates than the work will be worth 
 to them when finished, whether tis to be let or sold, such workmen 
 cannot expect employment, but poverty must come as one that travel- 
 leth, and want as an armed man. And if the same love of pleasure, 
 wine, and oil, still continue under these circumstances, it will not be 
 difficult to find a cause why such are not rich. It is not to be doubted, 
 but that young beginners in the world have mistaken their own condi 
 tion ; have valued an appearance, and run too easily into debt ; and 
 that workmen declining labour on practicable terms, to put it in the 
 power of others to employ them, and yet continuing their usual expense ; 
 it is not to be doubted, I say, but that great numbers, by these mea 
 sures, though they may not be the only cause, have been plunged into 
 distressed circumstances, of which they themselves will not see the 
 reason : but being uneasy under them, they repine, and grow envious 
 against those who, by greater diligence and circumspection, have pre 
 served themselves in a more easy and safe condition of life. Such peo 
 ple run into complaints of grievances; cry out against the oppression 
 of the poor, though perhaps no country in the world is more free from 
 it than ours; they grow factious and turbulent in the state ; are for 
 trying new politics, and like persons afflicted with distempers, contracted 
 through vicious habits, who are calling for lenitives to their pains, but 
 will not part with the beloved but destructive cause ; they are for in 
 venting new and extraordinary measures for their relief and ease ; when 
 it is certain, that nothing can prove truly effectual to them, but a change 
 of their own measures, in the exercise of those wholesome and healing 
 virtues I have mentioned, viz. sobriety, industry, and frugality : not by 
 contracting new debts, for this is a constant snare, and a pit, in which 
 the unwary are caught ; for the borrower, we are told, is a servant to 
 the lender, and the man who gives surety worketh his own destruction : 
 for why (it is said) should he (thy creditor) take thy bed from under 
 thee t or, which amounts to the same, why should he take that from thce. 
 
NOTES. 479 
 
 from which thou must gain thy bread, or the place on which thy bed PART I. 
 stands ? such relief is but a snare : and I will here be bold to say, that v ^^ _^_. 
 it is not even the greatest quantities of coin that can be imported into 
 this province, (unless it were to be distributed for nothing.) nor of any 
 other specie, that can relieve the man who has nothing to purchase it 
 with ; but it is his industry, with frugality, that must ease him, and enti 
 tle him to a share of it. 
 
 (NOTE V. p. 396.) 
 
 The petition which Lord Nugent presented to the House of Com 
 mons, during its last session (1819), on the part of the English Roman 
 Catholics, was signed by 10,300 persons, among whom were eleven 
 peers, thirteen baronets, and three hundred gentlemen of landed pro 
 perty. To make the American reader acquainted with the intent of 
 their disfranchisement, I offer the following extracts from some of their 
 late petitions and addresses, as preserved in a valuable work published 
 the present year in London, and entitled, " Historical Memoirs of the 
 English Catholics, by Charles Butler, Esq." 
 
 " Several disabling and penal laws sti/l remain in force against English 
 Catholics. Still are civil and military offices denied them ; still are they 
 excluded from many lines in the profession of the law and medicine"; 
 still are some avenues to commercial wealth shut against them ; still is 
 entrance into corporations prohibited to them ; still the provisions for 
 their schools and places of religious worship are without legal security ; 
 still they are disabled from voting at elections; still they are deprived of 
 eligibility to a seat in the House of Commons; still Roman Catholic 
 peers are excluded from their hereditary seats in the House of Lords; 
 and still Roman Catholic soldiers and sailors are legally subject to heavy 
 penalties, and even to capital punishment > for refusing to conform to the 
 religious rites of the established church. Each of these penal laws has 
 a painful operation : their united effects is very serious. It meets the 
 Catholics in every path of life ; makes their general body a depressed 
 and insulated cast ; and forces every individual of it below the rank in 
 society which he would otherwise hold. Seldom, indeed, does it hap- 
 pen, that a Roman Catholic closes his life, without having more than 
 once experienced, that his pursuits have failed of success, or that, if 
 they have succeeded, the success of them has been greatly lessened or 
 greatly retarded, or that his children have lost provision or preferment, 
 in consequence of his having been a Roman Catholic." 
 
 " How injurious the test acts are, both to the public and to the indi 
 viduals on whom they operate, appeared in 1795 ; in which year, during 
 the then great national alarm of invasion, Lonl Petre, the grandfather 
 of the present lord, having, with the express leave and encouragement 
 of government, raised, equipped, and trained, at his own expence, a 
 corps of two hundred and fifty men for his majesty s service, requested 
 that his son might be appointed to the command of them His son s 
 religion was objected, his appointment refused, and another person 
 was appointed to the command of the corps. You cannot but feel how 
 much such a conduct tended to discourage the Catholics from exertions 
 of zeal and loyalty : but, the noble family had too much real love of 
 their country to resign from her service, even under these circum 
 stances. His lordship delivered over the corps, completely equipped, 
 and completely trained, into the hands of government, and his son 
 served in the ranks." 
 
 "In the last Parliament, (1816) it was shown, that a meritorious pri- 
 
430 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 PART f. vate, for refusing, (which he did in a most respectful manner), to at- 
 _^^_ - % _. tend divine service and sermon according to the rights of the establish- 
 lished church, was confined nine days in a dungeon, on bread and wa 
 ter." 
 
 " Thus the English Catholic soldiers are incessantly exposed to the 
 cruel alternative of either making a sacrifice of their religion, or incur 
 ring the extreme of legal punishment; than which, your petitioners 
 humbly conceive, there never has been, and cannot be a more direct 
 religious persecution. To an alternative, equally oppressive, the En 
 glish Roman Catholics are exposed on their marriages ; the law re 
 quires, for the legal validity of a marriage in England, that it should be 
 celebrated in a parish church ; as Roman Catholics believe marriage to 
 be a sacrament, the English Roman Catholics naturally feel great re 
 pugnance to a celebration of their marriages in other churches than 
 their own." 
 
 With regard to the Irish Roman Catholics, their situation is worse. 
 Their disfranchisement is as entire in substance, and much more galling 
 in its operation, than that of the American negroes. In 1812, the num 
 ber of the Irish Catholics was estimated at 4,200,000 ; making five 
 sixths of the whole population of Ireland, and being as 10 to 1, in the 
 proportion of the Protestants. Their clergy amounted to upwards of 
 two thousand. The following representations are copied from a very 
 able and full exposition of their grievances published at the period just 
 mentioned.* 
 
 If a Catholic clergyman happens, though inadvertently, to celebrate 
 marriage between two Protestants, or between a Protestant and a Ca 
 tholic, (unless already married by a Protestant minister) he is liable by 
 law to suffer death. 
 
 The Catholic clergy are unprotected by any law, prohibiting the dis 
 turbance of Divine service, whilst celebrated by them. 
 
 The Catholic clergyman, bound by his vows to a life of celibacy, and 
 generally in narrow circumstances, feels the harshness of being held li 
 able to the payment of a modern tax, called bachelor s tax. 
 
 The Catholic clergy are interdicted from receiving any endowment, 
 or permanent provision, either for their own support, or for that of their 
 houses of worship, &c. 
 
 Whilst the members of all other religious persuasions in Ireland are 
 permitted to provide for the permanent maintenance of their respective 
 ministers of worship, and of the establishments connected with their 
 respective tenets, the Catholics alone are denied this permission. Re 
 proached, as they frequently are, with the poverty of their clergy, the 
 misery of their people, and the supposed ignorance of their poor, they 
 are forbidden by law, to resort to the necessary measures for supply 
 ing these deficiencies. 
 
 In Ireland, the Protestant parishoners actually enjoy the privilege 
 of assembling together, under the name of Parish Vestries, to the exclu 
 sion of the Catholics, of legislating and of imposing such yearly land tax 
 upon the Catholics as they may think proper, for the alleged purposes 
 of building, repairing, refitting, &c. Protestant houses of worship and 
 of providing lucrative occupation for each other. 
 
 The people of Ireland, already pay (as a plain calculation will show) 
 an average sum, not less than 200/. for every family, that frequents the 
 public service of the established church : or in other words, each of 
 these families now costs to the people an average sum of 200/. yearly, 
 for its religious worship. 
 
 * Statement of the Penal laws, which aggrieve the Catholics of Ire 
 land. 2d. Edit. Dublin. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 481 
 
 tt The Irish parliament, in the last year of its existence, solemnly or- PART I. 
 ganized a powerful inquisition, the Commission of Charitable Bequests^ v^-v^^ 
 vigilant and eager in the pursuit of its prey, and arrm-d with every ne 
 cessary authority for discovering and seizing the funds destined by dy 
 ing Ca thoiics for the maintenance of the pious and the poor of their own 
 communion, and appropriating them, when seized, to the better mainte 
 nance of the Protestant institutions." 
 
 * Suffice it to say, respecting the general conduct of this hoard, that 
 their zeal and activity in the discharge of their ungracious functions, 
 have completely succeeded in frustrating every attempt of the Irish 
 Catholics to provide any permanent maintenance for the ministers of 
 their worship, their places of education, or other pious or charitable 
 foundations. * 
 
 " No Catholic can be a guardian to a Protestant ; and no Catholic 
 priest can be a guardian at all. Catholics are only allowed to have arms 
 under certain restrictions ; and no Catholic can be employed as a fowler, 
 or have for sale, or otherwise, any arms or warlike stores. No Catho 
 lic can present to an ecclesiastical living, although dissenters, and 
 even Jews, have been found entitled to this privilege. The pecuniary 
 qualification of Catholic jurors is made higher than that of Protest 
 ants." 
 
 "The number of Catholics qualified for seats in the legislature, (if 
 learning, talents, landed estates, or commercial wealth be admitted as 
 a qualification) probably exceeds thirty thousand persons. These men 
 stand personally proscribed by the existing exclusion, whilst their Pro 
 testant neighbours find every facility for ready admission." 
 
 "Hence, every Protestant feels himself, and really is, more firm and 
 secure in the favour of the laws, more powerful in society, more free 
 in his energies, more elevated in life, than his Catholic neighbour of 
 equal merit, property, talents, and education. He alone feels and pos 
 sesses the right and the legal capacity to be a legislator, and this con 
 sciousness is actual power." 
 
 "Whatever may be the wealth of the Catholic, his talent, or his ser 
 vices, he is uniformly refused a place upon grand juries within the cor 
 porate towns ; and even upon petty juries, unless when the duty is 
 arduous, and unconnected with party interests. He more than doubts 
 of obtaining the same measure of justice, of favour or respect, from 
 the mayor, recorder, alderman, tax gatherer, public boards, &c. that is 
 accorded to his Protestant neighbour. He lives in continual apprehen 
 sion, lest he or his family may become objects of some pecuniary ex 
 tortion, or victims of some malicious accusation. Hence he is cringing, 
 dependant, and almost a suppliant, for common justice." 
 
 "Thus, the Catholic leads a life resembling that of the condemned 
 Jeno } of no account personally ; but partially tolerated for the sake of 
 outward show ; trampled upon individually ; preserved collectively 
 for the uses of others ; permitted to practise commerce and agriculture 
 for the benefit of public revenue ; gleaning, by connivance, a little 
 money from arduous enterprises and intense labours, which the happier 
 lot of the privileged class enables them to decline ; but never to be 
 received cordially as a- citizen of the town, which he enriches, and 
 perhaps maintains. * 
 
 It will appear, that the gross number of offices and situations, from 
 which the class of penal laws, concerning corporate offices, excludes 
 the Catholics, may be considered as amounting 
 
 " Directly, and by express enactment, to about - 2548 
 " Consequentially, to about - - -> ." 1200 
 
 "Total - . . .- *, -. . 3748" 
 VOL. I. 3 P 
 
482 NOTES. 
 
 PART 1. "The judicial situations, controlling the entire administration of 
 y^"V^/ justice in Ireland, are at present monopolized by the Protestants ; and, 
 under the existing laws and system, they must continue to be occupied 
 by Protestants alone." 
 
 "There appears to be a total number of nearly 1500 offices connect 
 ed with the profession and administration of the laws, which are inter 
 dicted to the Catholics, either by the express letter, or by the necessary 
 operation, of the present penal code." 
 
 " One hundred and sixty legal offices, of honour and of emolument, 
 are inaccessible to Catholic barristers, and open to Protestants. Thir 
 teen hundred other offices are reserved solely for the ruling class, to 
 the exclusion of Catholic students, solicitors, attorneys, clerks, &c. &c." 
 
 "Throughout the entire post office, established in Ireland, for in 
 stance, consisting of several hundred persons, there is scarcely a single 
 Catholic to be found in a higher situation than that of a common letter- 
 carrier; and few of even this class. The like may be affirmed of the 
 stamp-office, bank of Ireland, and the other public boards and establish 
 ments of Ireland." 
 
 "Although not disqualified by an express statute, yet the Catholic 
 physicians, surgeons, apothecaries not inferior in learning, skill, expe 
 rience or character, to those of any other persuasion are practically 
 excluded from medical honours and public situations and especial 
 ly from medical appointments of emolument or credit, within the in 
 fluence of the crown, or of the numerous departments connected with 
 the state." 
 
 " We do not read the name of any Catholic amongst the physicians, 
 surgeons, druggists, or apothecaries, attached to the military or naval 
 departments." 
 
 "The law presumes every Catholic to be faithless, disloyal, unprinci 
 pled, and disposed to equivocate upon his oath until he shall have repelled 
 this presumption by his sworn exculpation in public court." 
 
 " That there exist in Ireland numerous splendid establishments, bear 
 ing the plausible profession of public education, is sufficiently known, 
 From the extensive scale and pompous exterior of the buildings, from 
 the numerous train of officers and heavy annual charge a stranger 
 might infer the existence of ample and liberal public instruction in Ire 
 land but, upon a nearer view, he will be quickly undeceived. 
 
 " These seminaries are closed, by law or by usage, against the Catho 
 lics. They are founded, generally speaking, upon strict and exclusive 
 Protestantism upon abhorrence of Popery and upon the inculcation 
 of doctrines, breathing personal imputation and indirect hostility against 
 the Catholic population." 
 
 "Protestant families will not, in general, take Catholic servants. 
 Every newspaper contains advertisements for servants, signifying thai 
 they must not be Catholics." 
 
 . " In yeoman corps, (armed,) with very few exceptions, no Catholics 
 are admitted." 
 
 "In the country corps, the bigotry of the captains generally excludes 
 Catholics ; and, even when the captains would wish, for the appearance 
 of these corps, to mix a few stout comely Catholics in it, the bigotry of 
 the privates interferes to prevent it as, in most instances, they would 
 resign, if such a measure were persisted in." 
 
 "In many towns in Ireland, there are convivial societies, amongst 
 whom it it a rule to exclude Catholics." 
 
 "In many counties, Protestants will not visit a Catholic ; and it is tlu 
 fashion to speak of them in the most injurious and degrading terms." 
 
 " The Catholics can feel, and do suffer." 
 
 "The very peasantry acutely feel the stigma cast by government upon 
 their sect and their religion. The lowest order even suffer most. The 
 
NOTES. 
 
 483 
 
 wealthy Catholics acquire a degree of consideration and legal security PART I. 
 from their property ; but the peasantry are left naked to the pelting of x^-v^W 
 the storm, to all the jibes and jobs of Protestant ascendancy." 
 
 "Not only a Protestant lord looks down upon a Catholic lord, and a 
 Protestant gentleman on a Catholic gentleman, but a Protestant peasant 
 on a Catholic peasant; and, in proportion as the degrading scale de 
 scends, the expression of contempt becomes more marked and gross." 
 
 (NOTE W. p. 39r.) 
 
 MR. Fearon relates a story of negro flagellation, which he pretends 
 to have witnessed in Kentucky, and from which it might be inferred, 
 that the general treatment of the slaves in that state is barbarous. The 
 inference would involve a great injustice ; for, their condition is emi 
 nently good in Kentucky, as I myself know from personal observation, 
 and as every candid traveller who has had the same opportunity of judg 
 ing, will acknowledge. They have there, an abundant provision of ex 
 cellent food ; their labour is light ; and the recreations in which they 
 are indulged, give a particular hilarity to their carriage. We have ano 
 ther F.nglish writer of travels, Lieutenant Hall, who has assigned a 
 chapter specially to the negro slavery of the United States, and passed 
 general sentence, confessing at the same time, that " information as to 
 the condition of the negroes, in point of fact, is little attainable by a 
 cursory traveller." He, it would seem, only traversed Virginia, North 
 Carolina, and a part of South Carolina, rapidly, in the stage coach, and 
 by the main road. As he passed along, in the night, he saw the " fire 
 light shining through some of the negro huts," from which he inferred, 
 that they were universally without sufficient shelter from the inclemen 
 cy of the season. Wood, he acknowledges, they might have in plenty ; 
 but then " they must have their night s rest perpetually broken by the 
 obligation of keeping up their fires." How happy would be the poor 
 in England, if they were subjected to the same obligation ! 
 
 This traveller moans, too, over the diet of the negroes in the lower 
 parts of South Carolina rice, Indian meal, and dried fish ! He does not 
 deny, that they are amply supplied with the two first articles. Poultry, 
 he says, they may raise ; but we know that they do raise it in abun 
 dance, and either consume it themselves, or by the sale of it, procure 
 gratifications untasted by the British labourer. If the subsistence upon 
 rice be so calamitous a lot, there is enough to engross the compassion of 
 an Englishman, in the fate of the vast majority of the population sub 
 ject to the British power in India. It is only on the rice lands, and ge 
 nerally near the coast, that the negroes of Carolina are stinted as to 
 animal food : in what is called the upper country, it is given to them 
 in sufficient quantity for a daily and plentiful meal. Throughout the 
 slave-holding states, there are differences in the living of the blacks, 
 according to the greater or less productiveness of the soil, the nature 
 of the staple product, &c. But no where are they without wholesome 
 victuals, adequate to the demands of the appetite, and the support of 
 the frame in its full vigour. Lieutenant Hall remained a few weeks at 
 Charleston, and there picked up some stale anecdotes about the op 
 pression of the negroes. He found a Socrates in the black cook of a 
 vessel, condemned to death for poisoning the crew ; and has made a 
 most ridiculous romance of the affair. Of the kidnapping of free ne 
 groes, he heard something, and is moved, of course, to high indigna 
 tion and rebuke. I do not deny the atrocity of the crime, as odious to 
 
484 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 PART T. Americans in general as it can be to foreigners; but it has more than 
 v^^y^^t one direct parallel in England, to divert the anger and denunciations of 
 her sons from this unlucky country. Possibly, our traveller may have 
 heard of a practice, which Sir James Mackintosh has described as " a 
 flourishing though accursed trade,"* false accusation the swearing 
 away the life or liberty of an innocent person, for the sake of the re 
 ward called blood money. I will make the reader further acquainted 
 with it by a few extracts from the debates of the House of Commons. 
 
 " Mr. Bennet said, (March 2, 1818,) that he was convinced he was 
 not exaggerating, when he averred, that it had been a long established 
 practice in this country, (England,) for individuals, day after day, year 
 after year, to stimulate others to the commission of crime, for the pur 
 pose of putting money in their pockets by their conviction." 
 
 " Mr. Bennet said, (April 13, 1818,) that in many cases, false evi 
 dence was given by police officers, in order to bring the otFence within 
 the reach of the remuneration. Mr. Shelton, the clerk of the arraigns 
 at the Old Builey, slated, that too frequently these officers endeavoured 
 to stretch the point, with the view of sharing in the price of blood, 
 The calendars of the criminal courts established the same conclusion. 
 
 " Fixed rewards had long been the great blot in our system of cri 
 minal procedure. 
 
 " All the persons who were connected with the police acknowledg 
 ed, that the principle of the present system was bad, and that, from 
 the beginning of it to the end, instead of checking or controlling crime,- 
 it operated as a bounty to base and designing men, who went about, 
 not merely to tempt adults to the commission of crime, but (which was 
 the most famentable fact,) to train up children to be criminals. Children 
 of nine or ten y ears of age, instead of being indicted, as they ought to be, 
 for picking pockets, were frequently, in hopes of the reward, indicted 
 for high-way robberies. Not many months ago, two children, one thir- 
 teen,~the other nine years of age, were convicted of highway robbery, 
 one of the witnesses being a child of six years of age ; although he 
 was as sure as he stood there, that were it not for the system of re 
 wards, their offence would never have been ranked so high. 
 
 " The Bank was known to give a reward of 71. on the conviction ot 
 persons for passing bad money; and this very circumstance was the 
 cause of a great number of the convictions which took place for that 
 offence. A great many poor Germans, Swedes, and Irishmen, who 
 were ignorant of the English language, were entrapped into the pass 
 ing of bad coin, by persons whose only object was, the getting of the 
 reward offered in consequence." 
 
 " Mr. Alderman Wood expressed his conviction, (April 21, 1818,) 
 that nine out of ten of the prosecutions for forgery in London, origi 
 nated with persons who were paid for exciting others to commit the 
 crime. This he was enabled to state, from official experience and au 
 thentic information." 
 
 The kidnapping of children for the purpose of converting them into 
 beggars and thieves, or of selling them to those who are engaged in the 
 lowest and most disgusting callings of civilized life, is of more frequent 
 occurrence in England, than the kidnapping of free negroes in the 
 United States. Cases of child stealing, accompanied with circumstances 
 of monstrous barbarity, are daily announced in the English gazettes. I 
 will illustrate the fact and the process, by some quotations from the Re 
 port of the Committee of the House of Commons, concerning chimney 
 sweepers. 
 
 "Children are sometimes sold by their parents to master chimney 
 sweepers, and oftentimes they are stolen. These children are very 
 
 * House of Commons, May 4, 1818. 
 
NOTES. 485 
 
 hable to cough and inflammation of the chest, from their being out at all p ART I. 
 hours, and in all weathers : tnese are generally increased by the wretch- \^*v^^ 
 tdness of tneir haohations, as they too frequently have to sleep in a 
 shed exposed to the changes of the weather, their only bed a soot bag, 
 and another to cover them, independent of their tattered garments. 
 
 "They are very subject to burns, from their being forced up chim 
 neys while on fire, or soon af;er they have been on fire, and while over 
 heated ; and, however they may cry out, their inhuman musters pay not 
 the least attention, but compel them, too often with horrid imprecations, 
 to proceed. They are sometimes sent up chimneys on fire. 
 
 " It is in eviaence before your committee, that at Hadleigh, Barnet, 
 Uxbridge, and Windsor, female diildren have been employed. 
 
 "it is also in fvidencr, mat the) are stolen from their parents, and in 
 veigled out of -workhouses ; thai, in order to conquer the natural repug 
 nance of the infants to ascend the narrow and dangerous chimneys, to 
 clean wu:ch their labour is required, blows are used; that pins ure forced 
 into their feet by the boy thai follows thorn up the chimney, in order to 
 cornjjel them to ascend it ; and that lighted straw has been applied for 
 that purpose; that the children are suoject to sores and bruises, and 
 wounds and burns on their thighs, knees, and elbows ; ana tnat it will 
 require many months before the extremities of the elbows and knees 
 become sufficiently hard to resist the excoriations to which they are at 
 first subject. 
 
 " But it is not only the early and hard labour, the spare diet, wretch 
 ed lodging, and harsh treatment, whi.-h is the lot of tiuse children, but, 
 in general, they are kept almost entirely destitute of education, and 
 moral or religious instruction; they form a sort of class by themselves, 
 and from their work being done early in the day, they are turned into 
 the streets to pass their time in idleness and depravity : thus they be 
 come an easy prey to those whose occupation it is to delude the igno 
 rant and entrap the unwary ; and if their constitution is strong enough 
 to resist the diseases and deformities which are the consequences of 
 their trade, and that they should grow so much in stature as no longer 
 to be useful in it, they are cast upon the world at the age of about six 
 teen, without any means of obtaining a livelihood, with no habits of in 
 dustry, or rather, what too frequently happens, with confirmed habits of 
 idleness and vice." 
 
 The strong nerves of the English travellers would not tremble at these 
 things. It is the kidnapping of the negro that makes their flesh creep, 
 and disturbs their repose. So too, they are in transports of philanthropic 
 ruge, with the negro driving , an abominable trade and spectacle, no 
 doubt, but which has its counterpart in England, to be witnessed at all 
 times throughout that land of freedom. " The English," says Mr. 
 Southey, (Espriella s Letters, letter 26) " boast of their liberty, but 
 there is no liberty in England for the poor. They are no longer sold 
 with the soil, it is true ; but they cannot quit the soil if there be any 
 probability or suspicion that age or infirmity may disable them. If, in 
 such a case, they endeavour to remove to some situation where they 
 hope more easily to maintain themselves, where work is more plentiful, 
 or provisions cheaper, the overseers are alarmed, the intruder is ap 
 prehended, as if he were a criminal, and sent back to his own parish. 
 Whenever a pauper dies, that parish must be at the cost of his funeral : 
 instances therefore, have not been -wanting, of -wretches in the last stage of 
 dise se, having been hurried away in an open cart, upon straw, and dying 
 upon the road. Nay, even women in the very pains of labour, have been 
 driven out, and have perished by the way side, because the birth-place 
 of the child would be its parish." 
 
 I can furnish more recent, though certainly not more authentic testi 
 mony. Mr. Simon, in his " Journal of a Tour in Great Britain," (1815) 
 
486 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. speaking of the Poor Laws, proceeds thus : " Among the necessary 
 V^-v^,/ consequences of tliis system, is a multiplicity of vexatious laws repect- 
 ing settlements, by which the right of removing at pleasure, from one 
 part of the country to another, is so abridged, as to attach, in a great 
 degree, the labouring class to the glebe, as the Russian peasant is. 
 Perhaps, being bound to provide each for their own poor, it becomes a 
 matter of importance to prevent new comers from acquiring a settlement 
 by removal to a new parish ; and the poor are repulsed from one to the 
 other like infected persons They are sent back from one end of the kingdom 
 to the other, as criminals formerly in France, de brigade en brigade. You 
 meet on the high roads, Iivillnot say often, but too often, an old man on foot, 
 with his littie bundle, a helpless widow, pregnant perhaps, and two 
 or three barefooted children following her, become paupers in a place 
 where they had yet not acquired a legal right to assistance, and sent 
 away on that account, to their original place of settlement, in the mean 
 time, by the overseers of the parishes on their way." (V oJ. i. p. 224.) 
 
 Mr. Sturges Bourne, in proposing to the House of Commons, (March 
 25,1819) his bill to regulate the settlement of the Poor, pointed out 
 emphatically, the notorious practice of "sending back old paupers to 
 their original parish, after they had spent their youth and labour else 
 where ; tearing them from their friends and neighbours." He dwelt 
 upon "the extreme hardship upon the paupers, who, having resided 
 many years, and formed connexions, were sent home to their parishes, 
 and separated from all their friends and consolations to die in a remote 
 poor house."* 
 
 The American negro may, for aught I know, have much more sensi 
 bility than the English pauper; but I should, at first view, think the 
 fate of the latter, thus torn up by the roots, as it were, and transplanted 
 to " a hot bed of vice and wretchedness," as the poor-house is styled 
 in the Parliamentary Reports, quite as severe and barbarous, and as dis 
 graceful to the country in which it is undergone, as that of the " driven" 
 slave. In the history of civilized life, there is nothing more abomina 
 ble than the warfare carried on by the parishes in England against the 
 poor, (See the ensuing Note). 
 
 (NOTE X. p. 411.) 
 
 I WISH the American reader to be able to make an immediate compa 
 rison between the condition, physical and moral, of our negroes, and 
 that of the labouring poor of England. 1 will, therefore, place before 
 him a number of paragraphs concerning the latter, drawn from the 
 Treatise of Colquhoun on Indigence, Espriella s Letters, by Mr. South ey, 
 and the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on the 
 Poor Laws of the year 1817. I should premise that the statements of 
 Colquhoun and Southey were made in 1806 and 1807, and that a great 
 aggravation of all the evils of which they complain is admitted, on all 
 hands, to have taken place within the few years past. 
 
 COLQUHOUN. 
 
 "It has been shown that above one million of individuals (1,234,768) 
 in a country containing less than nine millions of inhabitants, have de 
 scended into a state of indigence, requiring either total or partial sup 
 port from the public." 
 
 " A very large proportion of this mass of indigence is to be traced to 
 the bad education, and particularly to the vicious and immoral habits of 
 the inferior ranks of the people." 
 
 * In 1803, the number of vagrants removed, was 194,052. 
 
NOTES. 487 
 
 " A prodigious number among the labouring classes cohabit together PART I. 
 without marriage, and again separate when a difference ensues ; and 
 their miserable offspring, from neglect, are rarely reared to maturity." 
 
 " The morals of the inferior classes of society have been greatly ne 
 glected. Vicious habits, idleness, improvidence, and sottisimess, pre 
 vail in so great a degree, that until a right bias shall have been given to 
 the minds of the vulgar, joined to a greater portion of intelligence in 
 respect to the economy of the poor, one million of indigent will be 
 added to another, requiring permanent or partial relief, producing 
 ultimately such a gangrene in the body politic as to threaten its total 
 dissolution." 
 
 " It will be seen also from late publications, that, after making very 
 large allowances, at least 1,750,000 of the population of the country, at 
 an age to be instructed, grow up to an adult state without any instruc 
 tion at all, in the grossest ignorance, and without any useful impression 
 of religion or morality." 
 
 " Innocent and culpable vagrancy are confounded together, and the 
 virtuous and vicious mendicant are subject to the same punishment. 
 Persons wandering abroad and begging are by law to be -whipped or 
 imprisoned." 
 
 " In many places, the workhouses on a small scale will be found to 
 be abodes of misery, which defy all comparison in human wretched 
 ness." 
 
 " To innocent indigence they are all gaols without guilt punishment 
 without crime." 
 
 "A working man may now go where he pleases, with his family, and 
 exert his labour where it may be most advantageous to him, as long as 
 he can avoid asking parish relief; but if, from sickness, accident, or any 
 affliction, depriving him, even for a short period, of the power of sup- 1 
 porting his family, he is compelled to solicit aid from the parish, he is 
 from that moment in a situation to be legally removed, to that from 
 which he came originally ; and when so removed, he must never again 
 return to the parish where he was in a situation to gain a subsistence, 
 on pain of being treated as a rogue and a vagabond" 
 
 " The constant interferences respecting settlements have unquestion 
 ably given a most injurious bias to the minds of the labouring people. 
 In the various disputes about who shall afford them an asylum, they have 
 been led to conceive that exertion and industry become less necessary, 
 since the parish to which they belong is, under every circumstance, 
 compelled to maintain them." 
 
 "The frequency of these interferences on the part of parish officers, 
 and the multitudes ivho have been carted from place to place, ivith their chil- 
 dren, have tended in no small degree to generate vagrancy, since they 
 are always unwelcome guests in the receiving parishes. With charac 
 ters thus degraded and rendered doubtful, and often without a single 
 relation or acquaintance in the place which has, thfough the refinements 
 upon the law, been deemed their settlement, what are they to do ? 
 The parish officers have provided no means of employing them ; and 
 for their labour, their only means of subsistence, they can find no pur 
 chaser, and yet they dare not return to the parish where they could be useful 
 to themselves and their country" 
 
 " In this situation, unable to exist on the scanty pittance afforded by 
 the parish, and without the means of filling up the chasm by their own 
 industry, their characters assume a new and degraded form, and where 
 not irnmured in a workhouse, they have no resource but to resort to 
 the miserable alternative of hazarding a more degrading punishment by 
 asking alms, where absolute infirmity does not establish a claim to full 
 subsistence." 
 
488 WOTES. 
 
 PART I SOUTHEY. 
 
 - _^- . -%_ " The dwellings of the labouring 1 manufacturers are in narrow street: 
 and lanes, blocked up from light and air, and crowded together because 
 every inch of land is of such value, that room for light and air cannot bt 
 afforded them Here in Manchester a great proportion of the poor louge 
 in cellars, damp ..ml dark, where every kind of filth is suffered to a cu 
 mulate, because no exertions of domestic care can ever make such homes 
 decent. These places arc so many hot-beds of infection; and .he poor 
 in large towns are rarely or never without an infectious fever among 
 them, H pL .gue of their o\\ n, which leaves the habitations of the rich, 
 like a Goshen of cleanliness and comfort, unvisited." 
 
 " \Vnen the poor are incapable of contributing any longer to their 
 own support, they are removed to what is called the workhouse. I 
 cannot express to you the feeling of hopelessness and dread with which 
 all the decent poor look on to this wretched termination of a life of 
 labour To this place all vagrants are sent for punishment; unmarried 
 women with child go hereto be delivered; and poor orphans and base- 
 born children are brought up here till they are of age to be appren 
 ticed oft ; the other inmates are those unhappy people who arc utterly 
 helpless, parish idiO Sand madmen, the blind and the palsied, and the 
 old who are fair!}- worn out. Jt is not in the nature of things that the 
 superintendants of such institutions as these should be gentle-ht ;r ed, 
 when the superintendance is undertaken merely for the sake of the 
 salary." 
 
 " To this society of wretchedness the labouring poor of England look 
 as their last resting place on this side of the grave, and rather than en 
 ter abodes so miserable, the} endure the severest privations as long as 
 it is possible to exist. A feeling of honest pride makes them simi.k 
 from a place where guilt and poverty are confounded; and it is he rt- 
 breaking for those who have reared a family of theJr own to be suigect- 
 ed, in tluir old age, to the harsh and unfeeling authorit) of persons 
 younger than themselves, neither better born nor better bred." 
 
 "Perhaps the pain the positive bodily pain which the poor of Bri 
 tain endure/row co/J, may be esteemed the worst evil of their poverty- 
 Coal is every where clear except in the neighbourhood of the collieries; 
 and especially so in London, where the number of the poor is of couise 
 greatest. You see women raking the ashes in the streets, for the sake 
 of the half burnt cinders. V\ hat a picture does one of their houses 
 present in the depth of winter! the old cowering over a few embers 
 the children shivering in rags, pale and livid all the activity and jo) ous- 
 ness natural to their time of life chilled within them. Tiie numbers 
 who perish from diseases produced by exposure to cold and rain, by 
 unwholesome food, and by the want of enough even of that, would 
 startle as well as shock you. Of the children of the poor, hardly one 
 third are reared." 
 
 "To talk of English happiness is like talking of Spartan freedom , 
 the helots are overlooked. In no country can such riches be acquired 
 by commerce, but it is the one who grows rich by the labour of the 
 hundred. The hundred human beings like himself, as wonderfull) 
 fashioned by Nature, gifted with the like capacities, and equally nrude 
 for immortality, are sacrificed body and soul. Horrible as it must needs 
 appear, the assertion is true to the very letter. They are deprived in 
 childhood of all instruction and all enjoyment; of the sports in which 
 childhood instinctively indulges; of fresh air by day and of natural sleep 
 by night. Their health, physical and moral, is alike destroyed; they 
 die of diseases induced by unremitting task-work, by confinement in 
 the impure atmosphere of crowded rooms, by the particles of metallic 
 
NOTES. 489 
 
 or vegetable dust which they are continually inhaling ; or they live to PART I. 
 grow up without decency, without comfort, and without hope i with- v ^^ -^_- 
 out morals, without religion, and without shame ; and bring forth slaves 
 like themselves to tread in the same path of misery." 
 
 "Let us leave to England the boast of supplying all Europe with her 
 wares. The poor must be kept miserably poor, orsucli a state of things 
 could not continue ; there must be laws to regulate their wages, not by 
 the value of their work but by the pleasure of their masters ; laws to 
 prevent their removal from one place to another within the kingdom, 
 and to prohibit their emigration out of it. 
 
 "The gentry of the land are better lodged, better accommodated, 
 better educated than their ancestors; the poor man lives in as poor a. 
 dwelling as his forefathers, when they were slaves of the soil, works as 
 hard, is worse fed, and not better taught. His situation, therefore, is 
 relatively worse." 
 
 There is nothing in the foregoing statements which is not fully con 
 firmed in the late Reports of the select committee of the House of Com 
 mons on the Poor Laws. The report dated July, 1817, makes, with the 
 minutes of evidence taken before the committee, a folio of 168 pages. 
 It unfolds a state of society extraordinary and deplorable beyond the 
 utmost stretch of the imagination, in reference to a country, wearing, 
 externally, an aspect of the highest general vigour and prosperity. The 
 passages "which I am about to extract, can convey no idea of the im 
 pression left by the whole. 
 
 " Your committee cannot but fear, from a reference to the increased 
 numbers of the poor, and increased and increasing amount of the sumS 
 raised for their relief, that this system of poor laws is perpetually in 
 creasing the amount of misery it was designed to alleviate. 
 
 " The result appears to have been highly prejudicial to the moral 
 habits, and consequent happiness, of a great body of the people, who 
 have been reduced to the degradation of a dependence upon parochial 
 support." 
 
 "In 1803, the sum raised, as poor rates, was 5,848,205/. ; in 1815, 
 7,068,999/. It is apparent, that both the number of paupers, and the 
 amount of money levied by assessment, are progressively increasing, 
 while the situation of the poor appears not to have been improved. In 
 practice, the burden has been imposed almost exclusively on land and 
 houses." 
 
 " Of the cultivator of a small farm, it has been said, forcibly and truly, 
 that he rises early, and it is late before he can retire to rest ; he works 
 hard and fares hard ; yet with all his labour and his care, he can 
 scarcely provide subsistence for his numerous family. He would feed 
 them better, but the prodigal must Jirst be fed ; he would purchase 
 warmer clothing for his children, but the children of the prostitute 
 must Jirst be clothed. " 
 
 " The independent spirit of mind which induced individuals in the 
 labouring classes to exert themselves to the utmost, before they sub 
 mitted to become paupers, is much impaired ; this order of persons are 
 every day becoming less and less unwilling to add themselves to the 
 list of paupers." 
 
 " In the petition from the parish of Wombridge, in Salop, the peti 
 tioners state, that the annual value of land, mines, and houses in this 
 parish is not sufficient to maintain the numerous and increasing poor, 
 even if the same were to be set free of rent, and that these circumsr/mces 
 will inevitably compel the occupiers of lands and mines to relinquish 
 them, and the poor will be without relief, or any known mode of ob 
 taining it, unless some assistance be speedily afforded them. And your 
 committee apprehend, from the petitions before them, that this is one 
 only of many parishes which are fast approaching to a state of derefie- 
 tion." 
 
 TOE I. 3 Q 
 
490 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. " *" proportion to the aggregate number of persons who are reduced 
 to this unfortunate dependence on parish relief, must be not only the 
 ^^^^^* increase of misery to each individual, but also the moral deterioration 
 of the people." 
 
 "The casualties of sickness and old age do not constitute the greater 
 proportion of the demands upon the poor s rate which have raised it to 
 its present high amount; a much greater proportion consists of allow 
 ances distributed in most parts of England to the labouring poor, in 
 addition to their wages, by reason of the number of their children." 
 
 " Not only the labourers who have hitherto maintained themselves 
 are reduced to seek assistance from the rate, but the smaller capitalists 
 themselves are gradually reduced, by the burden of the assessments, to 
 take refuge in the same resource." 
 
 " A practice has long prevailed in agricultural parishes, of sending 
 men, out of work, to work for the inhabitants of the parish, according 
 to their share of the rate." 
 
 "In 1815, the sums expended in litigation on account of paupers, 
 and in their removal, amounted to 287,000/. The appeals against orders 
 of removal, entered at the four last quarter sessions, amounted to 4,700 
 Great, however, as the inconvenience confessedly is, of this constant and 
 increasing litigation, there are still other effects of the law of settle 
 ment, which it is yet more important to correct ; such are the frauds 
 so frequently committed by those who are intrusted to prevent even 
 the probability of a burden being brought on their parish ; and such are 
 the measures, justifiable undoubtedly iii point of law, which are adopted 
 very generally in many parts of the kingdom, to defeat the obtaining 
 a settlement ; the most common of these latter practices is that of hiring 
 labourers for a less period than a year ; from whence it naturally and 
 necessarily follows, that a labourer may spend the season of his health 
 and industry in one parish, and be transferred in the decline of his life 
 to a distant part of the kingdom." 
 
 Minutes of Evidence Extracts from the Examinations of different 
 witnesses, overseers of the poor, &c. 
 
 " What do you consider the capacity for accommodation of the work 
 house in your parish; what number ous^ht to be accommodated? It 
 will not accommodate more than 400 well ; there are many of them now 
 three, and four in a bed, and 1 believe the boys are six , the master told 
 me so. If the house was spacious enough, I think I could write in a 
 hundred families to-morrow." 
 
 "Joseph Fletcher, Esq. The poor-house, you say, is overflowing; 
 what is the capacity of the accommodation in that poor-house ? I think 
 the poor-house never was intended to accommodate more than 180, or 
 200 the outside, and we have in it, I believe, 260 or 270, if not more. 
 
 " How many sleep in a bed ? two or three grown persons ; grown 
 persons two in all beds, and some three, and some four. 
 
 " Have you any means of separating the profligate from those well 
 ordered and well behaved? Not sufficient means; it is a difficult mat 
 ter to say which are very bad, and which a litte better. 
 
 " Joseph Sabine, Esq. You live in Hertfordshire ? Yes. At one 
 time your poor were farmed ? Only those in the workhouse ; we now 
 pay our workhouse man five shillings per head per week; he maintains 
 the paupers aiul has the benefit of their labour. 
 
 " From your extensive knowledge of the labouring classes, what do 
 you suppose has been the cause of the general increase of poor s rates, 
 and the decrease of happiness among them ? Losing the reeling of in 
 dependence they had, and their indifference about taking relief." 
 
 " The Rev. Richard Vernon. You are rector of the parish of Bush? 
 Yes. Is your s a purely agricultural parish ? Yes. Would a man with 
 
NOTESo 491 
 
 twelve shillings a week maintain four in a family ? That must be cal- PART I. 
 culated on the price of bread, or potatoes rather, for they are cheap.. . ^_ ^ . 
 
 " What are the weekly earnings of your labourers in general ? 
 Twelve shillings they call it. We have many families who do not be 
 long to us, and we keep them in the parish for fear of what a pauper 
 will swear, for to belong to a parish he likes, he -will swear any thing. 
 
 " What is your opinion of the workhouses ? That they act two ways, 
 one a little good, and a very great evil ; the little good is, that they act 
 as goals to terrify people from coming to the parish; the evil is, that 
 when they are in, however loath they were to get there, they soon be 
 come used to it, and never get out again. 
 
 "You conceive it corrupts the morals of the people ? Completely. 
 I believe it impossible to mix the lower orders of mankind without do 
 ing mischief. 
 
 " Should you not think workhouses, which should be considered as 
 hospitals for the aged, and schools for the young, as beneficial to the 
 individuals, and economical to the parish ? Certainly not ; as schools for 
 the young nothing can be more shocking, except a gaol ; and as for the 
 old, they are more comfortable a hundred times in private houses with 
 their relations and friends. 
 
 " Do you see any disposition in the young persons to help their pa 
 rents, by giving them any of their earnings ? No ; the poor rate pre 
 vents that ; they must go to the parish." 
 
 "John Bennet, Esq. In what parish da you live? In Tisbury; a 
 large parish about three miles from Hindon. 
 
 " Have you any persons whose wages will not maintain them and 
 their families, to whom you give relief from the poor rates ? A vast 
 number, I think three parts out of four of our labouring population. 
 
 "Do you think the morals of the lower classes have been much de 
 teriorated of late years ? Very much. 
 
 "Is the custom altered in your county of hiring their labourers short 
 of the year ? Yes, we never hire bv the year now ; we hire to evade the 
 settlement of the labourer, for six, nine months, &c. 
 
 " I am perfectly convinced the price of labour at present, and for the 
 last three years (7s. per week) has never been repaid to the farmer, in 
 cluding all other things ; the farmer has never received a remuneration 
 for the labour, generally including poor rates, taxes, and alt other 
 things." 
 
 " Mr. William Rankin. You reside at Bocking ? Yes. You say the 
 amount of the poor rates during the last year, in your parish, is about 
 5000/. ? Yes.- The rate last year was nearly 18s. in the pound ; this 
 year it is 23s." 
 
 * Mr. Thomas Lacoast, of the parish of Chetsey. Do you not con 
 ceive the labourers, if they were provided for in the house of a farmer, 
 and under the superintendance of a master and mistress, would be 
 more capable of doing work, and at the same time live cheaper than if 
 they provided for themselves ? I certainly think it would be better for 
 the labourers; I am sure that a man who does not live well cannot do 
 the work so well as a man who does. I have a man who is very honest 
 and works very hard, and I pay him long wages for doing it, and he has 
 been at my house not less than nineteen hours out of the twenty-four; 
 and I found he complained that he was not able to do the work, and I 
 gave him his dinner afterwards every day, and since that he has been 
 able to do the work." 
 
 " Rev. J. W. Cunningham. You are vicar of Harrow ? Yes. Have 
 you any communication to make respecting Friendly Benefit Societies 
 for the Poor. I have had an opportunity of knowing perhaps sixry or 
 seventy Friendly Societies, pretty accurately, and the general staie of 
 those I have observed is of this kind : They are all held at public houses; 
 
492 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. their principle universally is, either to forfeit one-eighth of the who! * 
 ^^~ -~^, savings for the benefit of the public house, to spend in beer, or else 
 one-fourth. Among these sixty or seventy, 1 do not know a single ex 
 ception to that case ; they drink for the benefit of the house, a pot or a 
 pint of beer each person. This morning I was examining into the case 
 of two in which there were sixty members; a member told me there 
 were very rarely twenty who attended ; therefore, in each of those 
 cases they drank sixty pots of beer, and of course got to a state in 
 which, if they could, they would drink sixty more ; and that principle 
 I believe to be almost universal; it certainly is in my own neighbour 
 hood ; in a large number of those societies now, I need hardly say, that 
 the demoralizing effects of Beneficial Societies, under their present consti 
 tution, is perfectly enormous." 
 
 (NOTE Y. p. 413.) 
 
 The state of religion in America has been at all times a theme oi ? 
 invective and affected lamentation, in England. As the majority of the 
 American population was composed, from the outset, of disseiiters, the 
 established church naturally found them horribly delinquent in respect 
 to Christianity. We have English sermons of an early date, particu 
 larly one of the celebrated Archbishop Seeker, when Bishop of Ox 
 ford, delivered in 1740, before the British Society for the Propagation 
 of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, in which New England is represented 
 as being without the knowledge of God, and about to return to "en- 
 lire barbarism." His lordship particularly complained that there were 
 several districts in America of sixty or seventy miles long, having 1 but 
 one minister to officiate in them. The case was undoubtedly the same 
 in some parts of England and Scotland, when the reproof was uttered, 
 and it is so still in the latter country. We read in the history of the 
 proceedings of the House of Commons upon the proposition of Mr. 
 Vansittart, (May 18, 1818,) to appropriate money to the building of 
 new churches, what follows. 
 
 " Mr. C. Grant said, that he hoped the House would see the neces 
 sity of extending the benefits of the grant for the erection of new 
 churches to Scotland. To his own knowledge, there were several dis 
 tricts in the northern part of the kingdom, some of sixty miles in length, 
 and twenty in breadth, without a church sufficient to contain the one- 
 twentieth part of the population." 
 
 The Quarterly Review has acknowledged, within the last three years, 
 that the populace of England are " more ignorant of their religious du 
 ties than they are in any other Christian country ;" and that " two- 
 thirds of the lower order of English are errant and unconverted Pa 
 gans." Nevertheless, it holds itself entitled to commisserate our un 
 happy lot, in being without an established church. We may fairly, 
 therefore, enquire, by what traits this institution is distinguished in 
 England, apart from the circumstance of its having left so large a por 
 tion of her population in the darkness of gentilism. 
 
 Before I adduce the extracts which 1 propose to make from British 
 statements, for the illustration of the point, I ought to remind mv 
 reader, that the English hierarchy has an immense revenue ; but that 
 those who discharge the common parochial duties of the church 
 are miserably provided. In the year 1810, it was proposed by the 
 British ministry to appropriate 100,000/. as a temporary relief for the 
 poorer clergy. Some members of the Opposition suggested that in 
 stead of laying an additional burden on the people, the higher benefices, 
 
NOTES. 
 
 493 
 
 and the livings in the gift of the Crown, should be taxed in favour of PART I. 
 those real and almost starving labourers in the vineyard of the Gospel, v^^-v-^* 
 This plan was contested and rejected. The Report of the Debate in 
 Hansard s volume (xvii.) furnishes the following matter, part of the 
 .speech of the Earl of Harrowby (the mover of the grant.) 
 
 " About three-lifths of the livings in England are in lay-patronage, 
 and the advowsons are a part of the estates of the proprietors, bought 
 and sold like other estates, for a valuable consideration. 
 
 "Livings in private patronage are usually disposed of to the friends, 
 relations, or private connections of the patron. 
 
 " The vvjiole number of livings under 150/. a year did not seem to 
 exceed 4000. 
 
 "But it had been generally supposed that the poor livings were 
 chiefly confined to the parishes in which the population was inconsi 
 derable, and the duty light; remote villages, where we wished cer 
 tainly to give the clergyman a better income, because it was not fitting 
 that he should receive less than a day labourer, but where his poverty 
 was out of sight, and did not affect the interests of any considerable por 
 tion of the community. If such a supposition had been entertained, the 
 accounts, now open upon the table, would prove its error. Of the 
 whole number of livings under 150/. per annum, there were above 600 
 which (in 1810) had a population of between 500 and 1000 persons, 
 and near 500 livings, with a population of above 1000. Of these 79 
 had between 2 and 3000 35 between 3 and 4000 17 between 4 and 
 5000 10 between 5 and 6009 and a considerable number much 
 more ; perhaps the strongest instance was in the diocese of Chester. In 
 15 parishes, of which six were in Liverpool, four in Manchester, three 
 in Whitehaven, two in Oldham, one in Warrington, one in Blackburn, 
 and one in Preston, there was a population of above 208,000 persons. 
 The revenue of the church in these three parishes, was 1,315/. amount 
 ing to about l^d. per ann. per soul. In Wolverhampton, Coventry, 
 Sunderland, and Newcastle, there were cases fully as strong. Taking 
 492 as the number of parishes, of which the population exceeded 1000, 
 and the income did not exceed 150/. per annum (exclusive of Birming 
 ham and Halifax, in which the population of the different parishes was 
 not distinguished,) these 492 livings comprehended near 1,200,000 per 
 sons, and the aggregate revenue of the church was only 42,046/. 
 
 "In stating the whole income of the church, in these 492 parishes, 
 to amount to only 42>OOOZ. their lordships must be aware, that he had 
 far overstated the actual incomes of those who performed these labours, 
 because half at least of these parishes might be supposed to be held by 
 non-resident incumbents, who would of course leave to their Curates 
 only a part of the profits of their livings. The number of livings, under 
 150/. was 3997, and the resident incumbents we re 1494." 
 
 Of incumbents, legally resident, in 11,164 parishes, there were, ac 
 cording to the bishop s returns in 1807, only 4412. If you added to 
 these, 152 persons, who lived in their own or their relatives houses, 
 within the parish, and 176 who lived near, and did duty, the number of 
 incumbents legally or virtually resident would amount to 5040. There 
 were 340 other persons returned as exempt, on account of cathedral or 
 college offices, many of whom might probably be resident part of the 
 year, although they did not fulfil the conditions of legal residence, and 
 the same observation might apply to many other persons under differ 
 ent classes of non-residents. The number of 5040 was, however, all 
 that appeared upon the returns ; of these resident incumbents, those 
 who possessed incomes under 150/. per annum, were, 1214; adding 
 those of this class who might be considered virtually resident, the num 
 ber would be 1494. It was, however, too large an allowance to include 
 as virtual residents, all those who resided near, and did the duty, for 
 
494 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. many cases must occur in which the parish saw nothing of its pastor, 
 y^"V^fc except when he performed the service of church once a week, or ones 
 a month, in the course of iiis morning or evening ride. Of lhe remaii - 
 ing 2503 parishes, of which the income wiis not 150/. a year, and where 
 the incumbent neither actually nor virtually resided, the income of the 
 officiating clergyman could only be what the incumbent was able to 
 spaie out of his own pittance, or rather, generally, it must be the lov - 
 est price at which it was possible to get the labour performed. The 
 power of the bishop to raise the salaries of the curates was rarely e: - 
 erted, and its effect might be defeated by private agreement between 
 the parties. 
 
 "This was therefore the state of the church, as it appeared upon the 
 returns ; on 11,164 parishes there were 3556 legally, or actually resi 
 dent incumbents, with incomes of 150/. per annum, and 1494 with h - 
 conu-s below that sum. The remaining 6124 parishes were left (sub 
 ject to the preceding observations) chiefly to the charge of curate 4. 
 That the non-residence of incumbents existing to so enormous an ex 
 tent, was a serious evil, he would not stop to argue; the main question 
 was, whether it was an evil which the liberality of parliament, withoi.t 
 a revision of the existing laws, repecting non-residence, and plurali 
 ties, could alone remedy. 
 
 " The present practice, according to which, the non-resident incum 
 bents of livings of 50/, 60/., or 70/. a year, put into their own pockets a 
 portion of this wretched pittance, and left much less than the -wages of a 
 day labourer for the subsistence of their curates, appeared to him far from 
 creditable to the parties concerned, and calculated to degrade the cha 
 racter of the church. Many instances came within his own knowledge, 
 in which parishes were served for 20/., or even for 101. per annum, and 
 in which, of course, all they knew of their clergyman was the sound of 
 his voice, in the reading desk or pulpit, once a week, or a fortnight, or 
 a month. This must also be the case where curates are permitted to 
 serve more than two churches. 
 
 " In the present state of the law, or at least, according to the present 
 mode of executing it, there was a great difficulty in obtaining permis 
 sion to erect an additional place of worship, according to the church of 
 England, within the limits of an existing parish. The inhabitants, 
 therefore, had no choice. They might prefer the church of England, 
 but that church shut her doors against them; they had, therefore, no 
 option, but either to neglect divine worship entirely, or to attend it i:i 
 a form which they did not so well approve." 
 
 After Lord Harrowby had finished his statements, of which that 
 part relating to the non-residence of the reverend usufructuaries of no 
 less than six thousand one hundred and twenty-four livings out of 
 eleven thousand one hnndred and sixty-four, is so instructive and ex 
 traordinary the Earl of Stanhope proceeded in this strain : 
 
 " However he might in general difi er from the noble earl, he had 
 always listened to him with a certain degree of satisfaction, because 
 that noble earl always appeared as contradistinguished to many of his 
 colleagues, to speak n ally what he meant. 
 
 " In his present speech there was much to approve, and he had only 
 to observe, that if from his lips similar observations had fallen, he would 
 be charged as the libeller of the church, as the enemy of our religious 
 interests, and the plague knew what. 
 
 " He would venture to predict, that, whether you voted six millions, 
 or sixty millions, whether you built churches or no churches, whether 
 you calumniated Dissenters or otherwise, the number of communicants 
 of the establishment would decrease, and that of Dissenters increase, as 
 long as they saw the church of England made the engine of state policy ; 
 as long as "they saw its prelates translated and preferred, not for their 
 
NOTES. 495 
 
 religious merits, but their slavish support to the ministers of the day. PART I. 
 For he would :isk the noble earl fairly to answer, if he knew of no pre- y^-v^^^ 
 ferments in the higher ranks of the clergy conferred upon such pre 
 tensions ? When he saw the bishops, according to the injunctions of 
 their religion, voting against wars, when he saw them voting for the 
 liberties of the people, then he would pronounce that the church of 
 England had no reason to feur." 
 
 With the established religion, there exists, strange as it may appear, 
 a vast deficiency of places of worship, so that a great proportion of the 
 British population, greater, I will venture to assert, than the proportion 
 of our own so situated, has no access to public worship. I will offer in 
 proof, the statements made the last year in the House of Commons, on 
 the occasion already mentioned, of a grant for the erection of new 
 churches. 
 
 "The Chancellor of the Exchequer observed, (March 16, 18181 that 
 for more than a century, the want of accommodation for public worship 
 had been fell by the members of the established church as a most se 
 rious evil; and an attempt had been made so long ago by parliament to 
 remedy it, so far as respected the metropolis and its immediate vicinity. 
 This attempt, however, though attended with considerable expense, 
 had been very imperfect in its execution, only eleven churches having 
 been built out ofjlfty, which it was proposed to erect. Since that lime 
 no farther steps liad been taken by public authority, though the evil 
 had been perpetually increasing with the growing 1 population of the 
 country. He had extracted from parliamentary accounts a list of twenty- 
 seven parishes, in which the deficiency of churches was most enormous. 
 The excess of the inhabitants beyond the means of accommodation in 
 the churches exceeds 20,000 in each. Of these, sixteen were in or about 
 Londcm, and eleven in great provincial towns In three of them the ex 
 cess in each was above 50,000 souls : in four mort from 40 to 50,000; 
 in eight from 30 to 40,000: and in the remaining twelve, from 20 
 to 30,000. In Liverpool, out of 94,376 inhabitants, 21,000 only could be 
 accommodated in the churches, leaving a deficiency of 73,376 ; in 
 Manchester, of 79,459, only 10,950, Ieaving68, 509; and in Mary-ir-r>one, 
 of 75,624, no more than 8700, leaving 66,924 without the means of ac 
 commodation. It thus appeared, that in three parishes only, there, were 
 near 210,000 inhabitants who could not obtain access to their churches. 
 
 "The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated, (March 18, 18lo.) that 
 the population of London and its vicinity, was 1,129,551 ; of whom the 
 churches and episcopal chapels can only contain 151,536, leaving an ex 
 cess of 977,915. 
 
 " In the dioceses of York and Chester, the disproportion of popula 
 tion to the capacity of churches, was little less than in the district of the 
 metropolis. In the diocese of York there were ninety-six churches, 
 which afford room for 139,163 inhabitants the whole population 
 amounted to 720,091, so that there was a deficiency of accommodation 
 for 580,928. In that of Chester, there were one hund red and sixty-seven 
 parishes, the churches in which would contain 228,696; but the actual 
 
 of 1,040,006. 
 ir greater part 
 service even once 
 a day, was, however, by no means the only evil. There were many 
 other most important functions of his sacred office, which it was impos 
 sible for any clergyman, however zealous and laborious, adequately to 
 discharge towards a population of 40 or 50,000 souls, or even a much 
 smaller number. 
 
 With respect to the deficiency in the number of places for public 
 worship, Lord Selsey remarked, "the fact was too notorious to require 
 
496 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. explanation. Many parts of the kingdom, he lamented to say, were ul- 
 v.^-v^^, terly destitute of any means of acquiring moral instruction." 
 
 The chancellor of the exchequer observed, on the same occasion on 
 which we made the statements quoted from him above, that the church 
 of Scotland stood equally in need of assistance. The committee of the 
 church of Scotland has, in fact, lately represented, that, in that country, 
 there are forty-seven parishes in need of churches or chapels, and eighty- 
 eight other parishes but ill supplied with religious instruction. 
 
 During the discussion, in the House, of Commons, of the question of 
 erecting new places of worship, the following, among many representa 
 tions of like import, were made by members of the highest distinction. 
 
 Lord Milton said, that " there was hardly a parish church in the king-^ 
 dom, in which great encroachments had not been made, by persons of 
 wealth, on that part of the church which was the property of the popu 
 lation of the parish." 
 
 " Where tithes exist," said Mr. Brougham, " the pastor is seen in the 
 light of a tax-gatherer. Among the causes of irreligion or lukewarm 
 ness, and ecclesiastical feuds and schisms, he believed none to be so 
 prominent as the disputes which arose out of tithes." 
 
 " Jl large proportion" said Sir Charles Monck, " of the present endow 
 ments of the church are employed in a manner not at all calculated 
 to promote the interests of religion." 
 
 The mere fact of non-res idence, that is to say, the total personal de 
 reliction of their parishes, by so large a proportion of the holders of 
 benefices, ministers of the Gospel, who had solemnly declared, on enter 
 ing into holy orders, that they verily believed themselves moved by the 
 Holy Ghost, the mere fact bespeaks a great perversion of character 
 and functions among the clergy of the established church. It^isinu 
 Uritish publication of no inconsiderable note and authority, the Christian 
 Observer, for Nov. 1811, that I find the following details, which could 
 not have been hazarded, if not in great part indisputably true. 
 
 " Christianity forms little or no part in the regular plan of instruction 
 at our universities. Contrary to our experience in every other profes 
 sion, candidates for our ministry are taught every branch of science but 
 that in which they are to practise. Chapel is not attended till it is half 
 over. Many go there intoxicated, as to a kind of roll call : and though 
 the assumption of the Lord s supper is peremptory upon the students, 
 no care is taken to teach them its importance." 
 
 " So very lax has become the examination for orders, that there is 
 no man, who has taken a degree at the university, who cannot reckon 
 on ordination as a certainty, whatever his attainments in learning, mo 
 rals, or religion." 
 
 " A great proportion of our clergy are a set of men, wrapt up in secu 
 lar pursuits, with a total indifference to the spiritual duties of their call 
 ing. Many of them seem to consider, that they are appointed to a life 
 of sloth and inactivity, or merely to feed upon the fat of the land ; and 
 that, in return for immense and growing revenues, they have only to 
 gabble through a few formal offices." 
 
 " Many in the higher offices of the church are distinguished for learn 
 ing and piety, but, for all this, we may fear that a great proportion of the 
 clergy are the very reverse of these high examples and betray an indif 
 ference of conduct, and dissoluteness of manners, which, whilst it is most 
 shameful to them, would not be borne with in any other state of life." 
 
 " A horse race, a fox chase, or a boxing match, is never without its 
 reverend attendants; and the man, who, in the house of God, hurries 
 over the offices of devotion, as beneath his attention, will be seen, the 
 next day, the noisy toast-master, or songster, of a club. Their profes 
 sional indolence, but one degree removed from positive misconduct 
 
NOTES. 497 
 
 their occasional activity, at a county election, in a cathedral county PART I. 
 town. You have the honour of finding yourself, in such contests, act- v^-v-v^ 
 ing in concert with deans, chancellors, archdeacons, prebendaries, and 
 minor canons, without number. On such occasions grave, very grave 
 persons are to be seen, shouting the chorus of some election ribaldry, 
 whose zeal, or even common industry, upon important topics, had never 
 been witnessed." 
 
 We are not at a loss for still higher authority on this subject. The 
 late Bishop Watson, of Llandaff, wrote thus in his " Memoirs" recently 
 given to the world. 
 
 " It has been said (I believe by D Alembert,) that the highest offices 
 in church and state resemble a pyramid whose top is accessible to only 
 two sorts of animals, eagles and reptiles. My pinions were not strong 
 enough to pounce upon its top, and I scorned by creeping to ascend its 
 summit. Not that abishoprick was then, or ever, an object of my am 
 bition ; for I considered the acquisition of it as no proof of personal 
 merit, inasmuch as bishopricks are as often given to the faltering depend* 
 ants, or to the unlearned younger branches of noble families, as to men 
 of the greatest erudition ; and I considered the possession of it as a 
 frequent occasion of personal demerit ; for I saw the generality of tlie 
 bishops bartering their independence and the dignity of their order for the 
 chance of a translation; and polluting gospel-humility by the pride of 
 prelacy. I used then to say, and I say so still, render the office of 
 a bishop respectable, by giving some civil distinction to its possessor, in 
 order that his example may have more weight with both the laity and 
 clergy. Annex to each bishoprick some portion of the royal eccle siasti- 
 cal patronage -which is noiv prostituted by the chancellor and the minister of 
 the day to the purpose of parliamentary corruption" 
 
 In a remarkable work, entitled, The State of the Established Church, 
 in a series of Letters to the Right Honourable Spencer Percival," it is 
 said, that the London clergy afford a faint, though laudable exception 
 tp the above general description. I am not disposed to question the 
 fact, but I lay before the American reader, that he may judge for him 
 self, the following extract from the proceedings of the British House of 
 Commons, on the 24th March, 1819. 
 
 " Sir James Graham called the attention of the house to the situation 
 of the clergy of fifty of the parishes in the city of London. In thirty 
 out of thejifty parishes, the petitioners performed the duty in person." 
 
 " Mr. Harvey said, he was of opinion that the petitioners were endea 
 vouring, by slow, but sure degrees, to accomplish designs which they 
 dared not unfold at once, as they knew the rapacity -which ivas their cha 
 racteristic, would not fail to cause the house to repel them with indigna 
 tion if those designs were fully known. The Hon. Baronet had en 
 deavoured to awaken the sympathy of the house for these gentlemen, 
 but he (Mr. Harvey) stated almost all of them to have 4UO/. per an 
 num, and some had 600/. or more. Above twenty were pluralists, and 
 if they had no residences in the city, it was because they were the best 
 calculators in it, and preferred letting their houses for the sake of 
 the profit that might be thus obtained. Not one of them dared to call 
 on the house to take his individual case into consideration. The value 
 they themselves attached to their own labours, might be collected 
 from the sums they paid to the curates who officiated for them, and who 
 received 50/, 60/, or 701. per annum from those who were in the yearly 
 receipt of WOOL, 15001., or 2000/." 
 
 Now what are the character and situation of the episcopal clergy 
 throughout this country, where the church is divorced from the state r 
 Asa body they are unimpeachable in all respects ; of the best morals 
 and most regular habits; indefatigable in discharging the most solemn 
 of trusts; ever at the post of duty. On2 small part of them is not 
 
 VOL. I. 3 R 
 
498 
 
 NOTES, 
 
 PART I. endowed with princely revenues, while the majority drag on a life of 
 V^-v*^/ indigence and abjection. The provision for each member is not ample, 
 but for the most part enough to assure a decent, comfortable, and inde- 
 pendent existence. The same remarks may be extended to our regular 
 clergy of every description, among whom non-residence and pluralities 
 are unknown, and whose stipend arises directly as it were, from the 
 esteem and confidence of their parishioners. 
 
 The detections lately made in England, respecting tl\e abuse of the 
 public charities, with which the established clergy are so largely con 
 nected, furnish additional proof of the state of things implied by the 
 circumstance of " three -fifths of the livings being in lay patronage, 
 and being .usually disposed of to the private connexions of the patron." 
 The Bill for enquiring into the malversation of the charities, which 
 Mr. Brougham, as the chairman of the education committee, introduced 
 into the House of Commons, was vehemently opposed in the upper 
 house by the prelates, and destroyed through their influence. There 
 are, it would seem, five hundred free schools in England and Wales, all 
 of which are grossly perverted from their purpose. " It is absolutely 
 necessary," said Lord Eldon, speaking as chancellor, (C. 13. V. 580,) 
 " that it should be perfectly known that charity estates all over the king 
 dom are dealt with in a manner most grossly improvident, amounting 
 to the most direct breach of trust." The Report of the committee of 
 Parliament on the education of the lower orders, (May 1818,) is still 
 stronger on this head. " It appears clearly from the returns," says the 
 committee, " as well as from other sources, that a very great deficiency 
 exists in the means of educating the poor, wherever the population is 
 thin and scattered over the county districts. The efforts of individuals 
 combined in societies are almost wholly confined to populous places." 
 
 "In the course of their enquiries your committee have incidentaiiv 
 observed that charitable funds, connected with education, are not alone 
 liable to great abuses. Equal negligence and malversation appear to Jiave, 
 prevailed in all other charities" 
 
 Mr. Brougham, the chairman of the committee, said (June 3d, 1818, ) 
 " that it had been generally granted, indeed nothing was more manifest 
 to the committee of that house, that abuses prevailed, not alone in the 
 charities connected with education, but in all other public charities, of 
 what description soever. lie would pledge himself to prove that of alt 
 the charities in which abuses exist, none were greater or grosser than 
 in those where special visitors (to charitable institutions) were appoint 
 ed. A variety of causes concurred to produce this evil. In some in 
 stances these visitors resided at a distance, and never exercised their 
 powers ; in others the visitor was the patron of the school, and did not 
 correct abuses to which his system led ; in others the visitor was the 
 heir at law of the endower, and had rather pocket the funds than ap 
 ply them to the proper purposes ; and of course he did not visit his own 
 sins very heavily on his own head. Indeed he could say positively that 
 the grossest case of abuse that came before the committee, was of a 
 charity where special visitors have been appointed, but who had neve:- 
 attended to their duties for twenty years." 
 
 As a specimen of these abuses, I take the following instance related 
 in Mr. Brougham s admirable pamphlet The "Letter to Sir Samuel 
 Romilly, respecting the Charities." 
 
 " The Dean and Chapter of Lincoln have the patronage as well as the 
 superintendence of Spital charity ; yet they allow the warden, son of 
 their Diocesan, to enjoy the produce of large estates, devised to him //; 
 trust for the poor of two parishes, as well as of the hospital, while he only 
 pays a few pounds to four or five of the latter. The Bishop himself is 
 patron and visitor of Mere, and permits the warden, his nephew (for 
 whom he made the vacancy by promoting his predecessor,) to enjoy am 7 
 
NOTES, 
 
 499 
 
 underlet a considerable trust estate, paying only 24/. a year to the PART I. 
 poor." (P. 25.) WN^W 
 
 " The statutes of Winchester College require, in the most express 
 terms, that only " the poor and indigent" shall be admitted upon the foun 
 dation. They are, in fact, all children of persons in easy circumstances ; 
 many of opulent parents. Boys, when they attain the age of fifteen, 
 solemnly swear that they have not 3/. 6s. a year to spend; yet as a 
 practical commentary on this oath, they pay ten guineas a year to the 
 masters, and the average of their expenses exceed 50/. It is ordered 
 that if any boy comes into the possession of property to the amount of 
 51. a year, he shall be expelled ; and this is construed 66/. 13s. 4cf. re 
 gard being had to the diminished value of money, although the war 
 dens, fellows and scholars all swear to observe the statutes " according 
 to their plain, literal, and grammatical sense and understanding. The 
 infractions of the original statutes are sought to be justified by the con 
 nivance of successive visitors, and it is alledged that they have even 
 authorized them by positive orders (injunctions). But the statutes ap 
 pointing the visitor, expressly prohibit him from altering them in any 
 manner or way directly or indirectly, and declare all acts in contraven 
 tion of them absolutely null. 1 must add, that notwithstanding the dis 
 regard shown to some statutes and some oaths, there was a strong dis 
 position manifested in the members of the college to respect those 
 which they imagined bound them to keep their foundation and their 
 concerns secret."* 
 
 In his speech of May 1818, on this subject, Mr. Brougham stated, 
 " that the whole income actually received by charities of all descriptions, 
 might be between 7 or 800,000/. ; but the sum which ought to be re 
 ceived by charities was nearer two millions sterling than fifteen hun 
 dred thousand ;" and his account of the formation of this immense fund, 
 so infamously plundered and dilapidated, is not a little remarkable. 
 
 " It is impossible," said the orator, " for me to close these remarks 
 without expressing the extraordinary gratification which I feel, in ob 
 serving how amply the poor of this country have in all ages been en 
 dowed by the pious munificence of individuals. It is with unspeakable 
 delight that I contemplate the rich gifts that have been bestowed the 
 honest zeal displayed by private persons for the benefit of their fellow 
 creatures. When we inquire from whence proceeded those magnifi 
 cent endowments, we generally find that it is not from the public po 
 licy, nor the bounty of those who in their day possessing princely re 
 venues, were anxious to devote a portion of them for the benefit of 
 mankind not from those, who having amassed vast fortunes by public 
 employment, were desirous to repay in charity a little of what they 
 had thus levied upon the state. It is far more frequently some obscure 
 personage some tradesman of humble birth, who, grateful for the edu 
 cation^ which had enabled him to acquire his wealth through honest in 
 dustry, turned a portion of it from the claims of nearer connexions to 
 enable other helpless creatures in circumstances like his own, to meet 
 the struggles he himself had undergone." 
 
 The guardianship of what the honest tradesman had thus nobly ap 
 propriated, fell in a great measure to the established church as such, and 
 the consequence is the waste of nearly two-thirds by embezzlement 
 and neglect ! It is incredible what opposition was made both in and out 
 of parliament to the idea of a parliamentary commission for enquiring 
 into charities having special " visitors, governors and overseers !" 
 " Almost every considerable charity," says Mr. Brougham, " is subject 
 to special visitation. We (the education committee) were severely re 
 proved for pushing our inquiries into establishments destined it was 
 said for the education of the upper classes, while our instructions 
 
 P. 51, 2.- 
 
#00 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. confined us to schools for the lower orders. Unfortunately, we no 
 v.,- - - sooner looked into any of these institutions, than we found that this ob 
 jection lo our jurisdiction rested upon the very abuses, which we were 
 investigating, and not upon the real nature of the foundation. For as 
 often as we examined any establishment, the production of the charter 
 or statutes proved that it was originally destined for the education of 
 the poor.* The alarms conceived by the members and friends of the 
 church at the prospect of a thorough investigation, and their strenuous, 
 and in part successful, efforts to avert that calamity, are strikingly 
 contrasted, as they are related by Mr. Brougham in his pamphlet, with 
 the fact announced in the following statement. 
 
 "The Chancellor of the Exchequer said (House of Commons, June 
 3d, 1818,) that the bill (on the subject of the charitable institution en 
 quiry) exempted the schools of Quakers, and yet he was authorized to 
 say from that respectable body of men, that they had not only no objec 
 tion to the examination of their few charitable schools, but that they 
 should rejoice at finding them made the subject of Parliamentary in 
 quiry." 
 
 The advantage of an established church, as regards the cause of Chris 
 tians, if not imaginary, would be shewn, at least in the greater morality 
 and decorum of the lives of its professors and constitutional supporters. 
 If it failed to .make real Christians and exemplary citizens of its imme 
 diate allies, its superior influence in this respect with the mass of a na 
 tion might well be questioned. We have seen how the case stands as 
 to the Episcopal clergy, in England. Now what is it as to the royal 
 family, the peers, and gentry ? Have the princes set a Christian ex 
 ample ? In the scandalous debate of the House of Commons (April 
 13th, 1818,) respecting the marriage of the royal family, lord Castle- 
 reagh remarked that " of the seven sons of his Majesty, not one, al 
 though the youngest was forty -five years of age, had any lawful issue. 
 To excite some of the members of the royal family to marriage was 
 now an object of consequence. The Prince Regent, sensible of this, 
 had made offers to such of his royal brothers as could reconcile mar 
 riage to their feelings." 
 
 The open concubinage in which they have lived, without being pro 
 scribed by the established church, is sufficiently notorious. On the 
 subject of these misogamists, I need only repeat the phrase of Mr. Wil- 
 berforce, uttered in the House of Commons on the day after the debate 
 just mentioned. 
 
 " As to the allusion made to the character of the princes, he agreed 
 that we had no right to enter into the discussion of any man s private 
 character. But yet it was impossible to suppress what we saw, and 
 felt, and thought." 
 
 To what class<of persons belong those flagrant cases of adultery with 
 which the English newspapers are filled ? To the nobility and gentry, 
 the hereditary pillars of the establishment. Who give the grand dinner 
 parties and concerts, which distinguish the Sabbath in London ? Who 
 make a gala-day of it in the Park, and in fact take the lead in its dese 
 cration ? How is it spent by the high officers of state, the cabinet-minis- 
 sters, &c. ? 
 
 The spirit of toleration is not, indeed, the distinguishing trait in the 
 history of the Christian world, but this spirit is, doubtless, one of the 
 ends of Christianity. How far it has been displayed and cultivated by 
 the established church of England, is seen from the contents of a preJ 
 ceding note (V). I will make the case somewhat more plain by a few * 
 additional facts stated upon Parliamentary authority. There are very 
 near one hundred and fifty acts on the British statute-book, relative to 
 
 * Letter to sir Samuel Romilly, p. 481. 
 
NOTES. 501 
 
 test oaths, of supremacy, allegiance, abjuration, &c. (Mr. Croker, May PART I. 
 3d, 1819. House of Commons.) Catholic emancipation has been now v ^^ ^^ 
 agitated in Parliament since forty years. (Mr. Grattun, May 3d, 1819,) 
 The principal tenets of the Catholic religion transubstantiation, the sa 
 crifice of the mass, the invocation of saints, are still declared idolatrous 
 on the British statute-book. Thus, near five millions of the inhabi 
 tants of the British Isles, are held and stigmatized by law as idolaters, 
 Earl Grey, in the House of Lords (May 17th, 1819,) and general Thorn 
 ton, in the House of Commons (May 7th, 1818,) moved to expunge from 
 the British code, this insult and injustice to so large a portion of his ma 
 jesty s subjects; but they could make no impression upon the majority 
 of Parliament. The Earl of Uonoughmore, in supporting the Catholic 
 petition, in the House of Peers, in 1818, related the following anec 
 dote : 
 
 The Earl of Donoughmore said " a circumstance had happened in the 
 metropolis itself, which he would state. It was a toast given in a large 
 society of gentlemen, and which is resorted to by none but persons who, 
 in point of situation and prosperity, are entitled to that denomination. 
 But what was this toast ? it was so nauseous and disgusting, that it was 
 with difficulty that he could prevail upon himself to pollute their lord 
 ships House by the mere repetition of it. " The pope in the pillory, 
 the pillory in hell pelted with priests by the devil!" 
 
 " But this was not a mean drunken folly; it was the sober malignity 
 of the bigot which the unguarded sincerity of beastly debauch had in 
 discreetly brought into open day. And all this took place in the me 
 tropolis, as he had already stated, which was the station of a Parlia 
 ment, and is still the residence of the king s representative." 
 
 Thus, in whatever point of view we look at the established church 
 in England, we do not find it accomplishing any thing for Christianity 
 beyond what is effected elsewhere under a different system! It has 
 not produced a better clergy ; nor a more moral gentry ; nor a more 
 educated and christianized people ; it has left a great part of the nation 
 without instruction; without temples of worship ; it has tended to de 
 grade the clerical character by the intrigue and competition to which 
 its large livings have given rise ; and by the abject poverty and dis 
 parity of rank to which those of its professors not so fortunate" as to gain 
 the prizes in the lottery, have been condemned. It may be an excel 
 lent engine of state; but, as our civil institutions, with which we are per 
 fectly content, do ; not stand in need of such aid, we cheerfully leave 
 the honor and profit of it to England. 
 
 (NOTE Z. p. 424.) 
 
 IN Addition to the facts respecting the condition and character of the 
 British population and institutions, which I have scattered through the 
 preceding notes ; I will present the reader, here, with a miscellany of a 
 similar purport, vouched by parliamentary and other unquestionable 
 evidence. It cannot be thought harsh, if, too, I subjoin a few extracts 
 from British newspapers and journals, in the manner of the English 
 travellers and critics, when they treat of our affairs. The Quarterly 
 Review lays great stress upon scraps picked out of American gazettes, 
 as illustrations of the state and morals of the whole American people. 
 Nee lex ulla aequior est, &c. 
 
 HOSPITALS, PRISONS, IMPRISONMENTS, Sec. 
 
 In 1814, says the Parliamentary Report on the Police of the Metro 
 polis, ninety-eight boys under sixteen were committed to Newgate; 
 four of them of nine years, eight of them of ten years, and twelve 
 
50& NOTES. 
 
 PART I. of them of eleven years of age. In 1815, ninety-eight boys under 
 s^-v^/ sixteen were committed; and in 1816, 146 of the same age were com 
 mitted. In 1816, there were committed 1683 persons under twen 
 ty, of these 1281 were of seventeen and under, and 957 of these of se 
 venteen years of age and under, were committed for felonies. From 
 the 25th of August, 1814, to October 1816, 200 boys had been in cus 
 tody. Of these, twenty-tree had been in custody for the first offence ; 
 one aged sixteen had been forty times in custody, and another had been 
 eighty times in custody; and 170 of them had been from three to four 
 limes in custody, for different offences. Of these 200 there were con 
 victed 141 ; 26 of them capitally, the youngest of these was nine and a 
 half years old ; 42 were transported, the youngest of them was eleven ; 
 and 73 were imprisoned for different terms. Of these 200 two-thirds 
 were under fourteen, and down to eight years of age. The remainder 
 one-third were from fourteen to seventeen years of age. Of these 200 
 miserable beings, two-thirds could neither read nor write. 
 
 " On the snbjectof transportation, it appeared, that since 1812, 4659 
 persons had been transported to Botany Bay, of whom 3978 were males, 
 and 681 females. Of these, 1116 were under twenty-one; of whom, 5 
 were of eleven years; 7 of twelve years; 17 of thirteen years; 32 of 
 fourteen years ; and 65 of fifteen years of age. Of these 4659 persons, 
 2055 were transported for life, 726 for fourteen years, and 1916 for se 
 ven years. Of 2038 who were on board the hulks in 1815, there were 
 111 under twenty years of age, amongst whom one was of eleven, two 
 of twelve, and four of fourteen years of age. The number of boys of 
 seventeen and under, confined in Newgate in 1817, was 359, and in 
 1818, of persons under twenty-one years of age, six hundred, including 
 males and females." 
 
 " On the first day of January. 1817, there were on board the different 
 hulks, two thousand and forty-one prisoners ; from which time to the 
 first of January, 1818, two thousand three hundred and sixty -four were 
 received on board from the different goals ; one thousand seven hun 
 dred and ninety have actually been transported to New South Wales, 
 (being an excess of the preceeding year of seven hundred and eighty- 
 two prisoners) forty-five have died; and four hundred and thirty-seven 
 have been discharged, or removed to other places of confinement ; leav 
 ing on board the respective ships on the first of January, 1818, two 
 thousand one hundred and thirty-two prisoners." (Official Report to 
 Lord Sidmouth.) 
 
 The third Report on the Prisons of the Metropolis, states, that 
 through three of the prisons " there passed in 1819, 10,371 persons, all 
 of whom must have gone away more corrupt than they came." 
 
 In the Report on Mendicity and Vagrancy, of the House of Com 
 mons, it is stated, that in one half of the cases of those who beg, beg 
 gary is the effect of real distress. ^ 
 
 The number of street mendicants in London, was returned at 15,288, 
 of whom 9218 were children. 
 
 Mr. Bennet said, June 5, 1818, "the House of Commons was proba 
 bly not aware, that, from the year 1816 to 1818, no less than 3600 bad 
 been sent to Botany Bay ; and that from the year 1798, it hud cost the 
 country no less than four millions to defray the expense of transporta 
 tion." 
 
 In the three first months of the year 1818 118 persons were tried 
 for forgery of Bank of England Notes the expenses for which were 
 .19,982 5*. 6d. 
 
 Lord Castlereagh (March 1, 1819,) admitted, that it appeared by the 
 returns, that within the last three or four years, crime had increased to 
 an alarming extent, almost in the proportion of two to one ; and com 
 paring the commitments of the last year with those ten years ago, in 
 
NOTES. 503 
 
 some classes of crime they were in the ratio of nearly three to one. PART I. 
 Such a view was in some respects appalling. The punishment of death; .^^^^. 
 certainly had increased in frequency in these kingdoms. At the close 
 of the year 1805, the number of capital convictions was 350, and at the 
 termination of the last year 1250." 
 
 Alderman Wood observed, (March 1, 1819,) "the great increase of 
 crimes was to be ascribed to the promiscuous congregation of prisoners 
 left without employment. He had, by virtue of an authority from Lord 
 Sidmouth, visited all the goals in the country, and was convinced that it 
 would take six or seven years to make an efficient parliamentary in 
 quiry." 
 
 Mr W. Wynne, (March 11, 1819.) He was shocked to find, and 
 every man of humanity would shudder at the idea, that the lunatic sel 
 dom or ever obtained his release." 
 
 Mr. Bennet, (May 20, 1818,) presented the Report of the Committee 
 appointed to inquire into the state of Fever in the metropolis. In moving 
 that the report be printed, the honourable member said, " the medical 
 institutions of this city were very defective. In all the Hospitals it was the 
 practice to mix cases of contagious fevers with common instances of in 
 disposition, and the consequence was, that not only patients, but nurses 
 and medical persons fell victims to this want of arrangement. And such 
 was the deficiency of supply of assistance for the sick and diseased 
 poor, that at the principal hospitals four out of Jive cases were weekly 
 refused." The committee recommended these circumstances, and the 
 evidence contained in the Report, to the consideration of his majesty s 
 ministers. 
 
 The Marquis of Lansdowne said, (June 26, 1819.) " Their lordships 
 on enquiry would find that deaths had occurred in lunatic establish 
 ments, and that it had been impossible for the magistrates after the 
 strictest investigations, to discover in what manner the unfortunate be 
 ings had been disposed of. These facts offered strong grounds for their 
 lordships adopting some system of regulation; but another powerful 
 reason in favour of the bill was the situation of pauper lunatics. These 
 unfortunate persons were left too much at the mercy of parish officers. 
 Let their lordships read the evidence of a noble lord, a member of the 
 other House of Parliament, he meant lord R. Seymour, and they would 
 be convinced of the necessity of a remedy for the great abuses in the 
 management of the insane poor. They were often kept in the work 
 houses till they became furious, and there were instances of their being- 
 bled until they became, from weakness, more manageable." 
 
 " An official return, printed by order of the House of Commons, pre 
 sents in one view an accurate representation of the state of crimes made 
 capital by the law, in the several years, from the year 1805 to the year 
 1818, inclusive. From this it appears, that the total number of persons 
 convicted of burglary in said interval, was 1874, of whom, 199 were exe 
 cuted; of larceny in dwelling houses to the value of 40s. 1119, of whom 
 17 were execute d ; of forgery 501, of whom 207 were executed; horse 
 stealing 852, of whom 35 were executed; house breaking in the day 
 time, and larceny, 761, of whom 17 were executed; of murder 229, o f 
 whom 202 were executed ; robbery on the person, the highway, and 
 other places, 848, of whom 118 were executed; sheep stealing 896, of 
 whom 43 were executed; making, with various other offences of a ca 
 pital nature within said interval, a gross total of convicted, 8430, of 
 whom 1035 were executed." (Bell s Weekly Messenger, March 29, 
 1819.) 
 
 Sir James Macintosh said, (March 3, 1819.) " The greatest change 
 produced by the revolution of 1688, was what might be termed the 
 establishment of a Parliamentary government. (Hear, hear.) Yet it 
 been attended with one important inconvenience the unhappy 
 
504 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. facility afforded to legislation ; the ease with which every member of 
 s^-v- 1 ^/ Parliament could indulge his whims and caprices ; the little difficulty 
 he found in obtaining measures to augment the number of capital felo 
 nies. [Hear.] An anecdote, confirmatory of t4iis statement, was told 
 by Mr. Burke, in the early part of his public career. He was about to 
 leave the house, when he was detained by a gentleman who wished 
 him to remain. Mr. Burke pleaded urgent business; and the reply of 
 the individual who held him was, that the subject on which the house 
 was engaged would very soon be dismissed, as it was only upon the 
 subject of a capital felony, without benefit of clergy. [LaTtghler.] Mr. 
 Burke had afterwards stated, that he had no doubt that he could, with 
 out difficulty, have obtained the assent of the house to any bill he 
 brought in for capital punishment." 
 
 " Mr. Bennet observed, (June 26, 1816,) that the abuse of the system 
 of solitary confinement had exceeded any thing that could have been 
 imagined. For the crime of vagrancy a person had been subject to 
 this terrible punishment for thirteen months, one for seven months, and 
 one for four months. 
 
 "Among the cases mentioned in the return was that of a man who had 
 been kept in solitary confinement three months, for destroying a phea 
 sant s egg! That was to say the miserable being who fell under the 
 sentence was kept twenty-three hours out of twenty-four within four 
 small walls, without any kind of employment, either entirely open to 
 the air, or quite excluded from light; and the crime for which this 
 punishment was inflicted was the breaking of a pheasant s egg." 
 
 " Mr. Western said, (April 2, 1819,) that in looking at the return? 
 already prepared for the years 1817 and 1818, it would appear that 
 there were two thousand persons in each year, against whom either no 
 bills were found, or who were not prosecuted, and two thousand six 
 hundred who were acquitted. In the period which elapsed between 
 July and the Lent assizes, many persons had been confined, who had 
 remained in prison perhaps fourteen or fifteen months, before they had 
 been tried an enormous evil." 
 
 " Mr. M. A. Taylor asked, (May 26, 1818,) did the house consider 
 it fit and proper that this state of things should continue ; that in four 
 counties there should be but one assize in a year; and that prisoners 
 should, notwithstanding all the exertions of magistrates, in disposing of 
 minor offences, lie for so many months in confinement, before they 
 were brought to trial. A man, taken up on suspicion, and sent to the 
 county gaol, must in sucli a case be ruined, however innocent of the 
 crime imputed to him. We might boast as much as we pleased of our 
 superior laws, and practice of administering them, but there was no 
 country in Europe where so monstrous a defect existed in the judiciary 
 system a defect equally injurious to individuals and disgraceful to the 
 character of justice. A case of manslaughter had recently occurred, 
 in which the prisoner was acquitted, after lying eleven months in con 
 finement; the whole punishment annexed by law to the conviction ot 
 that offence being but twelve months imprisonment. One man he had 
 known indicted for stealing a game cock, who was closely confined for 
 nine months ; and when he was at length brought to trial, there was not 
 a shadow of evidence to prove his guilt." 
 
 " Mr. W. Smith said, (May 26, 1818,) that he had been informed by 
 the town clerk of Norwich, that instances had occurred of persons 
 being confined nine or ten months previously to their trial ; and a navy 
 surgeon had been confined for twelve months, and then acquitted. By 
 so long an imprisonment, individuals sometimes suffered more than 
 they would have done, if convicted, from the sentence of the law." 
 
 " Mr. Bennet said, (May 6, 1817,) that last year there was a wretched 
 individual in the Fleet, who had been confined there, under an order 
 
 
NOTES. 505 
 
 of the court of chancery, for contempt of court, for no less a time than PART I. 
 thirty-one years. The name of that man was Thomas Williams. He 
 had visited him in his wretched house of bondage, where he found 
 him sinking under all the miseries that can afflict humanity ; and on the 
 following day he died. There were at this moment within the walls of 
 the same prison, besides the petitioner, a woman who had been in con 
 finement twenty-eight years, and two others who had been there seven 
 teen years." 
 
 " It was worthy of remark that eight hundred persons were commit 
 ted to Clerkenwell prison, in one year, chiefly for assaults." 
 
 The following is an authentic list of persons who, in October, 1817, 
 were confined in the Fleet prison alone, for contempt of court, no other 
 charges being alleged against them : viz. Hannah Baker, confined twen 
 ty-seven years ; Charles Bulmer, eighteen years ; Ann Britner, ten 
 years ; Richard Bell, five years ; Matthew Bland, five years ; Jeremiah 
 Board, three years ; Elizabeth Dawson, seven years ; David William, 
 six years ; Mary Tiuch, three years ; Samuel Mansell, four years ; John 
 Melson, three years; George Picked, fifteen years; Thomas Pale, 
 three years; Peter Rigby, four years; I. Soribner, eight years ; John 
 Watts, four years ; John Somax, seven years ; William Smith, eighteen 
 years. 
 
 " Mr. Bennet said, (March 28, 1817,) that the situation of the pri 
 sons in Dublin was miserable in the extreme, and certainly it could not 
 be too much lamented that any human beings should be confined in 
 them." 
 
 " Mr. Peele entirely coincided in the opinion of the honourable gen 
 tleman, as to the miserable state of the prisons in Ireland, and should 
 be happy to find that any measures could be taken, which would lead 
 to the amelioration of the condition of the wretched inmates." 
 
 "The Marquis of Lansdowne said, (June 3, 1818,) from the informa 
 tion contained in the report of the House of Commons on the state of 
 the prisons of the kingdom, it appeared that, in the course of ten 
 years, such had been the progress of crimes, that they had increased 
 to three times their former amount. It was not improbable that, out 
 of the number annually consigned to the prisons, thirteen thousand were 
 permitted to return to society, either by being acquitted, or after hav 
 ing undergone the sentence of imprisonment. In what a state of de 
 gradation must they, under their present system, return to the duties, 
 or, he was afraid, rather to the vices of civilized men." 
 
 " Mr. Buxton said, that from parliamentary documents it could be 
 seen, that it was ten to one that an offender was not taken, fifty to one 
 that he was not prosecuted, a hundred to one that he was not convicted, 
 and more than a thousand to one that he was not executed." 
 
 "Alderman Wood rose (House of Commons, March 12, 1819). He 
 said, that the petition which he had to present did not complain of the 
 heavy burdens which the lord mayor and corporation had to bear, in 
 supporting the various persons confined in the different prisons of the 
 metropolis, but of the crowded state of the gaols at the present mo 
 ment. They were so full, that it was totally impossible to attempt any 
 reformation in their inmates, by classifying them, according to the 
 crimes of which they had been guilty. Newgate was filled to repletion 
 with criminals under different sentences : there were now in it forty- 
 seven individuals condemned to death, besides sixteen individuals for 
 lesser offences, who had been sent there by the magistrates from the 
 Clerkenwell sessions. Of these sixteen he was sorry to observe that 
 fifteen were for abominable and infamous offences, and that from want 
 of space they had all been placed in one room. This was an evil which 
 ought, by all means, to be remedied. There was another, also, which 
 he wished to press upon the attention of the house. There was no 
 VOL. I. 3 S 
 
506 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. accommodation, in any of the prisons, for stale prisoners; and he 
 thought it rather hard that an individual of respectable rank and cha 
 racter should be compelled to herd with common felons, as he now was- 
 obliged to do, if committed by that house. Latterly, Newgate had been 
 so crowded, that in the fifteen condemned cells they had been obliged 
 to place the forty-seven men now under sentence of death, thus giving 
 a proportion of more than three inmates to each cell ; which was much 
 greater than it ought to be." 
 
 "Men, who see their lives respected and thought of value by others, 
 come to respect that gift of God themselves. Hefore he sat down, he 
 begged leave to say a few words on a public spectacle, which had been 
 made at Newgate, of a wretched man, who, being accused of murder, 
 had destroyed himself. It was stated in the newspapers of that day, 
 that the mangled and bloody corpse had been exhibited in an elevated 
 situation, with a small gallows erected over it, to which was appended 
 the fatal instrument of destruction. Such a horrid exposition, he was 
 persuaded, was calculated to produce the most mischievous conse 
 quences on the men, women, and children by whom it was beheld." 
 (Sir Samuel Romilly, ib. Feb. 25, 1818 ) 
 
 " Mr. Burton said, (March 3, 1819,) with respect to the effect which 
 an execution was supposed to have upon the minds of the criminals, he 
 could assure the house that it was next to nothing ; and if any gentle 
 man would expose his feelings to the pain of seeing one of these 
 dreadful exhibitions, the truth of his assertion would immediately ap 
 pear. 
 
 "He believed there was not a single instance of an execution having 
 taken place, without some robberry being committed at the same time, 
 under the gallows. Indeed, it had been admitted by one of the light- 
 fingered gang, that an execution was their harvest, as, while people s 
 eyes were open above, their pockets were loose below. 
 
 " There was a fact within his recollection, which, if possible, would 
 place the matter in a stronger light. A man was executed in this me 
 tropolis for selling forged bank-notes: his body was given over to his 
 family, and it was taken home. The first feeling would be that of com 
 passion towards his afflicted children, and a disconsolate widow ; but 
 the house would be shocked to hear that this unhappy family and 
 mourning friends were actually seized by the police-officers, in the act 
 of selling forged noles, over the dead body. It was evident, therefore, 
 that something ought to be done." 
 
 "From the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on 
 the Police of the Metropolis, it appears that many thousands of boys 
 are daily engaged in the commission of crime : that in one prison only 
 (Clerkenwell), where young and old are all mixed indiscriminately 
 together, three hundred and ninety-nine boys, under twenty, were con 
 fided for felonies in the last year; of whom was one of nine, two were 
 of ten, seven of eleven, fourteen of twelve, and thirty-two of thirteen 
 years of age ! 
 
 " Nor is it possible to pass over, in this inquiry, the dreadful slate of 
 our infant population, and the alarming increase of juvenile delinquency* 
 To no cause whatever can this be attributed to with so much certainty 
 as to the depraved and hardened disposition of the parents, the result 
 of that habit of intoxication, which induces them either to abandon 
 their offspring altogether, or, in order to supply the cravings of their 
 depraved -tppetites, to incite them to, and instruct them in, every spe 
 cies of theft and depredation. The extent to which this has been car 
 ried, not only in the metropolis, but in some of the principal towns in 
 the kingdom, would be as incredible as it is disgraceful, were it not 
 from its almost daily exposure in our judicial proceedings." 
 
 Roscoe s Observations on Penal Jurisprudence, 1819, 
 
NOTES. 607 
 
 PARTI. 
 
 COURTS OF LAW AND CHANCERY. s^v*^< 
 
 [Mr. Brougham, June 3d, 1818.] A number of the objections which 
 had been made to the hill (for a committee to enquire into the edu 
 cation of the poor) were grounded on the confidence which those 
 who made them reposed in courts of law, as affording the means of 
 correcting abuses. He confessed that he himself had not any reliance 
 on courts of law in that respect, especially with reference to expedi 
 tion and cheapness. He allowed those courts the possession of learn 
 ing without stint. He allowed them great copiousness, great power 
 of drawing out written argument. The faculty of caring nothing 
 for the time and patience of suitors, and the hundreds of thousands 
 of their clients money they enjoyed in a perfection which the wild 
 est sallies of imagination could not go beyond. But as to expedition 
 and cheapness, and attention to the comfort of those who were in 
 volved in the business of those courts, they were qualities by which 
 they were certainly not distinguished- 
 
 Notwithstanding all the good qualities on the part of the noble 
 and learned lord (Chancellor,) it was his (Mr. Brougham s) duty to say, 
 that there was something in the court of chancery that set at defiance 
 all calculations of cost and time, and rendered the celebrated irony of 
 Swift, when he made Gulliver tell the worthy Hynynhmn, his master, 
 (what he says, his honour found it hard to conceive,) that his father had 
 been wholly ruined by the misfortune of having gained a chancery suit, 
 with full costs, not only not an exaggeration, but a strictly correct de 
 scription of the fact. 
 
 Sir John Newport stated (June 2d, 1818,) "To show the enormous 
 nature of the fees in the Court of Chancery, he might mention that in 
 one case, the fees for docketing, enrolling, exemplifying, and register 
 ing a decree, amounted to upwards of 800/." 
 
 The Marquis of Lansdowne observed (March 6th 1818,) "That no 
 source of revenue operated to produce greater mischief to the poorer 
 classes, than the stamps on law proceedings. The expense they occa 
 sioned was an obstacle to the attainment of justice. 
 
 " As to the present measure, he continued, it went merely to re 
 lieve unfortunate poor persons from paying the fees on pardons, which 
 amounted on each to about 60/, and therefore it could operate in a very 
 slight degree towards the reduction of the revenue. * 
 
 " The bill of the solicitor of the excise, in the prosecution of Weaver, 
 for the offence of selling a certain drug to a brewer, amounted to nearly 
 250/. In this case, there were five counsel employed for the Crown, 
 and the penalty ultimately recovered from the delinquent was 200/" 
 
 The following return has been laid before the House of Commons, of 
 the amount of property locked up in the Court of Chancery in England; 
 viz. in 1796, upwards of fourteen millions of pounds sterling; in 1806, 
 upwards of twenty-one millions; in 1816, upwards of thirty-one mil 
 lions; in 1818, upwards of thirty-three millions. 
 
 Mr. Hume (March 1814,) begged to call the attention of the House 
 of Commons particularly to the police in India. Persons were frequently 
 taken up, and months elapsed before any information was exhibited 
 against them. In the interval, they were confined in crowded and un 
 healthy prisons, where death not unfrequently overtook them, or after 
 enduring the aggravated misery of imprisonment, nothing whatever 
 appeared against them, and they were liberated. The whole system of 
 police at Bengal was conducted by a set of spies, who were generally 
 composed of bands of robbers; these, when once discharged, were let 
 loose to ravage the surrounding country By a minute of the Bengal go 
 vernment, dated the 24th of November, 1810, it appeared that the pro- 
 
508 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. fession of a spy, in India, took its rise upon the order issued in 1792, for 
 . ji* _ -^. the encouragement of head money. Every police-office had its regular 
 and organized set of spies, who shared the reward or head money with 
 the chief of the deceits (a species of robbers ) Much had been said by an 
 honourable member (sir W. Burroughs) as to the economy observed in 
 the appointment of legal men in India, affecting the administration of 
 justice. So far from there being any thing like economy in this respect, 
 the whole of Europe, p*it together, was at less expense for law officers 
 than India alone (Hear.) The whole revenue of India was estimated 
 at 11,000,000/. ; the charges of the law altogether were no less than 
 1,785,000/. sterling, above one-eleventh of that revenue. 
 
 BANKRUPTCY. 
 
 " In Scotland," (said lord Archibald Hamilton, 1818,) "the burgh 
 of Aberdeen had been declared bankrupt for 230,000/. sterling, attend 
 ed with extensive ruin. It had dissolved in its rottenness." 
 
 "Sir William Curtis remarked, (Feb. 24th, 1818,) that rich men can 
 go to the King s-bench prison, and drink their burgundy : They first 
 rob their neighbours and then get whitewashed." 
 
 " Up to the 1st of March, 1817, (said Mr. Waithman, Feb. 12th 1819,) 
 9000 persons were discharged under the debtors insolvent act, whose 
 united debts amounted to nine millions sterling; whilst the property 
 which they had given up to their creditors would not, on the average, 
 pay a dividend of one half a farthing in the pound." 
 
 " Sir S. Romilly observed, that every man conversant with the bank 
 rupt laws must know, that not a year passed without the occurrence ot 
 a great number of fraudulent bankruptcies." (Ib.Feb. 25th, 1816.) 
 
 Mr. Lockart rose (Feb. 17th, 1817,) according to notice, to move for 
 the introduction of a bill to amend the bankrupt laws. 
 
 The evil of which he complained was the multiplication of fraudu 
 lent bankruptcies to an extent which threatened the most frightful con 
 sequences to the commerce and morals of the country. 
 
 By late returns to Parliament it appears, that the aggregate number of 
 insolvent debtors discharged since the last return in 1815, up to 1st of 
 February, 1819, was 13,291 ; the amount of their debts 9,506,837/. 16s. 
 ll^d. ; and the amount of dividends but sixty thousand pounds. 
 
 "Every one who heard him," said Mr. Buxton, (House of Commons, 
 March 3d, 1819,) "certainly must know how many fraudulent circum 
 stances were connected with almost all the bankruptcies that now take 
 place; and after a more careful examination, it had been declared, on 
 the highest authority, that of the bankruptcies which occurred, by far 
 the greater number were of a fraudulent description." 
 
 FINANCIAL MATTERS. 
 
 Mr. Baring said, (1817,) "there could be no doubt, notwithstanding 
 the delicacy which had been professed on the subject of touching the 
 sinking fund, that to all practical purposes, it was completely swept 
 away." 
 
 Mr. Ricardo (June 10, 1819,) had already opposed the grant of three 
 millions towards a sinking fund, because he did not wish to place such 
 a fund at the mercy of ministers, who would take it whenever they 
 thought urgent necessity required it. He did not mean to say that it 
 
NOTES. 509 
 
 would be better with one set of ministers than another, for he looked PART I. 
 upon it that all ministers would be anxious, on cases of what they con- s^-v^^x 
 ceived emergency, to appropriate it to the public use. He thought, 
 therefore, the whole thing u delusion upon the public, and on that ac 
 count he would never support a tax to maintain it. 
 
 The evil of the national debt ought to be met. It was an evil which 
 almost any sacrifice would not be too great to get rid of. It destroyed 
 the equilibrium of prices, occasioned many persons to emigrate to other 
 countries, in order to avoid the burden of taxation which it entailed, and 
 hung like a millstone round the exertion and industry of the country. 
 He therefore, never would give a vote in support of any tax which 
 went to continue a sinking fund ; for if that fund were to amount to 
 eight millions, ministers would on any emergency give the same account 
 of it as they did at present. The delusion of it was seen long ago by 
 all those who were acquainted with the subject ; and it would have 
 been but fair and sound policy to have exposed it long ago. 
 
 Mr. Brougham said, (June 8, 1819) " How stood the circumstances 
 with respect to this fund ? In 1786, it amounted to one million, and an 
 addition of 200,000/. was made soon after. In 1792, it was increased by 
 so much of each loan, as gave assurance that at the end of 45 years such 
 loan would be expunged by the gradual operation of the sinking fund. 
 This pledge continued to 1802, when new arrangements were made by 
 Lord Sidmouth, that did not much postpone the term of payment. The 
 operation of 1813, was to accelerate the liquidation of the debt, towards 
 the close of the period pledged for that purpose, and the fund was then 
 reduced to 15,000,000/. instead of 21,000,000/. to which it had accumu 
 lated. The fund holder was then told that repayment would go on at 
 an accelerated rate from a certain term, and now came the plan by 
 wh ch all this was bid adieu to, and the sinking fund reduced to 
 5,000,000/. Did not this place the public credit on a different footing ? 
 and was it not, to all intents and purposes, a breach of faith ? 
 
 "Lord Holland stated, in a speech sometime since, that the royal fa 
 mily of England, that is to say, the maintenance of the mere state of the 
 crown, cost the country one million two hundred thousand pounds ! or 
 nearly one-fourth of the whole assessed taxes of the kingdom." (Bell s 
 Weekly Messenger, May 18, 1819.) 
 
 " Mr. Tierney stated, (April 5, 1818,) that his majesty s privy purse 
 amounted to sixty thousand pounds. A privy purse of sixty thousand 
 pounds, in the present state of his majesty ! {Hear, hear.] Out of this 
 sum he admitted that the allowance to the physicians had to be paid ; 
 but on the most liberal allowance to them, this would not amount to 
 eighteen thousand pounds a year. There was also received out of the 
 dutchy of Lancaster ten thousand pounds. So that here was seventy 
 thousand pounds that her majesty had, without there being a necessity 
 of rendering an account for any part of it. With the deduction of an 
 allowance to the physicians, and a few pensions, this was a fund for ac 
 cumulation for somebody. Her majesty s establishment amounted to 
 one hundred thousand pounds a year. These two sums together made 
 one hundred and seventy thousand pounds. But besides this, her ma 
 jesty was allowed for her Windsor establishment fifty-eight thousand 
 pounds, and an additional allowance of one thousand pounds a year for 
 what was called travelling expenses ; and the allowance for the two 
 princesses was twenty-six thousand pounds, making the total of the 
 Windsor establishments amount to no less a sum than two hundred and 
 sixty-four thousand pounds per annum." [Hear, hear!] 
 
 " Mr. Brougham considered, (1817,) that the amount of the pension 
 list in 1809, a year when the four and a half per cent fell extremely 
 short, was two hundred and twenty thousand pounds. Upon that list 
 were to be found the names of those who had rendered no service ; 
 
510 
 
 NOTES, 
 
 PART I. persons who belonged to families not more distinguished for their ant; 
 ^^v-^/ quity and rank than for their wealth and splendour, and whose only 
 title to their pensions, he presumed, was their invariable support of the 
 ministers of the crown, whoever those ministers might be." 
 
 "The sinecure vacated by the death of the Earl of Buckingham 
 shire had been worse than useless ; it had served as a screen to the 
 most shocking abuses, and the most abominable frauds." (Lord Lans- 
 downe, May, 1816.) 
 
 "Sir H. Parnellsaid, (July 13, 1819,) in stating the increase of the 
 civil list, it ought to have been stated to have increased from 900,000/. 
 to 1,030,000/." 
 
 " Mr. Calcraft expressed his obligations to the honourable baronet 
 for bringing forward his resolutions, and trusted that he would not be 
 deterred from future inquiries by the criticisms which every man who 
 talked of economy was exposed to, from the bench opposite him. The 
 main resolutions had not been grappled with by the right honourable 
 getleman (Mr. Long,) thai the revenue was collected at the enormous 
 expense of 5,500,000/. Had he shown that it was collected at less ? 
 This was the key to the popularity and consequence of the present 
 administration. So long as they had these 5,500,000/. to distribute, so 
 long would they hear, from those who received it, of their popularity." 
 
 "The credit of the custom house tables (said Mr. Brougham, in his 
 speech of June 16, 1812,) would be but small, after the account of 
 them which appears in evidence. But the evidence sufficiently ex 
 plains on which side of the scale the error is likely to lie. There is, 
 it would seem, a fellow feeling between the gentlemen at the custom 
 house, and their honoured masters at the board of trade ; so that when 
 the latter wish to make blazing statements of national prosperity, the 
 former are ready to find the fact. The managing clerk of one of the 
 greatest mercantile houses in the city, tells you that he has known 
 packages entered at 500/. which were not worth 50/. that those sums 
 are entered at random, and cannot be at all relied upon. Other wit 
 nesses, particularly from Liverpool, confirm the same fact ; and I know, 
 as does my right lion, friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who 
 was present, that the head of the same respectable house, a few days 
 ago mentioned at an official conference with him, an instance of his 
 own clerks being desired at the Custom Hou. c e, to make a double entry 
 of an article for export. After such facts as these, I say it is in vain to 
 talk of Custom House returns, even if they were contradicted in no re 
 spect by other evidence." 
 
 The consumers of tea, said Mr. Elllce, (June 18, 1819,) paid not only 
 3,500,000/. to government, but 2,OOO r OOO/. to the monopoly of the East 
 India company. 
 
 Civil Contingencies Bill March 19, 1819 3191/ for expense of fur 
 niture for one room in the Royal Yatcht 13.300/. expences of grand 
 duke Nicholas. 22 ; 500/ for snuff boxes to foreign ministers. 10,897/. 
 for fees and presents to German Barons, &c. 
 
 Mr. Tierney said, (1819.) that the amount of pensions for England 
 and Scotland, independently of those founded on parliamentary grants, 
 was 250,OOU/. 
 
 LOOSE EXTRACTS FROM ENGLISH JOURNALS. 
 
 "After the bodies of the criminals, Chennol and Chalcraft, had been 
 cut down, they were received into the waggon, which conveyed them 
 to the place of execution, and extended on the eK-vated stage which 
 had been constructed in the vehicle. The procession of officers, con- 
 
NOTES. 511 
 
 stables, Sec. was then re-formed, and the remains of the murderers were . PART I. 
 conveyed in slow and awful silence through the town of Godalming, un- \^**r^s 
 til they arrived at the house of the late Mr. Channel. Here the pro 
 cession halted, and the bodies of Chennel and Chalcraft were removed 
 from the waggon into the kitchen of the house, one of them being 
 placed on the very spot where the housekeeper, Elizabeth Wilson, was 
 found murdered. After this the surgeon proceeded to perform the 
 first offices of dissection, and the bodies in this state were left to the 
 gaze of thousands, who throughout the day eagerly rushed in to view 
 them. (Bell s Weekly Messenger, 1818.) 
 
 " The country assizes," said the London Courier of April 4, 1817 
 " now just terminated, have presented a list of criminals quite unparal 
 leled for magnitude in the history of this country. At no former pe 
 riod have they amounted to more than a fourth or a third part of their 
 present number. From fifteen to fifty capital convictions have taken place 
 in almost every county. At Lancaster assizes forty-six persons received 
 sentence of death. In October last it was proved in a court of law, that 
 a club of conspirators (Halters) at Manchester, perjured themselves by 
 wholesale, to the amount of one hundred and thirty at a time ; and now it 
 is just proved that a knot of assassins can be as easily hired in England, 
 as in Italy. Three hundred of Messrs. Bodin s workmen, at Loughbo- 
 rough, having conspired against their employers about wages, subscrib 
 ed a fund, and hired, at five pounds each man, a squad of assassins well 
 skilled in the art of house burning, and murder, who destroyed their 
 master s premises in revenge." 
 
 Revolt in Winchester College. " We are happy to state, that tranquil 
 lity has been restored at Winchester College, that the business of the 
 school has been resumed with order, and that the young gentlemen 
 have since shown perfect resignation to the will of their able teachers 
 About ten of the gentlemen commoners have been allowed to resign. 
 There were only six (out of 230) who did not join in the revolt, the 
 two senior and four other college prefects. (Bell s Weekly Messen 
 ger, May 18, 1818.) 
 
 We are happy to announce that prosecutions have been brought 
 against a number of grocers for the manufacture and sale of a perni 
 cious substitute for tea, composed of the leaves of the black and white 
 thorn, boiled, dried on copper plates, and coloured with logwood, ver- 
 digrease, and Dutch pink. The facts were proved at great length, and 
 verdicts found in the Court of Exchequer, on Saturday, against no fewer 
 than ten dealers in the metropolis, for this fraud. Several of them sub 
 mitted to conviction without resistance, and thus the important fact is 
 established, that this deleterious mixture is imposed on the fair trader. 
 
 There are other articles of human consumption, equally exposed to 
 similar frauds. Porter and ale, it has frequently been proved, have 
 been mixed with drugs of the most pernicious quality. Port wine, as 
 it is called, and especially that sold at very low prices, it is known, has 
 been manufactured from sloe juice, British brandy, and logwood. Gin, 
 in order that it may have the grip, or have the appearance of being par 
 ticularly strong, is known to be adulterated with a decoction of long 
 pepper, or a small quantity of aquafortis. Bread, from public convic 
 tions, is known to have been made of a mixture of flour, ground stone, 
 chalk, and pulverized bones. Milk to have been adulterated with 
 whitening and water. Sugar to have been mixed with sand. Pepper 
 with fuller s earth and other earths. Mustard, with cheap pungent 
 seeds. Tobacco, with various common British herbs. There is scarce 
 an article of ordinary consumption, which is not rendered destructive by 
 the infamous and fraudulent practices of interested persons. (Bell s 
 Weekly Messenger, May 13, 1818.) 
 
 "The practice of adulterating flour with bones becomes more com- 
 
512 NOTES. 
 
 PART I. mon. The price of pulverized bones, lias accordingly, advanced within 
 
 ^^V*^/ these few years from ten pence a bushel, to eighteen pence to the first 
 
 purchasers. The collection of bones, is, in fact, pursued as a regular 
 
 trade in the metropolis. Fine pulverized clay is also mixed with the 
 
 prime necessary of life. (Literary Panorama, July 19, 1819.) 
 
 "The contraband trade of Great Britain is estimated at about fifteen 
 millions sterling a year, by which the revenue is annually defrauded of 
 about two millions." 
 
 "December 1, 1818. Lord Ranelagh indicted, convicted and fined 
 fifty pounds for extorting money (for the use of his servants) from three 
 young men who took, shelter on his grounds on the banks of the Thames 
 in a thunder storrn." 
 
 "Dec. 3, 1818. A British naval officer connected with the dock yard 
 at Chatham, is condemned (at St. Omer s) to five years labour in chains 
 for uttering forged bank of England notes in the neighbourhood of St. 
 Omer, Dunkirk and Calais." 
 
 "Feb. 26, 1819. Bartholomew Broughton, an officer in If is Majesty^s 
 navy, was brought before Mr. Alderman Cox, as sitting alderman, 
 charged with felony in stealing bank notes and other property at the 
 White Horse, Fetter Lane, and the Swan with two necks, Lads Lane, 
 where he had at different times slept." 
 
 " Old Bailey, 26th Feb. 1819. Edward Lawrence Colman, late purser 
 in His Majesty s navy, was convicted on an indictment for embezzling 
 his employers money Mess Lewis and Company, Oxenden street." 
 
 " March 18, 1819. A naval court martial was held a few days ago 
 on board His Majesty s ship Northumberland, at Chatham, for the trial 
 of capt. W. E. Wright, of the navy, for smuggling. He was convicted 
 and sentenced to be dismissed the service." 
 
 (The foregoing cases, it will be observed, occurred within a few 
 months of each other. They are collected by a casual reader, and are 
 probably not all, of the same nature, that took place during the same 
 time.) 
 
 "June, 1819. The Earl of Morton having lately occasion to call on 
 Mr. Geo. Moncrieff, manager of the Union Canal Company in Edin 
 burgh, gave him the lie. A boxing match ensued, /and blue eyes and 
 bloody noses were the results on both sides. Lord Morton was high 
 commissioner of the general assembly which sat only a few weeks ago." 
 
 " Dec. 1818. It is a fact that Chief Justice Abbott, (the Lord Chief 
 Justice of England) lately threatened to adjourn the court of King s 
 bench, because talloiv candles had been produced, instead of wax 
 lights." 
 
 " It is also a fact, that the late Justice Gould, when on the circuit, 
 once threatened to remove the Essex Assizes from Chelmsford to Col- 
 Chester, because no good small beer could be found in*the former town." 
 
 " In a debate which took place in the House of Commons, April 2, 
 1819, on the circumstances attending the arrest of general Gourgand, 
 sir George Cockburn threw out an accusation, -whilst speaking in his 
 place, against Gourgaud, by relating what he had heard from him at St. 
 Helena, in the hasty and unguarded moments of private conversation. " The 
 general," said sir George Cockburn, " stated to me that he had great 
 reason to complain of that scoundrel Bertrand, for so these persons 
 in the habit of speaking of each other." 
 

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