In New England, where there was the nearest approach to equality, few of the dwellers inland were eligible for seats in the upper houses because of the high property qualifications. In the southern colonies the planters dared not share power with the non-slaveholders of the Piedmont. Everywhere the propertyowning class feared that popular government would lead to taxation of those who possessed property for the benefit of the poorer class. In Pennsylvania the immigration of foreigners aroused the apprehensions even of Franklin. The ease with which they acquired land made the ordinary property qualifications for voting and officeholding an ineffectual barrier.1 New communities were therefore tardily organized as counties, and then only allowed from one to four representatives each, while the old counties where dwelt the "Quaker aristocracy' enjoyed eight each more than either their relative wealth or numbers warranted.

Virginia allowed each of the new counties, like the old ones, two representatives in the lower house, but made them so large that their delegates represented many more inhabitants than did those from the tidewater counties. In South Carolina the Piedmont had no separate representation before 1773.

The men of the back country did not meekly accept their position of inferiority. Many of them, including the ScotchIrish Presbyterians and some of the German sects, held the Calvinistic theology with its democratic implications. Under the primitive conditions of the frontier these doctrines and the actual equality of men inevitably begot the ideal of political equality. The backwoodsmen forgot those artificial distinctions which had no meaning in the realities of their lives, and used arguments which anticipated those of the Revolution, in their demand for equal rights.

Although allowed so slight a share in the government of their provinces, the frontiersmen actually regulated the affairs of their everyday lives, and their actual liberty and self-reliance made them all the more impatient with the restraints put upon them by the governing class. Before the Revolution a sharp contest

1 At the close of the colonial era seven colonies imposed a freehold qualification upon the franchise; the other six accepted personal property as an alternative qualification. For office holding the requirements were higher than for voting.

had begun between the people of the coast and those of the interior in most colonies. The unenfranchised workmen of the towns were potential allies of the men of the back districts in this contest, and in this division is to be found one of the bases of the political parties of later times.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER IV

The Westward Movement; The Frontier. Ford, Scotch-Irish in America, Hanna, The Scotch-Irish, and Faust, German Element in the United States, are among the most important books dealing with the race elements which contributed most largely to the early pioneer stock. For the general significance of immigration see Schlesinger, "The Influence of Immigration on American History," in New Viewpoints in American History. Turner, The Frontier in American History, develops in a series of essays the significance of the westward movement. Turner is the pioneer scholar of the modern school to exploit this theme.

Urban Life; Country Life. Andrews, Colonial Folkways. Alice M. Earle has written several books on manners and customs in the colonial period. Among them are: Child Life in Colonial Days; Colonial Dames and Goodwives; Colonial Days in Old New York; Customs and Fashions in Old New England; Home Life in Colonial Days; Stage Coach and Tavern Days.

Economic Development. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England; Andrews, "Colonial Commerce," in American Historical Review; Bell, "West India Trade," ibid.

Relations of Frontier and Coast. Turner, "The Old West," in The Frontier in American History; Hockett, Western Influences on Political Parties to 1825, 9–22.

CHAPTER V

ENGLAND AND THE COLONIES

While America was growing into vigorous adolescence, England was attempting to devise a policy for the suitable control of her lusty offspring. When the period of religious controversy passed, the Puritan party in Parliament was eclipsed by another group whose thoughts turned on economic interests. With this class the extension of trade had always been a chief consideration in colonization. At first they had operated, as in the case of Virginia, through private companies to which the King granted concessions. From the Restoration on the "mercantilists" gained more and more influence in the government, and in the eighteenth century practically became the government. Their rise is closely associated with the growth of the power of Parliament at the King's expense, and as their influence increased, British colonial policy more and more embodied their views.

British mercantilism, like that of the other states of western Europe in the same era, aimed at national self-sufficiency. Economic strength had a political purpose, the safety of the nation in its rivalries with other powers, especially when those rivalries led to wars. The intent was not merely to advance the prosperity of the commercial class, but to promote the welfare of the empire as a whole.

In the very year of the Restoration (1660) Parliament passed a navigation law which excluded all foreign vessels from colonial ports. It also required the colonists to send certain enumerated products only to England or another English colony. The main purpose of this provision was to bring the products of the West Indies to the mother country, but as tobacco was included in the list of enumerated goods Virginia and her neighbors were also affected. In 1663 a second act added the requirement that all articles bound for the colonies from European countries must first be brought to England and there reshipped for the colonial ports.

Charles II, working in harmony with the mercantilists, after some tentative plans, appointed a Committee of the Privy Council for Trade and Plantations (1675) to administer these laws and give general supervision to colonial matters. The purpose of the laws was to build up English shipping. A prosperous merchant marine was regarded as the foundation for the powerful navy which was essential for the protection of the colonies as well as England. Colonial industry was also to be made to supplement English industry, in order that it might help to free the Islands from dependence upon foreign countries.

By destroying Dutch competition these acts gave New England the lion's share of the carrying trade of the empire and greatly benefited her ship-building industry. The restrictions in the acts may have been meddlesome but they were not deliberately unjust, and valuable privileges were granted as offsets. Thus while tobacco could be shipped only to England, it enjoyed a monopoly of that market, for its importation from any other source than the English provinces was forbidden.

None the less the Crown had difficulty in enforcing the acts, for the colonists chafed under the restrictions and evaded them in all possible ways. Enumerated articles were shipped first to another colony and thence to Europe. New England shipmasters imported goods directly from European countries and distributed them throughout the colonies. The cost of such commodities was reduced somewhat, perhaps twenty per cent, below the prices quoted by British merchants.

The colonial governors were required to enforce the acts of 1660 and 1663, but they performed this duty so laxly that special collectors of customs had to be appointed with salaries paid by the English government. Their performance of duty sometimes led to violent resistance to an insurrection in North Carolina and to the murder of a collector in Maryland. In Massachusetts the stand was taken that acts of Parliament were not in force unless reënacted by the colonial assembly. The collector for New England, Edward Randolph, found that colonial juries would not convict persons charged with violations of these laws; nine cases prosecuted by him resulted in eight acquittals. In the ninth the shipmaster was fined, the money going into the colonial treasury while the costs were assessed

against the collector. Taught by experience that Americans were likely to be guided by their interests rather than by their sense of loyalty, Randolph urged the government to set up admiralty courts to try such cases. These courts would be free from local influence, because they dispensed with juries and left the decision on points both of fact and law to judges appointed by the Crown.

The self-willed conduct of Massachusetts in other matters irritated the King. She had long been a thorn in the side of the Stuart rulers. During the Civil War and ensuing disorders in England she had acted very much as if she were an independent state. Soon after the Restoration, therefore, the King demanded that her people take an oath of allegiance; that the courts render justice in his name; that freedom of worship be granted to members of the Church of England; and that a freehold qualification for voting be substituted for the religious test. When royal commissioners visited New England to see how these commands were obeyed, they found that only one the issue of writs in the King's name had really been complied with, and they departed in high dudgeon, declaring: "The king did not grant away his Sovereigntie over you when he made you a corporation. When His Majestie gave you power to make wholesome laws and to administer Justice by them, he parted not with his right of judging whether those laws were wholesome, or whether justice was administered accordingly or no."

The obstinacy of Massachusetts at last led the Lords of Trade to advise the King that its government was conducted without the slightest regard for the authority or revenue of the Crown. The outcome was a court process and judgment annulling the charter, in 1684.

By this time it was apparent that the charters of the corporate and proprietary colonies interfered with the plans of the government. Down to 1679 Virginia was the only royal colony, but the design was now formed of changing all of the chartered colonies to the royal type and uniting them to simplify administration of the trade acts and other laws. Following the Massachusetts case the Lords of Trade determined to proceed against the charters of Connecticut and Rhode Island and the patents for the Jerseys and Delaware, and to unite all of them with New