PROCEEDINGS AGAINST THE COLONIES.

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From this period until the disputes with the mother country, which ended in their separation, the colonies continued to grow by immigration and natural multiplication together,' which doubled their numbers in some twenty-two or twenty-three years.

In this career of steady advancement their chief annoyances were wars either with the Indians or the French settlements on this continent, and vexatious regulations of the mother country, dictated by a desire to secure more effectually their political dependence, and to prevent all rivalship in commerce and manufactures. They were thus brought into occasional collision with the colonial governors, both royal and proprietary. The most important of these controversies we shall, as we proceed, briefly notice.

In 1701 a bill was introduced into Parliament for uniting to the Crown all the charter governments of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, the Jerseys, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Carolina, and declaring their several charters void. But the agents of these colonies, in England, having been heard against the bill, it was defeated. One of the principal objections urged against those governments was, that from their increasing numbers and wealth, the colonies would, in a few years, throw off their allegiance to the parent country, and declare themselves "free states," if they were not checked in time by being made entirely subject to the Crown. We may fairly presume that the danger was then deemed slight or remote, when it was thus openly avowed, and when the proposed remedy was thus easily abandoned.

In 1702 the separation of the Delaware Territories from Pennsylvania took place. They had been erected into a separate government in 1691, but were re-annexed in 1693. After they had a separate Legislature in 1702,

they were still nominally under the jurisdiction of the proprietary of Pennsylvania.

In the same year Queen Anne, having accepted the surrender of East and West Jersey, appointed Lord Cornbury' the Governor of New Jersey and of New York. He was the grandson of Lord Clarendon, and consequently cousin-german to the Queen. This man, at once needy, rapacious and unscrupulous, was in a perpetual state of bickering and altercation with the Legislature of New Jersey, until they made such a representation of his misrule to the Queen that she removed him— declaring that "she would not countenance her nearest relations in oppressing her people." On being superseded he was placed under the custody of the Sheriff of New York, where he remained until, by his father's death, he became Earl of Clarendon.

2

Before 1680 appeals from judicial decisions lay, in most of the colonies, to the legislative assemblies. But about that period, on a representation from Lord Culpeper, Governor of Virginia, of a controversy between the two Houses of Assembly respecting such appeals, Charles abolished them, and ordered that thereafter they should be made to the king in council.

These appeals to the king were afterwards resisted in some of the colonies, but were finally acquiesced in.

In the war which Queen Anne declared against France, both the New England colonies and the French settlements were again subject to mutual incursions. In 1707, an unsuccessful attack was made on Port Royal, the chief town in Acadie, by a force principally from Massachusetts and Rhode Island; and Massachusetts

1

1 He had, however, been previously nominated by her predecessor, in consequence of the support he had received from Cornbury's father. Smith's History of New Jersey.

UNSUCCESSFUL EXPEDITIONS.

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was also invaded by the French. But two years afterwards, in another attack on Port Royal from the same two colonies, aided by troops from England, the town was taken, and received the name of Annapolis Royal.

In the following year another joint expedition was undertaken against Quebec, to which all the colonies contributed their quotas of troops. This enterprise proved most disastrous. Eight of the transports were wrecked, and near a thousand persons perished; upon which the fleet returned to England. In the treaty of Utrecht, which terminated the war, Acadie and Port Royal, since called Nova Scotia and Annapolis, were ceded to England.

In the same war there was also an expedition against St. Augustine in Florida, from Carolina, which utterly failed. Another was afterward attempted by the Spaniards against South Carolina, in which the invaders met with a signal repulse.

A general massacre of the people of North Carolina was attempted by the Tuscarora Indians in 1713, and one hundred and thirty-seven whites were destroyed in one night. Prompt aid having been afforded by South Carolina, the Indians were completely subdued. They soon afterward left the country, and uniting themselves with the Five Nations,' they have been since often called the "Six Nations."

Most of the colonial legislatures had hitherto been in the habit of making liberal donations to their governors, and to grant them salaries for a single year. But it was now apprehended in England that this practice gave to the colonies a dangerous influence over the representatives of the royal authority. They were therefore in

1 These were originally Iroquois, and consisted of Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondaguas, Cayugas, and Senecas.

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COLONIAL DISPUTES.

structed by the ministry of Queen Anne to receive no more presents, and to endeavor to obtain permanent salaries. But the same considerations which induced the government to abolish the practice, induced the colonies to maintain it. It was a subject of controversy between the government and Massachusetts for nearly thirty years, during which time it was the theme of almost yearly altercation. The perseverance of the colony finally prevailed; and the Governor, after being, for two or three successive years, allowed, on special applications from the Legislature, to receive temporary grants, finally obtained a general permission to receive them.

There had also been disputes, in the same colony, between the Legislature and the Governor, as to the exclusive right of the General Court to appoint its own speaker, and to adjourn without requiring the concurrence of the Governor; both of which points were decided in England against Massachusetts by an explanatory charter, which the colony reluctantly accepted.

The treaty of Utrecht, which had given peace to France and England, had not also produced amity between either those nations or their American colonies. The ́hostile incursions of Indians on the New England settlements, after the cession of Acadie, was imputed by the colonists to the intrigues of the French, who were known to have great influence, through their missionaries, with the Indian tribes. A prudent regard to the future, therefore, made it desirable to the English colonies, to obtain command of Lake Ontario, which lies between New York and Canada. With this view Governor Burnet, of New York, erected a trading house at Oswego, on that lake.

This naturally exciting the political and commer

THE CAROLINAS BECOME ROYAL PROVINCES.

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cial jealousy of the Governor of Canada, he erected both a store-house and a fort on lake Ontario, in spite of the remonstrances of Burnet, who then in turn erected a fort at Oswego. The French, after meditating an attack on this fort, contented themselves with taking possession of Crown Point, and fortifying it, which measure gave them the entire command of Lake Champlain. Remonstrances on both sides were all the effect then produced by these indications of mutual hostility.

After a massacre of the whites in South Carolina by the Yemassee Indians, the people of that colony, more dissatisfied than ever with the proprietary government for not affording them adequate protection, determined to rid themselves of it; and, with that view, proposed to the Governor to continue in authority in the name of the king; but he refusing, they chose a governor of their own, elected a council, and thus perfected a civil revolution. Many of the proprietors acquiesced in the change, and, for a sum of money, surrendered all their rights and interests to the Crown. Eleven years after the surrender, the royal province was divided into North and South Carolina.

In 1732, James Oglethorpe and others obtained a grant of the English territory south of Carolina, and extending to the Pacific, for the purpose of establishing there a colony, which professed to be "an asylum for the destitute," and to which they gave the name of Georgia, after their sovereign George the Second. Early in the following year Oglethorpe arrived in his new domain with one hundred and sixteen persons, and having laid out the town of Savannah, on the river of that name, he began the settlement of the last of the English colonies within the present limits of the United States, one hundred and twenty-six years after Virginia was settled.