PERIOD II.

INDEPENDENCE. ·

CHAPTER I.

MIND-BATTLES POINT TO A DISINTHRALLED NATIONAL LIFE.

"As interesting mankind, the question was, Shall the Reformation, developed to the fulness of free inquiry, succeed in its protest against the middle ages? - BANCROFT.

ESSENTIAL freedom is in the mind. If this is inthralled, no outward forms can make a man free. Government creates no liberty. It can recognize it when it exists, respond to it, and provide for it; or it can assault and repress it. Hence it is, that the emancipation of thought, and deliverance from mental tyranny in the regeneration, become the precursors of organized liberty. The legitimate result does not always follow. Oppression may be for a time too strong for the inner force. The people may be wanting in clearness of views, or in public spirit, or in completeness of organization. Stern discipline may be required to bring them up to the point of proper resistance. The contest once commenced, however, can never be ended but by the triumph of the right.

In this examination of the early history of our country, we have reached a period in which the mental conflict preceding the War of the Revolution must be sharper, and better defined. Our duty is to trace the progress of this war of principle, so far as to determine the character of the effective power which presided over the contest, and finally controlled the result.

THE RIGHT OF SOIL.

Upon the ground of pre-occupation, this would seem to have been in the Indian tribes. It is, however, to be considered that these wandering savages were, to a large extent, unsettled. In some instances, and in particular localities, they were sufficiently permanent to establish their claim. In every such case, the white people, whether English or Spanish or French, were bound to obtain the right of settlement by fair negotiation, or pass on to other parts of the great continent, where it was possible to found their claims. in justice. In every instance, God opened the way of those who, like Oglethorpe and Penn and Williams, endeavored to deal fairly with the natives; but in the bloody wars which followed the summary processes of intruders, and those which resulted from open robbery, or angry attacks of either party, an account of responsibility ran up of which Infinite Wisdom alone could judge, and which Infinite Justice alone can finally settle.

It is here, however, due to state, that it cost our ancestors incredible suffering, and many precious lives, to establish their right to live where the Indians had roamed. It is not necessary for us to trace these desolating Indian wars at length. They were only preliminary to the severe struggles which the colonists were compelled to pass through with the mother-country on the same ground. These were really moral rather than physical battles.

But when the savages resigned their hunting-grounds to the steady advance of civilization, or bargained them away to the colonists, to whom did they belong? The government answered, "They are the property of the crown." Indeed, as we have already seen, they were claimed originally by right of discovery. One after another, the square miles of our continent, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, were "granted" away for certain defined or undefined immunities. yet to be realized by the monarch, but extending indefinitely into the future.

Proprietaries and companies, with enormous privileges, might hold the land under the crown; but their rights could be reversed, and concessions revoked, at the pleasure of the king. This involved the comfort and rights of the settlers; for they gradually obtained privileges from these grand monopolies, which were valuable. Under various acts of spontaneous legislation, and by capricious acts of the monarch, there grew up a feeling of ownership in the soil, upon the part of individuals; and the people would first contend with the proprietaries and companies against the crown, and then against all monopolists, for the right to own the lands which they had rescued from the forests, and with incredible toil brought under cultivation, and thus given them their real value.

One of these famous contests came on in 1623 between James and the London Company. As the shares were unproductive, it revealed only a very doubtful property-interest; but it brought out a spirit of political independence, which surprised the king, and which became the true reason for the destruction of the company. The king could not suppress the freedom of debate in the company, nor control the elections. He would, therefore, demand the surrender of their charter. This they stubbornly refused, undertaking to secure private and corporate rights against a despotic government; but it was of no avail. Pretexts could be found in the mismanagement of the company in Virginia. Commissioners appeared there to investigate the acts of alleged malefeasance. And now the Virginians appear to assert property-rights, which had never been argued before the crown. There were wrongs which they would like to have redressed, but not by the destruction of the fundamental rights under which they claimed to own their estates. The company went down by royal decree; but the new power just coming into notice in the colony could not be so easily disposed of. Espionage, king-craft, and intimidations were alike unavailing. Liberty had taken deep root in this virgin soil. As easily might his

Majesty tear up the giant trees of the American forests as to eradicate it. The Assembly convened under this very charter would vindicate the rights of property "against arbitrary taxation" at all hazards. Not an inch would they yield to despotic exactions. "The governor shall not lay any taxes or ympositions upon the colony, their lands, or commodities, other way than by authority of the General Assembly, to be levyed and ymployed as the said Assembly shall appoynt."

Now, the origin of this controversy was farther back. If these colonists had a right, as individuals, to the soil on which they lived, if the right of discovery was not a right to monopolize the continent, then the king, in granting patents to adventurers, had no right to pre-empt this vast domain, and exclude, at pleasure, the individuals and families who were to reclaim it from the wild beasts. Then they were men, and not merely loyal subjects of the king; and their right to the soil came through a great law of the Creator to which kings as well as people are subject. Then an attempt to govern them as mere tenants at will, or dispose of the avails of their industry as serfs, was oppressive; and, when the Virginians stood up inflexibly against it, they began to assert the rights which man had assailed, and which God would defend. This was the opening battle in the war of independence, and the colonists triumphed.

The Plymouth Colony could obtain no "royal patent; yet their claim to their land was valid, according to the principles of English law as well as natural justice."

One after another, the colonies set up the rights which belong only to freeholders. Companies, as the profits of their investments were exceedingly small, and the balance was not unfrequently against them, were more easily shaken off than the king. The value of proprietary estates was seen to be in the increase of the population, and the contentment and thrift of the people: hence extravagant de

* Bancroft, i. 320.