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THE treaty of Ryswick failed to bring, either in Europe or America, a settlement of the essential issues. The problem of the Spanish succession, which had troubled the statesmen of Europe for a generation, remained unsolved. Charles II., the reigning king of Spain, was an invalid and childless, and the succession was contested by the two leading dynasties of continental Europe; both the Austrian Hapsburgs and the Bourbons of France had claims based upon intermarriage with Spanish princesses. The complete triumph of either would have produced a political combination more serious than any in Europe since the days of Charles V., but the union of France and Spain seemed particularly dangerous to those who wished to defend the balance of power.

The treaty of Ryswick was followed by prolonged negotiations in which Louis XIV., William III., and the Hapsburg emperor were the chief participants. A compromise which gave the Spanish crown to a minor personage, the electoral prince of Bavaria, and

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allowed certain concessions of territory to the French and Austrian claimants, was soon nullified by the death of the young Bavarian prince. Renewed negotiations between the English and Dutch governments on the one side, and Louis XIV. on the other, resulted in the second partition treaty of 1700, by which Spain, with the Spanish Netherlands and the colonies, was assigned to an Austrian prince and the important possessions in Italy to the French Dauphin. Again, however, the work of diplomacy was undone; for in the same year Charles II. died, leaving by will all the Spanish dominions to Philip of Anjou, a younger grandson of Louis XIV. Louis accepted the will, and with his support Philip established himself on the Spanish throne.[*]

[* Von Noorden, Spanische Erbfolge-Krieg, I., 97-118.]

This Bourbon succession was at once contested by the Austrians, but it was at first doubtful whether they would receive general support. To William III. the desirability of resistance was clear, but his English subjects were not yet convinced that their own interests were at stake. Again, as in 1689, this conviction was forced on them by the French king himself. Their anxiety was first aroused by his occupation of border fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands, previously secured by Dutch garrisons. In September, 1701, there came news of French edicts excluding British manufactures. The French seemed also to be reaching after a monopoly of the

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Spanish-American trade, to the serious detriment of English interests. Finally, in the same year, Louis XIV. again challenged the national spirit of the English people by acknowledging, on the death of James II., his son, "the Pretender," as James III., king of England. There was soon a decided change of feeling in England, and the newly elected Parliament gave its cordial support to the king's war policy. Before war was actually declared, King William died, but the accession of Anne and the choice of new ministers brought no change in the foreign policy of the government. Under the leadership of Marlborough, England became more than ever the predominant partner in the coalition against France.[*]

[* Von Noorden, Spanische Erbfolge-Krieg, I., 119-121, 125-139, 172-179; Stanhope, England, 1701-1713 (ed. of 1870), 11; Grimblot, Letters of William III. and Louis XIV., II., 477-479.]

Aside from the sentiment of national independence challenged by Louis' acknowledgment of the Pretender, the primary interest of England in the War of the Spanish Succession was to prevent the close union of France and Spain which seemed Likely if Philip V. were allowed to keep his crown. This was not merely a question of continental European politics, but even more largely one of commercial competition. During the later years of the Spanish Hapsburgs the English and the Dutch had, lawfully or unlawfully, secured for themselves an important part of the Spanish trade, including

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that of the American colonies. There was reason to suppose that under a Bourbon prince stricter regulations would be enforced, that special privilege enjoyed by the English would be withdrawn, and that the French would use their political power to exploit the Spanish trade.

This emphasis on commercial interests, and especially upon colonial trade, appears repeatedly in the diplomatic representations of the British government, from the foundation of the coalition until the final settlement. Thus, in the secret treaty between England, the Netherlands, and the Austrian emperor in 1701, there were included as indispensable conditions of a settlement with France, not only the exclusion of the French from the trade of the Spanish Indies, but also the securing to English and Dutch merchants of all the commercial privileges enjoyed by them under the late king. The same treaty reserved to the Dutch and the English the right to make conquests in the Spanish Indies. Similar views were expressed in the English treaty with the Austrian claimant in 1706, and in the preliminary articles proposed by England in the peace negotiations of 1709 and 1711. Thus one of the leading issues of the war was in part, at least, American.[*]

[* Von Noorden, Spanische Erbfolge-Krieg, I., 46-51, 162, II., 224, III., 504; Stanhope, England, 1701-1713, p. 490; Bolingbroke, Letters and Correspondence, I., 374-381, notes; cf. Mahan, Sea Power, 203.]

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In the preceding wars the resources of Spain were, in a measure at least, at the service of the coalition. In 1702, however, its government was in the hands of the French party and the authority of Philip V. was recognized at once in the American colonies. For the first time the English in North America had to face an alliance of the two great Latin powers; and for South Carolina and the British West Indies this was a serious danger.

The great engagements of this war were fought on the continent of Europe, and the victories of Marlborough and Prince Eugene were probably the most important factors in forcing France to terms. Yet one of the most marked features of the struggle was the steady decline in the naval power of France and the steady advance in that of England. England gained at the expense of the Dutch as well as of the French, and by the close of the war had become unquestionably the leading maritime power. This naval superiority produced, however, no marked results in the American war. Though the French navy declined because of official neglect, English colonial trade suffered severely at the hands of French privateers, especially from the West India Islands.[*]

[* Mahan, Sea Power, 217-231.]

As the European conflict approached, it was probably not materially hastened by any crisis in North America. In fact, there was a strong disposition among the French to maintain peace in

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America. A French state paper of 1701 contains an elaborate project for the conquest of the northern English colonies, but ends with the opinion that, after all, the neutrality of North America would be preferable to war and would be "infinitely more advantageous for Canada." Proposals for neutrality were afterwards made by Governor Dudley, of Massachusetts, and accepted in principle, not only by Governor Vaudreuil at Quebec, but by the French authorities at home. Upon the precise terms, however, the two governors could not agree.[*]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., IX., 725-728, 770-776, 779.]

On the New York frontier the peculiar position of the Iroquois resulted in a sort of partial neutrality which was maintained during the greater part of the war. Since, after a long and harassing conflict, the Canadian government had just brought the Five Nations into peaceable treaty relations, it was considered very important that these relations should be maintained. Conferences were held with the Iroquois and assurances of neutrality were secured. In view, however, of the close relations which had long existed between these Indians and the authorities at Albany, it seemed doubtful whether, in case of actual war between the French and the English, the Iroquois could be prevented from taking sides with the latter. For this reason the French refrained from attacking New York. The English and Dutch of New York found it almost equally their interest to preserve the peace.

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Thus for several years New York was protected from Indian incursions and the Indian trade was freely continued both with Albany and Montreal.[*]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 42, IX., 736-739, 742-745; Schuyler, Colonial New York, II., 13-26; Parkman, Half-Century of Conflict, I., 11-14.]

The attitude of the French towards New England was quite different. The Indians of that region had been under Jesuit influence and closely allied with the French, but there was some anxiety lest they might be reconciled with the English and take sides with them. The Marquis de Vaudreuil, who in 1703 became governor of New France, argued that the English and the Abenakis must be kept "irreconcilable enemies," and he therefore instigated these Indians to attacks on the New England frontier, in which the converted Iroquois of the French mission were also engaged. The government in France expressed some misgivings with regard to this policy at first, but its opposition does not seem to have been serious.[*]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., IX., 755-760, 804.]

The peculiar neutral attitude of New York, while the New England settlements were exposed to the horrors of border warfare, provoked sharp criticism. The New-Englanders suspected that their own safety was being sacrificed in order that the men at Albany might carry on a profitable trade. From time to time they attempted to secure the help of the Iroquois in their war with the eastern Indians,

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but were always blocked by opposition from New York. It was not until 1709 that that province was willing to promise its support and that of the Indian allies for a general movement against the French. Sometimes, however, the Schuylers at Albany rendered the New-Englanders substantial service by warning them of impending French and Indian raids. Samuel Penhallow, a contemporary New England writer, notes the timely warning given on the eve of the Deerfield massacre by "Colonel Schuyler who was always a kind and faithful intelligencer."[*]

[* Penhallow, Wars of New England (ed. of 1859), 24, 35, 43; Schuyler, Colonial New York, II., 20, 24; N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 42.]

The history of the American war may be conveniently divided into two periods. The first covers the seven years from 1702 to 1709, and is characterized for the northern colonies chiefly by French and Indian raids on the New England frontier, followed by generally ineffective attempts at reprisal, especially on the part of the Massachusetts government. There was also a large amount of commerce-destroying, in which New England suffered severely from French privateers, especially those from the West Indies and Port Royal. On the sea, however, the New-Englanders were able to give a better account of themselves than on land, and considerable damage was inflicted upon French commerce and fisheries. Meanwhile, South Carolina, in even greater isolation, was

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engaged in a serious conflict with the Spaniards of Florida, aided not merely by Indian allies, but also by French forces from the West Indies.

The intervening colonies were less directly involved in the war, but their commerce was exposed to attack. The English government, at considerable expense, provided naval vessels to convoy the fleets that sailed at intervals from Massachusetts or Virginia or Barbadoes, besides guard-ships to patrol the coasts; but these precautions did not always prevent serious loss. Even Pennsylvania, where the Quakers were doing their utmost to keep out of the war, had to feel at times the blows of the enemy. James Logan, Penn's agent in the province, writes repeatedly of the annoyance caused by the "Martinico privateers." In 1708 he observed that after a period of comparative peace, "these coasts begin to be intolerably infested," and that within four days "three vessels of this river" had been sunk and burned, including one "just off our own capes." The next year he noted the plunder of a neighboring town by a French privateer.[*]

[* Penn-Logan Correspondence, I., 240, 289, 301, II., 123, 275, 348; Chalmers, Revolt, I., 354.]

In the second period, from 1709 to 1713, the English were more aggressive. Larger enterprises were undertaken, there was more co-operation among the colonies, and there were also considerable reinforcements from England. These larger plans, however,

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were seriously impaired by poor leadership and defective organization, and the results accomplished were relatively small.

Notwithstanding the formal declaration of war, in 1702, there was no serious outbreak on the New England border that year. In 1703, Joseph Dudley, who had recently been appointed governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and thus exercised jurisdiction over practically the whole territory exposed to Indian attacks, held a conference with the Abenaki tribes at Casco, on the Maine frontier. A treaty of peace was then agreed to by the Indians, but within two months, under the influence of the French Jesuits, they reopened the war by a destructive raid which almost wiped out the Maine settlements. In 1704 occurred the most serious disaster of the whole war in New England, the massacre at Deerfield, then the northwestern outpost of settlement in the Connecticut valley. The town was attacked by a force of Indians, accompanied by a few Frenchmen, under the lead of a well-known partisan chief, Hertel de Rouville. Men, women, and children were butchered, and about a hundred prisoners carried off to Canada. The most conspicuous of the prisoners was the Reverend John Williams, pastor of the church, who left a record of the hardships experienced by himself and his associates in captivity. Many of the weaker prisoners died or were murdered by their captors. Of those who finally reached Canada, some were ultimately exchanged

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and returned to their homes; but others, especially the children, yielded to the efforts of the Catholic missionaries or were so much influenced by their Indian captors that they were unwilling to be reclaimed.[*]

[* Penhallow, Wars of New England (ed. of 1859), 16-23; Drake, Border Wars of New England, chaps. xvi., xviii.]

Even more characteristic of the border warfare than this Deerfield expedition were the innumerable frontier raids made by comparatively small bodies of French and Indians, or of Indians alone. In this, as in the previous war, the ravages of the enemy were not confined to Maine, New Hampshire, and the remote Connecticut valley towns. The Indian war-parties penetrated into the eastern counties of Massachusetts, even to such towns as Reading and Sudbury, within a few miles of Boston, and Haverhill, which suffered one of the most destructive raids of the whole war. Many of these expeditions were sent out by Governor Vaudreuil, and he had the efficient co-operation of the French missionaries. In 1703 the Jesuit Father Rale reported that the Abenakis would take up the hatchet whenever he pleased; and Vaudreuil noted complacently afterwards that the small parties sent out had not failed "seriously to inconvenience the English." The French government at home ultimately gave its approval of this savage warfare; in 1707, Pontchartrain, the French colonial minister, told Vaudreuil that he did well "to write to the Missionaries

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among the Abenakis to have the war continued against the English."[*]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., IX. 755-760, 504; Drake, Border Wars, passim; Penhallow, Wars of New England, passim.]

Against these terrible onslaughts there seemed to be no certain means of defence. The line of exposed settlements was too long to be continuously defended; the precise point of attack could rarely be anticipated; and the communications were slow and uncertain. It was during the winter of 1703-1704, while Massachusetts and New Hampshire had nearly nine hundred men in service, that the disaster occurred at Deerfield. From time to time small retaliatory expeditions were sent out, and, if successful, they returned with Indian scalps, for which the provincial government offered liberal bounties. Penhallow tells of one such party sent up the Connecticut from Northampton in 1704, consisting of Mr. Caleb Lyman (subsequently elder of a church in Boston) and five friendly Indians. After ten days' absence the party returned, having killed eight Indians and taken six scalps. It was estimated, however, that every Indian killed or taken had cost the English at least £1000. To the direct charges of the war must be added the wide-spread destruction of property on land, and the serious damage done to New England fisheries and commerce by the French privateers.[*]

[* Penhallow, Wars of New England, 25-31, 33, 48, 57; Drake, Border Wars, passim, esp. 251.]

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In 1705, Governor Dudley attempted to solve the problem by proposing the neutrality of the colonies, but he refused to accept Vaudreuil's counter proposal that the New-Englanders should be excluded from the fisheries on the Acadian coasts. Under these circumstances the Indian problem could only be solved by striking at the French, who stood behind the savages. For measures of this sort, however, New England was poorly organized: the colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut were still under independent governments which could not be counted upon for continuous hearty support; and even in Massachusetts there were serious divisions. The governor, Joseph Dudley, though a man of ability, was regarded with great suspicion by many people under his jurisdiction. He was charged with complicity in an illegal trade which was being carried on with the enemy, and which undoubtedly increased unnecessarily their power for offensive measures against the English. These charges were doubtless much exaggerated, but so conservative a man as Samuel Sewall thought the governor not wholly free from blame.[*]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., IX., 770-772, 776, 779; Hutchinson, Hist. of Mass. Bay (ed. of 1795), II., 141-148; Drake, Border Wars, 210-215; Mass. Hist., Soc., Collections, 5th series, VI., 65-131*, esp. 111*.]

Again, as in the earlier wars, New England suffered seriously from the absence of trained military leaders and a disciplined soldiery, with the result

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that expeditions prepared with great enthusiasm and with considerable financial sacrifices often resulted in humiliating failures. The first retaliatory expedition on any considerable scale was that of Church in 1704, the last enterprise of that veteran fighter of King Philip's War. After unsuccessful efforts to find forces of French and Indians along the Maine coast, Church sailed to Acadia, ravaged the French settlements on the Bay of Fundy, and took a number of prisoners. The expedition also entered Port Royal harbor, but the fort was not attacked; and the failure to produce more positive results called forth severe criticism both of Church and of Governor Dudley.[*]

[* Penhallow, Wars of New England, 28-30; Hutchinson, Hist. of Mass. Bay (ed. of 1795) II., 132-135; Drake, Border Wars, chap. xx.]

As the war proceeded, the importance of Acadia as a base for French operations against New England was keenly felt; and in 1707 a new expedition was organized against it, to which Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts contributed, though Connecticut held aloof. Two regiments commanded by Colonel March were sent by sea under convoy of a royal man-of-war and an armed vessel belonging to Massachusetts, and appeared before Port Royal in June, 1707, with some prospect of success. The French governor, Subercase, made a vigorous defence, and March, though an Indian fighter of good reputation and undoubted courage,

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proved unequal to his task. He finally lost heart and after some skirmishing abandoned the siege. There was great indignation in Boston at this fiasco, and Dudley sent peremptory orders to the fleet to return to the siege; but the attacking force was now too demoralized, while the French had materially strengthened their position, so that the siege was a second time abandoned.[*]

[* Parkman, Half-Century of Conflict, I., 120-127; Hutchinson, Hist. of Mass. Bay (ed. of 1795), II., 150-156; Penhallow, Wars of New England, 50-52.]

While New England was waging this comparatively ineffective warfare with the French and Inddians [sic], the South-Carolinians had been making a creditable stand against their enemies. From its beginning the Carolina settlement had been jealously watched by its Spanish neighbors at St. Augustine, who, in 1686 destroyed the Scotch settlement at Port Royal. The colonists were then eager to organize a retaliatory expedition, but were held back by the proprietary government. During the next sixteen years Spain and England were not only nominally at peace, but for a considerable time allies against France.[*] By 1702, however, this restraint upon the rival colonies was removed.

[* McCrady, South Carolina under Proprietary Government, 216-222.]

Early in 1702, before the queen's proclamation of war was known in America, the Spaniards organized a force, composed mainly of Indian allies with a few whites, for a land attack upon South Carolina.

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The English traders, however, were warned by the friendly Creek Indians, and formed from them a strong opposing force, so that the invaders were surprised and routed. The South-Carolinians now determined to take the offensive, and in the autumn of 1702 sent a small fleet with several hundred provincial militia and Indians from Port Royal against St. Augustine. The town was destroyed but there was not enough artillery for a successful siege of the fort, and before the needed supplies could be secured, Governor Moore, who was in command of the expedition, was alarmed by the appearance of two hostile frigates and hastily retreated. The South - Carolinians, like the New-Englanders before Port Royal, had involved themselves in heavy expense with no tangible results.

In the following year a new governor, Sir Nathaniel Johnson, received his commission from the proprietors, and adopted in the main a defensive policy. Nevertheless, Colonel Moore was allowed to undertake a raid into the enemy's territory; and during the winter of 1703-1704 he fought a pitched battle with several hundred Indians under Spanish leaders. The English were completely victorious, and after ravaging the country returned with a large number of prisoners to Charleston.[*]

[* McCrady, South Carolina under Proprietary Government, 377-396; Carroll, Collections, II., 348-353, 574.]

Two years now passed without any important operations, and the interval was used by Governor

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Johnson in guarding against possible invasion by land or sea. In 1706 a French and Spanish expedition sailed from Havana under a French commander, Monsieur le Feboure, and, after receiving reinforcements at St. Augustine, appeared before Charleston, August 24. There was great anxiety in the town, which was already suffering a severe epidemic of yellow fever, but the governor faced the situation with admirable courage and energy. Militia were promptly brought in from the surrounding country; and when, after three days' delay, the French commander presented his demand for surrender, he received a defiant response. The enemy then landed a part of his force, but one landing party was defeated with considerable loss. The Carolinians now assumed the offensive and sent a small fleet against the invaders, whereupon the French commander hastily abandoned the attack and sailed away. Almost immediately after his departure another French man-of-war appeared, and, apparently in ignorance of the defeat of the fleet, entered Sewee Bay, a few miles northeast of Charleston. A small landing party sent out by the French commander was defeated and the ship itself was captured by the Charleston fleet. In a little more than a week the Carolinians had repelled a formidable invading force and taken over two hundred French and Spanish prisoners.[*]

[* McCrady, South Carolina under Proprietary Government, 396-401.]

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This historic defence of Charleston was the last important event of the war on the southern frontier. Neither party had been able to hold territory belonging to the other, but the English inflicted more damage than they suffered, and were, on the whole, entitled to the honors of the conflict.

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AFTER seven years of indecisive conflict, during which the colonists had been left largely to their own resources, the English government began to direct its attention more seriously to the North American situation. The desirability of the conquest of Canada had been repeatedly urged upon the home government, and now had an unusually zealous advocate in the person of Colonel Samuel Vetch, an adventurous Scotchman, who, after some service in the British army, came first to New York, where he married into the Livingston family, and afterwards engaged in trade at Boston. In 1706, Vetch, with a number of other prominent Boston merchants, was convicted of trading with the enemy and fined, though the sentence was annulled by the crown on technical grounds. This incident does not appear to have affected his standing in England, and he had the advantage of considerable local knowledge of Canadian affairs gained during a recent visit.[*]

[* Order in council of September 24, 1707, in Hutchinson, Hist. of Mass. Bay (ed. of 1795), II., 144; Patterson, "Hon. Samuel Vetch," in Nova Scotia Hist. Soc., Collections, IV., 1-20.]

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In March, 1709, a royal circular was issued to the northern governors announcing an expedition against the French in accordance with Vetch's proposals. A fleet was to be sent out from England with five regiments of British regulars, who were to be reinforced by Massachusetts and Rhode Island militia, and then to proceed by sea against Quebec; Montreal was to be attacked by a land force from Albany, consisting of militia from New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and an auxiliary force of Indians. Vetch was given general supervision of the enterprise, and the colonial governments were required to furnish supplies and fixed quotas of militia.[*]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 70-74; Instructions to Vetch in Nova Scotia Hist. Soc., Collections, IV., 64-68.]

The plan was received with enthusiasm in New England, where it seemed to offer a permanent solution of the perplexing French and Indian problem. The necessary preparations were therefore pushed forward with vigor.[*] In the middle colonies the problem was less simple. For New York the new enterprise meant a departure from the quasi-neutral position which had hitherto saved the province from border warfare. Nevertheless, the expulsion of the French from Canada was a prize for which it was worth while to take some risks, so that the New York assembly contributed liberally in men and supplies; and, by the help of the Schuylers, some

[* Parkman, Half-Century of Conflict, I., 131.]

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[Map Facing This Page: Frontier Warfare of New England (1689-1713)]

of the Iroquois were induced to co-operate. In New Jersey and Pennsylvania the Quaker influence proved a serious obstacle. New Jersey finally made an appropriation of £3000, but Pennsylvania refused to take any part in the enterprise. Nevertheless, a strong force was collected and a commander chosen in the person of Francis Nicholson, who as governor or lieutenant-governor in New York, Virginia, and Maryland, had had an unusually varied experience. His military capacity was never severely tested, but he was zealous and energetic.[*] After all these preparations the colonists were finally disappointed by the failure of the home government to do its part. The supposedly more urgent demands of the European war led to a change of plan, and the troops formerly intended for Quebec were sent to Portugal. It was now proposed that with the help of English men-of-war then in American waters an attack should be made on Port Royal. The naval officers, however, refused their co-operation, and the year of hard work and heavy outlay ended with no tangible result.[**]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 78-81; Penn-Logan Correspondence, II., 351.]
[** Parkman, Half-Century of Conflict, I., 137-140; Hutchinson, Hist. of Mass. Bay (ed. of 1795), II., 160-163.]

Nevertheless, the leaders in America refused to give up the enterprise. Nicholson and Schuyler went to England to urge vigorous measures upon the government, and the latter took with him a

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party of Mohawk sachems who attracted much attention.[*] The more ambitious expedition to Canada was allowed to drop for the present, but one substantial result of these appeals was the Port Royal expedition of 1710, of which Nicholson himself was commander-in-chief, with Vetch as adjutant-general. Four regiments of militia were furnished by New England, and the English government contributed a few men-of-war with a regiment of marines. The French governor at Port Royal was too weak to resist so strong a force, and a week after the arrival of the fleet he was obliged to surrender. Acadia thereupon became the British province of Nova Scotia and Port Royal became Annapolis Royal.[**]

[* Schuyler, Colonial New York, II., 32-39.]
[** Nicholson, Journal, in Nova Scotia Hist. Soc., Collections, I., 59-104; Penhallow, Wars of New England, 57-62; N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., IX., 853.]

After the capture of Port Royal, Nicholson returned to England to urge once more the larger enterprise against Canada. During the summer of 1710 the ministry of Godolphin and Marlborough, which, though not distinctly partisan, had finally allied itself closely with the Whigs, was overthrown and a new Tory ministry came into office, of which the leading members were Robert Harley, soon after created Earl of Oxford, and Henry St. John, who was also soon raised to the peerage as Viscount Bolingbroke. These men represented the reaction

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against the continental war policy of their predecessors, and they soon set themselves to secure peace with France. On the other hand, the idea of the conquest of Canada appealed strongly to St. John, who wrote of the plan, "It is my favorite project, which I have been driving on ever since I came last into business, what will be an immense and lasting advantage to our country, if it succeeds, and what if it fails, will perhaps be particularly prejudicial to me."[*]

[* Stanhope, England, 1701-1713, pp. 424-427, 438-441, 469-473; St. John to Hunter, February 6, 1711, quoted in Palfrey, New England, IV., 280; cf. Bolingbroke, Letters and Correspondence, I., 232, 252.]

A new campaign was therefore planned. Again, as in 1709, it was proposed to undertake simultaneous movements by sea from Boston against Quebec and by land from Albany against Montreal. The attack on Quebec was to be made by a British fleet carrying seven regiments of regular troops, and an additional force to be raised in New England. The land expedition was to consist of a few regulars, militia from Connecticut and the middle colonies, and Iroquois Indians, all under the command of General Nicholson.

The desire of the government to keep the expedition as secret as possible left the colonists only a scant allowance of time to make their contributions in men and supplies; but they seem, on the whole, to have given cordial and effective support.

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A conference of governors was held at New London to discuss the necessary arrangements, and even Pennsylvania consented to make a contribution in money.[*] After some discussion the leading Quakers decided that they might "give the Queen money, notwithstanding any use she might put it to, that being not our part, but hers."[**] In Boston there was some friction between the royal officers and the citizens, but the general court seems to have done all that could reasonably have been expected. In New York there was another diplomatic contest between Peter Schuyler and the able French agent Joncaire, which resulted in securing the co-operation of eight hundred Iroquois for the attack on Montreal.[***]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 257-261.]
[** Penn-Logan Correspondence, II., 436.]
(*** N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 252.]

Once more the colonists were doomed to disappointment, and the responsibility for the failure must rest mainly with the British naval and military commanders. The admiral of the fleet, Sir Hovenden Walker seems to have been faint-hearted as well as incompetent. The commander of the military forces, the notorious "Jack Hill," a brother of the queen's favorite, Mrs. Masham, had been rapidly promoted in the face of Marlborough's protests and had never shown capacity for important military command.[*] The fleet entered the St.

[* Coxe, Marlborough, V., 127; Bolingbroke, Letters and Correspondence, I., 94.]

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Lawrence in August, 1711, but never reached Quebec: through a serious blunder, for which Walker was at least partially responsible, several transports were wrecked in the river with a loss of several hundred soldiers. There still remained a force decidedly superior to any that Vaudreuil could muster at Quebec, but neither Walker nor Hill had any heart for the undertaking, and after taking the advice of a council of war they determined to retreat. The failure of the Quebec movement required the abandonment of the New York enterprise also, greatly to the disgust of its commander.

Few episodes in English colonial history are more humiliating than the failure of this Quebec expedition; and in New England, especially, there was sharp criticism of the management, "some imputing it to cowardice, but most to treachery." An attempt was also made to throw the blame upon the Massachusetts government and people for lack of proper support, but the charge was effectively answered by Dummer, the Massachusetts agent in London, in his Letter to a Noble Lord.[*]

[* Penhallow, Wars of New England, 70-74; Dummer, Letter to a Noble Lord.]

Notwithstanding their disappointment, the colonists urged upon the home government a new attempt upon Canada, but the Tory ministers were deep in the negotiations for peace, and in 1712 secured a general suspension of hostilities. After a long and exhausting war both parties were

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ready for concessions, and in 1713 they agreed to the peace of Utrecht. The Spanish succession was settled by a compromise which was reluctantly and after some delay accepted by the Austrians; the establishment of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain and its colonial dependencies was recognized, but the union of the French and Spanish crowns was care fully guarded against. Nevertheless, the tendency of the two related houses to act together proved more than once an important factor in the subsequent history both of Europe and America.[*]

[* Palfrey, New England, IV., 285; Treaty with France, Art. vi., in Chalmers, Collections, I., 340-386.]

Of great significance for America are the provisions of the peace of Utrecht which mark the advance of England as a maritime power. Her position in the Mediterranean was strengthened by the acquisition of Port Mahon, in Minorca, and the fortress of Gibraltar, captured in 1704. Her interest in the Spanish trade was recognized by the Asiento clause, which gave to English merchants for thirty years the exclusive privilege of carrying on the African slave-trade with the Spanish-American colonies. In the West Indies the net result was comparatively small. St. Christopher became a wholly English possession, but the French retained their chief islands, which continued to be important stations for French privateers.[*]

[* Treaty with Spain, Arts. x., xi, xii., ibid., II., 40-107; treaty with France, Art. xii., ibid., I., 340-386.]

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The North American settlement brought serious disappointment to both parties. Louis XIV. was reluctant to give up Acadia and offered instead various concessions elsewhere; but he was finally forced to yield, although an opening was left for future controversy by the statement that the province was ceded "with its ancient limits." With Acadia, England also established her claim to the Hudson Bay country and Newfoundland, though with certain reservations in the interests of the French fisheries. The old claim that the Iroquois were subjects of the king of England was now formally recognized by the French, though their efforts to bring the confederates under French influence were by no means finally abandoned.[*]

[* Treaty with France, Arts. x.-xv., in Chalmers, Collections, I., 340-386.]

For the New-Englanders the conquest of Canada had seemed one of the desirable and possible results of the war. Dummer, the Massachusetts agent, in his Letter to a Noble Lord, insisted that the English colonies could never be at ease while the French remained master of Canada. Writing in 1712, after the failure of Walker's expedition, he urged that Canada as well as Acadia be retained. Doubtless a minister of the type of Pitt, supported by a general like Wolfe, would have anticipated by half a century the English conquest of Canada. A serious defect in the settlement from the English point of view was the retention of Cape Breton Island by

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the French. The English had proposed a joint occupation of the island, refusing to either party the right to fortify it; but the French rejected this proposal, and in their hands Louisbourg became a formidable base for hostile operations against New England.[*]

[* Bolingbroke, Letters and Correspondence, II., 286; Dummer, Letter to a Noble Lord; Kingsford, Canada, II., 481.]

The cessation of war between France and England enabled the New-Englanders to come to terms with the eastern Indians. In July, 1713, Governor Dudley held a conference at Portsmouth with representatives of various tribes and a treaty of peace was agreed to. The Indians acknowledged the sovereignty of the queen, promised to respect the rights of the colonists to the territory occupied by them, and to seek redress for future wrongs by peaceful methods. In spite of this solemn treaty another border war broke out a few years later, but for the time being the return of peace encouraged the English to extend their settlements.[*]

[* Penhallow, Wars of New England, 77-84.]

The year of the general peace was marked also by the end of a serious Indian disturbance in North Carolina, the so-called Tuscarora war, which required the co-operation of the neighboring colonies and for a time caused some uneasiness so far north as New York. The coming of a new Swiss colony into North Carolina had excited the jealousy of this strong tribe of Indians, and the murder of the provincial surveyor, John Lawson, was followed

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by a general uprising in September, 1711, when some two hundred frontier settlers were massacred. The governments of Virginia and South Carolina were asked for assistance, and South Carolina promptly sent Colonel Barnwell into the neighboring colony. In midwinter of 1712, Barnwell defeated the Tuscaroras in a severe engagement near the Neuse River and compelled them to make peace, but this treaty was soon broken and the war continued. In 1713 another South Carolina force, under the command of Colonel James Moore, son of the man who had led the expedition against St. Augustine, captured the Indian fortress with some eight hundred prisoners. The Tuscaroras were now so demoralized that most of them abandoned the province altogether.[*]

[* N. C. Col. Records, I., 810 et seq.; McCrady, South Carolina under Proprietary Government, 496-503, 525.]

The Five Nations considered themselves bound by kinship to the Tuscaroras, and there was some anxiety in New York lest they might combine forces against the English, especially as the French were then suggesting to the Iroquois doubts as to the sincerity of English friendship. This danger was, however, averted. After their final defeat the Tuscaroras took refuge with the Five Nations, becoming the sixth tribe of the confederacy; and with some hesitation this arrangement was finally accepted by the English governor of New York.[*]

[* Schuyler, Colonial New York, II., 50-53; N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 343, 387.]

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For North America as a whole the peace of Utrecht marks, as no previous treaty with France had done, a real advance in the prestige of England. It was true that the French raids had retarded the spread of English settlements and that much damage had been done to New England trade and fisheries. Yet these losses were soon repaired and the net result of French military and diplomatic effort was a serious though not a decisive defeat.

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THE long wars of William and Anne were succeeded by a quarter-century of comparative peace. In spite of Jacobite conspiracies the Act of Settlement was carried out in 1714, and the succession of George I. marked the victory of parliamentary authority over the hereditary rights of the Stuart line. Essentially foreign in their education, tastes, and interests, the first two Georges depended for their administration of English affairs upon the Whig chiefs by whose support the dynasty had been established. Under these conditions the system of party and parliamentary administration was, in course of time, so strongly founded that it finally prevailed even against the aggressively personal policy of George III.

The first years of the Whig domination were occupied with struggles for headship in the party; but they soon ended in the supremacy of Sir Robert Walpole, who became prime-minister in 1721, and held the position until 1742. Though he was then

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forced to resign by a combination of Tories with dissatisfied Whigs, most of the ministers of the next two decades were men who had been trained in his school. Walpole was a strong though coarse-grained country gentleman and a liberal-minded statesman. He shared the prevailing low standards of public and private morality, and his political power was maintained in part by various forms of parliamentary corruption. His primary policy was to establish securely under Whig auspices the new Protestant succession and to develop the commerce and manufactures of his country. He sought to accomplish these ends by preserving peace abroad, by avoiding extreme measures of any kind which might provoke dangerous antagonism to the existing government, and by some relaxation of commercial restrictions.

Walpole's part in the shaping of British colonial policy has never been thoroughly examined. He has been credited with liberal views and particularly with having opposed a proposal for taxing the colonies. During his administration, parliament enacted some laws in the interest of colonial trade; but, on the other hand, one of the harshest legislative measures of the period, the Molasses Act of 1733, which, if enforced, would have seriously injured the trade of the northern colonies, was strongly supported by his followers and seems to have been distinctly an administration measure. His influence was apparently, in the main, the negative

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one of discouraging over-aggressive schemes of colonial control.[*]

[* Annual Register, 1765, p. 25; Cobbett, Parliamentary History VIII., passim; Coxe, Sir R. Walpole, I. 163.]

The system of colonial administration remained essentially unchanged throughout the Walpole era, so that the direct charge of colonial interests was, as before, mainly in the hands of the secretary of state for the southern department and the Board of Trade. Until 1724 no one man held the secretaryship long enough to exert much influence for good or ill upon colonial politics. In that year, however, the southern department was given to the Duke of Newcastle, who retained it during the remainder of Walpole's ministry and for six years longer, in all a period of twenty-four years.

Newcastle was conspicuous even among his contemporaries for his activity in the lower forms of politics, particularly for his prostitution of the patronage to partisan ends. He was also notoriously inefficient. One of his contemporaries said of him that he did "nothing in the same hurry and agitation as if he did everything." According to another bon-mot attributed to one of his colleagues, he was always losing "half an hour in the morning, which he is running after the rest of the day without being able to overtake it." He neglected the colonial correspondence, and his chief interest in American affairs, as in home politics, seemed to be the spoils of office. From a politician of this type

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no constructive policy could reasonably be expected.[*]

[* Horace Walpole, Memoirs, I., 162-166, 396; Coxe, Sir R. Walpole, I., 192, 317-330; Mahon, England, 1713-1783, II., 154.]

The personnel of the Board of Trade was hardly of a kind to supply the deficiencies of the secretary. In 1714 the board was completely changed and a number of comparatively obscure men appointed. During the next thirty years about thirty men in all were appointed and the average tenure was fairly long; four members held office for over twenty years. With one exception, none of the men who saw any considerable service in the board under Walpole could be rated as even a respectable politician of the second class. That exception was Colonel Martin Bladen, a veteran of the War of the Spanish Succession, who entered Parliament as a Whig in 1715, was appointed to the board in 1717, and served continuously until his death in 1746. He was one of the most active and influential members of the board, and he also spoke frequently in the House of Commons, where he steadily supported Walpole. He came to be regarded as an expert on commercial and colonial affairs, and as a member of the Board of Trade was said to have gone by the name of "Trade" while his colleagues were called the "Board."[*]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., III., xvi., xvii.; Dict. of National Biography, art. Bladen.]

According to Horace Walpole, the Board of Trade

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in his father's time had become almost a "sinecure"; but the colonial papers of the twenties and thirties indicate that the board held frequent meetings and transacted a considerable amount of business. In the course of a parliamentary debate, General Oglethorpe said of its members that they were "as exact and diligent in all the matters which fall under their province as any board in England," and that it was "one of the most useful boards we have."[*]

[* Horace Walpole, Memoirs, I., 396; Cobbett, Parliamentary History, VIII., 921.]

The board maintained a fairly regular correspondence with colonial governors, inquired into colonial conditions, and made some elaborate reports and recommendations, notably in 1721 and 1732. Though many of these recommendations were disregarded, others were accepted, and much of the colonial legislation of the period was in accordance with their advice. In their efforts to impose their policies upon the colonial assemblies, they were frequently defeated; but this was due, partly at least, to a division of authority which left them almost no power of final action. Ultimate decisions regarding appointments and other subjects were in the hands of the Privy Council, acting usually on the advice of its own "Committee for Plantation Affairs." An energetic secretary of state acting in full harmony with the members of the board would probably have moulded the colonial policy of the

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ministry, but these conditions were never realized during the Newcastle regime. Generally speaking, the lack of co-operation between the ministry and the Board of Trade showed itself not in the adoption by the former of a positive programme at variance with that of the board, but in failure to act upon its recommendations.[*]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., VI., passim; N. C. Col. Records, III., IV., passim; cf. Egerton, Short Hist. of Col. Policy, 140.]

Other administrative boards continued to take a considerable part in questions of colonial policy. Thus the admiralty was interested in fostering the production of naval stores in America, and one of its leading members, Sir Charles Wager, was regarded as an expert in American affairs. Horace Walpole the elder, a brother of Sir Robert, and a diplomatist of some reputation, held the profitable office of auditor-general of the colonial revenues. He took part in the parliamentary proceedings of 1731-1733 which ended in the passage of the Molasses Act, and in 1735 he urged upon his brother a closer attention to colonial affairs.[*]

[* Coxe, Sir R. Walpole, III., 243; Cobbett, Parliamentary History, VIII., 992-1002.]

Horace Walpole particularly commended "one Coram, the honestest, the most disinterested, and the most knowing person about the plantations I ever talked with." Coram, after many years residence in Massachusetts, finally settled in London. Having a special interest in colonial trade and shipping

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he advocated the bounty on naval stores in 1704; but he also favored the policy of restricting colonial manufactures. He was one of the Georgia trustees, and was also interested in the settlement of Nova Scotia. Doubtless, Coram was only one among a number of more obscure personages who contributed each his small share to the shaping of British official opinion.[*]

[* Dict. of National Biography, art. Coram; N. J. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 308-314.]

A fair test of a colonial administration is its exercise of the appointing power. Newcastle kept the patronage largely in his own hands, and numerous letters among the colonial papers show that their writers looked to him as the dispenser of desirable offices. Even before his time the Board of Trade complained of not being consulted with regard to appointments. Sinecure positions continued to be a serious evil in colonial administration; during the first half of the eighteenth century the important government of Virginia was generally held by a non-resident governor, while the actual work of administration was performed by a lieutenant-governor. The commercial conception of public patronage may be illustrated by the case of Lord Delaware, who, having been appointed governor of New York in 1737, was asked three years later to resign in favor of Lieutenant-Governor Clarke, and was promised one thousand guineas, to be paid when the new appointment had actually been made. A new governor

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was appointed, but Clarke's application was unsuccessful.[*]

[* Chalmers, Revolt, II., 35; N. C. Col. Records, III., passim, esp. 80; N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist. VI., 163.]

Not all appointments, however, were unfit. There were bad governors like Cosby in New York, but he was probably no worse than Lord Cornbury, his predecessor, in Queen Anne's reign. The Newcastle regime must, on the other hand, be credited with such good appointments as those of Morris in New Jersey and Shirley in Massachusetts. Though disposed to stand for the royal prerogative, both these governors were men of public spirit. Nor was the home government wholly irresponsible in the making of removals. In Massachusetts, it showed its sensitiveness to local sentiment on the death of one governor who had made himself obnoxious to the colonists, by appointing as his successor the agent who had been sent to act against him. Probably the home government was not always reasonably firm in its support of men whose unpopularity arose largely from their vigorous assertion of imperial authority.

A governor once appointed was supposed to be controlled by his instructions. During the Newcastle period there was no marked change in the general instructions issued to the governor on his appointment, though there were a few additions. Some governors were criticised for failing to make regular reports to the secretary of state and the

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Board of Trade; but in other instances a voluminous correspondence was kept up, enough to give the home government a lively picture of provincial conditions, especially on the political side, though the board seems not always to have had full confidence in the accuracy of the returns. The adverse criticism which the board passed upon colonial officials was sometimes reciprocated. In October, 1736, a North Carolina governor wrote that he had had no communication from the board since the previous December, and, with the exception of a short note then, nothing for over a year. A similar complaint was made by Governor Clinton, of New York, a few years later.[*]

[* N. C. Col. Records, III., IV., passim, esp. IV., 173, 242; N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., VI., passim, esp. VI., 270.]

Even in this era of "salutary neglect," colonial legislation was scrutinized with some care, though there was no such wholesale disallowance of provincial statutes as had taken place during the reigns of William and Anne. This may have been due partly to lack of energy in the Board of Trade, but it is explained partly also by the fact that the assemblies had adjusted themselves to a sort of modus vivendi in which some demands of the crown were acquiesced in and others avoided by indirect methods. Governors also were now more definitely instructed with regard to legislation. In the new royal government of North Carolina, out of the first two hundred and seventy-one acts approved by the

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governors, only eight were disallowed by the crown, and even in Massachusetts the percentage of royal vetoes was small. In Massachusetts the charter provision that acts not disallowed within three years after presentation to the crown should remain laws until repealed by the provincial assembly, was avoided by postponing presentation. It was a common practice of the Board of Trade to order colonial acts "to lie by probationary," awaiting examination by legal counsel or objections from any other quarter. Some acts which were not disallowed were adversely criticised by the board or its legal counsel, and sometimes the governor was cautioned against the passage of similar acts in the future.[*]

[* Raper, North Carolina, 45, 49, 56; Massachusetts Bay, Acts and Resolves, II., passim, esp. 31, 66, 790.]

The colonies frequently gave offence by their tariff legislation. Discriminating duties were laid in favor of colonial shipping as against that of Great Britain, and duties on slaves and on goods imported from England were also frequently complained of. Governors were forbidden to pass acts of this kind without at least a clause suspending execution until approved by the crown; and several such acts were disallowed Again, the home government forbade the passage of private acts without the suspending clause, and for several years the Massachusetts general court gave up such legislation altogether.[*]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 706; Massachusetts Bay, Acts and Resolves, II., 69, 128; N. C. Col. Records, III., 95; Chalmers, Revolt, II., 72-75.]

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A striking instance of the use of a royal veto to check a strong popular demand was the disallowance of a New York act providing for triennial assemblies. After two long assemblies, lasting ten and nine years respectively, it was felt that more frequent elections were necessary to secure genuine representation. The movement was resisted by Governor Cosby, but in 1737 the triennial act was approved by his successor, Lieutenant Governor Clarke. An elaborate argument was made in its favor, laying stress upon the practice of annual elections in New England and Pennsylvania; but the Board of Trade, accepting the advice of its special counsel, Mr. Fane, recommended the disallowance of the act and an order in council was issued accordingly.[*]

[* Doc. Hist. of N. Y., IV., 243 et seq.]

The home government could not always impose its wishes upon the colonial assemblies. Royal instructions did not prevent temporary grants to governors or extravagant issues of paper money. As a solution of this problem, and also in order to control the legislation of the chartered colonies which was not subject to veto, the House of Lords proposed that all colonial laws should be sent to the Board of Trade, and that except in case of urgency none should take effect until approved by the king in council. This drastic measure, however, was not adopted.[*]

[* Talcott Papers, I., 296-298.]

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Generally speaking, the Whig ministries accepted the mercantilist colonial theories, and governors were carefully instructed to enforce the navigation acts. Colonial enterprises were jealously watched, and the board continued its efforts to check colonial manufactures by encouraging the production of naval stores. Most English statesmen regarded the southern colonies, and more particularly the sugar islands, as deserving special attention and favor, because their trade was more clearly advantageous to the mother-country. In case of conflict, the interests of the northern colonies were likely to be sacrificed to those of the West Indies.

These views were embodied in a considerable number of acts of Parliament dealing with American affairs. The most vital phase of English foreign relations was the antagonism with Spain, arising from the efforts of enterprising English merchants to secure for themselves more of the Spanish-American trade than they could fairly claim under existing treaties. This subject was almost constantly discussed in Parliament, and a more aggressive policy was urged upon the ministry, until in 1739 it was reluctantly forced into war with Spain. These conditions, of course, made it easier for colonial officials to gain the attention of Parliament.[*]

[* Mahon, England, 1713-1783, I.-III., passim; Coxe, Sir R. Walpole, passim; Cobbett, Parliamentary History, VII., VIII., passim.]

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In 1721 a recommendation of the Board of Trade in favor of encouraging the production of naval stores was indorsed in the king's speech to Parliament and a new bounty act was passed. Other acts of this year placed furs and copper on the list of enumerated articles, but, on the other hand, removed all export duties on British manufactures, with a few exceptions. In 1727 Parliament established the right of the Pennsylvanians to import their salt directly from Europe, as the New-Englanders were already allowed to do, and a few years later the same privilege was secured to New York.[*]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 628; Cobbett, Parliamentary History, VII., 913-916; 8 George I., chaps. xii., xv., xviii.; 13 George I., chap. v.; 3 George II., chap. xii.]

With the year 1730 begins a period of considerable parliamentary activity in colonial affairs. Readiness to stimulate desirable lines of trade was shown by allowing the planters, first of South Carolina and then of Georgia, to send their rice, one of the enumerated articles, directly to European countries south of Cape Finisterre. A few years later a similar concession was made to the sugar planters of the West Indies. Generally speaking, however, the spirit of British legislation during the next two decades was restrictive. In 1732 Parliament prohibited the intercolonial trade in hats, and otherwise restricted their manufacture in America. A similar policy with regard to iron manufactures had already been urged, but it was not carried out until the

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act of 1750 prohibiting the manufacture of that metal beyond the stage of pig or bar iron.[*]

[* 3 George II., chap. xxviii.; 8 George II., chap. xix.; 12 George II., chap. xxx.; see below, chap. xvii.]

The most important commercial regulation of this period was the Molasses Act, which, after two years of discussion in Parliament, became law in 1733. Its chief importance consists not in its actual economic effects, but in the light which it throws on colonial policy, and in the constitutional questions which were raised while the bill was under discussion. This act, imposing prohibitory duties on molasses, sugar, and rum imported into the continental colonies from the West Indian colonies of other powers than England, was intended to revive the declining trade of the British West Indian planters by compelling the continental colonies to buy of them instead of encouraging their French and Dutch competitors. Its enforcement would have crippled the commerce of the northern colonies, and its passage in the face of their protests shows clearly the relative importance of the West Indies from the official point of view. Sir John Barnard, one of Walpole's leading antagonists in the House of Commons, and General Oglethorpe, both argued ably but unsuccessfully against this sacrifice of continental interests to those of the islands.[*]

[* 6 George II., chap. xiii.; Cobbett, Parliamentary History, VIII., 856-1200, passim., 1261-1266; see Howard, Preliminaries of the Revolution (Am. Nation, VIII.), chap. vi.]

Three other acts may be mentioned as marking

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some real advance in imperial control. In 1732 Parliament determined to intervene in the judicial administration of the colonies for the protection of British merchants who had complained of legal obstacles in the collection of debts due them in America. It was provided that debts due to residents in Great Britain or to the crown might be proved by testimony taken in England, and that colonial real estate should be "chargeable with all just debts" as "real estates are by the law of England." In 1741 the Land Bank of Massachusetts was summarily dealt with by applying to the colonies the provisions of a previous statute dealing with similar speculative companies. Finally, in 1751, Parliament undertook to check the paper-money craze in New England by prohibiting the issue of legal-tender bills. The act which destroyed the Land Bank was retroactive and therefore peculiarly arbitrary. Mr. Andrew McF. Davis, the leading authority on this subject, has accepted as "probably true" the opinion of John Adams that this act was more influential than the Stamp Act in the development of opposition to the supremacy of Parliament among the people of Massachusetts. Franklin also thought that the hostility of the home government to colonial currency experiments was a large factor in the growth of colonial discontent.[*]

[* 5 George II., chap. vii.; 14 George II., chap. xxxvii.; Davis, Currency and Banking in Mass. Bay, II., chaps. vii.-xii.; Franklin, Works (Bigelow's ed.) III., 418.]

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Some of the more aggressive officials of the Georgian period continued to cherish projects of direct royal government in all of the colonies, and the union of all under one general governor to whom the governors of particular colonies should be subordinate. Little, however, was accomplished in the realization of these ideals.

At the beginning of this period one backward step was taken. Maryland, which had been administered since 1692 by royal governors, was in 1715 re-established as a proprietary province. The Catholicism of the proprietor had been one of the reasons urged for the institution of royal government, and now the succession of a Protestant heir was considered to justify the restoration of full proprietary rights. The negotiations for the surrender of Pennsylvania had also, as has already been observed, come to nothing. Thus the two proprietorships which had been most seriously threatened during the early years of William III. survived to the close of the colonial era.[*]

[* Steiner, in Am. Hist. Assoc., Annual Report, 1899, I., 231 et seq.]

One decided advantage was gained, however, by the abolition of proprietary government in the Carolinas, largely on the initiative of the colonists themselves. Both of the Carolina governments had long been under fire for lax administration of the navigation laws and for various other irregularities. The intolerance of the high-church party, supported

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by the proprietors, helped to bring on a civil war in North Carolina, while in the southern province it provoked an appeal by the colonists to the crown. In the latter case the prestige of the proprietors was weakened by the queen's intervention on behalf of the colonists, and the annulling of the charter was seriously considered.[*]

[* See above, p. 60.]

The exposed position of these frontier colonies also showed the need of a stronger government. This need was illustrated by the struggles of South Carolina with the French and Spaniards, and of North Carolina with the Tuscarora Indians; and it was still further emphasized two years after the peace of Utrecht by the Yemassee war. The Yemassee Indians, who were settled in the southern part of South Carolina, were led, partly by unfriendly treatment at the hands of English traders and partly by the instigation of the Spaniards, to take up arms against the province. The invasion was finally repelled by the colonists themselves, with some help from Virginia and North Carolina; but several hundred settlers were massacred, and the proprietors gave no substantial protection. Exasperated by the negligence of the proprie ors, the colonists in 1716 presented through their agent a memorial asking the intervention of the crown.

Soon afterwards the proprietors gave great offence to the colonists by vetoing a number of popular laws which had been enacted by the assembly.

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The most important was one changing the method of election for the members of the assembly, so that instead of being chosen altogether at Charleston they should be elected by the voters in the various districts of the province. This veto seemed to be intended to secure the continued domination of a little group of politicians in Charleston, and led finally to armed resistance. In 1719 the colonists assembled in arms and called upon their governor, Robert Johnson, to renounce the proprietors and assume the government in the name of the crown. This Johnson loyally refused to do. He was, therefore, set aside and Moore elected governor in his place, with the understanding that he was to hold office for the king.[*]

[* Proceedings of the People of South Carolina, in Carroll, Collections, II., 141-192; N. C. Col. Records, II., 224-234.]

The home government accepted the results of this revolution by appointing Francis Nicholson as the governor of South Carolina, and the attorney-general was ordered to proceed against the charter. No such legal steps were actually taken, however, and the royal government of South Carolina remained for ten years on a purely provisional basis. The proprietors tried at first to recover their control of the government; failing in this attempt, they began negotiations for the surrender of their proprietary rights as a whole. In 1729 these negotiations were consummated by an act of Parliament, and royal governments were then permanently established

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in both provinces. Three years after this event the crown granted a charter for the part of this territory lying between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers to the Georgia trustees. The government of the new province was delegated for twenty years to a private corporation, but it was then to revert to the crown.[*]

[* McCrady, South Carolina under Proprietary Government, chaps. xxiii.-xxx.; 2 George, II., chap. xxxiv.]

From time to time the general plan of abolishing all the chartered governments was revived. In 1715 a bill for the "better regulation of Charter and Proprietary Governments" passed the first and second readings in the House of Commons; and in 1721 the Board of Trade urged that all proprietary governments be abolished. To meet attacks of this kind, Jeremiah Dummer, agent in England for the colony of Massachusetts, wrote his famous Defence of the New England Charters, addressing it to Newcastle's immediate predecessor, Lord Carteret. He defended the colonists effectively against the common charges brought against them, such as lack of zeal in imperial defence, arbitrary government, violation of the navigation acts, and the enactment of laws at variance with those of Great Britain. He asserted strongly the loyalty of the colonists to the mother-country, denied any tendency towards independence, and insisted that the prosperity of the mother-country was bound up with that of the colonies. He held that the prosperity

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of the latter was founded on the liberal provisions of the early charters, which could not, therefore, be withdrawn without serious injury to imperial interests. The power of Parliament to resume the charters was not denied; but, he said, "the question here is not about power but right; and shall not the supreme legislature of all the nation do right?"

During the next quarter-century schemes for the reorganization of the colonial governments were frequently proposed; in 1723 Rhode Island and Connecticut were asked to submit to union with the royal province of New Hampshire; and in 1744 Governor Clinton of New York referred to a printed proposal which he had seen for a general governor over all the continental colonies.[*]

[* Dummer, Defence of the New England Charters; Kellogg, Am. Colonial Charter, in Am. Hist. Assoc., Report, 1903, I., 308 et seq.; N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 627, VI., 268.]

In the same letter Governor Clinton referred to a closely related proposal for colonial taxation. The possibility of taxation by Parliament for the support of colonial administration was discussed at intervals throughout the eighteenth century. In an essay submitted by Bladen to Lord Townshend in 1726, a stamp duty was suggested as a means by which Parliament might raise a revenue in the colonies, and this was the particular form of tax referred to by Clinton in 1744. Clinton declared the colonists were "quite strangers to any duty, but such as they raise themselves," and that the

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proposed tax "might prove a dangerous consequence to His Majesty's interests."[*]

[* N. C. Col. Records, II., 635; Bassett, Writings of William Byrd, 365; Chalmers, Revolt, II., 138.]

The most important parliamentary discussion of taxation and representation took place in the debate on the Molasses Act in 1733, with special reference to a Rhode Island petition against the bill. Sir William Yonge, in arguing against receiving the petition, objected to a clause declaring the bill "prejudicial to their charter," "as if this House had not a power to tax them, or to make any laws for the regulating of the affairs of their colony." Another speaker was sure that "they can have no such charter" which "debars this House from taxing them as well as any other subject of this nation." Sir John Barnard, speaking for the petitioners, argued that the colonists had a special claim to be heard by petition, because "the people of every part of Great Britain have a representative in this House who is to take care of their particular interest, as well as of the general interest of the nation . . . but the people who are the petitioners . . . have no particular representatives in this House; and, therefore, they have no other way of applying or of offering their reasons to this, but in the way of being heard at the bar of the House by their agent here in England." As against this view of Barnard, however, another member, Mr. Conduit, set forth the orthodox theory of virtual representation,

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that as the colonies were "all a part of the people of Great Britain they are generally represented in this House as well as the rest of the people are."[*]

[* Cobbett, Parliamentary History, VIII., 1261-1266.]

In the Annual Register in 1765, for which Edmund Burke was then writing, the statement is made that a scheme for taxing the colonies was proposed to Walpole and rejected by him, with the remark that he would leave that "to some of my successors who may have more courage than I have." In his opinion, the royal exchequer would gain more indirectly by the development of colonial commerce, which would be "taxing them more agreeably to their own constitution and to ours."[*]

[* Annual Register, 1765, p. 25.]

It has been customary to speak of this period of British colonial policy as one of "salutary neglect," but this, like some other attractive generalizations, cannot be accepted without many qualifications. Though the trade laws were less vigorously enforced than they were in later years, and though the proposal of taxation by Parliament was never carried out, the colonists were by no means left to themselves. Popular legislation was repeatedly defeated by the royal veto, and Parliament exerted its authority over the colonies even in the face of strong resistance. Sometimes, as in the suppression of the Massachusetts Land Bank, these assertions of parliamentary authority left a smouldering fire of discontent to trouble the statesmen of a later time.

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It is not easy to determine with precision what in this period were the theories and feelings of the colonists regarding the authority of the home government. If the views of aggressive imperialists had been carried out, if Parliament had remodelled the colonial governments and levied a stamp tax, radical theories like those of Samuel Adams and Thomas Jefferson would probably have come earlier to light. There were, indeed, royal officials under George II., as under Queen Anne, who thought the colonial assemblies were moving clearly towards independence. Attorney-General Bradley of New York set forth this theory at length in 1729, pointing out the difficulty of suppressing a revolt if the colonists were once united; and Dummer thought it necessary to discuss the question in his Defence of the New England Charters.[*]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 901; cf. Anderson, Church of England in the Cols., III., 351.]

Nevertheless, the colonists generally were loyal to the king and did not question the supremacy of Parliament. Dummer, in his argument against legislative resumption of the charters, insisted that the colonists were unreservedly loyal and would accept a decision by Parliament as final, even if it abolished their chartered privileges. He admitted that "the legislative power is absolute and unaccountable, and King, Lords, and Commons may do what they please." Doubtless, as Clinton intimated, there was an underlying assumption that

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taxation by Parliament would be a violation of colonial rights, but the colonists had not yet been obliged to define with precision their theories of constitutional limitations.[*]

[* Dummer, Defence of the New England Charters; cf. Egerton, Short Hist. of Col. Policy, 143; Hutchinson, Hist. of Mass. Bay (ed. of 1795), II., 319.]

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IN spite of the prevalence of similar political ideas among the colonies, there was much of mutual jealousy and antagonism due in part to boundary controversies. In 1702 none of the colonies had its boundaries accurately marked; and in every case except that of New Jersey the disputed lands were of considerable importance for the future development of the colony. Massachusetts had boundary disputes with Rhode Island and Connecticut on the south, and New York on the west; while she could not agree with New Hampshire either regarding the northern limits of the old Bay Colony or the western boundary of Maine. The disputes with New York and New Hampshire were important because of the large area involved; and the comparatively small strips at issue with Rhode Island and Connecticut related to settled townships. Connecticut had also a dispute with Rhode Island on the east and an unsurveyed line on the

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west which was still to cause some trouble with New York.[*]

[* Palfrey, New England, IV., 356-364, 554-559, 586; N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., VI., 125, 143, 454, 510.]

New York had a comparatively small controversy to adjust with New Jersey and a more important one with Pennsylvania as to the whole northern line of Penn's charter. The latter issue did not, however, become serious during the first half of the century because of the slow movement of settlers into that territory. On the south, Penn and his heirs had a much more difficult question to settle. The Baltimores continued to claim the "lower counties" on the Delaware, and the southern line of Pennsylvania was still undetermined when in the second quarter of the eighteenth century immigrants began to enter the disputed territory. Of all the boundary controversies of the period, this was the most persistent and acrimonious. In the south there were similar boundary disputes which embittered the relations of the two Carolinas with each other and those of North Carolina with Virginia.

Before the middle of the eighteenth century marked progress was made towards the settlement of these disputes. The interior lines of New England were substantially determined, though Massachusetts and New York had not yet come to terms regarding the territory between the Hudson and the Connecticut. In 1750 the Pennsylvania-Maryland

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controversy was passed upon by the lord chancellor in England, though there was still some wrangling about details. A few years earlier, the North Carolina lines were drawn for some distance westward from the coast by agreement with her neighbors to the north and south.[*]

[* Shepherd, Proprietary Government in Pa., chap. vii.; N. C. Col. Records, II., viii., 205, IV., viii.]

Trade jealousies were another source of friction. Discriminating duties in favor of home shipping were common and sometimes provoked retaliation, as in 1721, when New Hampshire retaliated against a Massachusetts law imposing double duties and light-house fees upon the inhabitants of the former province. There were similar incidents in the middle and southern colonies, and a serious instance of hostile feeling awakened by commercial regulations occurred between Virginia and North Carolina. The latter colony, being poorly supplied with ports, was accustomed to ship tobacco through Virginia; but this practice was prohibited by the Virginia assembly in acts of 1725 and 1726, on the ground that North Carolina tobacco was of an inferior quality. North Carolina complained to the Board of Trade, which recommended the disallowance of both acts.[*]

[* Weeden, Econ. and Soc. Hist. of New England, II., 593; Hill, "Colonial Tariffs," in Quarterly Journal of Economics, VII., 78; N. C. Col. Records, II., 683, III., 196, 210.]

There was also a considerable intercolonial rivalry in the Indian trade, notably between Virginia and South Carolina and between the latter colony and

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Georgia. In both instances serious ill-feeling developed.[*]

[* Smith, South Carolina, 212 et seq.; N. C. Col. Records, II., 251 et seq.]

Some intercolonial disputes were settled by amicable agreement; but often the intervention of the home government was necessary, and the final award left bad feeling behind on the part of one or both the parties. The difficulty of maintaining cordial relations between neighboring colonies is well illustrated by the experience of two pairs of provinces united for a time by the assignment of a single governor to both governments. New Hampshire and Massachusetts were combined under one governor over forty years, until 1741; when, partly because of the bad feeling between the two provinces, generated by the boundary dispute, this personal union was abandoned and New Hampshire received a separate government. For over thirty years the crown commissioned the same person as governor of New York and New Jersey; but in this case, as in the other, the weaker colony felt that its interests were being sacrificed to those of the stronger, and the practice was given up in 1738. The southern colonies were no more friendly neighbors during much of this period. William Byrd, one of the Virginia commissioners in the boundary dispute, repeatedly expressed his contempt for the North Carolina people; and in 1730 the South Carolina agents in London characterized the same province

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as the "receptacle of all the vagabouns & runaways of the main land of America, for which reason and for their entertaining Pirates they are justly contemned by their neighbors."[*]

[* N. C. Col. Records, II., 394-396; Bassett, Writings of William Byrd, passim.]

Notwithstanding these unpleasant facts of intercolonial jealousy and strife, the most significant thing in the life of the colonies is the growing similarity of their political usages and aspirations. Leaving the two elective governments out of account, the fundamental fact of American politics in this as in the earlier period was the antagonism between the appointed governor and the elected assembly, between the organized colonists and the agent of external authority. The underlying constitutional issues remained essentially as they were at the close of the seventeenth century, but they sometimes presented themselves in different aspects; and among the colonists themselves there appeared new lines of party cleavage.

Numerous controversies arose regarding the composition and organization of the assembly, in which the lower house sought to secure as much freedom as possible from executive control. Thus in North Carolina the lower house refused for many years to admit members elected from districts which had been created by the governor without the sanction of the assembly. Nevertheless, in this, as in a similar controversy in New Hampshire, the representatives

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were finally beaten. The attempts to limit the governor's freedom in summoning and dissolving assemblies also continued. Acts providing for triennial elections were passed during this period in South Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York; but the New Jersey and New York acts were disallowed by the crown. The Board of Trade regarded such acts as interfering with the legitimate prerogatives of the crown, and the governor's point of view was probably stated accurately by Governor Montgomerie of New Jersey, when he said that his predecessors "could not have carried on the publick business so quietly and Successfully as they did, if they had been obliged to call a new Assembly every three years."[*]

[* Raper, North Carolina, 89-92; Greene, Provincial Governor, 147, 155-157.]

One of the most important questions of legislative privilege during this period was whether the house of representatives had the right to choose its own speaker independently of the governor. In most of the colonies, as in the mother-country, the presentation of the speaker to the governor was a mere formality; but in Massachusetts and New Hampshire the governors sometimes rejected candidates chosen by the house. The most important contest took place in Massachusetts in 1720, when Governor Shute vetoed the choice of the opposition leader as speaker of the house, on the ground that the charter gave him a negative upon all acts of

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the general court. The home government finally issued, in 1725, an "explanatory charter" which decided the point in the governor's favor.[*]

[* Hutchinson, Hist. of Mass. Bay, II., 211-214, 226, 241; Poore, Charters and Constitutions, I., 954; N. H. Provincial Papers, IV., 485-488.]

By the beginning of the Hanoverian period the practice of making temporary grants to the governors had been adopted by several of the colonies; but the home government was by no means ready to yield. The ideal of the board was a salary fixed by the crown, and governors were instructed to insist upon permanent settlements. The most interesting contests of this period took place in Massachusetts and New York.

In Massachusetts the crisis came during the administration of Governor Burnet in 1728. The governor argued strongly for a permanent civil list as necessary to his freedom of action in legislative matters. He supported this argument by referring to the practice of the mother-country, and claimed also that temporary grants had been used to extort legislation in opposition to the governor's judgment. The position of the house was summed up in a resolution declaring that, after a salary had once been settled, the governor with his uncertain tenure would have little interest in serving the welfare of the people. In this instance the governor held to his instructions and died at his post, refusing to the end the liberal grants which the assembly

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was willing to give if he would only consent to give up the principle of a permanent establishment. The Privy Council in 1729, after the Massachusetts agents had argued the assembly's case, commended Burnet and reiterated the demand for a permanent settlement of the governor's salary; but under Burnet's successors, Belcher and Shirley, the home government practically gave up the fight. A permanent settlement was still urged, but if that could not be had, temporary grants might be accepted.

In New York the practice for several years after Queen Anne's War was to grant the salary list for periods of five or three years; but the house finally resolved to grant revenue for one year only, and the home government was obliged to submit. At the beginning of the last French war the board practically acknowledged its defeat, as it had already done in Massachusetts, by instructing the governor not to press the matter. The same issue arose in South Carolina during the first years of the royal government, and the outcome was the same.[*]

[* Greene, Provincial Governor, 168-173; Smith, South Carolina, 75-77.]

The result of these controversies was that in South Carolina as well as in New England and the middle colonies the provincial assemblies had in their hands an effective offset to the administrative control exercised by the home government. A contemporary

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statement regarding the proprietary province of Pennsylvania may be taken as applicable to several of the royal governments: "Every proprietary Governor has two Masters: one who gives him his Commission and one who gives him his Pay."[*]

[* Historical Review of the Const. and Govt. of Pa. (1759), 72.]

The powers thus gained, the assemblies were not slow to use for purposes which the royalists regarded as subversive of the constitution; and in these radical measures New England continued to exercise a strong influence, which was naturally felt most strongly in the neighboring provinces of New York and New Jersey, where it attracted the attention of the royal governors. Cosby, of New York, said in 1732 that the "example and spirit of the Boston people begins to spread amongst these colonys in a most prodigious maner"; and a few years later Governor Morris, of New Jersey, wrote of the fondness of his assembly for the example of "their neighbours in Pennsylvania & New England." It is noteworthy that the New York assembly, in defending the triennial act of 1737, urged that their people ought not to be deprived of a privilege enjoyed by their neighbors. Even in the Carolinas the prevalence of "commonwealth maxims" was attributed to New England influence.[*]

[* Chalmers, Revolt, II., 99; Morris Papers, 162; N. J. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., V., 321; S. C. Hist. Soc., Collections, I., 283.]

The most common encroachments of the provincial

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assemblies were in the field of finance. In several colonies the assemblies attempted, with more or less success, either to authorize payments of money without the governor's warrant, required by his instructions; or to make the warrant a mere formality by requiring a particular vote of the representatives in each instance. The assemblies also generally refused to allow the council to amend money bills, a policy which had appeared much earlier and was unsuccessfully resisted by the Board of Trade. In the first years of the royal government in South Carolina the issue was raised there. The governor's instructions explicitly gave the council equal rights with the house; but the assembly denied that the king could limit their privileges in this way, and insisted upon their right to all the privileges of the House of Commons. The dispute went on for over twenty years and the house finally carried its point. In 1740 the Board of Trade made a stand in favor of the New Jersey council, but here again it was defeated. By the middle of the eighteenth century the exclusive control in the lower house of money bills was almost everywhere established.[*]

[* N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., VI., 614; Greene, Provincial Governor, 122, 180; Raper, North Carolina, 197; Smith, South Carolina, 289 et seq.]

Provincial treasurers were generally appointed by the assemblies during the quarter-century following the English revolution; but there was some controversy

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as to whether the appointment should be controlled by the lower house alone or whether it should follow the regular process of legislation by governor, council, and assembly. Usually the control rested practically if not formally with the lower house. Sometimes, as in Virginia and North Carolina, the close relation between the House and the treasurer was shown by combining that office with the speakership in a way which suggests the position of the English chancellor of the exchequer in the House of Commons.

Other executive officers were frequently appointed by the assemblies during the eighteenth century. When, about the middle of the century, Governor Glen of South Carolina declared that the executive power was largely in the hands of commissioners appointed by the assembly, he made a statement which, with some allowance for exaggeration, might have been made with regard to several of the provincial governments. In 1751 the Board of Trade made a long statement about New York, in which they rehearsed the "fatal measures, by which the legal prerogative of the Crown (which alone can keep this or any Province dependent on the Mother Country) has been reduced" and "the most essencial powers of Govermt violently wrested out of the hands of the Governor."[*]

[* Greene, Provincial Governor, 183-195; N. Y. Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist., VI., 614 et seq.]

While governor and assembly were thus struggling

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for control of the provincial administration, other important issues were raised, involving the rights of individuals and the extent to which they shared in the legal privileges of English subjects. The general principle was stated during this period in two important legal opinions. The first, delivered by Richard West, special counsel to the Board of Trade, in 1720, declared that the common law of Eng land was the common law of the plantations." Let an Englishman," he said, "go where he will, he carries as much of law and liberty with him as the nature of things will bear." The second opinion was delivered by Attorney-General Yorke in 1729, and dealt with the more difficult question of the statute law, which had been for many years an important political issue in Maryland. With special reference to that colony, Yorke asserted that general statutes enacted by Parliament since the settlement of the province, and not expressly applied to that colony or to the colonies in general, were not applicable there, unless they had either been declared so by act of assembly or "received there by long uninterrupted usage or practice," which might imply the tacit consent of the proprietor and the colonists.

The Maryland assembly asserted, however, that general statutes passed by Parliament, and not specifically restricted, were the common privilege of English subjects whether in England or America. The proprietor denied this proposition; and though the matter was frequently discussed and the assembly

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gained a partial victory, it was never precisely settled.[*]

[* Chalmers, Opinions, 206; Mereness, Maryland, 257-278; see below, p. 221.]

As a part of their inheritance in the common law, the American colonists enjoyed the familiar safeguards of property and personal liberty, and were accustomed to trial by jury both in civil and criminal cases. The habeas-corpus act of 1679 was not applicable to the colonies, and their acts extending its provisions to themselves were sometimes disallowed; but the privilege of the writ was generally secured in practice under the common law. Certain other personal rights now regarded as a matter of course were not then generally conceded. One of these was religious liberty; for, notwithstanding the substantial progress of the previous century, Catholics and Jews were still deprived of equal rights, and many men were compelled to support religious establishments of which they disapproved. So also the right of free criticism of public men and measures was not enjoyed as of course by the American of the provincial era, but was the outcome of serious conflicts with arbitrary power.[*]

[* Carpenter, "The Habeas Corpus" in Am. Hist. Review, VIII., 18-27.]

Shortly before the revolution of 1688 a clause had been commonly inserted in the governor's instructions providing that no book should be printed and no printing-press set up without the governor's

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leave. This clause was retained during the reigns of William and Anne, and for a time in some of the colonies the censorship was actually enforced. In 1721, Governor Shute of Massachusetts asked for penal legislation against the authors of seditious papers, but the house of representatives refused, and resolved instead that "to suffer no books to be printed without a license from the governor will be attended with innumerable inconveniences and danger." In the instructions to later governors the censorship clause was omitted.[*]

[* Greene, Provincial Governor, 127.]

Yet the withdrawal of the governor's censorship by no means perfectly secured the free expression of public opinion, which was still much restricted by prosecutions for criminal libel, in which the rights of defendants were not always thoroughly guarded. Representative assemblies also were at times guilty of arbitrary procedure in this respect.[*]

[* Cf. above, p. 88.]

Fortunately for the American people, the principle of a free press found an able defender in 1735, when John Peter Zenger, publisher of the Weekly Journal in New York, was tried for publishing false and malicious libels against Governor Cosby. Cosby had removed the chief-justice, Lewis Morris, for deciding against him in a suit about his salary, and the libels consisted in sharp criticisms of the governor's conduct in the columns of Zenger's Journal. The case was tried before the new chief-justice, De

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Lancey, who had a natural bias against the prisoner. According to De Lancey's theory the jury had to decide only on the fact of publication, simply accepting the decision of the court as to the libellous character of the statements made. This would of course have secured Zenger's conviction.

The defendant's friends had, however, secured the services of an. able counsellor in the person of Andrew Hamilton, a well-known lawyer and politician of Pennsylvania. Hamilton insisted that the jury must decide whether the publication was really a false and malicious libel, and argued strongly for public criticism as the only safeguard of free government. By this appeal he won the jury, who acquitted Zenger and thus established a new barrier against arbitrary power.[*]

[* Rutherfurd, John Peter Zenger.]

These constitutional controversies between the colonists and their governors were complicated by other disputes, especially on economic issues. In the royal and proprietary governments the land question was in some form or other an almost constant source of friction, the governors finding it difficult to secure the proper collection of quit-rents. In the proprietary provinces the colonists struggled to secure public control of land administration.

Paper-money issues constituted another prolific source of party conflicts in which the governors and the administration parties sometimes stood out

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against the popular demand, but often yielded to the pressure of colonial opinion, especially when they needed financial support. Even in the elective governments this became a disturbing political issue. In 1731, Governor Joseph Jenckes of Rhode Island carried his opposition to paper-money issues to the point of indorsing his dissent upon a bill which had been passed by both houses of the assembly. The charter, however, made no reference to an executive veto, and the legal advisers of the home government decided against the governor, holding that the assembly might make any law not actually in conflict with the laws of England. At the next election Jenckes lost his office.[*]

[* R. I. Col. Records, IV., 456-461.]

No definite and permanent organization of political parties can be traced in the provincial era, and the lines of party cleavage varied at different times and in different colonies. In Massachusetts there was a tendency to party division between social classes, especially during the period in which currency problems were under discussion. A radical party, recruited largely from the farmers and small traders, was opposed by the conservative "men of estates and the principal merchants," who held out against the paper-money radicals and became later the basis of a distinctly royalist party. There was a similar division of parties in Rhode Island.[*]

[* Hutchinson, Hist. of Mass. Bay, (ed. of 1795), II., 188, 200, 315, 354, Bates, R. I. and the Formation of the Union, 36.]

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In New York, party contests assumed a more distinctly factional character. The suffrage was closely limited, and politics during the first half of the eighteenth century was largely a contest between a few influential families, such as the Livingstons and the De Lanceys, who built up their influence by means of marriage alliances and other social ties. This aristocratic type of family politics continued until after the War of Independence; but the constitutional controversies between the governor and the assembly were preparing the way for more clearly defined parties based on political principles rather than on personal allegiance.[*]

[* Becker, "Nominations in Colonial New York," in Am. Hist. Review, VI., 260-275.]

In Pennsylvania the Quakers formed a compact political body which until the middle of the eighteenth century controlled the provincial assembly, with the help of the conservative Germans. By that time the Penn family had joined the established church and the Quakers were usually in opposition. On the proprietary side there were usually the Anglicans, a small but relatively influential party, and the Presbyterians. During the last French war this proprietary party favored vigorous measures of defence. The comparative conservatism of the dominant Quaker party may be illustrated by the more moderate paper-money issues of Pennsylvania as compared with New England.[*]

[* Sharpless, Quaker Experiment in Government, I., chap. iv.]

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In the tobacco colonies, especially in Maryland, the divergent interests of the large and small planters led to important political disputes as to the regulation of the tobacco trade. Gradually the poorer and less educated people began to find political leaders in the lawyer class. In Virginia a prominent feature of politics during the first half of the eighteenth century was the great power exercised by a small group of aristocratic families who were strongly represented in the council and were able to make quite uncomfortable any governor whose policy interfered with the interests of their class. In South Carolina there was a strong group of Charleston merchants which, until about 1760, formed the backbone of the government party, opposing the paper-money legislation desired by the planters and taking a generally conservative position on public questions. It was largely this class which dominated the council, while the planters controlled the lower house.[*]

[* Mereness, Maryland, pt. i., chaps. iv., v.; Bassett, Writings of William Byrd, Introd.; Spotswood, Official Letters, passim; Smith, South Carolina, 234, 330.]