it too delicate for a public letter. However, as it appears to me that the welfare of this Province, the honor of the British Government, and the future connection between them both depend upon the right improvement of the time present, I have put the thoughts to writing in a letter, in which I have avoided all personalities which may discover the writer, and even the signing and addressing it. If these hints are like to be of use, communicate them in such a manner that the writer may not be known, unless it is in confidence. If they come too late, or disagree with the present system, destroy the paper. All I can say for them is that they are fully considered and are well intended.
“I am,” etc.
This relation shows that the popular leaders were right in their judgment, that they had broader work before them than to deal with the special matter of taxation, and that the presence of the troops meant the beginning of arbitrary government. The duty of the hour was not shirked. The Patriots could not know the extent of the Governor’s misrepresentations; but they knew from the tone of the Parliamentary debates, that they were regarded as children, with a valid claim, perhaps, to be well governed, but not as Englishmen, with coequal rights to govern themselves, and that the British aristocracy meant to cover them with its cold shade. And when the Loyalists arraigned the Charter and town-meetings and juries as difficulties in the way of good order, Shippen, in the “Gazette,” (January 25, 1769,) said,–“The Province has been, and may be again, quietly and happily governed, while these terrible difficulties have subsisted in their full force. They are, indeed, wise checks upon power in favor of the people. But power vested in some rulers can brook no check. To assert the most undoubted rights of human nature, and of the British Constitution, they term faction; and having embarrassed a free government by their own impolitic measures, they fly to military power.”
It may be asked, What came of the recommendations of Bernard? “I know,” Hutchinson wrote, (May 6, 1769,) “the Ministry, when I wrote you last, had determined to push it [the alteration of the Constitution] in Parliament. They laid aside the thought a little while. The latter end of February they took it up again. I have reason to think it is laid aside a second time.” There was a third time also. The Patriots for six years endured a steady aggression on their constitutional rights, which had the single object in view of checking the republican idea, when the scheme was taken up and pressed to a consummation. The Parliamentary acts of 1774, as to town-meetings, trial by jury, and the Council of Massachusetts, aimed a deadly blow at the local self-government. It was the subjugation that John Adams judged was symbolized by the military rule of 1768. Not until they saw this, did the generation of that day feel justified in invoking the terrible arbiter of war. Nor did they draw the awful sword until the Thirteen Colonies, in Congress assembled, (1774,) solemnly pledged each other to stand as one people in defence of the old local government. This was in the majesty of revolution. It is profanation to compare with this patience and glory the insurrection begun by South Carolina. She–the first time such an organization ever did it–assumed to be a nation; and then madly led off in a suicidal war on the National Government, although the three branches of it, Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary, recognized every constitutional obligation, and had not attempted an invasion of any local right.
A month after the Governor transmitted his plan for an alteration of the Constitution, he renewed, in an elaborate letter to Lord Hillsborough, (January 24, 1769,) his old allegation, that the popular leaders designed by their September town-meeting to inaugurate insurrection, and by the Convention to make their proposed insurrection general,–and that the plan was, to remove the King’s Governor and resume the old Charter. “A chief of the faction” –this was a sample of the evidence–“said that he was always for gentle measures; for he was only for driving the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor out of the Province, and taking the government into their own hands. Judge, my Lord, what must be the measures proposed by others, when this is called a gentle measure.” And he advised the Minister, that, to aid him in the execution of the orders he had received, he had formed a Cabinet Council of three principal officers of the Crown, whose zeal, ability, and fidelity could not be suspected. On the next day (January 25) the Governor devoted a despatch to Lord Hillsborough to remarks upon the press, and especially the “Boston Gazette” and Edes and Gill–“They may be said to be no more than mercenary printers,” are the Governor’s words,–“but they have been and still are the trumpeters of sedition, and have been made the apparent instruments of raising that flame in America which has given so much trouble and is still likely to give more to Great Britain and her Colonies”; and it seemed to the Governor that “the first step for calling the chiefs of the faction to account would be by seizing their printers, together with their papers, if it could be.” He would not pronounce any particular piece absolutely treason, but he sent to his Lordship a complete file of this journal from the 14th of August, 1767, “when the present troubles began.”
The next official action on the Patriot side was taken by the Selectmen, who, in a touching as well as searching address to the Governor, (February 18, 1769,) requested him to communicate to them such representations of facts only as he had judged proper to make to the Ministry during the past year relative to the town, in order that, by knowing precisely what had been alleged against its proceedings or character, the town might have an opportunity to vindicate itself. After characterizing as truly alarming to a free people the array of ships of war around it and the troops within it, the address proceeds,–“Your Excellency can witness for the town that no such aid is necessary; loyalty to the sovereign, and an inflexible zeal for the support of His Majesty’s authority and the happy Constitution, is its just character; and we may appeal to an impartial world, that peace and order were better maintained in the town before it was even rumored that His Majesty’s troops were to be quartered among us than they have been since”; and the judgment is expressed, that the opinion entertained abroad as to the condition of things in Boston could have arisen only from a great misapprehension, by His Majesty’s Ministers, as to the behavior of individuals or the public transactions of the town.
To this rather troublesome request the Governor returned a very brief and curt answer,–that he had no reason to think that the public transactions had been misapprehended by the Government, “or that their opinions thereon were founded upon any other accounts than those published by the town itself”; and he coolly added,–“If, therefore, you can vindicate yourselves from such charges as may arise from your own publications, you will, in my opinion, have nothing further to apprehend.”
A week later, the Selectmen waited on the Governor with another address, which assumed that his reply to the former address had substantially vindicated the town as a corporation, as it had published nothing but its own transactions in town-meeting legally assembled. And now the Selectmen averred, that, if the town had suffered from the disorders of the eighteenth of March and the tenth of June, “the only disorders that had taken place in the town within the year past,” the Governor’s words were full testimony to the point, that it must be in consequence of some partial or false representations of those disorders to His Majesty’s Ministers; and the address entreated the Governor to condescend to point out wherein the town, in its public transactions, had militated with any law or the British constitution of government, so that either the town might be made sensible of the illegality of its proceedings, or its innocence might appear in a still clearer light.
The following sentence constituted the whole of the reply of the royal representative: for what else could such a double-dealer say?
“Gentlemen,–As in my answer to your former address I confined myself to you as Selectmen and the town as a Body, I did not mean to refer to the disorders on the eighteenth of March or of the tenth of June, but to the transactions in the town-meetings and the proceedings of the Selectmen in consequence thereof.
“FRA: BERNARD.
“Feb. 24, 1769.”
The town next, at the annual March meeting, petitioned the King to remove the troops. This petition is certainly a striking paper, and places in a strong light the earnest desire of the popular leaders to steer clear of everything that might tend to wound British pride or in any way to inflame the public mind of the mother-country, and to impress on the Government their deep concern at the twin charges brought against the town of disorder and disloyalty. While lamenting the June riot, they averred that it was discountenanced by the body of the inhabitants and immediately repressed; but with a confidence, they said, which will ever accompany innocence and truth, they declared that the courts had never been interrupted, not even that of a single magistrate,–that not an instance could be produced of so much as an attempt to rescue any criminal out of the hands of justice,–that duties required by Acts of Parliament held to be grievous had been regularly paid,–and that all His Majesty’s subjects were disposed orderly and dutifully to wait for that relief which they hoped from His Majesty’s wisdom and clemency and the justice of Parliament. After reviewing elaborately the representations that had been made of the condition of the town, with “the warmest declarations of their attachment to their constitutional rights,” they pronounced those accounts to be ill-grounded which represented them as held to their “allegiance and duty to the best of sovereigns only by the bond of terror and the force of arms.” The petition then most earnestly supplicates His Majesty to remove from the town a military power which the strictest truth warranted them in declaring unnecessary for the support of the civil authority among them, and which they could not but consider as unfavorable to commerce, destructive to morals, dangerous to law, and tending to overthrow the civil constitution. “Your Majesty,” was the utterance of Boston, and in one of those town-meetings that were heralded even from the Throne and Parliament as instrumentalities of rebellion, “possesses a glory superior to that of any monarch on earth,–the glory of being at the head of the happiest civil constitution in the world, and under which human nature appears with the greatest advantage and dignity,–the glory of reigning over a free people, and of being enthroned in the hearts of your subjects. Your Majesty, therefore, we are sure, will frown, not upon those who have the warmest attachment to this constitution and to their sovereign, but upon such as shall be found to have attempted by their misrepresentations to diminish the blessings of your Majesty’s reign, in the remotest parts of your dominions.”
This is not the language of party-adroitness or of a low cunning, but the calm utterance of truth by American manhood. There is no indication of the authorship of the petition, but a strong committee was chosen at the meeting which adopted it, consisting of James Otis, Samuel Adams, Thomas Cushing, Richard Dana, Joseph Warren, John Adams, and Samuel Quincy, to consider the subject of vindicating the town from the misrepresentations to which it had been subjected. This petition, accompanied by a letter penned by Samuel Adams, was transmitted (April 8, 1769) to Colonel Barre, with the request that he would present it, by his own hand, to His Majesty. Both the letter and the petition requested the transmission to Boston of all Bernard’s letters, a specimen only of which had now been received. “Conscious,” the letter said, “of their own innocence, it is the earnest desire of the town that you would employ your great influence to remove from the mind of our Sovereign, his Ministers, and Parliament, the unfavorable sentiments that have been formed of their conduct, or at least obtain from them the knowledge of their accusers and the matters alleged against them, and an opportunity offered of vindicating themselves.”
The letters just referred to as having been received from England were six in number, five written by Governor Bernard and one by General Gage, which contained specimens of the characteristic misrepresentations of political affairs by the crown officials; and, having been transmitted to the Council, this body felt called upon to act in the matter, which they did (April 15, 1769) in a spirited letter addressed to Lord Hillsborough. This letter is occupied mainly with the various questions touching the introduction and the quartering of the troops. Again were the disorders of the eighteenth of March and the tenth of June reviewed and explained; the charge made by the Governor, that the Council refused to provide quarters for the troops out of servility to the populace, was pronounced to be without foundation or coloring of truth; and the Council boldly charged upon Bernard, that his great aim was the destruction of the constitution to which, as Englishmen and by the Charter, they were entitled,–“a constitution,” they remark, “dearly purchased by our ancestors and dear to us, and which we persuade ourselves will be continued to us.” Then, also, they charged that no Council had borne what the present Council had borne from Bernard; that his whole conduct with regard to the troops was arbitrary and unbecoming the dignity of his station; and that his common practice, in case the Council did not come into his measures, of threatening to lay their conduct before His Majesty, was absurd and insulting.
The troops, during the progress of the events which have been related, did not redeem the promise, as to discipline and order, which General Gage made for them to the Council. After the arrival of the Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Regiments, General Pomeroy continued the commander through the winter, and down to the month of May; and he made himself popular with the inhabitants. Still, the four regiments consisted, to a great degree, of such rough material, that they could not, in the idleness in which they were kept, be controlled. “The soldiers,” Andrew Eliot writes, January 29, 1769, “were in raptures at the cheapness of spirituous liquors among us, and in some of their drunken hours have been insolent to some of the inhabitants”; and he further remarks that “the officers are the most troublesome, who, many of them, are as intemperate as the men.” Thus, while the temptation to excess was strong, the restraint of individual position was weak, and both privates and officers became subjects of legal proceedings as disturbers of the public peace.
The routine of military discipline grated rudely on old customs. Citizens who, like their ancestors for a century and a half, had walked the streets with perfect freedom, were annoyed at being obliged to answer the challenge of sentinels who were posted at the Custom-House and other public places, and at the doors of the officers’ lodgings. Then the usual quiet of Sunday was disturbed by the changes of the guards, with the sounds of fife and drum, and the tunes of “Nancy Dawson” and “Yankee Doodle”; church-goers were annoyed by parties of soldiers in the streets, and the whole community outraged by horse-racing on the Common. Applications for redress had been ineffectual; and General Pomeroy was excused for not checking some of these things, on the ground that he was controlled by a superior officer. His successor, General Mackay, gave great satisfaction by prohibiting, in general orders, (June 15, 1769,) horse-racing on the Common on the Lord’s day by any under his command, and also by forbidding soldiers to be in the streets during divine service, a practice that had been long disagreeable to the people.
In one way and another the troops became sources of irritation. The Patriots, mainly William Cooper, the town clerk, prepared a chronicle of this perpetual fret, which contains much curious matter obtained through access to authentic sources of information, private and official. This diary was first printed in New York, and reprinted in the newspapers of Boston and London, under the title of “Journal of Occurrences.” The numbers, continued until after the close of Bernard’s administration, usually occupied three columns of the “Boston Evening Post,” and constituted a piquant record of the matters connected with the troops and general politics. It attracted much attention, and the authors of it formed the subject of a standing toast at the Liberty celebrations. Hutchinson averred that it was composed with great art and little truth. After this weekly “Journal of the Times,” as it was now called, had been published four months, Governor Bernard devoted to it an entire official letter addressed to Lord Hillsborough. He said that this publication was intended “to raise a general clamor against His Majesty’s government in England and throughout America, as well as in Massachusetts”; and that in this way the Patriots “flattered themselves that they should get the navy and army removed, and again have the government and Custom-House in their own hands.” The idea of such disloyal purposes excited the Governor to the most acrimonious criticism. “It is composed,” he informed Lord Hillsborough, “by Adams and his associates, among which there must be some one at least of the Council; as everything that is said or done in Council, which can be made use of, is constantly perverted, misrepresented, and falsified in this paper. But if the Devil himself was of the party, as he virtually is, there could not have been got together a greater collection of impudent, virulent, and seditious lies, perversions of truth, and misrepresentations, than are to be found in this publication. Some are entirely invented, and first heard of from the printed papers; others are founded in fact, but so perverted as to be the direct contrary of the truth; other part of the whole consists of reflections of the writer, which pretend to no other authority but his own word. To set about answering these falsities would be a work like that of cleansing Augeas’s stable, which is to be done only by bringing in a stream strong enough to sweep away the dirt and collectors of it all together.” Doubtless there were exaggerations in this journal. It would be strange, if there were not. If the perversions of truth were greater than the Governor’s misrepresentations of the proceedings of the inhabitants on the eighteenth of March, or on the tenth of June, or of what was termed “the September Rebellion,” they deserved more than this severe criticism. But, in the main, the general allegations, as to grievances suffered by the people from the troops, are borne out by private letters and official documents; and a plain statement of the course of Francis Bernard shows that they did not exceed the truth as to him.
The troops continued under the command of General Pomeroy until the arrival (April 30, 1769) of Hon. Alexander Mackay, Colonel of the Sixty-Fifth Regiment, a Major-General on the American establishment, and a member of the British Parliament, when the command of the troops, so it was announced, in the Eastern District of America, devolved on him. When General Pomeroy left the town, the press, of all parties, and even the “Journal of the Times,” highly complimented his conduct both as an officer and a gentleman.
The crown officials found themselves, at this period, in an awkward situation as to arrests of the popular leaders. They had recommended to the Government what they termed the slight punishment of disqualification, by Act of Parliament, from engaging in civil service; but the Ministry and their supporters determined on the summary proceeding of prosecutions under existing law for treason, thinking that few cases would be necessary,–and all agreed that these should be selected from Boston. On this point of singling out Boston for punishment, whatever other measures might be proposed, there was entire unanimity of sentiment. Thus, Lord Camden, on being applied to by the Prime-Minister for advice, suggested a repeal of the Revenue Act in favor of other Provinces, but the execution of it with rigor in Massachusetts, saying,–“There is no pretence for violence anywhere but at Boston; that is the ringleading Province; and if any country is to be chastised, the punishment ought to be levelled there.” As to the policy of arrests, in Lord Barrington’s judgment, five or six examples would be sufficient for all the Colonies, and he thought that it was right they should be made in Boston, the only place where there had been actual crime; for “they,” his words are, “would be enough to carry terror to the wicked and factious spirits all over the continent, and would show that the subjects of Great Britain must not rebel with impunity anywhere.” The King and Parliament stood pledged to make arrests; Lord Hillsborough, in his instructions, had urged them again and again; the private letters of the officials addressed to Bernard were refreshingly full and positive as to the advantage which such exercise of the national authority would be to the King’s cause; the British press continually announced that they were to be made; and all England was looking to see representative men of America, who had dared to deny any portion of the authority of Parliament, occupy lodgings in London Tower. And yet, though it had been announced in Parliament that the object in sending troops was to bring rioters to justice, not a man had been put under arrest; and the only requisition that had been made for eight months upon a military power which was considered to be invincible was that which produced the inglorious demonstration at the Manufactory House occupied by John Brown the weaver. So ridiculous was the figure which the British Lion cut on the public stage of Boston!
Governor Bernard not unlikely felt more keenly the awkwardness of all this from having received, as a reward for service, the honor of a Baronetcy of Great Britain. The “Gazette,” in announcing this, (May 1, 1769,) has an ironical article addressing the new Baronet thus:–“Your promotion, Sir, reflects an honor on the Province itself,–an honor which has never been conferred upon it since the thrice happy administration of Sir Edmund Andres, of precious memory, who was also a Baronet”; and in a candid British judgment to-day, (that of Lord Mahon,) the honor was “a most ill-timed favor surely, when he had so grievously failed in gaining the affections or confidence of any order or rank of men within his Province.” The subject occupies a large space in the private correspondence, and the title was the more flattering and acceptable to the Governor from being exempted from the usual concomitant of heavy expense as fees. But whatever other service he had rendered, he had not rendered what was looked upon as most vital, the service of making arrests.
At this period the Governor held a consultation with distinguished political leaders, consisting of the Secretary, Andrew Oliver, who had been Stamp-Officer, the Judge of Admiralty, Robert Auchmuty, who was an eminent lawyer, and the Chief Justice, Hutchinson, who was counted the ablest man of the party, all ultra Loyalists, to consider the future policy as to arrests,–all doubtless feeling that the non-action course needed explanation. The details of this consultation are given at such length, and with such minuteness, by Bernard, in a letter addressed to Lord Hillsborough, that these learned political doctors can almost be seen making a diagnosis of the prevalent treason-disease and discussing proposed prescriptions. They carefully considered what had been done at the great public meetings, and what had been printed in the “Boston Gazette,” which had been all collected and duly certified, and had been faithfully transmitted to Westminster, where distinctions of law were better known than they were in Boston. But, after legal scrutiny there, no specifications of acts amounting to treason had been made out as proper bases for proceedings, and it could not be expected that the local authorities would be wiser than their superiors; and thus this class of offences was set aside. To deal with other matters of treason, and especially with “the Rebellion of September,” was found to be involved in difficulties. The members of the faction were now behaving “very cautiously and inoffensively,” and so nothing could be made out of the present; and as they would not bear witness against each other as to the past, it was not easy from old affairs to make out cases of treason. Former private consultations of a treasonable character, it was said, lacked connection with overt acts, and the overt acts of a treasonable character lacked connection with the prior consultations: as, for instance, they said, the consultation to seize the Castle was treasonable, but it was not followed by an overt act,–and the overt act of the tar-barrel signal on the beacon-pole was treasonable, but it could not be traced to a prior consultation so as to evidence the intent. So these acute crown officials went on in their deliberations, and came to the conclusion, which Bernard officially communicated (May 25, 1769) to Lord Hillsborough, in the long letter above referred to, that they could not fix upon any acts “that amounted to actual treason, though many of them approached very near to it.”
The Governor, meantime, had issued precepts to the towns to return members of the General Court; this made each locality (May, 1769) alive with politics; and he stated to Lord Hillsborough, as a further reason for not polling inquiry into treasonable practices, that he was anxious not to irritate the people more than he felt obliged to. The question of the removal of the troops was now discussed in the little country forums, and the resolves and instructions to the Representatives, printed in the journals, reecho, in a spirited manner and with great ability, the political sentiment which had been embodied in official papers. They contain earnest protestations of a determination to maintain His Most Sacred Majesty George the Third, their rightful sovereign, his crown, dignity, and family; to maintain their Charter immunities, with all their rights derived from God and Nature, and to transmit them inviolable to their latest posterity; and they charge the Representatives not to allow, by vote or resolution, a right in any power on earth to tax the people to raise a revenue except in the General Assembly of the Province. All urged action relative to the troops, and several put this as the earliest duty of the Assembly, as the presence of the troops tended to awe or control freedom of debate. These utterances of the towns, which the journals of May contain, make a glowing record of the spirit of the time.
The Selectmen of Boston, on issuing the usual warrants for an election of Representatives, requested General Mackay to order the troops out of town on the day (May 8, 1769) of the town-meeting; but though he felt obliged to decline to do this, yet, in the spirit in which he acted during his entire residence here, he kept the troops, on this day, confined to their barracks. The town, after choosing Otis, Cushing, Adams, and Hancock as Representatives, adopted a noble letter of instructions, not only rehearsing the grievances, but asserting ideas of freedom and equality, as to political rights, that had been firmly grasped. They arraigned the Act of Parliament of 4th Geo. III., extending admiralty jurisdiction and depriving the colonists of native juries, as a distinction staring them in the face which was made between the subject in Great Britain and the subject in America,–the Parliament in one section guarding the people of the realm, and securing to them trial by jury and the law of the land, and in the next section depriving Americans of those important rights; and this distinction was pronounced a brand of disgrace upon every American, a degradation below the rank of an Englishman. While the instructions claimed for each subject in America equality of political right with each subject in England, they claimed also for the General Court the dignity of a free assembly, and declared the first object of their labors to be a removal of “those cannon and guards and that clamorous parade that had been daily about the Court-House since the arrival of His Majesty’s troops.”
The country towns, which now responded so nobly to the demand of the hour, were controlled by freemen. Among these it was rare to find any who could not read and write; they were mostly independent freeholders, with person and property guarded, as it used to be said in the Boston journals of the time, not by one law for the peasant and another law for the prince, but by equal law for all; they exercised liberty of thought and political action, and their proceedings, as they appeared in the public prints, gave great alarm to the Governor. He now informed Lord Hillsborough that the Sons of Liberty had got as high as ever; and that out of a party which used to keep the opposition to Government under, there were reckoned to be not above ten members returned in a House of above one hundred and twenty. After giving an account of a meeting of “the factious chiefs” in Boston, held a few days before the General Court assembled, he says,–“To see that faction which has occasioned all the troubles in this Province, and I may add in America too, has quite overturned this government, now triumphant and driving over every one who has loyalty and resolution to stand up in defence of the rights of the King and Parliament, gives me great concern.”
This result of the elections, which the crown officials ascribed to a talent for mischief in the popular leaders, naturally flowed from the exhibition of arbitrary power. The introduction of the troops was a suicidal measure to the Loyalists, and in urging their continuance in the Province the crown officials had been carrying an exhaustive burden; while, even in every failure to effect their removal, the Whigs had won a fresh moral victory. There was, in consequence, a more perfect union of the people than ever. The members returned to the General Court constituted a line representation of the character, ability, and patriotism of the Province; many of the names were then obscure which subsequent large service to country was to make famous as the names of heroes and sages; and such a body of men was now to act on the question of a removal of the troops.
It would be travelling a beaten path to relate the proceedings of this session of the General Court; and only a glance will be necessary to show its connection with the issue that had so long stirred the public mind. Immediately on taking the oath of office, at nine o’clock, the House, through a committee, presented an elaborate and strong protest to the Governor against the presence of the troops. They averred that they meant to be loyal; that no law, however grievous, had in the execution of it been opposed in the Province; but, they said, as they came as of right to their old Parliament-House, to exercise, as of right, perfect freedom of debate, they found a standing army in their metropolis, and a military guard with cannon pointed at their very doors; and, in the strong way of the old Commonwealth men, they protested against this presence as “a breach of privilege, and inconsistent with that dignity and freedom with which they had a right to deliberate, consult, and determine.” The Governor’s laconic reply was,–“I have no authority over His Majesty’s ships in this port or his troops within this town; nor can I give any orders for their removal.” The House, resolving that they proceeded to take part in the elections of the day from necessity and to conform the Charter, chose their Clerk, Speaker, and twenty-eight Councillors.
The Governor at ten o’clock received at the Province House a brilliant array of officials, when an elegant collation was served; at twelve, escorted by Captain Paddock’s company, he repaired to the Council-Chamber, whence, after approving the choice of Speaker, the whole Government went in procession to the Old Brick Meeting-House, where the election sermon was preached; then succeeded an elegant dinner at Faneuil Hall, which was attended by the field-officers of the four regiments, and the official dignitaries, including Commodore Hood and General Mackay, which, as to the Governor, closed the proceedings of the day.
The House in its choice of Councillors elected several decided Loyalists, though it did not reelect four of this party who were of that body the last year, namely, Messrs. Flucker, Ropes, Paine, and Worthington. The Governor refused his consent to eleven on the list. On the next day he thus wrote of these events:–
FRANCIS BERNARD TO JOHN POWNALL.
“_Boston, June 1,1769._
“Dear Sir,–There being a snow ready to sail for Glasgow, I take the opportunity of sending you the printed account of the election and other proceedings on yesterday and to-day; from which you will perceive that everything goes as bad as could be expected. The Boston faction has taken possession of the two Houses in such a manner that there are not ten men in both who dare contradict them. They have turned out of the Council four gentlemen of the very first reputation in the country, and the only men remaining of disposition and ability to serve the King’s cause. I have negatived eleven, among which are two old Councillors, Brattle and Bowdoin, the managers of all the late opposition in the Council to the King’s government. There is not now one man in the Council who has either power or spirit to oppose the faction; and the friends of Government are so thin in the House, that they won’t attempt to make any opposition; so that Otis, Adams, etc., are now in full possession of this government, and will treat it accordingly. This is no more than was expected. I will write more particularly in a few days.
“I am,” etc.
The Governor could write thus of his political friends of the Council, several of whom, six years later, when the attempt was made to change the Constitution, were thought to have spirit enough to receive appointments from the Crown,–such, for instance, as Danforth, Russell, Royal, and Gray,–and hence were called _Mandamus_ Councillors.
A few days after (May 5, 1769) there was a holiday in Boston, the celebration of the birth-day of the King, which the House, “out of duty, loyalty, and affection to His Majesty,” noticed formally, as provided by a committee consisting of Otis, Hancock, and Adams. The Governor received a brilliant party–at the Province House; the three regiments in town, the Fourteenth, Twenty-Ninth, and Sixty-Fourth, paraded on the Common; the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company–it happened to be their anniversary–went through the customary routine, including the sermon, the dinner at Faneuil Hall, and the exchange of commissions on the Common; and in the evening there was a ball at Concert Hall, where, it is said in the Tory paper, there was as numerous and brilliant an appearance of gentlemen and ladies as was ever known in town on any former occasion. The Patriot journals give more space to the celebration, towards evening, in the Representatives’ Hall, where, besides the members, were a great number of merchants and gentlemen of the first distinction, who, besides toasting, first the King, Queen, and Royal Family, and second, North America, drank to “The restoration of harmony between Great Britain and the Colonies,” “Prosperity and perpetuity to the British Empire in all parts of the world,” and “Liberty without licentiousness to all parts of the world.” The House thus testified their loyalty to country; but, as the Governor refused to remove the troops, they–the “Boston Gazette” of June 12th said–“had for thirteen days past made a solemn and expressive pause in public business.”
Meantime the Governor received in one day (June 10) communications which surprised him half out of his wits and wholly out of his office, and which must have made rather a blue day in his calendar.
The Ministry now vacillated in their high-handed policy, and gave to General Gage discretionary power as to a continuance of the troops in Boston; and this officer had come to the sensible conclusion that troops were worse than needless, for they were an unnecessary irritation and detrimental to a restoration of the harmony which the representative men of both parties professed to desire. Accordingly the Governor received advices that the Commander-in-Chief had ordered the Sixty-Fourth and Sixty-Fifth Regiments, with the train of artillery, to Halifax, and that he had directed General Mackay to confer with his Excellency as to the disposition of the remainder of the troops, whether His Majesty’s service required that any should be posted longer in Boston, and if so, what the number should be. The Governor was further requested to give his opinion on this point in writing.
As the Governor had received no intimation of such a change of policy from his friends in England, he could hardly find words in which to express his astonishment. He wrote, two days after, that nothing could be more _mal-a-propos_ to the business of Government or hard upon him; that it was cruel to have this forced upon him at such a time and in such a manner; and as the question was put, it was hardly less than whether he should abdicate government. “If the troops are removed,” he wrote, “the principal officers of the Crown, the friends of Government, and the importers of goods from England in defiance of the combination, who are considerable and numerous, must remove also,” which would have been quite an extensive removal. He wrote to Lord Hillsborough,–“It is impossible to express my surprise at this proposition, or my embarrassment on account of the requisition of an answer.”
The other communication was a right royal greeting. Up to this time the letters to the Governor from the members of the Government, private as well as official, had been to him of the most gratifying character, to say nothing of the gift of the baronetcy. “I can give you the pleasure of knowing,” Lord Barrington wrote to him, (April 5, 1769,) “that last Sunday the King spoke with the highest approbation of your conduct and services in his closet to me”; but in a postscript to this letter were the ominous words,–“I understand you are directed to come hither; but Lord Hillsborough authorizes me to say, you need not be in any inconvenient haste to obey that instruction.” This order, in the manuscript, is indorsed, “Received June 10, 1769”; and being unique, it is here copied from the original, which has Hillsborough’s autograph:–
“GEORGE R.
“Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. Whereas we have thought fit by our royal license under our signet and sign-manual bearing date the twenty-second day of June, 1768, in the eighth year of our reign, to permit you to return into this our kingdom of Great Britain: Our will and pleasure therefore is, that as soon as conveniently may be, after the receipt hereof, you do repair to this our kingdom in order to lay before us a state of our province of Massachusetts Bay. And so we bid you farewell. Given at our court at St. James the twenty-third day of March, 1769, in the ninth year of our reign.
“By His Majesty’s command,
“HILLSBOROUGH.”
It was now an active time with the Patriots. Before the Governor had a chance to talk with General Mackay or to write to General Gage, the news spread all over the town that the two regiments were ordered off; and with this there was circulated the story, that Commissioner Temple had received a letter from George Grenville containing the assurance that the Governor would be immediately recalled with disgrace, that three of the Commissioners of the Customs would be turned off directly, and that next winter the Board would be dissolved; and Bernard, who tells these incidents, says that the reports exalted the Sons of Liberty as though the bells had rung for a triumph, while there was consternation among the crown officials, the importers, and the friends of Government. Here was thrust upon Bernard, over again, the question of the introduction of the troops.
The Governor was as much embarrassed by the requisition for an answer in writing as to the two regiments that were not ordered off as he was astonished at the order that had been given; and on getting a note from General Mackay, he gave the verbal answer, that he would write to General Gage. Meantime, while Bernard was hesitating, the Patriots were acting, and immediately applied themselves to counteract the influence which they knew was making to retain the two regiments. One hundred and forty-two of the citizens petitioned the Selectmen for a town-meeting, at which it was declared, that the law of the land made ample provision for the security of life and property, and that the presence of the troops was an insult. After a week’s hesitation, the Governor wrote to General Gage, who had promised inviolable secrecy, that to remove a portion of the two regiments would be detrimental to His Majesty’s service; to remove all of these troops would be quite ruinous to the cause of the Crown; but that one regiment in the town and one at the Castle might be sufficient. Of course, General Gage, if he paid any respect to the Governor’s advice, could do no less than order both regiments to remain. Thus was it that the two Sam Adams Regiments continued in town, designed for evil, but working for the good of the common cause.
Governor Bernard, during the month of June, and down to the middle of July, was greatly disturbed by the manly stand of the General Court; and, because of its refusal to enter upon the public business under the mouths of British cannon, adjourned it to Cambridge. On the night after this adjournment, the cannon were removed. These irritating proceedings made this body still more high-toned. While in this mood, it received from the Governor two messages, (July 6 and 12,) asking an appropriation of money to meet the expenses which had been incurred by the crown officers in quartering troops in Boston. The members nobly met this demand by returning to the Governor (July 15, 1769) a grandly worded state-paper, in which, claiming the rights of freeborn Englishmen, as confirmed by Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, and as settled by the Revolution and the British Charter, they expressly declared that they never would make provision for the purposes mentioned in the two messages. On the same day, it was represented in the House that armed soldiers had rescued a prisoner from the hands of justice, when two constables were ordered to attend on the floor who were heard on the matter, and a committee was then appointed to consider it. But Secretary Oliver now appeared with a message from the Governor to the effect that he was at the Court-House and directed the immediate attendance of the members. They accordingly, with Speaker Cushing at their head, repaired to the Governor, who, after a haughty speech charging them with proclaiming ideas lacking in dignity to the Crown and inconsistent with the Province continuing a part of the British Empire, prorogued the Court until the 10th of January.
The press arraigned the arbitrary proceedings of the Governor with great boldness and a just severity; while it declared that the action taken by the intrepid House of Representatives, with rare unanimity, was supported by the almost universal sentiments of the people. The last act of the Governor, the prorogation of the General Court for six months, was especially criticized; and after averring that such long prorogations, in such critical times, could never promote the true service of His Majesty or the tranquility of his good subjects, it predicted that impartial history would hang up Governor Bernard as a warning to his successors who had any sense of character, and perhaps his future fortune might be such as to teach even the most selfish of them not to tread in his steps.
On the day this prediction was written, (August 1, 1769,) Sir Francis Bernard, in the Rippon, was on his way to England. Congratulations among the people, exultation on the part of the press, the Union Flag on Liberty Tree, salutes from Hancock’s Wharf, and bonfires, in the evening, on the hills, expressed the general joy. And yet Francis Bernard was hardly a faithful representative of the proud imperial power for which he acted. He was a bad Governor, but he was not so bad as the cause he was obliged to uphold. He was arbitrary, but he was not so arbitrary as his instructions. He was vacillating, but he was not so vacillating as the Ministers. When he gave the conciliatory reply to the June town-meeting, it was judged that he lowered the national standard, and it seriously damaged him at Court; when he spoke in the imperial tone that characterized the British rule of that day, he was rewarded with a baronetcy. The Governor after months of reflection, in England, on reviewing in an elaborate letter the political path he had travelled, indicated both his deep chagrin and his increase of wisdom in the significant words,–“I was obliged to give up, a victim to the bad policy and irresolution of the supreme Government.”
The execution of a bad policy as directed by an irresolute Ministry was now the lot of Lieutenant-Governor Hutchinson. It was embodied in the question of the removal of the troops; and this question was not decided, until, after months of confusion and distress, the blood and slaughter of His Majesty’s good subjects compelled an indignant American public opinion to command their departure from the town of Boston.
LIFE IN THE OPEN AIR.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “CECIL DREEME” AND “JOHN BRENT.”
KATAHDIN AND THE PENOBSCOT.
CHAPTER I.
OFF.
At five, P. M., we found ourselves–Iglesias, a party of friends, and myself–on board the Isaac Newton, a great, ugly, three-tiered box that walks the North River, like a laboratory of greasy odors.
In this stately cinder-mill were American citizens. Not to discuss spitting, which is for spittoons, not literature, our fellow-travellers on the deck of the “floating palace” were passably endurable people, in looks, style, and language. I dodge discrimination, and characterize them _en masse_ by negations. The passengers of the Isaac Newton, on a certain evening of July, 18–, were not so intrusively green and so gasping as Britons, not so ill-dressed and pretentious as Gauls, not so ardently futile and so lubberly as Germans. Such were the negative virtues of our fellow-citizen travellers; and base would it be to exhibit their positive vices.
And so no more of passengers or passage. I will not describe our evening on the river. Alas for the duty of straight-forwardness and dramatic unity! Episodes seem so often sweeter than plots! The way-side joys are better than the final successes. The flowers along the vista, brighter than the victor-wreaths at its close. I may not dally on my way, turning to the right and the left for beauty and caricature. I will balance on the strict edge of my narrative, as a seventh-heavenward Mahometan with wine-forbidden steadiness of poise treads Al Serat, his bridge of a sword-blade.
Next morning, at Albany, divergent trains cleft our party into a better and a worser half. The beautiful girls, our better half, fled westward to ripen their pallid roses with richer summer-hues in mosquitoless inland dells. Iglesias and I were still northward bound.
At the Saratoga station we sipped a dreary, faded reminiscence of former joys and sparkling brilliancy long dead, in cups of Congress-water, brought by unattractive Ganymedes and sold in the train,–draughts flat, flabby, and utterly bubbleless, lukewarm heel-taps with a flavor of savorless salt.
Still northward journeying, and feeling the sea-side moisture evaporate from our blood under inland suns and sultry inland breezes, we came to Lake Champlain.
As before banquets, to excite appetite, one takes the gentle oyster, so we, before the serious pleasure of our journey, tasted the Adirondack region, paradise of Cockney sportsmen. There through the forest, the stag of ten trots, coquetting with greenhorns. He likes the excitement of being shot at and missed. He enjoys the smell of powder in a battle where he is always safe. He hears Greenhorn blundering through the woods, stopping to growl at briers, stopping to revive his courage with the Dutch supplement. The stag of ten awaits his foe in a glade. The foe arrives, sees the antlered monarch, and is panic-struck. He watches him prance and strike the ground with his hoofs. He slowly recovers heart, takes a pull at his flask, rests his gun upon a log, and begins to study his mark. The stag will not stand still. Greenhorn is baffled. At last his target turns and carefully exposes that region of his body where Greenhorn has read lies the heart. Just about to fire, he catches the eye of the stag winking futility into his elaborate aim. His blunderbuss jerks upward. A shower of cut leaves floats through the smoke, from a tree thirty feet overhead. Then, with a mild-eyed melancholy look of reproachful contempt, the stag turns away, and wanders off to sleep in quiet coverts far within the wood. He has fled, while for Greenhorn no trophy remains. Antlers have nodded to the sportsman; a short tail has disappeared before his eyes;–he has seen something, but has nothing to show. Whereupon he buys a couple of pairs of ancient weather-bleached horns from some colonist, and, nailing them up at impossible angles on the wall of his city-den, humbugs brother-Cockneys with tales of _venerie_, and has for life his special legend, “How I shot my first deer in the Adirondacks.”
The Adirondacks provide a compact, convenient, accessible little wilderness,–an excellent field for the experiments of tyros. When the tyro, whether shot, fisherman, or forester, has proved himself fully there, let him dislodge into some vaster wilderness, away from guides by the day and superintending hunters, away from the incursions of the Cockney tribe, and let out the caged savage within him for a tough struggle with Nature. It needs a struggle tough and resolute to force that Protean lady to observe at all her challenger.
It is well to go to the Adirondacks. They are shaggy, and shagginess is a valuable trait. The lakes are very well,–very well indeed. The objection to the region is not the mountains, which are reasonably shaggy,–not the lakes and rivers, which are water, a capital element. The real difficulty is the society: not the autochthonous society,–they are worthy people, and it is hardly to be mentioned as a fault that they are not a discriminating race, and will asseverate that all fish are trout, and the most arrant mutton is venison,–but the immigrant, colonizing society. Cockneys are to be found at every turn, flaunting their banners of the awkward squad, proclaiming to the world with protuberant pride that they are the veritable backwoodsmen,–rather doing it, rather astonishing the natives, they think. And so they are. One squad of such neophytes might be entertaining; but when every square mile echoes with their hails, lost, poor babes, within a furlong of their camps, and when the woods become dim and the air civic with their cooking-smokes, and the subtle odor of fried pork overpowers methylic fragrance among the trees, then he who loves forests for their solitude leaves these brethren to their clumsy joys, and wanders elsewhere deeper into sylvan scenes.
Our visit to the Adirondacks was episodic; and as I have forsworn episodes, I turn away from them with this mild slander, and strike again our Maine track. With lips impurpled by the earliest huckleberries, we came out again upon Champlain. We crossed that water-logged valley in a steamboat, and hastened on, through a pleasant interlude of our rough journey, across Vermont and New Hampshire, two States not without interest to their residents, but of none to this narrative.
By coach and wagon, by highway and by-way, by horse-power and steam-power, we proceeded, until it chanced, one August afternoon, that we left railways and their regions at a way-side station, and let our lingering feet march us along the Valley of the Upper Connecticut. This lovely river, baptizer of Iglesias’s childhood, was here shallow and musical, half river, half brook; it had passed the tinkling period, and plashed and rumbled voicefully over rock and shallow.
It was a fair and verdant valley where we walked, overlooked by hills of pleasant pastoral slope. All the land was gay and ripe with yellow harvest. Strolling along, as if the business of travel were forgotten, we placidly identified ourselves with the placid scenery. We became Arcadians both. Such is Arcadia, if I have read aright: a realm where sunshine never scorches, and yet shade is sweet; where simple pleasures please; where the blue sky and the bright water and the green fields satisfy forever.
We were in lightest marching-trim. Iglesias bore an umbrella, our armor against what heaven could do with assault of sun or shower. I was weaponed with a staff, should brute or biped uncourteous dispute our way. We had no impediments of “great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle.” A thoughtful man hardly feels honest in his life except as a pedestrian traveller. _”La propriete c’est le vol”_–which the West more briefly expresses by calling baggage “plunder.” What little plunder our indifferent honesty had packed for this journey we had left with a certain stage-coachman, perhaps to follow us, perhaps to become his plunder. We were thus disconnected from any depressing influence; we had no character to sustain; we were heroes in disguise, and could make our observations on life and manners, without being invited to a public hand-shaking, or to exhibit feats in jugglery, for either of which a traveller with plenteous portmanteaus, hair or leather, must be prepared in villages thereabouts. Totally unembarrassed, we lounged along or leaped along, light-hearted. When the river neared us, or winsome brooklet from the hill-side thwarted our path, we stooped and lapped from their pools of coolness, or tasted that most ethereal tipple, the mingled air and water of electric bubbles, as they slid brightly toward our lips.
The angle of the sun’s rays grew less and less, the wheat-fields were tinged more golden by the clinging beams, our shadows lengthened, as if exercise of an afternoon were stimulating to such unreal essences. Finally the blue dells and gorges of a wooded mountain, for two hours our landmark, rose between us and the sun. But the sun’s Parthian arrows gave him a splendid triumph, more signal for its evanescence. A storm was inevitable, and sunset prepared a reconciling pageant.
Now, as may be supposed, Iglesias has an eye for a sunset. That summer’s crop had been very short, and he had been some time on starvation-allowance of cloudy magnificence. We therefore halted by the road-side, and while I committed the glory to memory, Iglesias entrusted his distincter memorial to a sketch-book.
We were both busy, he repeating forms, noting shades and tints, and I studying without pictorial intent, when we heard a hail in the road below our bank. It was New Hampshire, near the Maine line, and near the spot where nasal organs are fabricated that twang the roughest.
“Say!” shrieked up to us a freckled native, holding fast to the tail of a calf, the last of a gambolling family he was driving,–“Say! whodger doon up thurr? Layn aoot taoonshup lains naoou, aancher? Cauds ur suvvares raoond. Spekkleayshn goan on, ur guess.”
We allowed this unmelodious vocalist to respect us by permitting him to believe us surveyors in another sense than as we were. One would not be despised as an unpractical citizen, a mere looker at Nature with no immediate view to profit, even by a freckled calf-driver of the Upper Connecticut. While we parleyed, the sketch was done, and the pageant had faded quick before the storm.
Splendor had departed; the world in our neighborhood had fallen into the unillumined dumps. An ominous mournfulness, far sadder than the pensiveness of twilight, drew over the sky. Clouds, that donned brilliancy for the fond parting of mountain-tops and the sun, now grew cheerless and gray; their gay robes were taken from them, and with bended heads they fled away from the sorrowful wind. In western glooms beyond the world a dreary gale had been born, and now came wailing like one that for all his weariness may not rest, but must go on harmful journeys and bear evil tidings. With the vanguard gusts came volleys of rain, malicious assaults, giving themselves the trouble to tell us in an offensive way what we could discover for ourselves, that a wetting impended and umbrellas would soon be nought.
While the storm was thus nibbling before it bit, we lengthened our strides to escape. Water, concentrated in flow of stream or pause of lake, is charming; not so to the shelterless is water diffused in dash of deluge. Water, when we choose our method of contact, is a friend; when it masters us, it is a foe; when it drowns us or ducks us, a very exasperating foe. Proud pedestrians become very humble personages, when thoroughly vanquished by a ducking deluge. A wetting takes out the starch not only from garments, but the wearers of them. Iglesias and I did not wish to stand all the evening steaming before a kitchen-fire, inspecting meanwhile culinary details: Phillis in the kitchen is not always as fresh as Phillis in the field. We therefore shook ourselves into full speed and bolted into our inn at Colebrook; and the rain, like a portcullis, dropped solid behind us.
In town, the landlord is utterly merged in his hotel. He is a sovereign rarely apparent. In the country, the landlord is a personality. He is greater than the house he keeps. Men arriving inspect the master of the inn narrowly. If his first glance is at the pocket, cheer will be bad; if at the eyes or the lips, you need not take a cigar before supper to keep down your appetite.
Our landlord was of the latter type. He surged out of the little box where he was dispensing not too fragrant rummers to a circle of village-politicians, and congratulated us on our arrival before the storm. He was a discriminating person. He detected us at once, saw we were not tramps or footpads, and led us to the parlor, a room attractively furnished with a map of the United States and an oblong music-book open at “Old Hundred.” Our host further felicitated us that we had not stopped at a certain tavern below, where, as he said,–
“They cut a chunk er beef and drop ‘t into a pot to bile, and bile her three days, and then don’t have noth’n’ else for three weeks.”
He put his head out of the door and called,–
“George, go aoot and split up that ‘ere wood as fine as chaowder: these men ‘ll want their supper right off.”
Drawing in his head, he continued to us confidentially,–
“That ‘ere George is jes’ like a bird: he goes off at one snappin’.”
Our host then rolled out toward the bar-room, to discuss with his cronies who we might be. From the window we perceived the birdlike George fly and alight near the specified wood, which he proceeded to bechowder. He brought in the result of his handiwork, as smiling as a basket of chips. Neat-handed Phillis at the door received the chowder, and by its aid excited a sound and a smell, both prophetic of supper. And we, willing to repose after a sixteen-mile afternoon-walk, lounged upon sofa or tilted in rocking-chair, taking the available mental food, namely, “Godey’s Lady’s Book” and the Almanac.
CHAPTER II.
GORMING AND GETTING ON.
Next morning it poured. The cinders before the blacksmith’s shop opposite had yielded their black dye to the dismal puddles. The village cocks were sadly draggled and discouraged, and cowered under any shelter, shivering within their drowned plumage. Who on such a morn would stir? Who but the Patriot? Hardly had we breakfasted, when he, the Patriot, waited upon us. It was a Presidential campaign. They were starving in his village for stump-speeches. Would the talking man of our _duo_ go over and feed their ears with a fiery harangue? Patriot was determined to be first with us; others were coming with similar invitations; he was the early bird. Ah, those portmanteaus! they had arrived, and betrayed us.
We would not be snapped up. We would wriggle away. We were very sorry, but we must start at once to pursue our journey.
“But it pours,” said Patriot.
“Patriot,” replied our talking member, “man is flesh; and flesh, however sweet or savory it may be, does not melt in water.”
Thus fairly committed to start, we immediately opened negotiations for a carriage. “No go,” was the first response of the coachman. Our willy was met by his nilly. But we pointed out to him that we could not stay there all a dismal day,–that we must, would, could, should go. At last we got within coachee’s outworks. His nilly broke down into shilly-shally. He began to state his objections; then we knew he was ready to yield. We combated him, clinking the supposed gold of coppers in our pockets, or carelessly chucking a tempting half-dollar at some fly on the ceiling. So presently we prevailed, and he retired to make ready.
By-and-by a degraded family-carriage came to the door. It came by some feeble inertia left latent in it by some former motive-power, rather than was dragged up by its more degraded nags. A very unwholesome coach. No doubt a successful quack-doctor had used it in his prosperous days for his wife and progeny; no doubt it had subsequently become the property of a second-class undertaker, and had conveyed many a quartette of cheap clergymen to the funerals of poor relations whose leaking sands of life left no gold-dust behind. Such was our carriage for a rainy day.
The nags were of the huckleberry or flea-bitten variety,–a freckled white. Perhaps the quack had fed them with his refuse pills. These knobby-legged unfortunates we of course named Xanthus and Balius, not of podargous or swift-footed, but podagrous or gouty race. Xanthus, like his Achillean namesake, (_vide_ Pope’s Homer,)
“Seemed sensible of woe and dropped his head,– Trembling he stood before the (seedy) wain.”
Balius was in equally deplorable mood. Both seemed more sensible to “Whoa” than to “Hadaap.” Podagrous beasts, yet not stiffened to immobility. Gayer steeds would have sundered the shackling drag. These would never, by any gamesome caracoling, endanger the coherency of pole with body, of axle with wheel. From end to end the equipage was congruous. Every part of the machine was its weakest part, and that fact gave promise of strength: an invalid never dies. Moreover, the coach suited the day: the rusty was in harmony with the dismal. It suited the damp unpainted houses and the tumble-down blacksmith’s-shop. We contented ourselves with this artistic propriety. We entered, treading cautiously. The machine, with gentle spasms, got itself in motion, and steered due east for Lake Umbagog. The smiling landlord, the disappointed Patriot, and the birdlike George waved us farewell.
Coachee was in the sulks. The rain, beat upon him, and we by purse-power had compelled him to encounter discomfort. His self-respect must be restored by superiority over somebody. He had been beaten and must beat. He did so. His horses took the lash until he felt at peace with himself. Then half-turning toward us, he made his first remark.
“Them two hosses is gorming.”
“Yes,” we replied, “they do seem rather so.”
This was of course profound hypocrisy; but “gorming” meant some bad quality, and any might be safely predicated of our huckleberry pair. Who will admit that he does not know all that is to be known in horse-matters? We therefore asked no questions, but waited patiently for information.
Delay pays demurrage to the wisely patient. Coachee relapsed into the sulks. The driving rain resolved itself into a dim chaos of mist. Xanthus and Balius plodded on, but often paused and gasped, or, turning their heads as if they missed something, strayed from the track and drew us against the dripping bushes. After one such excursion, which had nearly been the ruin of us, and which by calling out coachee’s scourging powers had put him thoroughly in good-humor, he turned to us and said, superlatively,–
“Them’s the gormingest hosses I ever see. When I drew ’em in the four-hoss coach for wheelers, they could keep a straight tail. Now they act like they was drunk. They’s gorming,–_they won’t do nothin’ without a leader_.”
To gorm, then, is to err when there is no leader. Alas, how mankind gorms!
By sunless noon we were well among the mountains. We came to the last New-Hampshire house, miles from its neighbors. But it was a self-sufficing house, an epitome of humanity. Grandmamma, bald under her cap, was seated by the stove dandling grandchild, bald under its cap. Each was highly entertained with the other. Grandpapa was sandy with grandboy’s gingerbread-crumbs. The intervening ages were well represented by wiry men and shrill women. The house, also, without being tavern or shop, was an amateur bazaar of _vivers_ and goods. Anything one was likely to want could be had there,–even a melodeon and those inevitable Patent-Office Reports. Here we descended, lunched, and providently bought a general assortment, namely, a large plain cake, five pounds of cheese, a ball of twine, and two pairs of brown ribbed woollen socks, native manufacture. My pair of these indestructibles will outlast my last legs and go as an heirloom after me.
The weather now, as we drove on, seemed to think that Iglesias deserved better of it. Rain-globes strung upon branches, each globe the possible home of a sparkle, had waited long enough unillumined. Sunlight suddenly discovered this desponding patience and rewarded it. Every drop selected its own ray from the liberal bundle, and, crowding itself full of radiance, became a mirror of sky and cloud and forest. Also, by the searching sunbeams’ store of regal purple, ripe raspberries were betrayed. On these, magnified by their convex lenses of water, we pounced. Showers shook playfully upon us from the vines, while we revelled in fruitiness. We ran before our gormers, they gormed by us while we plucked, we ran by, plucked again, and again were gormingly overtaken and overtook. Thus we ate our way luxuriously through the Dixville Notch, a capital cleft in a northern spur of the White Mountains.
Picturesque is a curiously convenient, undiscriminating epithet. I use it here. The Dixville Notch is, briefly, picturesque,–a fine gorge between a crumbling conical crag and a scarped precipice,–a pass easily defensible, except at the season when raspberries would distract sentinels.
Now we came upon our proper field of action. We entered the State of Maine at Township Letter B. A sharper harshness of articulation in stray passengers told us that we were approaching the vocal influence of the name Androscoggin. People talked as if, instead of ivory ring or coral rattle to develop their infantile teeth, they had bitten upon pine knots. Voices were resinous and astringent. An opera, with a chorus drummed up in those regions, could dispense with violins.
Toward evening we struck the river, and found it rasping and crackling over rocks as an Androscoggin should. We passed the last hamlet, then the last house but one, and finally drew up at the last and northernmost house, near the lumbermen’s dam below Lake Umbagog. The damster, a stalwart brown chieftain of the backwoodsman race, received us with hearty hospitality. Xanthus and Balius stumbled away on their homeward journey. And after them the crazy coach went moaning: it was not strong enough to creak or rattle.
Next day was rainy. It had, however, misty intervals. In these we threw a fly for trout and caught a chub in Androscoggin. Or, crouched on the bank of a frog-pond, we tickled frogs with straws. Yes, and fun of the freshest we found it. Certain animals, and especially frogs, were created, shaped, and educated to do the grotesque, that men might study them, laugh, and grow fat. It was a droll moment with Nature, when she entertained herself and prepared entertainment for us by devising the frog, that burlesque of bird, beast, and man, and taught him how to move and how to speak and sing. Iglesias and I did not disdain batrachian studies, and set no limit to our merriment at their quaint, solemn, half-human pranks. One question still is unresolved,–Why do frogs stay and be tickled? They snap snappishly at the titillating straw; they snatch at it with their weird little hands; they parry it skilfully. They hardly can enjoy being tickled, and yet they endure, paying a dear price for the society of their betters. Frogs the frisky, frogs the spotted, were our comedy that day. Whenever the rain ceased, we rushed forth and tickled them, and thus vicariously tickled ourselves into more than patience, into jollity. So the day passed quickly.
CHAPTER III.
THE PINE-TREE.
While we were not tickling frogs, we were talking lumber with the Umbagog damster. I had already coasted Maine, piloted by Iglesias, and knew the fisherman-life; now, under the same experienced guidance, I was to study inland scenes, and take lumbermen for my heroes.
Maine has two classes of warriors among its sons,–fighters of forest and fighters of sea. Braves must join one or the other army. The two are close allies. Only by the aid of the woodmen can the watermen build their engines of victory. The seamen in return purvey the needful luxuries for lumber-camps. Foresters float down timber that seamen may build snips and go to the saccharine islands of the South for molasses: for without molasses no lumberman could be happy in the unsweetened wilderness. Pork lubricates his joints; molasses gives tenacity to his muscles.
Lumbering develops such men as Pindar saw when he pictured Jason, his forest hero. Life is a hearty and vigorous movement to them, not a drooping slouch. Summer is their season of preparation; winter, of the campaign; spring, of victory. All over the north of the State, whatever is not lake or river is forest. In summer, the Viewer, like a military engineer, marks out the region, and the spots of future attack. He views the woods; and wherever a monarch tree crowns the leafy level, he finds his way, and blazes a path. Not all trees are worthy of the axe. Miles of lesser timber remain untouched. A Maine forest after a lumber-campaign is like France after a _coup d’etat:_ the _bourgeoisie_ are prosperous as ever, but the great men are all gone.
While the viewer views, his followers are on commissariat and quartermaster’s service. They are bringing up their provisions and fortifying their camp. They build their log-station, pile up barrels of pork, beans, and molasses, like mortars and Paixhans in an arsenal, and are ready for a winter of stout toil and solid jollity.
Stout is the toil, and the life seemingly dreary, to those who cower by ingle-nooks or stand over registers. But there is stirring excitement in this bloodless war, and around plenteous camp-fires vigor of merriment and hearty comradry. Men who wield axes and breathe hard have lungs. Blood aerated by the air that sings through the pine-woods tingles in every fibre. Tingling blood makes life joyous. Joy can hardly look without a smile or speak without a laugh. And merry is the evergreen-wood in electric winter.
Snows fall level in the sheltered, still forest. Road-making is practicable. The region is already channelled with watery ways. An imperial pine, with its myriads of feet of future lumber, is worth another path cut through the bush to the frozen riverside. Down goes his Majesty Pinus I., three half-centuries old, having reigned fifty years high above all his race. A little fellow with a little weapon has dethroned the quiet old king. Pinus I was very strong at bottom, but the little revolutionist was stronger at top. Brains without much trouble had their will of stolid matter. The tree fallen, its branches are lopped, its purple trunk is shortened into lengths. The teamster arrives with oxen in full steam, and rimy with frozen breath about their indignant nostrils. As he comes and goes, he talks to his team for company; his conversation is monotonous as the talk of lovers, but it has a cheerful ring through the solitude. The logs are chained and dragged creaking along over the snow to the river-side. There the subdivisions of Pinus the Great become a basis for a mighty snow-mound. But the mild March winds blow from seaward. Spring bourgeons. One day the ice has gone. The river flows visible; and now that its days of higher beauty and grace have come, it climbs high up its banks to show that it is ready for new usefulness. It would be dreary for the great logs to see new verdure springing all around them, while they lay idly rotting or sprouting with uncouth funguses, not unsuspect of poison. But they will not be wasted. Lumbermen, foes to idleness and inutility, swarm again about their winter’s trophies. They imprint certain cabalistic tokens of ownership on the logs,–crosses, xs, stars, crescents, alphabetical letters,–marks respected all along the rivers and lakes down to the boom where the sticks are garnered for market. The marked logs are tumbled into the brimming stream, and so ends their forest-life.
Now comes “the great spring drive.” Maine waters in spring flow under an illimitable raft. Every camp contributes its myriads of brown cylinders to the millions that go bobbing down rivers with jaw-breaking names. And when the river broadens to a lake, where these impetuous voyagers might be stranded or miss their way and linger, they are herded into vast rafts, and towed down by boats, or by steam-tugs, if the lake is large as Moosehead. At the lake-foot the rafts break up and the logs travel again dispersedly down stream, or through the “thoro’fare” connecting the members of a chain of lakes. The hero of this epoch is the Head-Driver. The head-driver of a timber-drive leads a disorderly army, that will not obey the word of command. Every log acts as an individual, according to certain imperious laws of matter, and every log is therefore at loggerheads with every other log. The marshal must be in the thick of the fight, keeping his forces well in hand, hurrying stragglers, thrusting off the stranded, leading his phalanxes wisely round curves and angles, lest they be jammed and fill the river with a solid mass. As the great sticks come dashing along, turning porpoise-like somersets or leaping up twice their length in the air, he must be everywhere, livelier than a monkey in a mimosa, a wonder of acrobatic agility in biggest boots. _He_ made the proverb, “As easy as falling off a log.”
Hardly less important is the Damster. To him it falls to conserve the waters at a proper level. At his dam, generally below a lake, the logs collect and lie crowded. The river, with its obstacles of rock and rapid, would anticipate wreck for these timbers of future ships. Therefore, when the spring drive is ready, and the head-driver is armed with his jackboots and his iron-pointed sceptre, the damster opens his sluices and lets another river flow through atop of the rock-shattered river below. The logs of each proprietor, detected by their marks, pay toll as they pass the gates and rush bumptiously down the flood.
Far down, at some water-power nearest the reach of tide, a boom checks the march of this formidable body. The owners step forward and claim their slicks. Dowse takes all marked with three crosses and a dash. Sowse selects whatever bears two crescents and a star. Rowse pokes about for his stock, inscribed clip, dash, star, dash, clip. Nobody has counterfeited these hieroglyphs. The tale is complete. The logs go to the saw-mill. Sawdust floats seaward. The lumbermen junket. So ends the log-book.
“Maine,” said our host, the Damster of Umbagog, “was made for lumbering-work. We never could have got the trees out, without these lakes and dams.”
[To be continued.]
TO WILLIAM LOWELL PUTNAM,
AFTER SEEING TWO PHOTOGRAPHS OF HIM.
The trumpet, now on every gale,
For triumph or in funeral-wail,
One lesson bloweth loud and clear Above war’s clangor to my ear.
The blood that flows in bounding veins, The blood that ebbs with lingering pains, Springs living from the self-same heart: Courage and patience act one part.
Doers and sufferers of God’s will
Tread in each other’s footprints still; Soldier or saint hath equal mind,
When vows of truth the spirit bind.
Two portraits light my chamber-wall, Hero and martyr to recall;
Lines of a single face they keep, To make beholders glow or weep.
With gleaming hilt, girt for the fray Freedom demands, he cannot stay:
Forward his motion, keen his glance: ‘Tis victory painted in a trance.
But, lo! he turns, he folds his hands; With farther, softening gaze he stands; His sword is hidden from his eyes;
His head is bent for sacrifice.
Through looks that match each varied thought Of holy work or offering brought,
Upon the sunbeam’s shifting scroll Shines out alike the steady soul.
Young leader! quick to win a name
Coeval with thy country’s fame,
For either fortune thou wast born,– The crown of laurel or of thorn.
THE HORRORS OF SAN DOMINGO.
CHAPTER III.
CARIB SLAVES–INTRODUCTION OF NEGROES–LAS CASAS–DECAY OF SAN DOMINGO.
Among the natives captured by the Spaniards in the neighboring islands and upon the Terra Firma, as the South-American coast was called,–were numerous representatives of Carib tribes, who had been released by Papal dispensation from the difficulties and anxieties of freedom in consequence of their reputation for cannibalism. This vicious taste was held to absolve the Spaniards from all the considerations of policy and mercy which the Dominicans pressed upon them in the case of the more graceful and amiable Haitians. But we do not find that Las Casas himself made any exception of them in his pleadings for the Indians;[1] for, though he does not mention cannibalism in the list of imputed crimes which the Spaniards held as justification in making war upon the natives to enslave them, he vindicates them from other charges, such as that of sacrificing infants to their idols. The Spaniards were touched with compassion at seeing so many innocent beings perish before arriving at years of discretion, and without having received baptism. They argued that such a practice, which was worse than a crime, because it was a theological blunder, could not be carried on in a state of slavery. “This style of reasoning,” says Las Casas, “proves absolutely nothing; for God knows better than men what ought to be the future destiny of children who die in the immense countries where the Christian religion is unknown. His mercy is infinitely greater than the collective charity of mankind; and in the interim He permits things to follow their ordinary course, without charging anybody to interfere and prevent their consequences by means of war.”[2]
The first possessors of Hayti were startled at the multitude of human bones which were found in some of the caverns of the island, for they were considered as confirming the reports of cannibalism which had reached them. These ossuaries were accidental; perhaps natives seeking shelter from the hurricane or earthquake were overwhelmed in these retreats, or blocked up and left to perish. We have no reason to believe that the caves had been used for centuries. And even the Caribs did not keep the bones which they picked, to rise up in judgment against them at last, clattering indictments of the number of their feasts. Nor do they seem to have shared the taste of the old Scandinavian and the modern Georgian or Alabamian, who have been known to turn drinking-cups and carve ornaments out of the skeletons of their enemies.
But they liked the taste of human flesh. The difference between them and the Spaniard was merely that the latter devoured men’s flesh in the shape of cotton, sugar, gold. And the native discrimination was not altogether unpraiseworthy, if the later French missionaries can be exonerated from national prejudice, when they declare that the Caribs said Spaniards were meagre and indigestible, while a Frenchman made a succulent and peptic meal. But if he was a person of a religious habit, priest or monk, woe to the incautious Carib who might dine upon him! a mistake in the article of mushrooms were not more fatal. Du Tertre relates that a French priest was killed and smoke-dried by the Caribs, and then devoured with satisfaction. But many who dined upon the unfortunate man, whom the Church had ordained to feed her sheep less literally, died suddenly: others were afflicted with extraordinary diseases. Afterwards they avoided Christians as an article of food, being content with slaying them as often as possible, but leaving them untouched.
The Caribs were very impracticable in a state of slavery. Their stubborn and rigid nature could not become accommodated to a routine of labor. They fled to the mountains, and began marooning;[3] but they carried with them the scar of the hot iron upon the thigh, which labelled them as natives in a state of war, and therefore reclaimable as slaves. The Dominicans made a vain attempt to limit this branding to the few genuine Caribs who were reduced to slavery; but the custom was universal of marking Indians to compel them to pass for Caribs, after which they were sold and transferred with avidity, the authorities having no power to enforce the legal discrimination. The very existence of this custom offered a premium to cruelty, by furnishing the colonists with a technical permission to enslave.
But the supply could not keep up with the insatiable demand. The great expeditions which were organized to sweep the Terra Firma and the adjacent islands of their population found the warlike Caribs difficult to procure.[4] The supply of laborers was failing just at the period when the colonists began to see that the gold of Hayti was scattered broadcast through her fertile soil, which became transmuted into crops at the touch of the spade and hoe. Plantations of cacao, ginger, cotton, indigo, and tobacco were established; and in 1506 the sugar-cane, which was not indigenous, as some have affirmed, was introduced from the Canaries. Vellosa, a physician in the town of San Domingo, was the first to cultivate it on a large scale, and to express the juice by means of the cylinder-mill, which he invented.[5] The Government, seeing the advantages to be derived from this single article, offered to lend five hundred gold piastres to every colonist who would fit up a sugar-plantation. Thus stimulated, the cultivation of the cane throve so, that as early as 1518 the island possessed forty sugar-works with mills worked by horse-power or water. But the plantations were less merciful to the Indians than the mines, and in 1503 there began to be a scarcity of human labor.
At this date we first hear that negroes had been introduced into the colony. But their introduction into Spain and Europe took place early in the fifteenth century. “Ortiz de Zunigo, as Humboldt reports, with his usual exactness, says distinctly that ‘blacks had been already brought to Seville in the reign of Henry III of Castile,’ consequently before 1406. ‘The Catalans and the Normans frequented the western coast of Africa as far as the Tropic of Cancer at least forty-five years before the epoch at which Don Henry the Navigator commenced his series of discoveries beyond Cape Nun.'”[6]
But the practice of buying and selling slaves in Europe can be traced as far back as the tenth century, when fairs were established in all the great cities. Prisoners of war, representing different nations at different times, according to the direction which the love of piracy and conquest took, were exposed at those great periodical sales of merchandise to the buyers who flocked from every land. The Northern cities around the Baltic have the distinction of displaying these human goods quite as early as Venice or any commercial centre of the South: the municipal privileges and freedom of those famous cities were thus nourished partly by a traffic in mankind, for whose sake privilege and right are alone worth having. Seven thousand Danish slaves were exposed at one fair held in the city of Mecklenburg at the end of the twelfth century. They had the liberty of being ransomed, but only distinguished captives could be saved in that way from being sold. The price ranged from one to three marks. It is difficult to tell from this how valuable a man was considered, for the relation of the mark to other merchandise, or, in other words, the value of the currency, cannot be represented by modern sums, which are only technically equivalent,–as a mark, for instance, was then held equal to eight ounces of silver.[7] That was not exorbitant, however, for those times, and shows that men were frequently exposed for sale. The merchants of Bristol used to sell a great many captives into Ireland; but it is recorded that the Irish were the first Christian people who agreed at length to put a stop to this traffic by refusing to have any more captives brought into their country. The Church had long before forbidden it; and there are no grounds for supposing that any other motive than humanity induced the Irish people to show this superiority to the conventions of the age.[8]
From the essay by Schoelcher, entitled “The Slave-Trade and its Origin,” which has been prepared with considerable research, we gather that the first negroes seen in Portugal were carried there in 1441. Antonio Gonzales was the name of the man who first excited his countrymen by offering for sale this human booty which he had seized. All classes of people felt a mania like that which turns the tides of emigration to Australia and California. Nothing was desired but the means of equipping vessels for the coast of Guinea. Previously to this a few Guanches from the Canaries had been exposed for sale in the markets of Lisbon and Seville, and there were many Moorish slaves in Spain, taken in the wars which preceded the expulsion of that nation. But now there was a rapid accumulation of this species of property, fed by the inexhaustible soil of Africa, whence so many millions of men have been reaped and ploughed into the soils of other lands.
In 1443, an expedition of six caravels, commanded by a gentleman of the Portuguese court, went down the coast on one of these ventures, ostensibly geographical, but really mercenary, which then excited the popular enterprise. It managed to attack some island and to make a great number of prisoners. The same year a citizen of Lisbon fitted out a vessel at his own expense, went beyond the Senegal, where he seized a great many natives, discovered Cape Verde, and was driven back to Lisbon by a storm.
Prince Henry built the fort of Mina upon the Gold Coast, and made it a depot for articles of Spanish use, which he bartered for slaves. He introduced there, and upon the island of Arguin, near Cape Blanco, the cultivation of corn and sugar; the whole coast was formally occupied by the Portuguese, whose king took the title of Lord of Guinea. Sugar went successively to Spain, Madeira, the Azores, and the West Indies, in the company of negro slaves. It was carried to Hayti just as the colonists discovered that negroes were unfit for mining. Charlevoix says that the magnificent palaces of Madrid and Toledo, the work of Charles V., were entirely built by the revenue from the entry-tax on sugar from Hayti.
At first, all prisoners taken in war, or in attacks deliberately made to bring on fighting, were sold, whatever their nation or color. This was due to the Catholic theory that all unbaptized people were infidels. But gradually the same religious influence, moved by some scruples of humanity, made a distinction between negroes and all other people, allowing only the former to become objects of traffic, because they were black as well as heathen. Thus early did physiology come to the aid of religion, notifying the Church of certain physical peculiarities which seemed to be the trade-marks of the Creator, and perpetual guaranties, like the color of woods, the odor of gums, the breadth and bone of draught-cattle, of their availability for the market. What renown has graced the names of Portuguese adventurers, and how illustrious does this epoch of the little country’s life appear in history! Rivers, bays, and stormy headlands, long reaches of gold coast and ivory coast, and countries of palm-oil, and strange interiors stocked with new forms of existence, and the great route to India itself, became the charter to a brilliant fame of this mercenary heroism. Man went as far as he was impelled to go. While the stimulus continued, and the outlay was more than equalled by the income and the glory, unexplored regions yielded up their secrets, and the Continent of Africa was established by this insignificant nation to be for centuries the vast slave-nursery of the world.
When the habit of selling men began to be restricted to the selling of negroes, companies were formed to organize this business and to have it carried on with economy. The Portuguese had a monopoly of the trade for a long time. They went up and down the African coast, picking quarrels with the natives when the latter did not quarrel enough among themselves to create a suitable supply of captives. Slaves were in great demand in Spain, and quite numerous at Seville. The percentage which the Portuguese exacted induced the Spaniards at length to enter into the traffic, which they did, according to Zunigo, in 1474.
At that time negroes were confined, like Jews, to a particular quarter of a Spanish city. They had their places of worship, their own regulations and police. “A _Cedula_ [order] of November 8, 1474, appoints a negro named Juan de Valladolid mayoral of the blacks and mulattoes, free and slaves, in Seville. He had authority to decide in quarrels and regular processes of law, and also to legalize marriages, because, says the _Cedula_, ‘it is within our knowledge that you are acquainted with the laws and ordinances.’ He became so famous that people called him _El Conde Negro_, The Black Count, and his name was bestowed upon one of the streets of the negro quarter.”
Thus men were born in Europe into a condition of slavery before 1500. In that year the introduction of negroes into Hayti was authorized, provided they were born in Spain in the houses of Christian masters. Negroes who had been bred in Morisco[9] families were not allowed to be carried thither, from a well-grounded fear that the Moorish hatred had sunk too deeply into a kindred blood.
A great many slaves were immediately transported to Hayti; for in 1503, “Ovando, the Governor-General of the Indies, who had received the instructions of 1500, asked the court ‘not to send any more negroes to Espanola, because they often escaped to the Indians, taught them bad habits, and could never be retaken.'”
Schoelcher seems to think that these first slaves were so difficult to manage because they had been reared in a civilized country; and he notices that Cardinal Ximenes, who was well acquainted with the Spanish negro, constantly refused to authorize a direct slave-trade with Hayti, because it would introduce into the colony so many enterprising and prolific people, who would revolt when they became too numerous, and bring the Spaniards themselves under the yoke. This was an early presentiment of the fortune of Hayti, but it was not justly derived from an acquaintance with the Spanish-bred negro alone; for the negroes who were afterwards transported to the colony directly from Africa had the same unaccommodating temper, which frequently disconcerted the Cardinal’s theory that an African should be born and bred in a Christian city to render him unfit for slavery. This unclerical native prejudice against working for white men is so universal, and has been so consistently maintained for three hundred years, as to present a queer contradiction to those divine marks which set him apart for that condition. The Cardinal attributed, in fact, to intercourse with the spirit of his countrymen that disposition of the negro which seems to be derived from intercourse with the spirit of his Creator.
No sooner did the negro enter the climate of Hayti, and feel that more truculent and desolating one of the Spanish temper, than he began to revolt, to take to the mountains, to defend his life, to organize leagues with Caribs and other natives. The colonists were often slain in conflicts with them. The first negro insurrection in Hayti occurred in November, 1522. It began with twenty Jolof negroes belonging to Diego Columbus; others joined them; they slew and burned as they went, took negroes and Indians along with them, robbed the houses, and were falling back upon the mountains with the intent to hold them permanently against the colony. Oviedo is enthusiastic over the action of two Spanish cavaliers, who charged the blacks lance in rest, went through them several times with a handful of followers, and broke up their menacing attitude. They were then easily hunted down, and in six or seven days most of them were hanging to the trees as warnings. The rest delivered themselves up. In 1551, Charles V. forbade negroes, both free and slave, from carrying any kind of weapon. It was necessary subsequently to renew this ordinance, because the slaves continued to be as dexterous with the _machete_ or the sabre as with the hoe.
Humboldt and others have alluded to a striking prediction made by Girolamo Benzoni, an Italian traveller who visited the islands and Terra Firma early in the sixteenth century, and witnessed the condition and temper of the blacks. It is of the clearest kind. He says,[10] after speaking of marooning in Hayti,–_”Vi sono molti Spagnuoli che tengono per cosa certa che quest’ Isola in breve tempo sara posseduta da questi Mori. Et per tanto gli governatori tengono grandissima vigilanza”_ etc.: “There are many Spaniards who hold it for certain that in a brief time this island will fall into the hands of the Africans. On this account the governors use the greatest vigilance.” He goes on to remark the fewness of the Spaniards, and afterwards gives his own opinion to confirm the Spanish anticipation. Nothing postponed the fulfilment of this natural expectation till the close of the eighteenth century, but the sudden decay into which the island fell under Spanish rule, when it became no longer an object to import the blacks. Many Spaniards left the island before 1550, from an apprehension that the negroes would destroy the colony. Some authorities even place the number of Spaniards remaining at that time as low as eleven hundred.
The common opinion that Las Casas asked permission for the colonists to draw negroes from Africa, in order to assuage the sufferings of the Indians, does not appear to be well-founded. For negroes were drawn from Guinea as early as 1511, and his proposition was made in 1517. The Spaniards were already introducing these substitutes for the native labor, regardless of the ordinance which restricted the possession of negroes in Hayti to those born in Spain. It is not improbable that Las Casas desired to regulate a traffic which had already commenced, by inducing the Government to countenance it. His object was undoubtedly to make it easier for the colonists to procure the blacks; but it must have occurred to him that his plan would diminish, as far as possible, the miseries of an irregular transfer of the unfortunate men from Africa. (See Bridge’s _Jamaica, Appendix, Historical Notes on Slavery._ The Spaniards had even less scruple about their treatment of the negroes than of the Indians, alleging in justification that their own countrymen sold them to the traders on the Guinea coast!)
The horrors of a middle passage in those days of small vessels and tedious voyages would have been great, if the number of slaves to be transported had not been limited by law. There is no direct evidence, however, that Las Casas made his proposition out of any regard for the negro. Charles V. resolved to allow a thousand negroes to each of the four islands, Hayti, Ferdinanda, Cuba, and Jamaica. The privilege of importing them was bestowed upon one of his Flemish favorites; but he soon sold it to some Genoese merchants, who held each negro at such a high price that only the wealthiest colonists could procure them. Herrera regrets that in this way the prudent calculation of Las Casas was defeated.
This was the first license to trade in slaves. It limited the number to four thousand, but it was a fatal precedent, which was followed by French, Spanish, and Dutch, long after the decay of the Spanish part of Hayti, till all the islands, and many parts of Central America, were filled with negroes.
It is pleasanter to dwell upon those points in which the brave and humane Las Casas surpassed his age, and prophesied against it, than upon those which he held in common with it, as he acquiesced in its instinctive life. At first it seems unaccountable that the argument which he framed with such jealous care to protect his Indians and recommend them to the mercy of Government was not felt by him to apply to the negroes with equal force. Slavery uses the same pretexts in every age and against whatsoever race it wishes to oppress. The Indians were represented by the colonists as predestined by their natural dispositions, and by their virtues as well as by their vices, to be held in tutelage by a superior race: their vices were excuses for colonial cruelty, their virtues made it worth while to keep the cruelty in vigorous exercise. In refuting this interested party, Las Casa anticipates the spirit and reasoning of later time. He was the first to utter anti-slavery principles in the Western hemisphere. We have improved upon his knowledge, but have not advanced beyond his essential spirit, for equity and iniquity always have the same leading points to make through their advocates. When we see that such a man as Las Casas was unconscious of the breadth of his own philanthropy, we wonder less at the liability of noble men to admit some average folly of their age. This is the ridiculous and astonishing feature of their costume, the exceptional bad taste which their spiritual posterity learn to disavow.
The memory of Las Casas ought to be cherished by every true democrat of these later times, for he announced, in his quality of Protector of the Indian, the principles which protect the rights of all men against oppressive authority. He was eager to convince a despotic court that it had no legal or spiritual right to enslave Indians, or to deprive them of their goods and territory. In framing his argument, he applied doctrines of the universal liberty of men, which are fatal to courts themselves; for they transfer authority to the people, who have the best of reasons for desiring to be governed well. It is astonishing that the republicanism of Las Casas has not been more carefully noted and admired; for his writings show plainly, without forced construction or after-thought of the enlightened reader, that he was in advance of Spain and Europe as far as the American theory itself is. Our Declaration of the Rights of Man shows nothing which the first Western Abolitionist had not proclaimed in the councils and conferences of Seville.
It is worth while to show this as fully as the purpose of this article will admit. One would expect to find that he counselled kings to administer their government with equal regard to the little and the great, the poor and the rich, the powerful and the miserable; for this the Catholic Church has always done, and has held a lofty theory before earthly thrones, not-withstanding its own ambitious derelictions. But Las Casas tells the Supreme Council of the Indies that no charge, no servitude, no labor can be imposed upon a people without its previous and voluntary consent; for man shares, by his origin, in the common liberty of all beings, so that every subordination of men to princes, and every burden imposed upon material things, should be inaugurated by a voluntary pact between the governing and the governed; the election of kings, princes, and magistrates, and the authority with which they are invested to rule and to tax, anciently owed their origin to a free determination of people who desired to establish thereby their own happiness; the free will of the nation is the only efficient cause, the only immediate principle and veritable source of the power of kings, and therefore the transmission of such power is only a representative act of a nation giving free expression to its own opinion. For a nation would not have recourse to such a form of government, except in accordance with its human instinct, to secure the advantage of all; nor does it, in thus delegating power, renounce its liberty, or have the intention of submitting to the domination of another, or of conceding his right to impose burdens and contributions without the consent of those who have to bear them, or to command anything that is contrary to the general interest. When a nation thus delegates a portion of its power to the sovereign, it is not done by subscribing any written contract or transaction, because primitive right presides, and there are natural reserves not expressed by men, such as that of preserving intact their individual independence, that of their property, and the right of never submitting to a privation of good or an establishment of taxes without a previous consent. People existed before kings and magistrates. Then they were free, and governed themselves according to their untrammelled intent. In process of time people make kings, but the good of the people is the final cause of their existence. Men do not make kings to be rendered miserable by their rule, but to derive from them all the good possible. Liberty is the greatest good which a people can enjoy: its rights are violated every time that a king, without consulting his people, decrees that which wounds the general interest; for, as the intention of subjects was not to grant a prince the ability to injure, all such acts ought to be considered unjust and altogether null. “Liberty is inalienable, and its price is above that of all the goods of this world.”[11]
Las Casas follows the fashion of his time in resting all his glorious axioms upon the authority of men and councils. He quotes Aristotle, Seneca, Thomas Aquinas, the different Popes, the Canons, and the Scriptures; but it is astonishing to find how democratic they all are to the enthusiastic Bishop, or rather, how the best minds of all ages have admitted the immutable principles of human nature into their theology and metaphysics. When will the Catholic Church, which has nourished and protected so many noble spirits, express in her average sentiment and policy their generous interpretations of her religion, and their imputations to her of being an embodiment of the universal religion of mankind?
Men complained of Las Casas for being severe and unsparing in his speech. In this respect, of calling the vices and enormities of Slavery by their simple names, and of fastening the guilt of special transactions not vaguely upon human nature, but directly upon the perpetrators who disgraced the nature which they shared, he also anticipated the privilege and ill-repute of American Abolitionists. He told what he saw, or what was guarantied to him by competent witnesses. His cheek grew red when it was smitten by some fierce outrage upon humanity, and men could plainly read the marks which it left there. Nor did they easily fade away; he held his branded cheek in the full view of men, that they might be compelled to interpret the disgrace to which they were so indifferent. Men dislike to hear the outcries of a sensitive spirit, and dread to have their heathenism called by Christian names. How much better it would be, they think, if philanthropy never made an attack upon the representatives of cruelty! they would soon become converted, if they were politely let alone. No doubt, all that the supporters of any tyranny desire is to be let alone. They delight in abstract delineations of the vices of their system, which flourishes and develops while moral indignation is struggling to avoid attacking it where only it is dangerous, in the persons of its advocates. If there were nothing but metaphysical wickedness in the world, how effective it would be never to allude to a wicked man! If Slavery itself were the pale, thin ghost of an abstraction, how bloodless this war would be! Fine words, genteel deprecation, and magnanimous generality are the tricks of villany. Indignant Mercy works with other tools; she leaps with the directness of lightning, and the same unsparing sincerity, to the spot to which she is attracted. What rogue ever felt the clutch of a stern phrase at his throat, with a good opinion of it? Shall we throttle the rascal in broad day, or grope in the dark after the impersonal weasand of his crime?
And those amiable people who think to regenerate the world by radiating amenity are the choice accomplices of the villains. They keep everything quiet, hush up incipient disturbances, and mislead the police. No Pharisee shall be called a Devil’s child, if they can help it: they say “Fie!” to the scourge of knotted cord in the temple, or eagerly explain that it was used only upon the cattle, who cannot, of course, rebel. “These people who give the fine name of prudence to their timidity, and whose discretion is always favorable to injustice!”[12]
“I have decided to write this history,” says Las Casas, in his “Memoir upon the Cruelty of the Spaniards,” “by the advice of many pious and God-fearing persons, who think that its publication will cause a desire to spring up in many Christian hearts to bring a prompt remedy to these evils, as enormous as they are multiplied.” He designates the guilty governors, captains, courtiers, and connects them directly with their crimes. He does not say that they were gentlemen or Christians: “these brigands,” “executioners,” “barbarians,” are his more appropriate phrases. If he had addressed them as gentlemen, the terrible scenes would have instantly ceased, and the system of _Repartimientos_ would have been abandoned by men who were only waiting to be converted by politeness! He calls that plan of allotting the natives, and reducing them to Spanish overseership, “atrocious.” Yet for some time it was technically legal: it was equivalent to what we call constitutional. So that it was by no means so bad as the anarchical attack which Las Casas made upon it! He tells where an infamous overseer was still living in Spain,–or at least, he says, “his family was living in Seville when I last heard about him.” What a disgraceful attack upon an individual! how it must have hurt the feelings of a respectable family!–“How malignant!” cried the _hidalgos_; “How coarse!” the women; and “How ill-judged!” the clergy. He speaks of Cortes with contempt: why should he not? for he was only the burglar of a kingdom. But we read these sincere pages of Las Casas with satisfaction. The polished contemporaries of Abolitionists turn over the pages of antique denunciation, and their lymph really quickens in their veins as they read the prophetic vehemence of an Isaiah, the personality of a Nathan, the unmeasured vernacular of Luther, the satire and invective of all good upbraiders of past generations, until they reach their own, which yet waits for a future generation to make scripture and history of its speech and deeds. Time is the genial critic that effaces the contemporary glosses of interested men. It rots away the ugly scaffolding up which the bold words climbed, and men see the beautiful and tenacious arch which only genius is daring enough and capable to build. It is delightful to walk across the solid structure, with gratitude and taste in a glow. We love to read indictments of an exploded crime which we have learned to despise, or which we are committing in a novel form.
Charlevoix takes up this complaint of the imprudence of Las Casas, and, to illustrate it, thinks that he could not have anticipated the bad effects of the publication of his “Memoir upon the Cruelty of the Spaniards,” for it appeared during the war with the revolted Netherlands, and was translated into Dutch by a Frenchman. “Nothing,” he says, “so animated those people to persist in their rebellion, as the fear, that, if they entered into any accommodation with Spain, they would be served as the natives had been in the American Provinces, who were never so badly oppressed as when they felt most secure upon the faith of a treaty or convention.” If the book of Las Casas really lent courage and motive to that noble resistance, as it undoubtedly did by confirming the mistrust of Spanish rule in the Low Countries, the honorable distinction should be preserved by history.
While a bad institution is still vigorous and aggressive, the divine rage of conscientious men is not so exhilarating. A different style of thought, like that which prevailed among the French missionaries to the Indies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is more acceptable to colonial susceptibility. A South-side religion is a favorable exposure for delicate and precarious products like indigo, sugar, coffee, and cotton. Las Casas had not learned to wield his enthusiastic pen in defence of the negro; but when the islands became well stocked with slaves, later Catholics eagerly reproduced the arguments of the Spanish _encomiendas_, and vindicated afresh the providential character of Slavery. “I acknowledge,” says one, “and adore with all humility the profound and inconceivable secrets of God; for I do not know what the unfortunate nation has committed to deserve that this particular and hereditary curse of servitude should be attached to them, as well as ugliness and blackness.” “It is truly with these unfortunates that the poet’s saying is verified,–
“‘Dimidium mentis Jupiter illis aufert,’–
“as I have remarked a thousand times that God deprives slaves of half their judgment, lest, recognizing their miserable condition, they should be thrown into despair. For though they are very adroit in many things which they do, they are so stupid that they have no more sense of being enslaved than if they had never enjoyed liberty. Every land becomes their country, provided they find enough to eat and drink, which is very different from the state of mind of the daughters of Zion, who cried, on finding themselves in a foreign country,– ‘_Quomodo cantabimus canticum Domini in terra aliena?_'”[13]
Another missionary, in describing his method of administering baptism, says: “After the customary words, I add, ‘And thee, accursed spirit, I forbid in the name of Jesus Christ ever to dare to violate this sacred sign which I have just made upon the forehead of this creature, whom He has bought with His blood.’ The negro, who comprehends nothing of what I say or do, makes great eyes at me, and appears confounded; but to reassure him, I address to him through an interpreter these words of the Saviour to St. Peter: ‘What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.'”
He complains that they do not appear to value the mystery of the Trinity as a necessary means of salvation: the negro does not understand what he is made to repeat, any more than a parrot. And here the knowledge of the most able theologian will go a very little ways. “Still, a missionary ought to think twice before leaving a man, of whatever kind, to perish without baptism; and if he has scruples upon this point, these words of the Psalmist will reassure his mind: ‘_Homines et jumenta salvabis, Domine_’: ‘Thou, Lord, shall save both man and cattle!'”[14]
Father Labat is scandalized because the English planters refused to have their slaves baptized. Their clergymen told him, in excuse, that it was unworthy of a Christian to hold in slavery his brother in Christ. “But may we not say that it is still more unworthy of a Christian not to procure for souls bought by the blood of Jesus Christ the knowledge of a God to whom they are responsible for all that they do?” This idea, that the negroes had been first bought by Christ, must have been consoling and authoritative to a planter. The missionary has not advanced upon the Spanish theory, that baptism introduced the natives into a higher life.[15] “However,” says Labat, “this notion of the English does not affect them, whenever they can get hold of our negroes. They know very well that they are Christians, they cannot doubt that they have been made by baptism their brothers in Christ, yet that does not prevent them from holding them in slavery, and treating them like those whom they do not regard as their brothers.”[16] This English antipathy to baptizing slaves, for fear of recognizing them as men by virtue of that rite, appears to have existed in the early days of the North-American Colonies. Bishop Berkeley, in his “Proposal for the Better Supplying of Churches in our Foreign Plantations,” etc., alludes to the little interest which was shown in the conversion of negroes, “who, to the infamy of England and scandal of the world, continue heathen under Christian masters and in Christian countries; which could never be, if our planters were rightly instructed and made sensible that they disappointed their own baptism by denying it to those who belong to them.” This receives an explanation in a sermon preached by the Bishop in London, where he speaks of the irrational contempt felt for the blacks in the Plantation of Rhode Island, “as creatures of another species, who had no right to be instructed or admitted to the sacraments. To this may be added an erroneous notion that the being baptized is inconsistent with a state of slavery. To undeceive them in this particular, which had too much weight, it seemed a proper step, if the opinion of his Majesty’s attorney and solicitor-general could be procured. This opinion they charitably sent over, signed with their own hands; which was accordingly printed in Rhode Island, and dispersed throughout the Plantation. I heartily wish it may produce the intended effect.”[17]
In a speech upon West-Indian affairs, which Lord Brougham delivered in the House of Commons in 1823, there is some account of the religious instruction of the slaves as conducted by the curates. He alludes in particular to the testimony of a worthy curate, who stated that he had been twenty or thirty years among the negroes, “and that no single instance of conversion to Christianity had taken place during that time,–all his efforts to gain new proselytes among the negroes had been in vain; all of a sudden, however, light had broken in upon their darkness so suddenly that between five and six thousand negroes had been baptized in a few days. I confess I was at first much surprised at this statement. I knew not how to comprehend it; but all of a sudden light broke in upon my darkness also. I found that there was a