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Oglethorpe), and incorporated them by the name of the "Trustees for establishing the Colony of Georgia, in America." The charter conferred the usual powers of corporations in England, and authorized the trustees to hold any territories, &c., in America, for the better settling of a colony.

The charter further granted to the corporation seven undivided parts of all the territories lying in that part of South Carolina which lies from the northern stream of a river, there called the Savannah, all along the seacoast, to the southward, unto the southernmost stream of a certain other great river, called the Alatamaha, and westward from the heads of the said rivers respectively in direct lines to the South Seas, to be held as of the manor of Hampton Court, in Middlesex, in free and common soccage, and not in capite. It then erected all the territory into an independent province, by the name of Georgia. It authorized the trustees, for the term of twenty-one years, to make laws for the province, “not repugnant to the laws and statutes of England," subject to the approbation or disallowance of the crown, and after such approbation to be valid. The affairs of the corporation were ordinarily to be managed by the common council. It was further declared that all persons born in the province should enjoy all the privileges and immunities of natural-born subjects in Great Britain. Liberty of conscience was allowed to all inhabitants in the worship of God, and a free exercise of religion to all persons except Papists. The corporation were also authorized, for the term of twenty-one years, to erect courts of judicature for all civil and criminal causes, and to appoint a governor, judges, and other magistrates. The registration of all conveyances of the corporation was also provided for. The governor was to take an oath to observe all the acts of Parlia ment relating to trade and navigation, and to obey all royal instructions pursuant thereto. The governor of South Carolina was to have the chief command of the militia of the province; and goods were to be imported and exported without touching at any port in South Carolina. At the end of the twenty-one years, the crown was to establish such form of government in the province, and such method of making laws therefor, as in its pleasure should

be deemed meet; and all officers should be then appointed by the

crown.

It continued to languish, until at length the trustees, wearied with their own labors, and the complaints of the people, in June, 1751, surrendered the charter to the crown. Henceforward it was governed as a royal province, enjoying the same liberties and immunities as other royal provinces; and in process of time it began to flourish, and at the period of the American Revolution it had attained considerable importance among the colonies.

In respect to its ante-revolutionary jurisprudence, the same system prevailed as in the Carolinas, from which it sprang. Intestate estates descended according to the course of the English

law.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ANGLO-SAXON SYSTEM IN NORTH AMERICA-DISPUTE WITH

ENGLAND-RIGHT OF REVOLUTION.

COMPARISON OF THE COLONIAL WITH THE ANGLO-SAXON SETTLEMENTS-DISTINCT NESS OF THE COLONIES AND ITS CAUSES-DIFFERENT TIMES OF SETTLEMENTDISTANCE-NAVIGATION LAWS-RELIGIOUS ANIMOSITIES-POLITICAL ANTIPATHIES-NECESSITY OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR-THE NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERACY-NATURE OF THE CONTROVERSY OF THE COLONIES WITH ENGLANDCLAIMS OF THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT OPPOSITE VIEW OF THE COLONIES-HOW VINDICATED BY THE PRESENT COLONIAL SYSTEM OF ENGLAND OBSERVATIONS-FORCE OF CIRCUMSTANCES IN COMPELLING THE ADOPTION OF THE ANGLO-SAXON SYSTEM IN AMERICA—THE RIGHT OF REVOLUTION-FOUNDED IN NATURE-OBJECT OF GOVERNMENTS-THE DOCTRINE OF CONSENT-REVOLUTION ONLY JUSTIFIABLE IN CASE OF TYRANNY OR USURPATION-OBJECTION TO THE RIGHT OF REVOLUTION ON SCRIPTURAL GROUNDS-HOW ANSWERED-CASE OF HEZEKIAH-REVOLUTION IS JUSTIFIABLE POLITICALLY ONLY BY SUCCESSPRUDENTIALLY BY AN IMPROVED GOVERNMENT-THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION JUSTIFIED RELIGIOUSLY, POLITICALLY, PRUDENTIALLY—A QUESTION.

To the planting of the English colonies in North America we might with all propriety apply even stronger language than was used in our first chapter to describe the Anglo-Saxon settlements in England. Like these the colonies were from the first entirely independent of each other. They were planted at times widely different, at distant places, under different auspices and different leaders, with antagonistic principles of faith and government. Established separately, they remained in all respects distinct and almost without intercourse until the period of the Revolution. Thus, though, like the Saxon tribes, they were of one race and of one speech, yet they were in no sense one people. They were even more distinct than the kingdoms of the Saxon Octarchy. No similarity of natural circumstances availed to unite them. Only com

mon dangers and the sufferance of common wrongs forced them at length to enter into a confederate alliance to maintain their common rights.

Not to reckon the early settlements which failed of success, the first permanent settlement was made in Virginia in 1606. Georgia was not colonized till after 1732. Thus the period of settlements extends over a hundred and twenty-six years at least, and by a different and still fair computation it might be made much more. But at least more than four generations of Virginian colonists had lived, and the fifth generation was already well advanced before the first field had been cultivated or the first house built in the colony of Georgia.

At the present day, with our immense facilities of locomotion, we have but a faint idea of the obstacle to intercourse imposed upon the colonists by distance. From Boston to Savannah was a sea voyage of weeks, along a coast of which there were no charts, and must be made in some small craft but little suited to endure the storms of the Atlantic. Colonists much nearer to each other than the colonists of Georgia and Massachusetts looked upon the distance as immense; and if we observe the difficulties to be overcome in travelling, they were in fact more remote from each other than Europe and America at the present day. Moreover, the Government of England did not favor intercourse between them; and the navigation laws, prohibiting direct trade from the colonies to foreign nations, hindered the development of their marine to an extent which operated almost as a prohibition of trade between themselves.

And apart from interest there was little to create a very strong desire for intercourse. Between the Quaker-burning Puritan of Massachusetts and the Quaker colonist of Pennsylvania, the Roman Catholic of Maryland and the Episcopalian of Virginia or the Carolinas, there were strong religious animosities; and none of them were altogether free from the intolerance of religious rancor. In New England, women who dissented from dissent were whipped naked from Boston to Dedham, and Baptists were drowned to death— a rather grim jest on the doctrine of immersion. In Virginia, nonconformists to the Church of England were expelled the colony. And even in Maryland an act was passed in 1649, though it does

not appear to have been put in force, which punished Unitarianism with death and confiscation. Religious prejudices so strong and so radically opposite were alone sufficient to prevent friendly communications; and in fact most of the colonies were in this respect as widely separated from each other as Jerusalem and Samaria of old; they had " no dealings" with each other.

Nor were their political antipathies much less decided. The Cavalier of the South and the Roundhead regicide of the New England settlements had no point of agreement, and their mutual bitterness was as intense as that of their respective parties in the mother country. Aside from these direct antagonistic influences, their different colonial constitutions had a tendency to keep them separate. The Plymouth colonies were in the strictest sense democracies. In fact, they were the only radical democracies then in the world. The Carolinas, on the contrary, were, by the constitution framed for them by Locke, established on a basis of aristocratic precedence and power; although the popular principle was made coördinate with the aristocratic. Other colonies, and at a later date the Carolinas also, were brought into near relations to the Government at home by the appointment of their governors and councils by the crown; which, notwithstanding that the assemblies were elected by the people, kept alive a cordial feeling of attachment to the sovereign. In the proprietary governments, particularly that of Maryland, where "Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, sovereign lord and proprietary of the province," exercised in all but name the functions of a constitutional monarch, thus uniting in his single person the office of a king, the status of an English peer, and the enlightenment of a popular leader, a peculiarity of public feeling was produced perhaps more favorable to real progress than any of the others. It was preeminently a government of law. The sovereign lord" and the free colonist were equally its subjects. Yet the constitution was as far removed from premature democracy as from an effete absolutism. Perhaps of all forms of colonial existence, this, wisely administered, was least objectionable. Conservative and yet progressive, it neither trampled rudely on the institutions of the past, nor rushed with indiscreet haste into the uncertainties of an unripe future. But whichever of these forms of local

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