BURNABY'S TRAVELS THROUGH NORTH AMERICA 811 profanation of the Sabbath. Next day, therefore, he was summoned before the magistrates who, with many severe rebukes and pious exhortations, ordered him to be publicly whipped. The captain underwent his punishment like a man, but on the day of his final departure for England he invited the principal magistrates and select men to dine with him on board his ship. They accepted the invitation and had a most convivial entertainment. At the moment of setting sail the captain, after taking an affectionate farewell, accompanied them up on deck where the boatswain and crew were ready to receive them. He there thanked them afresh for the civilities they had shown him, of which he said he should have an eternal remembrance, and to which he wished it had been in his power to have made a more adequate return. One point of civility only remained to be adjusted between them which, as it was in his power, so he meant most fully to recompense to them. He then reminded them of what had passed, and, ordering the crew to pinion them, had them brought one by one to the gangway where the boatswain stripped off their shirts and with a cat-of-nine-tails laid on the back of each forty stripes save one. They were then amidst the shouts and acclamations of the crew shoved into their boats; and the captain immediately getting under weigh sailed for England.1 This anecdote does not sound very trustworthy, but at least it illustrates contemporary opinion with regard to the relations between England and Massachusetts. In his final summing up Burnaby traverses the conclusion already becoming popular, that empire was travelling westward, so that in time America would give law to the rest of the world. America was formed for happiness but not for empire. In a course of 1200 miles he had not seen a single object that solicited charity, but he had seen insuperable causes of weakness which would necessarily prevent it from being a powerful State. That he was proved to be wrong did not detract from the force of many of his arguments. With the economic effects of the navigation laws we have here nothing to do; still less with their influence upon political developments; but, if the whole system was honeycombed with corruption, the moral effects of their constant evasion must have been disastrous. It was not merely that an illicit trade grew up when England was at war with Holland or France; by which means trading with the enemy developed and flourished. There was the further effect that buccaneering and piracy were winked at. A broad distinction must be drawn between privateering and piracy. Privateers were of assistance to the Royal Navy as late as Saunders's expedition against Quebec.2 Buccaneering, however, naturally degenerated into downright piracy. These pirates and sea rovers, when prosecuted, generally escaped scot free through the partiality of juries. Fletcher, the governor of New York, and his council were in close communion with these gentry, 1 Burnaby, 1, 748-9. * Kimball, п, 80. the governor's excuse being that he wished to reclaim Tew, a notorious malefactor, from the vile habit of swearing.1 When Fletcher's successor sought to put an end to the evil he found the task almost impossible. In 1704 a noted pirate was hanged in Boston who struck an answering note when he told the bystanders to beware how they brought money into New England, to be hanged for it. It would seem that at both Boston and New York a full third part of the trade was "directly against law"; and, considering that these laws were openly condemned by members of the governor's council, such a result was not surprising. In 1733 a newspaper, commending the many virtues of a deceased collector of the customs, wrote: "He with much humanity took pleasure in directing masters of vessels how they ought to avoid the breach of the Acts of Trade". Rhode Island was especially an offender in this respect. Governor Hopkins virtually defended illicit trading as necessary to the colony.4 In conclusion the question must be faced, what part did the social and intellectual life of the old colonial Empire play in the development of a new national type? So far as social life was concerned, the answer is obvious, so that whoso runs may read. The inevitable tendency of a new country is in the direction of democracy; and even in the most English of the old colonies the winning of the Virginia West altered materially the character of that colony; whilst everywhere the movement towards a frontier that was continually reaching farther and farther west meant a new advance for democratic ideals. Moreover, the immigration of new European types involved further removal from English ideals. As we have seen, even in New England aristocratic influences of a sort were for a long time strong; but these had little in common with the aristocratic system which prevailed in England throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Here, then, was the persistent cause of antagonism-a social system increasingly democratic confronted with one which still drew its inspiration from aristocratic sources. Turning to the intellectual life of the old Empire we recognise that this found its main development in two directions, neither of which was in sympathy with tendencies prevailing at the time in the mother country. Compared with the splendid output of the British genius American literature counted for very little in the period in question. In two directions alone, it asserted itself. Concentration on theology at once narrowed and deepened the field of its activities, but this Calvinist Puritan theology was in its essence polemical and never tired of throwing the gage of battle to Arminianism as represented by the Church of England. Again, when the fires of theology began to burn less brightly, the lawyers, to whom the torch was handed 1 New York Col. Docs. IV, 447. 3 Weeden, p. 557. 2 Ibid. IV, 776. THE WEST INDIES 813 on, were defending for the most part a cause which was in direct opposition to the claims of British lawyers. Everywhere, then, we recognise that in the field of social and intellectual, no less than in that of political and economical life, the stars in their courses were moving in a direction hostile to the permanence of the British connection. Although Puritanism played some part in the foundation of the Bermudas and the main part in the foundation of the abortive Providence Island plantation, religion had very little to do with the development of the West Indies. It was the wealth of these islands that attracted settlers. Politics played indeed some part in providing new settlers to Barbados; it became the resort of Royalists who could not endure the state of things in England, but even these were more inclined to interest themselves in resenting unfair taxation than in displaying enthusiasm for the restored monarchy. At first it seemed as though the ideal of a white community living in semi-tropical surroundings might be realised, since in 1645 there were said to be more than 11,000 proprietors. Twenty-two years later the number of proprietors had fallen to 745, whilst there were 82,023 negro slaves. In 1645 there were 18,300 men fit to bear arms, and in 1667 only 8300.1 At first the tobacco and cotton planters had occupied small plots of from five to thirty acres, and had tilled them with the help of a few white servants; the population being almost exclusively white. But a complete revolution in the social life of the islands was made by the cultivation of sugar, involving, as it did, capitalist production and the use of slave labour. If ever the statement held good, latifundia perdidere Italiam, it was in the case of these West India islands. For a time re-emigration could cope with the difficulty. Thousands left Barbados to settle in Antigua and the other Leeward Islands. At a later date Barbados found settlers for Trinidad and Surinam and afterwards Jamaica. Henceforth the interests of the islands became inextricably joined with those of the slave trade, the Royal African Company playing a leading part in their development. The huge influx of negroes had undoubtedly a demoralising effect on the character of the planters. Fear begets cruelty, and no doubt some of the measures taken to protect the whites against the blacks were the outcome of panic. White indentured servants were still introduced, but their numbers were very small compared with that of the negro slaves. The demand largely exceeded the supply. Jeaffreson wrote, when endeavouring from London to obtain servants: "I believe, if you will endeavour it, you may find Scotch and English that would willingly change their climate upon the afore-mentioned terms, and much more when they are directed to a certain place and person of whose character they may be well informed. How many broken traders, miserable debtors, penniless spendthrifts, discontented 1 But sec ante pp. 174, 267 and authorities there cited. persons, travelling heads and scatter-brains would joyfully embrace such offers".1 In nine years out of the 300 promised malefactors only sixty-one had been shipped to the Leeward Islands. The conditions under which servants, no less than slaves, worked, depended mainly on the character of their masters. According to Jeaffreson "It is seldom seen that the ingenious or industrious men fail of raising their fortunes in any part of the Indies especially here, or where the land is not thoroughly settled. There are now several examples of it to my knowledge-men raised from little or nothing to vast estates. And I can assure you our slaves live as well now as the servants did formerly. The white servants are so respected that, if they will not be too refractory, they may live much better than thousands of the poor people in England during their very servitude, or at least as well".2 Unfortunately the number of these continued to diminish and more and more the islands came under the system of large plantations worked by vast gangs of slaves with a few white supervisors. As time went on, and capitalist production took more and more the place of the small freeholders, another evil assumed alarming dimensions. In Barbados as early as 1669 the bad results of the nonresidence of many planters were dealt with. Several of the most eminent planters fulfilled no parochial duties, their representative owners having removed themselves to England; attorneys, agents and overseers were left to manage their estates, whereby the country had a far less choice of able men to act in the highest places of trust, the burden of inferior offices thus falling more heavily on the poorer classes. The sufferings entailed on servants and slaves by the behaviour of an untrustworthy agent during the absence of a good proprietor are vividly brought out in Jeaffreson's letters. "By a kind of magnetic force", it was said in 1689, "England draws to it all that is good in the Plantations, it is the centre to which all things tend. Nothing but England can we relish or fancy: our hearts are here wherever our bodies be....They that are able breed up their children in England.' In addition to absentee planters, there was a scandal of absentee office-holders who farmed out their offices to others who extorted exorbitant fees from the colonists. It was the custom to send children to be educated in England, which often bred in young men indifference to their native colony. Codrington College, founded by the great governor of the Leeward Islands and completed in 1721, was a gallant attempt to cope with this evil, but scarcity of funds did not allow of its having a very wide influence. Much information with regard to the social life of the West Indies is furnished by the despatches of governors to be found in the Colonial 1 A Young Squire of the Seventeenth Century (ed. Jeaffreson, J. C.), 1, 259. 2 Ibid. 1, 256-7. 3 Quoted by Pitman, F. W., The Development of the British West Indies, pp. 31, 32. Calendar. Thus we learn that about 1673 the population of Barbados amounted to 21,309 whites and 33,184 negroes, the number of negroes, however, being probably understated. At this time the number of acres possessed by each planter ranged from 200 to 1000, the average number being 300.1 Sir Peter Colleton, who had become president of the council at the death of Lord Willoughby, noted that it was a troublesome task to keep eleven men in order who reckoned themselves equal in power and were not over well qualified for government. Colleton urged that a man who had an interest in the island would be more likely to be a good governor than one sent from England; the latter might think his employment a reward for past services and that his offence would be winked at should he break the Acts of Trade and Navigation. According to the findings of the Grand Jury in 1673 there had been a daily increase in the number of Quakers in the colony -no doubt partly caused by the profanation of the Lord's Day, which was a crying sin in the island, and the amount of swearing and drunkenness. 3 At the close of 1668 Jamaica was in a very prosperous condition and growing rich by privateering and the produce of the country. In 1674 Sir Thomas Lynch reported that the island had improved these last three years to a marvel, and the people were as contented as English could be. According to a survey made in 1670, about 209,000 acres had been granted by patent to 717 families consisting of about 15,000 persons, and there were numerous sugar and indigo works. No island abounded in cocoa more than Jamaica, at the time a more profitable crop than indigo, cotton or sugar. There was great stock of cattle, so that all danger of want was past, and in a short time they hoped to furnish the ships homeward bound.5 A friend of Lord Arlington, the Secretary of State, one John Style, wrote to him gossiping letters of some interest. He complained of the great number of "tippling houses", that there were not more than ten men resident to every licensed house that sold strong liquors, and of the wickedness of those who called themselves Christians. "Were the most savage heathens here present they might learn cruelty and oppression, the worst of Sodom or the Jews that crucified our Saviour might behold themselves matched if not undone." Although there was doubtless exaggeration in all this it seems clear that gambling was a crying evil in Jamaica and the council recommended measures for abating the mischief. A paper addressed to Lord Vaughan, when governor in 1674, recommended that some public manly sports instead of cards, dice and tables should be brought into fashion among the young gentry; that in time of peace they should be often exercised in arms. Penalties should be set upon swearing and upon intemperance 1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1669-74, no. 1101. 2 Ibid. no. 1104. 5 Ibid. nos. 271, 375. 3 Ibid. no. 1116. 4 Ibid. no. 1389. |