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them to Europe. Thus Boston used the Dutch port as an annexe for its own more risky operations, which could be conducted in greater safety under a foreign jurisdiction. The situation therefore amounted to this, that a conquest of New Netherland would gratify and strengthen Connecticut, check the independence of Massachusetts, and render it possible to set about the enforcement of the laws of trade and navigation; it was in fact indispensable to the imperial policy of the ministry. In formal justification there existed the excuse that England had more than once denounced the Dutch occupation as a trespass upon English rights founded on prior discovery and the Virginia charters of James I. The excuse was inconsistent, for England, from the reign of Elizabeth onwards, had strongly asserted the counterdoctrine that effective occupation was the only test of colonial titles; and if the Dutch occupation was not very effective, there had been no attempt at English occupation of any sort save in the eastern part of the territory. There was yet another significance in the conquest of the Hudson waterway-its strategic value in a conflict with New France. But that was a frontiersman's interest, and there is no evidence that it occurred in 1664 to English statesmen, whose eyes were upon the coast and the ocean to the exclusion of the interior. In this respect they were building better than they knew.

The Duke of York, brother of Charles II, undertook the prosecution of the plan.1 In March 1664 he received letters patent creating him proprietor of certain territory to the north of New England, of the islands from Cape Cod to the Hudson, and of the mainland of the Dutch possessions. He sent out Colonel Richard Nicolls with a force not five hundred strong and orders to enlist more men in New England. At Boston the commander met with a profession of willingness but an actual delay which made the Massachusetts men too late to share in the campaign. Connecticut, on the other hand, provided an effective contingent, and at the end of August Nicolls took New Amsterdam without firing a shot. In October a subordinate occupied the Delaware settlements and the conquest was complete. The Dutch Government made no effort at recovery, and the Treaty of Breda by recognising actual conquests left the colony in English hands. It was in effect exchanged for Surinam.

The exclusive object having been to perfect the system of imperial relationships, the duke did not care very greatly what local institutions were established in the territory so long as that object was attained. This is the clue to his colonial policy, and it explains his political tolerance overseas as compared with his absolutism at home. It explains also his gift of half the conquest to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, two of the Carolina proprietors; in his view he was delegating a responsibility rather than parting with a source of profit.

1 See Van Rensselaer, M. G., Hist. of New York in the Seventeenth Century; Channing, E., Hist. of United States, vol. II, chap. ii.

NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY

253

Whilst the result of the undertaking was yet unknown, he made over to Berkeley and Carteret the land from the Hudson to the Delaware under the name of New Jersey.

Nicolls established his master's authority with very little friction at New York, where the Dutch ex-governor set the example of swearing allegiance. The colony was as yet hardly fit for representative government, much less for autonomy of the New England type, but the arrangements actually made were wise and liberal. "The Duke's Laws", applied in 1665 to the English of Long Island and subsequently to the whole province, allowed liberty of conscience and worship and trial by jury, and personal freedom was certainly not less extensive than in any other colony. In the next Dutch War, that of 1672-4, New York was retaken by its former owners but was restored at the peace. Sir Edmund Andros, a man of firmness and good sense, was governor from 1674 to 1680, and Colonel Thomas Dongan from 1682 to 1688. Andros defined the boundaries with neighbouring colonies and enforced the laws of trade. Dongan was empowered by the duke to introduce representative government, and the first Assembly met in 1683. This step is in sharp contrast with the trend of home politics at the time; and in general it may be said that the character and policy of James, Duke of York, cannot be fairly judged without taking his colonial proceedings into account. Dongan also realised the military importance of the Hudson and made a lasting alliance with the Six Nations who occupied the forest country north of the province. There was no extensive English emigration to New York. At the time of the conquest it contained about 7000 Dutchmen, nearly all of whom remained as English subjects. Huguenots and some German settlers went there during the Restoration period. New Englanders entered the eastern regions, and the duke, who employed Catholics and Protestants indifferently, sent out some Irish officials. The result, as in Carolina, was scarcely an English colony, but neither was it typically American; it was rather cosmopolitan and so remained for a century to come.

The New Jersey grant to Berkeley and Carteret was made in June 1664. The two proprietors agreed to interest themselves in West and East Jersey respectively, the former meaning the south-westward region bounded by the Delaware estuary. The Dutch population of New Jersey was very scanty, and in the first two years it was augmented by new arrivals from England and also from Connecticut and New Haven. The vigorous New Englanders set the pace in political matters and procured the election of the first Assembly in 1668. This body sought at once to establish autonomy of the New England type, and a contest with the proprietors resulted. The Dutch reconquest in 1673 left the immediate future uncertain, and before peace had ensured restitution Lord Berkeley sold his rights in West Jersey to two Quakers, John Fenwick and Edward Byllyng. Hence arose the first

organised Quaker emigration from England, for the purchasers intended to form a colony of refuge for their co-religionists. After the peace of 1674 the Crown granted new letters patent for both New York and New Jersey to the Duke of York alone, in disregard of the Quaker purchase. Andros, who went out to govern the two provinces for the duke, declined to recognise the Quaker rights, but his master was more complaisant and allowed the settlement to proceed. This kindness was partly due to statesmanship, which demanded that the colony should be peopled, and partly to a queer friendship that existed between the Catholic duke and the Quaker William Penn, who had taken over Byllyng's share of the business. Penn, the acknowledged leader of his sect, could command a fair amount of capital, and in 1681-2 he simplified the Jersey problem by buying up the Carteret rights in addition to those of Berkeley. The duke instructed Dongan, his representative at New York, to honour the arrangement, and the separate existence of New Jersey was assured. The colony was not, however, a personal proprietorship of William Penn, but that of a syndicate of which he was the leader. The Quakers were not the most numerous section of the population, and their principles rendered them disinclined for political strife. The government of New Jersey thus fell chiefly to the non-Quakers and, except for its religious toleration, resembled the New England type.

Penn was not content with the New Jersey experiment; he hankered after a colony in which he could put his own pronounced views to a trial unhindered by prior occupation of the field. The Quakers, in spite of the friendship of the Duke of York, experienced bitter persecution in the England of Charles II. Their unworldly stubbornness in petty matters-wearing a distinctive costume, refusing to doff their hats in courts of justice, "theeing" and "thouing" their judges, and interrupting the services of the established Church-aroused more hatred than did their fundamental principles, and both they and their persecutors came to the conclusion that the continued residence in England of their more intransigent members was impossible. Virtuous as they were, authority regarded them as bad citizens, and there was consequently no objection to their emigration; the State, classing them for its purposes with paupers, felons and rebels, felt relieved at their departure and was disposed to facilitate their going.1 This circumstance explains how Penn was enabled to enter the ranks of the favoured courtiers in obtaining a proprietary grant of a large new area of North America, to which he undertook to draw off his unpopular followers.

The Crown had owed several thousand pounds to Penn's father, who had died in 1670, and ten years later it still owed the money to his son. The latter offered to accept an American grant in payment, and in March 1681 received letters patent for a vaguely defined tract

1 Beer, 1, 29-30.

PENNSYLVANIA

255 whose borders were ultimately drawn as those of the present State of Pennsylvania. At the time of granting, however, the province was much larger, and it was soon afterwards made to include the settlements on the south side of the Delaware estuary which had hitherto belonged to New York. The duke freely made over this territory to Penn, but since it was already occupied, its development took a different course from that of Pennsylvania proper, and in 1702 it was separated to form the colony and subsequent State of Delaware. Penn had suggested "Sylvania" as the title of his province, and it was Charles II who attached the prefix, somewhat against the will of the grantee.1

New York had become a cosmopolitan colony by the accidents of its history; Pennsylvania was made cosmopolitan by the policy of its founder. The Quakers were strong in Wales and Ireland as well as in England, and contingents from all three countries were among the pioneers. In addition to this Penn wrote a prospectus which was published on the continent in Dutch, French and German, and by this means attracted a number of foreign recruits, chiefly Germans and Swiss, from religious bodies like the Mennonites, whose principles resembled those of the Quakers. From the outset there was complete religious toleration, and all Christians were allowed full political rights; the only restriction was that the sects must abstain from interference with each other's practices. The grant of representative government was a condition embodied in the patent and was acted upon as soon as the pioneers had settled down. Penn drew up an elaborate and unworkable constitution known as the "Frame of Government", but he did not attempt to put it into operation; its council of seventy-two and Assembly of two hundred members were obviously impossible, and it should be read as an academic statement of principle. There was, however, some trace of its influence in the early political arrangement whereby the council (of eighteen members) could alone initiate legislation, and the Assembly (of thirty-six) could alone vote upon it. This peculiarity soon disappeared, and the constitution became one of the normal type, giving scope, it may be added, for the usual dissensions between proprietor and subjects.

Penn himself spent the years 1682-4 in the colony. To him may be attributed two lasting achievements, the establishment of friendly relations between the colonists and the Indians, whose lands were punctually although not too generously paid for, and the laying-out of the capital city of Philadelphia on the estuary of the Delaware. Philadelphia was an example of deliberate planning and not of haphazard growth, and its position guaranteed its future importance, for it stood in the only corner of the province which impinged upon navigable water. Pennsylvania was a spiritual as well as a material experiment. In the former character it succeeded as well as any 1 See Jones, F. R., Colonisation of the Middle States and Maryland, pp. 263-81.

practical man could expect, for it produced a clean-living and tolerant community; but to Penn it was a disappointment, for he expected something more, and with the inevitable squabbles between factions and authorities it fell far short of the example of peace and charity of which he had dreamed. On the material side there was unqualified success. The planting of the pioneers went without a hitch, there was no Indian war and no "starving-time" as in the earlier foundations, and in ten years Philadelphia was exporting surplus foodstuffs to the West Indies. If the saints were no more than passably saintly, they were yet excellent men of business.

The history of Virginia under the Restoration is full of important incidents, but it will be possible to touch only upon those matters which are typical of the position of a Plantation colony in its second generation. By 1660 the formative period was over, and the chief task of Virginia, as of Barbados, was to adapt itself to the general polity of the Empire. Sir William Berkeley, appointed governor by Charles I and displaced by the Commonwealth, resumed office when Charles II mounted the throne. At that date he had lived nearly twenty years in Virginia, understood its interests, and was welcomed as a governor the colony could trust. He identified himself with the planters' protest against the enumeration of tobacco in the Navigation Act of 1660, but failed to secure its repeal. The restriction caused much discontent, and all commercial misfortunes were attributed to it. In reality, as had been apparent more than twenty years before, the depression in the tobacco trade was primarily due to overproduction. The colony's output glutted the English market and had to face Spanish and Portuguese competition on the continent of Europe. The only way to improve the price of Virginian tobacco was to limit the output. To that end the Home Government urged the colonists to turn their attention to flax, hemp and pitch, products which would have rendered the Empire more nearly self-sufficing. But all efforts in these directions failed, either because the commodities were unsuited to the country or because the servile organisation of labour could not be adapted to them.

Narrow and self-centred, the colony developed political characteristics that were typical of the period. An Assembly composed of Berkeley's supporters was elected in 1660 and sat undissolved for sixteen years. During that time many new immigrants arrived and the views of the electorate greatly changed. Nevertheless the ruling clique clung to office, managed public business for their own benefit, and gradually drew apart as an oligarchy treating the newcomers as inferiors. Berkeley, whose character deteriorated with age, abetted this schism in the corporate life. The climax came with a rebellion headed by one Nathaniel Bacon, an immigrant, in 1676. It cost many lives, entailed the recall of Berkeley, and ultimately cleared the political atmosphere. The melancholy sequence of corruption,

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