of Jamaica were established there between 1741 and 1749. The three British settlements of Black River, Cape Gracias à Dios and Blewfields boasted 1400 inhabitants in 1770, 206 of whom were whites. Besides exporting considerable quantities of mahogany, sarsaparilla, cocoa and tortoiseshell, Black River served as a refuge for the logwood-cutters driven from the Bay of Honduras in 1730. It also offered a valuable starting point for trade with the neighbouring Spaniards, or for attacking their settlements by way of Lake Nicaragua.1

Whilst Barbados and the Leeward Islands turned almost wholly to sugar planting, the soil of the Bermudas proved suitable only for raising vegetables. These the inhabitants exported in the sloops they built, serving also as carriers between the West Indies and the continent, raking and carrying salt for the Newfoundland and New England fisheries, "fishing" for wrecks, and sometimes turning privateers or pirates. But the principal "nest" of pirates was in the Bahamas. For some time after 1713 the coasts of North America were infested by them. They met with no little secret support Pennsylvania, Carolina, and Virginia. But two expeditions, one from Carolina and one from Virginia, which resulted after desperate fighting in the capture of Bonnet and Thatch in 1718, put an end to their activities there.2 In spite of their strategic importance, the Bahamas, left derelict by the lords proprietors, were allowed to be so reduced by Spanish raids that only twelve scattered families remained there in 1716.3 In 1718 Captain Woodes Rogers, the famous seaman and adventurer, was sent to drive out the pirates and to resettle the Islands. New colonists were introduced, including some Germans from the Palatinate, and constitutional government was established in due course.5

In Newfoundland, Placentia on being surrendered by the French was placed under a military governor. The need for a civil governor was increasingly felt. The system by which the master of the first vessel to arrive at any fishing ground acted as "fishing admiral” and sole dispenser of justice until the coming of the commodore of the convoy had definitely broken down. When the fishing season was over, the few inhabitants who remained for the winter relapsed into a state of semi-barbarism. From 1728 onwards, therefore, the convoy captains were appointed as governors. But they could, of course, only act during their brief summer visits with the fishing fleets. The first such governor commissioned resident justices who could act in his absence. Courts of law were presently instituted. The permanent 1 Edwards, v, 202 seqq. See McLeish, J., "British Activities in Yucatan and on the Moskito Shore", an unpublished thesis in the Library of the University of London. 2 N.C. Col. Rec. II. 3 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1716, no. 108.

See Rogers, Woodes, A Cruising Voyage round the World, ed. Mainwaring, G. E., Introduction.

5 C.O. 37, 10 seqq.

• Reports by Commodores and Lt.-Gov. Moody, Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1715, passim, and 1716, no. 70, i, etc.

THE AMERICAN COLONIES

385

population, largely recruited from Irish Roman Catholics and convicts, now began to grow rapidly, rising from 1800 to 2400 during this period.1

After the Peace of Utrecht, British territory on the continent reached from Hudson Bay to Savannah. From a coast line roughly 1000 miles long, it extended 100 miles inland. To the hinterland an indefinite claim was laid. The accession of George I was welcomed in the Plantations as a guarantee of the continuance of their political and religious liberties.2 The Jacobite minorities, whether in Barbados or New York, could not challenge the fait accompli, and the colonies settled down to enjoy an era of comparative political calm and rapid economic development.

All the political questions which were to cause the disruption of the Empire after the Peace of Paris, had been raised after the Peace of Utrecht. Already the West Indies had demanded that the importation of foreign sugar into the northern Plantations of the continent should be prohibited; already enquiries were afoot as to how the colonies could be made to pay the cost of their governments and a standing army. But as yet the threat of the French had not been removed from America, and at home there was urgent need of political calm.

The risings of the 'Fifteen and 'Forty-five confirmed Newcastle and Walpole in their attitude of not interfering more than could be helped in colonial affairs. Gradually the opposite policy, for which the Board of Trade and Plantations stood, was shelved. That policy aimed at stricter control over the trade and development of the colonies, and the establishment of a homogeneous system of administration by converting all proprietary and chartered governments into Royal Provinces, governed directly by the Crown. Between 1700 and 1720 seven bills for the resumption of the charters were introduced into the House of Commons. They were rejected. The charters of Carolina and New Jersey were subsequently resumed, but those of Connecticut and Rhode Island, of Massachusetts Bay, Pennsylvania and Maryland were allowed to stand. Maryland provided an early instance of the new policy. There the new Lord Baltimore was allowed to resume proprietary government, from which, as a Catholic, his grandfather had been suspended. William Penn died without signing the surrender of his proprietorship of Pennsylvania (1718). His successors passed into the position of absentee landlords without his prestige, and of governors acting through deputy-governors.

Proprietary government in South Carolina had proved incompetent, arbitrary and unpopular. To help them in the devastating war with the Yamassee Indians which broke out in 1715, the 1 C.O. 194, 5 seqq., and 195, 6 seqq.; Prowse, Hist. of Newfoundland; Rogers, J. D., Hist. Geog. of Brit. Col., Newfoundland.

Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1714-15, P. v. ♦ Cf. Egerton, H. E., Brit. Col. Policy.

CHBE I

3 Ibid. 1712-14, pp. vi, vii.

5 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1714-15, pp. xv, xvi.

25

Carolinians appealed for aid to the lords proprietors and the other colonies, and to the Crown to take them under its protection. The proprietors refused to surrender their charter, but confessed that they could render no effective aid.1 The majority of the settlers were AngloIrish dissenters. They were equally disgusted by the neglect of the proprietors and their Anglican policy, by their exercise of the prerogative in disallowing their laws and by their interference with the distribution of the lands of the conquered Yamassees. A threatened invasion by the Spaniards in 1719 brought matters to a head. The governor was obliged to call out the militia. They marched upon Charleston. An Assembly was elected, styled itself a convention, and again appealed to the King. Clearly the proprietors had failed to defend the country and preserve order. The veteran, Sir Francis Nicholson, was appointed by the Crown to carry on the government. The surrender of the charter was completed in 1729, a strip of North Carolina being reserved for Lord Carteret, who refused to part with his share of the soil. Alarmed by the repeated representations of the Board of Trade in favour of resuming the charters, notably in 1721,2 and its success in the case of South Carolina, Massachusetts presented to the King an address for the continuance of its privileges. It was supported by its colony's agent, Jeremiah Dummer, in his Defence of the New England Charters. That pamphlet closed a discussion which had been active for a generation and which was not seriously reopened for another forty years.3

In direct conflict with the ideal of stricter control steadily urged by the Council of Trade, stood the ideal of the colonies. In royal and chartered governments alike that ideal was almost complete independence after the Connecticut model. There, and in Rhode Island, the executive and legislature were appointed by the voters. They chose their own governors, carried on illegal trade with impunity, and had no correspondence with the Government at home, except when they stood in need of assistance from the Crown.4

5

Deep devotion to the Crown was expressed in all addresses. But certainly, even at this early period, a strong current of feeling for independence was running in the colonies, or at least a desire to manage their own affairs in a way which involved disowning the sovereignty of the Crown. It was so interpreted not only by the Board of Trade and the Privy Council, but by governors of such different characters as Hunter and Clarke of New York, Belcher of New England, and Lord Archibald Hamilton of Jamaica, and by independent observers on both sides of the Atlantic. It was, indeed,

1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1714-15, nos. 517, 524; N.C. Col. Rec. 11, 191 seqq.

2 N.Y. Col. Docs. v, 591.

3 Cf. Osgood, H. L., Amer. Col. in the Eighteenth Century, 11, 294-9.

4 C.O. 5, 752, no. 45; 5, 1294, p. 27.

6

Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1711-12, pp. 103, 104; C.O. 5, 752, nos. 44, ii, iv, 45; 5, 898, no. 84. A.P.C., Col. m, 329–34. 7 C.O. 5, 1093, ff. 64, 126.

GOVERNORS' SALARIES AND REVENUE

387 the natural interpretation of much of the procedure of the Assemblies during the first half of the eighteenth century. Sometimes the nominated councils, which with the governor formed the executive, joined with the representatives in their demands. Sometimes they opposed the governor on their own behalf, as when in New York (1729),1 North Carolina, and elsewhere, they successfully challenged his claim to sit and vote in council when acting in a legislative capacity. But more usually they acted with the governor in opposing the claims of the Assemblies. Everywhere, in royal and chartered provinces alike, the constitutional development was practically the same. By precisely the same procedure as was pursued in the West Indies, the legislative Assemblies endeavoured to obtain complete control over finance, the executive and the judiciary. Using the power of the purse to induce governors to disobey the Royal Instructions which, they maintained, were not binding upon themselves, they attempted, by alternate bribery and starvation, to gain control over all officers of State. The growing system of placemen and the permitting holders of Crown appointments in the colonies to act by deputy-an abuse long combated in vain by the Council of Trade-no doubt stimulated their opposition to royal nominees and the desire to appoint their own officers. The peculation and maladministration of bad governors, such as Lord Cornbury in New York, lent a colour of reason to their refusal to vote permanent salaries. But the refusal was maintained equally when there was no such reason. Nor was it a question of hardship. Though poverty was sometimes pleaded as an excuse for not voting governors' salaries, yet Massachusetts, New York, and Jamaica were all ready enough to offer heavier bribes than the salaries demanded, if they could have their way, and to prolong their own sessions at a cost greater than the revenues they were asked to vote. This is the key to the struggle to obtain a permanent and adequate revenue and fixed salaries for governors which was fought out in long and bitter controversies during the first part of the eighteenth century, chiefly in the arenas of Massachusetts, New York, and Jamaica. In Virginia, where the governor's salary was fixed and paid out of the permanent revenue, and the Assembly could therefore put no pressure upon him, political calm reigned. It was not until 1753 that a principle of financial control was raised there. Governor Dinwiddie then claimed the right to levy a tax fixed by himself on all documents requiring the public seal. The Assembly protested to the King. Its appeal was rejected, but the governor saw fit to modify his attitude.

In New York, thanks to the firmness and political genius of Governor Hunter, the issue was temporarily decided in the opening years of this period, and decided in favour of the Crown. In view of the Assembly's prolonged refusal to vote an adequate revenue for the

1 C.O. 5, 1093, ff. 84, 85.

support of the governor and government, threats were made of settling a revenue by Act of Parliament over the Assembly's head. Then Hunter was left in the lurch by the new Tory ministry. The accession of George I and the return of the Whigs came just in time to save him from being ruined and recalled. By his conciliatory skill he succeeded at length in obtaining a vote for a revenue in return for his passing a Naturalisation Act upon which the Assembly had set its heart. When William Burnet, Whig son of a Whig bishop, came out to follow in his footsteps in 1720, the province had been restored to peace and credit. The Assembly voted him a supply for five years, and among its appropriations was a salary of £1560 for the governor. It was not until Governor Clarke succeeded Cosby in 1736 that the opposition, which had been roused by the Zenger case,2 revived in the Assembly all those claims which had lain dormant since Hunter's time, and which, taken together, constituted a deliberate attack upon the executive and the prerogative of the Crown. Clarke himself was kept without a salary and starved into accepting a triennial act and other acts aiming at establishing courts by statute instead of by virtue of the governor's commission; at the appointment of judges during good behaviour; and at rendering the entire executive dependent upon the Assembly by a system of appropriations and annual votes for salaries.3

Massachusetts Bay in the meanwhile had remained the chief centre of political disturbance. Governor after governor for thirty years was instructed to stop the waste of timber reserved for masts for the Navy, to obtain the grant of a fixed salary, and the rebuilding of the fort at Pemaquid, which with the adjacent country had been abandoned ever since its destruction by the French in 1697, and was of importance as an outpost and for maintaining the title of Great Britain to the territory east of Kennebec River. All these and other reasonable demands were persistently refused. Only when Colonel Dunbar, the Governor of Nova Scotia, resettled Pemaquid (1731), did the New Englanders bestir themselves to assert their claim to it. Colonel Shute's demand for a fixed salary was steadily refused. When Governor Burnet came from New York to succeed him, he was instructed to move the Assembly for a fixed salary of £1000, and to warn it that any further delay would necessitate the intervention of Parliament. The representatives endeavoured in vain to bribe him by voting him larger sums twice a year. His successor, Jonathan Belcher, with similar instructions, met with a similar reception. He could only induce the Assembly to agree to vote his salary annually at the beginning of each session, instead of the half-yearly dole by which since Dudley's time it had determined to retain control over the governor's interest. "They are daily endeavouring to incroach 2 Vide infra, p. 399. 5 seqq.

1 Cal. St. Pap. Col. 1714-15, nos. 435, 530.

3 N.Y. Ass. Journals, 1, 792 seqq.; cf. N.J. Archives, v, 86 s