THE revolution of 1689 was, in the first instance, a revolution of the English people. Through their representatives in the great convention they defended the Protestant establishment of the church, asserted the sovereignty of Parliament, defined certain fundamental rights of the individual, and, finally, placed these ancient rights under the protection of their new sovereigns, William and Mary. A few weeks later a similar convention in Scotland took similar action; and during the next two years the military campaigns of William and his officers re-established in the dependent principality of Ireland the authority of the English crown and the English church. These events, however, did not establish the “United Kingdom” of to-day. For a century longer Ireland maintained her separate though dependent Parliament; and the legislative

union of Scotland and England was not accomplished for nearly twenty years. From the standpoint of British law and administration, Scotchmen and Irishmen were still in large measure alien peoples, both in England and in the colonies.

     These political movements in the British Isles were followed with close interest by large numbers of English subjects in the American hemisphere. They produced or made possible similar movements there, and radically changed the internal organization of the colonies as well as their relation to each other and to the mother-country. Notwithstanding the close causal connection between the revolutionary movements in the mother-country and in the colonies, there were important differences between them, due to peculiar conditions prevailing either in the colonies as a whole or in particular colonies or groups of colonies. The American movements cannot, therefore, be understood without some analysis of those conditions.¹

     The main body of the English colonists in 1689 occupied a narrow strip of territory stretching along the seaboard from the Kennebec River in Maine to the Ashley in South Carolina. Beyond the struggling English settlements in Maine, to the north and east, was a region in which English and French claims overlapped. In the south the Carolinas had been settled in defiance of the prior Spanish

claims, and the new settlement of Charleston, in particular, was jealously watched by the Spanish garrison at St. Augustine. Everywhere the frontier line was drawn close to the sea. Here and there were interior posts in the wilderness, like the Massachusetts towns in the Connecticut Valley, and Schenectady on the Mohawk, but even towns within a few miles of Boston were still subject to Indian forays.

     North of these permanent settlements on the main-land, were several remote trading-posts on the shores of Hudson Bay, maintained by the Hudson’s Bay Company. A few small fishing settlements also existed on the eastern shore of Newfoundland, but the English claim to the island was challenged by a French fort on Placentia Bay.

     To the south, England had already acquired a series of insular possessions, beginning with the Bermudas, and including in succession the Bahamas, the Leeward Islands, Barbadoes, and Jamaica. Commercial and social relations of considerable importance existed between the insular colonies and those of the mainland, and their political tendencies were in some respects much alike.

     The population of these colonies can only be roughly estimated. New England, not counting Indians, may have numbered about eighty thousand, of whom about two-thirds were included in 1691 under the political jurisdiction of Massachusetts. New York, New Jersey, and Penn’s colonies

Map Facing Page 6: North America, Showing European Claims, Occupation, and Settlements (1689)

on the Delaware had together a population probably somewhat less than that of Massachusetts. Virginia was then the largest of the colonies, and the two Chesapeake provinces combined probably had a population slightly larger than that of New England. In the isolated Carolina settlements, there may have been in all five thousand people, including negroes.¹

     In these British dominions there was already a considerable variety of racial elements. The New England colonists were almost exclusively of English stock, and so for the most part were the white settlers of the south, though there was already a small French Huguenot colony in South Carolina. New York was a comparatively recent conquest, with the Dutch considerably outnumbering the English element and a smaller representation of other European stocks. In Pennsylvania the generous policy of Penn and his liberal advertisements in continental Europe had attracted some non-English immigrants to reinforce the early Swedish and Dutch settlers and the English Quakers. African and, to a lesser extent, Indian slavery existed throughout the continental colonies as well as in the islands; though in the former it was only beginning to assume an important position. In South Carolina, however, by the close of the century, the negroes outnumbered the whites.

     The American colonists differed from each other

not merely in racial distinctions, but sometimes even more decisively in religion. New England as a whole was still dominated by the religious ideals of the Puritan founders of Massachusetts Bay. Dissenters could not, however, be absolutely excluded, as the Antinomians and the early Quakers had been in the days of Winthrop and Endicott. Rhode Island, with her ideal of religious toleration, still stood in marked antagonism to the old Puritan ecclesiasticism; and the royal government of the Andros régime had given the Episcopal church a foothold in Massachusetts. In the closing years of the seventeenth century the Anglican clergy and laymen of New England constituted a small but energetic minority which had to be reckoned with as a real political force.

     The racial differences of the middle colonies were reflected in the field of religion. In New York, Calvinism was not so strongly entrenched nor so aggressive as in New England. Its adherents were in a decided majority, but were themselves divided into rival organizations, of which the most important were the old Dutch Reformed church, lately the established church of New Netherland, and the more loosely associated Congregational churches which had their strongholds on Long Island, thus bringing into New York politics the militant spirit of New England Puritanism. The Lutherans were also represented in the colony, and the Church of England had a bare foothold. Between these various

Protestant bodies, the early English governors had maintained on the whole a fairly even balance. The few Catholics of the province, protected from persecution during the supremacy of James, the Catholic proprietor and king, became in the revolution of 1689 the chief objects of popular hatred, and were afterwards subjected to severe penalties. In Pennsylvania the strongest influence was, of course, that of the Quakers, but there were also Anglicans, Lutherans, and other Protestants. In none of the middle colonies was there a true state church, and it is in them that the student finds the nearest approach to the freedom and diversity of our modern American life.

     Virginia, notwithstanding some jealousies between clergy and laity, held strongly to the Anglican establishment. In Maryland the Catholic proprietor had striven to keep the peace between Catholics, Puritans, and Anglicans, but the violent anti-Catholic spirit of the English revolution asserted itself here as in New York. Provincial politicians used this religious antagonism to overthrow for a time the government of the proprietor, and when the revolution was over the Anglican party reaped the fruits of the Protestant victory in the legal establishment of their own church. In the Carolinas the early policy of the proprietors gave rise to a religious diversity similar to that in the middle colonies. The Anglicans were the strongest element among the early settlers of Charleston,

but there were also French Huguenots, Scotch and Irish Presbyterians, and New England Puritans. The obscure settlements of North Carolina could hardly be said at this time to have any definite religious complexion. The Quaker missionaries exerted a considerable influence, but the general atmosphere was one of religious indifference.

     The economic occupations and interests of the colonies at the close of the seventeenth century have been carefully examined in the preceding volume of this series and require only a brief review here. In all the colonies agricultural interests were predominant, but the specific character of these interests varied widely. In Maryland and Virginia the large plantation was becoming the characteristic economic unit, and there were no considerable centres of trade. Negro slavery had gained a firm foothold, and the planters were almost wholly absorbed in the production of tobacco for export. South Carolina was developing along West Indian lines the plantation system in its most extreme form; and she differed from the Chesapeake colonies in possessing a commercial and social centre at Charleston, which completely dominated also the political life of the colony throughout its history.

     In the middle colonies economic conditions were more varied, and flourishing trading centres had grown up at Philadelphia and New York, overshadowing others of less importance. The large

plantation existed here also to a limited extent, notably among the Hudson River people, but the small farmer was also an important factor throughout this region. The organization of agriculture in New England differed more sharply from that of the south. Here the farmers gathered in towns within easy reach of the meeting-house. Their outlying farms were small as compared with Virginia plantations, negro slavery was an almost negligible factor, and there were no great agricultural staples comparable with tobacco. Agriculture was supplemented by the important fishing industry and the Indian fur trade. The timber resources of New England had been used for ship-building on a considerable scale, and her vessels were engaged in a constantly widening intercolonial and foreign trade.

     This developing industrial life of the colonies Parliament was now attempting to guide in certain legally established channels; but the navigation acts, with their restrictions on colonial shipping, imports, and exports, were imperfectly obeyed. For their really efficient enforcement a different governmental organization was necessary; and the attempt to secure such a system became one of the most important factors in the constitutional history of the later colonial era.

     The governments of the American colonies were, at the close of the Stuart period, in a state of decidedly unstable equilibrium, due to the adoption by the English crown of a new and aggressive colonial

policy. These new measures, however, cannot be appreciated without recalling certain leading principles of English colonial policy in its earlier phases.

     The first is the leaving of responsibility, not merely for the economic development but for the government of new colonies, to private individuals, private associations, or corporations, acting either under the authority of royal charters, or, as sometimes happened in New England, simply by the sufferance of the crown. No one of the main-land colonies began its career under a royal or provincial government, and until 1684 only two were definitely so organized: Virginia, which became a royal government in 1624, after the charter of the Virginia Company had been annulled; and New Hampshire, which, after a varied experience at first under the nominal rule of a proprietor, and then as a part of Massachusetts, was finally, in 1679, organized as a separate royal province.¹

     Secondly, the tendency was, instead of concentrating governmental responsibility in a few hands, to authorize, or to permit, a large number of small governments. By 1684 there were on the mainland twelve distinct colonial governments: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Plymouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, East New Jersey, West New Jersey, Pennsylvania with the “lower

counties,” Virginia, Maryland, and Carolina, having, for the most part, no political connection with each other except their common subjection, slight and intangible as that often was, to the English crown and Parliament.

     The greatest variety appeared in the character of these governments, both as to the nature of their relations with the home government and as to their internal organization. In Virginia the constitution was in the main embodied in the royal commission and instructions issued to each succeeding governor. In the more recently organized proprietary governments the proprietor, though given considerable freedom of action, was held in check by such requirements as the allowing of appeals to the Privy Council or the submission of colonial laws for the approval of the crown. There were also quasi-independent governments like those of Maryland, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, where the crown had no effective check on colonial law and administration. Under the royal charters, New England had become the home of practically republican governments, where judges and executive officers as well as law-makers were chosen by the people or their representatives. The Maryland proprietary government may be described as a constitutional monarchy of the conservative type, while Penn’s constitution was much more liberal. These governments, however, had one thing in common: the principle of popular representation had in some form or

other been conceded in all of them, sometimes freely, as in Pennsylvania, and sometimes tardily, or only temporarily, as in New York. Often, however, the privileges of these representative bodies were imperfectly defined and held on a somewhat precarious tenure.

     A third striking characteristic of early colonial policy was the almost entire absence of parliamentary control. The English territories in America, whether acquired by discovery or by conquest, were the domains of the crown. The king determined the conditions under which they should be occupied, their trade carried on, and their governments organized. Not until the period of the Commonwealth did Parliament begin to concern itself actively in the affairs of the colonies; and at first its work was mainly confined to the assertion of principles, without providing adequate machinery for their enforcement.

     During the second half of the seventeenth century there was in England greater interest in the problem of colonial government. The material resources and the industry of the colonies were to be exploited and made factors in the development of national power. By the navigation acts of the Commonwealth and Restoration governments, Parliament undertook to regulate the course of colonial enterprise. The trade of the colonies must be carried on in English ships and by English seamen. Many of their staple articles of export might be

sent to Europe only through English ports, and their imports from Europe must come only by way of England. The acts which asserted these general principles were naturally followed by others which were needed to settle doubtful questions of construction, and to secure a more effective enforcement.

     The primary motive of this legislation was financial or economic, but it had also important constitutional results. Since the existing colonial governments could not be relied upon to enforce thoroughly the requirements of the navigation acts, a special official service was organized in the colonies, charged with this specific duty. Consequently, there soon appeared side by side with the local governments of individual colonies, whether provincial, proprietary, or republican, the surveyor-general and the collectors of customs, as the representatives of a new imperial control. These new officials in turn were supervised and controlled by the Privy Council with its Committee of Trade and Plantations.

     Even these measures, however, were inadequate. The thorough enforcement of the law required the cordial co-operation of the colonial governor with the royal agent, but instead of this there was mutual suspicion and dislike. The governor was influenced by the local sentiment of the colony or

the personal interests of the proprietor, which were often at variance with those of the crown. It was natural enough, therefore, that such men as Edward Randolph, who looked at the problem from the point of view of a royal official, should demand a reorganization of the colonial governments themselves, in order to make them more effective agents of imperial control. These general considerations, with others of a more local character, gradually led the English government to adopt new principles of colonial administration.

     The changed attitude of the crown towards the proprietary governments was illustrated in the New York patent of 1664, and still more in Penn’s charter of 1681. In both these provinces the right of appeal to the Privy Council was expressly reserved by the crown, and in Pennsylvania this check upon provincial independence was reinforced by a number of new provisions, including a royal veto on colonial laws. In 1684 came the revocation of the Massachusetts charter, followed during the next four years by the gradual incorporation in a single province of eight hitherto distinct jurisdictions, including, besides all of New England, New York and the Jerseys, all of which were covered by the royal commission to Andros in 1688. Legal proceedings were also ordered for the purpose of annulling the proprietary authority in Delaware, Maryland, and the Carolinas. It seems probable that if this policy had not been interrupted by the revolution of 1689,

direct control by the crown would have been secured in all, or nearly all, of the colonies.

     Thus the later policy of the Stuarts embodied these two leading principles: the substitution of royal for proprietary or elective governments; and the consolidation of numerous petty jurisdictions into a smaller number of strong provinces. Such a policy would probably in any case have provoked sharp antagonism from the colonists, and from the various proprietary interests which were thus assailed. It was still further weakened by being associated with another form of restriction with which it had no necessary connection: the colonies which were successively incorporated in the “greater New England” of 1688 were left without any general representative assembly to take the place of the various local bodies which had been superseded. The extension of imperial control and the consolidation of governments may be regarded in some aspects at least as measures of progress; the denial of popular representation was distinctly reactionary.