by Edmund Burke
This plant, which the native Americans call weachin, is known in some of the Southern parts of America by the name of maize. The ear is about a span in length, consisting of eight rows of the corn, or more, according to the goodness of the ground, with about thirty grains in each row. On the top of the grain hangs a sort of flower, not unlike a tassel of silk, of various colours, white, blue, greenish, black, speckled, striped, which gives this corn as it grows a very beautiful appearance. The grain is of all the colours which prevail in the flower, but most frequently yellow and white. The stalks grow six or eight feet high, and are of a considerable thickness. They are less high in New England, and other Northern countries, than in Virginia, and those which lie more to the Southward. They are jointed like a cane, and at each of these joints shoot out a number of leaves like flags, that make very good fodder for the cattle. The stalk is full of a juice, of which a syrup as sweet as sugar has been frequently made.
This grain is generally sowed in little squares, and requires a very attentive cultivation. The ground in which it flourishes most is light and sandy, with a small intermixture of loam. About a peck of seed is sufficient for an acre, which at a medium produces about twenty-five bushels. The New England people not only make bread of this grain, but they malt and brew it into a beer, which is not contemptible. However, the greater part of their beer is made of molasses, hopped; with the addition sometimes of the tops of the spruce fir infused.
They raise in New England, besides this and other species of grain, a large quantity of flax, and have made essays upon hemp, that have been far from unsuccessful. An acre of their Cow-pen land produces about a ton of this commodity; but the land is pretty soon exhausted. This plant probably requires a climate more uniformly warm than New England; for though the greater part of our hemp is brought to us from Northern ports, yet it is in the more Southerly provinces of Russia, that the best which comes to our market is produced.
Their horned cattle are very numerous in New England, and some of them very large. Oxen have been killed there of eighteen hundred weight. Hogs likewise are numerous, and particularly excellent; and some so large as to weigh twenty-five score. They have besides, a breed of small horses, which are extremely hardy. They pace naturally, though in no very graceful or easy manner, but with such swiftness, and for so long a continuance, as must appear almost incredible to those who have not experienced it. They have a great number of sheep too, and of a good kind. The wool is of a staple sufficiently long, but it is not near so fine as that of England. However, they manufacture a great deal of it very successfully. I have seen cloths made there, which were of as close and firm a contexture, tho’ not so fine, as our best drabs; they were thick, and, as far as I could judge, superior for the ordinary wear of country people, to any thing we make in England.
CHAP. VI.
THERE are in this country many gentlemen of considerable landed estates, which they let to farmers, or manage by their stewards or overseers; but the greater part of the people is composed of a substantial yeomanry who cultivate their own freeholds, without a dependence upon any but providence and their own industry. These freeholds generally pass to their children in the way of gavelkind; which keeps them from being almost ever able to emerge out of their original happy mediocrity. This manner of inheriting has here an additional good effect. It makes the people the more ready to go backward into the uncultivated parts of the country, where land is to be had at an easy rate and in larger portions. The people by their being generally freeholders, and by their form of government, have a very free, bold, and republican spirit. In no part of the world are the ordinary sort so independent, or possess so many of the conveniencies of life; they are used from their infancy to the exercise of arms; and they have a militia, which for a militia is by no means contemptible; and certainly if these men were somewhat more regularly trained, and in better subordination, it would be impossible to find in any country, or in any time ancient or modern, an army better constituted than that which New England can furnish. This too is much the best peopled of any of our colonies upon the continent. It is judged that the four provinces which it comprises, contain about three hundred and fifty thousand souls, including a very small number of blacks and Indians; the rest are whites. Douglass, who seems to be well informed in this point, proportions them as follows,
Massachusets bay,
200,000
Connecticut,
100,000
Rhode Island,
30,000
New Hampshire,
24,000
354,000
These four governments are confederated for their common defence. We have shewn how these several governments have arisen. The most considerable of them for riches and number of people, though not for extent of territorry, is Massachusets bay. This province like the others had originally a power of chusing every one of their own magistrates; the governor, the council, the assembly, — all; and of making such laws as they thought proper, without sending them home for the approbation of the crown. But being accused of having abused this freedom, in the latter end of the reign of Charles the second, they were deprived of it by a judgment in a quo warranto in the king’s bench in England. They remained from that time to the revolution without any charter. Some time after the revolution they received a new one, which though very favourable, was much inferior to the extensive privileges of the former charter, which indeed were too extensive for a colony, and what left little more than a nominal dependence on the mother country, and the crown itself. But now, the governor, lieutenant governor, and the chief places of the law and in the revenue, are in the disposal of the crown; so is the militia; and tho’ the council is chosen by the representatives of the people, yet the governor has a negative which gives him an influence, sufficient to preserve the prerogative entire. Appeals for sums above three hundred pounds are admitted to the king and council, and all laws passed here must be remitted to England; where if they do not receive a negative from the crown in three years, they are to be considered as valid, and are to have the effect of laws; which they are to have likewise until the time that the king’s resolution is known. But one point has been long and resolutely disputed in this colony; the grant of a certain salary to their governor. Many attempts have been made to induce them to this measure; but to no effect. They think a dependence on the people for his salary the most effectual method of restraining the governor from any unpopular acts. To the Massachusets government is united the ancient colony of Plymouth, and the territory which is called Main.
The colony of Connecticut, which lies upon a river of the same name to the South of this province, has preserved it’s ancient privileges, which are now as considerable as those of Massachusets were formerly. At the time that the charter of the former was attacked, that of this government was threatened with the same fate. But they agreed to submit to the king’s pleasure; therefore, no judgment was given against them; and being found in this condition at the revolution, it was judged that they were in full possession of their old charter, and have so continued ever since.
The third and smallest of the provinces which compose New England, is Rhode Island. This consists of a small island of that name, and the old plantation of Providence. These united plantations had a charter the same with that of Connecticut, and they have preserved it by the same method. In this province is an unlimited freedom of religion, agreeable to the first principles of it’s foundation; and though very small, it is from thence extremely well peopled.
New Hampshire, the fourth province, is much the largest of them all; but not inhabited in proportion. This is more Northerly for the greater part than any of the rest. It is a royal government; that is, the crown has the nomination of all the officers of justice and of the militia, and the appointment of the council.
CHAP. VII.
THERE is not one of our settlements which can be compared in the abundance of people, the number of considerable and trading towns, and the manufactures that are carried on
in them, to New England. The most populous and flourishing parts of the mother country hardly make a better appearance. Our provinces to the Southward on this continent are recommendable for the generous warmth of the climate, and a luxuriance of soil which naturally throws up a vast variety of beautiful and rich vegetable productions; but New England is the first in America, for cultivation, for the number of people, and for the order which results from both.
Though there are in all the provinces of New England large towns which drive a considerable trade, the only one which can deserve to be much insisted upon in a design like ours, is Boston; the capital of Massachuset’s bay, the first city of New England, and of all North America. This city is situated on a peninsula, at the bottom of a fine capacious and safe harbour, which is defended from the outrages of the sea, by a number of islands, and rocks which appear above water. It is entered but by one safe passage; and that is narrow, and covered by the cannon of a regular and very strong fortress. The harbour is more than sufficient for the great number of vessels, which carry on the extensive trade of Boston. At the bottom of the bay is a noble pier, near two thousand feet in length, along which on the North side extends a row of warehouses. The head of this pier joins the principal street of the town, which is, like most of the others, spacious and well built. The town lies at the bottom of the harbour, and forms a very agreeable view. It has a town house, where the courts meet, and the exchange is kept, large, and of a very tolerable taste of architecture. Round the exchange, are a great number of well furnished booksellers shops, which find employment for five printing presses. There are ten churches within this town; and it contains at least twenty thousand inhabitants.
That we may be enabled to form some judgment of the wealth of this city, we must observe that from Christmas 1747, to Christmas 1748, five hundred vessels cleared out, from this port only, for a foreign trade; and four hundred and thirty were entered inwards; to say nothing of coasting and fishing vessels, both of which are extremely numerous, and said to be equal in number to the others. Indeed the trade of New England is great, as it supplies a large quantity of goods from within itself; but it is yet greater, as the people of this country are in a manner the carriers for all the colonies of North America and the West-Indies, and even for some parts of Europe. They may be considered in this respect as the Dutch of America.
The commodities which the country yields are principally masts and yards, for which they contract largely with the royal navy; pitch, tar and turpentine; staves, lumber, boards, all sorts of provisions, beef, pork, butter and cheese, in large quantities; horses and live cattle; Indian corn and pease; cyder, apples, hemp and flax. Their peltry trade is not very considerable. The have a very noble cod fishery upon their coast, which employs a vast number of their people; they are enabled by this to export annually above thirty-two thousand quintals of choice cod fish, to Spain, Italy, and the Mediterranean, and about nineteen thousand quintals of the refuse sort to the West-Indies, as food for the negroes. The quantity of spirits, which they distil in Boston from the molasses they bring in from all parts of the West-Indies, is as surprising as the cheap rare at which they vend it, which is under two shillings a gallon. With this they supply almost all the consumption of our colonies in North America, the Indian trade there, the vast demands of their own and the Newfoundland fishery, and in great measure those of the African trade; but they are more famous for the quantity and cheapness, than for the excellency of their rum.
They are almost the only one of our colonies which have much of the woollen and linen manufactures. Of the former they have nearly as much as suffices for their own cloathings. It is a close and strong, but a coarse stubborn sort of cloth. A number of presbyterians from the North of Ireland, driven thence, as it is said, by the severity of their landlords, from an affinity in religious sentiments chose New England as their place of refuge. Those people brought with them their skill in the linen manufactures, and meeting very large encouragement, they exercised it to the great advantage of this colony. At present they make large quantities, and of a very good kind; their principal settlement is in a town, which in compliment to them is called Londonderry. Hats are made in New England which in a clandestine way find a good vent in all the other colonies. The setting up these manufactures has been in a great measure a matter necessary to them; for as they have not been properly encouraged in some staple commodity, by which they might communicate with their mother country, while they were cut off from all other resources, they must either have abandoned the country, or have found means of employing their own skill and industry to draw out of it the necessaries of life. The same necessity, together with their convenience for building and manning ships, has made them the carriers for the other colonies.
The business of ship-building is one of the most considerable which Boston or the other sea-port towns in New England carry on. Ships are sometimes built here upon commission; but frequently, the merchants of New England have them constructed upon their own account; and loading them with the produce of the colony, naval stores, fish, and fish-oil principally, they send them out upon a trading voyage to Spain, Portugal, or the Mediterranean, where having disposed of their cargo, they make what advantage they can by freight, until such time as they can sell the vessel herself to advantage; which they seldom fail to do in a reasonable time. They receive the value of the vessel, as well as of the freight of the goods, which from time to time they carried, and of the cargo with which they sailed originally, in bills of exchange upon London; for as the people of New England have no commodity to return for the value of above a hundred thousand pounds, which they take in various sorts of goods from England, but some naval stores, and those in no great quantities, they are obliged to keep the ballance somewhat even by this circuitous commerce, which though not carried on with Great Britain, nor with British vessels, yet centers init’s profits, where all the money which the colonies can make in any manner, must center at last.
I know that complaints have been made of this trade, principally because the people of New England, not satisfied with carrying out their own produce, become carriers for the other colonies, particularly for Virginia and Maryland, from whom they take tobacco, which, in contempt of the act of navigation, they carry directly to the foreign market. Where, not having the duty and accumulated charges to which the British merchant is liable to pay, they in a manner wholly out him of the trade. Again, our sugar colonies complain as loudly, that the vast trade which New England drives in lumber, live stock and provisions with the French and Dutch sugar islands, particularly with the former, enables these islands, together with the internal advantages they possess, greatly to undersell the English plantations. That the returns which the people of New England make from these islands being in sugar, or the productions of sugar, syrups and molasses, the rum which is thence distilled prevents the sale of our West-India rum. That this trade proves doubly disadvantageous to our sugar islands; first, as it enables the French to sell their sugars cheaper than they could otherwise afford to do; and then, as it finds them a market for their molasses, and other refuse of sugars, for which otherwise they could find no market at all; because rum interferes with brandy, a considerable manufacture of Old France.
These considerations were the ground of a complaint made by the islands to the legislature in England some years ago. They desired that the exportation of lumber, &c. to the French colonies, and the importation of sugars and molasses from thence, might be entirely prohibited. This was undoubtedly a very nice point to settle. On one hand, the growth of the French West-Indies was manifest and alarming, and it was not to be thought that the French would ever wink at this trade, if it had not been of the greatest advantage to them. On the other hand, the Northern colonies declared, that if they were deprived of so great a branch of their trade, it must necessitate them to the establishment of manufactures. For if they were cut off from their foreign trade, they never could purchase in England the many things for the use or the ornament of life, w
hich they have from thence. Besides this, the French deprived of the provision and lumber of New England, must of necessity take every measure to be supplied from their own colonies, which would answer their purposes better, if they could accomplish it, at the same time that it would deprive the New England people of a large and profitable branch of their trade.
These points, and many more, were fully discussed upon both sides. The legislature took a middle course. They did not entirely prohibit the carrying of lumber to the French islands, but they laid a considerable duty upon whatever rum, sugars, or molasses they should import from thence, to enhance by this means the price of lumber, and other necessaries to the French, and by laying them under difficulties, to set the English sugar plantations in some measure upon an equal footing with theirs.
This was undoubtedly a very prudent regulation. For though it was urged, that the Missisippi navigation was so bad, that there was no prospect that the French could ever be supplied with lumber and provisions from thence; and that there were no snows in Louisiana, the melting of which might facilitate the transportation of lumber into that river, yet it was by no means safe to trust to that, so as utterly to destroy a trade of our own, which employed so much shipping, and so many sailors. Because we have a thousand instances, wherein the driving people to the last streights, and putting them under the tuition of such a master as absolute necessity, has taught them inventions, and excited them to an industry, which have compassed things as much regretted at last, as they were unforeseen at first.