by Edmund Burke
The events in all countries which are not the residence of the supreme power, and have no concern in the great business of transacting war and peace, have generally but little to engage the attention of the reader. I have therefore intirely omitted the tedious detail of the governors and their several transactions, with which my materials so plentifully supply me; and for the same reason I shall be very concise in my account of Maryland, which agreeing altogether with Virginia in it’s climate, soil, products, trade, and genius of the inhabitants, and having few or no remarkable events to recommend it, will save much trouble in that article.
CHAP. XVIII. MARYLAND.
IT was in the reign of Charles the first, that the Lord Baltimore applied for a patent for a part of Virginia, and obtained in 1632, a grant of a tract of land upon Chesapeak bay, of about an hundred and forty miles long, and an hundred and thirty broad, having Pensylvania, then in the hands of the Dutch, upon the North, the Atlantic ocean upon the East, and the river Potowmack upon the South; in honour of the queen he called this province Maryland.
Lord Baltimore was a Roman catholic, and was induced to attempt this settlement in America, in hopes of enjoying liberty of conscience for himself, and for such of his friends to whom the severity of the laws might loosen their ties to their country, and make them prefer an easy banishment with freedom, to the conveniencies of England, embittered as they were by the sharpness of the laws, and the popular odium which hung over them. The court at that time was certainly very little inclined to treat the Roman catholics in a harsh manner, neither had they in reality the least appearance of reason to do so; but the laws themselves were of a rigorous constitution; and however the court might be inclined to relax them, they could not in policy do it, but with great reserve. The puritan party perpetually accused the court, and indeed the episcopal church, of a desire of returning to popery; and this accusation was so popular, that it was not in the power of the court to shew the papists that indulgence which they desired. The laws were still executed with very little mitigation; and they were in themselves of a much keener temper, than those which had driven the puritans about the same time to seek a refuge in the same part of the world. These reasons made lord Baltimore desirous to have, and the court willing to give him, a place of retreat in America.
The settlement of the colony cost the lord Baltimore a large sum. It was made under his auspices by his brother, and about two hundred persons, Roman catholics, and most of them of good families. This settlement at the beginning did not meet with the same difficulties, which embarrassed and retarded most of the others we had made. The people were generally of the better sort, a proper subordination was observed amongst them, and the Indians gave and took so little offence, that they ceded one half of their principal town, and some time after the whole of it, to these strangers. The Indian women taught ours how to make bread of their corn; their men went out to hunt and fish with the English; they assisted them in the chace, and sold them the game they took themselves for a trifling consideration; so that the new settlers had a sort of town ready built, ground ready cleared for their subsistence, and no enemy to harrass them.
They lived thus, without much trouble or fear, until some ill-disposed persons in Virginia insinuated to the Indians, that the Baltimore colony had designs upon them; that they were Spaniards and not Englishmen, and such other stories as they judged proper to sow the seeds of suspicion and enmity in the minds of these people. Upon the first appearance, that the malice of the Virginians had taken effect, the new planters were not wanting to themselves. They built a good fort with all expedition, and took every other necessary measure for their defence; but they continued still to treat the Indians with so much kindness, that partly by that, and partly by the awe of their arms, the ill designs of their enemies were defeated.
As the colony met with so few obstructions, and as the Roman catholics in England were yet more severely treated in proportion as the court party declined, numbers constantly arrived to replenish the settlement; which the lord proprietor omitted no care, and witheld no expence to support and encourage; until the usurpation overturned the government at home, and deprived him of his rights abroad. Maryland remained under the governors appointed by the parliament and by Cromwell until the restoration, when lord Baltimore was reinstated in his former possessions, which he cultivated with his former wisdom, care and moderation. No people could live in greater ease and security; and his lordship, willing that as many as possible should enjoy the benefits of his mild and equitable administration, gave his consent to an act of assembly, which he had before promoted in his province, for allowing a free and unlimited toleration for all who professed the christian religion of whatever denomination. This liberty, which was never in the least instance violated, encouraged a great number, not only of the church of England, but of presbyterians, quakers, and all kinds of dissenters, to settle in Maryland, which before that was almost wholly in the hands of Roman catholics.
This lord, though guilty of no maleadministration in his government, though a zealous Roman catholic, and firmly attached to the cause of king James the second, could not prevent his charter from being questioned in that arbitrary reign, and a suit from being commenced to deprive him of the property and jurisdiction of a province granted by the royal favour, and peopled at such a vast expence of his own. But it was the error of that weak and unfortunate reign, neither to know it’s friends, nor it’s enemies; but by a blind precipitate conduct to hurry on every thing of whatever consequence with almost equal heat, and to imagine that the sound of the royal authority was sufficient to justify every sort of conduct to every sort of people. But these injuries could not shake the honour and constancy of lord Baltimore, nor tempt him to desert the cause of his master. Upon the revolution he had no reason to expect any favour; yet he met with more than king James had intended him; he was deprived indeed of all his jurisdiction, but he was left the profits of his province, which were by no means inconsiderable; and when his descendants had conformed to the church of England, they were restored to all their rights as fully as the legislature has thought fit that any proprietor should enjoy them.
When upon the revolution power changed hands in that province, the new men made but an indifferent requital for the liberties and indulgences they had enjoyed under the old administration. They not only deprived the Roman catholics of all share in the government, but of all the rights of freemen; they have even adopted the whole body of the penal laws of England against them; they are at this day meditating new laws in the same spirit, and they would undoubtedly go to the greatest lengths in this respect, if the moderation and good sense of the government in England did not set some bounds to their bigotry; thinking very prudently that it were highly unjust, and equally impolitic, to allow an asylum abroad to any religious persuasions which they judged it improper to tolerate at home, and then to deprive them of it’s protection, recollecting at the same time in the various changes which our religion and government has undergone, which have in their turns rendered every sort of party and religion obnoxious to the reigning powers, that this American asylum which has been admitted in the hottest times of persecution at home, has proved of infinite service, not only to the present peace of England, but to the prosperity of it’s commerce, and the establishment of it’s power. There are a sort of men, who will not see so plain a truth; and they are the persons who would appear to contend most warmly for liberty; but it is only a party liberty for which they contend; a liberty, which they would stretch out one way only to narrow it in another; they are not ashamed of using the very same pretences for persecuting others, that their enemies use for persecuting them.
This colony, as for a long time it had with Pensylvania the honour of being unstained with any religious persecution, so neither they nor the Pensylvanians have ever until very lately been harrassed by the calamity of any war, offensive or defensive, with their Indian neighbours, with whom they always lived in the most exemplary harmony. Indeed, in a war wh
ich the Indians made upon the colony of Virginia, by mistake they made an incursion into the bounds of Maryland; but they were soon sensible of their mistake, and attoned for it. This present war indeed has changed every thing, and the Indians have been taught to laugh at all their ancient alliances.
Maryland, like Virginia, has no considerable town, and for the same reason; the number of navigable creeks and rivers. Annapolis is the seat of government. It is a small but beautifully situated town upon the river Patuxent.
Here is the seat of the governor, and the principal custom-house collection. The people of Maryland have the same established religion with those of Virginia, that of the church of England but here the clergy are provided for in a much more liberal manner, and they are the most decent, and the best of the clergy in North America. They export from Maryland the same things in all respects that they do from Virginia. Their tobacco is about forty thousand hogsheads. The white inhabitants are about forty thousand; the negroes upwards of sixty thousand.
CHAP. XIX. CAROLINA.
IT must not be forgot, that we formerly called all the coast of North America by the name of Virginia. The province properly so called, with Maryland and the Carolinas, was known by the name of South Virginia. By the Spaniards it was considered as part of Florida, which country they made to extend from New Mexico to the Atlantic ocean. By them it was first discovered; but they treated the natives with an inhumanity, which filled them with so violent an hatred to the Spanish name, as rendered their settlement there very difficult; nor did they push it vigorously, as the country shewed no marks of producing gold or silver, the only things for which the Spaniards then valued any country. Florida therefore remained under an entire neglect in Europe, until the reign of Charles the ninth, king of France.
The celebrated leader of the protestants in that kingdom, the admiral Chastillon, who was not only a great commander but an able statesman, was a man of too comprehensive views not to see the advantages of a settlement in America; he procured two vessels to be fitted out for discoveries upon that coast. He had it probably in his thoughts to retire thither with those of his persuasion, if the success which hitherto suited so ill with his great courage and conduct, should at last entirely destroy his cause in France. These ships in two months arrived upon the coast of America, near the river now called Albemarle in the province of North Carolina. The French gave the Indians to understand in the best manner they were able, that they were enemies to the Spaniards, which secured them a friendly reception, and the good offices of the inhabitants. They were, however, in no condition to make any settlement.
On their return to France, the admiral, at this time by the abominable policy of the court apparently in great favour, was so well satisfied with the account they had given of the country, that in 1564 he fitted out five or six ships with as many hundred men aboard, to begin a colony there. This was accordingly done at the place of their landing in the first expedition. They built a fort here, which they called Fort Charles, as they called the whole country Carolana in honour of their king then reigning. The Spaniards, who had intelligence of their proceedings, dispatched a considerable force to attack this colony, who not satisfied with reducing it, put all the people to the sword after quarter given; and committing great outrages upon the natives, they paved the way for the vengeance which soon after fell upon them for such an unnecessary and unprovoked act of cruelty. For though the admiral and his party were by this time destroyed in the infamous massacre of St. Bartholomew, and though the design of a colony died with him, one M. de Gorgues, a private gentleman, fitted out some ships, which sailed to that coast purely to revenge the murder of his countrymen, and his friends. The Indians greedily embraced the opportunity of becoming associates in the punishment of the common enemy. They joined in the siege of two or three forts the Spaniards had built there; they took them, and in all of them put the garrison to the sword without mercy.
Satisfied with this action the adventurers returned, and happily for us, the French court did not understand, blinded as they were by their bigotry, the advantages which might have been derived from giving America to the protestants, as we afterwards did to the dissenters, as a place of refuge; if they had taken this step, most certainly we should have either had no settlements in America at all, or they must have been small in extent, and precarious in their tenure, to what they are at this day.
CHAP. XX.
AFTER the French expedition, the country of Carolina remained without any attention from Spaniards, French or Enlish, until, as we observed in the article of Virginia, Sir Walter Raleigh projected an establishment there. It was not in the part now called Virginia, but in North Carolina, that our first unhappy settlements were made and destroyed. Afterwards the adventurers entered the bay of Chesapeak, and fixed a permanent colony to the Northward; so that although Carolina was the first part of the Atlantic coast of America, which had an European colony, yet by an odd caprice it was for a long time deserted by both England and France, who settled with infinitely more difficulty in climates much less advantageous or agreeable.
It was not until the year 1663, in the reign of Charles the second, that we had any notion of formally settling that country. In that year the earl of Clarendon lord chancellor, the duke of Albemarle, the lord Craven, lord Berkley, lord Ashley, afterwards earl of Shaftesbury, Sir George Carteret, Sir William Berkley, and Sir George Colleton, obtained a charter for the property and jurisdiction of that country, from the 31st degree of North latitude to the 36th; and being inverted with full power to settle and govern the country, they had the model of a constitution framed, and a body of fundamental laws compiled by the famous philosopher Mr. Locke. On this plan the lords proprietors themselves stood in the place of the king, gave their assent or dissent as they thought proper to all laws, appointed all officers, and bestowed all titles of dignity. In his turn one of these lords acted for the rest. In the province they appointed two other branches, in a good measure analogous to the legislature in England. They made three ranks, or rather classes of nobility. The lowest was composed of those to whom they had made grants of twelve thousand acres of land, whom they called barons; the next order had twenty-four thousand acres, or two baronies, with the title of cassiques; these were to answer our earls; the third had two cassiqueships, or forty-eight thousand acres, and were called landgraves, a title in that province analogous to duke. This body formed the upper house; their lands were not alienable by parcels. The lower house was formed, as it is in the other colonies, of representatives from the several towns or counties. But the whole was not called, as in the rest of the plantations, an assembly, but a parliament.
They began their first settlement at a point of land towards the Southward of their district, between two navigable rivers, though of no long course, called Ashley and Cowper rivers, and there laid the foundation of a city, called Charles town, which was designed to be, what it now is, the capital of the province. They expended about twelve thousand pounds in the first settlement. But it was not chiefly to the funds of the lords proprietors, that this province owed it’s establishment. They observed what advantages the other colonies derived from opening an harbour for refugees; and not only from this consideration, but from the humane disposition of that excellent man who formed the model of their government, they gave an unlimited toleration to people of all religious persuasions. This induced a great number of dissenters, over whom the then government held a more severe hand than was consistent with justice or policy, to transport themselves with their fortunes and families into Carolina. They became soon at least as numerous as the churchmen; and though they displayed none of that frantic bigotry which disgraced the New England refugees, they could not preserve themselves from the jealousy and hatred of those of the church of England, who having a majority in one of the assemblies, attempted to exclude all dissenters from a right of sitting there. This produced dissentions, tumults, and riots every day, which tore the colony to pieces, and hindered it for many years from making t
hat progress which might be expected from it’s great natural advantages. The people fell into disputes of no less violent a nature with the lords proprietors, and provoking the Indians by a series of unjust and violent actions, they gave occasion to two wars, in which however they were victorious, and subdued almost all the Indian nations within their own bounds at this side of the Apalachian mountains.
Their intestine distractions, and their foreign wars, kept the colony so low, that an act of parliament, if possible to prevent the last ruinous consequences of these divisions, put the province under the immediate care and inspection of the crown. The lords proprietors making a virtue of necessity, accepted a recompence of about twenty-four thousand pounds, both for the property and jurisdiction; except the earl Granville, who kept his eighth part of the property, which comprehends very near half of North Carolina, on that part which immediately borders upon the province of Virginia. Their constitution in those points wherein it differed from that of the other colonies, was altered; and the country, for the more commodious administration of affairs, was divided into two distinct independent governments, called North Carolina and South Carolina. This was in the year 1728. In a little time a firm peace was established with all the neighbouring Indian nations, the Cherokees, the Creeks, and the Cataubas; the province began to breathe from it’s internal quarrels, and it’s trade has advanced every year since that time with an astonishing rapidity.
CHAP. XXI.
THESE two provinces lying between the 31st and 46th degrees of latitude, are upwards of four hundred miles in length, and in breadth to the Indian nations, near three hundred. The climate and soil in these countries, do not considerably differ from those of Virginia; but where they differ, it is much to the advantage of Carolina, which is one of the finest climates in the world. The heat in summer is very little greater than in Virginia, but the winters are milder and shorter, and the year in all respects does not come to the same violent extremities. However the weather, though in general serene as the air is healthy, yet like all American weather, it makes such quick changes, and those so sharp, as to oblige the inhabitants to rather more caution in their dress and diet, than we are obliged to use in Europe. Thunder and lightning is here frequent; and it is the only one of our colonies upon the continent which is subject to hurricanes; but they are very rare, and not near so violent as those of the West-Indies. Part of the month of March, and all April, May, and the greatest part of June, are here inexpressibly temperate and agreeable, but in July, August, and for almost the whole of September, the heat is very intense; and though the winters are sharp, especially when the North-West wind prevails, yet they are seldom severe enough to freeze any considerable water; affecting only the mornings and evenings, the frosts have never sufficient strength to resist the noon-day sun; so that many tender plants which do not stand the winter of Virginia, flourish in Carolina; for they have oranges in great plenty near Charles-town, and excellent in their kinds, both sweet and sour. Olives are rather neglected by the planter, than denied by the climate. The vegetation of every kind of plant is here almost incredibly quick; for there is something so kindly in the air and soil, that where the latter has the most barren and unpromising appearance, if neglected for a while, of itself it shoots out an immense quantity of those various plants and beautiful flowering shrubs and flowers, for which this country is so famous, and of which Mr. Catesby is his Natural History of Carolina has made such fine drawings.