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SWEDISH SETTLERS — VIRGINIA SUBMITS.

manner, disputed the grant of Maryland to Lord Baltimore, as inconsistent with her prior patent. From that time almost to the present day, questions of boundary have given rise to serious and irritating controversy, both provincial and national.

The Swedes also, by the advice and aid of their prince Gustavus Adolphus, had made a settlement on the west side of the Delaware river as early as 1627. They afterwards built several forts near that river, founded the little town of Christiana, called after their queen; and the whole country from Cape Henlopen to the Falls of the Delaware, was named New Sweden. Of this country they retained possession until 1654, when it was wrested from them by the Dutch.

During the civil war in England, which terminated in the death of Charles the First, and after the substitution of a commonwealth for the monarchy, the New England colonies, having been settled by Puritans, took sides with Cromwell; while Virginia, where the Church of England was established, adhered to Charles, and afterwards to his son, while he was an exile in Holland. The attachment of the Virginians to the royal cause was augmented by the number of loyal cavaliers who fled thither during the troubles in England. About two years after the execution of Charles, the Parliament sent over a powerful force to reduce Virginia and other rebellious colonies to obedience, and on the arrival of the fleet off James Town, the colonists, headed by Sir William Berkeley, the Governor, prepared for resistance, but, after a short negotiation, the parties came to terms of liberal and amicable compromise.

There seems to have been separate articles of capitulation agreed on by the three Parliament Commissioners with the Council of State, and by the same Commissioners

TERMS OF SUBMISSION.

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with the "Grand Assembly of Governor, Council and Burgesses." One set merely secured indemnity and indulgencies to the Governor and members of the Council. Of the other set, the first article, after acknowledging the subjection of "the plantation of Virginia" and its inhabitants to the Commonwealth of England, declares that this submission was "a voluntary act, not forced nor constrained by a conquest upon the country;" and that the inhabitants" shall have and enjoy such freedom and privileges as belong to the free-born people of England."

The second article provides that the Grand Assembly shall "transact the affairs of Virginia" as formerly, doing nothing, however, contrary to the government of the Commonwealth of England and its laws.

After some articles of minor importance, it is stipulated that the people of Virginia shall have as free trade as the people of England to all nations; shall enjoy privileges equal to those of the English plantations in America; and shall be free from all taxes, customs, and impositions whatsoever, imposed without the consent of the Grand Assembly. These articles were signed and sealed by Commissioners on both sides on the twelfth of March, 1651.

On the same day the Parliament's Commissioners executed a formal act of indemnity for all that had been done, written, or spoken by the inhabitants against the Parliament or Commonwealth of England; and they assign as their motive for this act the prevention of the ruin and destruction of their Commonwealth that would so probably follow its resistance to the forces of the Parliament.

The liberality of these terms of capitulation has been somewhat more extolled by historians than the occasion seems to justify. They were the natural result of the

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VIRGINIA CHOOSES HER GOVERNORS.

circumstances in which the parties were placed. The colonists, by persevering in a resistance which must finally prove unavailing, might injure themselves, but could not benefit the royal cause. On the other hand, the chief object of the expedition having been obtained when the colonial authorities acknowledged submission and obedience to the existing government of England, the Commissioners of Parliament were not likely to abridge the liberties of a colony which was about to pass under the rule of their adherents; which course, moreover, would have been repugnant to their own most cherished political principles. That they were influenced by such considerations would appear from the fact that the same liberal terms then granted to Virginia, they had previously granted to Barbadoes, after it was subdued by the Parliamentary forces.

Richard Bennett, one of the Parliament Commissioners, was then unanimously chosen Governor, by the House of Burgesses; and they continued to appoint his successors until the Restoration. On one of these successors, Matthews, they exercised the right of removal, and then re-elected him.

They were so far reconciled to the change of dynasty in England that, on the death of Cromwell, the House of Burgesses unanimously acknowledged his son Richard as his successor. Yet, on learning Richard's resignation about the time of Governor Matthews's death, they elected Sir William Berkeley to succeed him; and on his refusing to take office under an usurped authority, they acknowledged Charles the Second to be their lawful sovereign, and so proclaimed him.

While these things were passing in Virginia, the people of New England, under the disadvantages of a harsher climate and less genial soil, were steadily in

RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION.

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creasing in numbers and improving in condition. By means of their fisheries, and an active foreign commerce, prosecuted with the enterprise, industry and thrift which have ever characterized them, their population appears to have overtaken and passed that of Virginia at the time of its surrender to the authority of the Commonwealth, when it was computed to be twenty thousand.1 The English Puritans who migrated to America went exclusively to New England.

Thus fed by new accessions, the puritanical spirit lost there none of its original vigor, and exhibited itself not merely in the fervor of its devotion, in its rigid selfdenial, and in subtle theological controversy, but what is far less creditable, in religious persecution, as they themselves had experienced the very species of injustice they inflicted. Thus those who had encountered the discomforts of a wilderness and the horrors of Indian warfare to enjoy uninterrupted liberty of conscience, were unwilling

1 Mr. Bancroft (Vol. I. p. 415) says the number of emigrants to New England before 1640 was estimated at twenty-one thousand two hundred. But it may be remarked that since of these immigrants by far the larger part were males, the number of births in this period was probably less than that of the deaths, and, consequently, the whole population was less than the whole number of immigrants. This inference is confirmed by Mr. Bancroft's estimate of the New England population thirty-six years afterwards, which he puts down at only fifty-five thousand, and which is scarcely equal to the ordinary increase by natural multiplication.

By reason of the disproportion of males in the early immigrations, and the changing ratio of natural multiplication, it would follow that the rate of increase would be at first very high; would gradually diminish for a term, and then gradually increase, until it reached uniformity or near it. This varying ratio makes every estimate of the population of new colonies, founded on any census, preceding or subsequent, a problem of difficulty and uncertainty; and helps to account for the perplexing discordance we meet with in this item of their statistics.

VOL. I. 3

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ROGER WILLIAMS — RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.

to grant that liberty to others. By this inconsistency Roger Williams, a man of rare virtue and disinterestedness, but a zealot contending for greater religious freedom than was tolerated in Massachusetts, was compelled to leave that colony. It was then that he sought refuge in Rhode Island, where he founded the first settlement, which he called Providence. Anne Hutchinson, too, as distinguished for eloquence as religious zeal, and who taught the antinomian doctrine, shared the same fate, with others of less note. The Quakers, likewise, who were not then the quiet sect they subsequently became, were required to leave Massachusetts on pain of death, which penalty several of them voluntarily incurred. It would seem that in this colony the same pride of opinion and inflexibility of purpose which the Puritans had shown in bearing persecution they now exhibited in inflicting it; and while the recollection of former persecutions induced the Catholics in Maryland, the Baptists in Rhode Island, and the Quakers in Pennsylvania to grant freedom of conscience to others, in Massachusetts, under similar circumstances, fanaticism overpowered the sense of justice. But in truth fellow-feeling for the suffering from persecution could avail little against the frantic bigotry of the Puritans, which infatuation, confounding all moral distinctions, regards the most savage cruelty as innocent, and converts lenity and moderation into crime.

In 1662, Charles the Second granted to a few favorite courtiers1 all the lands in North America from the thirtysixth degree of north latitude to the river St. Matthieu, now the St. John's of Florida. But the patentees, dis

1 These were Lord Chancellor Clarendon, the Duke of Albemarle, formerly General Monk, Lord Ashley, afterwards Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Craven, Lord Berkeley and his brother Sir William, Sir John Colleton, and Sir George Carteret.

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