DEATH OF SEVERAL OF THE MOST PROMINENT MEN.—CHANGES IN LEGISLATION.

The woes of Rhode Island begin anew. Scarcely had the war ceased when Connecticut as we have already seen renewed her claim to Narragansett. Massachusetts soon followed in the name of the Atherton company. And presently Plymouth joined herself to the roll of Rhode Island’s enemies by advancing a claim to Aquidneck itself. Connecticut sought to strengthen her pretensions by asserting that the disputed territory was now hers by right of conquest. Thus far the sturdy little colony had held its ground and grown and prospered in the midst of enemies. Would she continue to hold it? Humanity itself was concerned in the answer, for of all the powers and kingdoms of the earth she alone was founded upon the principle of perfect toleration. The contest was a long and a weary one, too long for the purpose of this volume, for it is a history of seventy years of discussion and aggression, of bitter attack and firm resistance, terminating at last in the triumph of the weak and single-handed. Rhode Island not only preserved her original territory but added to it from that of two of her enemies. I shall select a few incidents to illustrate the progress of the contest.

It was to be waged for the most part by a new generation. The great men of the foundation were passing away. John Clarke, who had thrown the mild lustre of his purity over the first half of the life of the Colony, died in 1676, leaving a deep longing, or rather a sore need of his civil virtues and diplomatic skill. Samuel Gorton, whose tenacious convictions made him stern and intolerant in public life though gentle and attractive in private intercourse, and whose vigorous and subtle intellect led him to rejoice in the bitterness of controversy as the swift horse rejoices in the dust of the race-course, died the year after. Roger Williams was spared a few years longer—bold, ardent, disputatious, resolute, sincere and earnest to the last. But the young of his middle age were growing old, and the companions of his active years were falling around him. His colony had thriven and flourished. The five men who followed him from Salem had become “a thousand or twelve hundred men able to bear arms.” In spite of the threatening of the political horizon his strong faith told him that the being in whom he had put his trust thus far would stand by him still. And thus he laid his head upon his last pillow, a satisfied and happy man.

Another man of bold, original type—William Harris—had run his active career, and died with his hands and heart still full of unfinished work. We have seen to what length he carried his doctrine of individual right to free action. We have seen him wage a bitter controversy with Roger Williams. Time after time he crossed the Atlantic as agent of the great boundary questions which fill so large a space in the Rhode Island history of this period; the last time, and from which he was never to return, as agent for Connecticut. A deep presentiment of disaster seems to have filled his mind as he was preparing himself for this voyage, and not satisfied with making his will he presented it for probate with his own hands. The presentiment was well founded. On the outward passage he was taken by a Barbary corsair and sold into slavery. By the exertion of friends he was ransomed after a year’s captivity and made his way through Spain and France to England. But the year of slavery had told hard upon him, and three days after his arrival he died. It has been remarked by a profound thinker that while Williams’s more comprehensive mind could embrace both the practical and ideal in their mutual relations, the moment that Harris touched the ideal he became a radical. It does not seem to have struck his cotemporaries as it does us to see him accepting the agency of Connecticut in her controversy with Rhode Island. But he has a definite place in Rhode Island history and did her good service through his long and somewhat turbulent career. William Coddington, who had been an eminent man in Massachusetts before he became a very eminent man in Rhode Island, lived to take an active part in the controversy, and died in 1678, while holding for the time the office of Governor. His temporary usurpation had been forgiven and forgotten, and men remembered only that he had sincerely renounced his hostile designs and become a loyal and useful citizen.

Such were some of the men who bore the largest part in moulding the original character of Rhode Island. Talent and character like theirs was required to guide the little Colony through the dangers that surrounded it. But before we return to the external history of these days we will gather from the acts of the Assembly a few records of the moral and intellectual life of the Colony and its progress to a higher civilization.

The publicity of the laws is a question of deep interest in every stage of society, but particularly interesting in small communities. In the early days of Rhode Island they were published by beat of drum under the seal of the Colony. The violation of a law found no excuse in the plea of ignorance.

The sessions of the Assembly were held in a tavern or sometimes in a private house, always beginning, as the Roman assemblies did, at a very early hour. We have already seen that early attempts were made to allure the members to their duty by payment. It was still some time before this became a fixed law. In 1679 a resolution was passed for paying the board and lodging of the members of the Assembly and of the Court of Trials. In the May session of 1680 a definite sum was fixed upon—seven shillings a week. The true nature of the reciprocal obligation of the citizen and the State was not yet fully understood.

The frequent appeals to England which the aggressions of the other New England colonies made necessary, made it also necessary to keep resident agents at the English court. Thus the increased expenditure of the Colony kept pace with the increase of her resources.

In 1678 a tax was laid which enables us to form a tolerably accurate idea of the financial condition of the Colony. Its full amount was three hundred pounds. “Of this sum Newport was assessed one hundred and thirty-six pounds, Portsmouth sixty-eight, New Shoreham and Jamestown twenty-nine each, Providence ten, Warwick eight, Kingston sixteen, afterwards reduced to eight, East Greenwich and Westerly two each.” As the greater part of this tax was commutable, we are enabled to form a pretty accurate idea of the price of living just after the war. “Fresh pork was valued at twopence a pound, salted and well packed pork at fifty shillings a barrel, fresh beef at twelve shillings a hundred weight, packed beef in barrels thirty shillings a hundred, peas and barley malt two and sixpence a bushel, corn and barley, two shillings, washed wool sixpence a pound, and good firkin butter fivepence. The quarter part of this tax was paid in wool at the rate of fivepence a pound.” If we compare these prices with those of 1670, we shall see that war had proved here as everywhere a great scourge.

In the law by which this tax was levied we find a practical illustration of the principle which less than a century later became the fundamental principle of colonial resistance to the mother country. None but a complete representation of all the towns could levy a tax, or as it was formulated by James Otis—taxation without representation is tyranny.

It is also worthy of observation that there was a tendency to extend the usage of election to direct choice by vote of the freemen. The office of major which at its first institution during Philip’s war was filled by vote of the militia, passed, in 1678, to the whole body of freemen. The necessity of a distinction between martial and civil law seems, also, to have made itself more sensibly felt at the same period, and a permanent court-martial was formed for the trial of delinquent soldiers. As the commercial spirit of the Colony increased the necessity of a bankrupt law was felt, but on trial it was found to be premature and repealed. An attempt was also made to avoid the conflict of land titles in Narragansett, where the interest of townships as well as of private individuals was involved. To correct this evil which struck at the root of social organization the Assembly ordered that the disputed tracts should be surveyed and plats made of them. For the more efficacious protection of this fundamental interest it was ordered that all who held by Indian titles “should present their deeds to be passed on by the Assembly.” Descending to minuter particulars, we find a law against fast riding—first, in “the compact parts of Newport,” and not long after, of Providence, also. We find it also ordered that a bell be provided and set up in some convenient place for calling the Assembly and courts and council together. Of deeper interest was the act appointing a committee to make a digest of the laws, “that they may be putt in print.” Only part, however, of this resolution was carried out, and it was not till 1719 that the laws were put into a permanent form.

Not the laws only but the language in which they were expressed attracted attention. We now meet for the first time in the enacting clause of a law, “and by the authority thereof be it ordained, enacted and declared.” Instead of executor administrator was written, “it being in that case the more proper and usual term in the law.” In one act we find an instance of grim humor. The accounts of a general sergeant were found to be in inextricable confusion. The auditing committee resolved to call them square “and voted that by this act there is a full and fynal issue of all differences relative to said accounts from the beginninge of the world unto this present Assembly.”

In some instances the public mind was not made up concerning a law, and one Assembly would undo the work of its predecessor. One of the most important acts of this class was an act denying the revisory power of the Assembly over decisions of courts of trials. In the August session of 1680, after two years of experiment, the act was repealed.

The existence of a law proves, also, the existence of an evil. In the May session of 1679, we find an act for the protection of servants, whom “sundry persons being evil-minded” were in the habit of overtasking at home, and then hiring others to let out for work on Sunday—thus infringing the law which practically made Sunday a holiday. This is not a pleasant picture, but the action of the Assembly forbidding the abuse shows that public opinion was sound. We find, also, that then as now sailors were more or less at the mercy of sailor landlords. The Assembly took up their defence. Those who trusted a sailor for more than five shillings without an order from his captain forfeited their claim. Another law bearing directly upon navigation was passed in the May session of 1679. “The master of every vessel of over twenty tons burthen was required to report himself to the head officer of the town upon arrival and departure, and if over ten days in port, then to set up notice in two public places in the town three days before sailing.” In this last act we see the influence of the navigation act which was so long held to be the guardian genius of England’s commercial prosperity, and which was communicated to all the colonies by royal edict in 1680.

And here, as illustrative of border life when Rhode Island was a border colony, comes the story of John Clawson’s curse. This John Clawson was a hired servant of Roger Williams, who, at the instigation of a desperate fellow by the name of Herendeen, was attacked in the night from behind a thicket of barberry bushes, near the old north burial ground by an Indian named Waumaion. The Indian, who was armed with a broad axe, split open Clawson’s chin at the first blow. The wound was mortal, but the wounded man lived long enough to utter his curse—that “Herendeen and his posterity might be marked with split chins and haunted with barberry bushes” forever. The malediction, legend says, was fulfilled, and the descendants of the murderer were still distinguished in the last century by a furrowed chin, and fired up with indignation at the mention of a barberry bush.