CHARTER GOVERNMENT AGAIN RESUMED.—FRENCH WAR.—INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.—CHARGES AGAINST THE COLONIES.

Rhode Island had never hated Andros as bitterly as the other colonies had hated him, for the freedom of conscience which he endeavored to force upon them was in her a fundamental principle. But she loved her charter and rightly believed that it was the only sure pledge of her liberties. Therefore, when Dudley, the Chief-Justice, undertook to open his court, he was seized and put in jail. This was a bold casting off of the new government. The next step was a cautious return to the old. A letter from Newport came out calling upon the freemen of Rhode Island to meet there “before the day of usual election by charter,” to take counsel together concerning public affairs. When the day came the freemen met, and doubtless with all their usual freedom of debate, prepared a statement of their reasons for resuming their charter government. Party lines were already sharply drawn. On one side were the Royalists, led by the rich merchant, Francis Brinley, who opposed the resumption of the charter, and called for a general government by immediate appointment of the King. On the other were the Republicans, stronger both by number and by fervor of opinion. Their boldness secured the freedom of the Colony. In an address to “the present supreme power of England,” they gave their reasons for returning to their charter, and asked to have their action approved. Deputy-Governor Coggeshall, with several assistants, resumed their functions, but Governor Clarke, whose characteristic trait was caution, declined and the Colony was ten months without a governor.

Still, in May, all the old officers were reinstated and “all the laws superseded in 1686” resumed their place on the schedule. “The charter was produced in open Assembly” and then restored to Governor Clarke for safe keeping. When the question of the legality of the resumption of charter government came before the King, he approved it upon the written opinion of the law officers of the crown that “the charter, never having been revoked, but only suspended, still remained in full force and effect.” Heartily must Rhode Island and Connecticut have rejoiced that theirs had been so successfully guarded. In May came the welcome tidings that William and Mary had been acknowledged in England. They were promptly and joyfully acknowledged in the colonies. Dr. Increase Mather, a great name in Massachusetts, was in London on behalf of the colonies when the revolution broke out. He obtained an early audience of William and pleaded for the recall of Andros. The recall was granted, and after ten months of confinement the crestfallen Governor was sent to England for trial. But his conduct was viewed in a different light in the mother country from what it had been in the colonies. “The charges against him were dismissed by the royal order, on the ground of insufficiency—and that he had done nothing which was not fully justified by his instructions.” As a compensation for his long imprisonment, he was presently made Governor of Virginia.

In February, 1689–90, the Assembly met for the first time in four years and entered upon the work of organization. Seventeen deputies, together with the officers chosen in May, were present. Absentees were summoned. Clarke refused to serve as Governor. Christopher Almy also declined. The bold but aged Henry Bull was chosen in his stead. After some hesitation Clarke gave up the charter and other official papers. Funds which had been appropriated to the building of a Colony House were held by Roger Goulding, who promptly paid them over. Andros had broken the original colonial seal. A new seal, Hope with her anchor, was procured. Rhode Island’s exposed situation laid her open to attacks by sea, and thus imposed the necessity of new expenses. War had broken out between England and France, and the colonies were to come in for their share of war’s sufferings. Some fear was felt of the colony in Frenchtown, and the few survivors of the unfortunate settlement were required to repair to the office of John Greene, in Warwick, and take the oath of allegiance to the King.

Thus the government was regularly organized and public business began to move on in its accustomed track. At the May session of 1690 Governor Bull declined a reelection, and John Easton was chosen in his place. John Greene was chosen Deputy-Governor. One more was added to the list of assistants, who thus became ten. Here ends the probation of Rhode Island.

Poor and weak, through toil and sacrifice, in spite of internal dissensions and external enmities, calumniated for the great truth on which she was founded, coveted for the beautiful territory which she had redeemed from the wilderness, she had solved the problem of self-government and proved that the religious virtues may flourish without the aid of civil authority. The struggle for existence is over. She now enters through industry upon the path to wealth and culture.

The sessions of the Assembly had been held hitherto in taverns or private houses. But now a proper edifice, the town house, is built for public use and the public meetings are held in it. Thus far, also, the governor, the deputy-governor and the assistants have received no compensation for their services. They are henceforth exempted from the Colony tax. War with the French and Indians was raging all along the northern frontier. New York was the colony most exposed. Leister, her Governor, called on the other colonies for aid. Rhode Island, whose extensive water fronts left her open to attacks by sea, could not send men, and therefore taxed herself three hundred pounds to send money. The wisdom of this course was soon apparent. Seven French privateers made a descent upon the islands on the coast, committing horrible excesses. Bonfires were kindled at Pawcatuck to alarm the country, and a sloop well manned sent out from Newport to reconnoitre. A night attempt was made upon the town but failed. One upon New London was repulsed. Two sloops carrying ninety men were sent out under Thomas Paine and John Godfrey to fight the enemy. A bloody battle which lasted two hours and a half followed, and the French were driven off with the loss of half their crews and a valuable prize. Block Island was particularly exposed during this war. Four attacks were made upon it, the inhabitants ill treated and their cattle driven off. In the last invasion the privateersmen were defeated in “an open pitched battle.”

The war pressed so heavily on the commercial interests of the community that it was found necessary to lay a tonnage duty of a shilling a ton upon the vessels over ten tons burthen of other colonies that broke bulk in Newport harbor. The payment might be made in money or in powder, at the rate of a shilling a pound, and the products of the duty were employed in keeping up a powder magazine on the island. Rhode Islanders had not yet learnt to pay their taxes promptly, and more than once the Assembly was called together to devise the means of collecting sums already voted. The tonnage duty was a welcome, though a small contribution, to the scanty resources of the little Colony. A few years later a new source was opened by the levy of a duty upon foreign wines, liquors and molasses—that upon molasses being a half-penny a gallon. In the August session of 1698 an elaborate tax law in twelve sections was enacted, and a tax of eight hundred pounds currency was voted. By this act a poll tax of a shilling a head was imposed upon all males between sixteen and sixty. But this, also, was not easily collected, and years passed before an adequate method of taxation was devised and applied.

Shortly after the return to the charter the small-pox broke out. “Rhode Island is almost destroyed by the small-pox,” says a cotemporary letter. When the Assembly met they were unable to open the session with the prescribed formalities, for the only copy of the charter was in the keeping of the recorder, who was sick with the dreaded disease, and the reading of the charter was the first step towards organization. When the pestilence was passed, the attention of legislation was directed to the militia laws, which were revised and brought more into harmony with the material wants of the Colony. In this connection it may not be out of place to remember that the town house was enlarged and a belfry added to it. Government was gradually putting on the external forms of authority.

In 1691 a change occurred on the eastern border which threatened her inter-colonial relations. Plymouth was merged in Massachusetts, which was thus brought into larger contact with Rhode Island. Sir William Phipps, a native of Massachusetts, was appointed Governor, with a commission which gave him command over all the forces of New England, by land and by sea—a flagrant violation of the charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut, and which was vigorously repelled. Older grievances were not entirely healed. Some Pawcatuck men asked to be placed under the laws of Connecticut. The leaven of the Atherton company dispute had not yet spent its force. But the change of tone in the language of the correspondence shows that the bitterness which had distinguished its early stages was gradually passing away.

This (1692) was the time of the witchcraft trials in Massachusetts, a delusion in which Rhode Island did not share, for though she gave witchcraft a place on her statute books as a tribute to a superstition of the age, she never brought it into her courts. She was busied with more important questions.

Phipps was urging his claim to command the New England forces. John Greene, now Deputy-Governor, went to Boston with one of the assistants to discuss the matter. They got no satisfaction from the aspiring governor, either upon the question of command or upon the equally important question of the boundary line. The whole matter was referred to the Board of Trade and by them to the Attorney-General, who decided in favor of Rhode Island. A distinction, however, was made between peace and war. In time of war the commander-in-chief might, in conjunction with the governor, call out the quota prescribed by the Board of Trade. Rhode Island’s quota for service under the Governor of New York was forty-eight men. The eastern boundary question was referred to the New York Council as being disinterested and near the spot. The Narragansett dispute though so often decided in favor of Rhode Island, still reappeared from time to time. Several years were yet to pass before the boundaries both on the east and the west were definitively settled and the stout little Colony secured in the possession of her own territory. I shall no longer attempt to follow the story through its obscure ramifications. It has served thus far to illustrate colonial life, and show with what tenacity of purpose and devotion to a great principle Rhode Island followed up her labor of organization. It was the border war of our colonial history.

The necessity of regular communication between the colonies began to be seriously felt, and part of John Greene’s mission to Boston in 1692 was to negotiate the establishment of a post office. Early in the following year Thomas Neale, acting under patent from the King, established a weekly mail from Boston to Virginia. Rhode Island came in for her share of the advantage. The rate of postage upon a single inland letter from Boston to Rhode Island was sixpence. And thus was woven one of the first links in the chain which, before another century was passed, had bound all the colonies in an indissoluble union.

We have seen a gradual approach towards a just comprehension of the relations of the state to its officers. The decisive step was taken in 1695, when a salary of ten pounds was voted to the governor, six pounds to the deputy-governor, four pounds to the assistants and three shillings a day to the deputies while in session. Absentees forfeited twice their pay.

In the following year an important change was made in the organization of the Assembly, the deputies becoming a separate house coordinate with the assistants, each house occupying a separate room and having a veto upon the action of the other. It will help to form a correct idea of daily life in the country if I add that a bounty of ten shillings was paid for killing old wolves, and of the seaports and sea coast that privateers were fitted out from them with very irregular commissions. Blackbirds fared hard in Portsmouth, where every householder was required to kill twelve before the tenth of May, under penalty of two shillings, and with a premium of a shilling a head for all over twelve. This was to serve as a protection for fields. But the serious danger was from the Indians, for the treaty of Ryswick gave for sometime but an imperfect peace to the colonies. Inroads of Indians were frequent and sudden. Never had the councils of war been more active or more constantly in session, and never had the men who were fit for service been more constantly under arms. Scouting parties of ten men were sent out every two days to serve beyond the limits of the plantations. Such were the trials of the second generation of colonizers.

The violation of the acts of trade and lax dealing with privateers became so flagrant that the home government after many vain complaints resolved to establish courts of admiralty in all the colonies. The attorney-general was consulted and said there was nothing in their charters to prevent it. The colonial agents, exerted themselves earnestly to ward off the blow, but without success, and when the Rhode Island agent, Jahleel Brenton, returned in December, 1697–8, he brought a commission to Peleg Sandford as Judge, and to Nathaniel Coddington as Register. Governor Clarke opposed it and tried to induce the Assembly to join in the opposition. Brenton advised that he should be impeached, whereupon Clarke resigned in favor of his nephew, Samuel Cranston.

The Colony was entering upon a new period of trial and danger. The enemies of her chartered rights were numerous and powerful, and unhappily for her were supported in their charges by a dangerous array of specious evidence. The rival interests were represented by men admirably fitted for their respective tasks. The Royal Governor of Massachusetts, Lord Bellemont, a man of singular ability and strength of character, represented the party that would have made New England a vice-royalty. Cranston, firm, resolute and self-possessed, held that Rhode Island under the protection of her charter had fully proved her capacity for self-government.

The great interest at stake was the interest of trade. Domestic trade was fostered and protected. Peddling was prohibited as injurious to regular traffic. Pains were taken to secure uniformity of weights and measures. In all this no power was assumed which the spirit if not the letter of the charter did not fully grant. But the act of navigation had raised up an enemy to foreign trade which in time of war encouraged privateering and in time of peace led to piracy. The treaty of Ryswick left many hardy spirits afloat, greedy for gold and unscrupulous in their pursuit of it.

The American coast offered great facilities for smuggling, and it was only as smugglers that pirates or privateersmen could convert their prizes into money. Much of this money it is said was buried in retired nooks of the inlets and bays along the coast. The royal revenues suffered greatly by this illicit trade, and the royal agents accused the colonists of openly favoring it. “The people of New York,” wrote Lord Bellemont to the Board of Trade, “have such an appetite for piracy and unlawful trade that they are ready to rebel as often as the government puts the law in execution against them.” Rhode Island was held to be a favorite resort of these bold adventurers. Both Cranston her Governor, and John Greene her Deputy-Governor were accused of favoring them. Greene, who had been elected ten years in succession, was dropped in 1700, but Cranston was reËlected from year to year, thirty years in succession.

Meanwhile Bellemont, whose hostility was embittered by the instigations of Randolph, went on collecting document upon document, till the formidable list amounted to twenty-five heads of accusation—chief of which was connivance with pirates—and, as he wrote to the Board of Trade, “making Rhode Island their sanctuary.” Should the Board of Trade accept these accusations, what could preserve the Colony from a quo warranto? Nothing did save her but the death of the Royal Governor.

To this period belongs the story of Captain Kidd, long the subject of many a fearful tradition and all the more widely known from having exchanged an admiral’s flag for the black flag of the corsair. After a wild and adventurous career in the Indian ocean he came to the American coast, and showing himself boldly in the streets of Boston was arrested, sent to England for trial and hanged.