PAPER MONEY TROUBLES.—ESTABLISHMENT OF BANKS.—PROTECTION OF HOME INDUSTRIES.—PROPERTY QUALIFICATIONS FOR SUFFRAGE.

The treaty of Utrecht gave peace to England and her dependencies, leaving them free to follow out the peaceful development of commerce and manufactures. War had brought on paper money, which was first issued to meet the expenses of the second expedition against Port Royal. This first issue was of five thousand pounds in bills of from five pounds to two shillings, equal in value as far as legislation could make them so, “to current silver of New England, eight shillings to the ounce. They were to be received in all payments due the treasury, to be redeemed in specie at the end of five years,” and meanwhile were secured by an “annual tax of a thousand pounds.” To counterfeit or deface them was felony. Further issues of eight thousand pounds were made by the end of the war, and secured by new taxes. Thus was opened the great gulf which was to swallow the fruits of much laborious industry.

The Assembly made another step towards its present form by electing a clerk outside the house. The pay of this first clerk was six shillings a day. The military stores which had been collected during the war were divided into two classes. Those of a perishable nature were sold. The rest were carefully stored away to be ready for the chances of another war. “The cannon were tarred and laid on logs on the governor’s wharf.” The garrison of Fort Anne was dismissed. The labors of peace began. Increased attention was given to public highways. The old road which ran through the Colony from Pawtucket to Pawcatuck was repaired, and a new one opened to Plainfield through Warwick and West Greenwich. But in this the enterprise of the Colony outran its wants, and the new road was soon abandoned.

As we follow the sessions of the Assembly we find acts for the repression of litigation renewed three times in five years. The provision of the charter by which commissioned militia officers were to be elected by the Assembly had been neglected for more than a generation, and the elections made by the towns. While the population was small and most of the inhabitants freemen this mode of election proved good. But with the increase of population disputes and difficulties arose, and in 1713 a new law was passed in accordance with the provisions of the charter. But after a short trial and in spite of the protest of the governor and four assistants, the old law was revised.

One of the difficult questions of legislation came before the Assembly of 1713. Merchants had exported grain too freely and the home market began to feel the drain. The Assembly interfered, and not only forbade further exportation but set a tariff of prices for the markets of the Colony. An account of the stock of provisions in Newport was taken. The price of wheat was ten shillings and sixpence a bushel, of rye five shillings, of corn and barley four shillings, and of flour and biscuit thirty shillings a hundred.

Among the laws of trade which were passed at this time was a stringent law against peddlers, prohibiting them from selling dry goods under heavy penalties. But the apple of discord which divided the whole community was paper money. All New England was disturbed by it. In Massachusetts there were three parties, each very bitter against the other. Smallest of the three was the hard money party, which insisted upon withdrawing the bills of credit and putting all business transactions upon a metallic basis. The other two were in favor of banks, but of banks founded upon very different principles. One advocating a private, the other a public bank system. By the former bills of credit secured upon real estate were to be issued by the company and received by its members as money, but without any fixed relation to gold and silver. The other advocated a public bank, with bills to be loaned by government on mortgage of real estate and paying an annual interest for the support of government. Each party represented a distinct class. The hard money party was composed of men for the most part free from debt and ready to pay their way in cash. The private bank party were owners of real estate who were unable to use it to advantage for meeting their engagements. The hard money party after a severe struggle coalesced with these, and a “bank or loan of fifty thousand pounds” was established for five years.

In Rhode Island there were but two parties—the hard money party and the paper money party. The struggle was long and bitter, and ended by the adoption of the public bank system of Massachusetts. The contest was felt in the elections, each party striving to secure an Assembly favorable to itself. In the May election of 1714 “the specie party triumphed.” Twenty-two deputies out of twenty-eight lost their seats. An act had been passed requiring the treasurer to burn two thousand bills of credit. He disobeyed and lost his place. Bills to the amount of one thousand one hundred and two pounds eight shillings and sixpence were collected and burnt.

In the new election the paper money question still agitated the public mind. Only five out of the old members were returned to the Assembly. Of the assistants only one. Joseph Jenckes was chosen Deputy-Governor in the place of Henry Tew. So complete was the change that it was called “the great revolution.” Yet amid all these changes Governor Cranston held his place.

The death of Queen Anne and accession of George I. excited little attention in the colonies. South Carolina was suffering from the Yemassee war, which brought new emigrants to Rhode Island, and among them some females of Huguenot origin who had their Indian slaves with them. Their coming seems to have been acceptable, for the Assembly upon petition remitted to them the importation tax. The population was not yet sufficient to protect farmers from wolves and foxes. The old bounty was increased, and rewards were offered by Portsmouth for blackbirds and crows, and by Providence for gray squirrels and rats. A few years later still higher bounties were offered for wild-cats and bears.

The great public question was still the question of the bank, and we have already seen that the form adopted was that of public banks. In the July session of 1715 a bank or loan of thirty thousand pounds was established, which in a later session was raised to forty thousand. “Bills from five pounds to one shilling were issued and proportioned among the towns.” Whoever could give good mortgage security could claim a loan. But the interest instead of being secured by bond and mortgage was secured by bond alone, and thus the greater part of it was eventually lost, a very serious defect in the system, for it was from this interest that the bills were to be redeemed and the expenses of government paid. We shall meet this subject again, but never in a pleasant form.

It is interesting to see by what devices the increasing wants of the Colony was met. Newport had wants of her own as “the metropolitan town of the Colony.” The street leading to the Colony House needed paving, and to meet the expenses a grant was made of funds drawn from the duty on imported slaves. Other streets were paved and a bridge built over Potowomut River by funds drawn from the same source.

The criminal code also, grows with the Colony. Fraudulent voting is punished with fine, whipping or imprisonment. To facilitate detection every voter was required to endorse his name in full on his ballot. A large proportion of the crimes in the Colony were committed by Indian slaves. The fear of punishment was an insufficient protection against this class of criminals, and a law was passed prohibiting their introduction into the Colony.

We have seen that Newport and Providence made early provision for schools. Portsmouth followed their example, and “having considered how excellent an ornament learning is to mankind,” made in 1716 an appropriation for building a school-house. The experiment was successful, and six years later two others were built—one of them sixteen feet square, the other thirty by twenty-five. It is deserving of remark that in this young society slander was not suffered to go unpunished. A Gabriel Bernon had brought a false accusation against one of the assistants. He was compelled to make “a written acknowledgment to the injured party,” and ask pardon in writing of the Assembly which he had treated with disrespect on his examination.

The condition of the Indians called for legislative interference. On the petition of Ninigret their lands were taken under the protection of the Colony, and overseers appointed to lease them for the benefit of the tribe and remove trespassers. The following year an attempt was made to enforce temperance among them by increasing the difficulty of their obtaining liquor on credit.

The militia law was revised from time to time and various changes introduced. In that of 1718 the governor was styled “Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief,” and the deputy-governor “Lieutenant-General.”

It will be remembered that colonial laws were required to conform as far as possible to English laws. The colonial legislatures put a large interpretation upon this provision, and in providing for the estates of intestates modified materially the law of primogeniture. The eldest son, instead of the whole estate, received only a double share—one-third being given to the widow and the remainder divided among the children.

The Board of Trade had repeatedly called for a complete copy of the laws, and the Assembly had appointed more than one committee to revise and print them. It was not, however, till 1719 that the work was taken seriously in hand. That it should have been printed in Boston shows how old prejudices were passing away. This first edition was distributed among the towns and the Assembly.

Boundary questions revive from time to time. The northern boundary gave rise to bitter discussions, and though often on the point of being decided, was not really brought to a decision for several years. The western boundary, also, had been practically decided in favor of Rhode Island. But this question, too, was reÖpened, and the uncertainties and inconveniences which such disputes engender idly prolonged to the sore annoyance of the inhabitants of the border. How imperfectly the serious nature of the question was understood in England may be seen by the proposition of the Privy Council that both Rhode Island and Connecticut should surrender their charters and be annexed to New Hampshire. It was not till 1727 that Westerly knew whether she belonged to Connecticut or to Rhode Island.

Protection begins about this time to manifest itself as essential to the success of domestic industry. Acts also were passed for the protection of river fisheries. The manufacture of nails and hemp duck were encouraged—nails by a loan and duck by a bounty. With the increase of population new guarantees were required to secure purity of suffrage. In the winter of 1724 the freehold act was passed “requiring a freehold qualification of the value of one hundred pounds, or an annual income of two pounds derived from real estate to enable any man to become a freeman.” With modification of detail but none of principle, this law held its place on the statute book for a hundred and twenty years. “Freemen of the towns who were not freemen of the Colony were allowed to vote for deputies.”

In 1721 a new bank or loan for forty thousand pounds was established upon the same principle as the first. Hemp and flax were received in payment of interest. Specie had become so scarce that an English half-penny passed for three half-pence, and it was soon manifest that the introduction of paper money had raised prices and encouraged speculation in land.

But nothing occurred to break the monotony of colonial life so important as the capture in 1723 of a pirate schooner and the trial of her crew by a court of admiralty. Twenty-six of the prisoners were condemned to death, hanged at Gravelly or Bull’s Point, and buried on Goat Island between high and low water mark.

One of the important events of 1722–3, and which must be considered as a favorable indication of the increase of population was the division of Kingston into two towns. In 1724 the failure of the crops led again to the prohibition of the exportation of grain. Two thousand bushels of Indian corn were bought on public account and sold to the people at low prices. In Newport no one was allowed to have more than four bushels at a time—in the other towns not more than eight. The temperance question, also, began to attract attention at an early day, and various efforts were made to check drunkenness. Among them was an act prohibiting the selling of liquor to common drunkards, and to ensure the carrying out of the act town councils were required to post in their own and the neighboring towns those who came under it. In nothing, however, was the progress of the Colony more evident than in the growth of the religious sentiments. The soul liberty of its founder had been mistaken for license. Towards the close of the seventeenth century Cotton Mather had written: “Rhode Island is a colluvies of Antinomians, Familists, Anabaptists, Anti-Sabbatarians, Arminians, Socinians, Quakers, Ranters, everything in the world but Roman Catholics and true Christians.” A quarter of a century later he wrote: “Calvinists with Lutherans, Presbyterians with Episcopalians, Pedobaptists with Anabaptists, beholding one another to fear God and work righteousness, do with delight sit down together at the same table of the Lord.” In strict accordance with the fundamental principle of the Colony the pay of the clergy was made by voluntary contribution of their parishioners. We have recorded the deaths of Williams and Clarke. In April, 1727, Governor Samuel Cranston followed them to the grave, leaving no public man so universally loved behind.

It is a proof of the progress of the Colony that vagrants and “mad persons” began to be provided for by law. Among the laws adopted from England at this period was the act of limitations for personal actions.