ATTEMPT TO RETURN TO SPECIE PAYMENTS.—CHANGES IN THE REQUIREMENTS OF CITIZENSHIP.—NEW COUNTIES AND TOWNS FORMED.—FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.—WARD AND HOPKINS CONTEST.—ESTABLISHMENT OF NEWSPAPERS.

The war was almost over, although privateers still endangered maritime commerce. First an armistice was agreed upon for four months and then peace was signed at Aix la Chapelle, on the 30th of April, 1748. It was a welcome peace although the war had brought lessons with it which were never forgotten. The men who had fought at Louisburg were looked upon as veterans, and when the final struggle came brought experience to the service of the revolting colonies. Parliament, well aware of the readiness with which the colonies had contributed to the support of the war both by men and by money, made them a grant of eight hundred thousand pounds as an indemnity. Rhode Island’s share for the expedition against Cape Breton was six thousand three hundred and twenty-two pounds twelve shillings and tenpence; for the expedition against Canada, ten thousand one hundred and forty-four pounds nine shillings and sixpence. But deductions were afterwards made in a caviling spirit which excited bitter feelings. Still more irritating to colonial pride was the article restoring to France her conquered territories, for among them was Louisburg. Of the right of search, the original cause of the war, no mention was made, a precedent not forgotten in the war of 1812. Now was the time to heal the wound which paper money had inflicted upon the commerce of the country. Hutchinson, an aspiring young statesman of Massachusetts, formed a plan for sinking the paper money and restoring specie payment by means of this grant. Massachusetts after a long discussion, wisely adopted Hutchinson’s plan. Rhode Island and Connecticut rejected it. Rhode Island presently felt the consequences of her error by the loss of her West India trade.

The records of the labors of peace again fill the schedules. Charlestown was divided into two towns and the name of Richmond given to the portion north of Pawcatuck river. The communications between the different parts of the Colony were carefully watched over. There were already nineteen ferries when peace returned, and of these thirteen served to keep up the connection with the seat of government.

The year before the peace the first public library in the Colony, the Redwood Library, was founded. It was fruit of the good tree planted by Berkeley. In 1754 Providence followed the noble example and founded the Providence Library Association. In the following year we find another attempt to enforce a moral law by legislative enactment. The act against swearing was revised, and a fine of five shillings or three hours in the stocks imposed as a penalty for every offence.

The increase of population called for a revision of the statute of legal residence. “New comers were required to give a month’s notice of intention to become residents, after which if they remained one year without being warned to leave they were admitted as lawful inhabitants of the town.” A freehold estate of thirty pounds sterling also gave a legal residence. “Apprentices having served their time in any town, might elect their residence there, or return to the place of their birth. Paupers not having acquired a legal settlement might be removed by the councils on complaint of the overseer of the poor, to the place of their last legal residence or to that of their birth.” So careful was the watch kept over the conditions and privileges of citizenship. The Board of Trade called for a new census. “The population was found to consist of thirty-four thousand one hundred and twenty-eight souls, of whom twenty-nine thousand seven hundred and fifty were whites, the remainder blacks and Indians. Newport contained forty-six hundred and forty souls, Providence thirty-four hundred and fifty-two.”

The lottery had taken a strong hold upon the innate love of chance. The two first lotteries had been applied to public improvements. The third was formed for the relief of an insolvent debtor. Henceforth we meet it as a common relief in business misfortunes and a natural assistant in new enterprises.

The winter of 1748–49 was made memorable in Rhode Island annals by the death of John Callender, her first historian and pastor of the First Baptist Church in Newport. Among the public works of the year which the growing commerce of the Colony called for, was a light-house at the south end of Conanicut, still known as Beaver Tail Light.

Depreciation began to make itself deeply felt as the interests of English commerce became more and more interwoven with those of colonial commerce. Their raw products were the only articles that the colonies could give in exchange for English manufactures. Their West India trade was their only source of coin. Colonial bills out of the colonies were worthless. The subject was brought before the House of Commons, which called for a full and accurate statement of the condition of the currency. A committee was appointed by the Assembly to prepare the statement, and Partridge the colonial agent directed to present and support it. By this report it was shown that three hundred and twelve thousand three hundred pounds in bills of credit, emitted to supply the treasury since May, 1710, of which one hundred and seventy-seven thousand had been burned at various times and one hundred and thirty-five thousand pounds were still outstanding, amounting in all in sterling money to about thirty-six thousand pounds.

An interesting incident of this year was the organization of a Moravian mission.

The statute book records several new criminal statutes. It is an illustration of domestic relations that the first divorce was granted by the Assembly in 1754—more than a hundred years after the foundation of the Colony. And it may be taken as proof of the feelings of the Colony towards England, that a large number of English statutes were transferred to the colonial statute book. New precautions against fire were taken in Newport by the formation of firewards, and a fire engine was sent for from England. Providence soon followed the example. Another step was taken towards a satisfactory distribution of the territory by forming East and West Greenwich, Coventry and Warwick into a new county under the name of Kent County, with East Greenwich for its county town. The new county was required to build a court house at its own expense, which was partly done by lottery. Four years later another town was formed from Providence County and incorporated under the name of Cranston. In spite of the increased depreciation of the currency the Colony continued to grow in numbers and strength. Seventeen hundred and fifty-two was made memorable both in England and her colonies by the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. Henceforth the new year begins on the first of January instead of the twenty-fifth of March.

But the great event of the year was the decision of the lawsuit for the possession of the glebe lands in Narragansett, a suit of nearly thirty years standing, and which after passing through many phases was decided in favor of the Congregationalists against the Episcopalians, upon the ground that “by the Rhode Island charter all denominations were orthodox, and that a majority of the grantors when the deed took effect were Presbyterians or Congregationalists.”

Meanwhile paper money was doing its bad work. The calendar of private petitions bears sad witness to the evil. Bankruptcy became frequent, and among the bankrupts of those days of gloom was Joseph Whipple, the Deputy-Governor, who, surrendering all his property to his creditors was relieved by a special act of insolvency. The spirit of enterprise though dulled, was not crushed.

The first recorded patent was granted in 1753. Parliament had passed an act to encourage the making of potash in the colonies, and Moses Lopez took out a patent for making it for ten years by a process known only to himself. The next year a similar patent was granted to James Rogers for the manufacture of pearl-ash. The industrial instinct which was to receive in the sequel so great a development, was already girding itself up for the trial. The spirit of association, also, was awakening. A society of sea-captains was incorporated for mutual assistance under the name of the Fellowship Club. From this grew the Newport Marine Society.

A new war was at hand, a war known to our childhood as the old French war, and the last waged by France and England for the dominion of North America. The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle had left the door wide open for new claims, and these soon led to a new war. Here again Rhode Island displayed great energy, sending Stephen Hopkins and Martin Howard, Jr., to represent her as Commissioners at the Albany Congress of 1754, in which Franklin brought forward his plan for developing by union the resources of the colonies, she took promptly the steps necessary for her own defence and complied cheerfully with the requisitions of the English commanders. In this as in former wars she sent out her privateers to harass the enemy’s commerce. But her part in the contest was a limited one. Her troops went as contingents not as armies. She had no generals to give their names to great victories, and when peace returned her soldiers and sailors returned cheerfully to the duties and avocations of common life.

The annexation of the eastern towns in 1757 marks an important period in the history of Rhode Island. With two unfriendly neighbors on each side she had been compelled to contend inch by inch for her territory. All the obstacles which impede development had accumulated in her path. All the dangers which menace the existence of feeble colonies had beset her. She had faced them all, she had overcome them all. A great principle lay at the root of her civilization, and humanity itself was inseparably connected with her success.

From the annexation of the eastern towns in 1757 to the peace of Paris in 1763, all the leading events were more or less connected with the war. Privateering took the place of commerce. Taxes were levied to build and arm forts and raise and equip soldiers, not to erect churches and court houses and libraries and schools.

The war was lingering but decisive. It gave England one brilliant victory and one illustrious name—the Heights of Abraham, and Wolf—to the colonies the lesson so valuable a few years later that English troops might be driven where colonists held their ground, and the name of Washington. Recorded in European history as the seven years war, for the colonies it was a war of nine years, hostilities having begun two years before war was declared. Nowhere is man’s place in history more distinctly marked than in this war, which till the right man came was a succession of blunders and defeats. With William Pitt came victory. While the war was still confined to the colonies a large number of French residents had been thrown into jail as prisoners of war. What was their legal position? The question was brought before the Assembly by a petition for release, which was so far granted as to authorize their transportation to some neutral port, and so far rejected as to still subject them to the laws of war.

We have seen how watchful the home government was to enforce the laws of trade. But with all its watchfulness smuggling still prevailed in every colony. New orders came from the King directing the Assembly to “pass effectual laws for prohibiting all trade and commerce with the French, and for preventing the exportation of provisions of all kinds to any of their islands or colonies.” The Assembly passed the necessary acts. But too many and too powerful interests were involved to admit of their rigorous execution.

To this period belongs the bitterest party contest in the annals of Rhode Island, generally known as the Ward and Hopkins contest. Samuel Ward and Stephen Hopkins were the foremost Rhode Islanders of their time; both men of self-acquired culture and both illustrious by public services. Hopkins was the elder of the two, being born at Scituate on the 7th of March, 1717. Ward was his junior by eighteen years. Both were farmers and merchants, and both sincerely devoted to the interests of their native Colony. But as to what those interests were they differed widely, and their difference soon took the form of town and country parties. Newport was the leading town of the Colony, not only in commercial enterprise but in intellectual culture. Berkeley had not left his foot-prints there in vain. This seat of Rhode Island culture was best represented by Samuel Ward. The name of Hopkins stood for the country. The distribution of taxes was one of the questions at issue. Paper money was another. By degrees all questions of public policy were classed under the one or the other of these two leading names. There were sharp contests at the polls, painful severings of social ties and all the bitterness which partisanship gives to political discussion. At last the aid of the law was invoked and Hopkins sued Ward for slander. It is a singular illustration of the altered relations between Rhode Island and Massachusetts that in order to obtain an impartial jury the trial should have taken place at Worcester. Ward was acquitted and Hopkins condemned to pay the costs. In a few years the party contest gave way to the graver contest of the Revolution wherein the two leaders took their seats side by side in Congress Hall.

Among the events of domestic interest which belong to this period was the burning of the Providence Court House—not so much for the loss of the building as for that of the Providence Library which was kept in one of its rooms. The want of a public library was keenly felt, and when a lottery was granted for rebuilding the court house, half of its proceeds were set apart for the library. Rhode Island already felt the importance of libraries and schools. She will persevere in this course till it secures her a comprehensive school system and an admirable university.

The theatre found less favor, although its founder, David Douglass, brought with him the recommendation of the Governor and Council of Virginia. His first application for a licence in Newport failed; a second was more successful; and this pioneer of the American stage drew for a while good houses. He moved to Providence and built a permanent theatre. Many came from Boston to seek an enjoyment which they could not find at home. But the current soon turned. The Bostonians met with a cold reception, and the short-lived pleasure was condemned as a nuisance.

A newspaper was a want more generally acknowledged. Hitherto there had been none in the Colony. But in the summer of 1758 the Newport Mercury was established, and has held its ground with varying fortunes to our own day. Four years later William Goddard established in Providence the Providence Gazette and Country Journal. Among its first contributors was Governor Hopkins, who began for it his “Account of Providence,” but called to other subjects by the excitement of the times he never went beyond the first chapter. Enough, however, was published to call out several insulting letters from Massachusetts.

Times were daily becoming more and more critical. The Board of Trade insisted upon the rigorous enforcement of the navigation act. The colonial governments passed the necessary laws but could not enforce them. It was then that writs of assistance were first called for, and from this call arose that trial so celebrated in colonial annals, the first mutterings of the tempest which was at hand. James Otis became a familiar name throughout the colonies.

For thirty-four years the Quaker diplomatist, Richard Partridge, had faithfully and skillfully served Rhode Island as her agent in London. In 1759 mindful to the last of the interests of the Colony, he wrote on his death bed to recommend a brother Quaker, Joseph Sherwood, for his successor.

In this same year freemasonry was introduced, a charter was granted by the Assembly with permission to raise twenty-four hundred dollars by lottery for building a hall in Newport.

We have seen how early attention was called to the subject of fires. In 1759 the immediate action at fires was placed under the direction of five presidents of firewards, three of whom were elected at annual town meetings with authority to blow up buildings if necessary in order “to stop the progress of the flames.” These details though minute, serve to show how far our fathers carried their ideas of the powers and duties of government.

The increase of population called for a new division of territory. In 1757 Westerly was divided and its northern portion incorporated under the name of Hopkinton, a choice of name which shows that in that legislature the Hopkins party was in the majority. Two years later the new town of Johnston was formed out of Providence and named after the attorney-general.