290 EARLY LEGISLATION IN NORTH CAROLINA. [1669

prietaries, and six chosen by the assembly; an assembly, composed of the governor, the council, and twelve delegates from the freeholders of the incipient settlements, formed a government worthy of popular confidence.

The authentic record of the legislative history of North Carolina, begins with the autumn of 1669. It was then enacted that none should for five years be sued for any cause of action arising out of the country. Marriage was made a civil contract. New settlers were exempted from taxation for a year. Strangers were prohibited from trading with the neighboring Indians. As every adventurer who joined the colony received a bounty in land, frauds were checked by withholding a perfect title, till the emigrant should have resided two years in the colony. The members of this early legislature probably received no compensation; to meet the expenses of the governor and council, a fee of thirty pounds of tobacco was exacted in every lawsuit. Such was the simple legislation of men, who, being destitute of fortune, had roamed in quest of it. The laws were confirmed by the proprietaries, were reënacted in 1715, and were valid in North Carolina for more than half a century.

Hardly had these few laws been established, when the new constitution was forwarded to Albemarle; but the nature of the people rendered its introduction impossible. The proprietaries, contrary to stipulations with the colonists, superseded the existing government; and the colonists resolutely rejected the substitute.

Far different was the welcome with which the people of North Carolina, in 1672, met the first messengers of religion. From the commencement of the settlement, there seems not to have been a minister in the land. But when, in 1672, William Edmundson came to visit his Quaker brethren among the groves of Albemarle, "he met with a tender people." A quarterly meeting of discipline was established; and the sect, of

1672.] GEORGE FOX IN NORTH CAROLINA.

291

which opposition to spiritual authority is the badge, was the first to organize a religious government in Carolina.

Here

In the autumn of the same year, George Fox, the father of the sect, the upright man, who could say of himself, "What I am in words, I am the same in life," travelled across "the great bogs" of the Dismal Swamp, commonly "laying abroad anights in the woods by a fire," till at last he reached a house in Carolina, and obtained the luxury of a mat by the fireside. Carolina had ever been the refuge of fugitives from ecclesiastical oppression. The people "lived lonely in the woods," with no other guardian to their solitary houses than a watch-dog. The plantations of that day were upon the bay, and along the streams that flow into it; the rivers and the inlets were the highways of Carolina; the boat and the lighter birchen skiff the only equipage; every man knew how to handle the oar; and there was hardly a woman in the land but could paddle a canoe. was a colony of men from civilized life, scattered among the forests, hermits with wives and children, resting on the bosom of nature, in perfect harmony with the wilderness of their gentle clime. With absolute freedom of conscience, benevolent reason was the simple rule of their conduct. Such was the people to whom George Fox "opened many things concerning the light and spirit of God that is in every one," without distinction of education or race. The governor of the province, with his wife, "received him lovingly." From the house of the governor the traveller continued his journey to the residence of "Joseph Scot, one of the representatives of the country," where he had "a sound and precious meeting" with the people. His eloquence reached their hearts, for he did but assert the paramount value of the impulses and feelings which had guided them in the wilderness. At another meeting, "the chief secretary of the province," who "had been formerly convinced," was present; and Fox became his guest, yet not without "much ado;" for, as the boat approached his plantation, it grounded in the shallow

292

GOVERNMENT IN NORTH CAROLINA.

[1674.

channel, and could not be brought to shore. But a little skiff shot promptly to the traveller's relief; the wife of the secretary of state came herself in a canoe, and brought him to her hospitable home. Among emigrants like these, the introduction of the constitutions of Locke was impossible.

In 1674, while it was thus practically uncertain what was the government of North Carolina, the country was left without a governor by the death of Stevens. The assembly, conforming to a prudent instruction of the proprietaries, continued to elect a successor; until, in 1677, Miller arrived in the province, in which he was to hold the triple office of president or governor, secretary, and collector.

At that time North Carolina hardly contained four thousand inhabitants; a few fat cattle, a little maize, and eight hundred hogsheads of tobacco, formed all their exports; their humble commerce had attracted none but small vessels from New England; and the mariners of Boston, guiding their vessels through the narrow entrances of the bay, brought to the doors of the scattered planters the few foreign articles which the exchange of their produce could purchase. And yet this inconsiderable traffic, so little alluring, but so convenient to the colonists, was envied by the English merchant; the law of 1672 was now to be enforced; the traders of Boston were to be crowded from the market by an unreasonable duty, and the planters to send their harvests to England as they could.

The attempt at enforcing the navigation acts in 1678, hastened an insurrection, which was fostered by refugees from Virginia, and by New England men; and which, having been the effect of deliberate contrivance, was justified by the first American manifesto. Excessive taxation, an abridgment of political liberty by the change in the form of government, with the "denial of a free election of an assembly," and the unwise interruption of the natural channels of commerce, were the threefold grievances of the colony. The leader in the insurrection was John

THE REBEL ACQUITTED BY AN ENGLISH JURY. 293

Culpepper, one of those " very ill men "who loved popular liberty, and whom the royalists of that day denounced as having merited "hanging, for endeavoring to set the poor people to plunder the rich." One of the counsellors joined in the rebellion; the rest, with Miller, were imprisoned, "that thereby the country may have a free parliament, and may send home their grievances." Having deposed and imprisoned the president and the deputies of the proprietaries, and set at nought the acts of parliament, the people recovered from anarchy, tranquilly organized a government, and established courts of justice. The insurgents, having completed their institutions, in 1679, sent Culpepper and another to England to negotiate a compromise. It proves in Culpepper a conviction of his own rectitude, that he did not hesitate to accept the trust.

To a struggle between the planters and the proprietaries, the English public had been indifferent; but Miller, escaping from Carolina, presented himself as the champion of the navigation acts, and enlisted in his favor the jealous anger of the mercantile cities. Culpepper was taken into custody, and his opposition to the proprietaries was held, under a statute of Henry VIII., to justify an indictment for high treason, committed without the realm. Against the act of tyranny Culpepper vainly protested, claiming "to be tried in Carolina, where the act was committed." "Let no favor be shown him,” said Lauderdale and the lords of the plantations. But when, in June, 1680, he was brought up for trial, Shaftesbury, who at that time was in the zenith of popularity, with clear sagacity, penetrated the injustice of the accusation, appeared in his defence, and procured his acquittal. Thus was the insurrection in Carolina excused by the verdict of an English jury.

But how should the proprietaries establish their authority in the plantations? It was a natural expedient to send one of the proprietaries themselves to look after the interests of the company; and, in 1680, Seth Sothel, who had purchased the rights of Lord Clarendon, was

294 SOTHEL'S ADMINISTRATION IN NORTH CAROLINA.

selected for the purpose. Sothel, on reaching the colony, in 1683, found tranquillity established. The counties were quiet and well regulated, because not subjected to a foreign sway; the planters, in peaceful independence, enjoyed the freedom of the wilderness. The proprietary arrived and the scene was changed.

To introduce the constitutions was impossible, unless for one who could transform a log cabin into a baronial castle, a negro slave into a herd of leet-men. And how could one man, without soldiers, and without a vessel of war, enforce the navigation acts? Having neither the views nor the qualities of a statesman, Sothel had no higher purpose than to satiate his sordid passions, and, like so many others, employed his power to gratify his covetousness, by exacting unjust fees, or by engrossing traffic with the Indians. His object was money, and he valued his office as the means of gaining it. His avarice was not unusually exorbitant. He did but practise the arts of exaction with which nearly every royal province was becoming familiar. But the people of North Carolina were already experienced in rebellion. They bore with him about five years, and, in 1688, deposed him without bloodshed, condemning him to a twelve months' exile, and a perpetual incapacity for the government.

Here was a double grief to the proprietaries; the rapacity of Sothel was a breach of trust, the judgment of the assembly an ominous usurpation. The planters of North Carolina recovered tranquillity as soon as they escaped the misrule from abroad, and, sure of amnesty, esteemed themselves the happiest people on earth. They loved the pure air and clear skies of their "summer land.” True, there was no fixed minister in the land till 1703; no church erected till 1705; no separate building for a court-house till 1722; no printing-press till 1754. Careless of religious sects, or colleges, or lawyers, or absolute laws, the early settlers enjoyed liberty of conscience and personal independence, freedom of the forest and of the river, and they desired no greater happiness than they enjoyed.