the new secretary of the Committee of the Privy Council, his papers, he accounts for these, but significantly adds a denial of knowledge of the maps and globes also asked for. It must be admitted, however, that Evelyn mentions1 the Council Chamber as furnished with maps, atlases, charts, globes, etc.; and in 1678 we find Blathwayt presenting an account for "books and maps bought by him at Paris. Their Lordships seem well pleased with the collection." In any case English statesmen may well have thought that it was not unwise to have a French thorn in the flesh, threatening so independent a Colony as Massachussets was still showing herself to be, and possibly the same motive may have caused that toleration of the French settlements in Newfoundland, which has been so severely condemned by later writers. 1 Diary, May 26, 1671. CHAPTER III Shaftes- NEXT behind Clarendon in importance, if indeed at all bury. behind, must rank a statesman of a very different type. Whatever be the clue to the illusive windings of Shaftesbury's domestic policy, his record in colonial matters is consistent and clear. Appointed from the outset a member of the Council for Trade and Plantations, he continued to be one of its most active members. In 1667 we find him proposing a new Committee for Trade, which in the following year made the important recommendation that the Customs authorities should maintain an officer in each Plantation, whose business it should be to administer the Oaths,1 required by the Navigation Act, to the several Governors. Before his fall Shaftesbury became the President of the Council for Trade and Plantations, and it was through him that the Oct. 1673. philosopher, John Locke, was appointed its secretary. Shaftesbury, however, in colonial matters, is best rememCarolina. bered in connection with the foundation of Carolina. In 1663 a Charter was granted to Lord Clarendon, the Duke of Albemarle, Lord Craven, Lord Berkeley, Lord Ashley, Sir G. Carterett, Sir J. Colleton, and Sir William Berkeley, of the territory lying to the south of Virginia. By the English this tract had been known as South Virginia, and by the Spanish and French as a portion of Florida. The attempt of the French to settle there had been foiled by the cruelty of the Spaniards, and the apathy of the French Government in protecting heretics. The area granted covered the lands already given by Charles I. to Sir R. Heath, but it was 1 Note that in 1672 we find Sir C. Wheeler, the Governor of the Leeward Islands, complaining that he suspects no other Governor has been sworn to the Act of Navigation but himself; and for aught he can see masters and merchants punished by him can trade freely to other islands. 2 Afterwards Lord Shaftesbury. held that, no attempt having been made to occupy, the earlier grant fell to the ground. Of the eight proprietors, Ashley and Colleton were the most active. Under the Charter, as amended two years later, laws were to be 1665. enacted by the proprietors with the advice and assent of the free men, or of the greater part of them or their delegates or deputies. Such laws were to be consonant to reason, and, as far as possible, agreeable to the laws and customs of England. Power was given to confer titles of honour, but such titles were not to clash with those in use in England. Liberty from custom dues was granted for seven years, on certain exports, and the right was allowed after unloading goods to re-export them to foreign countries within one year, without paying more than the ordinary dues. The Colony was to be immediately subject to the Crown of England, and to be in complete independence of any other Colony. The preamble to the clause relating to religious toleration runs: "Because it may happen that some of the people cannot in their private opinions conform to the public exercise of religion according to the Church of England, or take or subscribe the oaths and articles made and established in that behalf, and for that the same by reason of the remote distances of those places will, as we hope, be no breach of the unity and conformity established in this nation." And the clause itself allows liberty to the proprietors to grant such indulgences and dispensations as they think fit and reasonable. The principle of religious toleration and its grounds could not be more lucidly stated. The Charter being obtained, the next step was to develop the Colony. The aim of the proprietors appears at first to have been to establish a variety of separate and independent Colonies, each of which should have its own Governor, its own assembly, and its own customs and laws. In the extreme north a settlement had already been made from Virginia, and over this Sir W. Berkeley was to preside. It must be allowed that for many years Carolina was very far from a success, but this was due to no want of goodwill or good management on the part of the proprietors. On the contrary, they showed a most accommodating spirit in their efforts to assist the colonists. The failure has been ascribed to a variety of causes, to the unhealthiness of the climate, to the dispersion of the settlers over too large an area, and even to Locke's luckless Fundamental Constitutions. In fact, the truth would seem to be that the land was most suited to cultivation on a large scale, of such staple products as rice, and that therefore it did not attain full development until the Upas tree of negro slavery was in full bloom. Be this as it may, the letters of Shaftesbury on the Colony bear witness to his constant and assiduous care. No subject is too trivial to command his attention. We find him summoning home young men who had emigrated against the wishes of their relatives, writing letters of introduction for newcomers, warning the colonial authorities to keep strict secrecy as to the existence of mines, and in their letters to call gold "antimony" and silver “iron." He has always a good eye to the main chance; "we find ourselves mightily mistaken in endeavouring to get a great number of poor people there, it being substantial men and their families that must make the plantation, which will stock the country with negroes, cattle, and other necessaries, whereas others rely upon and eat us." His letters of rebuke are models of their kind. "If to take care of one, whatsoever becomes of us or the people; if to convert all things to his present private profit be the mark of able parts, Sir John is without doubt a very judicious man." Closely associated with Shaftesbury in his colonial labours was his confidential secretary and physician, John Locke. It is not possible in all cases to say what was written by the one and what by the other. Most interesting is it for a generation, to which such puffs have become terribly stale, to read an advertisement, drafted by a statesman and philosopher, in the youth of colonization. "Notice is hereby given to all ingenious and industrious persons that there is a new plantation begun two years since in the mainland between Virginia and the Cape of Florida. It is a climate most 1 Sir J. Yeaman. desirable. . . they have two crops of India corn in one year ... The privileges with which it is endowed make it yet more desirable. The principles whereof follow I. There is full and free liberty of conscience granted. 2. They shall choose, from among themselves, thirteen persons or some other odd number, one whereof the Lord proprietors will appoint for Governor, and half of the others for his Council, which Governor is to rule for three years and then learn to obey. 3. They shall choose from among themselves an assembly. They are to have freedom of custom in England, for all wine, fruit, currants, almonds, oils, olives, and silk for seven years." 5. Every man and woman going before June 24th, 1667, was to have a hundred acres for himself, wife, and each child, and armed servant, and fifty acres for every woman, servant, and slave. 6. Every servant at the expiration of the four years' term of service was to have the same quantity of land as his master had already obtained because of him. In spite of these attractions, settlers did not come forward, and the North Carolina colonists contented themselves, in the way of legislation, with establishing a kind of Alsatia, where the debtor might rest from duns, and in constituting a marriage law which for crude simplicity it would be hard to beat. There is a curious irony in the fact that it was with material such as this that the first practical attempt at constitution making by a philosopher, at least in modern times, was to deal. The fundamental constitutions of Locke possess an interest in the fields of jurisprudence and thought, but they left little or no trace in the life of the Carolinas, except as an occasional cause for bickering, and, when they were formally annulled by the Proprietors in 1693, the life of the Colony went on just as before. They now serve only to point the trite moral that character and circumstances count for more in the development of constitutions than the best thought out a priori theories of the philosophic lawgiver. Nevertheless, the constitutions represent an honest |