LOVE OF THE SOIL.

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No notions of government can be wider apart than those held by the Latin races and those held by the English. (With the latter, the one solitary and natural idea of government is what is known as self-government. It springs from the love of the soil, so characteristic of the tribe; an affection which makes the trespasser on one's field almost as great a wrong-doer as he who violates the sanctity of the person. The race has always given the supremacy, in respect of property, to land, and has always girt it about with favoring laws no less marked than are the hedges and fences that surround it on the ground. Where this legislative expression appears, there the race displays its natural love of the soil; where it does not appear, there, it is safe to say, this quality of the race is no longer uppermost, but has declined, or, perhaps, has never existed at all. No more significant sign of the decadence of race qualities can be given, than where the courts, who utter the voice of the state, enforce the doctrine that land shall be as easily transferable as personalty. It is the sacrifice of a race characteristic to present expediency, and if any thing which disturbs or destroys the natural action of the race is a wrong, then this doctrine is wrong and is sure to end in disaster. It becomes a precedent, to say the least, for further destruction of race characteristics, with which disappear the race notions of free government, and anti-race notions of despotic rule take their places as a matter of course.

It is to this love of the soil, this notion of personal independence, and to the sense of individual power which one has when standing in his own fields and on his own ground, that is to be attributed that freedom of action which is the true source of the institutions which mark the race.

The colonists brought with them this love of the soil, and the natural proclivity to self-government. From Virginia to Massachusetts Bay, no sooner was the land occupied than it was laid off in counties, and in hundreds, or townships. The very first thing the settlers did anywhere, was to betake themselves to the task of governing themselves; and, forthwith, their natural institutions appear, as if they had been brought over in boxes which were the first to be unpacked. The little hives bestir themselves at once in the direction of social organization, and one invariable feature Chitty on Pleading." Tit. Trespass.

1

of their labors is the provision made for the future expansion of society. Before the dwellings were built the governments were erected. Perhaps, like the dwellings, they were but temporary shelters, to last only until houses took the place of sheds: but there they were, and from the moment they appeared, they, and the institutions they sheltered, went on developing without a moment's retrogression. If they were opposed, they were as stubborn as the rocks; if unopposed, they expanded with the growth of their colonies. Sometimes these governments were cut and dried in the London office of "the Company" before the colonists started; sometimes they were outlined in their charters by the imperial government; and yet again, as in the cases of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island, they were the results of the direct action of the proprietary or the people. But, whether the work of cabinets, of proprietaries, of companies, or of colonists, sooner or later, all had for their active, vital, controlling force, without which they would have been as nothing, the people themselves. They became, thanks to the remoteness which thwarted the interference of the home government, and to the indifference of that government, real examples of popular sovereignty, no matter what might be the terms of the charter, patent, or commissions of the governors. They made their own laws, laid their own taxes, fought their own battles, and, in all respects, were their own men. This was selfgovernment, local self-government; for each colony looked out for itself, and none so much as pretended to meddle with the affairs of another, or to indulge in an interference which was sure to be sharply resented. Independent of each other and of the world, with nothing to restrain them except the slight tie that bound them to the mother-country, with the sense of power inherent in freemen, and with the love of adventure the ocean and the wilderness alike fostered, it is no wonder that there arose, in the course of time, that "fierce spirit of liberty," which filled, in such large measure, the observant eye of Burke,—a spirit which grew "with the growth of the people in the colonies, and increased with the increase of their wealth."

1

Foremost among the incentives of that fierce spirit of liberty was the contemptuous regard for the colonies entertained by the

FIRST NOTION OF INDEPENDENCE.

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commercial classes of England, who looked upon them simply as so many institutions erected for the especial benefit of England; as, in short, so many sponges to be squeezed. These classes naturally had great influence with the legislature of a country given over to thrift, and they made their mark from time to time on the legislation, which, in turn, betrayed this notion. As these acts of Parliament were almost invariably encroachments in some shape or another on what the colonies deemed sacred rights, they were promptly resisted. The government, doubtful of enforcing success with bodies too important to be lost, yet not of too great importance to be imposed upon when the opportunity offered, would retire from the position adverse to colonial interests into which the greed of home commerce would at times thrust it, and thus, on its part, did its share in familiarizing the colonists with the belief that all that was necessary to make the government back down was to meet it with a bold front. This notion, which, it must be said, the facts warranted the colonists in adopting, was the first step on the road to independence; for those who saw that the colonies had sunk in the eyes of Englishmen to being mere commercial appendages to the empire, instead of being living parts and members of it, soon entertained the still further advanced idea, that, if the colonies were more important to England than England was to the colonies, they might be better off were they to cease being mere tributaries or feeders to the trade of London and Bristol. Hence arose the last notion of the series, that of independence, which, beaten down as fast as it raised its head, by the loyalty that bound the American heart to England, never ceased its struggles until it had asserted its existence, destroyed the bond of allegiance, and, carrying along with it the now enthusiastic masses of the colonies, had torn from the empire the best part of its continental possessions, and those, too, which were biggest with the promise of the future.

If we look at the career of this "fierce spirit of liberty," and observe its character, we shall not be astonished that it ends in independence of the mother-country. Little else, indeed, could be expected, if, from the plan of historical development, which, before the advent of the English in America had marked the different migrations of the race, inferences could be drawn upon which to forecast the colonial future. The colonists were of a people

whose whole career had been characterized by an insatiable crav

ing after local self-government. This kind of government they

brought along with them, and they were enjoying it to a much greater extent where they were than they could have done had they remained in England. The appetite for personal influence in the administration grew by what it fed upon, and caused the colonists, when the pleasure of its enjoyment was interrupted, not only to be galled in the most sensitive part of their nature, but to regard the effort to curtail their liberties as downright robbery of that self-government to which they had long before acquired the actual right of possession. Had the policy of George III. been enforced by the house of Stuart, it is hardly probable that there would have been any thing more than a murmur. Men had not yet grown up to liberty and the desire for independence, but in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the spirit of liberty was already more fierce, perhaps, than it had ever been before, and it stood ready, if balked in its course, to hew its way with the sword to the independence which suffered no questioning. Hence we see, that, at the bottom of this disruption, lay the determination to keep inviolate the local self-government, to which, as living members of their race, they had the birthright, and of which they had long had actual possession. This it was that rode upon the

storm.

The forms of government in the colonies having been considered, and the effects of descent and remoteness of situation noticed, we proceed with the analysis as given by Mr. Burke.

PR

CHAPTER III.

IV.-Religion in the Northern Provinces.

ROCEEDING to the next cause mentioned by Mr. Burke which served to make liberty in the colonies fierce, namely, Religion in the Northern Provinces, we shall see that its striking feature was the principle of toleration, or, to use the broader expression, freedom of conscience; and if we are to point out the localities where this principle appeared in its greatest vigor, we must name, above all other territories, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Jersey, and Rhode Island.

Freedom in one thing is the natural progenitor and support of freedom in another, and it needs no argument to show that freedom of conscience was the natural forerunner and ally of freedom of the citizen. Inasmuch as free inquiry passed from religious to secular subjects in the colonies, just as it did in England, though without revolution and civil commotion, an inquiry into the causes of our political freedom must necessarily embrace the contemplation of what free inquiry did in America when it turned from religion to politics.

At the first glance, the colonies do not appear to be a chosen abiding-place of free inquiry in religious matters. Their foundations were laid when intolerance was still a sacred principle, and their structure betrays the characteristics of the age in which they rose. But, though intolerance came with the early colonists, it was the only thing they brought with them which did not display enduring vitality. Intolerance-practical, physical intolerancewas never more determinedly enforced than in the settlements around Massachusetts Bay; yet, before one generation had passed away, we behold, in the settlement of Rhode Island by men of Massachusetts, the first example known to the world of a com