stop to settle points of casuistry. Not a Frenchman or a Spaniard had been in Carolina for a hundred years. The name of Raleigh, says Bancroft, belongs to American history. His great soul looked to the new world and its developments. Elizabeth granted him every thing he could desire-a vast empire, and almost unlimited power. His proprietary grant covered part of Carolina under the title of Virginia. In the vicinities of Albemarle and Pamlico were unsuccessful colonies. In 1590 Raleigh assigned his proprietary. In 1606 "The London Company"-noblemen -gentlemen-merchants, obtained a charter; Carolina, north of Cape Fear, was included in it. This, the first colonial charter granted to Englishmen in America, was despotic; it violated magna charta itself. The hardy spirits who were to brave the dangers of the new world, were to do it with the yoke about their necks. James the First drew up a code for this new government. Hence the origin of our chartered governments; hence perhaps, too, the idea of written constitutions so universal in the American States. The pretence under these charters was "the propagation of christianity." Alas that such a "multitude of sins" should be covered under so fair a guize! New England was granted to men jealous of civil and religious freedom-men yearning after liberty. The New England charters were essentially free. Noblemen, knights, and gentlemen coveted wealth from Southern climes; there the rivers washed out golden sand. These men needed plantations-not States; power-not liberty; estates-not homes. The Southern charters contained no element of popular rights. Sir Robert Heath, Attorney General to the King, obtained, in 1630, a grant covering from 31 to 36 degrees of latitude. It passed through the Earl of Arundel to Dr. Coxe, whose son published an account and map of the country. Tradition says there were attempts under the grant to colonize;-the patent was long after declared void. If Heath did nothing, however, Massachusetts and Virginia did. The former sent a small settlement to Cape Fear ;the latter, in 1663, granted land to George Cathmaid, “as a reward for establishing sixty-seven persons in Carolina." The Charter of Charles the Second is at last before us. The constitutional history of South-Carolina, of right, begins with it. To eight of the most distinguished men in England, is secured all the territory south of the 36° parallel to the St. Matheo (now the St. John's) River. The historian, Clarendon; the novus homo Albemarle, (so celebrated as Gen. Monk at the Restoration;) Craven, a cavalier and a soldier; Ashly Cooper, Chancellor of the Exchequer, (history's dissolute but eloquent and philosophic Shaftsbury ;) Colleton, the royalist; two Berkleys; and Sir George Carteret, were invested by the instrument with almost absolute power,-"to enjoy the same," says the charter, "as amply as any Bishop of Durham,"* etc., etc. Allegiance alone was reserved to the crown. "Avarice is the vice of declining years; most of the proprietors were past middle life. They begged the country under the pretence of a pious zeal for propagating the gospel, and their sole object was the increase of their own wealth and dignity." The opposing claims of Spain-the London Company-the Massachusetts settlers, were soon disposed of. Sir John Yeamans, who came over from Barbadoes with a colony of planters about this time, was constituted Governor of all the territory south of Cape Fear. Thus the history of the first charter. There was a second two years after, suited to the ever grasping hands of the proprietors.† It extended half a degree further north; southward to 29°; westward to the ocean: covering an almost illimitable territory. All of the present North and South-Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Missis * Durham was a County Palatine. The Bishop had in it jura regalia as fully as the King in his palace. All offences were against his peace. All forfeitures accrued to him. He exercised the right of pardoning; appointed judges, etc. Most of these privileges Henry VIII. and Elizabeth abolished; but this did not affect the proprietors; they having all the Bishop's original rights. + The proprietors held by free and common socage tenure, with an annual rent of twenty marks, and one half of all gold and silver ore. They had the fullest powers to constitute a government. To make all laws, etc., analogous to the laws and customs of England, with consent of the freeholders. They might create titles of nobility not used in England; and might-but only if they pleased, for so I understand it-grant liberty of conscience and full toleration to all dissenters. The charter evidently contemplated a large production of tropical commodities, admitting as it does into England for several years free of duty from Carolina, wines, currants, raisins, silks, capers, wax, almonds, oil, and olives. The hope was never realized. A magnificent empire, too, was anticipated, or why those rights of "erecting fortifications," "making war," "exercising martial law," "raising revenues," etc. lodged in the proprietors. From this latter right, however, they expected most to their private fortunes. Every thing was accorded them. "Nothing was neglected," says Bancroft, "but the interests of the English crown and the rights of the colonists." And yet Clarendon, the Chancellor, was impeached not long after for introducing the arbitrary power of the crown into the plantations. 2 Car. Coll. p. 288. sippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, part of Florida and Missouri, Texas and Mexico, included in it. A noble province this Carolina then! Between the years 1669 and 1698 five distinct set of laws (or fundamental constitutions) were sent over by the Proprietors for the government af their Province. The object professed was to "prevent the erecting of a numerous democracy." The last set claims to be "with the advice and consent of the Landgraves, and Cassiques and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled." The people in their respective assemblies never ratified these constitutions ;they determined them in 1702 never to have been law in the State-so little disposition had these hardy adventurers to be governed, where they were not represented. Amid the wild scenes of their new homes dreams of liberty soon floated in their fancies; a jealousy of the proprietors at once sprung up, and the seeds of after revolution were sown in that early period. In 1669 came Wm. Sayle as Governor of the Colony; and three years afterwards followed, nineteen "Articles of Instruction" and the model of a town -the Rome doubtless of the new world. The first set of constitutions are so remarkable, that we design a full notice of them.* Such a notice will not be uninteresting. The early history of the State cannot always indeed be understood, without some knowledge of these; the more ancient statutes have a clear reference to them: titles of nobility.† with large landed interests, were actually created under their sanction. Thos. Smith was created Landgrave with 4,800 acres land. Colleton, Yeamans, and Carteret, were entitled "Landgraves ;"-the same dignity is said to have been conferred upon John Locke. These constitutions, in themselves, are worthy of all attention; they are worthy of attention, too, from the There is a manuscript copy of these Constitutions in the Charleston Library; it is a curious old paper, in the hand-writing of John Locke himself. The writing is stiff but very clear; it is not punctuated in any part: a fac simile of Locke's signature is attached to it. The date is 14th July, 1669. The manuscript was presented to the Library in 1833, by Robert Gilmor, of Baltimore. We are indebted to the Librarian for a view of it. + The dignities under the Constitutions were to be. 1. Palatine-comes palatii. The term explains itself. 2. Landgrave. A German title, like the Saxon "Thane." 3. Casique. An Indian title. Vide 1 Cooper, 42. character of those who framed them. Every Colony, except South-Carolina, was planted by refugees from ecclesiastical tyranny. The men who first crossed the waters for our shores were of a different character. Men of broken fortunes, adventurers, artisans, servants-the first colonists were any thing which could be included under the genus homo. These, it might be supposed, would not be over jealous about liberty. How to govern them?-was a natural question for the proprietors. Were they to cross the ocean with a few general instructions, and form a government afterwards for themselves,-as circumstances, the exigencies of the occasion, the habits of the colonists, their peculiar and ever changing relations might seem to dictate? Or must they, at the first, be chained down to a certain fixed, unyielding, inflexible form, to which every thing else must be accommodated? Political wisdom might have hesitated about the first; avarice and lust of power erred sadly in determining upon the last. The proprietors had designs of a stupendous nature. What could suit an establishment, at the head of which we recognize a Clarendon, or a Shaftsbury-but all the pomp of regal show-the magnificence of empire-the glory of dominion? Statesmen at home-legislators, they were cradled in the storms and tempests of revolution,-educated amid the ceaseless conflict of parties, trained in action and for action. Some of them were philosophers, and amid every distraction of the State, found in philosophy a solace and a guide ;-courting Egeria in her solitary groves, when the tempest raged without. Such was Shaftsbury-such was Clarendon. If we would know the constitutions granted to the first colonists, we must know the men that granted them. Clarendon was abroad on a mission to Sweden. All the responsibilities of the enterprize rested upon Shaftsbury; he was its oracle-he gave laws to it—and in giving laws to it, was himself the type of the government he was about to establish. A man unflinching in his purposes-ever changing in his connexions; an equal foe to despotic power and to democracy; an aristocrat doating upon a landed aristocracy, with all faith in the nobles-all contempt for the people. Loving wealth without avarice; just from interest,and popular as a chancellor every where but among the lawyers. Without religion-he feared not God, but watched * the stars; without faith in christianity, he clung to astrology;-a counsellor, but not an actor. A man without sympathies, he could neither understand a prejudice, or prescription. He debauched his mind into a contempt of the people, and would have debauched them in turn by inflaming their passions. Such was Shaftsbury, as Bancroft de scribes him. There was another man-John Locke. As a patron of letters, Shaftsbury was not long ignorant of the merits of the unpretending scholar. They were antipodes to each other in religion and morals; in letters and in politics they met on a common arena and shook hands together. Shaftsbury was in the zenith of his glory;-Locke, as yet, "unhonored and unsung." A lover of truth, moved by convictions and regardless of theory-looking to the nobility as the rock of the commonwealth, and out of all conceit with the people-John Locke, "in going forth," says the historian, "to lay the foundation of civil government in the wilderness, bowed his mighty understanding to the persuasive influences of Shaftsbury." Associated with these great names comes down to us the first set of Carolina Constitutions. Locke drafted them on Shaftsbury's principles, but these were consonant to the feelings of the great metaphysician himself; and there is throughout the whole performance, we are told, but a single article which did not meet with his hearty approval.† Locke to his last days prided himself on these legislative labours. In their first birth they were the theme of extravagaut eulogy. "Beyond compare are they," said some; "empires will be solicitous of subjection to the noble government," said others; "they shall endure forever," said the proprietors, "sacred and unalterable."‡ He could yet pretend a faith, when it suited the purposes of his insatiable ambition. He communed with the Church of England, and maintained, at times, that "it was censurable to represent the gospel as a fraud; that he hoped its enemies would be reconciled to it, and its friends prize it more highly." Vide Dwight on Infidel Philosophy. M'Ilvaine's Evidences, p. 336. + The Article establishing a National Church. The autograph copy of these Constitutions in the Charleston Library, is dated July, 1669. As the reader may be pleased with a view of the plan of government to be established by them, we have thought it not inappropriate to furnish in a note such a summary or digest. It will be some labour to us, and lest it might prove tedious to any, we shall not encumber the text with it. The curiosity of the whole affair warrants us in this step; and |
