BOOK VI. PROGRESS UNDER KING GEORGE THE THIRD. CHAPTER I. JUST a hundred years passed between the restoration of the Stuart dynasty to the throne of England and the accession of the third monarch of the line of Hanover. The former event inflicted on New England some of the evils which had been apprehended ever since the period of the colonization, and was working towards a consummation of the ruin, when the revolution under the Prince of Orange brought relief to Englishmen on both sides of the water alike. At first the despotic Governor who represented King James the Second had seemed to possess a power secure against resistance. The Colonies of New England were not even united among themselves. United, they could have offered but feeble opposition to the military and naval strength of England, organized as it had been by the great Protector and his associates, and now transferred to hostile hands. The friends of the colonists in England the patriot party had been defeated, and were for the time discouraged and disabled. The conditions of the accomplishment of the early dream of ultimate independence had ceased to exist. It does not belong to the temper of Englishmen to submit to permanent servitude; but whatever hope had once been entertained of relief by separation from the misgoverned kingdom, had been dispelled in the course of events that could not be recalled. The forms of government which the elected King allowed to stand in Connecticut and Rhode Island were satisfactory to the people of those Colonies. Those which he gave to Massachusetts and New Hampshire, if far from being all that could be reasonably wished, were generally acknowledged to be as good as, in the circumstances, could any way be had, and such as a free people could contentedly live under. Even regarded from the colonists' point of view, it could not be said that those constitutions embodied and perpetuated any considerable practical grievance. They respected religious liberty, and they ostensibly provided for the cis-atlantic Englishman the traditional English securities for life, person, reputation, and property. Some of their provisions admitted different interpretations and applications; and out of these dif ferences from time to time questions arose between the Colonies and those who were administering the affairs of the parent country, as has been seen in the course of this narrative. But these questions were susceptible of being dealt with by discussion and management, as questions of internal administration were dealt with in England by opposing parties. The English dissenters, for instance, aggrieved by the ecclesiastical policy of Queen Anne's reign, did not expect to right themselves by revolt, but by argument and agitation, and a judicious use of as many votes as from time to time they could command in the House of Commons. So the people of Massachusetts, if a royal Governor was too officious about his prerogative, checked him by a diminution of his pay; if they thought him too extravagant in his projects, they cut down his supplies; if a law which they thought useful was disapproved in England, they tried it again with some change of phraseology, or they coaxed or annoyed the Ministry into allowing it by making or promising or threatening |