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Virginia[1] were seekers of gold, adventurers without resources and without character, whose turbulent and restless spirits endangered the infant colony,[2] and rendered its progress uncertain. The artisans and agriculturists arrived afterward; and although they were a more moral and orderly race of men, they were in nowise above the level of the inferior classes in England.[3] No lofty conceptions, no intellectual system directed the foundation of these new settlements. The colony was scarcely established when slavery was introduced,[4] and this was the main circumstance which has exercised so prodigious an influence on the character, the laws, and all the future prospects of the south.
Slavery, as we shall afterward show, dishonours labour; it introduces idleness into society, and, with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind, and benumbs the activity of man. The influence of slavery, united to the English character, explains the manners and the social condition of the southern states.
In the north, the same English foundation was modified by the most opposite shades of character; and here I may be allowed to enter into some details. The two or three main ideas which constitute the basis of the social theory of the United States were first combined in the northern British colonies, more generally denominated the states of New England.[5] The principles of New England spread at first to the neighbouring states; they then passed successively to the more distant ones; and at length they imbued
- ↑ The charter granted by the crown of England, in 1609, stipulated, among other conditions, that the adventurers should pay to the crown a fifth of the produce of all gold and silver mines. See Marshall's “Life of Washington,” vol. i., pp. 18-66.
- ↑
A large portion of the adventurers, says Stith (History of Virginia), were
unprincipled young men of family, whom their parents were glad to ship off, discharged
servants, fraudulent bankrupts, or debauchees: and others of the same class, people
more apt to pillage and destroy than to assist the settlement, were the seditious chiefs
who easily led this band into every kind of extravagance and excess. See for the
history of Virginia the following works:—
“History of Virginia, from the first Settlements in the year 1624,” by Smith.
“History of Virginia,” by William Stith.
“History of Virginia, from the earliest Period,” by Beverley.
- ↑ It was not till some time later that a certain number of rich English capitalists came to fix themselves in the colony.
- ↑ Slavery was introduced about the year 1620, by a Dutch vessel, which landed twenty negroes on the banks of the river James. See Chalmer.
- ↑ The states of New England are those situated to the east of the Hudson; they are now six in number: 1. Connecticut; 2. Rhode Island; 3. Massachusetts; 4. Vermont; 5. New Hampshire; 6. Maine.
