A Century Too Soon: The Age of TyrannyMusick, John R. (John Roy)
History
A Century Too Soon: The Age of Tyranny
Musick, John R. (John Roy)
Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775 -- Fiction
Happiness was enjoyed unconsciously. Beneath a rugged exterior, humanity
wore its sweetest smile. For a long time there was hardly a lawyer in
the land. The husbandman who held his own plough and fed his own cattle
was the greatest man of the age. No one was superior to the matron, who,
with her busy daughters, kept the hum of the wheel incessantly alive,
spinning and weaving every article of their dress. Fashion was confined
within narrow limits, and pride, which aimed at no grander equipage than
a pillion, could exult only in the common splendor of the blue and white
linen gown, with short sleeves, coming down to the waist, and in the
snow-white flaxen apron, which, primly starched and ironed, was worn on
public days. There was no revolution except from the time of sowing to
the time of reaping, from the plain dress of the week to the more trim
attire of Sunday. Every family was taught to look to the fountain of
all good.
Life was not all sombre. Frolic mingled with innocence. Sometimes
religion itself wore the garb of gayety, and the annual thanksgiving to
God was, from primitive times, as joyous as it was sincere. Nature
always asserts her rights, and Christianity means gladness.
The English colonies of the south after the restoration began to show
evidence of improvement. Mr. William Drummond, the sturdy Scotch
emigrant to Virginia, having been appointed governor of North Carolinia
brought that country into the favorable notice of the world. Clarendon
gained for Carolinia a charter which opened the way for religious
freedom. One clause held out to the proprietaries a hope of revenue from
colonial customs, to be imposed in colonial ports by Carolinia
legislatures. Another gave them authority to erect cities and manors,
counties and baronies, and to establish orders of nobility with other
than English titles. The power to levy troops, to erect fortifications,
to make war by sea and land on their enemies, and, in cases of
necessity, to exercise martial law was granted them. Every favor was
extended to the proprietaries, nothing being neglected but the interests
of the English sovereign and rights of the colonists. Imagination
encouraged every extravagant hope, and Ashley Cooper, Earl of
Shaftesbury, the most active and the most able of the corporators, was
deputed by them to frame for the dawning states a perfect constitution,
worthy to endure throughout all ages.
The constitutions for Carolinia merit attention as the only continued
attempt within the United States to connect political power with
hereditary wealth. America was singularly rich in every form of
representative government. Its political life was so varied that, in
modern constitutions, hardly a method of constituting an upper or
popular house has thus far been suggested, of which the character and
operation had not already been tested in the experience of our fathers.
In Carolinia the disputes of a thousand years were crowded into a
generation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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