صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

indentured white servants, and 2000 were negroes. In that year a statute of Virginia enacted that "all servants, not being Christians, imported into this country by shipping shall be slaves," and as there were some pious masters who attempted to convert their slaves, it was later enacted that "conversion to the Christian faith doth not make free." For an owner to kill his slave "from extremity of correction," was not a felony, "since it cannot be presumed that prepensed malice, which alone makes murther felony, should induce any man to destroy his own estate." In 1700 there were probably 6000 negroes and 60,000 whites, but it was not until after the Asiento article of the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 gave to England a monopoly of the African slave trade that the kidnapping of black men became a recognized and respectable business; and so profitable had the trade become and so great was the demand for servile labor, that in 1750 there were believed to be 250,000 negro slaves in Virginia, and an equal number of whites.

It is not necessary at this time to deal further with the subject of slavery or the political, social and moral effect of the institution and the psychological influence which it exercised, as in the logical development of the theme we shall see how powerful that influence became and how momentous its consequences.

E

CHAPTER XV

VIRGINIA AN ARISTOCRATIC OLIGARCHY

We have already shown that the men who first settled Virginia were not substantially different from those who exiled themselves to Massachusetts, and Virginia, like the northern colony, built a social system on the feeble foundation laid by men who were deficient in those qualities that are necessary for nation building. The strength of Massachusetts was the Puritan, not the Pilgrim. The character of Virginia was made by the Cavalier, not by the men who followed John Smith, but here the parallel ends. The Pilgrims, too gentle and unresisting to oppose the force of stronger wills, were merged in the Puritans, to the advantage of the latter. The Pilgrim strain in the Puritan blood was a refining and softening influence that did not destroy the Puritan qualities, but brought a ray of sunshine into the darkened recesses of minds abnormally self-centred. In Virginia it was otherwise. The descendants of the first settlers did not cease to exist after the coming of the Cavaliers, they were not absorbed by a stronger or coarser mentality, they did not intermarry, but both lived side by side, and each influenced the other to the injury of both. As the Cavaliers rose they pressed down the class

below them and more sharply emphasized the distinction of class. In any state of civilization where there is a wide gulf between classes the consequences are always detrimental. The possession of power, the knowledge that the people may be exploited with impunity and cannot successfully resist, makes the upper and ruling class selfish, arrogant and unrestrained; but there is also developed a high level of social refinement; there is as much luxury as is compatible with the means to gratify it, and among a few an extraordinary mental culture that amazes the world by its boldness and philosophic insight. The lower class becomes resigned to its subordinate position; it is deprived of the great incentive, ambition; and the mass constantly sinks lower.

Virginia strikingly exhibits the working of this social law. It developed a race of arrogant, quicktempered aristocrats, and a large number of men extraordinarily endowed mentally, whose philosophic grasp is still the admiration of the world; and simultaneously it gave birth to "the mean whites,” a degraded, shiftless, mentally deficient class, whose maleficent influence made the South for many generations far behind the North in culture and civilization and lowered the general level of intelligence. A single drop of poison corrupts the whole blood. Against the corrupting influence of "the mean whites" all the genius and wisdom of philosophers and humanitarians and statesmen were

powerless. The men who have made some parts of the South "a dark and bloody ground," where to this day the only law known is the law of the rifle and the knife, where dense ignorance prevails and superstition holds sway, are the legacy of this colonial era and its social system.

Just as the dominant and lasting impression was made on New England when the religious persecution of Charles I drove the Puritans to build new temples in the wilderness of the New World, so the character of Virginia was laid when the political persecution of the successor to Charles I drove the Cavaliers to find an asylum on the banks of the rivers and streams of Virginia. The great Puritan hegira covered about thirteen years. The Cavalier migration to Virginia began seven years after Charles's power for evil had ceased to exist, and lasted eleven years. There is here a remarkable correspondence of time and cause, and the coincidence is still further emphasized by the almost identical increase in the population of the two colonies. The heavy hand of the Church forced 20,000 Puritans into exile. Cromwell's root and branch policy swelled the white population of Virginia from 15,000 in 1649 to 38,000 in 1670.

Nothing has become more firmly fixed in the minds of perhaps a majority of Americans than the belief that the Cavaliers were nearly all men of title and long descent, and the Puritans or Roundheads were drawn from the people or lower classes.

Many great noblemen and landed squires without title, it is true, supported Charles I and were thus enrolled in the Cavalier party, but in the parliamentary ranks are to be found the names of the holders of some of the most historical peerages in the kingdom; and the great leader in the cause of parliamentary government, John Hampden, whose refusal to pay ship money lit the torch that flamed into rebellion, was entitled to the designation of "gentleman"; and so were Pym and Vane and Cromwell and many others, all men of gentle blood. The distinction between Cavalier and Roundhead was no more a difference in respect to lineage or social rank than the analogous distinction between Tory and Whig; no more distinction than to-day Liberal or Conservative in England or Republican or Democrat in the United States connotes wealth or station. There are great territorial magnates who can trace their descent back to the mists of antiquity who train with the Conservative party just as men of equal birth and rank and wealth are Liberals; in America, it is impossible to tell a man's wealth or intellectual attainments or social status by his political affiliations. It is important to correct a historical fable that has become accepted as a historical truth.

American writers have made much use of the term "English aristocracy," with the implication that in England there exists a caste or class of special privilege apart from the people, who are

« السابقةمتابعة »