The Crater - James Fenimore Cooper (beautiful books to read txt) 📗

a look at the damages done. In this respect, there was little to choose; each vessel having suffered, and seemingly each about as much as the other. After consuming an hour or two in repairing damages, the combat was renewed; when the two colony craft, seeing no prospects of its soon terminating, and being now several leagues to leeward of the group, hauled up for the roads again. The brigs continued their fight, always running off before the wind, and went out of sight, canopied by smoke, long after the reports of their guns had become inaudible. This was the last the governor ever saw or heard of these dangerous enemies.


Chapter XXIX.


VOX POPULI, VOX DEI.

Venerable Axiom.


After this unlooked-for termination of what the colonists called the 'Pirate-War,' the colony enjoyed a long period of peace and prosperity. The whaling business was carried on with great success, and many connected with it actually got rich. Among these was the governor, who, in addition to his other means, soon found himself in possession of more money than he could profitably dispose of in that young colony. By his orders, no less than one hundred thousand dollars were invested in his name, in the United States six per cents, his friends in America being empowered to draw the dividends, and, after using a due proportion in the way of commissions, to re-invest the remainder to his credit.

Nature did quite as much as art, in bringing on the colony; the bounty of God, as the industry of man. It is our duty, however, to allow that the colonists did not so regard the matter. A great change came over their feelings, after the success of the 'Pirate-War,' inducing them to take a more exalted view of themselves and their condition than had been their wont. The ancient humility seemed suddenly to disappear; and in its place a vainglorious estimate of themselves and of their prowess arose among the people. The word "people," too, was in everybody's mouth, as if the colonists themselves had made those lovely islands, endowed them with fertility, and rendered them what they were now fast becoming--scenes of the most exquisite rural beauty, as well as granaries of abundance. By this time, the palm-tree covered more or less of every island; and the orange, lime, shaddock and other similar plants, filled the air with the fragrance of their flowers, or rendered it bright with the golden hues of their fruits. In short, everything adapted to the climate was flourishing in the plantations, and plenty reigned even in the humblest dwelling.

This was a perilous condition for the healthful humility of human beings. Two dangers beset them; both coloured and magnified by a common tendency. One was that of dropping into luxurious idleness--the certain precursor, in such a climate, of sensual indulgences; and the other was that of "waxing fat, and kicking." The tendency common to both, was to place self before God, and not only to believe that they merited all they received, but that they actually created a good share of it.

Of luxurious idleness, it was perhaps too soon to dread its worst fruits. The men and women retained too many of their early habits and impressions to drop easily into such a chasm; on the contrary, they rather looked forward to producing results greater than any which had yet attended their exertions. An exaggerated view of self, however, and an almost total forgetfulness of God, took the place of the colonial humility with which they had commenced their career in this new region. These feelings were greatly heightened by three agents, that men ordinarily suppose might have a very different effect--religion, law, and the press.

When the Rancocus returned, a few months after the repulse of the pirates, she had on board of her some fifty emigrants; the council still finding itself obliged to admit the friends of families already settled in the colony, on due application. Unhappily, among these emigrants were a printer, a lawyer, and no less than four persons who might be named divines. Of the last, one was a presbyterian, one a methodist,--the third was a baptist, and the fourth a quaker. Not long after the arrival of this importation, its consequences became visible. The sectaries commenced with a thousand professions of brotherly love, and a great parade of Christian charity; indeed they pretended that they had emigrated in order to enjoy a higher degree of religious liberty than was now to be found in America, where men were divided into sects, thinking more of their distinguishing tenets than of the Being whom they professed to serve. Forgetting the reasons which brought them from home, or quite possibly carrying out the impulses which led them to resist their former neighbours, these men set to work, immediately, to collect followers, and believers after their own peculiar notions. Parson Hornblower, who had hitherto occupied the ground by himself, but who was always a good deal inclined to what are termed "distinctive opinions," buckled on his armour, and took the field in earnest. In order that the sheep of one flock should not be mistaken for the sheep of another, great care was taken to mark each and all with the brand of sect. One clipped an ear, another smeared the wool (or drew it over the eyes) and a third, as was the case with Friend Stephen Dighton, the quaker, put on an entire covering, so that his sheep might be known by their outward symbols, far as they could be seen. In a word, on those remote and sweet islands, which, basking in the sun and cooled by the trades, seemed designed by providence to sing hymns daily and hourly to their maker's praise, the subtleties of sectarian faith smothered that humble submission to the divine law by trusting solely to the mediation, substituting in its place immaterial observances and theories which were much more strenuously urged than clearly understood. The devil, in the form of a "professor," once again entered Eden; and the Peak, with so much to raise the soul above the grosser strife of men, was soon ringing with discussions on "free grace," "immersion," "spiritual baptism," and the "apostolical succession." The birds sang as sweetly as ever, and their morning and evening songs hymned the praises of their creator as of old; but, not so was it with the morning and evening devotions of men. These last began to pray at each other, and if Mr. Hornblower was an exception, it was because his admirable liturgy did not furnish him with the means of making these forays into the enemy's camp.

Nor did the accession of law and intelligence help the matter much. Shortly after the lawyer made his appearance, men began to discover that they were wronged by their neighbours, in a hundred ways which they had never before discovered. Law, which had hitherto been used for the purpose of justice, and of justice only, now began to be used for those of speculation and revenge. A virtue was found in it that had never before been suspected of existing in the colony; it being discovered that men could make not only very comfortable livings, but, in some cases, get rich, by the law; not by its practice, but by its practices. Now came into existence an entire new class of philanthropists; men who were ever ready to lend their money to such of the needy as possessed property, taking judgment bonds, mortgages, and other innocent securities, which were received because the lender always acted on a principle of not lending without them, or had taken a vow, or made their wives promises; the end of all being a transfer of title, by which the friendly assistant commonly relieved his dupe of the future care of all his property. The governor soon observed that one of these philanthropists rarely extended his saving hand, that the borrower did not come out as naked as the ear of the corn that has been through the sheller, or nothing but cob; and that, too, in a sort of patent-right time. Then there were the labourers of the press to add to the influence of those of religion and the law. The press took up the cause of human rights, endeavouring, to transfer the power of the state from the public departments to its own printing-office; and aiming at establishing all the equality that can flourish when one man has a monopoly of the means of making his facts to suit himself, leaving his neighbours to get along under such circumstances as they can. But the private advantage secured to himself by this advocate of the rights of all, was the smallest part of the injury he did, though his own interests were never lost sight of, and coloured all he did; the people were soon convinced that they had hitherto been living under an unheard-of tyranny, and were invoked weekly to arouse in their might, and be true to themselves and their posterity. In the first place, not a tenth of them had ever been consulted on the subject of the institutions at all, but had been compelled to take them as they found them. Nor had the present incumbents of office been placed in power by a vote of a majority, the original colonists having saved those who came later to the island all trouble in the premises. In these facts was an unceasing theme of declamation and complaint to be found. It was surprising how little the people really knew of the oppression under which they laboured, until this stranger came amongst them to enlighten their understandings. Nor was it less wonderful how many sources of wrong he exposed, that no one had ever dreamed of having an existence. Although there was not a tax of any sort laid in the colony, not a shilling ever collected in the way of import duties, he boldly pronounced the citizens of the islands to be the most overburthened people in Christendom! The taxation of England was nothing to it, and he did not hesitate to proclaim a general bankruptcy as the consequence, unless some of his own expedients were resorted to, in order to arrest the evil. Our limits will not admit of a description of the process by which this person demonstrated that a people who literally contributed nothing at all, were overtaxed; but any one who has paid attention to the opposing sides of a discussion on such a subject, can readily imagine how easily such an apparent contradiction can be reconciled, and the proposition demonstrated.

In the age of which we are writing, a majority of man kind fancied that a statement made in print was far more likely to be true than one made orally. Then he who stood up in his proper person and uttered his facts on the responsibility of his personal character, was far less likely to gain credit than the anonymous scribbler, who recorded his lie on paper, though he made his record behind a screen, and half the time as much without personal identity as he would be found to be without personal character, were he actually seen and recognised. In our time, the press has pretty effectually cured all observant persons at least of giving faith to a statement merely because it is in print, and has become so far alive to its own great inferiority as publicly to talk of conventions to purify itself, and otherwise to do something to regain its credit; but such was not the fact, even in America, forty years since. The theory of an unrestrained press has fully developed itself within the last quarter of a century, so that even the elderly ladies, who once said with