Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/67

1629-70] Settlement of Carolina. 35 It will save possibilities of confusion to enumerate the different settlements by which the soil of Carolina was occupied. These were: (1) a settlement from Virginia on Albemarle River, which became the nucleus of North Carolina; (2) a settlement from New England near Cape Fear, which was dispersed and absorbed into (1) ; (3) a settlement from Barbados, also near Cape Fear; (4) a settlement direct from England. This last changed its habitation more than once, absorbed (3) in the course of its wanderings, and finally grew into South Carolina. Of the settlers from Massachusetts we know but little. At one time their condition was such that a collection for their help had to be made in the parent colony. The process of emigration from Virginia is equally obscure. All we know definitely is that in September, 1663, the new Proprietors divided their province into two, and that the northern section was already settled. The instructions given by the Proprietors to the governor of the northern half constituted it for the time being as something like a democracy. The elective Assembly was invested with the appointment of officers, the establishment of law courts, and the military defence of the colony. In 1667 the Proprietors of Carolina put forth a most elaborate constitution, attributed, though on inconclusive evidence, to John Locke, who was their secretary. The Proprietors more than once thought it worth while to modify it in form, but they never made any serious attempt to enforce it as a working system. Meanwhile the Assembly of the northern settlement was dealing with the needs of the colony in a wholly practical way, by passing certain regulations which show us what they intended the colony to be and help us to understand what it became. For five years from its foundation no settler was to be legally liable for any debt incurred outside the colony. No tax was to be levied on newcomers for a year. Marriage was valid if there was a declaration of mutual consent before the governor. A colony so administered might seem a paradise to the bankrupt and the pauper. It is no exaggeration to say that the history of North Carolina for the next fifty years is little more than a dreary and uninstructive record of disputes and insurrections. The colony indeed seems to have reached that chronic state of anarchy when the imprisonment and deposition of a governor is a passing incident which hardly influences the life of the community. In the meantime a province was growing up in the southern half of the territory whose life, though it did not wholly escape the same class of disturbances as beset the sister colony, was on the whole vigorous and prosperous. In 1670, after a careful survey of the country, the Proprietors established a colony at Charleston. The constitution was a liberal one, since the freemen were not only to elect a house of representatives, but also to nominate ten out of twenty councillors. The instructions given by the Proprietors for the colony at Charleston CH. i. 3 2