Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

at each end.'1 Colonel Quary, writing to the Commissioners of Customs about New Jersey and Pennsylvania, says: There is Four times ye quantity of Tobacco made in this Countrey this last year than ever was made in anyone year before All which is Engrossed by the Scotch . . . they give such Extravagent rates that no person who designs to trade fairly can give. They carry on a constant trade from Curesan hither, about a month ago came in a vessel from thence belonging to Scotch merchants which brought in abundance of Linen and other Dry Goods of the manufacture of Holland.' These Dutch goods thus imported were sold as cheap in Pennsylvania as they can be bought in England.' Scotland also had some advantages as a market for Colonial produce, especially for tobacco. The merchants were said to be induced to follow illegal trade by ye Great Incouragement which a Scotch Act of Parliament gives to ye Importation of tobacco thither directly from Virginia, in which case ye Importers are Obliged to pay but three pence per pound, and do ordinarily obtaine leave to Compound for thre halfe pence, whereas if ye ship first make her Entry in England then for such Tobacco afterwards brought into Scotland the Importer is obleiged to pay sixpence per pound.''

3

Before the Act of 1696, which endeavoured to remedy the abuses in the Plantation trade, was passed, another cause of complaint had arisen, which made the feeling against Scotland and Scottish interlopers still more strong. This was the Scottish Act of 1695 constituting the Company of Scotland, Trading to Africa and the West Indies.' The original design seems to have been to start a rival to the East India Company, but the officials in America regarded it as an attempt to legalise and extend that illicit trade with Scotland which they had been endeavouring to suppress. Randolph, writing to the Commissioners in England about the Scottish Act, says: In which Act under pretence of erecting an East India Company in yt Kingdome they do engage themselves with Great sums of money in an American Trade; a Trade which has for several years been carried on by Scotchmen.' The Commissioners of 2 Treasury Papers, xlxiii. 43, 1701. 4 Treasury Papers, xxvi. 53, 1693.

1 Board of Trade, Maryland, 8, p. 188, 1695.
3 Board of Trade, Maryland, 2, 115, 1694.
5 Acts, Scotland, vol. ix. p. 377.
6 S.P. Col.: Col. Entry Book, 100, p. 352.

6

the Customs then made a presentment to the Commissioners of the Treasury in which they declared themselves: 'Humbly apprehensive of this growing mischief, for ye Trade between Scotland and the Plantations is now about to be more openly carried on under colour of a Law lately past in Scotland."1 They desired the matter to be laid before His Majesty in Council in order to some effectual remedy for suppressing such a Trade from Scotland to the Plantations tending so apparently to the ruine of this Principale Branch of the Revenue.' It was feared that the Scots would settle at some point on the Delaware shores which had not been specified in Penn's grant; or in some island near the Continent, where they might in a short time make a staple for European and enumerated Plantation commodities. It was therefore recommended that all unappropriated tracts of land should be immediately annexed to the nearest province, and put under some regular government. The House of Lords were also alarmed about the Plantation trade. In their address to the King on the subject of the Scottish East India Company they declare that: When once that Nation shall have settled themselves in Plantations in America, our Commerce in Tobacco, sugar, Cotton, Wool, Skins, Masts etc, will be utterly lost . . . and the English Plantations and the Traffick thereof lost to us, and the exportation of our own manufactures yearly decreased.' 2

3

As a result of the various petitions and remonstrances concerning the Plantation trade the Act for preventing Frauds and regulating Abuses in the Plantation Trade' was passed in 1696. This Act recited all the provisions of Charles II.'s statutes relating to Colonial trade, asserted their validity in all the Plantations, ordered the governors and officers to take oaths for the proper performance of their duties, and generally made the administration of the Acts far more stringent. With evident reference to the Scottish East India Company it was enacted that persons who claimed right or property in America, or in the islands, were not to sell any land except to natural born subjects of England, Ireland, Wales, or Berwick-upon-Tweed. Special provisions dealt with the Scotch trade. And whereas great Frauds and Abuses have beene committed by Scotchmen and others in the Plantation Trade by obtruding false and

1 S.P. Col. Col. Entry Book, 100, p. 350.
2 Journals of House of Lords, vol. xv. 611.

37 and 8 Gul. III. c. 22.

counterfeit Certificates upon the Governour and Officers in the Plantations. . . of having given security in this Kingdome to bring the ladings of Plantation Goods to England, Wales or Berwick-upon-Tweed, as also Certificates of having discharged their lading of Plantation Goods in this kingdome pursuant to securities taken in the Plantations, and also Cocketts . . . of having taken in their ladings of European goods in England etc, whereof they may carry the Goods of Scotland and other Places of Europe without shipping or lading the same in England . . . to His Majesty's Plantations, and also carry the Goods of the Plantations directly to Scotland, or to any Market in Europe without bringing the same to England,' greater care is to be taken in accepting certificates. To guard against the influence exerted by Scots settlers on behalf of their fellow-countrymen, the Act declared that, in actions concerning forfeiture of goods because of unlawful exportations or importations, there shall not be any Jury but of such onely as are Natives of England Ireland or are borne in His Majesties said Plantations."

In the same year a new Board of Trade and Plantations was erected, which was to examine into and regulate all foreign trade and all Colonial affairs. Notwithstanding the provisions of the new Act for the more stringent enforcement of the laws concerning the Plantation trade, and also the fact that a great deal of the capital of the Scottish nation was engaged in the ill-fated Darien scheme, the trade of Scotland with the English Colonies seems to have continued to flourish. In 1699 Governor Basse of New Jersey writes that he is discouraged and deserted because of his discountenancing the Scoch and pirates in their illegal trades.' The former, he says, are growne to a very great height,' from the prospect of a Scot being made governor of the province, and also because of the 'success that their Countrymen meet withall in their settlement of . . . Golden Island.' 'I cannot but see that the English Interest and trade must of necessity fall if some speedy course be not taken for their stoping of their Growth . . . the principall traders in East New Jersey and Pennsylvania are Scotch.'i

A few years later Colonel Quary declares that in Pennsylvania and the Jersies the quantity of tobacco grown has very much increased, and that it is all engrossed by the Scotch 'as almost all other Trade here is.' 2 All attempts to exclude them from the trade seemed to be made in vain. As Quary said: 'There

1

1 New Jersey Colonial Documents, ii. 288. 2 Treasury Papers, lxxiii. 43, 1701.

are so many Conveniences for the running of Goods that tis impossible to prevent it Lett the government make what Laws they can.' It seems probable, therefore, that the feeling that as the Scots were evidently going to have a large share of the Plantation trade, they should therefore be brought under the control of the English Parliament, was in some degree responsible for the union of 1707.

THEODORA KEITH.

The Relations of the Earl of Murray with

[ocr errors]

Mary Stuart

DENTIFIED from the outset of his career with the triumph of the Scottish Reformation, Murray is indebted for his place in history more to circumstances than to statesmanship. Happy in the hour of his birth, he had throughout life what would be described, in modern phraseology, as the flowing tide,' conducting him to eminence almost in his own despite. Calvinism, as Mr. T. L. Henderson observes, fitted him like a glove,' and temperamentally he was an absolute expression of the tendencies that were then riveting that theology upon the minds of the Scottish nation.

So far as Murray's relations with his sister are concerned, they may be described without exaggeration as a tissue of treachery from beginning to end. To hold him entirely blameworthy for this history of betrayal would be scant justice, as all Mary's instincts were in immediate antagonism to his own; but none the less it would puzzle even the most ingenious of apologists to whitewash many phases of Murray's conduct to his sovereign and sister. After making every allowance for a divided duty, he stands condemned at the bar of history as perfidious and disloyal when his attitude to the most luckless of Queens alone is subjected to examination.

A singularly colourless and unromantic personality, it seems almost a caprice of heredity that Murray should have been the scion of a dynasty so steeped in sentiment and abandoned to reaction as that of Stuart. Alike for good and evil, he was devoid of all the characteristics that distinguish the race to which, by virtue of a curious irony of circumstance, he belonged. Endowed with all the solidity, solemnity, and energy of Puritanism, he held graces, scholarship, and accomplishments in but slight esteem. A burgher rather than an aristocrat by temperament, it was, in some degree, by means of what many would

« PreviousContinue »