II. State and Personal Archives, 426; Massachusetts, 426; New Hampshire, 438; Vermont, 440; Rhode Island, 440; Connecticut, 442; New York, 444; New Jersey, 448; Pennsylvania, 450; Delaware, 452; Maryland, 452; Virginia, 454; North Carolina, 456; South Carolina, 457; Georgia, 458; West of the Allegha III. Foreign Archives, 459; English and Canadian, 459; French, 465; Dutch, 468; ILLUSTRATIONS: Lord Mahon, 418; Jared Sparks, with Autograph, 419, 421; James Bowdoin, 430; Autograph of Timothy Pickering, 434; James Warren and Au- tograph, 436; Autograph of Stephen Hopkins, 441; of Jonathan Trumbull, 443; of Henry Moore, with Seal, 445; of Gouverneur Morris, 447; of Baron Steuben, 448; of Frederick Haldimand, 461. COMPREHENSIVE PRINTED AUTHORITIES UPON THE GENERAL AND UPON SOME SPECIAL PHASES OF THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 1776-1850. ILLUSTRATIONS: William Gordon, 470; David Ramsay, 472; Mrs. Mercy Warren, 473; Autograph of Abiel Holmes, 474; George Bancroft and his Autograph, 476; NARRATIVE AND CRITICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA THE CHAPTER I. THE HUDSON BAY COMPANY.1 BY GEORGE E. ELLIS, D. D., LL. D., President Massachusetts Historical Society. HE most lavish liberality or generosity exhibited in this world of men is shown in the bestowal of a gift which does not belong to the donor of it. In such cases there is generally a very slight knowledge, if not an absolute ignorance, of the quality and value of the gift; so the terms of it are likely to be not only very general but very loose and vague. Indeed, part of the charm of such a gift will consist in the undefined possibilities, the imagined revelations, which may go with it. The burdens and responsibilities attending the acceptance of it, and the trespasses upon the rights of others, the injuries likely to be inflicted upon them, and the struggles, animosities, and controversies, with the risk of final discomfiture, in the maintenance of such a possession, are either not taken into account, or are winked out of sight. These familiar truths were signally illustrated, on a very grand scale too, in the gifts made by ecclesiastics and monarchs of the old world of expanses of territory on this western hemisphere, when opened by the early navigators. Under the latest advances of astronomical science, spaces in the moon might now be almost as definitely assigned to claimants for them as were the regions of this new world. Before it was known whether what had been discovered here were an island, an archipelago, or a continent, it was made over in a lump by the Pope to the monarchs of Spain. It was under the famous Bull of Demarcation that Spain was shortly after, by a convention with Portugal, forced to divide to a small extent with that power. Notwithstanding such papal partiality,2 Francis of France soon claimed his 1 [Dr. Ellis has given a summary of this chapter in the Bulletin of the Amer. Geog. Soc., 1886, No. 2, pp. 127-136. — ED.] 2 [See Vol. II. — ED] share in the real estate left by Adam. Then the Henrys and the Charleses of England announced themselves also as heirs. These rival sovereigns all wore the complimentary title of "Christian princes." As such they could take rightful possession of all heathendom, - of territory or of people. The sighting of a space of ocean shore by their respective navigators gave a title to the utmost reaches of land bounding upon it. The gifts bestowed were of princely largeness. Of course the boundaries of [NOTE. The opposite map is from the Zwölffte Schiffahrt of the Hulsius Sammlung (Oppenheim, 1614), being Hessel Gerritsz's Kurtze Beschreibung der Newen Schiffahrt gegen Nord-osten über die Americanische inseln, etc., in Hochteutscher Sprach beschrieben durch M. Gothardam Arthusen. The above cut is a fac-simile of a map in Drage's Account of a Voyage (London, 1849), vol. ii. - ED.] 1 these vast donations of territory, on the side where they were measurable, generally overlapped each other, and on the other side they ran off into shadows. When it is considered that these gifts of expanded territory not only transferred all their material contents and resources, but also included the sovereignty and mastership over their human inhabitants, we can somewhat appreciate the lavish liberality of those who gave away what did not belong to them, and recognize the vagueness in the terms of the gifts, which would inevitably bring about rivalry and conflicts attending claims to possession. King Charles II of England was one of the most bountiful of these lavish donors. But with a single notable exception, in favor of William Penn, who received a province in discharge of a crown debt due to his father, the king's generosity was exercised exclusively towards members of his own family. He gave to his brother, the Duke of York, the rich. expanses from Pemaquid to the St. Croix, and from the Connecticut to the Delaware. Another of his gifts furnishes the fruitful and engaging theme - for history, if not in the present treatment of it of this chapter. To [Reproduced from S. Freeman's engraving of Sir Peter Lely's picture, as given in Eliot Warburton's Memoirs of Prince Rupert (London, 1849). - ED.] |