English ships of war in the harbor, he threatened the town with assault, he found the Revolutionary forces prepared to resist him. Letters from the agents of the Colony announcing the decision of the government in favor of the Colonists opportunely put an end to the conflict. The arrival of Governor Nicholson with a Royal commission, to take charge of the Province for the Crown, finally set all doubts at rest, and restored the Province to peace. The results of this Revolution may be best described in relating the causes which led to the Revolution of 1776.

The situation of the Royal Province of South Carolina in 1770 was in striking contrast to its condition in 1719. Its population showed a seven-fold, its exports a ten-fold increase. Its inhabited territory, no longer confined to the sea-coast, now extended almost to the mountains and covered a large part of the present area of the State. And within and without the Province there was peace. The Indians, the French and the Spaniards, who for ninety years had kept the Province in alarm, were no longer to be feared, the power of the last hostile tribe having been broken in the Cherokee war of 1761, while the French in Canada and in the West, and the Spaniards in Florida had both in 1763 succumbed to the arms of Great Britain. The great war which controlled by the genius of Pitt had given to his country the empires of North America and of India, and raised the fame of England to a height not dreamed of before, had come to a close with the accession of George III to the throne, and by the terms of the peace of Paris, which ended the war, the whole of America east of the Mississippi became English. All obstacles to emigration were now removed, and year by year, from Virginia and North Carolina, and from the Northern Colonies, from the British Isles and from the Continent, poured streams of emigrants into the back-country, bringing health, courage and vigor to the population of the State. Bountiful harvests added their annual stores to the wealth of the planter, while the rewards of mercantile enterprise were both large and certain. To the sober and industrious, wealth was within easy reach, and poverty was almost unknown. All contemporary testimony is to the effect that a more prosperous Colony was not to be found in North America. If fear were sometimes felt lest the presence of a large servile population might injuriously affect the strength and welfare of the Province, the

danger in times of Remote as was the

evil was regarded as unavoidable, and the peace, too distant for immediate concern. Colony from the seats of learning, from the great centres of the arts and sciences, it was impossible that the advantages of education should be shared by all; but nowhere was its value more appreciated, or its influence more recognised. No other Colony in proportion to its population, sent so many of its youth to England for the purpose of education. Gen. Gadsden, William Henry Drayton, the Rutledges, Henry and John Laurens, the two Pinckneys, and others of the political leaders of the Revolutionary period had received at least a part of their education there.

The government of the Province, too, from 1719 to 1760, had been acceptable to the people of the Province. Its form was regulated by the Royal Instructions brought out by Governor Nicholson in 1721. They provided for a Governor and Commander-in-Chief appointed by the Crown, a Council or Upper House appointed by the Governor and approved by the Crown, and a Commons House of Assembly elected by Freeholders alone.

In contrast to the "Fundamental Constitutions" this scheme of government was a model of simplicity and directness. But it would be erroneous to suppose that these instructions, as compared with the government existing in 1719, increased the power of the people. Very ample powers were given by the instructions. to the Governor and his Council, and the privileges of the popular branch of the Legislature were in some respects curtailed. In theory the change from the Proprietary to the Royal Government was but a change of masters. In practice it was a change from a petty tyranny to English freedom and local self-governFor forty years after the change the Colonists governed themselves, and the disputes which sometimes arose between the Governor and the Assembly were local quarrels, and were settled here. The Duke of Newcastle, who, during a large part of that period, presided over the Colonial department, never read the Colonial dispatches, and neither knew nor cared to know anything of their affairs.

ment.

The Province throve under his salutary neglect. The British manufacturer was not jealous of a country whose only industry

was agriculture. The British tradesmen looked with favor upon customers so good. A bounty was accordingly granted upon the cultivation of our indigo, and our rice could be exported almost without restriction. A grant of £20,000 was voted by Parliament to rebuild Charlestown after the great fire of 1740. English soldiers came to our assistance in the Cherokee war. What wonder that the Carolinians gloried in the name of Englishmen, and boasted of their loyalty to their king?

It has often excited surprise that a Colony so favored should ever have been induced to revolt, that so loyal a people should so soon rebel. The cause may, I think, be ascribed to the interference with the internal administration of the Colony, attempted by the Ministry of George III. The local self-government obtained in 1719 and enjoyed for forty years was in danger. The Colonists endeavoured to maintain it, and in the struggle the tie which bound them to Great Britain was broken. It is true that it had been before predicted that the extinction of the French power in America, thus removing all need of external aid, would result in the revolt of the Colonists from the mother country. However just this prediction as to the Northern Colonies which competed with the English manufacturer, I do not think it applied to Carolina. Nothing but the tyranny, the incompetence and folly of the English Ministry, their indifference to Colonial interests and their disregard of Colonial feelings could have uprooted the sentiment of loyalty so widespread in Carolina, and led her citizens on from step to step until independence was declared. It must be remembered that the beginning of the reign of George III was a time of the fiercest party spirit. From the administration of Lord Bute to the end of the American war in 1783, except for a brief period, nearly all the honesty and public spirit of the Kingdom were in opposition to the Government and encouraged resistance to its acts.

The Americans believed with sincerity that in opposing the measures of government they were fighting the cause of liberty in America and in England. The success they expected was an overthrow of the ministry. In South Carolina even General Gadsden, the foremost champion of American rights, denied that the patriots desired a separation. Three months before the battle of Fort Moultrie, the Constitution of South Carolina, sol

emnly adopted by the representatives of the people, was declared to be in force only "until a reconciliation" with Great Britain. The interference with the affairs of Carolina began with the reign of George III in 1760. In that year Governor Lyttleton, who boasted that he had made it his effort to "regain the powers of Government which his predecessors had unfaithfully given away," was rewarded for his resistance to the will of the Colony by being transferred to a better post. The approval of his conduct in removing one of the members of the Council had already so irritated the Carolinians that it became a matter of pride with them not to accept an appointment as member of the Council of the Province. In 1761 the rude conduct to Colonial officers of Colonel Grant, the English commander in the Cherokee war, added to the irritation. Close upon this followed the quarrel of the Commons House of Assembly with Governor Boone as to the election law of the Province and the qualifications of its members. The Governor's unwarranted interference and personal insolence to the members were met by a refusal to do business with him. This continued till he left the Province in 1764, a period of more than two years.

Its provis-
It

In 1765 the famous Stamp Act was passed. So far as South Carolina was concerned it was but another step towards a systematic interference with the local affairs of the Province. Its object was professedly to raise by means of stamps on legal documents a revenue to be expended only in America. ions were, however, sweeping, and its penal clauses severe. was, besides, understood to be but the first of a series of acts of a like nature. The Colonists, after opposing the passage of the Act through their agents in London, determined to resist its operation. Their object was delay in hopes of a change of Ministry. In South Carolina the Commons House of Assembly, taking advantage of a technical informality in the reception of the Act from England by Lieutenant-Governor William Bull, disagreed with the Council and declared it not to be in force in the Province. They then passed a resolution protesting against being taxed except by their representatives, but declaring their loyalty to the king. After ordering the votes upon this resolution to be made public, in order “that a just sense of the liberty and the firm sentiment of loyalty of the representatives of the

people may be known to their constituents and transmitted to posterity," they, in response to an invitation from the Province. of Massachusetts Bay, elected Thomas Lynch, Christopher Gadsden and John Rutledge as a "committee to meet the committees of the other Provinces in New York."

When the stamped paper arrived in the Province, so excited was the public feeling that the paper was landed at Fort Johnson for safe keeping. A few nights afterwards a body of volunteers surprised the sleeping sentinel of the fort and the fifteen men who guarded it, seized the paper, and under threat of burning it unless removed, induced the officer of the sloop-of-war which had brought it to carry it away from the Province. The committees from most of the Provinces met in July, 1765, and united in petitioning the English Government for the removal of their grievances. In 1766 the Rockingham administration came into power in England, and the Stamp Act was repealed.

The statue of Lord Chatham, now standing in front of the Orphan-house in this city, was erected to commemorate his services to the Colony in securing the repeal of the act, and the town of Camden, lately founded, was named by Colonel Kershaw after Chief Justice Pratt, distinguished by his defence of popular rights, who had been elevated to the peerage with the title of Lord Camden.

The joy of the Colonists was short-lived. The new administration soon went out of power and interference began anew.

In Carolina the native Judges, Robert Pringle, Robert D'Oyley, Rawlins Lowndes and Benjamin Smith, who had decided in 1765 that in the absence of stamped paper the process of the courts could issue without it, were punished by being refused reappointment, and natives of Great Britain were appointed in their places. In 1769 the Commons House of Assembly, having voted 1,500 to be sent to England in support of the famous Bill of Rights Society, organized to pay the debts of the still more famous John Wilkes and to assist him in his contest with the Ministry, the Council sitting in a legislative capacity refused to pass the tax-bill which contained this clause.

For four years the dispute continued, and for four years no tax-bill was passed. The Ministry not only applauded and sustained the Council, but by an additional instruction took away a