第6章 Chapter (5)

* It is one of the qualifications of the delight which an historian feels while engaged in the details of those grateful episodes which frequently reward his progress through musty chronicles, to find himself suddenly arrested in his narrative by some of those rude interruptions by which violence and injustice disfigure so frequently, in the march of history, the beauty of its portraits. One of these occurs to us in this connection. Our Huguenot settlers on the Santee were not long suffered to pursue a career of unbroken prosperity.

The very fact that they prospered -- that, in the language of Mr. Lawson, "they outstript our English," when placed in like circumstances --that they were no longer desolate and dependent, and had grown vigorous, and perhaps wanton, in the smiles of fortune -- was quite enough to re-awaken in the bosoms of "our English" the ancient national grudge upon which they had so often fed before. The prejudices and hostilities which had prevailed for centuries between their respective nations, constituted no small part of the moral stock which the latter had brought with them into the wilderness. This feeling was farther heightened, at least maintained, by the fact that France and England had contrived to continue their old warfare in the New World;and, while French emissaries were busy in the back parts of the colony, stimulating the Creeks and Cherokees to hostility, it was perhaps natural enough that the English, whose frontiers were continually ravaged in consequence, should find it easy to confound the "parley-vous", their enemies, with those, their neighbors, who spoke the same unpopular language. It is not improbable, on the other hand, that the Huguenot settlers were a little too exclusive, a little too tenacious of their peculiar habits, manners, and language.

They did not suffer themselves to assimilate with their neighbors;but, maintaining the policy by which they had colonized in a body, had been a little too anxious to preserve themselves as a singular and separate people. In this respect they were not unlike the English puritans, in whom and their descendants, this passion for homogeneousness has always been thought a sort of merit, appealing very much to their self-esteem and pride.

In the case of the French colonists, whether the fault was theirs or not, the evil results of being, or making themselves, a separate people, were soon perceptible. They were subjected to various political and social disabilities, and so odious had they become to their British neighbors, that John Archdale, one of the proprietors, a man like Wm. Penn (and by Grahame, the historian, pronounced very far his superior), equally beloved by all parties, as a man just and fearless, was, when Governor of the colony, compelled to deny them representation in the colonial Assembly, under penalty of making invalid all his attempts at proper government.

Under this humiliating disability the Huguenots lived and labored for a considerable period, until the propriety of their lives, the purity of their virtues, and their frequently-tried fidelity in the cause of the country, forced the majority to be just.