When the States which are now in war against the Government, declared themselves no longer bound by the Constitution, and no longer parts of the nation, they rested their action, so far as they deigned to account for it, on the ground that the United States were nothing more than a confederation, constituted such by a mere compact, which could be broken when the interests or the whim of any party so dictated. The loyal States, on the other hand, straightway took up arms in defence of the integrity of the nation, constituted such by organic law, which is supreme forever throughout the length and breadth of the land. Now, while there are in our midst men base enough to endeavor to seduce the unthinking portion of our community to the idea that the traitors are entitled to those rights, and to be treated in that way conceded only by one nation to another, it may be well to consider, in the light of our own history, the argument as to the nature of our Government; for it is only by granting the correctness of the view advanced by the rebels, that we can for one moment entertain any proposition for compromise, or any of those vague but pernicious ideas brought forward by Peace Democrats looking to a disgraceful settlement of this war. With this purpose in view, we propose to briefly examine the main points in the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, and by thus comparing the frameworks of the two governments, to show the definite and irreconcilable difference which exists between them.
The Articles of Confederation were entered on within four days after the second anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, by the same body which adopted that instrument, and about nine years before the adoption of the Constitution in convention. The three years which just elapsed had been a season of singular and searching trial. While unity of feeling was compelled in the face of a powerful and aggressive foe, and in the defence of liberties held and prized in common, the mutual relations of the colonies were so indefinitely ascertained, and authority was so loosely bestowed, that unity of action was impossible; there was no power to do the very things which necessity and desire alike dictated. Having taken up arms against the most powerful nation of the time, whose system enabled it to concentrate vast energies on the subjugation of this dozen revolted colonies scattered along the Atlantic coast, they found themselves in so helplessly disorganized a condition, that, separated from the mother country, they could hardly, for any length of time, have successfully pursued the quiet life of peace.
Under these circumstances, they bound themselves together by Articles of Confederation. These were, what similar articles had always been, a species of treaty, having peculiar objects, seeking them in a peculiar way, and declared perpetual, but having an obligation no stronger than that of a treaty, and practically dissoluble at the will of the parties. Thus, the States issued letters of marque and reprisal; Congress determined on peace and war, but the States were depended on to accept the former and carry on the latter when declared. Congress might ascertain the number of ships and men to be furnished, but the States appointed the officers. Congress might fix the sums necessary to be used in defraying public expenses, but the States must raise them. Congress might regulate the value of coin, but the States might issue it. The loose character of this tie is seen still more plainly in the fact that there was no efficient final tribunal.The commissioners appointed by Congress might decide a controversy arising between two States, but there was nothing by which the commissioners could be guided, no stability or force as precedents in their decisions when made, and no power to enforce them if neglected or rejected by one or both the parties. It was simply a provision for constantly recurring arbitration, obtained by reference to a changeable, and practically unauthoritative board of judges. Moreover, this government, weak and unorganized as it was, was withdrawn on the adjournment of Congress; for the Committee of States, appointed to act in the recess, was useless, as well from the paucity of its powers, as from the fact that a quorum of its members could seldom be obtained.
Such a system, or rather, lack of system, could be tolerated only while the peril of their life and liberties compelled the people to perform the duties the government was powerless to enforce. After the war was over, and the people were left with independence and freedom, with a powerful ally in Europe, with elements of unrivalled resource, but with a heavy load of debt, with disorganized social and political relations, with crippled commerce, and without the powerful uniting pressure from outside, this system of confederation began to develop its evils and its insufficiency. To complete the triumph begun by the desolating struggle through which we had just passed, and, by building up a system under whose operation the nation's wealth could pay the nation's debt, and the nation's power protect the nation's honor and interest, to assert at once the claim and the right to respect, was the necessity of the time. To answer this necessity was a very different thing from conducting the war. Commerce was now to take the place of naval conflict; mutual intercourse in the interest of trade was to replace the performance of those duties which the common defence had imposed. The life of the people was now to be saved, not by armed struggles in its defence, but by nurturing its resources, opening its various channels, and freeing it for the performance of its healthful and renewing functions.
For this purpose, a system which could not make treaties of commerce without leaving it in the power of thirteen States to break them by retaliation, which could not prevent one or all of these States from utterly prohibiting the import or export of such commodities as they chose, and which left the people powerless to induce or compel advantages from foreign commerce, while it was even more helpless in regard to domestic commerce—for this purpose such a system was absolutely useless.
After struggling for a few years under the cramping and confusing effects of this system, it was given up, and the Constitution, as framed in 1787, was adopted. The relations assumed by the States at this time were marked. By the Articles, each State had retained its sovereignty, freedom, and independence. By the Constitution, the people and the States reserved such powers as were not expressly given to the United States, or prohibited to the States. The omission of the claim to sovereignty and independence in the Constitution, is as significant as is its presence in the Articles. It appears as a definite surrender of those attributes, as complete, as binding, as permanent as language could make it. Nor must we forget, while the momentous questions of our times are yet undecided, that sovereignty once surrendered can never be 'resumed.' The relations, the duties, and the attributes of the life to which it belongs have been completely and forever given up, while those of another have been as entirely and irrevocably assumed.
The States had thus passed from one into another sphere of existence, whose relations were as different as their objects. The Articles were a league of friendship for common defence, the security of liberties, and the general and mutual welfare. No identity of interest was supposed to exist or sought to be served. Such needs as were, at the time of the adoption, felt in common, were provided for, and the States were left to provide, as best they could, for the others. This much and no more was sought by the States. That the objects of the Constitution were different, as well as that they were avowed by a far different authority, is shown in the declaration with which it opens: 'We THE PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union'—not as to time, for both the old and the new union were declared perpetual; but in kind, for which the States surrendered the former claim to sovereignty and independence. 'To establish justice'—not to insure the amicable relations of allied States, but to form a tribunal which should decide upon the common allegiance and the common privileges of the people. 'To insure domestic tranquillity'—an object unrecognized in the Articles of Confederation, and implying, not association but identity; not the mutual obligations of partnership, but the intimate connection of the national household. 'Do ordain and establish this Constitution.' There is no longer the indefinite expression of half-conceived obligation, nor the imperfect pledge to imperfect union, but there is, instead, the solemn, authoritative language of a sovereign people, self-contained, self-sufficing, conscious alike of its duties and its rights, giving form to what shall be the law of the land, fundamental as being based on the will of the people, supreme as higher than the will of any part of the people, whether individual or State.
A difference as radical pervades all the provisions of the Constitution. By the Articles, the vote in Congress was taken by States. By the Constitution, a majority controls in all but extraordinary business, and the vote is always taken by members. The Congress is no longer the assembled States; it is the assembled representatives of the people—of the nation. It is no longer charged with the management of the mutual relations of parties to an alliance, but with the making of laws which shall be the supreme law of the land throughout its entire extent. By the Articles, prohibitions to the States are made conditional on the consent of Congress—but by the Constitution, the more important acts of sovereignty—forming treaties, issuing bills of credit, regulating the circulating medium—are unconditionally forbidden to the States. The Congress now controls foreign commerce, raises the revenue, levies taxes, and cares for the welfare of the nation. By the Articles, new members of the Confederation were to be admitted by the consent of nine—about two-thirds of the States. By the Constitution, the applicants are regarded rather as an organized body of men, seeking to identify themselves with the American people. To such the national Congress extends the privilege of citizenship, and from such demands conformity to our method of national life.
But while these are instances of the radical difference existing between the methods of treating the same subjects in the Articles of Confederation and in the Constitution, there are elements in the Constitution, peculiar to itself, which make the relations and duties of the States under them utterly irreconcilable. These are embodied in the organization of the national Government. In assuming the functions, it took upon itself the forms and instrumentalities of a sovereign and universal authority. Having founded the Government on the supremacy of the people, and deposited all original power with the representative and legislative body, the Constitution provided for the prompt and thorough exercise of that power by vesting the executive authority in the President of the United States, and such officersas Congress should appoint for him. In the Federation there was no executive, for there was very little to execute. What few things it lay in the power of the assembled States to determine should be done, were given to the respective States to do. When they were refractory or negligent, there was no power in Congress, either to appoint other agents, or to compel them to the performance of their duties. A promise voluntarily given, and deemed subject to voluntary violation, was the only pledge given for the execution of mutual agreements.
Were our national Government now as it was then—as the rebels maintain, and as their Northern friends would have us act as if we believed—the rebellion would indeed be a justifiable attempt to secure self-evident rights. But it is not so. Under the Constitution, an executive is appointed directly by the people, who is bound, by an oath too sacred for any but a traitor to violate, to protect, defend, and preserve the organic law which binds us as a nation forever, and to apply and execute the laws of Congress made in accordance therewith.
And to these laws, which, made by the representatives of the people, embody their sovereign authority, there is given the further sanction of judicial supervision. In the Confederation there was no general and permanent standard by which decisions could be made and preserved. Everything was made to depend on the irresponsible and often conflicting action of the States, or on the unauthoritative determination of the congressional commission. To remedy this defect, and make more complete the national character of our present Government, a judicial power of the United States was vested in the Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as Congress may establish. This Supreme Court, with original jurisdiction in all cases affecting foreign nations, and in all cases in which a State shall be a party, and with appellate jurisdiction in other cases, is at once a final tribunal for inter-State disagreement, and a representative to the world of an united nation, having an individual existence, and capable of performing all the functions of an individual nation.
We have thus traced the main lines of difference between the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, and have seen that the latter was meant to be, and is the organic law of a developed and completed nationality. Under it, every one of us becomes an American citizen, exercising, as is right, certain local privileges, and dependent for their immediate protection on the State authorities, but possessing other wider and nobler rights, which inhere in him as a citizen of the United States, and which are asserted and supported by the power and dignity of the entire nation. No words can more fully express the lofty majesty of that state of nationality on which we have entered, never, under God, to fall from it, than those of the Constitution itself, to support which every member of every government, the local as well as the national, is bound by solemn oath. 'This Constitution, and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made under the authority of the United States, shall be the SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.'
Before such words as these, binding these States together as one nation, whose integrity nothing but treason would seek to destroy or weaken, the fierce invective of the Southern, and the feeble sophistry of the Northern traitor shrink to insignificance. They are at once the record and the prophecy of our success, declaring the foundation on which the Government is based, and pointing to yet greater glories to be attained in the superstructure.
'In diligent toil thy master is the bee;In craft mechanical, the worm that creepsThrough earth its dexterous way, may tutor thee;In knowledge, couldst thou fathom all its depths,All to the seraph are already known:But thine, o Man, is Art—thine wholly and alone!'—Schiller.
'Thecontemplationof the Divine Attributes is the source of the highest enjoyment: theirmanifestationis the enduring base and unfailing spring of all true Art.'
'Thecontemplationof the Divine Attributes is the source of the highest enjoyment: theirmanifestationis the enduring base and unfailing spring of all true Art.'
Many good and great men persist in refusing to teach, save through abstract dogmas and logical formulæ, always disagreeable to and rarely comprehended by the masses, those high moral truths, which they are so eager to imbibe when presented to them under the attractive form of art. It is indeed impossible for man to grasp the essential truths of life through the understanding alone; because, created in the image of the triune God, he can only make vital truths fully his own in the symbolic unity of his triune being. If considered only as body or sensuous perception, only as soul or heart, only as spirit or intellect—he cannot be said to live at all, since it is only in the perfect union of the Three that his essential life is found. To make instruction really available to him, he must be taught as God and nature always teach him—as soul, spirit, and body. To sever them is to disintegrate the mystic core of his very being; to disregard the triune image in which he was made. As art is symbolic of man himself, it addresses itself to his whole being. Thus, man exists as:
Soul-Spirit-Body: to which the corresponding senses are—Hearing-Seeing—Touching: the corresponding arts—Music-Painting-Sculpture. Poetry is no fourth art; it but embraces and embodies them all in its correspondent divisions of—Rhythm-Description-Form.
Soul-Spirit-Body: to which the corresponding senses are—
Hearing-Seeing—Touching: the corresponding arts—
Music-Painting-Sculpture. Poetry is no fourth art; it but embraces and embodies them all in its correspondent divisions of—
Rhythm-Description-Form.
The 'Body' draws its life from the world of matter made by God, by an assimilation of the elements suited to and prepared for its needs.
The 'Spirit' lives by an analogous process; but its proper food is the wisdom of God.
In a like manner lives the 'Soul;' its tender instincts are to be pastured upon the love of God.
Oh, marvellous condescension! The Infinite deigns to be appropriated as the source of all life and growth by the finite!
In close connection with the threefold being of man, stand the Fine Arts.
'Body.' Sculpture is the art of corporeal form, appealing to the eye as the necessary medium for satisfying the corporeal sense of touch. It gratifies this sense that 'ideal beauty' should breathe through solid, tangible, and material forms. For the triune man longs for perfection in his triune being. It should not astonish us that this art attained its greatest perfection in the ages of classical antiquity; and that music and painting, the symbolic arts of soul and spirit, should have attained their highest excellence only after the advent of our sublime ideal Christ.
'Spirit.' As seeing is the sense holding the closest relation with the spirit or intellect, and light is the most spiritual element of nature,—so painting, addressing itself to the spirit of man, must be regarded as the most spiritualof the arts. Classic art became romantic during the Christian era; Christianity impressed it with an almost painful longing for the divine. Classic beauty was indeed there, but with the expression of inadequacy to its internal consciousness, oppressed with the grief of its fallen existence, and with the sadness of an infinite longing on its ethereal countenance.
'Soul.' Music, addressing itself through the ear to the emotions, is the art of the longing, divining, loving soul. It never excites abstract or antagonistic thought; it unites humanity in concrete feeling. It certainly cannot be denied that sounds address themselves immediately to the feelings; that the tones of the voice are highly sympathetic; that the sighs, groans, shrieks, cries of a sufferer affect us far more vividly than the mere sight of the same degree of suffering.
But though the arts seem to us to be thus divided, each art is also threefold, and must appeal to the triune nature of man. As man only truly lives, so he only truly creates, as a threefold being, yet hislifeis ever one, so that soul, spirit, and body are constantly acting and reacting upon each other. When the divine wisdom shines into the spirit, it gives it the perception of intellectual truths, which truths throw their light far into the dimmer soul; and when the divine love pours into the soul, it gifts it with the almost limitless faculty of loving, which warms and quickens the colder spirit, until it germs and buds in the lovely bloom of human charities and self-abnegating good deeds.
It is not our intention here to enter into any detailed speculations upon the hidden mysteries of our being; we simply call the attention of the reader to the fact that there is a class of truths which must belong to the universal reason (such as mathematical axioms, syllogistic formulæ, logical deductions, etc., etc.), because they compel assent as soon as recognized;—thus a ray of divine wisdom itself must exist in our spirits, which cannot be perverted, and which elevates the human mind to the immediate perception of impersonal, abstract, and conviction-compelling truths. We cannot deny them, even if we would! All sound logic has its power in the light proceeding from this divine ray.
A ray of the divine love must also exist in the essence of the human soul, to enable it to perform the marvels of self-abnegating devotion, of which the most humble among us frequently seem capable. Strange Promethean fire!
As it is the allotted task of every individual to form his soul into a noble and powerful personality, to be an artist in the highest sense of the word, since he must aid in chiselling a glorious statue from the living block intrusted to his care,—is it not essentially necessary that every human being should be taught to discern and love the beautiful? And vast is the difference between the artist in the school of men and in the school of God; the first, working for and in time, must be satisfied with leaving to his fellow men some brilliant yet perishing records of his thoughts; while the latter, working for eternity, may labor forever to approach the infinite beauty set before him as his glorious ideal of perfection!
We have already asserted that poetry is no fourth art on a line with the other three. It indeed embraces and resumes them all, with added powers of its own. It cannot, however, be denied that, employed in combination with poetry, the other arts lose much of their special power and effect, for thus associated they hold a subordinate station, are forced to appear in a colder medium, and are subjected to the laws of a harmony but partially adapted to their individual interests. Undeniable as this may be, poetry still maintains its high claims to our consideration. Though its tones be colder than those of music, since they must pass through the analytic intellect instead of appealing immediately to the sympathetic heart; if its hues are less vivid than, those of painting, as they must be transmitted through the slower medium of words in lieu of impressing themselves immediately upon the delighted eye; if less palpable to the corporeal sense of touch than sculpture, with its solidity of form,—yet is its range wider, fuller, and far more comprehensive than any one of the sister arts. If any one should be inclined to doubt that it is indeed aresuméof them all, let him consider that in its prosodial flow, measured pauses, metrical lines, varied cadences, stirring or soothing rhythms, sweet or rugged rhymes,—it is music: in its metaphorical diction, descriptive imagery, succession of shifting pictures, diversified illustration, and vivid coloring,—it is painting; while in its organic development and arrangement of parts, its complicated structure, in the individualism of characters, and the sharply defined personalities of its dramatic realm,—it struggles to attain the fixed and beautiful unity of sculpture.
The arts find their essential unity in the fact that their sole object is the manifestation of the beautiful. No one knows better than the artist that beauty is not the production, of his own limited understanding, but that, after having duly made his preliminary studies of the laws of the medium through which he is to manifest it, it shines into, it reveals itself, as it were, intuitively to the divining soul. Far lower in its sphere than that infallible inspiration which speaks to us through the sacred pages of Holy Writ of the things immediately pertaining to our relations with God, true artistic power must still be considered as inspiration, since it is constantly arriving at more than the unassisted reason of man could command by the fullest exercise of its highest logical powers. The impassioned Romeo cries: 'Can philosophy make a Juliet?' That philosophy has never made a Juliet in art is positively certain! Let us then reverentially enter upon an analysis of the effect of beauty upon the human spirit, whether found in the perfect works of our God, or shining through the more humble imitations and manifestations of the fallible human artist.
The perception of beauty first excites a sensation of pleasure, then a feeling of interest in the beautiful object, then a perception of kindness in a superior intelligence, from which it is at once seen it must ultimately flow, then a feeling of grateful veneration toward that beneficent Intelligence. Unless the perception of beauty be accompanied with these emotions, we have no more correct idea of beauty than we can be said to have an idea of a letter of which we perceive the fine handwriting and fair lines, without understanding the contents. The emotions consequent upon the due perception of beauty are not given by the senses, nor do they arise entirely from the intellect, but, proceeding from the entire man, must be accompanied by a right and open state of the heart. A true perception and acknowledgment of beauty is then certainly elevating; exalting and purifying the mind in accordance with its degree. And it would indeed seem, from the lavish profusion with which the Deity has seen fit to scatter it around us, that it was His beneficent intention we should be constantly under its influence. Now the artist is one gifted by his Creator to discern that ineffable beauty which is everywhere present, to live in the realm of the ideal, and to reveal it to men through words, forms, colors, sounds, and, would he insure the salvation of his own soul, through good deeds. Thus it can be proved that 'religion is the soul of art,' and essentially necessary to the artist, because it gives him, simultaneously, the ideas and feelings of the Absolute, without which he must lose his way, falling into sterile and ignoble copies of the real, like the Dutch painters, and thus be able to produce nothing but detailed and accurate copies of lowsubjects, of factitious emotions, or of vulgar sensations. Without faith, the artist prefers the body itself to the feelings which animate it—the polished limbs of a Venus to the brow of a Madonna! The intellect alone can never soar to the regions of eternal truth, to the Absolute; it must be aided by the heart in its daring flight. Faith and love are the snowy and glittering wings of true artistic excellence. When the soul is full of the bliss of beauty, the feeling of its happiness urges the artist on to the necessity of imparting it,—while his heart is wrapt in the vision of the Absolute, he would fain build for his joyous thoughts an eternal abode with his fellow men, that they too might see the steppings of the All Fair, and so be cheered and stimulated in these their gloomy days of evil.
Thus it cannot be denied that religion alone gives depth and sublimity to the creations of art, because it alone gives faith and hope in the Infinite. If we are often astonished to see the springs of artistic inspiration so rapidly exhausted in many men of genius of our own epoch, it is because of their overwhelming egotism and limited subjectivity, because the worship of the finite replaces that of the infinite, because religion has become for them a mere memory of childhood. To recover their blighted fertility of imagination, they must again become as little children, again betake themselves to the shady and lonely way leading to the temple of God.
In proof of this position, we constantly find that men gifted, sensuously, with acute perceptions of the beautiful, yet who do not receive it with a pure heart, never comprehend it aright; but making it a mere minister to their desires, a mere seasoning of sensual pleasures, sink until all their creations take the same earthly stamp, and it is seen and felt that the heavenly sense of beauty has been degraded into a servant of lust. But as the spirit of prophecy consisted with the avarice of Balaam and the disobedience of Saul, so God knows all the stops of the heaven-gifted but self-corrupted artists, and, in spite of themselves, has often made them discourse high harmonies, and give the most eloquent and earnest enunciations of the very sentiments and principles in which their own condemnation could be found clearly and vividly written. The good seed, although divine, if there be no blessing upon it, may indeed bring forth wild grapes, but these grapes are well discerned, for there is, in the works of bad men, a taint, stain, and jarring discord, blacker and louder exactly in proportion to their moral deficiency. At best it is no part of our duty to examine into and pronounce upon the frail characters of men, but rather to hold fast to that which we can prove good, and feel to be ordained for our own benefit.
It can, moreover, be fully proved that the artists, as a class, have never been false to religion. From the poets of the dark ages sprang a literature strange and marvellous, but full of naive faith, and bearing striking witness to the activity of the human spirit even in those dim centuries: I mean the literature of 'visions and legends.' And to estimate the importance of these consolatory creations aright, we must remember how precarious and miserable life then was, passed in constant privation and poverty, menaced with increasing perils; and then consider the fact that these legends kept constantly before the mind of the oppressed people the consoling idea of a superintending Providence, who numbers all our tears and hears our lightest sighs. The legend indeed never confined itself wholly to this earth as the theatre of its wild drama; immortality was always its groundwork, and its last scene always opened in the invisible world, where the saints were surrounded with undying halos of glory, and from whence they watched over men with increasing love, while in their midst reigned a gentle figure full ofgrace and majesty, uniting, in a mysterious and ineffable manner, the holy virginity and sacred maternity of woman; a gentle, humble being, through whose innocent meekness the two worlds, finite and infinite, had been forever linked in the person of the infant God, whom she forever bore upon her virgin bosom. What a tender lesson for barbaric life!
We must also remember that these legends were eminently popular, that they passed from mouth to mouth round the winter hearth, teaching the young and soothing the children, like the cradle song of a mother, pouring hope into the cell of the captive, teaching the virtuous oppressed that a just God mercifully listened to all their secret sighs, and, leading the poor to look beyond the squalid poverty which surrounded them, pointed to them the legions of angels, which were lovingly camped around them. It is impossible to overestimate the blessed effects of such a literature, or to count the naive hearts which it may have rescued from suicide and despair!
The spirit of the literature of the middle ages culminates in the Christian poet, Dante. History, theology, politics, paganism, sweet and melancholy elegies, flashes of fiery indignation, all men and all generations, meet in his majestic epic. Yet the closest unity is preserved through this astonishing range of subjects; one sublime idea broods over its every line,—the idea of a God of perfect justice—of undying love!
We cite, in corroboration, the following lines from this noble poet, though a prose translation can do but little justice to the glowing original:
'God is One in substance; Power, Wisdom, and Love assume in Him a triple Personality, so that in all tongues singular and plural are alike applicable to Him. He is spirit; he is the circle which circumscribes everything and which nothing ever circumscribes; immense, eternal, immutable, He is the Primal out of which all is darkness. Unlimited by time, without laws save in His own will, in the bosom of eternity, He, who is three in One, acts;—Power executes what Wisdom proposes, and Infinite Love is forever germing into ever new loves. Like a triple arrow from a single bow, from the depths of the Productive thought, spring, whether single or united, matter, form, with the living heart of all finite beings—their own governing laws. Created things are but the splendor of the immutable ideas which the Father engenders, and which He loves unceasingly. Ideas—thoughts—sacred words! Light, which, without being detached from Him who wills it into being, shines from creature to creature, from cause to effect, on—on—until it produces only contingent and transitory phenomena; Light which, repeated and reflected from mirror to mirror, pales as its distance increases from its Holy Source.'
'God is One in substance; Power, Wisdom, and Love assume in Him a triple Personality, so that in all tongues singular and plural are alike applicable to Him. He is spirit; he is the circle which circumscribes everything and which nothing ever circumscribes; immense, eternal, immutable, He is the Primal out of which all is darkness. Unlimited by time, without laws save in His own will, in the bosom of eternity, He, who is three in One, acts;—Power executes what Wisdom proposes, and Infinite Love is forever germing into ever new loves. Like a triple arrow from a single bow, from the depths of the Productive thought, spring, whether single or united, matter, form, with the living heart of all finite beings—their own governing laws. Created things are but the splendor of the immutable ideas which the Father engenders, and which He loves unceasingly. Ideas—thoughts—sacred words! Light, which, without being detached from Him who wills it into being, shines from creature to creature, from cause to effect, on—on—until it produces only contingent and transitory phenomena; Light which, repeated and reflected from mirror to mirror, pales as its distance increases from its Holy Source.'
That would surely be an interesting work which would glean for us the multiplied expressions of the faith of the 'laurel-crowned,' who have left their consoling records for humanity, their tracks of light over the dark earth-bosom in which they sleep. But this is not place for such researches; we must confine ourselves to but few quotations, designed to show that religion is the soul of art.
In proof of this we might quote the whole of the fine tragedy of Polyeucte; it is full of ardent religious feeling. The moral is indeed condensed in the following lines:
'If, to die for our king is a glorious destiny,—How sublime is death when we may die for God!'
Urged by that unconquerable love of the Absolute which possesses all true poets, Racine seeks in God alone the source of all regal power:
'The eternal is his name, the world is his work,He hears the sighs of the oppressed;He judges all mortals with equal justice,From the height of his throne he calls kings to account.'
Our English poet Shakspeare, whose works are full of sublime morality, puts into the mouth of one of his matchless heroines the following exquisite passage, recalling to us the lessons of the New Testament:
'Alas! alas!Why all the souls that are, were forfeit once,And He that might the advantage best have tookFound out the remedy: how would you be,If He, who is the top of judgment, shouldBut judge you as you are? In the strict courseOf justice none of us should see salvation:We do pray for mercy; that same prayerShould teach us all to render deeds of mercy.'
Klopstock, the German poet, sings only of God, not in the creation alone, the last judgment, in his august and dreadful majesty, but in the wonders of His tender love:
'I trust in thee, Divine Mediator! I have chanted the canticle of the new covenant; my race is run; Thou hast pardoned my tottering steps! Sound! sound, quivering strings of my lyre! My heart is full of the bliss of gratitude to my God! What recompense could I ask? I have tasted the cup of angels in singing of my Redeemer!'
'I trust in thee, Divine Mediator! I have chanted the canticle of the new covenant; my race is run; Thou hast pardoned my tottering steps! Sound! sound, quivering strings of my lyre! My heart is full of the bliss of gratitude to my God! What recompense could I ask? I have tasted the cup of angels in singing of my Redeemer!'
Not less devout than the 'Messiah,' but far more beautiful, is Tasso's exquisite 'Jerusalem Delivered.'
A complete system of theology may be found in the majestic pages of Milton's sublime 'Paradise Lost.'
That which with the heathen poets was but an episode, the religious element of the poem, as the 'Descent into Hades,' the 'Wanderings through Elysium,' etc., etc., ends by absorbing the entire work after the advent of Christianity. The 'Divine Comedy,' the 'Paradise Lost,' and the 'Messiah,' form a magnificent Christian trilogy, of which the scene is almost always in a supernatural sphere, and in which the principal actor is—the Providence of God.
On this subject we have no further time to dilate, and the reader may easily verify its truth for himself. If he would convince himself that the deepest draughts of inspiration have ever been drawn by the highest artists from religious ideas, let him add to the names above given, those of Fra Angelico, Fra Bartolomeo, Tintoret, Corregio, Murillo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo, and, in our own days, Overbeck; let him gaze into that divine face of godlike sorrow given us by an untaught monk, Antonio Pesenti, in his marvellous crucifix of ivory, let him listen to the pure ethereal strains of Palestrina, Pergolese, Marcello, Stradella, and Cherubini, and thus be assured that religion, the love of the Infinite, is the 'Soul of Art.'
The most terrible name, perhaps, in the juvenile literature of England and English America, during the last century and a half, has been that ofWilliam Kidd, the pirate. In the nursery legend, in story, and in song, the name of Kidd has stood forth as the boldest and bloodiest of buccaneers. The terror of the ocean when abroad, he returned from his successive voyages to line our coasts with silver and gold, and to renew with the devil a league, cemented with the blood of victims shot down whenever fresh returns of the precious metals were to be hidden. According to the superstitious of Connecticut and Long Island, it was owing to these bloody charms that honest money-diggers have ever experienced so much difficulty in removing these buried treasures. Often, indeed, have the lids of the iron chests rung beneath the mattock of the stealthy midnight searcher for gold; but the flashes of sulphurous fires, blue and red, and the saucer eyes and chattering teeth of legions of demons have uniformly interposed to frighten the delvers from their posts, and preserve the treasures from their greedy clutches. But notwithstanding the harrowing sensations connected with the name of Kidd, and his renown as a pirate, he was but one of the last and most inconsiderable of that mighty race of sea robbers who, during a long series of years in the seventeenth century, were the admiration of the world for their prowess, and its terror for their crimes.
The community of buccaneers was first organized upon the small island of Tortuga, situated on the north side of St. Domingo, at the distance of about two leagues from the latter. It was upon this island that the first European colony was planted in the New World, in the year and month of its discovery. But although the colony became considerable, and flourished so long as the natives remained in sufficient numbers to cultivate the plantations of the Spaniards, yet it did not take vigorous root. The numbers of the natives were greatly reduced by the arms of their conquerors, and were afterward still more rapidly diminished by oppression; and although an attempt was made to supply their places by a forced importation of forty thousand Indians from the Bahamas, the experiment was of little avail. In less than half a century, the aboriginal race was extinct. The country was beautiful beyond description: rich in its mines, and its soil of unexceeded fertility. But the Spaniard, if not by nature indolent, is prone to luxury. The earth producing by handfuls, the colonists saw little necessity of laborious exertion. They accordingly degenerated from the spirit and enterprise of their ancestors, and fell into habits of voluptuous idleness. Agriculture was neglected, and the mines deserted. Contenting themselves with a bare supply of the wants of nature, they sank into such a state of indolence, that many of their slaves had no other employment than to swing them in their hammocks the livelong day. No colony could nourish composed of such a people. During the first half century of its existence, it had indeed become considerable; but for a century afterward it dwindled away, neglected and apparently forgotten by the parent country, until even the remembrance of its former greatness was lost.
At length, about the middle of the seventeenth century, the Spaniards were roused from their repose. So early as the year 1630, the severity of the French colonial system had driven many of the most resolute of the colonists from the islands belonging to that nation, especially from St. Christopher's. Numbers of these men, in order to an unrestrained enjoyment of liberty, took refuge in the western division of St. Domingo, supporting themselves with game, and by hunting wild cattle, for which they continued to find a market, either in the Spanish settlements, or by trading with vessels visiting the western coast for that object. Meanwhile the exactions upon the colonists of St. Christopher's and the submission required of them to exclusive privileges, induced a further and greater number to abandon the island, and join the adventures of their own countrymen in the forests of St. Domingo. Those adventurers—many of whom had already been roaming the St. Domingo forest for nearly half a century, increasing in numbers by accessions from time to time—had, in 1630, established a social and political system of their own, peculiar to their own community. Their original calling was the hunting of wild boars and cattle, which abounded in the island. To this was added, to a small extent, the business of planting, and to this again the more adventurous profession of sea-roving and piracy. Their vessels were at first nothing larger than boats, or rather canoes, constructed from the trunks of trees—excavations after the manner ofthe ordinary light canoes of our own aboriginals. But from the size of some descriptions of trees growing in that climate, these canoes were capable of carrying crews of from thirty to fifty and seventy-five men, with the necessary supplies for short voyages among the Antilles. As they had no women among them, nor other consequent responsibilities, it was their custom to associate in partnerships of two, called comrades, who lived together, and assisted each other in the chase and in the domestic duties of their huts or cabins. Their goods were thrown into common stock; and when one of a partnership died, the survivor became the absolute heir of the joint stock—unless the deceased, by previous stipulation, bequeathed his goods to his relatives, perchance a wife and children in another land. They were frequently absent from their lodges on their hunting excursions for twelve months and two years at a time; but their lodges with their goods were left in perfect safety, for the crime of theft was unknown among them.
Differences seldom arose among them, and when they did occur, they were usually adjusted without much difficulty. In obstinate and aggravated cases, however, their disputes were decided by firearms, in the use of which the nicest principles of fairness and honor were observed. A ball entering the back or the side of a party, afforded evidence that he had fallen by treachery, and the assassin was immediately put to death. The former laws of their own country were disregarded; and by the usual sea baptism received in passing the tropic, they considered themselves expatriated from their native land, and at liberty to change their family names, which many of them did—borrowing terms from the character of the profession which they had chosen, as suited their fancy. Their dress was a shirt and drawers dipped in the blood of the animals they killed, shoes without stockings, a leathern girdle by which their knife and a short sabre were suspended, and a hat or cap without a brim. Their common food was the choicest pieces of bullock's flesh, seasoned with orange juice and pimento, and cured by smoke; of bread they lost the use, and, until the trade of piracy was adopted, water was their only drink. The termbuccaneers, by which the hunters were first known, was derived from a tribe of the Caribs, who were called thus from the manner in which they prepared meats for their food, whether flesh of beasts or of men. For this purpose they constructed a sort of grate or hurdle, consisting of twenty bars of Brazil wood, laid crosswise half a foot from each other, upon which the flesh of prisoners of war or of game was laid in pieces, and a thick smoke raised beneath from properly selected combustibles, which gave to the meat the vermil color and a delightful smell. These fixtures, thus adjusted, were calledbuccans, and the process of curing the meatbuccaning. The hunters, having adopted this process from the savages, were like them calledbuccaneers. In process of time the name was applied to the sea robbers as well as to the hunters; and when piracy became the general profession as a substitute for planting and the chase, all were called buccaneers indiscriminately.
Previously to the great and sudden augmentation of their forces, by the immigration from St. Christopher's about the year 1660, the buccaneers had taken possession of Tortuga, the geographical position and character of which island was well suited to their commercial and piratical purposes. This little island had been occupied by a few Spaniards as early as 1591; but their numbers were so small as not to interfere with the object of the buccaneers, while its rocky conformation afforded peculiar facilities for defence in the event of attack.
The greatly increasing numbers of the buccaneers at length aroused thecolonial voluptuaries of Spain to a sense of their danger. It was perceived that while the colonists were dwindling away, the outlaws were becoming so formidable in their numbers that they soon might be enabled to contest for the mastery of the island of Hispaniola itself. They therefore commenced a war upon them, and not being able to prosecute it with sufficient vigor themselves, they called to their aid troops from the other Spanish islands, and also from the continent. With these auxiliaries the barbarians were hunted with great severity, and many of them massacred. Finding themselves pursued in this manner, the outlaws banded together for mutual defence. Their avocations required them often to separate in the daytime; but they assembled in considerable numbers at night; and if individuals were missing, diligent search was made until their fate was ascertained. If he returned from an extended chase, it was well. If not—if it was discovered that he had fallen a victim to the Spaniards, or had been taken prisoner—his loss was requited with terrible vengeance. Everything Spanish was devoted to destruction, without distinction of age or sex. But in this partisan warfare, the buccaneers maintained a decided advantage. When too hotly pressed, they could fly to their canoes or hoys, as they were called, and escape to Tortuga; and if the Spaniards pursued them thither in numbers too powerful for an open combat, they would return back again to their principal island. Despairing at length of success in this mode of warfare, the Spaniards resolved to conquer the ruffians by destroying their means of subsistence. For this purpose, by a general hunt over the whole island, the wild bulls were killed, and the droves of cattle previously roaming the forests were consequently reduced so rapidly that the buccaneers found it necessary to change their employment—to form settlements and cultivate the lands. More than two thousand of them clustered upon Tortuga, where the business of cultivating sugar and tobacco was begun; but the more general and lucrative employment became that of piracy. They had as yet no larger craft than the boats and canoes already mentioned, but with these they managed to navigate the West India seas, shooting into secure places of refuge among the smaller islands, or keys, at pleasure.
The community had now become so large, in 1660, that something like order and government was seen to be necessary even by the buccaneers themselves; and they accordingly sent to the Governor of St. Christopher's for a governor. The boon was readily granted, and M. le Passeur was commissioned to that office. He repaired promptly to Tortuga with a ship of armed men and stores; assumed the command, and immediately commenced fortifying the island—a work to which nature had largely contributed by the peculiar conformation of some of the rock precipices. There was upon one high rock, inaccessible at all points save by ladders, a cavern large enough for a garrison of a thousand men, with an abundant spring gushing from the rocks. This post was seized and provisioned. Twice the Spaniards invaded them from Hispaniola, but were repulsed—the last time with terrible slaughter. The invaders were eight hundred in number. They had seized a yet higher point of rock than the natural fortress occupied by the buccaneers, upon which they were endeavoring to plant their cannon, in order the better to dislodge the enemy. The time chosen for the invasion was when a large number of the freebooters were at sea. These, however, returning suddenly by night, climbed the mountain upon the heels of the Spaniards, and attacked them with such fury as to compel them by hundreds to throw themselves from the rocky parapets into the valley beneath, by which their bodies were dashed in pieces. Thosewho were not killed by the fall were put to the sword; and few or none returned to rehearse the bloody story.
This ill-starred expedition was the last sent from St. Domingo against the buccaneers, who thenceforward became the masters and lord proprietaries of Tortuga. Nor were the buccaneers longer exclusively composed of adventurous Frenchmen. Visions of golden cities in the New World had been flitting before the eyes of the English for a century before, and had not even been eclipsed by the signal failures of Sir Walter Raleigh in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. Indeed the expeditions of the gallant knight, however bootless to himself, may have served to stimulate the cupidity of his countrymen for a long time afterward, inasmuch as some of Sir Walter's officers testified that they actually approached within sight of the golden city. Sir Walter's great contemporary, Sir Francis Drake, after committing many depredations upon the Spanish American coast, had returned to England with a vast amount of treasure. The expeditions both of Sir Francis and Sir Walter were of a character bordering closely upon piratical; and in that romantic age, it was not considered as greatly transcending their examples for daring spirits to seek their fortunes in the New World, even by associating themselves with the buccaneers of Tortuga. Be this, however, as it may, England and Holland and other European states respectively furnished many reckless and daring recruits to the army of freebooters; and their piracies increased with their numbers. Ostensibly they directed their operations only against the commerce of Spain, with whom they were directly at war, and whose galleons from the continent, freighted with the produce of the mines, offered golden incentives to bravery. But however virtuous in this respect might have been the intentions of the sea robbers, it was not invariably the merchantmen of Spain which suffered from their depredations, since from 'an imperfection, in the organs of vision,' or from some other cause 'they were not always able to distinguish the flags of different nations.' Others than the Spaniards, were consequently occasional sufferers; and a ready market was found for their plunder in the French, and English islands, especially in Jamaica, which England had conquered from Spain in 1655. This latter island was in fact their principal depot; for although the British Government, both under the Protectorate and afterward, had endeavored to direct the attention of the Jamaica colonists to agricultural pursuits, they had entirely failed, for the reason that the buccaneers, making it their principal resort, poured in such vast treasures, that the inhabitants amassed considerable wealth with little difficulty, and despised the more honest occupations of honest labor. The population rapidly increased, and in a few years amounted to twenty thousand, whose only source of subsistence was derived from the buccaneers.
Hitherto France had disclaimed as her subjects the roving cattle-hunters upon the island of Hispaniola; but after they had formed settlements and established themselves so firmly upon Tortuga, the French West India company took them under the ægis of the lilies for protection; and M. Ogeron, 'a man of probity and understanding,' was sent from the parent country to govern them. With the arrival of the new governor the domestic relations of the buccaneers underwent a material change, for the former brought many women with him—fit persons, from the past profligacy of their lives, to consort with the inhabitants of Tortuga. But the buccaneers were not fastidious in the selection of wives, and history gives us no right to suppose that there was a single forlorn damsel left without a husband. 'I ask nothing of your past life,' would the buccaneer say to the fair one to whom he proposed himself. 'If anybody would have had you whereyou came from, you would not have come here. But as you did not belong to me then, whatever you may have done was no disgrace to me. Give me your word for the future, and I will acquit you for the past.' Then striking his gun barrel, he would add, 'Shouldst thou prove false to me, this will not.'
Meanwhile, the buccaneers, becoming stronger and stronger every day, extended their designs, and pushed their operations with a degree of audacity and success that rendered them the terror of the seas. As yet their marine consisted only of boats and canoes, but these were, as before stated, of a size to carry from fifty to a hundred men each. They attacked not only merchantmen, but vessels of war, with a degree of intrepidity unexampled in the history of man. No matter for the size of a ship, or for her armament. They paused not to calculate chances. Their invariable practice was to carry their prizes by boarding. Their boats were propelled with the swiftness of an arrow. As certain as they grappled with a vessel, she was sure to be taken; for their onslaughts were desperately furious and irresistible. The Spanish Government complained bitterly, both to England and France, of the outrages upon her commerce by the pirates, a large majority of whom were the born subjects of those nations. The answers, however, of both were the same: that those piratical acts were not committed by the buccaneers as their subjects; and the Spanish ambassador was informed that his master might proceed against them as he saw fit. In consequence of the transactions of the buccaneers with the people of Jamaica, England went farther, and actually removed the governor of that colony. But, whether with the connivance of the civil authorities or not, the intercourse between the pirates and the people continued without serious interruption. Some of the buccaneers, however, pretended to hold commissions both from the French and the Dutch; but it was mere pretext. Their authority was in truth nothing more than what the sailors are wont jocosely to call 'a commission from the Pope.' Yet they affected to consider themselves in lawful war against Spain, for the reason that the Spaniards had debarred them from the privileges of hunting in the forests and fishing in the waters of St. Domingo—thus depriving them of the exercise of what they called their lawful rights. In regard to the cruelties which they frequently inflicted upon the prisoners who fell into their hands, they pleaded in justification those enormities which the conquerors of Spanish America inflicted upon the aborigines there. The horrible cruelties of Cortez and Pizarro are familiar to every student of history. 'I once,' says Las Casas, speaking of the conquest of the New World, 'beheld four or five chief Indians roasted alive at a slow fire; and as the miserable victims poured forth their dreadful yells, it disturbed the commandant in his siesta, and he sent an order that they should be strangled; but the officer on duty would not do it, but, causing their mouths to be gagged that their shrieks might not be heard, he stirred up the fire with his own hands, and roasted them deliberately until they all expired.' The conquerors had resorted to these dreadful executions under the cloak of religious zeal, but in reality to make the poor wretches disclose the secret depositories of their treasures. Instances of the same refined cruelty, at the contemplation of which humanity shudders, marked the history of the buccaneers. Their motives were the same as those which had governed the conduct of Cortez; and they, too, found a salvo for their consciences by persuading themselves that they were commissioned as a court of vengeance—the instruments of retributive justice in the hands of Providence—to punish the Spaniards for the remorseless cruelties practised upon the unoffending Mexicans. And here another extraordinaryfact may be noted in the history of the buccaneers. After their community had become consolidated and their government in a manner systematized, strange as it may seem, notwithstanding their murderous profession the observances of the Christian, religion were introduced to sanctify their atrocities. 'They never partook of a repast without solemnly acknowledging their dependence upon the Giver of all good.' In their infatuation, whenever they embarked upon any expedition, they were wont to invoke for its success the blessing of Heaven; and they never returned from a marauding excursion that they did not return thanks to God for their victory. 'On the appearance of a ship which they meant to attack, they offered up a fervent prayer for success; and when the conflict had terminated in their favor, their first care was to express their gratitude to the God of battles for the victory which He had enabled them to gain.'
The first leader of the buccaneers, after their concentration upon Tortuga, whose deeds of desperate valor 'damned him to everlasting fame,' wasPiérre Le Grande, a native of Dieppe, in Normandy. The crowning act of his piratical career was his taking the ship of the vice admiral, convoying a fleet of Spanish galleons, near the Cape of Tiburon, on the western side of St. Domingo—an act which was performed with a single boat, manned by only eighteen men, and armed with no more than four small pieces of ordnance. And even these latter were of no use, as the admiral's ship was carried by boarding, with no other arms than swords and pistols. Le Grande had been so long at sea, without falling in with any craft worth capturing, that his provisions were becoming short; and his crew, pressed with hunger and brooding over their ill success, were desperate. Thus situated, they espied the Spaniard bearing the vice admiral's flag, and separated from the rest of the flotilla. Notwithstanding the immense disparity of force, Le Grande determined to capture her, and his crew took an oath to stand by him till the last. The boat of the pirates was descried by the Spaniard in the afternoon, and the admiral was admonished of what might be its character; but he scorned the admonition, viewing the apparently pitiful craft with contempt, and adopting no precautions against it. Just in the dusk of evening the pirates ran alongside of his ship. As already remarked, the crew of Le Grande had sworn to stand by their captain; but in order to cut off all means of escape in the event of defeat, and therefore to make them fight with greater desperation, their chief, at the moment they were climbing the sides of the ship, caused the boat to be suddenly scuttled, and sunk. Indeed the boarding of the Spaniard was hastened by the necessity of leaping from their own vessel, already sinking beneath them. Under these circumstances, the boarding was so rapid, that the Spaniards were completely taken by surprise; so much so that as the pirates rushed into the great cabin, they found the captain, with several boon companions, engaged at a game of cards. Exclaiming that his assailants must be devils, the commander, with a pistol at his breast, was compelled to an immediate surrender. Meanwhile a portion of the assailants took possession of the gunroom; seized the arms, and killed all who resisted. This vigorous assault soon carried the ship by a surrender at discretion. She proved to be a rich prize; and the prisoners were treated with lenity, which was not always the course adopted by the buccaneers when they were disappointed in the amount of their expected plunder. Many were the crews compelled to pay with their lives for the poverty of their cargoes. In the present case Le Grande retained for his own service such of the common sailors as he needed, and after setting the rest on shore, proceeded toFrance with his prize, where he remained, without ever returning to America.
The success of this exploit, and the rich reward by which it was crowned, at once stimulated the cupidity of the Tortugans, and fired their breasts with the ambition of emulating the bravery of the Great Peter. Those who were yet engaged in planting or in other honest occupations, at once abandoned them, and betook themselves to the more inviting trade of piracy. Being unable to build larger vessels than the boats or hoys then in use, they carried on the war in these against the smaller vessels of Spain engaged in the coasting trade and in the traffic of hides and tobacco with the inhabitants of Jamaica. The vessels thus captured were substituted for their own smaller craft, by means of which they were soon enabled to make longer voyages, and stretch across to the coasts of the Spanish main. At Campeachy and other points they found many trading vessels, and often ships of great burden. Two of these commercial vessels they captured, and also two large armed ships, all laden with plate, within the port of Campeachy, which they boldly entered for that purpose, and sailed with them in triumph to Tortuga. Such rich returns greatly augmented the wealth of the island; and every additional capture enabled them to increase their marine, until at the end of two years from the last achievement of Piérre Le Grande, the pirates had a navy, very well manned and equipped, of more than twenty ships of different sizes. With such a force, composed of men of the most desperate fortunes and dauntless courage, the commerce of Spain with her colonies in Central and South America was in a few years almost entirely destroyed. The ships bound from Europe for the colonies were rarely molested by the pirates, who chose to fall upon them when laden with the precious metals, which Spain, in her avarice, was transporting home—not foreseeing that by that very process she was gradually working her own national ruin. Sometimes a fleet of galleons, when under strong convoy, succeeded in the return voyage; but a single ship, of whatever strength or force, seldom escaped the vigilance of the pirates. They followed such fleets as they judged it unsafe to attack, and a slow sailer or a straggler was inevitably captured. So daring were these robbers, that even before they were enabled to obtain a smaller craft, a crew of fifty-five of them in one of the large canoes sailed into the Southern Ocean, and proceeded along the coast of the continent as far north as California. On their return, they entered one of the ports of Peru, and captured a ship, the cargo of which was valued at several millions. Their canoe was then exchanged for the noble prize, in which they returned in triumph.
Preparations for their expeditions were made with the utmost care, and articles of agreement were always carefully written out and signed; and the dealings of the robbers among each other were usually characterized by the most scrupulous honor. In regard to their provisions, the rations were distributed twice a day—the officers, from the highest to the lowest, faring no better than the common sailor. It was stipulated exactly what sums of money or what proportionate sums each person engaged in a voyage should receive, with the understanding, of course,no prey,no pay. The commanders of the ships were frequently the owners. Sometimes they belonged to a company of adventurers on board. In other instances they were chartered for the service of individuals or companies on shore. The first stipulation, therefore, on arranging for a voyage, regarded the compensation to be received by the owner or owners of the ship, being ordinarily one third of the products of the cruise. If the boat or vessel in which an enterprise was first undertaken was the common property of thecrew, the first vessel captured was allotted to the captain, with one share of the booty obtained. In cases where the captain owned and fitted out the original vessel, the first ship taken belonged to him, with a double share of the plunder. The surgeon was allowed two hundred crowns for his medicine chest, and a single share of the prizes; and whoever had the good fortune to descry a ship that was captured, received a reward of a hundred crowns. A tariff of compensation for the wounded was also adjusted according to the greater or less severity of the wounds they might receive. For example, the compensation for the loss of a right arm was six hundred pieces of eight, or six slaves as an equivalent; for a left arm, five hundred pieces of eight, or five slaves; for the loss of a right leg, five hundred pieces, or five slaves; for an eye, one hundred pieces, or one slave; for the loss of a finger, the same. Claims of this character were first paid at the close of a voyage, from the common stock of the prize money. The commander of an expedition was allotted five portions of a common seaman; and the subordinate officers shared in proportion to their rank. The residue of the booty was then divided with exact equality among the crews, from the highest to the lowest mariner, not excepting the boys. Some of the duties of these latter were peculiar. For instance, when the pirates had captured a vessel better than their own, they transferred themselves to it, leaving the boys to escape from the deserted vessel last, after having set it on fire. Favor never had any influence in the distribution of the booty, which was rigidly decided by lot—lots being drawn for the dead as well as for the living. The portions for the dead were given to their surviving companion; or if the companion had also been killed, the allotment was sent to the family of the deceased. If they had no families, then the money or plate or other goods that would have belonged to them was distributed to the poor, or piously bestowed on churches, which were to pray for the souls of those in whose names the benefactions were given. These allowances to the dead and wounded were considered debts of honor—such as the brokers of Wall street would note as 'confidential.' Their intercourse with each other was marked with civility and kindness. They, of course, squandered their money on coming ashore, in all manner of dissipation, and with the recklessness which has ever characterized the sailor. To those who were in want they would contribute freely; and the kind offices of humanity among each other were readily interchanged. In ordinary cases, their prisoners were liberated, save those who were needed for their own assistance; and these were generally discharged after two or three years. Whenever they were in want of supplies, they landed upon the islands and levied exactions upon the people—planters and fishermen. The green turtles, however, among the Florida Keys, supplied a large portion of their food; and it is presumed that they became as great adepts in the turtle line as the corporation pirates of modern times.
So extensively was the commerce of Spain in these seas, under her own flag, cut up, notwithstanding the ships of war repeatedly sent for its protection, that foreign flags were resorted to, in hopes of deceiving the rovers. But therusewas not successful. Two of the buccaneer chiefs, Michael de Basco and Brouage, receiving intelligence that a cargo of great value had been shipped under the Dutch flag at Carthagena, in two ships much larger than their own, boldly entered the harbor, captured both, and plundered them of their treasure. The Dutch captains, chagrined at being thus beaten by inferior vessels, said to one of the pirate chiefs that had he been alone, he would not have dared thus to attack them. The buccaneer haughtily challenged mynheer to fight the battle over again—stipulating that his consort should stand aloof from the engagement, and, that should the Dutchman conquer, both the pirate vessels should be his. The challenge, however, was not accepted. At another time, when Basco and two other chiefs, named Jonqué and Laurence Le Graff, were cruising before Carthagena with three indifferent vessels, two Spanish men-of-war put out to attack them. The result was the capture of both the latter by the pirates, who kept the ships, but magnanimously sent the crews on shore—affecting, from the ease with which they had been vanquished, to look upon them with utter contempt.
There was yet another pirate chief, whose name stands out in bold relief, for his infamous cruelties, even among the bloody records of the buccaneers. He was a Dutchman by birth, who had settled in Brazil during the occupancy of that country by the United Provinces. On the restoration of the Portuguese to their Brazilian possessions this bloody wretch retreated to Jamaica. His name not being known, he received the soubriquet ofRock Braziliano, by which he was henceforward known. Very soon after his arrival at Jamaica, he joined the pirates, first as an ordinary mariner; and acquitted himself so well as to gain, in a short time, the respect and affection of his comrades. A mutiny breaking out on board the vessel in which he was embarked, caused a separation of the crew; a second vessel was taken possession of by a portion of them, and Braziliano chosen chief. He pursued his career with various success and the most frightful cruelty. His hatred of the Spaniards was exceedingly bitter, and when landing in Spanish settlements to procure provisions, he frequently roasted the inhabitants alive if they were not forthcoming at his command. In one of his cruises upon the coast of South America, he was wrecked, and his vessel lost. Escaping to the shore with his crew of only thirty men, he was pursued by a troop of one hundred Spanish cavalry. Upon these he turned, and defeated them with terrible slaughter, and with but trifling loss to himself. Mounting the horses of the slain, Braziliano continued his course coastwise, until, falling in with some boats from Campeachy, which he seized, he made sail for Jamaica—capturing another ship on the voyage laden with merchandise and a large amount of money in pieces of eight. Remaining on shore long enough to dissipate their booty in the usual round of drunkenness and debauchery which characterized the buccaneers when not upon the wave, Braziliano and his companions put to sea again, directing their course to his old haunts about Campeachy. Shortly after his arrival, while looking into the port, in a small boat, to espy what ships were offering for prizes, he was captured and thrown into prison. The Spanish authorities determined upon his execution; but in consequence of an admonition that terrible vengeance would be inflicted upon all Spanish prisoners falling into the hands of the pirates, in the event of his punishment, this horrible villain was released upon the security of his own oath, that he would forthwith relinquish his profession. But before he reached Jamaica on his return, he captured another prize; and after the avails of that were spent in every species of debauch, he went to sea again, committing greater robberies and cruelties than ever.
Jamaica, though a British possession, having, as we have seen, long afforded a market for the pirates, had in process of time become equally a rendezvous with Tortuga. Wealth, in immense quantities, had been poured into that island by the pirates, and had been diffused thence among the other West India possessions, British and French. The licentiousness of the buccaneers was unbounded, and their blood-stained spoils were scattered with incredible prodigality. Indeed they seemed to be at a loss how to spend their money fastenough. Their captains had been known to purchase pipes of wine, place them in the street, knock in the head, and compel every passer-by to drink; and mention is made of one, who, returning from an expedition with three thousand dollars in his pocket, was sold into slavery three months afterward for a debt of forty shillings. If admonished in regard to their reckless waste of money, their reply was that their lives were not like those of other men. Though alive to-day, they might be dead to-morrow, and hence it was folly for them to hoard their treasure. 'Live to-day,' was their maxim, 'to-morrow may take care of itself.' Those, therefore, who were worth millions to-day, robbed by courtezans and stripped at the gaming table, were often penniless in a week—destitute of clothes and even the necessaries of life. They had therefore no recourse but to return to the sea, and levy new contributions, to be dissipated as before.
But the commerce of Spain with her colonies was ruined. Failing in her exertions to conquer the buccaneers, and finding them to be so firmly established as to defy any force which she could send against them, and wearied in making so many consignments, as it were, directly into their hands, Spain dismantled her commercial marine and closed her South American ports, in the hope—a vain one, as it proved—that when the resources of the pirates upon the high seas were cut off, their establishments would be necessarily broken up, and the freebooters themselves disperse. But far different was the event. No sooner had these rapacious and savage men ascertained that there were no more galleons of her bullion to be taken, than they concentrated their forces, with a determination to strike nearer the mines themselves. Powerful expeditions were therefore openly organized at Jamaica and elsewhere, for the purpose of making descents upon the cities and towns of the Spanish main. The temptations to such a course were indeed strong; and the Spaniards, by their ostentatious display, materially assisted in their own ruin. For instance, the city of Lima, in 1682, on the occasion of the public entry of the viceroy, actually had the streets paved with ingots of silver, to the amount of seventeen millions sterling! 'What a pretty prize,' exclaims theLondon Times, 'for a few honest tars!' Then the splendor and magnificence of their churches, ornamented with immense gold and silver images, crucifixes, and candlesticks, and not unfrequently large altars of massive silver, became objects of adevout regard. Nor did the pirates fail to present themselves before every accessible shrine; for in truth, they swept over the vast central portion of the continent from Florida to Peru, plundering and laying in waste the most populous regions, and the wealthiest cities—meeting, moreover, with less resistance than attended the march of Cortez and Alvarado in achieving the conquest. Their visitations were sudden, and wherever they struck their blows fell like the thunderbolt. The consequence was that the consternation of the people upon the land became as great as their terror upon the ocean. The great roads were deserted; and the lands were no more ploughed than the sea.