Surely here is a picture of extreme poverty,--fully corroborated by a document in Mather,--showing how "the land grew weary of her inhabitants;" and how "children, neighbors and friends, especially the _poor_, were counted the greatest burdens." It tells us how the honest yeomanry and worthy laborers of that day were harassed by the encroachments of their "mightier" neighbors, and the rigid oppression of the civil law. They were "endangered" through no fault of their own. One cannot but recall a part of the petition of Agur,--"lest I be poor, and steal" to support life. But are we to consider such men as "rascals and villains"? And were any such men, sentenced, as men of guilt, to go forth as a part of the colony? Symonds here gives a full and sufficient interpretation to the meaning of Lloyd and Alexander.
Let us now see who had the power to sentence and fix the place of exile. The Statute of 39 Elizabeth c. iv, 1597-8, to which your correspondent refers as being ample enough to cover "the plan of colonizing by banishment of convicts," authorizes this penalty for "dangerous rogues," who "shall and may lawfully be banished out of this Realme and all other the Domynions thereof." This was to be done "by the Justices of the Peace" at the "Quarter Sessions." Not a word is said about the Chief Justice. The place to which they were to be sent was to be decided "by the Privie Council;" and thus, certainly, not by Popham alone. So that, if there were shame in the transaction, the most honored men of the nation were equally involved in the disgrace. It is unfair and ungenerous to single him out to meet a purpose, as the sole object of obloquy and rebuke.
And now, as to the return of these persons to England. Your correspondent, assuming that a part of them were convicts, truly says, in agreement with his assumption, that they would not be "over-anxious to revisit their native land. They had saved their necks once by emigrating, and were not in haste to put them again into the halter." And so he invents the story about a second pinnace, with which they could "lead generally a wild and free life, such as was congenial to their character and dispositions." This is a precious statement; but it happens to be directly opposite to the citation fearlessly made from Sir William Alexander, which declares that "Those that went thither,--as endangered by the laws,--dreaming of new hopes of home, returned thither with the first occasion." None were left behind. If they had been convicts, they would have pursued some such plan as is intimated by your correspondent, and not have gone back to the hazard of certain death. For the statute last quoted enacts, "if any such Rogues, so banished as aforesaid, shall returne againe into any part of this Realme or Dominion of Wales without lawful Lycence or Warrant so to do, that in every such case such offence shall be Fellony, and the Party offending therein shall suffer Death as in case of Fellony." This was but poor encouragement for convicts to seek their native shores. The winter had been hard. But Captain Davies, who had borne news of the "success" of the enterprise to England, had come back to Sagadahoc in the spring, "with a shipp laden full of vitualls" and other useful things, so that starvation had no horrors; and the summer was at hand. Sir William testifies that they had "new hopes" inviting them to go home. But, if they were condemned criminals, what "new hopes" could have been cherished by men who had nothing to expect but certain detection, by the letter R "branded in the left shoulder," for identification, as soon as they stepped on their native shores; and penal death as its sequel? These "hopes" must have been "new" indeed, if they rested only on a halter, a hangman, and a gallows! Here your correspondent and one of his chief witnesses entirely disagree. The former says, they "were not over-anxious to revisit their native land," fearing the halter. The witness says, that "they returned back with the first occasion"--hasting, and hopeful of a better condition than the one they had left. The one says, that, as liberated jail-birds, they led a roving life here, fearing death at home. The other, in effect, says they had a happy voyage to England, with bright anticipations of a more prosperous life!