ir
unworthiness. With the morals of the colony, its prosperity, even in
worldly interests, began to lose ground. The merchants, as usual, had
behaved badly in the political struggle. The intense selfishness of the
caste kept them occupied with the pursuit of gain, at the most critical
moments of the struggle, or when their influence might have been of use;
and when the mischief was done, and they began to feel its consequences,
or, what to them was the same thing, to fancy that the low price of oil
in Europe was owing to the change of constitution at the Crater, they
started up in convulsed and mercenary efforts to counteract the evil,
referring all to money, and not manifesting any particular notions of
principles concerning the manner in which it was used. As the cooler
heads of the minority--perhaps we ought to say of the majority, for,
oddly enough, the minority now actually ruled in Craterdom, by carrying
out fully the principle of the sway of the majority--but, as the cooler
heads of the colony well understood that nothing material was to follow
from such spasmodic and ill-directed efforts, the merchants were not
backed in their rising, and, as commonly happens with the slave, the
shaking of their chains only bound them so much the tighter.

At length the Rancocus returned from the voyage on which she had sailed
just previously to the change in the constitution, and her owner
announced his intention to go in her to America, the next trip, himself.
His brothers, Heaton, Anne, their children, and, finally, Captain Betts,
Friend Martha, and their issue, all, sooner or later, joined the party;
a desire to visit the low shores of the Delaware once more, uniting with
the mortification of the recent changes, to induce them all to wish to
see the land of their fathers before they died. All the oil in the
colony was purchased by Woolston, at rather favourable prices, the last
quotations from abroad being low: the ex-governor disposed of most of
his movables, in order to effect so large an operation. He also procured
a glorious collection of shells, and some other light articles of the
sort, filling the ship as full as she could be stowed. It was then that
the necessity of having a second vessel became apparent, and Betts
determined to withdraw his brig from the fishery, and to go to America
in her. The whales had been driven off the original fishing-ground, and
the pursuit was no longer as profitable as it had been, three f