ADOPTED.--WILLIAM
SAYLE COMMISSIONED GOVERNOR.--LEGISLATURE CAREER OF THE
COLONY.--THE INTRODUCTION OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH OF
ENGLAND INTO THE COLONY.--THE RIGHTS OF NEGROES CONTROLLED
ABSOLUTELY BY THEIR MASTERS.--AN ACT RESPECTING
CONSPIRACIES.--THE WRATH OF ILL-NATURED WHITES VISITED UPON
THEIR SLAVES.--AN ACT AGAINST THE EMANCIPATION OF
SLAVES.--LIMITED RIGHTS OF FREE NEGROES.

The geographical situation of North Carolina was favorable to the
slave-trade.

Through the genius of Shaftesbury, and the subtle cunning of John
Locke, Carolina received, and for a time adopted, the most remarkable
constitution ever submitted to any people in any age of the world. The
whole affair was an insult to humanity, and in its fundamental
elements bore the palpable evidences of the cruel conclusions of an
exclusive philosophy. "No elective franchise could be conferred upon a
freehold of less than fifty acres," while all executive power was
vested in the proprietors themselves. Seven courts were controlled by
forty-two counsellors, twenty-eight of whom held their places through
the gracious favor of the proprietary and "the nobility." Trial by
jury was concluded by the opinions of the majority.

"The instinct of aristocracy dreads the moral power of a
proprietary yeomanry; the perpetual degradation of the
cultivators of the soil was enacted. The leet-men, or
tenants, holding ten acres of land at a fixed rent, were not
only destitute of political franchises, but were adscripts
to the soil, 'under the jurisdiction of their lord, without
appeal;' and it was added, 'all the children of leet-men
shall be leet-men, and so to all generations.'"[497]

The men who formed the rank and file of the yeomanry of the colony of
North Carolina were ill prepared for a government launched upon the
immense scale of the Locke Constitution. The hopes and fears, the
feuds and debates, the vexatious and insoluble problems, of the
political science of government which had clouded the sky of the most
astute and ambitous statesmen of Europe, were dumped into this
remarkable instrument. The distance between the people and the
nobility was sought to be made illimitable, and the right to govern
was based upon permanent property conditions. Hereditary wealth was to
go arm in arm with political power.

The constitution was signed on the 21st of July, 1669, and William
Sayle was