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sive war; and they concluded with declaring it to be 66 a scandal in religion, that a General Court of Christians should be obliged to act and engage upon the faith of six delegates against their conscience."1

June 7.

June 29.

The report was approved by both branches of the Legislature of Massachusetts. When intelligence of what had been done reached Plymouth, the General Court of that Colony raised a committee to examine "the Articles of Confederation, and to give in their thoughts" at another meeting, which was to be held in the following month; 2 but it does not appear that anything was done in pursuance of this measure. The General Court of New Haven were strongly incensed. The Governor prepared an elaborate argument with a protest against the course which had been taken by Massachusetts; and two messengers — to be joined by two others from Connecticut-were instructed to proceed with it to Boston, and endeavor to obtain a reversal of the decision which had been there announced. Should they fail in that attempt, they were to ask "leave to use some means whereby volunteers might be procured out of that Colony, with shipping, victuals, and ammunition." The Court agreed that, if volunteers could be obtained in Massachusetts, New Haven would embark in the war with the aid of Connecticut alone. And the question being raised, whether, "in case the Massachusetts Colony would not revoke their interpretation they had given of the Articles of Confederacy, the Commissioners should meet

1 Records, &c., in Hazard, 249–273; comp. Mass. Rec., III. 311 - 316. When the Commissioners had been, at this time, a month in session, the year for which the Commissioners from Connecticut had been chosen expired (Conn. Rec., I. 233); and a week later, the term of service of the Commissioners from Massachusetts came to an end in the same manner. (Mass.

Rec., III. 258.) The session was ac-
cordingly suspended (May 18) till the
Commissioners elected anew by these
Colonies should have time to present
themselves. A new session began, at
the request of Massachusetts, May 31.
(Records, &c., in Hazard, II. 267;
comp. Mass. Rec., III. 314.)
2 Plym. Rec., III. 33.

at the usual time,

Threat of disunion.

the Court by vote declared that, in case that interpretation were not called in, they saw no cause why they should meet."1 Connecticut acceded to the proposal for an application to Massachusetts, but declined to be a party to the plan of obstructing the regular meeting of the Commissioners.3 The messengers came back from Boston with a letter from the Governor, and two letters from the Magistrates. Endicott wrote that he could not answer for the General Court of his Colony, which was not then in session; but that he did not believe they would consent "either to shed blood, or to hazard the shedding of their subjects' blood, except they could satisfy their consciences that God called for it;

neither did he think it was ever at first intended so to act against their consciences when they entered into confederation." The Magistrates used a courteous and conciliating tone, and avowed their own conviction that, in a correct construction of the Articles of Confederation, no distinction could be maintained, in respect to the power of the Commissioners, between offensive and defensive wars.4

Sept. 1.

At the regular time, the Commissioners for all four of the Colonies again came together at Boston. The General Court of Massachusetts was in session. "The Court, having considered the letters and papers from the General Courts of Connecticut and New Haven, which were directed to the Governor and Council," wrote to the Commissioners, protesting against the injustice of being placed "under a dilemma, either to act without satisfaction against their light, or be accounted covenantbreakers." The Commissioners were men too clearheaded and upright to deny the soundness of the ethical doctrine on which Massachusetts had deliberately taken

1 N. H. Rec., II. 4-14.

2 Conn. Rec., I. 244.

3 Ibid., 245.

4 N. H. Rec., II. 18-22.

her stand. "They knew well," they said in their replies, "that no authority or power in parents, magistrates, commissioners, &c., doth or ought to hold against God or his commands." They "readily acknowledged that all counsels, laws, and conclusions, whether of magistrates, General Courts, or Commissioners, so far as they were manifestly unjust, were, and ought to be accounted, of no force. But," they added, "we conceive that is not the question here."

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Sept. 9.

With Massachusetts, however, professedly, at any rate, that was precisely the question. And, that being the question, she was immovable. In the sequel of an animated correspondence, the dissatisfied Commissioners threatened to dissolve the Confederacy, and "return without loss of time to their other occasions." The Court briefly replied on the next day:-"We see not reason to protract time in fruitless and needless returns; we shall acquiesce in our last paper, and commit the success to God." To make sure, however, of being ❝rightly understood," when they learned that the Commissioners were about to disperse, they followed their "short writing" with a vote expressing their sense," that, by the Articles of Confederation, so far as the determinations of the Commissioners are just and according to God, the several Colonies are bound before God and men to act accordingly, and that they sin and break covenant if they do not; but otherwise," they added, "we judge we are not bound, neither before God nor men." This explanation the Commissioners "so far accepted" as to determine to refer to their respective General Courts the question which had arisen, and to proceed to the ordinary business of the session.1

Whatever judgment may be passed upon the skill in argument with which Massachusetts vindicated her course

1 Records, &c., in Hazard, 273 – 283; Mass. Rec., III. 323–327, IV. (i.) 166

173; comp. Mass. Rec., II. 140 – 144, III. 311–316.

on this occasion, no conclusion, different from that which she announced, could have been expected to follow from the principles which steadily guided her action in the early times, provided the conviction professed by her respecting the character of the facts, to which those principles were now to be applied, was really entertained. Whether or not she had either incautiously or deliberately subscribed to a form of words expressing a contract with others to join them, at their pleasure, in what she might account a causeless and therefore wicked war, her enlightened conscience could not fail to satisfy her, as soon as the case arose, that she had not, and could not have, entered in fact into a stipulation to that effect; inasmuch as such a stipulation would have been essentially invalid and void from the beginning, as being contrary to good morals.

It is not possible, in the nature of things, for two parties to enter into an obligatory engagement together to do a wrong to a third party. A mutual engagement to spoil and kill the innocent, is the bond of banditti, which courts and gibbets, carrying into effect the moral sense of men, refuse to recognize. What the sense of justice of Massachusetts was to be overruled by on this occasion, if overruled by anything, was her confederation with her sister Colonies. A confederation is a mutual compact, or promise, made between communities; and a promise made by a community is subject to the same conditions as a promise made by an individual. One of these conditions is, that, so far as a promise, by its terms, would require the doing of an immoral act, it has, and can have, no binding force. It is not, and never was, a promise, because the essential element of obligation was absent from it; or rather to present the truth more fully because antecedent, paramount, and inviolable obligations would be violated by its being kept. If the contingency that an engagement with another party will prove to have pledged the promiser to an unrighteous

act be looked forward to, the engagement cannot be made without crime ; but in any case, a promise, whether of an individual or of a community, has no virtue to require, or justify, or excuse, or palliate an act which, independent of it, would be culpable.1

On this occasion, the Commissioners of the three smaller Colonies declared that Massachusetts was dissolving the Confederacy, when she refused to do at its bidding what in their view was right, but what was in her judgment a gross iniquity; and a famous divine of the day could find Scripture to quote against her.2 But she knew no obligation entitled to interfere with that allegiance to the right and to God, which, however it may be stigmatized in the wickedness or the fatuity of party strife, is the only salt the world affords to keep either men or states from rottenness. She had made the Confederacy, and it was valuable and dear to her. But when its engagements were pleaded for what to her was a crime, she could not shut her eyes to the truth, that the frown of the God of justice was a calamity more to be dreaded than a severance of that union. They who spoke her magnanimous purpose knew that a strife with persons made resolute by a thoughtful and religious sense of duty often ends, when the adverse party is accessible to reason, in its abandoning the point in dispute. They knew further, that they were now dealing with men of religious integrity; and they did not believe that, on reflection, such men would decide to break with them for refusing to do what their honest convictions condemned. The event easily justified their wisdom. But, had the prospect, or the event, been different, these were not men who chiefly regarded present perplexities or apparent

1 Paley has stated these principles with the clearness and neatness, which were usual with him when he treated subjects that he had mastered. (Principles of Moral and Political Philoso

phy, Book III., Part I. Chap. V. § 3, Chap. VI.; comp. Vattel, Droit des Gens, Liv. II. § 228.)

2 Letter of Mr. Norris, of Salem, in Hazard, II. 255, 256.

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