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alone that stamp a value on land. The cold, barren, and inhospitable country comprised within their grant, was scarcely worthy of acceptance, certainly not of purchase, at the date of their patent. The fostering hand of the parent state was never extended to them. They cleared the interminable forests, they resisted the assaults of the savages, and the encroachments of the French. They built up their villages, extended their settlements, erected their fortifications, founded their schools, supported their clergy, and established and maintained the government, not only without the aid of England, but under many discouragements, and in the face of opposition.

The annals of colonization may be searched in vain for an effort so distinguished for courage, industry, perseverance, frugality, and intelligence. Their descendants have reason to be proud of the imperishable monument their ancestors thus erected, in the great American wilderness, of their own fame. Is it then to be wondered at, if they loved so dearly, and defended so strongly, a possession so peculiarly their own? and must we not in fairness admit, if they called sophistry in aid of their claim to independence, that England, to maintain her title by discovery, had not in reality much better or sounder grounds to proceed upon. The right of Europeans to America will not bear a very close investigation, but the pioneers who settled it, under the circumstances I have mentioned, might well be excused, if they thought their pretensions quite equal to those who had first sailed along the coast, and called it their own.

Their faults were engendered by the age in which they lived, their seclusion from the world, the severity of their morals, and the confused and imperfect knowledge they had of the relative obligation of the Old and New Testament; and as it would be manifestly unjust to omit those circumstances that palliated or accounted for their conduct, so, on the other hand, the narrative would be equally incomplete if no mention were made of their glaring inconsistencies. By quitting the reformed and pristine Church of England to which they belonged, they gave up fixed principles for the unsettled license of that unmeaning term, Protestantism, and decent and necessary ceremonies, for an exemption from all orders and established observances. They measured what they were by what they were not; and, as they protested against the errors of Popery, very complacently assured

that the whole Roman Church was a vast and complicated error, and that whatever she did not believe, practice, or enforce-and that only was primitive. In their pious horror of its unauthorized assumptions, they adopted a system that consisted of nothing else but human inventions. They resisted a prelate with disdain, for the Pope was a bishop. They suppressed confirmation, transferred ordination to the brethren, and marriage to the civil magistrate; and, as prelatic clergy bowed in reverence, and kneeled in supplication, they abolished both as superstitions, and voted to stand up boldly before their Maker, and plead guilty or not guilty like men. They did not think it scriptural to call the Apostles saints, who were unlettered men like Congregationalists (with no other possible advantage but the accidental one of being inspired), but they thought it by no means superstitious to appropriate the designation to themselves, or to regard old women as witches, and consistent with religion to execute them. They denied the authority of the General Council, composed of learned divines, but they established synods, consisting of men who compensated for their want of erudition by their superior gifts of extemporaneous preaching. They maintained the right of private judgment in religion, but they hanged Quakers; for it was manifest that they who differed from them had no judgment whatever. Determined to limit the authority of the clergy, they elected and ordained them themselves, and gave them to understand that the same power that made could discharge them. They then, with singular inconsistency, invested them with privileges that made them infinitely more despotic than those of any Church in the world. They emigrated, they said, to avoid persecution. More than fifty years elapsed before the Church of England could compel them to be tolerant. The fact that religious liberty was forced upon them by her efforts, is a triumphant answer to the calumnies that have been so liberally heaped upon her by sectarians and Romanists, at home and abroad.

This is the natural effect of schism. But the blame belongs not to the Puritans of Massachusetts more than to others. Dissent has no resting-place. There are regions yet unexplored, where the adventurers who are in advance of their nation, and dwell on the borders of civilization, may push their discovery, and, like the Mormons, enjoy the revelation of prophets of their own. Although we must now take leave of these republican colonists,

we shall still continue their history during the interval that elapsed before the arrival of the new charter, when it will be a more agreeable duty to examine the institutions they planted in the country, the beneficial effects of which are still felt and acknowledged throughout the United States. I shall next give a brief view of the condition of the other provinces at this period, which forms a great epoch in the history of the country, and afterward trace the progrèss of democracy in this continent during the existence of the royal government, until it attained that strength and maturity that enabled it boldly to assert, and manfully achieve, its absolute independence.

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BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

Indignation and Grief of the Colonists at the Loss of their Charter-Death of Charles II.-Accession of James II.-Apprehensions of having Colonel Kirke as Governor-Some Account of him-Mr. Dudley appointed President, who, with the Assistance of six Councilors, undertakes the Government-Protest of the Magistrates against the Suppression of the Legislature-Unpopularity of the President-Description of the Territory within his Jurisdiction-Some Account of Maine and New Hampshire, and the Intrigues of Massachusetts to extend its Authority over them-Desire of Charles II. to confer the former on the Duke of Monmouth, and to establish a Royal Government in the LatterBoth comprehended within the Commission of President Dudley-Character of his Administration.

We have seen in the foregoing chapters how constantly this people asserted and maintained their independence from the day they first landed in the colony until the charter was revoked. The loss of their liberty filled them with grief, and indignation. They had always dreaded interference, and had hitherto resisted or evaded every attempt of the king, the Parliament, or the hierarchy to control them. This continued watchfulness, and anxious jealousy, had infused into their minds suspicion of the designs, and distrust of the good faith of England; but the loss of their patent inspired feelings of hatred for what they called the wantonness of invasion, and of revenge for the humiliation of defeat. Unable to defend themselves, they were compelled to yield to superior power; but if they could not openly contend, they could at least harass. If they could not recover the country they had cleared and planted, they felt they could make it an uncomfortable abode for their victors. In the age in which they lived, they knew they must have some form of constitutional government, and some fuudamental rights conceded to them, and that the exercise of those privileges in a spirit of bitterness and uncompromising obstinacy must necessarily embarrass any administration, and render the possession of the colony as useless to

the English, as their presence and interference was distasteful to them.

Thus the republicanism of America may be traced to its first settlement, but the intense hatred of the Imperial Government, that gave stability and strength to the anti-monarchical principles, and finally led to the overthrow of British rule, must be dated in 1684 (the period when they lost their charter). It is not easy, at this distance of time, for persons practically unacquainted with the untiring zeal, the malignant revenge, intrepid courage, and martyr spirit of fanaticism, to comprehend the full force of the rage and disaffection with which the Provincials were maddened at the overthrow of their little sovereignty. The revocation by Charles II. of the patent of Massachusetts was the first step taken in a great scheme of reform he had conceived for the transatlantic plantations. The inconsiderate manner in which he had disposed of a large portion of his American territory, the little control he had reserved to himself in the charters he had given to several colonies, and the difficulty he found in enforcing obedience to the laws of trade, as well as the increasing growth of democracy among the people, admonished him that they all required remodeling. By commencing with the most refractory, he gave warning to the others, that he had at last become sensible of the error of his past inconsistencies, and was resolved on vigorous conduct for the future. He died before he could put any of his plans into execution, and the task devolved upon his brother, James II.

The first measure of the new monarch was to make a temporary provision for the government of Massachusetts, in order to give him time to mature and arrange the details of a comprehensive system of colonial policy. His very name inspired terror and dislike into the minds of the nonconformists. Their fears derived additional intensity from a rumor that reached them, that the noted and detestable Colonel Kirke was to be imposed upon them as governor. To receive a stranger at all in that capacity from the hands of others, when they had been in the habit of filling the office by election themselves, was an intolerable grievance, but to submit to a man who was only known for his atrocious butcheries, required a Christian meekness for which they could find neither example nor authority in Puritanism.

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