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[1630 A.D.]

and conduct, was chosen governor, and the whole board of assistants selected for America. Yet, as the hour of departure drew near, the consciousness of danger spread such terrors, that even the hearts of the strong began to fail. One and another of the magistrates declined. It was principally the calm decision of Winthrop which sustained the courage of his companions. An honest royalist, averse to pure democracy, yet firm in his regard for existing popular liberties; in England a conformist, yet loving "gospel purity" even to Independency; in America mildly aristocratic, advocating a government of "the least part," yet desiring that part to be "the wiser of the best"; disinterested, brave, and conscientious-his character marks the transition of the reformation into avowed republicanism; when the sentiment of loyalty, still sacredly cherished, was gradually yielding to the irresistible spirit of civil freedom.

The whole number of ships employed during the season was seventeen; and they carried over not far from fifteen hundred souls. About eight hundred all of them Puritans, inclined to the party of the independents; many of them men of high endowments, large fortune, and the best education; scholars, well versed in all the learning of the times; clergymen, who ranked among the most eloquent and pious in the realm-embarked with Winthrop for their asylum, bearing with them the charter, which was to be the basis of their liberties. Before leaving Yarmouth, they published to the world the grounds of their removal, and bade an affectionate farewell to the Church of England and to the land of their nativity. "Our hearts," say they, "shall be fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare, when we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness."

The emigrants were a body of sincere believers, desiring purity of religion, and not a colony of philosophers, bent upon universal toleration. Reverence for their faith led them to a new hemisphere, where distance might protect them from inquisition; to a soil of which they had purchased the exclusive possession, with a charter of which they had acquired the entire control; for the sake of reducing to practice the doctrines of religion and the forms of civil liberty, which they cherished more than life itself. They constituted a corporation to which they themselves might establish, at their pleasure, the terms of admission. They held in their own hands the key to their asylum, and maintained their right of closing its doors against the enemies of its harmony and its safety.

In June and July, 1630, the ships which bore Winthrop and his immediate companions, arrived to a scene of gloom; such of the earlier emigrants as had survived the previous winter, were poor and weak from sickness; their corn and bread were hardly enough for a fortnight's supply. Instead of offering a welcome, they thronged to the new-comers to be fed. Nearly two hundred servants, who had been sent over at a great expense, received their liberty, free from all engagements: their labour - such was the excessive scarcity was worth less than the cost of their maintenance.

The selection of places for the new plantations became the immediate care. The bay and the adjoining rivers were examined: if Charlestown was the place of the first sojourning, it was not long before the fires of civilisation, never more to be quenched, were kindled in Boston and the adjacent villages. Boston, especially, had "sweet and pleasant springs," "and good land, affording rich corn-fields and fruitful gardens." The dispersion of the company was esteemed a grievance; but no time was left for long deliberation, and those who had health began to build. Yet sickness delayed the progress of the work; and death often withdrew the labourer from the fruit of his exertions. Every

[1630-1633 A.D.}

hardship was encountered. The emigrants lodged at best in tents of cloth and in miserable hovels; they beheld their friends "weekly, yea, almost daily, drop away before their eyes"; in a country abounding in secret fountains, they perished for the want of good water.99

THE GOVERNORSHIP OF WINTHROP

The first public worship was held under a tree. On the 30th of July, 1630, a solemn fast was observed at Charlestown; and on this occasion were laid the foundations of the first church at this place and at Boston. John Winthrop governor, and Thomas Dudley deputy, with eighteen assistants, and the body of the freemen who should settle in the new province, were to constitute a legislative and executive body, in which all the corporate rights of the colony were vested. The court of assistants held its first meeting at Charlestown, on the 23rd of August, and enacted that houses be built for the ministers, and salaries raised for them at the common charge. A second court ordered that no settlements should be made within the limit of their patent, without the consent of the governor and his assistants; and changed the name of Trimountain to Boston, of Metapan to Dorchester, and gave to the town on Charles river the name of Watertown. The first general court of Massachusetts was held the same year at Boston, where the governor and most of his assistants had removed with their families some time previous. This court enacted, in October, that the freemen should in future elect representatives, who were to choose a governor and deputy from their own number, and with these, possess power to make laws for the province and appoint officers to execute them. To this measure the people gave their assent by a general vote; but the court rescinded it early the next year, and enacted that the officers should be chosen by the whole body of freemen.

The colony suffered much from the severity of the climate, and other trials incident to a new settlement. Before December, two hundred of their number died, among whom was Lady Arbella Johnson, a daughter of the earl of Lincoln, who had left the abodes of luxury and social comfort for the American wilderness, there to leave a memorial of her virtues and misfortunes. Her husband, one of the chief patrons of the colony, weighed down by sorrow and suffering, soon followed her. But the colonists bore all with fortitude.

As soon as the severity of the winter was sufficiently abated to admit of assemblies being convened, the court proceeded to enact laws for their internal regulation: and in May (1631) that body ordered that in future no persons should be admitted freemen, or entitled to a share in the government, unless members of some of the churches within the province. Many historians and statesmen have censured this provision, and the right of the government to make it has been much questioned. Yet it was perfectly consistent with the spirit of the age; and though it subsequently produced much dissension, it continued in force until the dissolution of the government.

In 1632 the chiefs of several Indian tribes visited Governor Winthrop, and sought his alliance. Among them were the sachems of the Mohegans, Nipmucs, Narragansetts, and Pequots. They were hospitably entertained by the governor, and entered respectively into treaties of amity with the colony. To confirm their friendly relations with the Plymouth colony, Winthrop and Wilson paid a visit to Governor Bradford, and passed a Sabbath with him; an event to which no small importance was attached at the time. During the summer of 1633, two hundred emigrants arrived from England, among whom were some eminent Puritan ministers, Eliot and Mayhew, the first

[1634-1635 A.D.] Protestant missionaries to the Indians; John Cotton, "a man whose singular worth procured and long preserved to him a patriarchal repute and authority in the colony"; and Thomas Hooker, a man little inferior to him in worth and influence. At a later period, Dr. Increase Mather arrived, whose family supplied no less than ten ministers to the colony in after times, and produced the celebrated author of the Ecclesiastical History of New England.

The small-pox had prevailed in the neighbourhood of the English settlements to a considerable extent, destroying the natives and leaving their lands desolate; and as several of the vacant Indian stations were well chosen, the colonists eagerly took possession of them. This produced a greater dispersion of the population than suited the condition of an infant colony, and it led to innovation in the government, totally altering its nature and constitution. When a general court was to be held in 1634, instead of attending in person, as the charter prescribed, the freemen elected representatives in their different districts, authorising them to appear in their name, with full power to deliberate and decide on all points that fell under the cognisance of the general court. This court asserted their right to a greater share in the government than they had formerly possessed, and provided that the whole body of freemen should assemble but once a year for the election of magistrates, while the deputies from the several districts were to assemble in general court four times a year. They also provided against arbitrary taxation, by enacting that the disposing of land and raising of money should be done only by the representatives of the people. This general court is the second instance of a house of representatives in America, the first being that of Virginia, convened June 19th, 1619. The government thus established, was retained, with but slight alterations, during the continuance of the charter. We must henceforth consider the colony, not as a corporation, whose powers were defined and mode of procedure regulated by its charter - but as a society possessed of political liberty, and a constitution framed on the model of that in England. Thus early did Massachusetts echo the voice of Virginia.

The state was filled with the hum of village politicians; "the freemen of every town in the bay were busy in inquiring into their liberties and privileges." With the exception of the principle of universal suffrage, now so happily established, the representative democracy was as perfect two centuries ago as it is to-day. Even the magistrates, who acted as judges, held their office by the annual popular choice. "Elections cannot be safe there long,' said the lawyer Lechford. The same prediction has been made these two hundred years. The public mind, ever in perpetual agitation, is still easily shaken, even by slight and transient impulses; but after all its vibrations, it follows the laws of the moral world, and safely recovers its balance.

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To limit the discretion of the executive, the people next demanded a written constitution; and a commission was appointed, in May, 1635, "to frame a body of grounds of laws in resemblance to a magna charta," to serve as a bill of rights. The ministers, as well as the general court, were to pass judgment on the work; and, with partial success, Cotton urged that God's people should be governed by the laws from God to Moses. The relative powers of the assistants and the deputies remained for nearly ten years, 1634 to 1644, the subject of discussion and contest. Both were elected by the people; the former by the whole colony, the latter by the several towns. The two bodies acted together in convention; but the assistants claimed and exercised the further right of a separate negative vote on all joint proceedings. The popular branch resisted; yet the authority of the patricians was long maintained, sometimes by wise delay, sometimes by "a judicious sermon;" till, at last,

[1638-1639 A.D.]

March, 1644, a compromise divided the court into two branches, and gave to each a negative on the other. 99

BANCROFT ON PURITAN INSTITUTIONS AND INFLUENCE

It was ever the custom, and it soon became the law, in Puritan New England, that "none of the brethren shall suffer so much barbarism in their families as not to teach their children and apprentices so much learning as may enable them perfectly to read the English tongue." "To the end that learning may not be buried in the graves of our forefathers," it was ordered in all the Puritan colonies "that every township, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall appoint one to teach all children to write and read; and where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families, they shall set up a grammar school; the masters thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they may be fitted for the university." The press began its work in 1639. "When New England was poor, and they were but few in number, there was a spirit to encourage learning."

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Six years after the arrival of Winthrop, the general court voted a sum, equal to a year's rate of the whole colony, towards the erection of a college. In 1638, John Harvard, who arrived in the bay only to fall a victim to the most wasting disease of the climate, desiring to connect himself imperishably with the happiness of his adopted country, bequeathed to the college one half of his estate and all his library. The infant institution was a favorite; Connecticut, and Plymouth, and the towns in the east often contributed little offerings to promote its success; the gift of the rent of a ferry, in 1645, was a proof of the care of the state; and once, at least, every family in each of the colonies gave to the college at Cambridge twelve pence, or a peck of corn, or its value in unadulterated wampumpeag; while the magistrates and wealthier men were profuse in their liberality. The college, in return, exerted a powerful influence in forming the early character of the country. In these measures, especially in the laws establishing common schools, lies the secret of the success and character of New England. Every child, as it was born into the world, was lifted from the earth by the genius of the country, and, in the statutes of the land, received, as its birthright, a pledge of the public care for its morals and its mind.

There are some who love to enumerate the singularities of the early Puritans. They were opposed to wigs; they would preach against veils; they denounced long hair; they disliked the cross in the banner, as much as the people of Paris disliked the lilies of the Bourbons, and for analogous reasons. They would not allow Christmas Day to be kept sacred; they called neither months, nor days, nor seasons, nor churches, nor inns by the names common in England; they revived Scripture names at christenings. The grave Romans legislated on the costume of men, and their senate could even stoop to interfere with the triumphs of the sex to which civic honors are denied; the fathers of New England prohibited frivolous fashions in their own dress; and their austerity, checking extravagance even in woman, frowned on her hoods of silk and her scarfs of tiffany, extended the length of her sleeve to the wrist, and limited its greatest width to half an ell. The Puritans were formal and precise in their manners; singular in the forms of their legislation; rigid in the observance of their principles. Every topic of the day found a place

[1638-1639 A.D.]

in their extemporaneous prayers, and infused a stirring interest into their long and frequent sermons. The courts of Massachusetts respected in practice the code of Moses; the island of Rhode Island enacted for a year or two a Jewish masquerade; in New Haven, the members of the constituent committee were called the seven pillars, hewn out for the house of wisdom. But these are only the outward forms, which gave to the new sect its marked exterior.

If from the outside peculiarities, which so easily excite the sneer of the superficial observer, we look to the genius of the sect itself, Puritanism was religion struggling for the people. "Its absurdities," says its enemy, "were the shelter for the noble principles of liberty." It was its office to engraft the new institutions of popular energy upon the old European system of a feudal aristocracy and popular servitude; the good was permanent; the outward emblems which were the signs of the party, were of transient duration; like the clay and ligaments with which the graft is held in its place, and which are brushed away as soon as the scion is firmly united.

Puritanism exalted the laity. Every individual who had experienced the raptures of devotion, every believer, who, in his moments of ecstasy, had felt the assurance of the favor of God, was in his own eyes a consecrated person. For him the wonderful counsels of the Almighty had chosen a Saviour; for him the laws of nature had been suspended and controlled, the heavens had opened, earth had quaked, the sun had veiled his face, and Christ had died and had risen again; for him prophets and apostles had revealed to the world the oracles and the will of God. Viewing himself as an object of the divine favour, and in this connection disclaiming all merit, he prostrated himself in the dust before heaven; looking out upon mankind, how could he but respect himself, whom God had chosen and redeemed? Angels hovered round his path, charged to minister to his soul; spirits of darkness leagued together to tempt him from his allegiance. His burning piety could use no liturgy; his penitence could reveal his transgressions to no confessor. He knew no superior in sanctity. He could as little become the slave of a priestcraft as of a despot. He was himself a judge of the orthodoxy of the elders; and if he feared the invisible powers of the air, of darkness, and of hell, he feared nothing on earth. Puritanism constituted, not the Christian clergy, but the Christian people, the interpreter of the divine will. The voice of the majority was the voice of God; and the issue of Puritanism was therefore popular sovereignty.

Of all contemporary sects, the Puritans were the most free from credulity, and, in their zeal for reform, pushed their regulations to what some would consider a sceptical extreme. So many superstitions had been bundled up with every venerable institution of Europe, that ages have not yet dislodged them all. The Puritans at once emancipated themselves from a crowd of observances. They established a worship purely spiritual. To them the elements remained but wine and bread; they invoked no saints; they raised no altar; they adored no crucifix; they kissed no book; they asked no absolution; they paid no tithes; they saw in the priest nothing more than a man; ordination was no more than an approbation of the officer, which might be expressed by the brethren, as well as by other ministers; the church, as a place of worship, was to them but a meeting-house; they dug no graves in consecrated earth; unlike their posterity, they married without a minister, and buried the dead without a prayer. Witchcraft had not been made the subject of sceptical consideration; and in the years in which Scotland sacrificed hecatombs to the delusion, there were three victims in New England.

On every subject but religion, the mildness of Puritan legislation corresponded to the popular character of Puritan doctrines. Hardly a nation of

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