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The

America, where his memory will never die. remainder of his people, and with them his wife and children, emigrated, so soon as means could be provided to defray the costs. "To enjoy religious liberty was the known end of the first comers' great adventure into this remote wilderness;" and they desired no increase, but from the friends of their communion. Yet their residence in Holland, making them acquainted with various forms of Christianity, had emancipated them from bigotry; and they were disinclined to religious persecution.

The frame of civil government in the Old Colony was

of the utmost simplicity. A governor was chosen by

general suffrage, whose power, always subordinate to the general will, was, at the desire of Bradford, specially restricted by a council of five, and afterwards of seven, assistants. In the council, the governor had but a double vote. For more than eighteen years, "the whole body of the male inhabitants" constituted the legislature; the state was governed, like our towns, as a strict democracy; and the people were frequently convened to decide on executive not less than on judicial questions. At length, the increase of population, and its diffusion over a wider territory, led to the representative system, and each town sent its committee to the general court.

Through scenes of gloom and misery, the Pilgrims showed the way to an asylum for those who would go to the wilderness for the purity of religion or the liberty of conscience. Accustomed "in their native land to no more than a plain country life and the innocent trade of husbandry," they set the example of colonizing New England, and formed the mould for the civil and religious character of its institutions. Enduring every hardship themselves, they were the servants of posterity, the benefactors of succeeding generations. In the history of the world, many pages are devoted to commemorate the men who have besieged cities, subdued provinces, or overthrown empires. A colony is a better offering than a victory: the citizens of the United States should

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[1620.

rather cherish the memory of those who founded a state on the basis of democratic liberty; the fathers of the country; the men who, as they first trod the soil of the New World, scattered the seminal principles of republican freedom and national independence. They enjoyed, in anticipation, the thought of their extending influence, and the fame which their grateful successors would award to their virtues. "Out of small beginnings," said Bradford, "great things have been produced; and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many, yea, in some sort, to our whole nation." Posterity repeats the consolation offered from England to the Pilgrims in the season of their greatest sufferings- "Let it not be grievous to you, that you have been instruments to break the ice for others.

The honor shall be yours to the world's end."

CHAPTER XIII.

COLONIZATION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE AND MAINE.

THE Council of Plymouth for New England, having obtained of King James the boundless territory and the immense monopoly which they had desired, had no further obstacles to encounter but the laws of nature and the remonstrances of parliament. No tributaries tenanted their countless millions of uncultivated acres; and exactions upon the vessels of English fishermen were the only means of acquiring an immediate revenue from America.

In the second year after the settlement of Plymouth, five-and-thirty sail of vessels went to fish on the coasts of New England, and made good voyages. The monopolists appealed to King James; and the monarch, asserting his own prerogative, rather than regarding the

1623, 1624.]

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wish of the house of commons, issued a proclamation, which forbade any to approach the northern coast of America, except with the special leave of the company of Plymouth, or of the privy council.

In 1623, one Francis West was despatched with a commission as admiral of New England, for the purpose of excluding from the American seas such fishermen as came without a license. But the ocean was a wide place over which to keep sentry. The mariners refused to pay the tax which he imposed; and his ineffectual authority was soon resigned.

In the same year, the patentees, alike prodigal of charters and tenacious of their monopoly, having already given to Robert Gorges, the son of Sir Ferdinand, a patent for a tract extending ten miles on Massachusetts Bay, and thirty miles into the interior, appointed him lieutenant-general of New England, with power "to restrain interlopers," not less than to regulate the affairs of the corporation. His patent was never permanently used; though the colony at Weymouth was renewed, to meet once more with ill fortune. He was attended by Morrell, an Episcopal clergyman, who was provided with a commission for the superintendence of ecclesiastical affairs. Instead of establishing a hierarchy, Morrell, remaining in New England about a year, wrote a description of the country in verse; while the civil dignity of Robert Gorges ended in a short-lived dispute with Weston. They came to plant a hierarchy and a general government, and they produced only a fruitless quarrel and a dull poem.

The house of commons of 1621 had indignantly opposed the charter to the council of Plymouth. To the argument that America was not annexed to the realm, and therefore not within the jurisdiction of parliament, it had been answered, that "a bill passed by the commons and lords, if it receive the king's assent, will control the patent When parliament was again convened, in 1624, the controversy against the charter was renewed. English fishermen, it was resolved, shall have

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fishing with all its incidents.

"Your patent' thus Gorges was addressed by Sir Edward Coke from the speaker's chair " contains many particulars contrary to the laws and privileges of the subject; it is a monopoly, and the ends of private gain are concealed under color of planting a colony." "Shall none," observed the veteran lawyer in debate- "shall none visit the seacoast for fishing? This is to make a monopoly upon the seas, which wont to be free. If you alone are to pack and dry fish, you attempt a monopoly of the wind and the sun.' It was in vain for Sir George Calvert to resist. The bill passed without amendment, though it never received the royal assent.

The determined opposition of the house, though it could not move the king to overthrow the corporation, paralyzed its enterprise; many of the patentees abandoned their interest; so that the Plymouth company now did little except issue grants of domains; and the cottages, which, within a few years, were sprinkled along the coast from Cape Cod to the Bay of Fundy, were the consequence of private adventure.

The territory between the River of Salem and the Kennebec became, in a great measure, the property of two enterprising individuals. We have seen that Martin Pring was the discoverer of New Hampshire, and that John Smith of Virginia had examined and extolled the deep waters of the Piscataqua. Sir Ferdinand Gorges, the most energetic member of the council of Plymouth, always ready to encounter risks in the cause of colonizing America, had not allowed repeated ill success to chill his confidence and decision; and now he found in John Mason, "who had been governor of a plantation in Newfoundland, a man of action," like himself. It was not difficult for Mason, who had been elected an associate and secretary of the council, to obtain, in March, 1621, a grant of the lands between Salem River and the farthest head of the Merrimac ; but he did no more with his vast estate than give it a Rame The passion for land increased; and, in August,

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1622, Gorges and Mason took a patent for Laconia, the whole country between the sea, the St. Lawrence, the Merrimac, and the Kennebec; a company of English merchants was formed, and under its auspices permanent plantations were, in 1623, established on the banks of the Piscataqua. Portsmouth and Dover are among the oldest towns in New England. Splendid as were the anticipations of the proprietaries, and lavish as was their enthusiasm in liberal expenditures, the immediate progress of the plantations was inconsiderable, and, even as fishing stations, they do not seem to have prospered.

When the country on Massachusetts Bay was granted to a company, of which the zeal and success were soon to overshadow all the efforts of proprietaries and merchants, it became expedient for Mason to procure a new patent; and on the seventh of November, 1629, he received a fresh title to the territory between the Merrimac and Piscataqua, in terms which interfered with the pretensions of his neighbors on the south. This was the patent for New Hampshire, and was pregnant with nothing so signally as suits at law. No notice seems to have been taken of the rights of the natives; nor did they now issue any deed of their lands; but the soil in the immediate vicinity of Dover, and afterwards of Portsmouth, was conveyed to the planters themselves, or to those at whose expense the settlement had been made. A favorable impulse was thus given to the little colonies; and houses now began to be built on the Strawberry Bank" of the Piscataqua. But the progress of the town was slow. In 1638, the whole coast is described as a mere wilderness, with here and there a few huts scattered by the sea-side; and thirty years after its settlement, Portsmouth made only the moderate boast of containing "between fifty and sixty families."

When the grand charter, which had established the council of Plymouth, was about to be revoked, Mason extended his pretensions to the Salem River, the southern boundary of his first territory, and, in April, 1635, ob