Island been large, the world would at once have been filled with wonder and admiration at its history. The excellency of the principles on which it rested its earliest institutions is not diminished by the narrowness of the land in which they were for the first time tested. Let, then, the name of Roger Williams be preserved in universal history as one who advanced moral and political science, and made himself a benefactor of his race.

The most touching trait in the founder of Rhode Island was his conduct toward those who had driven him out of their society. He says of them truly: "I did ever, from my soul, honor and love them, even when their judgment led them to afflict me." In his writings he inveighs against the spirit of intolerance, and never against his persecutors or the colony of Massachusetts. We shall presently behold him requite their severity by exposing his life at their request and for their benefit. It is not strange, then, if "many hearts were touched with relentings." The half-wise Cotton Mather concedes that many judicious persons confessed him to have had the root of the matter in him; and the immediate witnesses of his actions declared him, from "the whole course and tenor of his life and conduct, to have been one of the most disinterested men that ever lived, a most pious and heavenly minded soul."

CHAPTER XVI.

COLONIZATION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, RHODE ISLAND, AND CONNECTICUT.

RHODE ISLAND was the offspring of Massachusetts; but the loss of a few inhabitants was not sensibly felt in the parent colony. When the first difficulties of encountering the wilderness had been surmounted, and an apprehension had arisen of evil days that were to befall England, the stream of emigration flowed with a full current to Massachusetts; "Godly people there began to apprehend a special hand of Providence in raising this plantation, and their hearts were generally stirred to come over." The new settlers were so many that there was no room for them all in the earlier places of abode; and Simon Willard, a trader, joining with Peter Bulkeley, a minister from St. John's College in Cambridge, a man of wealth, benevolence, and great learning, became chief instruments in extending the frontier. Under their guidance, at the fall of the leaf in 1635, a band of twelve families, toiling through thickets of ragged bushes, and clambering over crossed trees, made their way along Indian paths to the green meadows of Concord. A tract of land six miles square was purchased for the planters of the squaw sachem and a chief to whom, according to Indian laws of property, it belonged. The suffering settlers burrowed for their first shelter under a hillside. The cattle sickened on the wild fodder; sheep and swine were destroyed by wolves; there was no flesh but game. The long rains poured through the insufficient roofs of their smoky cottages, and troubled even the time for sleep. Yet the men labored willingly, for they had their wives and little ones about them. The forest rung with their psalms;

and "the poorest people of God in the whole world," unable "to excel in number, strength, or riches, resolved to strive to excel in grace and in holiness." That New England village will one day engage the attention of the world.

Meantime, the fame of the liberties of Massachusetts extended widely. Among those who came in 1635 was the fiery Hugh Peter, who had been pastor of a church of English exiles in Rotterdam, a republican of energy and eloquence, not always tempering enterprise with judgment. At the same time came Henry Vane, the younger, "for conscience' sake." "He liked not the discipline of the church of England, of which none of the ministers would give him the sacrament standing." "Neither persuasions of the bishops nor authority of his parents prevailed with him ;" and, from "obedience of the gospel," he cheerfully "forsook the preferments of the court of Charles for the ordinances of religion in their purity in New England."

The freemen of Massachusetts, pleased that a young man of his rank and ability agreed with them in belief and shared their exile, in 1636, elected him their governor. The choice was unwise, for neither age nor experience entitled him to the distinction. He came but as a sojourner, and was not imbued with the genius of the place; his clear mind, fresh from the public business of England, saw distinctly what the colonists did not wish to see-the wide difference between their practice under their charter and the meaning of that instrument on the principles of English jurisprudence.

At first, the arrival of Vane seemed a pledge for the emigration of men of the highest rank. Several English peers, especially Lord Say and Seal, a Presbyterian, a friend to the Puritans, yet with but dim perceptions of the true nature of civil liberty, and Lord Brooke, a man of charity and meekness, an early friend to tolerance, had begun to negotiate for such changes as would offer them inducements for removing to America. They demanded a division of the general court into two branches, that of assistants and of representatives-a change which, from domestic reasons, was ultimately adopted; but they further required an acknowledgment of their own hereditary right to a seat in the upper house. The fathers of

Massachusetts promised them the honors of magistracy, and began to make appointments for life; but, as for the establishment of hereditary dignity, they answered by the hand of Cotton: "Where God blesseth any branch of any noble or generous family with a spirit and gifts fit for government, it would be a taking of God's name in vain to put such a talent under a bushel, and a sin against the honor of magistracy to neglect such in our public elections. But, if God should not delight to furnish some of their posterity with gifts fit for magistracy, we should expose them rather to reproach and prejudice, and the commonwealth with them, than exalt them to honor, if we should call them forth, when God doth not, to public authority." The people, moreover, were uneasy at any permanent concession of office; Saltonstall, "that much-honored and upright-hearted servant of Christ," loudly reproved "the sinful innovation," and advocated its reform; nor would the freemen be quieted till, in 1639, it was made a law that those who were appointed magistrates for life should yet not be magistrates except in those years in which they should be regularly chosen at the annual election.

The institutions of Massachusetts were likewise in jeopardy from religious divisions. In Boston and its environs, the most profound questions relating to human existence and the laws of the moral world were discussed with passionate zeal; the Holy Spirit was claimed as the inward companion of man; while many persons, in their zeal to distinguish between abstract truth and the forms under which truth is conveyed, between unchanging principles and changing institutions, were in perpetual danger of making shipwreck of all religious faith.

Amid the arrogance of spiritual pride, the vagaries of undisciplined imaginations, and the extravagances to which the intellectual power may be led in its pursuit of ultimate principles, two distinct parties may be perceived. The first consisted of the original settlers, the framers of the civil government and their adherents; they who were intent on the foundation and preservation of a commonwealth, and were satisfied with the established order of society. They had founded their government on the basis of the church, and church membership could be obtained only by an exemplary life and the favor of the

clergy. They dreaded unlimited freedom of opinion as the parent of ruinous divisions. "The cracks and flaws in the new building of the reformation," thought they, "portend a fall;" they desired patriotism, union, and a common heart; they were earnest to confirm and build up the state, the child of their cares and their sorrows.

The other party was composed of individuals who had arrived after the civil government and religious discipline of the colony had been established. Their pride consisted in following the principles of the reformation with logical precision to all their consequences. Their eyes were not primarily directed to the institutions of Massachusetts, but to articles of religion; and they resisted every form of despotism over the mind. To them, the clergy of Massachusetts were "the ushers of persecution," "popish factors" who had not imbibed the true principle of Christian reform; the magistrates were "priest-ridden" under a covenant of works; and they applied to the influence of the Puritan ministers the principle which Luther and Calvin had employed against the observances and pretensions of the Roman church. Standing on the doctrine of justification by faith alone, they derided the formality of the established religion; and by asserting that the Holy Spirit dwells in every believer, that the revelation of the Spirit is superior "to the ministry of the word," they sustained with intense fanaticism the paramount authority of private judg

ment.

The founder of this party was Anne Hutchinson, a woman of such admirable understanding "and profitable and sober carriage" that her enemies could never speak of her without acknowledging her eloquence and ability. She was encour aged by John Wheelwright, a silenced minister, who had mar ried her husband's sister, and by Henry Vane, the governor of the colony; while a majority of the people of Boston approved her rebellion against the clergy. Men of learning, members of the magistracy and of the general court, accepted her opinions. The public mind seemed hastening toward an insurrection against spiritual authority; and she was denounced as "weakening the hands and hearts of the people toward the ministers," as being "like Roger Williams, or worse."