For example, during the Middle Ages, men like Saint Hugh and Peter

the Venerable, and, most of all, Saint Francis, possessed by dreams

of attaining to perfection, by leading lives of inimitable purity,

self-devotion, and asceticism, inspired the community about them with

the conviction that they could work miracles. They thereby, as a reward,

drew to the Church they served what amounted to being, considering the

age they lived in, boundless wealth. But the effect of this economic

phenomenon was far from what they had hoped or expected. Instead of

raising the moral standard of men to a point where all the world would

be improved, they so debased the hierarchy, by making money the standard

of ambition within it, that, as a whole, the priesthood accepted,

without any effective protest, the fires of the Council of Constance

which consumed Huss, and the abominations of the Borgias at Rome.

Perfectly logically, as a corollary to this orgy of crime and

bestiality, the wars of the Reformation swept away many, many thousands

of human beings, wasted half of Europe, and only served to demonstrate

the futility of ideals.

And so it was with the Puritans, who were themselves the children of the

revolt against social corruption. They fondly believed that a new era

was to be ushered in by the rule of the Cromwellian saints. What the

Cromwellian saints did in truth usher in, was the carnival of debauchery

of Charles II, in its turn to be succeeded by the capitalistic

competitive age which we have known, and which has abutted in the recent

war.

Man can never hope to change his physical necessities, and therefore his

moral nature must always remain the same in essence, if not in form.

As Washington truly said, “The motives which predominate most in human

affairs are self-love and self-interest,” and “nothing binds one country

or one state to another but interest.”

If, then, it be true, that man is an automatic animal moving always

along the paths of least resistance toward predetermined ends, it cannot

fail to be useful to us in the present emergency to mark, as distinctly

as we can, the causes which impelled Germany, at a certain point in her

career, to choose the paths which led to her destruction rather than

those which, at the first blush, promised as well, and which seemed to

be equally as easy and alluring. And we may possibly, by this process,

expose certain phenomena which may profit us, since such an examination

may help us to estimate what avenues are like to prove ultimately the

least resistant.

Throughout the Middle Ages North Germany, which is the region whereof

Berlin is the capital, enjoyed relatively little prosperity, because

Brandenburg, for example, lay beyond the zone of those main trade routes

which, before the advent of railways, served as the arteries of the

eastern trade. Not until after the opening of the Industrial Revolution

in England, did that condition alter. Nor even then did a change come

rapidly because of the inertia of the Russian people. Nevertheless,

as the Russian railway system developed, Berlin one day found herself

standing, as it were, at the apex of a vast triangle whose boundaries

are, roughly, indicated by the position of Berlin itself, Petersburg,

Warsaw, Moscow, Kiev, and the Ukraine. Beyond Berlin the stream of

traffic flowed to Hamburg and thence found vent in America, as a

terminus. Great Britain, more especially, demanded food, and food passed

by sea from Odessa. Hence Russia served as a natural base for Germany,

taking German manufactures and offering to Germany a reservoir capable

of absorbing her redundant population. Thus it had long been obvious

that intimate relations with Russia were of prime importance to Germany

since all the world could perceive that the monied interests of Russia

must more and more fall into German hands, because of the intellectual

limitations of the Russians. Also pacification to the eastward always

was an integral part of Bismarck’s policy. Notwithstanding which other

influences conflicted with, and ultimately overbalanced, this eastern

trend in Germany.

For many thousand years before written history began, the economic

capital of the world, the seat for the time being of opulence and

of splendor, and at once the admiration and the envy of less favored

rivals, has been a certain ambulatory spot upon the earth’s surface, at

a point where the lines of trade from east to west have converged. And

always the marked idiosyncrasy of this spot has been its unrest. It has

constantly oscillated from east to west according as the fortunes of

war have prevailed, or as the march of applied science has made one or

another route of transportation cheaper or more defensible.

Thus Babylon was conquered and robbed by Rome, and Rome, after a long

heyday of prosperity, yielded to Constantinople, while Constantinople

lost her supremacy to Venice, Genoa, and North Italy, following the sack

of Constantinople by the Venetians in 1202 A.D. The Fairs of Champaign

in France, and the cities of the Rhine and Antwerp were the glory of

the Middle Ages, but these great markets faded when the discovery of the

long sea voyage to India threw the route by the Red Sea and Cairo into

eccentricity, and caused Spain and Portugal to bloom. Spain’s prosperity

did not, however, last long. England used war during the sixteenth

century as an economic weapon, pretty easily conquering. And since

the opening of the Industrial Revolution, at least, London, with the

exception of the few years when England suffered from the American

revolt of 1776, has assumed steadily more the aspect of the great

international centre of exchanges, until with Waterloo her supremacy

remained unchallenged. It was this brilliant achievement of London, won

chiefly by arms, which more than any other cause impelled Germany to try

her fortunes by war rather than by the methods of peace.

Nor was the German calculation of chances unreasonable or unwarranted.

For upwards of two centuries Germany had found war the most profitable

of all her economic ventures; especially had she found the French war

of 1870 a most lucrative speculation. And she felt unbounded confidence

that she could win as easy a triumph with her army, over the French, in

the twentieth as in the nineteenth century. But, could she penetrate

to Paris and at the same time occupy the littoral of the Channel and

Antwerp, she was persuaded that she could do to the commerce of England

what England had once done to the commerce of Spain, and that Hamburg

and Berlin would supplant London. And this calculation might have proved

sound had it not been for her oversight in ignoring one essential factor

in the problem. Ever since North America was colonized by the English,

that portion of the continent which is now comprised by the Republic

of the United States, had formed a part of the British economic system,

even when the two fragments of that system were competing in war, as has

occurred more than once. And as America has waxed great and rich these

relations have grown closer, until of recent years it has become hard to

determine whether the centre of gravity of this vast capitalistic mass

lay to the east or to the west of the Atlantic. One fact, however, from

before the outset of this war had been manifest, and that was that the

currents of movement flowed with more power from America to England

than from America to Germany. And this had from before the outbreak

of hostilities affected the relations of the parties. Should Germany

prevail in her contest with England, the result would certainly be to

draw the centre of exchanges to the eastward, and thereby to throw the

United States, more or less, into eccentricity; but were England to

prevail the United States would tend to become the centre toward which

all else would gravitate. Hence, perfectly automatically, from a time as

long ago as the Spanish War, the balance, as indicated by the weight of

the United States, hung unevenly as between Germany and England, Germany

manifesting something approaching to repulsion toward the attraction

of the United States while Great Britain manifested favor. And from

subsequent evidence, this phenomenon would seem to have been thus

early developed, because the economic centre of gravity of our modern

civilization had already traversed the Atlantic, and by so doing had

decided the fortunes of Germany in advance, in the greater struggle

about to come. Consider attentively what has happened. In April, 1917,

when the United States entered the conflict, Germany, though it had

suffered severely in loss of men, was by no means exhausted. On the

contrary, many months subsequently she began her final offensive, which

she pushed so vigorously that she penetrated to within some sixty miles

of Paris. But there, at Château Thierry, on the Marne, she first felt

the weight of the economic shift. She suddenly encountered a division of

American troops advancing to oppose her. Otherwise the road to Paris lay

apparently open. The American troops were raw levies whom the Germans

pretended to despise. And yet, almost without making a serious effort at

prolonged attack, the Germans began their retreat, which only ended with

their collapse and the fall of the empire.

A similar phenomenon occurred once before in German history, and it is

not an uncommon incident in human experience when nature has already

made, or is on the brink of making, a change in the seat of the economic

centre of the world. In the same way, when Constantine won the battle

of the Milvian Bridge, with his men fighting under the standard of

the Labarum, it was subsequently found that the economic capital of

civilization had silently migrated from the Tiber to the Bosphorus,

where Constantine seated himself at Constantinople, which was destined

to be the new capital of the world for about eight hundred years. So

in 1792, when the Prussians and the French refugees together invaded

France, they never doubted for an instant that they should easily

disperse the mob, as they were pleased to call it, of Kellermann’s

“vagabonds, cobblers, and tailors.” Nevertheless the Germans recoiled

on the slope of Valmy from before the republican army, almost without

striking a blow, nor could they be brought again to the attack, although

the French royalists implored to be allowed to storm the hill alone,

provided they could be assured of support. Then the retreat of the Duke

of Brunswick began, and this retreat was the prelude to the Napoleonic

empire, to Austerlitz, to Jena, to the dismemberment and to the

reorganization of Prussia and to the evolution of modern Germany: in

short, to the conversion of the remnants of mediæval civilization into

the capitalistic, industrial, competitive society which we have known.

And all this because of the accelerated movement caused by science.

If it be, indeed, a fact that the victory of Château Thierry and the

subsequent retreat of the German army together with the collapse of the

German Empire indicate, as there is abundant reason to suppose that they

may, a shift in the world’s social equilibrium, equivalent to the shift

in Europe presaged by Valmy, or to that which substituted Constantinople

for Rome and which was marked by the Milvian Bridge, it follows that we

must prepare ourselves for changes possibly greater than our world has

seen since it marched to Jerusalem under Godfrey de Bouillon. And the

tendency of those changes is not so very difficult, perhaps, roughly to

estimate, always premising that they are hardly compatible with undue

optimism. Supposing, for example, we consider, in certain of their

simpler aspects, some of the relations of Great Britain toward

ourselves, since Great Britain is not only our most important friend,

assuming that she remain a friend, but our most formidable competitor,

should competition strain our friendship. Also Great Britain has the

social system nearest akin to our own, and most likely to be influenced

by the same so-called democratic tendencies. For upwards of a hundred

years Great Britain has been, and she still is, absolutely dependent

on her maritime supremacy for life. It was on that issue she fought the

Napoleonic wars, and when she prevailed at Trafalgar and Waterloo she

assumed economic supremacy, but only on the condition that she should

always be ready and willing to defend it, for it is only on that

condition that economic supremacy can be maintained. War is the most

potent engine of economic competition. Constantinople and Antwerp

survived and flourished on the same identical conditions long before the

day of London. She must keep her avenues of communication with all the

world open, and guard them against possible attack. So long as America

competed actively with England on the sea, even for her own trade,

her relations with Great Britain were troubled. The irritation of the

colonies with the restrictions which England put upon their commerce

materially contributed to foment the revolution, as abundantly appears

in the famous case of John Hancock’s sloop Liberty, which was seized for

smuggling. So in the War of 1812, England could not endure the United

States as a competitor in her contest with France. She must be an ally,

or, in other words, she must function as a component part of the British

economic system, or she must be crushed. The crisis came with the attack

of the Leopard on the Chesapeake in 1807, after which the possibility of

maintaining peace, under such a pressure, appeared, in its true light,

as a phantasm. After the war, with more or less constant friction, the

same conditions continued until the outbreak of the Rebellion, and then

Great Britain manifested her true animus as a competitor. She waged

an unacknowledged campaign against the commerce of the United States,

building, equipping, arming, manning, and succoring a navy for the

South, which operated none the less effectively because its action was

officially repudiated. And in this secret warfare England prevailed,

since when the legislation of the United States has made American

competition with England on the sea impossible. Wherefore we have had

peace with England. We have supplied Great Britain with food and raw

materials, abandoning to England the carrying trade and an undisputed

naval supremacy. Consequently Great Britain feels secure and responds

to the full force of that economic attraction which makes America

naturally, a component part of the British economic system. But let

American pretensions once again revive to the point of causing her to

attempt seriously to develop her sea power as of yore, and the same

friction would also revive which could hardly, were it pushed to its

legitimate end, eventuate otherwise than in the ultimate form of all

economic competition.

If such a supposition seems now to be fanciful, it is only necessary

to reflect a moment on the rapidity with which national relations vary

under competition, to be assured that it is real. As Washington said,

the only force which binds one nation to another is interest. The rise

of Germany, which first created jealousy in England, began with the

attack on Denmark in 1864. Then Russia was the power which the British

most feared and with whom they were on the worst of terms. About

that period nothing would have seemed more improbable than that these

relations would be reversed, and that Russia and England would jointly,

within a generation, wage fierce war on Germany. We are very close to

England now, but we may be certain that, were we to press, as Germany

pressed, on British maritime and industrial supremacy, we should be

hated too. It is vain to disguise the fact that British fortunes in the

past have hinged on American competition, and that the wisest and most

sagacious Englishmen have been those who have been most alive to the

fact. Richard Cobden, for example, was one of the most liberal as he

was one of the most eminent of British economists and statesmen of

the middle of the nineteenth century. He was a democrat by birth and

education, and a Quaker by religion. In 1835, just before he entered

public life, Cobden visited the United States and thus recorded his

impressions on his return:

“America is once more the theatre upon which nations are contending

for mastery; it is not, however, a struggle for conquest, in which the

victor will acquire territorial dominion--the fight is for commercial

supremacy, and will be won by the cheapest.... It is from the silent and

peaceful rivalry of American commerce, the growth of its manufactures,

its rapid progress in internal improvements, ... it is from these, and

not from the barbarous policy or the impoverishing armaments of

Russia, that the grandeur of our commercial and national prosperity is

endangered.” [Footnote: John Morley, _The Life of Richard Cobden_, 107,

108.]

It is not, however, any part of my contention that nature should push

her love of competition so far as necessarily to involve us in war with

Great Britain, at least at present, for nature has various and

most unlooked-for ways of arriving at her ends, since men never can

determine, certainly in advance, what avenue will, to them, prove the

least resistant. They very often make an error, as did the Germans,

which they can only correct by enduring disaster, defeat, and

infinite suffering. Nature might very well, for example, prefer that

consolidation should advance yet another step before a reaction toward

chaos should begin.

This last war has, apparently, been won by a fusion of two economic

systems which together hold and administer a preponderating mass of

fluid capital, and which have partially pooled their resources to

prevail. They appear almost as would a gigantic lizard which, having

been severed in an ancient conflict, was now making a violent but only

half-conscious effort to cause the head and body to unite with the tail,

so that the two might function once more as a single organism, governed

by a single will. Under our present form of capitalistic life there

would seem to be no reason why this fluid capital should not fuse and

by its energy furnish the motor which should govern the world. Rome, for

centuries, was governed by an emperor, who represented the landed

class of Italy, under the forms of a republic. It is not by any means

necessary that a plutocratic mass should have a recognized political

head. And America and England, like two enormous banking houses, might

in effect fuse and yet go on as separate institutions with nominally

separate boards of directors.

But it is inconceivable that even such an expedient as this, however

successful at the outset, should permanently solve the problem, which

resolves itself once more into individual competition. It is not

imaginable that such an enormous plutocratic society as I have supposed

could conduct its complex affairs upon the basis of the average

intelligence. As in Rome, a civil service would inevitably be organized

which would contain a carefully selected body of ability. We have seen

such a process, in its initial stages, in the recent war. And such a

civil service, however selected and however trained, would, to succeed,

have to be composed of men who were the ablest in their calling, the

best educated, and the fittest: in a word, the representatives of what

we call “the big business” of the country. Such as they might handle

the railroads, the telegraph lines, the food supply, the question of

competitive shipping, and finally prices, as we have seen it done, but

only on condition that they belonged to the fortunate class by merit.

But supposing, in the face of such a government, the unfortunate class

should protest, as they already do protest in Russia, in Germany, and

even in England and here at home, that a legal system which sanctions

such a civilization is iniquitous. Here, the discontented say, you

insist on a certain form of competition being carried to its limit.

That is, you demand intellectual and peaceful competition for which I

am unfit both by education, training, and mental ability. I am therefore

excluded from those walks in life which make a man a freeman. I become a

slave to capital. I must work, or fight, or starve according to another

man’s convenience, caprice, or, in fine, according to his will. I could

be no worse off under any despot. To such a system I will not submit.

But I can at least fight. Put me on a competitive equality or I will

blow your civilization to atoms. To such an argument there is no logical

answer possible except the answer which all extreme socialists have

always advanced. The fortunate man should be taxed for all he

earns above the average wage, and the State should confiscate his

accumulations at death. Then, with a system of government education,

obligatory on all, children would start equal from birth.

Here we come against the hereditary instinct, the creator and the

preserver of the family: the instinct which has made law and order

possible, so far as our ancestors or we have known order, as far back

as the Ice Age. If the coming world must strive with this question, or

abandon the “democratic ideal,” the future promises to be stormy.

But even assuming that this problem of individual competition be

overcome, we are as far as ever from creating a system of moral law

which shall avail us, for we at once come in conflict with the principle

of abstract justice which demands that free men shall be permitted to

colonize or move where they will. But supposing England and America to

amalgamate; they now hold or assume to control all or nearly all

the vacant regions of the earth which are suited to the white man’s

habitation. And the white man cannot live and farm his land in

competition with the Asiatic; that was conclusively proved in the days

of Rome.

But it is not imaginable that Asiatics will submit to this

discrimination in silence. Nothing can probably constrain them to

resignation but force, and to apply force is to revert to the old

argument of the savage or the despot, who admits that he knows no law

save that of the stronger, which is the system, however much we have

disguised it and, in short, lied about it, under which we have lived

and under which our ancestors have lived ever since the family was

organized, and under which it is probable that we shall continue to live

as long as any remnant of civilization shall survive.

Nevertheless, it seems to be far from improbable that the system of

industrial, capitalistic civilization, which came in, in substance, with

the “free thought” of the Reformation, is nearing an end. Very probably

it may have attained to its ultimate stages and may dissolve presently

in the chaos which, since the Reformation, has been visibly impending.

Democracy in America has conspicuously and decisively failed, in the

collective administration of the common public property. Granting

thus much, it becomes simply a question of relative inefficiency, or

degradation of type, culminating in the exhaustion of resources by

waste; unless the democratic man can supernaturally raise himself to

some level more nearly approaching perfection than that on which he

stands. For it has become self-evident that the democrat cannot change

himself from a competitive to a non-competitive animal by talking about

it, or by pretending to be already or to be about to become other than

he is,--the victim of infinite conflicting forces.

BROOKS ADAMS,

QUINCY, _July_ 20, 1919.

THE EMANCIPATION OF MASSACHUSETTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE COMMONWEALTH.

The mysteries of the Holy Catholic Church had been venerated for ages

when Europe burst from her mediæval torpor into the splendor of the

Renaissance. Political schemes and papal abuses may have precipitated

the inevitable outbreak, but in the dawn of modern thought the darkness

faded amidst which mankind had so long cowered in the abject terrors of

superstition. Already in the beginning of the fifteenth century many of

the ancient dogmas had begun to awaken incredulity, and sceptics learned

to mock at that claim to infallibility upon which the priesthood based

their right to command the blind obedience of the Christian world.

Between such adversaries compromise was impossible; and those who

afterward revolted against the authority of the traditions of Rome

sought refuge under the shelter of the Bible, which they grew to

reverence with a passionate devotion, believing it to have been not

only directly and verbally inspired by God, but the only channel through

which he had made known his will to men.

Thus the movement was not toward new doctrines; on the contrary, it was

the rejection of what could no longer be believed. Calvin was no less

orthodox than St. Augustine in what he accepted; his heresy lay in the

denial of enigmas from which his understanding recoiled. The mighty

convulsion of the Reformation, therefore, was but the supreme effort of

the race to tear itself from the toils of a hierarchy whose life hung

upon its success in forcing the children to worship the myths of their

ancestral religion.

Three hundred years after Luther nailed his theses to the church door

the logical deduction had been drawn from his great act, and Christendom

had been driven to admit that any concession of the right to reason upon

matters of faith involved the recognition of the freedom of individual

thought. But though this noble principle has been at length established,

long years of bloodshed passed before the victory was won; and from

the outset the attitude of the clergy formed the chief obstacle to the

triumph of a more liberal civilization; for howsoever bitterly Catholic

and Protestant divines have hated and persecuted each other, they have

united like true brethren in their hatred and their persecution of

heretics; for such was their inexorable destiny.

Men who firmly believe that salvation lies within their creed alone, and

that doubters suffer endless torments, never can be tolerant. They feel

that duty commands them to defend their homes against a deadly peril,

and even pity for the sinner urges them to wring from him a recantation

before it is too late; and then, moreover, dissent must lessen the

power and influence of a hierarchy and may endanger its very existence;

therefore the priests of every church have been stimulated to crush

out schism by the two strongest passions that can inflame the mind--by

bigotry and by ambition.

In England the Reformation was controlled by statesmen, whose object was

to invest the crown with ecclesiastical power, and who made no changes

except such as they thought necessary for their purpose. They repudiated

the papal supremacy, and adopted articles of religion sufficiently

evangelical in form, but they retained episcopacy, the liturgy, and the

surplice; the cross was still used in baptism, the people bowed at the

name of Jesus, and knelt at the communion. Such a compromise with what

they deemed idolatry was offensive to the stricter Protestants, and so

early as 1550 John Hooper refused the see of Gloucester because he would

not wear the robes of office; thus almost from its foundation the church

was divided into factions, and those who demanded a more radical reform

were nicknamed Puritans. As time elapsed large numbers who could no

longer bring themselves to conform withdrew from the orthodox communion,

and began to worship by themselves; persecution followed, and many fled

to Holland, where they formed congregations in the larger towns, the

most celebrated of them being that of John Robinson at Leyden, which

afterward founded Plymouth. But the intellectual ferment was universal,

and the same upheaval that was rending the church was shaking the

foundations of the state: power was passing into the hands of the

people, but a century was to elapse before the relations of the

sovereign to the House of Commons were fully adjusted. During this

interval the Stuarts reigned and three of the four kings suffered exile

or death in the fierce contest for mastery.

The fixed determination of Charles I. was to establish a despotism

and enforce conformity with ritualism; and the result was the Great

Rebellion.

Among the statesmen who advised him, none has met with such scant mercy

from posterity as Laud, who has been gibbeted as the impersonification

of narrowness, of bigotry, and of cruelty. The judgment is unscientific,

for whatever may be thought of the humanity or wisdom of his policy, he

only did what all have done who have attempted to impose a creed on men.

The real grievance has never been that an observance has been required,

or an indulgence refused, but that the right to think has been denied.

Provided a boundary be fixed within which the reason must be chained,

the line drawn by Laud is as reasonable as that of Calvin; Geneva is no

more infallible than Canterbury or Rome. Comprehension is the dream of

visionaries, for some will always differ from any confession of faith,

however broad; and where there are dogmas there will be heretics till

all have perished. But in their fear and hatred of individual free

thought regarding the mysteries of religion, Laud, Calvin, and the Pope

agreed.

With the progress of the war, the Puritans, who had at first been united

in their opposition to the crown, themselves divided; one party, to

which most of the peers and of the non-conforming clergy belonged, being

anxious to reestablish the monarchy, and set up a rigid Presbyterianism;

the other, of whose spirit Cromwell was the incarnation, resolving each

day more firmly to crush the king and proclaim freedom of conscience;

and it was this doctrine of toleration which was the snare and the

abomination in the eyes of evangelical divines.

Robert Baillie, the Scotch commissioner, while in London, anxiously

watching the rise of the power of the Independents in Parliament, with

each victory of their armies in the field wrote, “Liberty of conscience,

and toleration of all and any religion, is so prodigious an impiety that

this religious parliament cannot but abhor the very meaning of it.”

Nor did his reverend brethren of the Westminster Assembly fall any whit

behind him when they rose to expound the word. In a letter of 17th May,

1644, he thus described their doctrine: “This day was the best that I

have seen since I came to England.... After D. Twisse had begun with

a brief prayer, Mr. Marshall prayed large two hours, most divinely,

confessing the sins of the members of the assembly, in a wonderful,

pathetick, and prudent way. After, Mr. Arrowsmith preached an hour, then

a psalm; thereafter, Mr. Vines prayed near two hours, and Mr. Palmer

preached an hour, and Mr. Seaman prayed near two hours, then a psalm;

after, Mr. Henderson brought them to a sweet conference of the heat

confessed in the assembly, and other seen faults to be remedied, and

the conveniency to preach against all sects, especially Anabaptists

and Antinomians. Dr. Twisse closed with a short prayer and blessing.”

[Footnote: Baillie’s _Letters and Journals_, ii. 18.]

But Cromwell, gifted with noble instincts and transcendent political

genius, a layman, a statesman, and a soldier, was a liberal from birth

till death.

“Those that were sound in the faith, how proper was it for them to

labor for liberty, ... that men might not be trampled upon for their

consciences! Had not they labored but lately under the weight of

persecution? And was it fit for them to sit heavy upon others? Is it

ingenuous to ask liberty and not to give it? What greater hypocrisy

than for those who were oppressed by the bishops to become the greatest

oppressors themselves, so soon as their yoke was removed? I could wish

that they who call for liberty now also had not too much of that spirit,

if the power were in their hands.” [Footnote: Speech at dissolution of

first Parliment, Jan. 22, 1655. Carlyle’s _Cromwell_, iv. 107.]

“If a man of one form will be trampling upon the heels of another form,

if an Independent, for example, will despise him under Baptism, and will

revile him and reproach him and provoke him,--I will not suffer it in

him. If, on the other side, those of the Anabaptist shall be

censuring the godly ministers of the nation who profess under that

of Independency; or if those that profess under Presbytery shall be

reproaching or speaking evil of them, traducing and censuring of them,

as I would not be willing to see the day when England shall be in the

power of the Presbytery to impose upon the consciences of others that

profess faith in Christ,--so I will not endure any reproach to them.”

[Footnote: Speech made September, 1656. Carlyle’s _Cromwell_, iv. 234.]

The number of clergymen among the emigrants to Massachusetts was

very large, and the character of the class who formed the colony was

influenced by them to an extraordinary degree. Many able pastors had

been deprived in England for non-conformity, and they had to choose

between silence or exile. To men of their temperament silence would have

been intolerable; and most must have depended upon their profession for

support. America, therefore, offered a convenient refuge. The motives

are less obvious which induced the leading laymen, some of whom were

of fortune and consequence at home, to face the hardships of the

wilderness. Persecution cannot be the explanation, for a government

under which Hampden and Cromwell could live and be returned to

Parliament was not intolerable; nor does it appear that any of them had

been severely dealt with. The wish of the Puritan party to have a

place of retreat, should the worst befall, may have had its weight with

individuals, but probably the influence which swayed the larger number

was the personal ascendancy of their pastors, for that ascendancy was

complete. In a community so selected, men of the type of Baillie must

have vastly outnumbered those of the stamp of Cromwell, and in point

of fact their minds were generally cast in the ecclesiastical mould and

imbued with the ecclesiastical feeling. Governor Dudley represented

them well, and at his death some lines were found in his pocket in which

their spirit yet glows in all the fierceness of its bigotry.

“Let men of God in Courts and Churches watch

O’re such as do a Toleration hatch,

Lest that Ill Egg bring forth a Cockatrice,

To poison all with heresie and vice.”

[Footnote: _Magnalia_, bk. 2, ch. v. section 1.]

In former ages churches had been comprehensive to this extent: infants

had been baptized, and, when the child had become a man, he had been

admitted to the communion as a matter of course, unless his life had

given scandal; but to this system the Congregationalist was utterly

opposed. He believed that, human nature being totally depraved, some

became regenerate through grace; that the signs of grace were as

palpable as any other traits of character, and could be discerned by all

the world; therefore, none should be admitted to the sacrament who had

not the marks of the elect; and as in a well-ordered community the godly

ought to rule, it followed that none should be enfranchised but members

of the church.

To suppose such a government could be maintained in England was beyond

the dreams even of an enthusiast, and there can be little doubt that the

controlling incentive with many of those who sailed was the hope, with

the aid of their divines, of founding a religious commonwealth in the

wilderness which should harmonize with their interpretation of the

Scriptures.

The execution of such a project was, however, far from easy. It would

have been most unsafe for the emigrants to have divulged their true

designs, since these were not only unlawful, but would have been highly

offensive to the king, and yet they were too feeble to exist without the

protection of Great Britain, therefore it was necessary to secure for

themselves the rights of English subjects, and to throw some semblance

at least of the sanction of law over the organization of their new

state. Accordingly, a patent [Footnote: March 4, 1629.] was obtained

from the crown, by which twenty-five persons were incorporated under the

name of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England;

and as the extent of the powers therein granted has given rise to a

controversy which is not yet closed, it is necessary to understand the

nature of that instrument in order to comprehend the bearings of the

bitter strife which darkens the history of the first fifty years of the

colony.

The germ of the written charter is so ancient as to be lost in

obscurity. During the Middle Ages, oppression was, speaking generally,

the accepted condition of society, no man not noble having the right

in theory, or the power in practice, to control his own actions without

interference from his feudal superior. Under such circumstances the

only hope for the weak was to combine, and most of the early triumphs

of freedom were won by combinations of commons against some noble, or

of nobles against a king. Organization is difficult for a peasantry,

but easy for burghers, and from the outset these seem to have united for

their common defense against the neighboring barons; and thus was born

the mediæval guild.

The ancient townsmen were not usually strong enough to fight for their

liberties, so they generally resorted to purchase; they agreed with

their lord upon a price to be paid for a privilege, and were given

for their money a grant, which, because it was written, was called a

charter.

The following charter of the Merchants’ Guild of Leicester is very early

and very simple. It presupposes that there could be no doubt about the

local customs, which are therefore not enumerated, and it shows that the

guild of Leicester existed as a corporation at the Conquest, and must

already have held property in succession and been liable to suit through

two reigns:--

“Robert, Earl of Mellent, to Ralph, and all his barons, French and

English, of all his land in England, greeting: Know ye, that I have

granted to my merchants of Leicester their Guild Merchant, with all

customs which they held in the time of King William, of King William his

son, and now hold in the time of Henry the king.

“Witness: R., the son of Alcitil.”

The object of these ancient writings was only to record the fact

of corporate existence; the popular custom by which the guilds were

regulated was taken for granted; but obviously they must have had

succession, been liable to suit, able to contract, and, in a word, to

do all those acts which were afterward set forth. And such has uniformly

been the process by which English jurisprudence has been shaped; a usage

grows up that courts recognize, and, by their decisions, establish as

the common law; but judicial decisions are inflexible, and, as they

become antiquated, they are themselves modified by legislation. Lawyers

observed these customary companies for some centuries before they

learned what functions were universal; but, with the lapse of time, the

patents became more elaborate, until at length a voluminous grant of

each particular power was held necessary to create a new corporation.

A merchants’ guild, like the one of Leicester, was an association of

the townsmen for their common welfare. Every trader was then called a

merchant, and as almost every burgher lived by trade, and was also a

landowner, to the extent at least of his dwelling, it followed that the

guild practically included all free male inhabitants; the guild hall was

used as the town hall, the guild ordinances were the town ordinances,

and the corporation became the government of the borough, and as such

chose persons to represent it in Parliament, when summoned by the king’s

writ to send burgesses to Westminster.

London is a corporation by prescription and not by virtue of any

particular charter, and to this day its city hall is called by the

ancient name, Guild Hall. But with the growth of wealth and population

the original fraternity divided into craft organizations (so long

ago, indeed, that no record of its existence remains), and each trade

organized a guild, with a hall of its own; and thus it came to pass that

the twelve livery companies--the Mercers, the Grocers, the Goldsmiths,

the Drapers, the Fishmongers, and the rest--became the government of the

capital of England.

All mediæval institutions tended to aristocracy and monopoly, and,

accordingly, after the merchant guilds had split into these corporate

trade unions, boroughs waxed exclusive, and membership, instead of being

an incident of citizenship, grew to confer citizenship itself; thus the

franchise, being confined to freemen, and freedom or membership

having come to depend on birth, marriage, election, or purchase, the

constituencies which returned a majority of the House of Commons grew

so petty and corrupt as to threaten the existence of parliamentary

government itself, and the abuse at last culminated in the agitation

which produced the Reform Bill.

When legal forms had taken shape, the land upon which a town stood was

not unusually granted to the mayor and commonalty by metes and bounds,

[Footnote: See Charter of Plymouth, granted 1439. _History of Plymouth_,

p. 50. The incorporation was by statute.] to them and their successors

forever, upon payment of a rent; and the mayor and common council were

empowered to make laws and ordinances for the local government, and to

fine, imprison, and sometimes whip and otherwise punish offenders, so

as their statutes, fines, pains, and penalties were reasonable and not

repugnant to law. [Footnote: _History of Tiverton_, App. 5.] The foreign

trading company was an offshoot of the guild, and was intended to

protect commerce. Obviously some such organization must have been

necessary, for, if property was insecure within the realm, it was far

more exposed without; and, indeed, in the fourteenth century, English

merchants domiciled on the Continent could hardly have been safer than

Europeans are now who garrison the so-called factories upon the coast of

Africa.

At the Conquest, the Hanse merchants had a house in London, which

was afterward famous as the Steel Yard. They lived a strange life,--a

combination of that of the trader, the soldier, and the monk. Their

fortified warehouse, exposed to the attacks of the ferocious mob, was

occasionally taken and sacked; and the garrison shut up within was

subject to an iron discipline. They were forbidden to marry, no woman

passed the gates, nor did they ever sleep a night without the walls;

but, always on the watch, they lay in their cells ready to repulse

a storm. For many years these Germans seem to have monopolized the

carrying trade, for it was not till the thirteenth century that

Englishmen appear to have made an effort at competition. However,

about 1296 certain London mercers are said to have obtained a grant of

privileges from John, Duke of Brabant, and to have established a wool

market at Antwerp. [Footnote: Andersen’s _History of Commerce_.] The

recognition of the Flemish government was of course necessary; but they

could hardly have maintained themselves without some support at home;

for, although their warehouse was abroad, they were English merchants,

and they must have relied upon English protection. No very early

documents remain; but an elaborate charter, granted by Edward IV. in

1463, proves that the corporation had then had a long legal existence.

[Footnote: Hakluyt’s _Voyages_, i. 230.] The crown thereby confirmed

one Obrey, the governor, in his office during pleasure, with the wages

theretofore enjoyed; existing laws were approved; the governor and

merchants were empowered to elect twelve Justicers, who were to hold

courts for all merchants and mariners in those parts; and the company

was authorized to regulate the trade and control the traders, provided

no laws were passed contrary to the intent of that charter.

Here, as in the Merchant Guild, the inevitable aristocratic revolution

took place, and the old democratic brotherhood became a strict monopoly.

The oppression was so flagrant that a petition was presented to

Parliament in 1497 against the exactions of the Merchant Adventurers, as

the association was then called, by which it appeared that interlopers,

trading to Holland and Flanders, were fined £40, whereas any subject

might have become a freeman in earlier times for an old noble, or about

6s. 8d.; [Footnote: 12 Henry VII. ch. vi.] and the scandal was so great

that the fine was fixed at 10 marks, or £6 l3s. 4d., by statute.

During the stagnation of the Middle Ages few traces of such commercial

enterprises are to be found, but with the sixteenth century Europe

awoke to a new life and thrilled with a new energy. Trade shared in

the impulse. In 1554 Philip and Mary incorporated the Russia Company in

regular modern form; in 1581 the Turkey Company was organized; in 1600

the East India Company received its charter; and, to come directly to

what is material, in 1629 Charles I. signed the patent of the Governor

and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England.

Stripped of its verbiage, the provisions are simple. The stockholders,

or “freemen,” as they were then called, were to meet once a quarter in a

“General Court.” This General Court, or stockholders’ meeting, chose the

officers, of which there were twenty, the governor, deputy governor, and

eighteen assistants or directors, on the last Wednesday in each Easter

Term. The assistants were intrusted with the business management,

and were to meet once a month or oftener; while the General Court was

empowered to admit freemen, and “to make laws and ordinances for

the good and welfare of the said company, and for the government and

ordering of the said lands and plantation, and the people inhabiting

and to inhabit the same, as to them from time to time shall be thought

meet,--so as such laws and ordinances be not contrary or repugnant

to the laws and statutes of this our realm of England.” The criminal

jurisdiction was limited to the “imposition of lawful fines, mulcts,

imprisonment, or other lawful correction, according to the course of

other corporations in this our realm of England.”

The “course of corporations” referred to was well established. The

Master and Wardens of the Guild of Drapers in London, for example,

could make “such ... pains, punishments, and penalties, by corporal

punishment, or fines and amercements,” ... “as shall seem ...

necessary,” provided their statutes were reasonable and not contrary

to the laws of the kingdom. [Footnote: Herbert’s _Livery Companies_, i.

489.] In like manner, boroughs such as Tiverton might “impose and

assess punishments by imprisonments, etc., and reasonable fines upon

offenders.” [Footnote: See _History of Tiverton_, App. 5.]

But all lawyers knew that such grants did not convey full civil or

criminal jurisdiction, which, when thought needful, was specially

conferred, as was done in the case of the East India Company upon their

petition in 1624, [Footnote: Bruce, _Annals_, i. 252.] and in that of

Massachusetts by the charter of William and Mary.

Such was the undoubted theory, and evidently there must always have

been some practical means of checking the abuse of power by these strong

organizations. In semi-barbarous ages the sovereign took matters into

his own hands by seizing the franchise, and even the Plantagenets

repeatedly suspended or revoked the liberties of London,--often, no

doubt, for cause, but sometimes also to make money by a resale; and a

succession of these arbitrary forfeitures demonstrated that charters to

be of value must be beyond the grantor’s control. Resort was had to the

courts, as a matter of course, and finally it was settled that relief

should be given by a writ of _quo warranto_, upon which the question of

the violation of privileges could be tried; and curious records still

remain of ancient litigations of this nature.

In 1321 complaint was made against the London Weavers for injuring

the public by passing regulations tending to raise the price of cloth.

[Footnote: _Liber Customarum_, i. 416-424.] It was alleged that the

guild, with this intent, had limited the working hours in the day, the

working days in the year, and the number of apprentices the freemen

might employ; and the prayer was that for these abuses the charter

should be annulled.

The cause was tried before a jury, who found the truth of some of the

charges; but the judgment is lost, as the roll is imperfect.

There was danger, moreover, to the citizen from the oppression of these

powerful bodies, as well as to the public from their usurpations; and

were authority wholly wanting, argument would be almost unnecessary to

prove that some appellate tribunal must always have had jurisdiction

to pass upon the validity of corporate legislation; for otherwise any

summary punishment might have been inflicted upon an individual, though

notoriously unlawful, and the only redress possible would have been

subsequent proceedings to vacate the charter.

Through appeals, corporations could be controlled; and by none was

this control so stubbornly disputed, or its necessity so clearly

demonstrated, as by the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in

New England. A good illustration is the trial of the Quaker, Wenlock

Christison, for his life in 1661.

“William Leddra being thus dispatch’d, it was resolved to make an end

also of Wenlock Christison. He therefore was brought from the prison

to the court at Boston, where the governor John Indicot, and the deputy

governor Richard Billingham, being both present, it was told him,

‘Unless you will renounce your religion, you shall surely die.’ But

instead of shrinking, he said with an undaunted courage, ‘Nay, I shall

not change my religion, nor seek to save my life; neither do I intend

to deny my Master; but if I lose my life for Christ’s sake, and the

preaching of the gospel, I shall save my life.’ ... John Indicot asked

him ‘what he had to say for himself, why he should not die?’ ... Then

Wenlock asked, ‘By what law will you put me to death?’ The answer was,

‘We have a law, and by our law you are to die.’ ‘So said the Jews of

Christ,’ (reply’d Wenlock) ‘we have a law, and by our law he ought to

die. Who empowered you to make that law?’ To which one of the board

answered, ‘We have a patent, and are the patentees; judge whether we

have not power to make laws.’ Hereupon Wenlock asked again, ‘How, have

you power to make laws repugnant to the laws of England?’ ‘No,’ said the

governor. ‘Then,’ (reply’d Wenlock,) ‘you are gone beyond your bounds,

and have forfeited your patent; and that is more than you can answer.’

‘Are you,’ ask’d he, ‘subjects to the king, yea or nay?’ ... To which

one said, ‘Yea, we are so.’ ‘Well,’ said Wenlock, ‘so am I.’ ...

‘Therefore seeing that you and I are subjects to the king, I demand to

be tried by the laws of my own nation.’ It was answered, ‘You shall be

tried by a bench and a jury.’ For it seems they began to be afraid to go

on in the former course, of trial without a jury ... But Wenlock said,

‘That is not the law, but the manner of it; for I never heard nor read

of any law that was in England to hang Quakers.’ To this the governor

reply’d ‘that there was a law to hang Jesuits.’ To which Wenlock

return’d, ‘If you put me to death, it is not because I go under the name

of a Jesuit, but of a Quaker. Therefore, I appeal to the laws of my own

nation.’ But instead of taking notice of this, one said ‘that he was

in their hands, and had broken their law, and they would try him.’”

[Footnote: Sewel, pp. 278, 279.]

Yet, though the ecclesiastical party in Massachusetts obstinately

refused to admit appeals to the British judiciary up to the last

moment of their power, for the obvious reason that the existence of

the theocracy depended upon the enforcement of such legislation as that

under which the Quakers suffered, there was no principle in the whole

range of English jurisprudence more firmly established. By a statute of

Henry VI. passed in 1436, corporate enactments were to be submitted to

the judges for approval; and the Court of King’s Bench always set aside

such as were bad, whenever the question of their validity was presented

for adjudication. [Footnote: Stat. 15 H. VI. ch. 6. Stat 19 H. VII.

ch. 7. Clark’s Case, 5 Coke, 633, decided A. D. 1596. See Kyd on

Corporations, ii. 107-110, where authorities are collected. Child v.

Hudson Bay Co., 2 P. W. 207.]

But discussion is futile; the proposition is self-evident, that an

association endowed with the capacity of acting like a single man, for

certain defined objects, which shall attempt other objects, or shall

seek to compass its ends by unlawful means, violates the condition upon

which its life has been granted, transcends the limits of its existence,

and forfeits its privileges; and that under such circumstances its

ordinances are void, and none are bound to yield them their obedience.

Approached thus from the standpoint of legal history, no doubt can exist

concerning the scope of the franchise secured by the Puritans for the

Massachusetts colony. The instrument obtained from Charles I. embodied

certain of their number in an English corporation, whose only lawful

business was the American trade, as the business of the East India

Company was trade in Hindostan. To enable them to act effectively, a

tract of land in New England, between the Merrimack and the Charles, was

conveyed to them, as the soil upon which a town stood was conveyed to

the mayor and commonalty. Within this territory they were authorized to

established their plantations and forts, which they were empowered to

defend against attack, as the Hanse merchants defended the Steel Yard

in London. They were also permitted to govern the country within their

grant by reasonable regulations calculated to preserve the peace, and of

much the same character as the municipal ordinances of towns, subject,

of course, to judicial supervision. The corporation itself was created

subject to the municipal laws of England, and could have no existence

without the realm; and though perhaps even then the American wilderness

might have been held to belong to the British empire, it formed no part

of the kingdom, [Footnote: Blackstone’s _Commentaries_, i. 109.] and was

altogether beyond the limits of that jurisdiction from whose customs

and statutes the life of this imaginary being sprang. Therefore, the

governing body could legally exercise its functions only when domiciled

in some English town. [Footnote: On this subject see the able paper of

Mr. Deane, in _Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings_, December,

1869, p. 166.]

Sir Richard Sheldon, the solicitor-general, advised the king that he

was signing a charter containing “such ... clauses for ye electing of

Governors and Officers here in England, ... and powers to make lawes and

ordinances for setling ye governement and magistracye for ye plantacon

there, ... as ... are usuallie allowed to Corporacons in England.”

[Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._ 1869-70, p. 173.] And there can be

no question that his opinion was sound.

Nothing can be imagined more ill-suited to serve as the organic law of

a new commonwealth than this instrument. No provision was made for

superior or probate courts, for a representative assembly, for the

incorporation of counties and towns, for police or taxation. In short,

hardly a step could be taken toward founding a territorial government

based upon popular suffrage without working a forfeiture of the charter

by abuse of the franchise. The colonists, it is true, afterward advanced

very different theories of construction; but that they were well aware

of their legal position is demonstrated by the fact that after some

hesitation from apprehension of consequences, they ventured on the

singularly bold and lawless measure of secretly removing their charter

to America and establishing their corporation in a land which they

thought would be beyond the process of Westminster Hall. [Footnote:

1629, Aug. 29.] The details of the settlement are related in many books,

and require only the briefest mention here. In 1628 an association of

gentlemen bought the tract of country lying between the Merrimack and

Charles from the Council of Plymouth, and sent Endicott to take charge

of their purchase. A royal patent was, however, thought necessary for

the protection of a large colony, and one having been obtained, the

Company of Massachusetts Bay was at once organized in England, Endicott

was appointed governor in America, and six vessels sailed during the

spring of 1629, taking out several hundred persons and a “plentiful

provision of godly ministers.” In August the church of Salem was

gathered and Mr. Higginson was consecrated as their teacher. In that

same month Winthrop, Saltonstall, and others met at Cambridge and signed

an agreement binding themselves upon the faith of Christians to embark

for the plantation by the following March; “Provided always that before

the last of September next, the whole government, together with the

patent, ... be first by an order of court legally transferred and

established to remain with us and others which shall inhabite upon the

said plantation.” [Footnote: _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. i. 28.] The

Company accepted the proposition, Winthrop was chosen governor, and he

anchored in Salem harbor in June. [Footnote: 1630] More than a thousand

settlers landed before winter, and the first General Court was held

at Boston in October; nor did the emigration thus begun entirely cease

until the meeting of the Long Parliament.

From the beginning the colonists took what measures they thought proper,

without regarding the limitations of the law. Counties and towns had to

be practically incorporated, taxes were levied upon inhabitants, and

in 1634 all pretence of a General Court of freemen was dropped, and the

towns chose delegates to represent them, though the legislature was not

divided into two branches until ten years later. When the government had

become fully organized supreme power was vested in the General Court, a

legislature composed of two houses; the assistants, or magistrates, as

they were called, and the deputies. The governor, deputy governor,

and assistants were elected by a general vote; but each town sent two

deputies to Boston.

For some years justice was dispensed by the magistrates according to

the Word of God, but gradually a judicial system was established; the

magistrate’s local court was the lowest, from whence causes went

by appeal to the county courts, one of whose judges was always an

assistant, and probate jurisdiction was given to the two held at Ipswich

and at Salem. From the judgments entered here an appeal lay to the Court

of Assistants, and then to the General Court, which was the tribunal of

last resort. The clergy and gentry pertinaciously resisted the enactment

of a series of general statutes, upon which the people as steadily

insisted, until at length, in 1641, “The Body of Liberties” was approved

by the legislature. This compilation was the work of the Rev. Mr. Ward,

pastor of Ipswich, and contained a criminal code copied almost word for

word from the Pentateuch, but apart from matters touching religion,

the legislation was such as English colonists have always adopted. A

major-general was elected who commanded the militia, and in 1652 money

was coined.

The social institutions, however, have a keener interest, for they

reflect that strong cast of thought which has stamped its imprint deep

into the character of so much of the American people. The seventeenth

century was aristocratic, and the inhabitants of the larger part of New

England were divided into three classes, the commonalty, the gentry, and

the clergy. Little need be said of the first, except that they were a

brave and determined race, as ready to fight as Cromwell’s saints, who

made Rupert’s troopers “as stubble to their swords;” that they were

intelligent, and would not brook injustice; and that they were resolute,

and would not endure oppression. All know that they were energetic and

shrewd.

The gentry had the weight in the community that comes with wealth and

education, and they received the deference then paid to birth, for they

were for the most part the descendants of English country-gentlemen. As

a matter of course they monopolized the chief offices; and they were

not sentenced by the courts to degrading punishments, like whipping, for

their offences, as other criminals were. They even showed some wish at

the outset to create legal distinctions, such as a magistracy for

life, and a disposition to magnify the jurisdiction of the Court of

Assistants, whose seats they filled; but the action of the people was

determined though quiet, a chamber of deputies was chosen, and such

schemes were heard of no more.

Yet notwithstanding the existence of this aristocratic element, the real

substance of influence and power lay with the clergy. It has been taught

as an axiom of Massachusetts history, that from the outset the town was

the social and political unit; but an analysis of the evidence tends

to show that the organization of the Puritan Commonwealth was

ecclesiastical, and the congregation, not the town, the basis upon which

the fabric rested. By the constitution of the corporation the

franchise went with the freedom of the company; but in order to form a

constituency which would support a sacerdotal oligarchy, it was enacted

in 1631 “that for time to come noe man shalbe admitted to the freedome

of this body polliticke, but such as are members of some of the churches

within ... the same.” [Footnote: _Mass. Records_, i. 87.] Thus though

communicants were not necessarily voters, no one could be a voter who

was not a communicant; therefore the town-meeting was in fact nothing

but the church meeting, possibly somewhat attenuated, and called by a

different name. By this insidious statute the clergy seized the temporal

power, which they held till the charter fell. The minister stood at the

head of the congregation and moulded it to suit his purposes and to do

his will; for though he could not when opposed admit an inhabitant to

the sacrament, he could peremptorily exclude therefrom all those of whom

he disapproved, for “none are propounded to the congregation, except

they be first allowed by the elders.” [Footnote: Winthrop’s reply to

Vane, _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. i. 101.] In such a community the

influence of the priesthood must have been overwhelming. Not only in an

age without newspapers or tolerable roads were their sermons, preached

several times each week to every voter, the most effective of political

harangues; but, unlike other party orators, they were not forced to

stimulate the sluggish, or to convince the hostile, for from a people

glowing with fanaticism, each elder picked his band of devoted servants

of the church, men passionately longing to do the will of Christ, whose

commands concerning earth and heaven their pastor had been ordained

to declare. Nor was their power bounded by local limits; though

seldom holding office themselves, they were solemnly consulted by the

government on every important question that arose, whether of war

or peace, and their counsel was rarely disregarded. They gave their

opinion, no matter how foreign the subject might be to their profession

or their education; and they had no hesitation in passing upon the

technical construction of the charter with the authority of a bench

of judges. An amusing example is given by Winthrop: “The General Court

assembled again, and all the elders were sent for, to reconcile the

differences between the magistrates and deputies. When they were come

the first question put to them was, ... whether the magistrates are,

by patent and election of the people, the standing council of this

commonwealth in the vacancy of the General Court, and have power

accordingly to act in all cases subject to government, according to the

said patent and the laws of this jurisdiction; and when any necessary

occasions call for action from authority, in cases where there is no

particular express law provided, there to be guided by the word of God,

till the General Court give particular rules in such cases. The elders,

having received the question, withdrew themselves for consultation about

it, and the next day sent to know, when we would appoint a time that

they might attend the court with their answer. The magistrates and

deputies agreed upon an hour “and ... their answer was affirmative,” on

the magistrates behalf, in the very words of the question, with some

reasons thereof. It was delivered in writing by Mr. Cotton in the name

of them all, they being all present, and not one dissentient.” Then

the magistrates propounded four more questions, the last of which is

as follows: “Whether a judge be bound to pronounce such sentence as a

positive law prescribes, in case it be apparently above or beneath the

merit of the offence?” To which the elders replied at great length,

saying that the penalty must vary with the gravity of the crime,

and added examples: “So any sin committed with an high hand, as the

gathering of sticks on the Sabbath day, may be punished with death when

a lesser punishment may serve for gathering sticks privily and in some

need.” [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 204, 205.] Yet though the clerical

influence was so unbounded the theocracy itself was exposed to constant

peril. In monarchies such as France or Spain the priests who rule the

king have the force of the nation at command to dispose of at their

will; but in Massachusetts a more difficult problem was presented, for

the voters had to be controlled. By the law requiring freemen to be

church-members the elders meant to grasp the key to the suffrage, but

experience soon proved that more stringent regulation was needed.

According to the original Congregational theory each church was complete

and independent, and elected its own officers and conducted its own

worship, free from interference from without, except that others of the

same communion might offer advice or admonition. Under the theocracy

no such loose system was possible, for heresy might enter in three

different ways; first, under the early law, “blasphemers” might form

a congregation and from thence creep into the company; second, an

established church might fall into error; third, an unsound minister

might be chosen, who would debauch his flock by securing the admission

of sectaries to the sacrament. Above all, a creed was necessary by

means of which false doctrine might be instantly detected and condemned.

Accordingly, one by one, as the need for vigilance increased, laws were

passed to guard these points of danger.

First, in 1635 it was enacted, [Footnote: 1635-6, March 3.] “Forasmuch

as it hath bene found by sad experience, that much trouble and

disturbance hath happened both to the church & civill state by the

officers & members of some churches, which have bene gathered ... in an

vndue manner ... it is ... ordered that ... this Court doeth not,

nor will hereafter, approue of any such companyes of men as shall

henceforthe ioyne in any pretended way of church fellowshipp, without

they shall first acquainte the magistrates, & the elders of the greater

parte of the churches in this jurisdiction, with their intenctions, and

have their approbaction herein. And ffurther, it is ordered, that noe

person, being a member of any churche which shall hereafter be gathered

without the approbaction of the magistrates, & the greater parte of the

said churches, shallbe admitted to the ffreedome of this commonwealthe.”

[Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ i. 168.]

In 1648 all the elders met in a synod at Cambridge; they adopted the

Westminster Confession of Faith and an elaborate “Platform of Church

Discipline,” the last clause of which is as follows: “If any church

... shall grow schismatical, rending itself from the communion of other

churches, or shall walk incorrigibly and obstinately in any corrupt

way of their own contrary to the rule of the word; in such case the

magistrate, ... is to put forth his coercive power, as the matter shall

require.” [Footnote: _Magnalia_, bk. 5, ch. xvii. Section 9.]

In 1658 the General Court declared: “Whereas it is the duty of the

Christian magistrate to take care the people be fed with wholesome

& sound doctrine, & in this houre of temptation, ... it is therefore

ordered, that henceforth no person shall ... preach to any company of

people, whither in church society or not, or be ordeyned to the office

of a teaching elder, where any two organnick churches, councill of

state, or Generall Court shall declare theire dissatisfaction thereat,

either in refference to doctrine or practize... and in case of

ordination... timely notice thereof shall be given unto three or

fower of the neighbouring organicke churches for theire approbation.”

[Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ iv. pt. 1, p. 328.] And lastly, in 1679, the

building of meeting-houses was forbidden, without leave from the freemen

of the town or the General Court. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 213.]

But legislation has never yet controlled the action of human thought.

All experience shows that every age, and every western nation, produces

men whose nature it is to follow the guidance of their reason in the

face of every danger. To exterminate these is the task of religious

persecution, for they can be silenced only by death. Thus is a dominant

priesthood brought face to face with the alternative, of surrendering

its power or of killing the heretic, and those bloody deeds that cast

their sombre shadow across the history of the Puritan Commonwealth

cannot be seen in their true bearing unless the position of the clergy

is vividly before the mind.

Cromwell said that ministers were “helpers of, not lords over, God’s

people,” [Footnote: Cromwell to Dundass, letter cxlviii. Carlyle’s

_Cromwell_, iii. 72.] but the orthodox New Englander was the vassal of

his priest. Winthrop was the ablest and the most enlightened magistrate

the ecclesiastical party ever had, and he tells us that “I honoured

a faithful minister in my heart and could have kissed his feet.”

[Footnote: _Life and Letters of Winthrop_, i. 61.] If the governor of

Massachusetts and the leader of the emigration could thus describe his

moral growth,--a man of birth, education, and fortune, who had had wide

experience of life, and was a lawyer by profession,--the awe and terror

felt by the mass of the communicants can be imagined.

Jonathan Mitchel, one of the most famous of the earlier divines, thus

describes his flock: “They were a gracious, savoury-spirited people,

principled by Mr. Shepard, liking an humbling, mourning, heart-breaking

ministry and spirit; living in religion, praying men and women.” And “he

would speak with such a transcendent majesty and liveliness, that the

people ... would often shake under his dispensations, as if they had

heard the sound of the trumpets from the burning mountain, and yet they

would mourn to think, that they were going presently to be dismissed

from such an heaven upon earth.” ... “When a publick admonition was to

be dispensed unto any one that had offended scandalously... the hearers

would be all drowned in tears, as if the admonition had been, as indeed

he would with much artifice make it be directed unto them all; but

such would be the compassion, and yet the gravity, the majesty, the

scriptural and awful pungency of these his dispensations, that the

conscience of the offender himself, could make no resistance thereunto.”

[Footnote: _Magnalia_, bk. 4, ch. iv. Sub-section 9, 10.]

Their arrogance was fed by the submission of the people, and they would

not tolerate the slightest opposition even from their most devoted

retainers. The Reforming Synod was held in 1679. “When the report of

a committee on ‘the evils that had provoked the Lord’ came up for

consideration, ‘Mr. Wheelock declared that there was a cry of injustice

in that magistrates and ministers were not rated’ (taxed), ‘which

occasioned a very warm discourse. Mr. Stodder’ (minister of Northampton)

‘charged the deputy with saying what was not true, and the deputy

governor’ (Danforth) ‘told him he deserved to be laid by the heels,

etc.’

“‘After we broke up, the deputy and several others went home with Mr.

Stodder, and the deputy asked forgiveness of him and told him he freely

forgave him, but Mr. Stodder was high.’ The next day ‘the deputy owned

his being in too great a heat, and desired the Lord to forgive it,

and Mr. Stodder did something, though very little, by the deputy.’”

[Footnote: Palfrey’s _History of New England_, in. 330, note 2. Extract

from _Journal_ of Rev. Peter Thacher.] Wheelock was lucky in not having

to smart more severely for his temerity, for the unfortunate Ursula Cole

was sentenced to pay £5 [Footnote: Five pounds was equivalent to a sum

between one hundred and twenty-five and one hundred and fifty dollars

now. Ursula was of course poor, or she would not have been sentenced to

be whipped. The fine was therefore extremely heavy.] or be whipped for

the lighter crime of saying “she had as lief hear a cat mew” [Footnote:

Frothingham, _History of Charlestown_, p. 208.] as Mr. Shepard preach.

The daily services in the churches consumed so much time that they

became a grievance with which the government was unable to cope.

In 1633 the Court of Assistants, thinking “the keepeing of lectures att

the ordinary howres nowe obserued in the forenoone, to be dyvers wayes

preiudiciall to the common good, both in the losse of a whole day, &

bringing other charges & troubles to the place where the lecture is

kept,” ordered that they should not begin before one o’clock. [Footnote:

_Mass. Rec._ i. 110.] The evil still continued, for only the next year

it was found that so many lectures “did spend too much time and proved

overburdensome,” and they were reduced to two a week. [Footnote: Felt’s

_Eccl. Hist._ i. 201.] Notwithstanding these measures, relief was not

obtained, because, as the legislature complained in 1639, lectures “were

held till night, and sometimes within the night, so as such as dwelt

far off could not get home in due season, and many weak bodies could

not endure so long, in the extremity of the heat or cold, without great

trouble and hazard of their health,” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 324.] and a

consultation between the elders and magistrates was suggested.

But to have the delights of the pulpit abridged was more than the

divines could bear. They declared roundly that their privileges were

invaded; [Footnote: _Idem_, i. 325.] and the General Court had to give

way. A few lines in Winthrop’s Journal give an idea of the tax this

loquacity must have been upon the time of a poor and scattered people.

“Mr. Hooker being to preach at Cambridge, the governor and many others

went to hear him.... He preached in the afternoon, and having gone on,

with much strength of voice and intention of spirit, about a quarter of

an hour, he was at a stand, and told the people that God had deprived

him both of his strength and matter, &c. and so went forth, and about

half an hour after returned again, and went on to very good purpose

about two hours.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 304.] Common men could not

have kept this hold upon the inhabitants of New England, but the clergy

were learned, resolute, and able, and their strong but narrow minds

burned with fanaticism and love of power; with their beliefs and under

their temptations persecution seemed to them not only their most potent

weapon, but a duty they owed to Christ--and that duty they unflinchingly

performed. John Cotton, the most gifted among them, taught it as a holy

work: “But the good that is brought to princes and subjects by the

due punishment of apostate seducers and idolaters and blasphemers is

manifold.

“First, it putteth away evill from the people and cutteth off a

gangreene, which would spread to further ungodlinesse....

“Secondly, it driveth away wolves from worrying and scattering the sheep

of Christ. For false teachers be wolves, ... and the very name of wolves

holdeth forth what benefit will redound to the sheep, by either killing

them or driving them away.

“Thirdly, such executions upon such evill doers causeth all the country

to heare and feare, and doe no more such wickednesse.... Yea as these

punishments are preventions of like wickednesse in some, so are they

wholesome medicines, to heale such as are curable of these eviles....

“Fourthly, the punishments executed upon false prophets and seducing

teachers, doe bring downe showers of God’s blessings upon the civill

state....

“Fifthly, it is an honour to God’s Justice that such judgments are

executed....” [Footnote: _Bloody Tenent Washed_, pp. 137, 138.]

All motives combined to drive them headlong into cruelty; for in the

breasts of the larger number, even the passion of bigotry was cool

beside the malignant hate they felt for those whose opinions menaced

their earthly power and dominion; and they never wearied of exhorting

the magistrates to destroy the enemies of the church. “Men’s lusts are

sweet to them, and they would not be disturbed or disquieted in their

sin. Hence there be so many such as cry up tolleration boundless and

libertinism so as (if it were in their power) to order a total and

perpetual confinement of the sword of the civil magistrate unto its

scabbard; (a notion that is evidently distructive to this people, and

to the publick liberty, peace, and prosperity of any instituted churches

under heaven.)” [Footnote: _Eye Salve_, Election Sermon, by Mr. Shepard

of Charlestown, p. 21.] “Let the magistrates coercive power in matters

of religion (therefore) be still asserted, seing he is one who is bound

to God more than any other men to cherish his true religion; ... and

how wofull would the state of things soon be among us, if men might have

liberty without controll to profess, or preach, or print, or publish

what they list, tending to the seduction of others.” [Footnote: _Eye

Salve_, p. 38.] Such feelings found their fit expression in savage laws

against dissenting sects; these, however, will be dealt with hereafter;

only those which illustrate the fundamental principles of the theocracy

need be mentioned here. One chief cause of schism was the hearing of

false doctrine; and in order that the people might not be led into

temptation, but might on the contrary hear true exposition of the word,

every inhabitant was obliged to attend the services of the established

church upon the Lord’s day under a penalty of fine or imprisonment;

the fine not to exceed 5s. (equal to about $5 now) for every absence.

[Footnote: 1634-35, 4 March. _Mass. Rec._ i. 140.]

“If any Christian so called ... shall contemptuously behave himselfe

toward ye word preached, or ye messengers thereof called to dispence ye

same in any congregation, ... or like a sonn of Corah cast upon his true

doctrine or himselfe any reproach ... shall for ye first scandole be

convented ... and bound to their good behaviour; and if a second time

they breake forth into ye like contemptuous carriages, either to pay

£5 to ye publike treasury or to stand two houres openly upon a block 4

foote high, on a lecture day, with a pap fixed on his breast with this,

A Wanton Gospeller, written in capitall letters ye others may fear &

be ashamed of breaking out into the like wickednes.” [Footnote: 1646, 4

Nov. _Mass. Rec._ ii. 179.]

“Though no humane power be Lord over ye faith & consciences of men

and therefore may not constraine ym to beleeve or profes against their

conscience, yet because such as bring in damnable heresies tending to ye

subversion of ye Christian faith ... ought duely to be restrained from

such notorious impiety, if any Christian ... shall go about to subvert

... ye Christian faith, by broaching ... any damnable heresy, as deniing

ye immortality of ye soule, or ye resurrection of ye body, or any sinn

to be repented of in ye regenerate, or any evill done by ye outward man

to be accounted sinn, or deniing yt Christ gave himselfe a ransome for

or sinns ... or any other heresy of such nature & degree ... shall pay

to ye common treasury during ye first six months 20s. a month and for

ye next six months 40s. p. m., and so to continue dureing his obstinacy;

and if any such person shall endeavour to seduce others ... he shall

forfeit ... for every severall offence ... five pounds.” [Footnote:

1646, 4 Nov. _Mass. Rec._ ii. 177.]

“For ye honnor of ye aetaernall God, whome only wee worshippp and

serve,” (it is ordered that) “no person within this jurisdiction,

whether Christian or pagan, shall wittingly and willingly presume to

blaspheme his holy name either by wilfull or obstinate denying ye true

God, or reproach ye holy religion of God, as if it were but a polliticke

devise to keepe ignorant men in awe, ... or deny his creation or

gouvernment of ye world, or shall curse God, or shall vtter any other

eminent kind of blasphemy, of ye like nature and degree; if any person

or persons whatsoeuer within our jurisdiction shall breake this lawe

they shall be putt to death.” [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ iii.98.]

The special punishments for Antinomians, Baptists, Quakers, and other

sectaries were fine and imprisonment, branding, whipping, mutilation,

banishment, and hanging. Nor were the elders men to shrink from

executing these laws with the same ferocious spirit in which they

were enacted. Remonstrance and command were alike neglected. The Long

Parliament warned them to beware; Charles II. repeatedly ordered them to

desist; their trusted and dearest friend, Sir Richard Saltonstall, wrote

from London to Cotton: “It doth not a little grieve my spirit to heare

what sadd things are reported dayly of your tyranny and persecution

in New England, as that you fyne, whip, and imprison men for their

consciences,” [Footnote: _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 127.] and

told them their “rigid wayes have laid you very lowe in the hearts of

the saynts.” Thirteen of the most learned and eminent nonconforming

ministers in England wrote to the governor of Massachusetts imploring

him that he and the General Court would not by their violence “put

an advantage into the hands of some who seek pretences and occasions

against our liberty.” [Footnote: _Magnalia_, bk. 7, ch. iv. section 4.]

Winthrop, the wisest and ablest champion the clergy ever had, hung back.

Like many another political leader, he was forced by his party into

measures from which his judgment and his heart recoiled. He tells

us how, on a question arising between him and Mr. Haynes, the elders

“delivered their several reasons which all sorted to this conclusion,

that strict discipline, both in criminal offences and in martial

affairs, was more needful in plantations than in a settled state, as

tending to the honor and safety of the gospel. Whereupon Mr. Winthrop

acknowledged that he was convinced that he had failed in over much

lenity and remissness, and would endeavor (by God’s assistance) to take

a more strict course thereafter.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 178.] But

his better nature revolted from the foul task and once more regained

ascendancy just as he sunk in death. For while he was lying very sick,

Dudley came to his bedside with an order to banish a heretic: “No,” said

the dying man, “I have done too much of that work already,” and he would

not sign the warrant. [Footnote: _Life and Letters of Winthrop_, ii.

393.]

Nothing could avail, for the clergy held the state within their grasp,

and shrank from no deed of blood to guard the interests of their order.

The case of Gorton may serve as an example of a rigor that shocked even

the Presbyterian Baillie; it must be said in explanation of his story

that the magistrates condemned Gorton and his friends to death for the

crime of heresy in obedience to the unanimous decision of the elders,

[Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 146.] but the deputies refusing to concur, the

sentence of imprisonment in irons during the pleasure of the General

Court was agreed upon as a compromise. “Only they in New England are

more strict and rigid than we, or any church, to suppress, by the

power of the magistrate, all who are not of their way, to banishment

ordinarily and presently even to death lately, or perpetual slavery; for

one Jortin, sometime a famous citizen here for piety, having taught

a number in New England to cast oft the word and sacrament, and deny

angels and devils, and teach a gross kind of union with Christ in this

life, by force of arms was brought to New Boston, and there with ten of

the chief of his followers, by the civil court was discerned perpetual

slaves, but the votes of many were for their execution. They lie in

irons, though gentlemen; and out of their prison write to the admiral

here, to deal with the parliament for their deliverance.” [Footnote:

Baillie’s Letters, ii. 17, 18.]

Like all phenomena of nature, the action of the mind is obedient to law;

the cause is followed by the consequence with the precision that the

earth moves round the sun, and impelled by this resistless power his

destiny is wrought out by man. To the ecclesiastic a deep debt of

gratitude is due, for it was by his effort that the first step from

barbarism was made. In the world’s childhood, knowledge seems divine,

and those who first acquire its rudiments claim, and are believed, to

have received it by revelation from the gods. In an archaic age the

priest is likewise the law-giver and the physician, for all erudition

is concentrated in one supremely favored class--the sacred caste. Their

discoveries are kept profoundly secret, and yet to perpetuate their

mysteries among their descendants they found schools which are the only

repositories of learning; but the time must inevitably come when this

order is transformed into the deadliest enemy of the civilization which

it has brought into being. The power of the spiritual oligarchy rests

upon superstitious terrors which dwindle before advancing enlightenment;

hence the clergy have become reactionary, have sought to stifle the

spirit of free inquiry, and have used the schools which they have

builded as instruments to keep alive unreasoning prejudice, or to serve

their selfish ends. This, then, has been the fiercest battle of mankind;

the heroic struggle to break down the sacerdotal barrier, to popularize

knowledge, and to liberate the mind, began ages before the crucifixion

upon Calvary; it still goes on. In this cause the noblest and the

bravest have poured forth their blood like water, and the path to

freedom has been heaped with the corpses of her martyrs.

In that tremendous drama Massachusetts has played her part; it may be

said to have made her intellectual life; and it is the passion of the

combat which gives an interest at once so sombre and so romantic to her

story.

In the tempest of the Reformation a handful of the sternest rebels were

cast upon the bleak New England coast, and the fervor of that devotion

which led them into the wilderness inspired them with the dream of

reproducing the institutions of God’s chosen people, a picture of which

they believed was divinely preserved for their guidance in the Bible.

What they did in reality was to surrender their new commonwealth to

their priests. Yet they were a race in whose bone and blood the spirit

of free thought was bred; the impulse which had goaded them to reject

the Roman dogmas was quick within them still, and revolt against the

ecclesiastical yoke was certain. The clergy upon their side trod their

appointed path with the precision of machines, and, constrained by an

inexorable destiny, they took that position of antagonism to liberal

thought which has become typical of their order. And the struggles and

the agony by which this poor and isolated community freed itself from

its gloomy bondage, the means by which it secularized its education and

its government, won for itself the blessing of free thought and speech,

and matured a system of constitutional liberty which has been the

foundation of the American Union, rise in dignity to one of the supreme

efforts of mankind.

CHAPTER II.

THE ANTINOMIANS.

Habit may be defined with enough accuracy for ordinary purposes as the

result of reflex action, or the immediate response of the nerves to

a stimulus, without the intervention of consciousness. Many bodily

functions are naturally reflex, and most movements may be made so by

constant repetition; they are then executed independently of the will.

It is no exaggeration to say that the social fabric rests on the control

this tendency exerts over the actions of men; and its strength is

strikingly exemplified in armies, which, when well organized,

are machines, wherein subjection to command is instinctive, and

insubordination, therefore, practically impossible.

An analogous phenomenon is presented by the church, whose priests have

intuitively exhausted their ingenuity in weaving webs of ceremonial, as

soldiers have directed their energies to perfecting manuals of arms;

and the evidence leads to the conclusion that increasing complexity of

ritual indicates a densening ignorance and a deepening despotism. The

Hindoos, the Spaniards, and the English are types of the progression.

Within the historic ages unnumbered methods of sacerdotal discipline

have been evolved, but whether the means used to compass the end has

been the bewildering maze of a Levitical code, or the rosary and the

confessional of Rome, the object has always been to reduce the devotee

to the implicit obedience of the trooper. And the stupendous power of

these amazingly perfect systems for destroying the capacity for original

thought cannot be fully realized until the mind has been brought to

dwell upon the fact that the greatest eras of human progress have begun

with the advent of those who have led successful insurrection; nor can

the dazzling genius of these brilliant exceptions be appreciated, unless

it be remembered how infinitely small has been the number of those among

mankind who, having been once drilled to rigid conformity, have not

lapsed into automatism, but have been endowed with the mental energy to

revolt. On the other hand, though ecclesiastics have differed widely in

the details of the training they have enforced upon the faithful, they

have agreed upon this cardinal principle: they have uniformly seized

upon the education of the young, and taught the child to revere the

rites in which he was made to partake before he could reason upon their

meaning, for they understood well that the habit of abject submission

to authority, when firmly rooted in infancy, would ripen into a second

nature in after years, and would almost invariably last till death.

But this manual of religion, this deadening of the soul by making

mechanical prayers and genuflexions the gauge of piety, has always

roused the deepest indignation in the great reformers; and, un-appalled

by the most ghastly perils, they have never ceased to exhort mankind to

cast off the slavery of custom and emancipate the mind. Christ rebuked

the Pharisees because they rejected the commandment of God to keep their

own tradition; Paul proclaimed that men should be justified by faith

without the deeds of the law; and Luther preached that the Christian

was free, that the soul did not live because the body wore vestments or

prayed with the lips, and he denounced the tyranny of the clergy, who

arrogated to themselves a higher position than others who were Christian

in the spirit. On their side priesthoods know these leaders of rebellion

by an unerring instinct and pursue them to the death.

The ministers of New England were formalists to the core, and the

society over which they dominated was organized upon the avowed basis of

the manifestation of godliness in the outward man. The sad countenance,

the Biblical speech, the sombre garb, the austere life, the attendance

at worship, and, above all, the unfailing deference paid to themselves,

were the marks of sanctification by which the elders knew the saints

on earth, for whom they were to open the path to fortune by making them

members of the church.

Happily for Massachusetts, there has never been a time when all her

children could be docile under such a rule; and, among her champions of

freedom, none have been braver than those who have sprung from the ranks

of her ministry, as the fate of Roger Williams had already proved. In

such a community, before the ecclesiastical power had been solidified by

time, only a spark was needed to kindle a conflagration, and that spark

was struck by a woman.

So early as 1634 a restless spirit was abroad, for Winthrop was then set

aside, and now, in 1636, young Henry Vane was enthusiastically elected

governor, though he was only twenty-four, and had been but a few months

in the colony. The future seemed bright and serene, yet he had hardly

taken office before the storm burst, which not only overthrew him, but

was destined to destroy that unhappy lady whom the Rev. Thomas Welde

called the American Jezebel. [Footnote: Opinions are divided as to the

authorship of the _Short Story_, but I conclude from internal evidence

that the ending at least was written by Mr. Welde.]

John Cotton, the former rector of St. Botolph’s, was the teacher of the

Boston church. By common consent the leader of the clergy, he was the

most brilliant, and, in some respects, the most powerful man in the

colony. Two years before, Anne Hutchinson, with all her family, had

followed him from her home in Lincolnshire into the wilderness, for,

“when our teacher came to New England, it was a great trouble unto me,

my brother, Wheelwright, being put by also.” [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist_.

ii. 440.] A gentlewoman of spotless life, with a kind and charitable

heart, a vigorous understanding and dauntless courage, her failings were

vanity and a bitter tongue toward those whom she disliked. [Footnote:

Cotton, _Way of New England Churches_, p. 52.] Unfortunately also for

herself, she was one of the enthusiasts who believe themselves subject

to divine revelations, for this pretension would probably in any event

have brought upon her the displeasure of the church. It is worth

while to attempt some logical explanation of the dislike felt by

the Massachusetts elders to any suggestion of such supernatural

interposition. The half-unconscious train of reasoning on which they

based their claim to exact implicit obedience from the people seems,

when analyzed, to yield this syllogism: All revelation is contained in

the Bible; but to interpret the ancient sacred writings with authority,

a technical training is essential, which is confined to priests;

therefore no one can define God’s will who is not of the ministry. Had

the possibility of direct revelation been admitted this reasoning must

have fallen; for then, obviously, the word of an inspired peasant

would have outweighed the sermon of an uninspired divine; it follows,

necessarily, that ecclesiastics so situated would have been jealous of

lay preaching, and absolutely intolerant of the inner light.

In May, 1636, the month of Vane’s election, Mrs. Hutchinson had been

joined by her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, the deprived vicar

of Bilsby. Her social influence was then at its height; her amiable

disposition had made her popular, and for some time past she had held

religious meetings for women at her house. The ostensible object of

these gatherings was to recapitulate the sermons of the week; but the

step from discussion to criticism was short, and it soon began to be

said that she cast reproach “upon the ministers, ... saying that none of

them did preach the covenant of free grace, but Master Cotton, and that

they have not the seale of the Spirit, and so were not able ministers

of the New Testament.” [Footnote: _Short Story_, p. 36.] Or, to use

colloquial language, she accused the clergy of being teachers of forms,

and said that, of them all, Cotton alone appealed to the animating

spirit like Luther or St. Paul.

“A company of legall professors,” quoth she, “lie poring on the law

which Christ hath abolished.” [Footnote: _Wonder-Working Providence_,

Poole’s ed. p. 102.]

Such freedom of speech was, of course, intolerable; and so, as Cotton

was implicated by her imprudent talk, the elders went to Boston in

a body in October to take him to task. In the hope of adjusting the

difficulty, he suggested a friendly meeting at his house, and an

interview took place. At first Mrs. Hutchinson, with much prudence,

declined to commit herself; but the Rev. Hugh Peters besought her so

earnestly to deal frankly and openly with them that she, confiding in

the sacred character of a confidential conversation with clergymen in

the house of her own religious teacher, committed the fatal error of

admitting that she saw a wide difference between Mr. Cotton’s ministry

and theirs, and that they could not preach a covenant of grace so

clearly as he, because they had not the seal of the Spirit. The progress

of the new opinion was rapid, and it is clear Mrs. Hutchinson had only

given expression to a feeling of discontent which was both wide-spread

and deep. Before winter her adherents, or those who condemned the

covenant of works,--in modern language, the liberals,--had become an

organized political party, of which Vane was the leader; and here lay

their first danger.

Notwithstanding his eminent ability, he was then but a boy, and the task

was beyond his strength. The stronghold of his party was Boston,

where, except some half-dozen, [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 212.] the whole

congregation followed him and Cotton: yet even here he met with the

powerful opposition of Winthrop and the pastor, John Wilson. In the

country he was confronted by the solid body of the clergy, whose

influence proved sufficient to hold together a majority of the voters

in substantially all the towns, so that the conservatives never lost

control of the legislature.

The position was harassing, and his nerves gave way under the strain.

In December he called a court and one day suddenly announced that he had

received letters from England requiring his immediate return; but

when some of his friends remonstrated he “brake forth into tears and

professed that, howsoever the causes propounded for his departure were

such as did concern the utter ruin of his outward estate, yet he would

rather have hazarded all” ... “but for the danger he saw of God’s

judgment to come upon us for these differences and dissensions which he

saw amongst us, and the scandalous imputations brought upon himself, as

if he should be the cause of all.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 207.]

Such a flight was out of the question. The weight of his name and the

protection given his supporters by the power of his family in England

could not be dispensed with, and therefore the Boston congregation

intervened. After a day’s reflection he seems himself to have become

convinced that he had gone too far to recede, so he “expressed himself

to be an obedient child to the church and therefore ... durst not go

away.” [Footnote: _Idem_, i. 208.]

That a young and untried man like Vane should have grown weary of his

office and longed to escape will astonish no one who is familiar with

the character and the mode of warfare of his adversaries.

In that society a layman could not retort upon a minister who insulted

him, nor could Vane employ the arguments with which Cromwell so

effectually silenced the Scotch divines. The following is a specimen of

the treatment to which he was probably almost daily subjected, and the

scene in this instance was the more mortifying because it took place

before the assembled legislature.

“The ministers had met a little before and had drawn into heads all the

points wherein they suspected Mr. Cotton did differ from them, and had

propounded them to him, and pressed him to a direct answer ... to every

one; which he had promised. ... This meeting being spoke of in the court

the day before, the governour took great offence at it, as being without

his privity, &c., which this day Mr. Peter told him as plainly of (with

all due reverence), and how it had sadded the ministers’ spirits,

that he should be jealous of their meetings, or seem to restrain their

liberty, &c. The governour excused his speech as sudden and upon a

mistake. Mr. Peter told him also, that before he came, within less than

two years since, the churches were in peace.... Mr. Peter also besought

him humbly to consider his youth and short experience in the things of

God, and to beware of peremptory conclusions which he perceived him to

be very apt unto.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 209.] This coarse bully was

the same Hugh Peters of whom Whitelock afterward complained that he

often advised him, though he “understood little of the law, but was very

opinionative,” [Footnote: Memorials, p. 521.] and who was so terrified

at the approach of death that on his way to the scaffold he had to drink

liquor to keep from fainting. [Footnote: Burnet, i. 162.]

“Mr. Wilson” also “made a very sad speech to the General Court of the

condition of our churches, and the inevitable danger of separation, if

these differences ... were not speedily remedied, and laid the blame

upon these new opinions ... which all the magistrates except the

governour and two others did confirm and all the ministers but two.”

[Footnote: Winthrop, i. 209.] Those two were John Cotton and John

Wheelwright, the preachers of the covenant of grace.

Their brethren might well make sad speeches, for their cup of bitterness

was full; but they must be left to describe for themselves the tempest

of fear and wrath that raged within them. “Yea, some that had beene

begotten to Christ by some of their faithfull labours in this land”

(England, where the tract was published,) “for whom they could have laid

downe their lives, and not being able to beare their absence followed

after them thither to New England to enjoy their labours, yet these

falling acquainted with those seducers, were suddenly so altered in

their affections toward those their spirituall fathers, that they would

neither heare them, nor willingly come in their company, professing they

had never received any good from them.” ... “Now the faithfull ministers

of Christ must have dung cast on their faces ... must be pointed at as

it were with the finger, and reproached by name, such a church officer

is an ignorant man, and knows not Christ; such an one is under a

covenant of works: such a pastor is a proud man, and would make a good

persecutor ... so that through these reproaches occasion was given to

men, to abhorre the offerings of the Lord.” [Footnote: Welde’s _Short

Story_, Pref. Sections 7-11.]

“Now, one of them in a solemne convention of ministers dared to say to

their faces, that they did not preach the Covenant of Free Grace, and

that they themselves had not the seale of the Spirit.... Now, after our

sermons were ended at our publike lectures, you might have seene halfe

a dozen pistols discharged at the face of the preacher (I meane) so

many objections made by the opinionists in the open assembly against our

doctrine ... to the marvellous weakening of holy truths delivered ...

in the hearts of all the weaker sort.” [Footnote: Welde’s _Short Story_,

Pref. Sections 7-11.]

John Wheelwright was a man whose character extorts our admiration, if it

does not win our love. The personal friend of Cromwell and of Vane, with

a mind vigorous and masculine, and a courage stern and determined even

above the Puritan standard of resolution and of daring, he spoke

the truth which was within him, and could neither be intimidated nor

cajoled. In October an attempt had been made to have him settled as a

teacher of the Boston church in conjunction with Wilson and Cotton, but

it had miscarried through Winthrop’s opposition, and he had afterward

taken charge of a congregation that had been gathered at Mount

Wollaston, in what is now Quincy.

On the 19th of January a fast was held on account of the public

dissensions, and on that day Wheelwright preached a great sermon

in Boston which brought on the crisis. He was afterward accused of

sedition: the charge was false, for he did not utter one seditious word;

but he did that which was harder to forgive, he struck at what he deemed

the wrong with his whole might, and those who will patiently pore over

his pages until they see the fire glowing through his rugged sentences

will feel the power of his blow. And what he told his hearers was in

substance this: It maketh no matter how seemingly holy men be according

to the law, if ... they are such as trust to their own righteousness

they shall die, saith the Lord. Do ye not after their works; for they

say and do not. They make broad their phylacteries and enlarge the

borders of their garments; and love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and

the chief seats in the synagogues; and greetings in the market place and

to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi. But believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,

and ye shall be saved, for being justified by faith we have peace with

God through our Lord Jesus Christ. And the way we must take if so be we

will not have the Lord Jesus Christ taken from us is this, we must all

prepare a spiritual combat, we must put on the whole armor of God, and

must have our loins girt up and be ready to fight, ... because of fear

in the night if we will not fight the Lord Jesus Christ may come to be

surprised.

And when his brethren heard it they sought how they might destroy him;

for they feared him, because all the people were astonished at his

doctrine.

In March the legislature met, and Wheelwright was arraigned before a

court composed, according to the account of the Quaker Groom, of Henry

Vane, “twelve magistrates, twelve priests, & thirty-three deputies.”

[Footnote: Groom’s Glass for New England, p. 6.] His sermon was

produced, and an attempt was made to obtain an admission that by those

under a covenant of works he meant his brethren. But the accused was

one whom it was hard to entrap and impossible to frighten. He defied

his judges to controvert his doctrine, offering to prove it by the

Scriptures, and as for the application he answered that “if he were

shown any that walked in such a way as he had described to be a covenant

of works, them did he mean.” [Footnote: Wheelwright, Prince Soc. ed. p.

17, note 27.] Then the rest of the elders were asked if they “did walk

in such a way, and they all acknowledged they did,” [Footnote: Winthrop,

i. 215. Wheelwright, p. 18.] excepting John Cotton, who declared that

“brother Wheelwright’s doctrine was according to God in the parts

controverted, and wholly and altogether.” [Footnote: Groom’s _Glass for

New England_, p. 7.] He received ecclesiastical justice. There was no

jury, and the popular assembly that decided law and fact by a partisan

vote was controlled by his adversaries. Yet even so, a verdict of

sedition was such a flagrant outrage that the clergy found it impossible

to command prompt obedience. For two days the issue was in doubt, but at

length “the priests got two of the magistrates on their side, and so

got the major part with them.” [Footnote: Felt’s _Eccl. Hist._ ii. 611.]

They appear, however, to have felt too weak to proceed to sentence, for

the prisoner was remanded until the next session.

No sooner was the judgment made known than more than sixty of the

most respected citizens of Boston signed a petition to the court in

Wheelwright’s behalf, In respectful and even submissive language they

pointed out the danger of meddling with the right of free speech.

“Paul was counted a pestilent fellow, or a moover of sedition, and a

ringleader of a sect, ... and Christ himselfe, as well as Paul, was

charged to bee a teacher of New Doctrine.... Now wee beseech you,

consider whether that old serpent work not after his old method, even in

our daies.” [Footnote: Wheelwright, Prince Soc. ed. p. 21.]

The charge of sedition made against them they repudiated in emphatic

words, which deserve attention, as they were afterwards held to be

criminal.

“Thirdly, if you look at the effects of his doctrine upon the hearers,

it hath not stirred up sedition in us, not so much as by accident; wee

have not drawn the sword, as sometimes Peter did, rashly, neither

have wee rescued our innocent brother, as sometimes the Israelites did

Jonathan, and yet they did not seditiously. The covenant of free

grace held forth by our brother hath taught us rather to become humble

suppliants to your worships, and if wee should not prevaile, wee would

rather with patience give our cheekes to the smiters.” [Footnote:

_Idem_.]

The liberal feeling ran so strongly in Boston that the conservatives

thought it prudent to remove the government temporarily to Cambridge,

that they might more easily control the election which was to come in

May. Vane, with some petulance, refused to entertain the motion; but

Endicott put the question, and it was carried. As the time drew near the

excitement increased, the clergy straining every nerve to bring up their

voters from the country; and on the morning of the day the feeling was

so intense that the Rev. Mr. Wilson, forgetting his dignity and his

age, scrambled up a tree and harangued the people from its branches.

[Footnote: Hutch. _Hist_. i. 62, note.]

Yet, though the freemen were so deeply moved, there was no violence,

and Winthrop was peaceably elected governor, with a strong conservative

majority in the legislature. It so happened that just at this time a

number of the friends of Wheelwright and the Hutchinsons were on their

way from England to settle in Massachusetts. The first act of the new

government was to exclude these new-comers by passing a law forbidding

any town to entertain strangers for more than three weeks without the

consent of two of the magistrates.

This oppressive statute caused such discontent that Winthrop thought

it necessary to publish a defence, to which Vane replied and Winthrop

rejoined. The controversy would long since have lost its interest had

it not been for the theory then first advanced by Winthrop, that the

corporation of Massachusetts, having bought its land, held it as though

it were a private estate, and might exclude whom they pleased therefrom;

and ever since this plea has been set up in justification of every

excess committed by the theocracy.

Winthrop was a lawyer, and it is but justice to his reputation to

presume that he spoke as a partisan, knowing his argument to be

fallacious. As a legal proposition he must have been aware that it was

unsound.

Although during the reign of Charles I. monopolies were a standing

grievance with the House of Commons, yet they had been granted and

enforced for centuries; and had Massachusetts claimed the right to

exclude strangers as interlopers in trade, she would have stood upon

good precedent. Such, however, was not her contention. The legislation

against the friends of Wheelwright was passed avowedly upon grounds of

religious difference of opinion, and a monopoly in religion was unknown.

Her commercial privileges alone were exclusive, and, provided he

respected them, a British subject had the same right to dwell in

Massachusetts as in any of the other dominions of the crown, or, indeed,

in any borough which held its land by grant, like Plymouth. To subject

Englishmen to restriction or punishment unknown to English law was as

outrageous as the same act would have been had it been perpetrated by

the city of London,--both corporations having a like power to preserve

the peace by local ordinances, and both being controlled by the law of

the land as administered by the courts. Such arguments as those advanced

by Winthrop were only solemn quibbling to cloak an indefensible policy.

To banish freemen for demanding liberty of conscience was a still more

flagrant wrong. A precisely parallel case would have been presented had

the directors of the East India Company declared the membership of a

proprietor to be forfeited, and ordered his stock to be sold, because he

disapproved of enforcing conformity in worship among inhabitants of the

factories in Hindostan.

Vane sailed early in August, and his departure cleared the last barrier

from the way of vengeance. Proceedings were at once begun by a synod

of all the ministers, which was held at Cambridge, for the purpose of

restoring peace to the churches. “There were about eighty opinions, some

blasphemous, others erroneous, and all unsafe, condemned by the whole

assembly.... Some of the church of Boston ... were offended at the

producing of so many errors, ... and called to have the persons named

which held those errors.” To which the elders answered that all those

opinions could be proved to be held by some, but it was not thought

fit to name the parties. “Yet this would not satisfy some but they oft

called for witnesses; and because some of the magistrates declared

to them ... that if they would not forbear it would prove a civil

disturbance ... they objected.... So as he” (probably meaning Winthrop)

“was forced to tell one of them that if he would not forbear ... he

might see it executed. Upon this some of Boston departed from the

assembly and came no more.” [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 238.] Once freed

from their repinings all went well, and their pastor, Mr. Wilson, soon

had the satisfaction of sending their reputed heresies “to the devil

of hell from whence they came.” [Footnote: _Magnalia_, bk. 3, ch. ii.

Section 13.] Cotton, seeing that all was lost, hastened to make his

peace by a submission which the Rev. Mr. Hubbard of Ipswich describes

with unconscious cynicism. “If he were not convinced, yet he was

persuaded to an amicable compliance with the other ministers; ... for,

although it was thought he did still retain his own sense and enjoy his

own apprehension in all or most of the things then controverted (as is

manifest by some expressions of his ... since that time published,”...)

yet. “By that means did that reverend and worthy minister of the gospel

recover his former splendour throughout ... New England.” [Footnote:

Hubbard, p. 302.]

He was not a sensitive man, and having once determined to do penance,

he was far too astute a politician to do it by halves; he not only gave

himself up to the task of detecting the heterodoxy of his old friends,

[Footnote: Winthrop, i. 253.] but on a day of solemn fasting he publicly

professed repentance with many tears, and told how, “God leaving him for

a time, he fell into a spirituall slumber; and had it not been for the

watchfulnesse of his brethren, the elders, &c., hee might have slept on,

... and was very thankfull to his brethren for their watchfulnesse over

him.” [Footnote: _Hypocrisie Unmasked_, p. 76.] Nor to the end of his

life did he feel quite at ease; “yea, such was his ingenuity and piety

as that his soul was not satisfied without often breaking forth into

affectionate bewailing of his infirmity herein, in the publick assembly,

sometimes in his prayer, sometimes in his sermon, and that with tears.”

[Footnote: Norton’s _Funeral Sermon_, p. 37.]