Wherever Americans gather, at home or abroad, those who can claim
the proud heritage of descent from the Pilgrims on the Mayflower are
accustomed annually to join in thanks-giving for all that they owe
to their ancestors. The spirit which prompts these celebrations is
singularly wholesome, and indeed holy. Among the natural instincts of
the heart, common to all races, is a longing for communion with the
past, which manifests itself in the worship of ancestors. That this
spirit of reverence has been from the earliest ages a most powerful
religious and patriotic force is a fact familiar to us in the history
of the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans. We readily recall the
beautiful ceremonial of pagan Rome on the _dies parentales_, when
violets and roses and wine, oil and milk were offered and _aves_ were
chanted to the spirits of their dead.
An impressive example of the survival of this instinct in modern times
is afforded by the Japanese, who daily, at innumerable household
shrines and public temples erected to Shintō, worship their ancestors
as the gods of the home and of the nation. When, twenty-years ago,
Japan so easily defeated the Chinese Empire with ten times the
population of Japan, the surprise and marvel of the world impelled one
of the most brilliant writers of our generation to seek the source of
the fortitude, the indomitable spirit and the military valor of the
Japanese. He did not expect to find it in their form of government
or in their laws, for he realized the great truth that mere forms of
government and laws possess no magical or supernatural virtue and are
of little moment in nations in comparison with the moral character of
their leaders and their people. He discovered, as he believed, that the
secret of the civil and martial power of the Japanese and the source
of their moral energy and virtue--I use virtue in the Latin sense of
valor--lay in the vital and all-pervading worship of their ancestors,
based upon the deep-rooted belief that all things are determined by the
dead. He found that this homage excited at once the deepest emotion
and the most powerful inspiration of the race, shaping their national
character, directing their national life, teaching them reverence,
obedience, self-restraint, temperance, loyalty, courage, devotion and
sacrifice, and making them ever conscious of the prodigious debt the
present owes to the past, as well as keenly sensible of the duty of
love and gratitude to the departed for their labors and suffering.
"They," the dead, he eloquently wrote, "created all that we call
civilization,--trusting us to correct such mistakes as they could not
help making. The sum of their toil is incalculable; and all that they
have given us ought surely to be very sacred, very precious, if only
by reason of the infinite pain and thought which it cost." And then he
added, "Yet what Occidental dreams of saying daily, like the Shintō
believer: '_Ye forefathers of the generations, and of our families,
and of our kindred,--unto you, the founders of our homes, we utter the
gladness of our thanks_'?"[6]
In the reverential spirit so beautifully expressed by this Japanese
prayer, I venture upon a necessarily brief and imperfect review of a
subject of transcendent and enduring interest to Americans--the debt
that American constitutional government, under which we enjoy the
blessings of civil and religious liberty and of just and equal laws,
owes to your ancestors of the Mayflower.
In these days of superlative comfort and affluence, it is difficult for
us assembled in this palatial hall, feasting better than the Cæsars
feasted and served as not even princes were served three hundred years
ago--difficult, if not impossible, is it to carry our minds from this
gorgeous and almost oppressive luxury back through the centuries to
November, 1620, to the Mayflower covered with snow and ice and buffeted
by fierce winter winds off the bleak and desolate coast of Cape Cod.
Equally difficult is it to picture to ourselves and in imagination to
breathe the air of that first American constitutional convention, in
the cramped and chilling cabin of the Mayflower, when the Pilgrim
Fathers were assisting, as Bancroft says, at "the birth of popular
constitutional liberty," and were discussing the provisions of what
has since been called the first written constitution ever framed by
a people for their own government from the time history began to
record human politics and human successes and failures. I need not
stop to read the contents of the completed draft of that constitution,
conceived in the then vague prompting, which one hundred and fifty-six
years later was to be proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence
as a self-evident truth, that all governments must derive "their just
powers from the consent of the governed." Nor shall I read the names
of the forty-one immortals who executed that compact in order to
evidence their covenant of due consent and promise of obedience to its
provisions and spirit. Surely, if there be one constitutional document
which should be familiar to all Americans, and particularly to the
descendants of the Pilgrims, it is the Mayflower Compact of November
21, 1620.[7]
Many of us believe that the compact thus entered into was the prototype
of the Constitution of the United States, that the government it
established was the beginning of the republican form of government
now guaranteed alike to nation and state, and that the covenant it
contained for just and equal laws was the germ from which has since
developed our whole system of constitutional jurisprudence. This
covenant reads: "We ... doe by these presents solemnly & mutualy in
ye presence of God, and one of another, covenant & combine our selves
togeather into a civill body politick, for our better ordering &
preservation & furtherance of ye ends aforesaid; and by vertue hearof
to enacte, constitute, and frame such just & equall lawes, ordinances,
acts, constitutions, & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought
most meete & convenient for ye generall good of y Colonie, unto
which we promise all due submission and obedience." Surely, this
simple, comprehensive and lofty language, in the style of the Bible
open before the Pilgrims, embodies the true and invigorating spirit of
our constitutional polity as it flourishes to-day.
In order to appreciate the political greatness and the moral grandeur
of the work of the Pilgrims, we should recall that, when the Mayflower
Compact was framed, in no part of the world did there exist a
government of just and equal laws, and that in no country was there
real religious liberty or the complete separation of Church and State.
In fact, the great and now fundamental principle of the separation
of Church and State was first made a living reality by the Pilgrims,
although, in theory at least, it antedated the voyage of the Mayflower.
It was the essence of their holy covenant of congregation entered into
years before. And to the Pilgrims chiefly are due the credit and honor
of incorporating this principle into Anglo-American polity. A wide gulf
separated the Pilgrims from the Puritans in this respect. The Pilgrims,
first known in England as the Separatists and Brownists--hated alike
by Puritan and Cavalier--advocated religious liberty and the complete
separation of Church and State. The Puritans, however, when they
secured power in England and later in New England, were intolerant in
religion and opposed both to religious liberty and to the separation of
Church and State. They were determined that the state should dominate
in religious as well as in civil affairs and that it should regulate
the religion of all; in truth, they sought to impose a dominant
theocracy as completely as Henry VIII. and Elizabeth were determined to
have a state church under their own spiritual supremacy and to abolish
all "diversity of opinions," if necessary by rack, fire and the
scaffold. The Pilgrim, personifying him as you love to in the lofty and
generous spirit of Robinson at Leyden, believed in religious freedom,
or, as it is differently phrased, in liberty of conscience; the Puritan
was determined that all should be coerced by legislation and the sword
to conform to his religious views as the only true faith. Although the
Puritan theocracy found its most complete development and tyranny in
Massachusetts, the colony of Plymouth remained liberal and tolerant.
Notwithstanding the terrible record of sanguinary persecutions among
other religious denominations of that age, no instance is recorded of
religious persecution by the Pilgrims or in the Plymouth colony.[8]
You will recall that the famous Pilgrim captain, Myles Standish,
never joined the Plymouth church, that no witches were ever burned
in Plymouth, and that when a malicious woman accused a neighbor of
witchcraft, she was promptly convicted of slander and thereupon fined
and publicly whipped. The excesses and fury of religious persecution
by Protestants and Catholics alike were the products of the fierce,
intolerant and blind spirit of that age. We should judge them not by
the standards of the twentieth century, but by those of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, and must not overlook the fact that in many
cases these persecutions were as much political as they were religious.
In the history of New England the Pilgrim is often confused with the
Puritan, undoubtedly because the Puritan soon dominated and ultimately
absorbed the Pilgrim. Nevertheless, the differences between them on
this question of religious tolerance and the separation of Church and
State were implacable, to adopt the word of a great American historian.
Yet, in differentiating between Pilgrim and Puritan and in recalling
the facts as to the origin of religious freedom and the separation of
Church and State, the greatest of all the blessings we now enjoy--in
giving most of the glory to the Pilgrims, notwithstanding the claims
of Catholic Maryland--I am not at all unmindful that in religion and
in politics the Pilgrim and the Puritan had many views in common, that
our debt to both is quite inseparable, and that our gratitude to them
should be eternal.
It is certainly impossible to exaggerate the debt we owe to the Puritan
spirit--fierce, indomitable and undaunted, even if intolerant, for it
was that spirit which cemented the foundations of our nation. It was
the Puritan spirit that gave to England her noblest figures and her
most inspiring traditions of battlefields. Towering above all other
Englishmen is the lofty figure of the Puritan Cromwell, and second
only to him are the Puritans Hampden, Pym, Selden, Milton, Vane, Hale.
Hampden--the highest type of English gentleman, with a nobility and
fearlessness of character, self-control, soundness of judgment and
perfect rectitude of intention, to which, as Macaulay declared, "the
history of revolutions furnishes no parallel or furnishes a parallel in
Washington alone." If to-day England is to preserve her empire, upon
which she boasts the sun never sets, she must appeal to the energy and
fortitude and courage of the Puritan. She must invoke the spirit of
Oliver Cromwell, whose mighty arm made the name of England terrible
to her enemies and laid the foundations of her empire, who led her to
conquest, who never fought a battle without gaining it, whose soldiers'
backs no enemy ever saw, who humbled Spain on the land and Holland on
the sea, and who left a tradition of military valor which is now the
inspiration of the splendid courage, heroism and sacrifice of England's
soldiers on the continent of Europe.
A most important aspect of the Pilgrims' contribution to our political
institutions is the provision for just and equal laws contained in
the Mayflower Compact, for, as I have already suggested, in that
provision is embodied the essence of our whole constitutional system.
It has become a truism that the characteristic of the American system
of constitutional government is equality before the law. We Americans
accept this doctrine as of course. But we should appreciate that civil
equality or equality before the law was practically unknown in Europe
when the Mayflower Compact was written. In this country its development
sprang in great measure gradually from the seed first sown by the
Pilgrims. Neither the phrase "equality before the law," so familiar to
us as expressing a fundamental and self-evident truth, nor the term
"the equal protection of the laws," now contained in the fourteenth
amendment, is to be found in the English common law. Nor was either
term, or any equivalent, in legal use in America at the time of the
adoption of the Constitution of the United States. Indeed, the phrase
"equality before the law" is said to be a modern translation from the
French. Nevertheless, equality in duty, in right, in burden and in
protection is the thought which has run through all our constitutional
enactments from the beginning.
The Pilgrim Fathers perceived, long before it was generally
appreciated, that equal laws might fall far short of political justice
and liberty, and hence they provided for "just and equal laws." They
realized, perhaps indistinctly, that equality in itself, without other
elements, is not sufficient to guarantee justice, and that, under a
law which is merely _equal_, all may be equally oppressed, equally
degraded, equally enslaved. They well knew that equality is one of
the pervading features of most despotisms, and that a law may be
equal and yet be grossly arbitrary, tyrannical and unjust. Obviously,
a law confiscating all property of a certain kind would be equal if
it applied to all having that particular kind of property. The laws
of England then in force providing for one form of worship, "for
abolishing diversity of opinions," as the title of the act of 31 Henry
VIII. recited, or compelling all to attend the same church and to take
the same oath of religious supremacy and the sacraments of the same
religious denomination, were all equal laws, because they applied to
every one, no matter what his conscience might dictate. In the cabin of
the Mayflower, the Pilgrim Fathers seem to have had a vision revealing
to them the fundamental and essential political truth that equality is
but an attribute of the liberty they were then seeking at the peril of
their lives and the sacrifice of their fortunes, and that true liberty
requires _just_ as well as _equal_ laws. To repeat, it was the Pilgrims
who first sowed in our soil the seed of just and equal laws, and that
seed has grown into the fixed rule of the American constitutional
system, a rule which has spread through all our political and civil
rights and duties until it reaches, pervades, unites and invigorates
the whole body politic.
The history of the Plymouth colony from 1620 until its absorption
by the colony of Massachusetts in 1691, teaches us many lessons in
political philosophy. There are two which I desire to recall to you
to-night: one as to the right to private property, the other as to pure
democracy.
The Pilgrims began government under the Mayflower Compact with a
system of communism or common property. The experiment almost wrecked
the colony. As early as 1623, they had to discard it and restore the
old law of individual property with its inducement and incentive to
personal effort. All who now urge communism in one form or another,
often in disguise, might profitably study the experience of Plymouth,
which followed a similarly unfortunate and disastrous experiment in
Virginia. History often teaches men in vain. Governor Bradford's
account of this early experiment in communism in his annals of "Plimoth
Plantation" is extremely interesting. The book is rich in political
principles as true to-day as they were three hundred years ago. After
showing that the communal system was a complete failure and that as
soon as it was abandoned and a parcel of land was assigned in severalty
to each family, those who had previously refused to work became "very
industrious," even the women going "willingly into ye feild" taking
"their litle-ons with them to set corne, which before would aledg
weaknes, and inabilitie," Bradford proceeds as follows:
"The experience that was had in this com̅one course and condition,
tried sundrie years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well
evince the vanitie of that conceite of Platos & other ancients,
applauded by some of later times;--that ye taking away of propertie,
and bringing in com̅unitie into a comone wealth, would make them happy
and florishing; as if they were wiser then God. For this comunitie
(so farr as it was) was found to breed much confusion & discontent,
and retard much imployme̅t that would have been to their benefite and
comforte. For ye yong-men that were most able and fitte for labour
& service did repine that they should spend their time & streingth
to worke for other mens wives and children, with out any recompence.
The strong, or man of parts, had no more in devission of victails &
cloaths, then he that was weake and not able to doe a quarter ye
other could; this was thought injuestice. The aged and graver men to
be ranked and equalised in labours, and victails, cloaths, &c., with
ye meaner & yonger sorte, thought it some indignite & disrespect unto
them.... Let none objecte this is men's corruption, and nothing to ye
course it selfe. I answer, seeing all men have this corruption in them,
God in his wisdome saw another course fiter for them."[9]
Although the colony of Plymouth began as a pure democracy under which
all the men were convened to decide executive and judicial questions,
the increase of population and its diffusion over a wider territory
necessarily led to the transaction of official business through chosen
representatives. The representative system was thus established by
the Pilgrims in New England perhaps more firmly than elsewhere, and
it became the cardinal principle of whatever efficiency, strength and
stability our republican governments now have. This system is menaced
by the enthusiasm for change and by the fads of recent years, such
as the initiative, the referendum, the recall and direct primaries.
In these political nostrums has been revived the crude notion that
the masses, inexperienced as they are in the difficult and complex
problems of government, are instinctively better qualified to guide
than the educated few who are trained, instructed and competent, and
who, acting as the representatives of all, are bound in good conscience
and sound policy to consider and protect the rights of the minority, of
the individual, of the humble and weak, against the arbitrary will or
selfish interest or prejudice of the majority.
There is no time to-night, even if your patience would bear with me
longer, to trace the growth of the political principles which we find
in the history of the Plymouth colony and underlying the experiment
in republican government there initiated under the Mayflower Compact.
If the tree is to be judged by its fruit, the framing of that compact
in 1620 was one of the most important events in the history of the
American people, and the document itself is one of the most interesting
and inspiring of American constitutional documents. But I feel that
I may appropriately suggest to you questions which are of immediate
and urgent concern to us all, and they are whether the quickening
and stirring message of the Mayflower has really endured--whether
the sterling qualities of the Pilgrim and the Puritan have
survived--whether the descendants of the Pilgrims have inherited and
can perpetuate the invincible spirit, the unconquerable moral energy,
the indomitable steadfastness of their ancestors--and whether these
qualities are available in our own day to guide the nation safely and
wisely through the inevitable crisis which we are approaching as the
whole civilization of Europe is being daily more and more engulfed in
the abyss of this awful war. These are problems which our generation
must face sooner or later. And who should be better qualified to guide
us--for it is leadership that we need--than men who inherit the spirit
and the traditions of the Pilgrim and the Puritan?
In this crisis, the greatest in our national affairs since 1861, I
hope we shall profit by the example of the founders of Plymouth, who,
as Palfrey wrote, "gave diligent heed to arrangements for the military
defence of the colony." It may be also that Providence will give us, in
the descendant of a Pilgrim, the captain who shall be both our shield
and our weapon as Myles Standish was the shield and the weapon of your
ancestors.