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ROGER WILLIAMS THE FOUNDER OF RHODE ISLAND. 377

IX.

sun is the centre of our system; if the name of Kepler CHAP. is preserved in the annals of human excellence for his sagacity in detecting the laws of the planetary motion; if the genius of Newton has been almost adored for dissecting a ray of light, and weighing heavenly bodies as in a balance,-let there be for the name of Roger Williams at least some humble place among those who have advanced moral science, and made themselves the benefactors of mankind.

But if the opinion of posterity is no longer divided, 1635 the members of the general court of that day pronounced against him the sentence of exile;1 yet not by a very numerous majority. Some, who consented to his banishment, would never have yielded but for the persuasions of Cotton; and the judgment was vindicated, not as a punishment for opinion, or as a restraint on freedom of conscience, but because the application of the new doctrine to the construction of the patent, to the discipline of the churches, and to the "oaths for making tryall of the fidelity of the people," seemed about "to subvert the fundamental state and government of the country."

Winter was at hand; Williams succeeded in obtaining permission to remain till spring; intending then to begin a plantation in Narragansett Bay. But the affections of the people of Salem revived, and could not be restrained; they thronged to his house to hear him whom they were so soon to lose forever; it began to be rumored, that he could not safely be allowed to found a new state in the vicinity; "many of the people were much taken with the apprehension of his godliness;" his opinions were contagious; the

1 Winthrop, i. 170, 171. Colony Records, i. 163. John Cotton's Re48

VOL. I.

ply, 27. 29. Roger Williams's Ac-
count, ibid. 24, and ff.

Jan.

CHAP. infection spread widely. It was therefore resolved to IX. remove him to England in a ship that was just ready 1636. to set sail. A warrant was accordingly sent to him to come to Boston and embark. For the first time, he declined the summons of the court. A pinnace was sent for him; the officers repaired to his house; he was no longer there. Three days before, he had left Salem, in winter snow and inclement weather, of which he remembered the severity even in his late old age. "For fourteen weeks, he was sorely tost in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean." Often in the stormy night he had neither fire, nor food, nor company; often he wandered without a guide, and had no house but a hollow tree.2 But he was not without friends. The same scrupulous respect for the rights of others, which had led him to defend the freedom of conscience, had made him also the champion of the Indians. He had already been zealous to acquire their language, and knew it so well that he could debate with them in their own dialect During his residence at Plymouth, he had often been the guest of the neighboring sachems; and now, when he came in winter to the cabin of the chief of Pokanoket, he was welcomed by Massasoit; and "the barbarous heart of Canonicus, the chief of the Narragansetts, loved him as his son to the last gasp." "The ravens," he relates with gratitude, "fed me in the wilderness." And in requital for their hospitality, he was ever through his long life their friend and benefactor; the apostle of Christianity to them without hire, without weariness, and without impatience at their idolatry; the guardian of their rights; the pacif

1 Roger Williams to Mason, in i. Mass. Hist. Coll. i. 276.

2 Roger Williams's Key. Reprinted in R. I. Hist. Coll. i.

FOUNDATION OF PROVIDENCE.

379

IX.

icator, when their rude passions were inflamed; and CHAP. their unflinching advocate and protector, whenever Europeans attempted an invasion of their soil.

He first pitched and began to build and plant at Seekonk. But Seekonk was found to be within the patent of Plymouth; on the other side of the water, the country opened in its unappropriated beauty; and there he might hope to establish a community as free as the other colonies. "That ever-honored Governor Winthrop," says Williams, "privately wrote to me to steer my course to the Narragansett Bay, encouraging me from the freeness of the place from English claims or patents. I took his prudent motion as a voice from God."

It was in June that the lawgiver of Rhode Island, with five companions, embarked on the stream; a frail Indian canoe contained the founder of an independent state and its earliest citizens. Tradition has marked the spring near which they landed; it is the parent spot, the first inhabited nook of Rhode Island. To express his unbroken confidence in the mercies of God, Williams called the place PROVIDENCE. "I desired," said he, "it might be for a shelter for persons distressed for conscience."1

In his new abode, Williams could have less leisure for contemplation and study. "My time," he observes of himself,-and it is a sufficient apology for the roughness of his style, as a writer on morals," was not spent altogether in spiritual labors; but, day and night, at home and abroad, on the land and water, at the hoe, at the oar, for bread." In the course of two

1 Backus, i. 94. There is in Backus much evidence of diligent research and critical respect for documentary testimony. He de

serves more reputation than he has
had.

2 Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody,
38, in Knowles.

1636

IX.

Mar.

24.

CHAP. years, he was joined by others, who fled to his asylum. The land which was now occupied by Williams, was within the territory of the Narragansett Indians; it 1638. was not long before an Indian deed from Canonicus and Miantonomoh1 made him the undisputed possessor of an extensive domain. Nothing displays more clearly the character of Roger Williams than the use which he made of his acquisition of territory. The soil he could claim as his "own, as truly as any man's coat upon his back;" and he "reserved to himself not one foot of land, not one tittle of political power, more than he granted to servants and strangers." “He gave away his lands and other estate to them that he thought were most in want, until he gave away all.”3 He chose to found a commonwealth in the unmixed forms of a pure democracy; where the will of the majority should govern the state; yet "only in civil things;" God alone was respected as the Ruler of conscience. To their more aristocratic neighbors, it seemed as if these fugitives "would have no magistrates;" for every thing was as yet decided in convention of the people. This first system has had its influence on the whole political history of Rhode Island; in no state in the world, not even in the agricultural state of Vermont, has the magistracy so little power, or the representatives of the freemen so much. The annals of Rhode Island, if written in the spirit of philosophy, would exhibit the forms of society under a peculiar aspect: had the territory of the state corresponded to the importance and singularity of the principles of its early existence, the world would have

1 Backus, i. 89,90. Knowles, 106, 107.

2 Backus, i. 290. viii.

Knowles, c.

3 Letter of Daniel Williams. 4 Winthrop, i. 293 Hubbard, 338.

MAGNANIMITY OF ROGER WILLIAMS.

381

been filled with wonder at the phenomena of its CHAP history.

The most touching trait in the founder of Rhode Island was his conduct towards his persecutors. Though keenly sensitive to the hardships which he had endured, he was far from harboring feelings of revenge towards those who banished him, and only regretted their delusion. "I did ever, from my soul, honor and love them, even when their judgment led them to afflict me."1 In all his writings on the subject, he attacked the spirit of intolerance, the doctrine of persecution, and never his persecutors or the colony of Massachusetts. Indeed, we shall presently behold him requite their severity by exposing his life at their request and for their benefit. It is not strange, then, if " many hearts were touched with relentings. That great and pious soul, Mr. Winslow, melted, and kindly visited me," says the exile, "and put a piece of gold into the hands of my wife, for our supply;" the founder, the legislator, the proprietor of Rhode Island, owed a shelter to the hospitality of an Indian chief, and his wife the means of sustenance to the charity of a stranger. The half-wise Cotton Mather concedes, that many judicious persons confessed him to have had the root of the matter in him; and his nearer friends, the immediate witnesses of his actions, declared him, from "the whole course and tenor of his life and conduct, to have been one of the most disinterested men that ever lived, a most pious and heavenly-minded soul." 3

Thus was Rhode Island the offspring of Massachusetts; but her political connections were long influenced by the circumstance of her origin. The loss of the

1 Winthrop and Savage, i. 65

2 Williams to Mason. 3 Callender, 17.

IX.

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