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Roman Church was vast and complicated error, and that whatever she did not believe, practise, or enforce-and that only-was primitive. In their pious horror of its unauthorized assumptions, they adopted a system that consisted of nothing else but human inventions. They resisted a prelate with disdain, for the Pope was a bishop. They suppressed confirmation, transferred ordination to the brethren, and marriage to the civil magistrate; and, as prelatic clergy bowed in reverence, and kneeled in supplication, they abolished both as superstitions, and voted to stand up boldly before their Maker, and plead guilty or not guilty like men. They did not think it Scriptural to call the Apostles saints, who were unlettered men like Congregationalists (with no other possible advantage but the accidental one of being inspired), but they thought it by no means superstitious to appropriate the designation to themselves, or to regard old women as witches, and consistent with religion to execute them. They denied the authority of the General Council, composed of learned divines, but they established synods, consisting of men who compensated for their want of erudition by their superior gifts of extemporaneous preaching. They maintained the right of private judgment in religion, but they hanged Quakers; for it was manifest that they who differed from them had no judgment what

ever.

Determined to limit the authority of the clergy, they elected and ordained them themselves, and gave them to understand that the same power that made could discharge them. They then, with singular inconsistency, invested them with privileges that made them infinitely more despotic than those of any Church in the world. They emigrated, they said, to avoid persecution: more than fifty years elapsed before the Church of England could compel them to be tolerant. The fact that religious liberty was forced upon them by her efforts, is a triumphant answer to the calumnies that have been so liberally heaped upon her by sectarians and Romanists, at home and abroad.

This is the natural effect of schism. But the blame belongs not to the Puritans of Massachusetts more than to others.

Dissent has no resting

place. There are regions yet unexplored, where the adventurers who are in advance of their nation, and dwell on the borders of civilization, may push their discovery, and, like the Mormons, enjoy the revelation of prophets of their own.

Although we must now take leave of these republican colonists, we shall still continue their history during the interval that elapsed before the arrival of the new Charter, when it will be a more agreeable duty to examine the institutions they planted in the country, the beneficial effects of

which are still felt and acknowledged throughout the United States. I shall next give a brief view of the condition of the other provinces at this period, which forms a great epoch in the history of the country, and afterwards trace the progress of democracy in this continent during the existence of the royal government, until it attained that strength and maturity that enabled it boldly to assert, and manfully to achieve, its absolute independence.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

Indignation and grief of the colonists at the loss of their Charter-Death of Charles II.-Accession of James II. -Apprehensions of having Colonel Kirke as GovernorSome account of him-Mr. Dudley appointed President, who, with the assistance of six councillors, undertakes the Government-Protest of the Magistrates against the suppression of the Legislature-Unpopularity of the President-Description of the territory within his jurisdiction-Some account of Maine and New Hampshire, and the intrigues of Massachusetts to extend its authority over them-Desire of Charles II. to confer the former on the Duke of Monmouth, and to establish a Royal Government in the latter-Both comprehended within the Commission of President Dudley-Character of his administration.

We have seen in the foregoing chapters how constantly this people asserted and maintained

their independence from the day they first landed in the colony until the Charter was revoked. The loss of their liberty filled them with grief and indignation. They had always dreaded interference, and had hitherto resisted or evaded every attempt of the King, the Parliament, or the hierarchy to control them. This continued watchfulness, and anxious jealousy, had infused into their minds suspicion of the designs, and distrust of the good faith of England; but the loss of their patent inspired feelings of hatred for what they called the wantonness of invasion, and of revenge for the humiliation of defeat. Unable to defend themselves, they were compelled to yield to superior power; but if they could not openly contend, they could at least harass. If they could not recover the country they had cleared and planted, they felt they could make it an uncomfortable abode for their victors. In the age in which they lived, they knew they must have some form of constitutional government, and some fundamental rights conceded to them; and that the exercise of those privileges in a spirit of bitterness, and uncompromising obstinacy, must necessarily embarrass any administration, and render the possession of the colony as useless to the English, as their presence and interference were distasteful to them.

Thus the republicanism of America may be traced to its first settlement, but the intense hatred

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