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Title: The Emancipation of Massachusetts

Author: Brooks Adams

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THE EMANCIPATION OF MASSACHUSETTS
THE DREAM AND THE REALITY

BY
BROOKS ADAMS




PREFATORY NOTE TO FIRST EDITION.


I am under the deepest obligations to the Hon. Mellen Chamberlain and Mr.
Charles Deane.

The generosity of my friend Mr. Frank Hamilton Cushing in putting at my
disposal the unpublished results of his researches among the Zuñis is in
keeping with the originality and power of his mind. Without his aid my
attempt would have been impossible. I have also to thank Prof. Henry C.
Chapman, J. A. Gordon, M. D., Prof. William James, and Alpheus Hyatt,
Esq., for the kindness with which they assisted me. I feel that any merit
this volume may possess is due to these gentlemen; its faults are all my
own.

BROOKS ADAMS.
QUINCY, _September_ 17, 1886.




CONTENTS.


PREFACE

CHAPTER I. THE COMMONWEALTH

CHAPTER II. THE ANTINOMIANS

CHAPTER III. THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM

CHAPTER IV. THE ANABAPTISTS

CHAPTER V. THE QUAKERS

CHAPTER VI. THE SCIRE FACIAS

CHAPTER VII. THE WITCHCRAFT

CHAPTER VIII. BRATTLE CHURCH

CHAPTER IX. HARVARD COLLEGE

CHAPTER X. THE LAWYERS

CHAPTER XL. THE REVOLUTION




PREFACE TO NEW EDITION.


CHAPTER I


I wrote this little volume more than thirty years ago, since when I have
hardly opened it. Therefore I now read it almost as if it were written by
another man, and I find to my relief that, on the whole, I think rather
better of it than I did when I published it. Indeed, as a criticism of
what were then the accepted views of Massachusetts history, as expounded
by her most authoritative historians, I see nothing in it to retract or
even to modify. I do, however, somewhat regret the rather acrimonious tone
which I occasionally adopted when speaking of the more conservative
section of the clergy. Not that I think that the Mathers, for example, and
their like, did not deserve all, or, indeed, more than all I ever said or
thought of them, but because I conceive that equally effective strictures
might have been conveyed in urbaner language; and, as I age, I shrink from
anything akin to invective, even in what amounts to controversy.

Therefore I have now nothing to alter in the _Emancipation of
Massachusetts_, viewed as history, though I might soften its asperities
somewhat, here and there; but when I come to consider it as philosophy, I
am startled to observe the gap which separates the present epoch from my
early middle life.

The last generation was strongly Darwinian in the sense that it accepted,
almost as a tenet of religious faith, the theory that human civilization
is a progressive evolution, moving on the whole steadily toward
perfection, from a lower to a higher intellectual plane, and, as a
necessary part of its progress, developing a higher degree of mental
vigor. I need hardly observe that all belief in democracy as a final
solution of social ills, all confidence in education as a means to
attaining to universal justice, and all hope of approximating to the rule
of moral right in the administration of law, was held to hinge on this
great fundamental dogma, which, it followed, it was almost impious to
deny, or even to doubt. Thus, on the first page of my book, I observe, as
if it were axiomatic, that, at a given moment, toward the opening of the
sixteenth century, "Europe burst from her mediæval torpor into the
splendor of the Renaissance," and further on I assume, as an equally self-
evident axiom, that freedom of thought was the one great permanent advance
which western civilization made by all the agony and bloodshed of the
Reformation. Apart altogether from the fact that I should doubt whether,
in the year 1919, any intelligent and educated man would be inclined to
maintain that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were, as contrasted
with the nineteenth, ages of intellectual torpor, what startles me in
these paragraphs is the self-satisfied assumption of the finality of my
conclusions. I posit, as a fact not to be controverted, that our universe
is an expression of an universal law, which the nineteenth century had
discovered and could formulate.

During the past thirty years I have given this subject my best attention,
and now I am so far from assenting to this proposition that my mind tends
in the opposite direction. Each day I live I am less able to withstand the
suspicion that the universe, far from being an expression of law
originating in a single primary cause, is a chaos which admits of reaching
no equilibrium, and with which man is doomed eternally and hopelessly to
contend. For human society, to deserve the name of civilization, must be
an embodiment of order, or must at least tend toward a social equilibrium.
I take, as an illustration of my meaning, the development of the domestic
relations of our race.

I assume it to be generally admitted, that possibly man's first and
probably his greatest advance toward order--and, therefore, toward
civilization--was the creation of the family as the social nucleus. As
Napoleon said, when the lawyers were drafting his Civil Code, "Make the
family responsible to its head, and the head to me, and I will keep order
in France." And yet although our dependence on the family system has been
recognized in every age and in every land, there has been no restraint on
personal liberty which has been more resented, by both men and women
alike, than has been this bond which, when perfect, constrains one man and
one woman to live a joint life until death shall them part, for the
propagation, care, and defence of their children.

The result is that no civilization has, as yet, ever succeeded, and none
promises in the immediate future to succeed, in enforcing this primary
obligation, and we are thus led to consider the cause, inherent in our
complex nature, which makes it impossible for us to establish an
equilibrium between mind and matter. A difficulty which never has been
even partially overcome, which wrecked the Roman Empire and the Christian
Church, which has wrecked all systems of law, and which has never been
more lucidly defined than by Saint Paul, in the Epistle to the Romans,
"For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.
For that which I do, I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but
what I hate, that do I.... Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin
that dwelleth in me.... For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil
which I would not, that I do.... For I delight in the law of God after the
inward man: ... But I see another law in my members, warring against the
law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is
in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?" [Footnote: Romans vii, 14-24.]

And so it has been since a time transcending the limits of imagination.
Here in a half-a-dozen sentences Saint Paul exposes the ceaseless conflict
between mind and matter, whose union, though seemingly the essence of
life, creates a condition which we cannot comprehend and to which we could
not hope to conform, even if we could comprehend it. In short, which
indicates chaos as being the probable core of an universe from which we
must evolve order, if ever we are to cope with violence, fraud, crime,
war, and general brutality. Wheresoever we turn the prospect is the same.
If we gaze upon the heavens we discern immeasurable spaces sprinkled with
globules of matter, to which our earth seems to be more or less akin, but
all plunging, apparently, both furiously and aimlessly, from out of an
infinite past to an equally immeasurable future.

Whence this material mass comes, or what its wild flight portends, we
neither know nor could we, probably, comprehend even were its secret
divulged to us by a superior intelligence, always conceding that there be
such an intelligence, or any secret to disclose. These latter speculations
lie, however, beyond the scope of my present purpose. It suffices if
science permits me to postulate (a concession by science which I much
doubt if it could make) that matter, as we know it, has the semblance of
being what we call a substance, charged with a something which we define
as energy, but which at all events simulates a vital principle resembling
heat, seeking to escape into space, where it cools. Thus the stars, having
blazed until their vital principle is absorbed in space, sink into
relative torpor, or, as the astronomers say, die. The trees and plants
diffuse their energy in the infinite, and, at length, when nothing but a
shell remains, rot. Lastly, our fleshly bodies, when the union between
mind and matter is dissolved, crumble into dust. When the involuntary
partnership between mind and matter ceases through death, it is possible,
or at least conceivable, that the impalpable soul, admitting that such a
thing exists, may survive in some medium where it may be free from
material shackles, but, while life endures, the flesh has wants which must
be gratified, and which, therefore, take precedence of the yearnings of
the soul, just as Saint Paul points out was the case with himself; and
herein lies the inexorable conflict between the moral law and the law of
competition which favors the strong, and from whence comes all the
abominations of selfishness, of violence, of cruelty and crime.

Approached thus, perhaps no historical fragment is more suggestive than
the exodus of the Jews from Egypt under Moses, who was the first great
optimist, nor one which is seldomer read with an eye to the contrast which
it discloses between Moses the law-giver, the idealist, the religious
prophet, and the visionary; and Moses the political adventurer and the
keen and unscrupulous man of the world. And yet it is here at the point at
which mind and matter clashed, that Moses merits most attention. For Moses
and the Mosaic civilization broke down at this point, which is, indeed,
the chasm which has engulfed every progressive civilization since the dawn
of time. And the value of the story as an illustration of scientific
history is its familiarity, for no Christian child lives who has not been
brought up on it.

We have all forgotten when we first learned how the Jews came to migrate
to Egypt during the years of the famine, when Joseph had become the
minister of Pharaoh through his acuteness in reading dreams. Also how,
after their settlement in the land of Goshen,--which is the Egyptian
province lying at the end of the ancient caravan road, which Abraham
travelled, leading from Palestine to the banks of the Nile, and which had
been the trade route, or path of least resistance, between Asia and
Africa, probably for ages before the earliest of human traditions,--they
prospered exceedingly. But at length they fell into a species of bondage
which lasted several centuries, during which they multiplied so rapidly
that they finally raised in the Egyptian government a fear of their
domination. Nor, considering subsequent events, was this apprehension
unreasonable. At all events the Egyptian government is represented, as a
measure of self-protection, as proposing to kill male Jewish babies in
order to reduce the Jewish military strength; and it was precisely at this
juncture that Moses was born, Moses, indeed, escaped the fate which
menaced him, but only by a narrow chance, and he was nourished by his
mother in an atmosphere of hate which tinged his whole life, causing him
always to feel to the Egyptians as the slave feels to his master. After
birth the mother hid the child as long as possible, but when she could
conceal the infant no longer she platted a basket of reeds, smeared it
with pitch, and set it adrift in the Nile, where it was likely to be
found, leaving her eldest daughter, named Miriam, to watch over it.
Presently Pharaoh's daughter came, as was her habit, to the river to
bathe, as Moses's mother expected that she would, and there she noticed
the "ark" floating among the bulrushes. She had it brought her, and,
noticing Miriam, she caused the girl to engage her mother, whom Miriam
pointed out to her, as a nurse. Taking pity on the baby the kind-hearted
princess adopted it and brought it up as she would had it been her own,
and, as the child grew, she came to love the boy, and had him educated
with care, and this education must be kept in mind since the future of
Moses as a man turned upon it. For Moses was most peculiarly a creation of
his age and of his environment; if, indeed, he may not be considered as an
incarnation of Jewish thought gradually shaped during many centuries of
priestly development.

According to tradition, Moses from childhood was of great personal beauty,
so much so that passers by would turn to look at him, and this early
promise was fulfilled as he grew to be a man. Tall and dignified, with
long, shaggy hair and beard, of a reddish hue tinged with gray, he is
described as "wise as beautiful." Educated by his foster-mother as a
priest at Heliopolis, he was taught the whole range of Chaldean and
Assyrian literature, as well as the Egyptian, and thus became acquainted
with all the traditions of oriental magic: which, just at that period, was
in its fullest development. Consequently, Moses must have been familiar
with the ancient doctrines of Zoroaster.

Men who stood thus, and had such an education, were called Wise Men, Magi,
or Magicians, and had great influence, not so much as priests of a God, as
enchanters who dealt with the supernatural as a profession. Daniel, for
example, belonged to this class. He was one of three captive Jews whom
Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, gave in charge to the master of his
eunuchs, to whom he should teach the learning and the tongue of the
Chaldeans. Daniel, very shortly, by his natural ability, brought himself
and his comrades into favor with the chief eunuch, who finally presented
them to Nebuchadnezzar, who conversed with them and found them "ten times
better than all the magicians and astrologers that were in all his realm."

The end of it was, of course, that Nebuchadnezzar dreamed a dream which he
forgot when he awoke and he summoned "the magicians, and the astrologers,
and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans, for to shew the king his dreams,"
but they could not unless he told it them. This vexed the king, who
declared that unless they should tell him his dream with the
interpretation thereof, they should be cut in pieces. So the decree went
forth that all "the wise men" of Babylon should be slain, and they sought
Daniel and his fellows to slay them. Therefore, it appears that together
with its privileges and advantages the profession of magic was dangerous
in those ages. Daniel, on this occasion, according to the tradition,
succeeded in revealing and interpreting the dream; and, in return,
Nebuchadnezzar made Daniel a great man, chief governor of the province of
Babylon.

Precisely a similar tale is told of Joseph, who, having been sold by his
brethren to Midianitish merchantmen with camels, bearing spices and balm,
journeying along the ancient caravan road toward Egypt, was in turn sold
by them to Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh's guard.

And Joseph rose in Potiphar's service, and after many alternations of
fortune was brought before Pharaoh, as Daniel had been before
Nebuchadnezzar, and because he interpreted Pharaoh's dream acceptably, he
was made "ruler over all the land of Egypt" and so ultimately became the
ancestor whom Moses most venerated and whose bones he took with him when
he set out upon the exodus.

It is true also that Josephus has preserved an idle tale that Moses was
given command of an Egyptian army with which he made a successful campaign
against the Ethiopians, but it is unworthy of credit and may be neglected.
His bringing up was indeed the reverse of military. So much so that
probably far the most important part of his education lay in acquiring
those arts which conduce to the deception of others, such deceptions as
jugglers have always practised in snake-charming and the like, or in
gaining control of another's senses by processes akin to hypnotism;--
processes which have been used by the priestly class and their familiars
from the dawn of time. In especial there was one miracle performed by the
Magi, on which not only they, but Moses himself, appear to have set great
store, and on which Moses seemed always inclined to fall back, when hard
pressed to assert his authority. They pretended to make fire descend onto
their altars by means of magical ceremonies. [Footnote: Lenormant,
_Chaldean Magic_, 226.] Nevertheless, amidst all these ancient eastern
civilizations, the strongest hold which the priests or sorcerers held
over, and the greatest influence which they exercised upon, others,
lay in their relations to disease, for there they were supposed to be
potent. For example, in Chaldea, diseases were held to be the work of
demons, to be feared in proportion as they were powerful and malignant,
and to be restrained by incantations and exorcisms. Among these demons the
one, perhaps most dreaded, was called Namtar, the genius of the plague.
Moses was, of course, thoroughly familiar with all these branches of
learning, for the relations of Egypt were then and for many centuries had
been, intimate with Mesopotamia. Whatever aspect the philosophy may have,
which Moses taught after middle life touching the theory of the religion
in which he believed, Moses had from early childhood been nurtured in
these Mesopotamian beliefs and traditions, and to them--or, at least,
toward them--he always tended to revert in moments of stress. Without
bearing this fundamental premise in mind, Moses in active life can hardly
be understood, for it was on this foundation that his theories of cause
and effect were based.

As M. Lenormant has justly and truly observed, go back as far as we will
in Egyptian religion, we find there, as a foundation, or first cause, the
idea of a divine unity,--a single God, who had no beginning and was to
have no end of days,--the primary cause of all. [Footnote: _Chaldean
Magic_, 79.] It is true that this idea of unity was early obscured by
confounding the energy with its manifestations. Consequently a polytheism
was engendered which embraced all nature. Gods and demons struggled for
control and in turn were struggled with. In Egypt, in Media, in Chaldea,
in Persia, there were wise men, sorcerers, and magicians who sought to put
this science into practice, and among this fellowship Moses must always
rank foremost. Before, however, entering upon the consideration of Moses,
as a necromancer, as a scientist, as a statesman, as a priest, or as a
commander, we should first glance at the authorities which tell his
history.

Scholars are now pretty well agreed that Moses and Aaron were men who
actually lived and worked probably about the time attributed to them by
tradition. That is to say, under the reign of Ramses II, of the Nineteenth
Egyptian dynasty who reigned, as it is computed, from 1348 to 1281 B.C.,
and under whom the exodus occurred. Nevertheless, no very direct or
conclusive evidence having as yet been discovered touching these events
among Egyptian documents, we are obliged, in the main, to draw our
information from the Hebrew record, which, for the most part, is contained
in the Pentateuch, or the first five books of the Bible.

Possibly no historical documents have ever been subjected to a severer or
more minute criticism than have these books during the last two centuries.
It is safe to say that no important passage and perhaps no paragraph has
escaped the most searching and patient analysis by the acutest and most
highly trained of minds; but as yet, so far as the science of history is
concerned, the results have been disappointing. The order in which events
occurred may have been successfully questioned and the sequence of the
story rearranged hypothetically; but, in general, it has to be admitted
that the weight of all the evidence obtained from the monuments of
contemporary peoples has been to confirm the reliability of the Biblical
narrative. For example, no one longer doubts that Joseph was actually a
Hebrew, who rose, through merit, to the highest offices of state under an
Egyptian monarch, and who conceived and successfully carried into
execution a comprehensive agrarian policy which had the effect of
transferring the landed estates of the great feudal aristocracy to the
crown, and of completely changing Egyptian tenures. Nor does any one
question, at this day, the reality of the power which the Biblical writers
ascribed to the Empire of the Hittites. Under such conditions the course
of the commentator is clear. He should treat the Jewish record as
reliable, except where it frankly accepts the miracle as a demonstrated
fact, and even then regard the miracle as an important and most suggestive
part of the great Jewish epic, which always has had, and always must have,
a capital influence on human thought.

The Pentateuch has, indeed, been demonstrated to be a compilation of
several chronicles arranged by different writers at different times, and
blended into a unity under different degrees of pressure, but now, as the
book stands, it is as authentic a record as could be wished of the
workings of the Mosaic mind and of the minds of those of his followers who
supported him in his pilgrimage, and who made so much of his task
possible, as he in fact accomplished.

Moses, himself, but for the irascibility of his temper, might have lived
and died, contented and unknown, within the shadow of the Egyptian court.
The princess who befriended him as a baby would probably have been true to
him to the end, in which case he would have lived wealthy, contented, and
happy and would have died overfed and unknown. Destiny, however, had
planned it otherwise.

The Hebrews were harshly treated after the death of Joseph, and fell into
a quasi-bondage in which they were forced to labor, and this species of
tyranny irritated Moses, who seems to have been brought up under his
mother's influence. At all events, one day Moses chanced to see an
Egyptian beating a Jew, which must have been a common enough sight, but a
sight which revolted him. Whereupon Moses, thinking himself alone, slew
the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. Moses, however, was not alone.
A day or so later he again happened to see two men fighting, whereupon he
again interfered, enjoining the one who was in the wrong to desist.
Whereupon the man whom he checked turned fiercely on him and said, "Who
made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest thou to kill me, as thou
killedst the Egyptian?"

When Moses perceived by this act of treachery on the part of a countryman,
whom he had befriended, that nothing remained to him but flight, he
started in the direction of southern Arabia, toward what was called the
Land of Midian, and which, at the moment, seems to have lain beyond the
limits of the Egyptian administrative system, although it had once been
one of its most prized metallurgical regions. Just at that time it was
occupied by a race called the Kenites, who were more or less closely
related to the Amalekites, who were Bedouins and who relied for their
living upon their flocks, as the Israelites had done in the time of
Abraham. Although Arabia Patrea was then, in the main, a stony waste, as
it is now, it was not quite a desert. It was crossed by trade routes in
many directions along which merchants travelled to Egypt, as is described
in the story of Joseph, whose brethren seized him in Dothan, and as they
sat by the side of the pit in which they had thrown him, they saw a
company of Ishmaelites who came from Gilead and who journeyed straight
down from Damascus to Gilead and from thence to Hebron, along the old
caravan road, toward Egypt, with camels bearing spices and myrrh, as had
been their custom since long beyond human tradition, and which had been
the road along which Abraham had travelled before them, and which was
still watered by his wells. This was the famous track from Beersheba to
Hebron, where Hagar was abandoned with her baby Ishmael, and if the
experiences of Hagar do not prove that the wilderness of Shur was
altogether impracticable for women and children it does at least show that
for a mixed multitude without trustworthy guides or reliable sources of
supply, the country was not one to be lightly attempted.

It was into a region similar to this, only somewhat further to the south,
that Moses penetrated after his homicide, travelling alone and as an
unknown adventurer, dressed like an Egyptian, and having nothing of the
nomad about him in his looks. As Moses approached Sinai, the country grew
wilder and more lonely, and Moses one day sat himself down, by the side of
a well whither shepherds were wont to drive their flocks to water. For
shepherds came there, and also shepherdesses; among others were the seven
daughters of Jethro, the priest of Midian, who came to water their
father's flocks. But the shepherds drove them away and took the water for
themselves. Whereupon Moses defended the girls and drew water for them and
watered their flocks. This naturally pleased the young women, and they
took Moses home with them to their father's tent, as Bedouins still would
do. And when they came to their father, he asked how it chanced that they
came home so early that day. "And they said, an Egyptian delivered us out
of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and
watered the flock." And Jethro said, "Where is he? Why is it that ye have
left the man? Call him that he may eat bread."

"And Moses was content to dwell with" Jethro, who made him his chief
shepherd and gave him Zipporah, his daughter. And she bore him a son.
Seemingly, time passed rapidly and happily in this peaceful, pastoral
life, which, according to the tradition preserved by Saint Stephen, lasted
forty years, but be the time long or short, it is clear that Moses loved
and respected Jethro and was in return valued by him. Nor could anything
have been more natural, for Moses was a man who made a deep impression at
first sight--an impression which time strengthened. Intellectually he must
have been at least as notable as in personal appearance, for his education
at Heliopolis set him apart from men whom Jethro would have been apt to
meet in his nomad life. But if Moses had strong attractions for Jethro,
Jethro drew Moses toward himself at least as strongly in the position in
which Moses then stood. Jethro, though a child of the desert, was the
chief of a tribe or at least of a family, a man used to command, and to
administer the nomad law; for Jethro was the head of the Kenites, who were
akin to the Amalekites, with whom the Israelites were destined to wage
mortal war. And for Moses this was a most important connection, for Moses
after his exile never permitted his relations with his own people in Egypt
to lapse. The possibility of a Jewish revolt, of which his own banishment
was a precursor, was constantly in his mind. To Moses a Jewish exodus from
Egypt was always imminent. For centuries it had been a dream of the Jews.
Indeed it was an article of faith with them. Joseph, as he sank in death,
had called his descendants about him and made them solemnly swear to
"carry his bones hence." And to that end Joseph had caused his body to be
embalmed and put in a coffin that all might be ready when the day came.
Moses knew the tradition and felt himself bound by the oath and waited in
Midian with confidence until the moment of performance should come.
Presently it did come. Very probably before he either expected or could
have wished it, and actually, as almost his first act of leadership, Moses
did carry the bones of Joseph with him when he crossed the Red Sea. Moses
held the tradition to be a certainty. He never conceived it to be a matter
of possible doubt, nor probably was it so. There was in no one's mind a
question touching Joseph's promise nor about his expectation of its
fulfilment. What Moses did is related in Exodus XIII, 19: "And Moses took
the bones of Joseph with him; for he had straitly sworn the children of
Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones
away hence with you."

In fine, Moses, in the solitude of the Arabian wilderness, in his
wanderings as the shepherd of Jethro, came to believe that his destiny was
linked with that of his countrymen in a revolution which was certain to
occur before they could accomplish the promise of Joseph and escape from
Egypt under the guidance of the god who had befriended and protected him.
Moreover, Moses was by no means exclusively a religious enthusiast. He was
also a scientific man, after the ideas of that age. Moses had a high
degree of education and he was familiar with the Egyptian and Chaldean
theory of a great and omnipotent prime motor, who had had no beginning and
should have no end. He was also aware that this theory was obscured by the
intrusion into men's minds of a multitude of lesser causes, in the shape
of gods and demons, who mixed themselves in earthly affairs and on whose
sympathy or malevolence the weal or woe of human life hinged. Pondering
deeply on these things as he roamed, he persuaded himself that he had
solved the riddle of the universe, by identifying the great first cause of
all with the deity who had been known to his ancestors, whose normal home
was in the promised land of Canaan, and who, beside being all-powerful,
was also a moral being whose service must tend toward the welfare of
mankind. For Moses was by temperament a moralist in whom such abominations
as those practised in the worship of Moloch created horror. He knew that
the god of Abraham would tolerate no such wickedness as this, because of
the fate of Sodom on much less provocation, and he believed that were he
to lead the Israelites, as he might lead them, he could propitiate such a
deity, could he but by an initial success induce his congregation to obey
the commands of a god strong enough to reward them for leading a life
which should be acceptable to him. All depended, therefore, should the
opportunity of leadership come to him, on his being able, in the first
place, to satisfy himself that the god who presented himself to him was
verily the god of Abraham, who burned Sodom, and not some demon, whose
object was to vex mankind: and, in the second place, assuming that he
himself were convinced of the identity of the god, that he could convince
his countrymen of the fact, and also of the absolute necessity of
obedience to the moral law which he should declare, since without absolute
obedience, they would certainly merit, and probably suffer, such a fate as
befell the inhabitants of Sodom, under the very eyes of Abraham, and in
spite of his prayers for mercy.

There was one other apprehension which may have troubled, and probably did
trouble, Moses. The god of the primitive man, and certainly of the
Bedouin, is usually a local deity whose power and whose activity is
limited to some particular region, as, for instance, a mountain or a
plain. Thus the god of Abraham might have inhabited and absolutely ruled
the plain of Mamre and been impotent elsewhere. But this, had Moses for a
moment harbored such a notion, would have been dispelled when he thought
of Joseph. Joseph, when his brethren threw him into the pit, must have
been under the guardianship of the god of his fathers, and when he was
drawn out, and sold in the ordinary course of the slave-trade, he was
bought by Potiphar, the captain of the guard. "And the Lord was with
Joseph and he was a prosperous man." Thenceforward, Joseph had a wonderful
career. He received in a dream a revelation of what the weather was to be
for seven years to come. And by this dream he was able to formulate a
policy for establishing public graineries like those which were maintained
in Babylon, and by means of these graineries, ably administered, the crown
was enabled to acquire the estates of the great feudatories, and thus the
whole social system of Egypt was changed. And Joseph, from being a poor
waif, cast away by his brethren in the wilderness, became the foremost man
in Egypt and the means of settling his compatriots in the province of
Gotham, where they still lived when Moses fled from Egypt. Such facts had
made a profound impression upon the mind of Moses, who very reasonably
looked upon Joseph as one of the most wonderful men who had ever lived,
and one who could not have succeeded as he succeeded, without the divine
interposition. But if the god who did these things could work such
miracles in Egypt, his power was not confined by local boundaries, and his
power could be trusted in the desert as safely as it could be on the plain
of Mamre or elsewhere. The burning of Sodom was a miracle equally in point
to prove the stern morality of the god. And that also, was a fact, as
incontestable, to the mind of Moses, as was the rising of the sun upon the
morning of each day. He knew, as we know of the battle of Great Meadows,
that one day his ancestor Abraham, when sitting in the door of his tent
toward noon, "in the plain of Mamre," at a spot not far from Hebron and
perfectly familiar to every traveller along the old caravan road hither,
on looking up observed three men standing before him, one of whom he
recognized as the "Lord." Then it dawned on Abraham that the "Lord" had
not come without a purpose, but had dropped in for dinner, and Abraham ran
to meet them, "and bowed himself toward the ground." And he said, "Let a
little water be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the
tree: And I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts;
after that you shall pass on." "And Abraham ran unto the herd, and fetcht
a calf tender and good, and gave it unto a young man; and he hasted to
dress it. And he took butter, and milk, and the calf which he had dressed,
and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree, and they did
eat." Meanwhile, Abraham asked no questions, but waited until the object
of the visit should be disclosed. In due time he succeeded in his purpose.
"And they said unto him, Where is Sarah thy wife? And he said, Behold, in
the tent. And he [the Lord] said, ... Sarah thy wife shall have a son....
Now Abraham and Sarah were old, and well stricken in age." At this time
Abraham was about one hundred years old, according to the tradition, and
Sarah was proportionately amused, and "laughed within herself." This mirth
vexed "the Lord," who did not treat his words as a joke, but asked, "Is
anything too hard for the Lord?" Then Sarah took refuge in a lie, and
denied that she had laughed. But the lie helped her not at all, for the
Lord insisted, "Nay, but thou didst laugh." And this incident broke up the
party. The men rose and "looked toward Sodom": and Abraham strolled with
them, to show them the way. And then the "Lord" debated with himself
whether to make a confidant of Abraham touching his resolution to destroy
Sodom utterly. And finally he decided that he would, "because the cry of
Sodom and Gomorrah is great and because their sin is very grievous."
Whereupon Abraham intervened, and an argument ensued, and at length God
admitted that he had been too hasty and promised to think the matter over.
And finally, when "the Lord" had reduced the number of righteous for whom
the city should be saved to ten, Abraham allowed him to go "his way ...
and Abraham returned to his place."

In the evening of the same day two angels came to Sodom, who met Lot at
the gate, and Lot took them to his house and made them a feast and they
did eat. Then it happened that the mob surrounded Lot's house and demanded
that the strangers should be delivered up to them. But Lot successfully
defended them. And in the morning the angels warned Lot to escape, but Lot
hesitated, though finally he did escape to Zoar.

"Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from
the Lord out of heaven."

"And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood
before the Lord:

"And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the
plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke
of a furnace."

We must always remember, in trying to reconstruct the past, that these
traditions were not matters of possible doubt to Moses, or indeed to any
Israelite. They were as well established facts to them as would be the
record of volcanic eruptions now. Therefore it would not have astonished
Moses more that the Lord should meet him on the slope of Horeb, than that
the Lord should have met his ancestor Abraham on the plain of Mamre.
Moses' doubts and perplexities lay in another direction. Moses did not
question, as did his great ancestress, that his god could do all he
promised, if he had the will. His anxiety lay in his doubt as to God's
steadiness of purpose supposing he promised; and this doubt was increased
by his lack of confidence in his own countrymen. The god of Abraham was a
requiring deity with a high moral standard, and the Hebrews were at least
in part somewhat akin to a horde of semi-barbarous nomads, much more
likely to fall into offences resembling those of Sodom than to render
obedience to a code which would strictly conform to the requirements which
alone would ensure Moses support, supposing he accepted a task which,
after all, without divine aid, might prove to be impossible to perform.

When the proposition which Moses seems, more or less confidently, to have
expected to be made to him by the Lord, came, it came very suddenly and
very emphatically.  "Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law,
the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert,
and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.

"And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the
midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire,
and the bush was not consumed."

And Moses, not, apparently, very much excited, said, "I will now turn
aside, and see this great sight." But God called unto him out of the midst
of the bush, and said, "Moses, Moses." And he said, "Here am I." Then the
voice commanded him to put off his shoes from off his feet, for the place
he stood on was holy ground.

"Moreover," said the voice, "I am the God of thy father, the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face;
for he was afraid to look upon God.

And the Lord said, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people ... and
have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their
sorrows.

"And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and
to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a
land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and
the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites....

"Come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest
bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

And Moses said unto God, "Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and
that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?..." And
Moses said unto God, "Behold, when I am come unto the children of Israel,
and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you;
and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?"

And God said unto Moses, "_I am That I Am_;" and he said, "Thus shalt
thou say unto the children of Israel, _I Am_ hath sent me unto you."

"And God said, moreover, unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children
of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of
Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name
forever, and this is my memorial unto all generations."

Then the denizen of the bush renewed his instructions and his promises,
assuring Moses that he would bring him and his following out of the land
of affliction of Egypt and into the land of the Canaanites, and the
Hittites, and the Amorites, and others, unto a land flowing with milk and
honey. In a word to Palestine. And he insisted to Moses that he should
gain an entrance to Pharaoh, and that he should tell him that "the Lord
God of the Hebrews hath met with us: and now let us go, we beseech thee,
three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord
our God."

Also God did not pretend to Moses that the King of Egypt would forthwith
let them go; whereupon he would work his wonders in Egypt and after that
Pharaoh would let them go.

Moreover, he promised, as an inducement to their avarice, that they should
not go empty away, for that the Lord God would give the Hebrews favor in
the sight of the Egyptians, "so that every woman should borrow of her
neighbor, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver,
jewels of gold, and raiment," and that they should spoil the Egyptians.
But all this time God did not disclose his name; so Moses tried another
way about. If he would not tell his name he might at least enable Moses to
work some wonder which should bring conviction to those who saw it, even
if the god remained nameless. For Moses appreciated the difficulty of the
mission suggested to him. How was he, a stranger in Egypt, to gain the
confidence of that mixed and helpless multitude, whom he was trying to
persuade to trust to his guidance in so apparently desperate an enterprise
as crossing a broad and waterless waste, in the face of a well-armed and
vigorous foe. Moses apprehended that there was but one way in which he
could by possibility succeed. He might prevail by convincing the
Israelites that he was commissioned by the one deity whom they knew, who
was likely to have both the will and the power to aid them, and that was
the god who had visited Abraham on the plain of Mamre, who had destroyed
Sodom for its iniquity, and who had helped Joseph to become the ruler of
Egypt. Joseph above all was the man who had made to his descendants that
solemn promise on whose faith Moses was, at that very moment, basing his
hopes of deliverance; for Joseph had assured the Israelites in the most
solemn manner that the god who had aided him would surely visit them, and
that they should carry his bones away with them to the land he promised.
That land was the land to which Moses wished to guide them. Now Moses was
fully determined to attempt no such project as this unless the being who
spoke from the bush would first prove to him, Moses, that he was the god
he purported to be, and should beside give Moses credentials which should
be convincing, by which Moses could prove to the Jews in Egypt that he was
no impostor himself, nor had he been deceived by a demon. Therefore Moses
went on objecting as strongly as at first:

"And Moses answered and said, But behold they will not believe me, nor
hearken to my voice; for they will say, the Lord hath not appeared unto
thee."

Then the being in the bush proceeded to submit his method of proof, which
was of a truth feeble, and which Moses rejected as feeble. A form of proof
which never fully convinced him, and which, in his judgment could not be
expected to convince others, especially men so educated and intelligent as
the Egyptians. For the Lord had nothing better to suggest than the ancient
trick of the snake-charmer, and even the possessor of the voice seems
implicitly to have admitted that this could hardly be advanced as a
convincing miracle. So the Lord proposed two other tests: the first was
that Moses should have his hand smitten with leprous sores and restored
immediately by hiding it from sight in "his bosom." And in the event that
this test left his audience still sceptical, he was to dip Nile water out
of the river, and turn it into blood on land.

Moses at all these three proposals remained cold as before. And with good
reason, for Moses had been educated as a priest in Egypt, and he knew that
Egyptian "wise men" could do as well, and even better, if it came to a
magical competition before Pharaoh. And Moses had evidently no relish for
a contest in the presence of his countrymen as to the relative quality of
his magic. Therefore, he objected once more on another ground: "I am not
eloquent, neither heretofore nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant:
but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue." This continued hesitancy
put the Lord out of patience; who retorted sharply, "Who hath made man's
mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have
not I the Lord?

"Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou
shalt say."

Then Moses made his last effort. "0 my Lord, send, I pray thee, by the
hand of him whom thou wilt send." Which was another way of saying, Send
whom you please, but leave me to tend Jethro's flock in Midian.

"And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses; and he said, Is not
Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak well. And also,
behold, he cometh forth to meet thee; and when he seeth thee, he will be
glad in his heart.

"And he shall be, ... to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him
instead of God."

Then Moses, not seeming to care very much what Aaron might think about the
matter, went to Jethro, and related what had happened to him on the
mountain, and asked for leave to go home to Egypt, and see how matters
stood there. And Jethro listened, and seems to have thought the experiment
worth trying, for he answered, "Go in peace."

"And the Lord said unto Moses,"--but where is not stated, probably in
Midian,--"Go, return into Egypt," which you may do safely, for all the men
are dead which sought thy life.

"And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and he
returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in his hand."

It was after this, apparently, that Aaron travelled to meet Moses in
Midian, and Moses told Aaron what had occurred, and performed his tests,
and, seemingly, convinced him; for then Moses and Aaron went together into
Egypt and called the elders of the children of Israel together, "and did
the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed: and ...
bowed their heads and worshipped." Meanwhile God had not, as yet, revealed
his name. But as presently matters came to a crisis between Moses and
Pharaoh, he did so. He said to Moses, "I am the Lord:

"I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God
Almighty; but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them....

"Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord.... And I will
bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to
Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage: I
am the Lord.

"And Moses spake so unto the children of Israel: but they hearkened not
unto Moses, for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage....

"And Moses spake before the Lord, saying, Behold the children of Israel
have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me?" And from this
form of complaint against his countrymen until his death Moses never
ceased.

Certain modern critics have persuaded themselves to reject this whole
Biblical narrative as the product of a later age and of a maturer
civilization, contending that it would be childish to attribute the
reasoning of the Pentateuch to primitive Bedouins like the patriarchs or
like the Jews who followed Moses into the desert. Setting aside at once
the philological discussion as to whether the language of the Pentateuch
could have been used by Moses, and admitting for the sake of argument that
Moses did not either himself write, or dictate to another, any part of the
documents in question, it would seem that the application of a little
common sense would show pretty conclusively that Moses throughout his
whole administrative life acted upon a single scientific theory of the
application of a supreme energy to the affairs of life, and upon the
belief that he had discovered what that energy was and understood how to
control it.

His syllogism amounted to this:

Facts, which are admitted by all Hebrews, prove that the single dominant
power in the world is the being who revealed himself to our ancestors, and
who, in particular, guided Joseph into Egypt, protected him there, and
raised him to an eminence never before or since reached by a Jew. It can
also be proved, by incontrovertible facts, that this being is a moral
being, who can be placated by obedience and by attaining to a certain
moral standard in life, and by no other means. That this standard has been
disclosed to me, I can prove to you by sundry miraculous signs. Therefore,
be obedient and obey the law which I shall promulgate "that ye may prosper
in all that ye do."

Indeed, the philosophy of Moses was of the sternly practical kind,
resembling that of Benjamin Franklin. He did not promise his people, as
did the Egyptians, felicity in a future life. He confined himself to
prosperity in this world. And to succeed in his end he set an attainable
standard. A standard no higher, certainly than that accepted by the
Egyptians, as it is set forth in the 125th chapter of the Book of the
Dead, a standard to which the soul of any dead man had to attain before he
could be admitted into Paradise. Nor did Moses, as Dr. Budde among others
assumes, have to deal with a tribe of fierce and barbarous Bedouins, like
the Amalekites, to whom indeed the Hebrews were antagonistic and with whom
they waged incessant war.

The Jews, for the most part, differed widely from such barbarians. They
had become sedentary at the time of the exodus, whatever they may have
been when Abraham migrated from Babylon. They were accustomed in Egypt to
living in houses, they cultivated and cooked the cereals, and they fed on
vegetables and bread. They did not live on flesh and milk as do the
Bedouins; and, indeed, the chief difficulty Moses encountered in the
exodus was the ignorance of his followers of the habits of desert life,
and their dislike of desert fare. They were forever pining for the
delights of civilization. "Would to God we had died by the hand of the
Lord in the land of Egypt, when we eat by the flesh-pots, and when we did
eat bread to the full! for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness,
to kill this whole assembly with hunger." [Footnote: Ex. XVI, 3.]

"We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers,
and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick." These
were the wants of sedentary and of civilized folk, not of barbarous nomads
who are content with goat's flesh and milk. And so it was with their
morality and their conceptions of law. Moses was, indeed, a highly
civilized and highly educated man. No one would probably pretend that
Moses represented the average Jew of the exodus, but Moses understood his
audience reasonably well, and would not have risked the success of his
whole experiment by preaching to them a doctrine which was altogether
beyond their understanding. If he told them that the favor of God could
only be gained by obeying the laws he taught, it was because he thought
such an appeal would be effective with a majority of them.

Dr. Budde, who is a good example of the modern hypercritical school, takes
very nearly the opposite ground. His theory is that Moses was in search of
a war god, and that he discovered such a god, in the god of the Bedouin
tribe of the Kenites whose acquaintance he first made when dwelling with
his father-in-law Jethro at Sinai. The morality of such a god he insists
coincided with the morality which Moses may have at times countenanced,
but which was quite foreign to the spirit of the decalogue.

Doubtless this is, in a degree, true. The religion of the pure Bedouin was
very often crude and shocking, not to say disgusting. But to argue thus is
to ignore the fact that all Bedouins did not, in the age of Moses, stand
on the same intellectual or moral level, and it is also to ignore the gap
that separated Moses and his congregation intellectually and morally from
such Bedouins as the Amalekites.

Dr. Budde, in his _Religion of Israel to the Exile_, insists that the
Kenite god, Jehovah, demanded "The sacred ban by which conquered cities
with all their living beings were devoted to destruction, the slaughter of
human beings at sacred spots, animal sacrifices at which the entire
animal, wholly or half raw, was devoured, without leaving a remnant,
between sunset and sunrise,--these phenomena and many others of the same
kind harmonise but ill with an aspiring ethical religion."

He also goes on to say: "We are further referred to the legislation of
Moses, ... comprising civil and criminal, ceremonial and ecclesiastical,
moral and social law in varying compass. This legislation, however, cannot
have come from Moses.... Such legislation can only have arisen after
Israel had lived a long time in the new home."

To take these arguments in order,--for they must be so dealt with to
develop any reasonable theory of the Mosaic philosophy,--Moses, doubtless,
was a ruthless conqueror, as his dealings with Sihon and Og sufficiently
prove. "So the Lord our God delivered into our hands Og also, the king of
Bashan, and all his people: and we smote him until none was left to him
remaining....

"And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon, king of Heshbon,
utterly destroying the men, women, and children of every city." [Footnote:
Deut. III, 3-6.]

There is nothing extraordinary, or essentially barbarous, in this attitude
of Moses. The same theory of duty or convenience has been held in every
age and in every land, by men of the ecclesiastical temperament, at the
very moment at which the extremest doctrines of charity, mercy, and love
were practised by their contemporaries, or even preached by themselves.
For example:

At the beginning of the thirteenth century the two great convents of Cluny
and Citeau, together, formed the heart of monasticism, and Cluny and
Citeau were two of the richest and most powerful corporations in the
world, while the south of France had become, by reason of the eastern
trade, the wealthiest and most intelligent district in Europe. It suffices
to say here that, just about this time, the people of Languedoc had made
up their minds, because of the failure of the Crusades, the cost of such
magnificent establishments was not justified by their results, and
accordingly Count Raymond of Toulouse, in sympathy with his subjects, did
seriously contemplate secularization. To the abbots of these great
convents, it was clear that if this movement spread across the Rhone into
Burgundy, the Church would face losses which they could not contemplate
with equanimity. At this period one Arnold was Abbot of Citeau,
universally recognized as perhaps the ablest and certainly one of the most
unscrupulous men in Europe. Hence the crusade against the Albigenses which
Simon de Montfort commanded and Arnold conducted. Arnold's first exploit
was the sack of the undefended town of Béziers, where he slaughtered
twenty thousand men, women, and children, without distinction of religious
belief. When asked whether the orthodox might not at least be spared, he
replied, "Kill them all; God knows his own."

This sack of Béziers occurred in 1209. Exactly contemporaneously Saint
Francis of Assisi was organizing his order whose purpose was to realize
Christ's kingdom upon earth, by the renunciation of worldly wealth and by
the practice of poverty, humility, and obedience. Soon after, Arnold was
created Archbishop of Narbonne and became probably the greatest and
richest prelate in France, or in the world. This was in 1225. In 1226 the
first friars settled in England. They multiplied rapidly because of their
rigorous discipline. Soon there were to be found among them some of the
most eminent men in England. Their chief house stood in London in a spot
called Stinking Lane, near the Shambles in Newgate, and there, amidst
poverty, hunger, cold, and filth, these men passed their lives in nursing
horrible lepers, so loathsome that they were rejected by all but
themselves, while Arnold lived in magnificence in his palace, upon the
spoil of those whom he had immolated to his greed.

In the case of Moses the contrast between precept and practice in the race
for wealth and fortune was not nearly so violent. Moses, it is true,
according to Leviticus, declared it to be the will of the Lord that the
Israelites should love their neighbors as themselves, [Footnote: Lev. XIX,
18.] while on the other hand in Deuteronomy he insisted that obedience was
the chief end of life, and that if the Israelites were to thoroughly obey
the Lord's behests, they were to "consume all the people which the Lord
thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them:
neither" should thou serve their gods, "for the Lord thy God is a jealous
God." [Footnote: Deut. VII, 16.]  And the penalty for slackness was "lest
the anger of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee
from off the face of the earth." [Footnote: Deut. VI, 15.] There is,
nevertheless, this much to be said in favor of the morality of Moses as
contrasted with that of thirteenth-century orthodox Christians like
Arnold; Moses led a crusade against a foreign and hostile people, while
Arnold slaughtered the Albigenses, who were his own flock, sheep to whom
he was the shepherd, communicants in his own church, and worshippers of
the God whom he served. What concerns us, however, is that the same
stimulant animated Moses and Arnold alike. The stimulant, pure and simple,
of greed. On these points Moses was as outspokenly, one may say as
brutally, frank as was Arnold. In the desert Moses commanded his followers
to exterminate the inhabitants of the kingdom of Bashan in order that they
might appropriate their possessions, which he enumerated, and Moses had no
other argument to urge but the profitableness of it by which to secure
obedience to his moral law.

Arnold stood on precisely the same platform. He did not accuse Count
Raymond of heresy or any other crime, nor did Pope Innocent III consider
Raymond as morally guilty of a criminal offence, or worthy of punishment.
Indeed, the pope would have protected the Count had it been possible, and
summoned him before the Fourth Lateran Council for that purpose. But
Arnold told his audience that were Raymond allowed to escape there would
be an end of the Catholic faith in France. Or, in other words, monastic
property would be secularized. Perhaps he was right. At all events, this
argument prevailed, and Raymond and his family and people were sacrificed.

Moses promised his congregation that, if they would spare nothing they
should enjoy abundance of good things, without working for them. He was
much more pitiless than such a man as King David thought it necessary to
be, but Moses was not a soldier like David. He could not promise to win
victories himself, he could but promise what he had in hand, and that was
the spoil of those they massacred. Moses never had but one appeal to make
for obedience, one incentive to offer to obey. In this he was perfectly
honest and perfectly logical. His congregation and he, finding Egypt
untenable, were engaged in a common land speculation to improve their
condition; a speculation in which Moses believed, but which could only be
brought to a successful end by obtaining control of the dominant energy of
the world. This energy, he held, could be handled by no one but himself,
and then only in case those who acted with him were absolutely obedient to
his commands, which, taken together, were equivalent to a magical exorcism
or spell. Then only could they hope that the Lord of Abraham and Isaac
would give them "great and goodly cities, which thou buildedst not, And
houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, and wells digged,
which thou diggedst not, vineyards and olive trees, which thou plantedst
not." [Footnote: Deut. VI, 10, 11.]

Very obviously, if the theory which Moses propounded were sound the assets
which he offered as an inducement for docility could be obtained, at so
cheap a rate, in no other way. All Moses' moral teaching amounted,
therefore, to this--"It pays to be obedient and good." No argument could
have been better adapted to Babylonish society, and it seems to have
answered nearly as well with the Israelites, which proves that they stood
on nearly the same intellectual plane. The chief difficulty with which
Moses had to contend was that his countrymen did not thoroughly believe in
him, nor in the efficacy of his motor. They always were tempted to try
experiments with other motors which were operated by other prophets and by
other peoples who were, apparently, as prosperous as they, or even more
so. His trouble was not that his followers were nomads unprepared for a
sedentary life or a moral law like his, or unable to appreciate the value
of the property of a people further advanced in civilization than they
were. The Amalekites would have responded to no such system of bribery as
Moses offered the Israelites, who did respond with intelligence, if not
always with enthusiasm.

The same is true of the Mosaic legislation which Dr. Budde curtly
dismisses as impossible to have come from Moses, [Footnote: _Religion of
Israel to the Exile_, 31.]  as presupposing a knowledge of a settled
agricultural life, which "Israel did not reach until after Moses' death."

All this is an assumption of fact unsupported by evidence; but quite the
contrary, as we can see by an examination of the law in question. Whatever
may have been the date of the establishment of the cities of refuge, I
suppose that it will not be seriously denied that the law of the covenant
as laid down in Exodus XX, 1, Numbers XXXV, 6, is at least as old as the
age of Moses, in principle, if not in words; and this legal principle is
quite inconsistent with, if not directly antagonistic to, all the
prejudices and regulations, moral, religious, or civil, of a pure nomadic
society, since it presupposes a social condition which, if adopted, would
be fatal to a nomad society.

The true nomad knows no criminal law save the law of the blood feud, which
is the law of revenge, and which prevailed among the Hebrews much earlier.
In the early Saxon law it was expressed by the apothegm "_Factum
reputabitur pro volunte_." The act implies the intent. That is to say,
the tribe is an enlarged family who, since they have no collective system
of sovereignty which gives them common protection by an organized police,
and courts with power to enforce process, have no option but to protect
each other. Therefore, it is incumbent on each member of the tribe or
family to avenge an injury to any other member, whether the injury be
accidental or otherwise; and to be himself the judge of what amounts to an
injury. Such a condition prevailed among the Hebrews at a very early
period; "And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them: ... at the
hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth
man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." [Footnote: Gen. IX, 1, 5,
6.] These customs and the type of thought which sustain them are very
tenacious and change slowly. Moses could not have altered the nomadic
customs of thought and of blood revenge, had he tried, more than could
Canute. It would have been impossible. The advent of a civilized
conception of the law is the work of centuries as the history of England
proves.

We know not how long ago it was that the law of the blood feud was fully
recognized in England, but it had already been shaken at the conquest, and
its death-blow was given it by the Church, which had begun to tire of the
responsibility entailed by the trial by ordeal or miracle, and the obloquy
which it involved, at a relatively early date. For the purposes of the
Church and the uses of confession it was more convenient to regard crime
or tort, as did the Romans; as a mental condition, dependent altogether
upon the state of the mind or "animus." Malice in the eye of the Church
was the virus which poisoned the otherwise innocent act, and made the
thought alone punishable. Indeed, this conception is one which has not yet
been completely established even in the modern law. The first signs of
such a revolution in jurisprudence only began to appear in England some
seven centuries ago. As Mr. Maitland has observed in his _History of
English Law_, [Footnote: Vol. II, 476.] "We receive a shock of surprise
when we meet with a maxim which has troubled our modern lawyers, namely,
_Reum nonfacit nisi mens rea_, in the middle of the _Leges Henrici_." That
is to say somewhere about the year 1118 A.D. This maxim was taken bodily
out of a sermon of Saint Augustine, which accounts for it, but at that
time the Church had another process to suggest by which she asserted her
authority. She threw the responsibility for detecting guilt, in cases of
doubt, upon God. By the ordeal, if a homicide, for example, were
committed, and the accused denied his guilt, he was summoned to appear,
and then, after a solemn reference to God by the ecclesiastics in charge,
he was caused either to carry a red-hot iron bar a certain distance or to
plunge his arms in boiling water. If he were found, after a certain length
of time, during which his arms were bandaged, to have been injured, he was
held to have been guilty. If he had escaped unhurt he was innocent.
Gradually, however, the ordeal began to fall into ridicule. William Rufus
gibed at it, for of fifty men sent to the ordeal of iron, under the sacred
charge of the clerks, all escaped, which certainly, as Mr. Maitland
intimates, looks as if the officiating ecclesiastics had an interest in
the result. [Footnote: _History of English Law_, II, 599, note 2.] At
length, by the Lateran Council of 1215, the Church put an end to the
institution, but long afterward it found its upholders. For example, the
_Mirror_, written in the reign of Edward I (circa 1285) complained, "It is
an abuse that proofs and compurgations be not by the miracle of God where
other proof faileth." Nor was the principle that "attempts" to commit
indictable offences are crimes, established as law, until at least the
time of the Star Chamber, before its abolition in the seventeenth century.
Though doubtless it is the law to-day. [Footnote: Stephen, _Digest of the
Criminal Law_, 192.] And this, although the means used may have been
impossible. Moreover, the doctrine is still in process of enlargement.

Very convincing conclusions may be drawn from these facts. The subject is
obscure and difficult, but if the inception of the process of breaking
down the right of enforcing the blood feud be fixed provisionally toward
the middle of the tenth century,--and this date is early enough,--the
movement of thought cannot be said to have attained anything like ultimate
results before at least the year 1321 when a case is cited wherein a man
was held guilty because he had attempted to kill his master, and the
"_volunias in isto casu reputabitur pro facto_."

Measuring by this standard five hundred years is a short enough period to
estimate the time necessary for a community to pass from the stage when
the blood feud is recognized as unquestioned law, to the status involved
in the administration of the cities of refuge, for in these cities not
only the mental condition is provided for as a legitimate defence, but the
defence of negligence is made admissible in a secular court.

"These six cities shall be a refuge, both for the children of Israel, and
for the stranger, and for the sojourner among them; that every one that
killeth any person unawares may flee thither....

"If he thrust him of hatred, or hurl at him by laying of wait that he die;

"Or in enmity smite him with his hand, that he die: he that smote him
shall surely be put to death; for he is a murderer: the revenger of blood
shall slay the murderer, when he meeteth him.

"But if he thrust him suddenly without enmity, or have cast upon him
anything without laying of wait,

"Or with any stone, wherewith a man may die, seeing him not, and cast it
upon him, that he die, and was not his enemy, neither sought his harm:

"Then the congregation shall judge between the slayer and the revenger of
blood according to these judgments:

"And the congregation shall deliver the slayer out of the hand of the
revenger of blood, and the congregation shall restore him to the city of
his refuge, whither he was fled."... [Footnote: Numbers XXXV, 15, 20-25.]

Here we have a defendant in a case of homicide setting up the defence that
the killing happened through an accident, but an accident not caused by
criminal negligence, and this defence is to be tried by the congregation,
which is tantamount to trial by jury. It is not left to God, under the
oversight of the Church; and this is precisely our own system at the
present day. We now come to the inferences to be drawn from these facts.
Supposing that the Israelites when they migrated to Egypt, in the time of
Joseph, were in the condition of pure nomads among whom the blood feud was
fully recognized as law, an interval of four or five hundred years, such
as they are supposed to have passed in Goshen would bring them to the
exodus. Now, assuming that the Israelites during those four centuries,
when they lived among civilized neighbors and under civilized law, made an
intellectual movement corresponding in velocity to the movement the
English made after the conquest, they would have been, about the time when
the cities of refuge were created, in the position described in Numbers,
which is what we should expect assuming the Biblical tradition to be true.

To us the important question is not whether a certain piece of the
supposed Mosaic legislation actually went into effect during the life of
Moses, for that is relatively immaterial, but whether the Biblical
narrative is, on the whole, worthy of credence, and this correlation of
dates gives the strongest possible evidence in its favor. Very possibly,
perhaps it may even be said certainly, the order in which events occurred
may have been transposed, but, taken as a whole, it is impossible to
resist the inference that the Bible story is excellent history and that,
due allowance being made for the prejudice of the various scribes who
wrote the Pentateuch in favor of the miraculous, where Moses was
concerned, the Biblical record is good and trustworthy history, and frank
at that;--much superior to quantities of modern documents which we accept
without question.

Of all the achievements of Moses' life none equals the exodus itself,
either in brilliancy or success. How it was possible for Moses, with the
assistance he had at command, to marshal and move a column of a million or
a million and a half of men, women, and children, without discipline or
cohesion, and encumbered with their baggage, beside their cattle, is an
insoluble mystery. "And the children of Israel did according to the word
of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels
of gold, and raiment: ... And they spoiled the Egyptians. And the children
of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand on
foot that were men, beside children. And a mixed multitude went up also
with them; and flocks and herds, even very much cattle." They started from
Ramses and Succoth.

The position of Ramses has been identified; that of Succoth is more
questionable. Ramses and Pithom were fortified places, built by the
Israelites for Ramses II, of the Nineteenth Dynasty, but apparently
Succoth was the last halting-place before coming to the difficult ground
which was overflowed by the sea.

The crossing was made at night, but it is hard to understand how, even
under the most favorable conditions of weather, such a vast and confused
multitude of women and children could have made the march in darkness with
an active enemy pursuing, without loss of life or material. Indeed, even
at that day the movement seemed to the actors so unparalleled that it
always passed for a miracle, and its perfect success gave Moses more
reputation with the Israelites and more practical influence over them than
anything else he ever did, or indeed than all his other works together.
"And Israel saw that great work which the Lord did upon the Egyptians: and
the people feared the Lord and believed the Lord and his servant Moses."

"And Miriam, the prophetess, the sister of Aaron; and all the women went
after her with timbrels and with dances." Now Miriam was in general none
too loyal a follower of her younger brother, but that day, or rather
night, she did proclaim Moses as a conqueror; which was a great concession
from her, and meant much. And Moses exulted openly, as he had good cause
to do, and gave vent to his exultation in a song which tradition has ever
since attributed to him, and has asserted to have been sung by him and his
congregation as they stood by the shore of the sea and watched the corpses
of the Egyptians lying in the sand. And, if ever man had, Moses then had,
cause for exultation, for he had seemingly proved by the test of war,
which is the ultimate test to which a man can subject such a theory as
his, that he had indeed discovered the motor which he sought, and, more
important still, that he knew how to handle it. Therefore, he was master
of supreme energy and held his right to command by the title of conquest.
This was the culminating moment of his life; he never again reached such
exaltation. From this moment his slow and gradual decline began.

And, indeed, great as had been the momentary success of Moses, his
position was one of extreme difficulty, and probably he so understood it,
otherwise there would be no way to account for his choosing the long,
difficult, and perilous journey by Sinai, instead of approaching the
"Promised Land" directly by way of Kadesh-Barnea, which was, in any event,
to be his ultimate objective. It may well have been because Moses felt
himself unable alone to cope with the difficulties confronting him that he
decided at any cost to seek Jethro in Midian, who seems to have been the
only able, honest, and experienced man within reach. Joshua, indeed, might
be held to be an exception to this generalization, but Joshua, though a
good soldier, was a man of somewhat narrow understanding, and quite unfit
to grapple with questions involving jurisprudence and financial
topography.

And at this juncture Moses must have felt his own deficiencies keenly. As
a captain he made no pretence to efficiency. The Amalekites were, as he
well knew, at this moment lying in wait for him, and forthwith he
recognized that he had no alternative but to retire into the background
himself and surrender the active command of the army to Joshua, a fatal
concession had Joshua been ambitious or unscrupulous. And this was but the
beginning. Before he could occupy Palestine he had to encounter and
overcome numbers of equally formidable foes, a defeat by any one of whom
might well be fatal. A man like Jethro, therefore, would be invaluable in
guiding the caravan to spots favorable for action, from whence retreat to
a place of safety would be open in case of a check. A reverse which
happened on a later occasion gave Moses a shock he never forgot.

Furthermore, though Moses lived many years with Jethro, as his chief
servant, he never seems to have travelled extensively in Arabia, and to
have been ignorant of the chief trade routes along which wells were dug,
and of the oases where pasture was to be found; so that Moses was nearly
worthless as a guide, and this was a species of knowledge in which Jethro,
according to Moses' own statement, excelled. Meanwhile, the lives of all
his followers depended on such knowledge. And Moses, when he reached
Sinai, left no stone unturned to overcome Jethro's reluctance to join him
and to instruct him on the march north.

More important and pressing than all, Moses was ignorant of how,
practically, to administer the law which he taught. His only idea was to
do all in person, but this, with so large a following, was impossible. And
here also his hope lay in Jethro. For when he got to Sinai, and Jethro
remonstrated with him upon his methods, pointing out that they were
impracticable, all Moses had to say in reply was that he sat all day to
hear disputes and "I judge between one and another; and I do make them
know the statutes of God, and his laws." Further than this he had nothing
to propose. It was Jethro who explained to him a constructive policy.

On the whole, upon this analysis, it appears that in all those executive
departments in which Moses, by stress of the responsibilities which he had
assumed, was called upon, imperatively, to act, there was but one, that of
the magician or wise man, in which, by temperament and training, he was
fitted to excel, and the functions of this profession drove him into to
intolerably irksome and distressing position, yet a position from which
throughout his life he found it impossible to escape. No one who
attentively weighs the evidence can, I apprehend, escape the conviction
that Moses was at bottom an honest man who would have conformed to the
moral law he laid down in the name of the Lord had it been possible for
him to do so. Among these precepts none ranked higher than a regard for
truth and honesty. "Ye shall not steal, neither deal falsely, neither lie
one to another." [Footnote: Leviticus XIX, 11.] And this text is but one
example of a general drift of thought.

Whether these particular words of Leviticus, or any similar phrases, were
ever used by Moses is immaterial. No one can doubt that, in substance,
they contained the gist of his moral doctrine and that he enforced the
moral duty which they convey to the best of his power. And here the burden
lay, which crushed this man, from which he never thenceforward could, even
for an instant, free himself, and which Saint Paul avers to be the
heaviest burden man can bear. Moses, to fulfil what he conceived to be his
destiny and which at least certainly was his ambition, was condemned to
lead a life of deceit and to utter no word during his long subsequent
march which was not positively or inferentially a lie. And the bitterest
of his trials must have been the agony of anxiety in which he must have
lived lest some error in judgment on his part, some slackness in measuring
the exact credulity of his audience, should cause his exposure and lead to
his being cast out of the camp as an impostor and hunted to death as a
false prophet: a fate which more than once nearly overtook him. Indeed, as
he aged and his nerves lost their elasticity under the tension, he became
obsessed with the fixed idea that God had renounced him and that some
horror would overtake him should he attempt to cross the Jordan and enter
the "Promised Land." Defeated at Hormah, he dared not face another such
check and, therefore, dawdled away his time in the wilderness until
further dawdling became impossible. Then followed his mental collapse
which is told in Deuteronomy, together with his suicide on Mount Nebo. And
thus he died because he could not gratify at once his lust for power and
his instinct to live an honest man.


CHAPTER II.


The interval during which Moses led the exodus falls, naturally, into
three parts of unequal length. The first consists of the months which
elapsed between the departure from Ramses and the arrival at Sinai. The
second comprises the halt at Sinai, while the third contains the story of
the rest of his life, ending with Mount Nebo.

His trials began forthwith. The march was hardly a week old before the
column was in quasi-revolt because he had known so little of the country,
that he had led the caravan three days through a waterless wilderness
where they feared to perish from thirst. And matters grew steadily worse.
At Rephidim, "And the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore
is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our
children and our cattle with thirst?" Not impossibly Moses may still, at
this stage of his experiences, have believed in himself, in the God he
pretended to serve, and in his mission. At least he made a feint of so
doing. Indeed, he had to. Not to have done so would have caused his
instant downfall. He always had to do so, in every emergency of his life.
A few days later he was at his wits' end. He cried unto the Lord, "What
shall I do unto this people? They be almost ready to stone me." In short,
long before the congregation reached Sinai, and indeed before Moses had
fought his first battle with Amalek, the people had come to disbelieve in
Moses and also to question whether there was such a god as he pretended.

"And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of the
chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord,
saying, Is the Lord among us, or not?"

"Then came Amalek, and fought with Israel in Rephidim." [Footnote: Exodus
xvii, 7, 8.]

Under such conditions it was vital to Moses to show resolution and
courage; but it was here that Moses, on the contrary, flinched; as he
usually did flinch when it came to war, for Moses was no soldier.

"And Moses said unto Joshua, Choose us out men and go out, fight with
Amalek: to-morrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God
in mine hand."

And Moses actually had the assurance to do as he proposed, nor did he even
have the endurance to stand. He made Aaron and Hur fetch a stone on which
he should sit and then hold up his hands for him, pretending the while
that when Moses held up his hands the Hebrews prevailed and when he
lowered them Amalek prevailed. Notwithstanding, Joshua won a victory. But
it may readily be believed that this performance of his functions as a
captain, did little to strengthen the credit of Moses among the fighting
men. Nor evidently was Moses satisfied with the figure that he cut, nor
was he confident that Joshua approved of him, for the Lord directed Moses
to make excuses, promising to do better the next time, by assuring Joshua
that "I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven."
This was the best apology Moses could make for his weakness. However, the
time had now come when Moses was to realize his plan of meeting Jethro.

"And Jethro ... came with his sons and his wife unto Moses into the
wilderness, where he encamped at the mount of God: ... And Moses went out
to meet his father-in-law, and did obeisance, and kissed him; and they
asked each other of their welfare; and they came into the tent.

"And Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done unto Pharaoh
and to the Egyptians for Israel's sake, and all the travail that had come
upon them by the way, and how the Lord had delivered them....

"And Jethro said, Blessed be the Lord, who hath delivered you out of the
hand of the Egyptians.... Now I know that the Lord is greater than all
gods.... And Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with
Moses' father-in-law before God."

It is from all this very plain that Jethro had a controlling influence
over Moses, and was the proximate cause of much that followed. For the
next morning Moses, as was his custom, "sat to judge the people: and the
people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening." And when Jethro
saw how Moses proceeded he remonstrated, "Why sittest thou thyself alone,
and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even?"

And Moses replied: "Because the people come unto me to enquire of God."

And Jethro protested, saying "The thing thou doest is not good. Thou wilt
surely wear away, both thou and this people that is with thee: for this
thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself
alone.

"Hearken, ... I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee; Be
thou for the people to God-ward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto
God."

Then it was that Moses perceived that he must have a divinely promulgated
code. Accordingly, Moses made his preparations for a great dramatic
effect, and it is hard to see how he could have made them better. For,
whatever failings he may have had in his other capacities as a leader, he
understood his part as a magician.

He told the people to be ready on the third day, for on the third day the
Lord would come down in the sight of all upon Mount Sinai. But, "Take heed
to yourselves that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it:
whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death:

"There shall not an hand touch it, but he shall surely be stoned or shot
through; whether it be beast or man, it shall not live: when the trumpet
soundeth long, they shall come up to the mount."

It must be admitted that Moses either had wonderful luck, or that he had
wonderful judgment in weather, for, as it happened in the passage of the
Red Sea, so it happened here. At the Red Sea he was aided by a gale of
wind which coincided with a low tide and made the passage practicable, and
at Sinai he had a thunder-storm.

"And it came to pass on the third day, in the morning, that there were
thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice
of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp
trembled." Moses had undoubtedly sent some thoroughly trustworthy person,
probably Joshua, up the mountain to blow a ram's horn and to light a
bonfire, and the effect seems to have been excellent.

"And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended
upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace,
and the whole mount quaked greatly.

"And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and
louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice.

"And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mount; and the
Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up." And the
first thing that Moses did on behalf of the Lord was to "charge the
people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them
perish."

And Moses replied to God's enquiry, "The people cannot come up to Mount
Sinai: for thou chargedst us, saying, Set bounds about the mount.

"And the Lord said unto him, Away, get thee down, and thou shalt come up,
thou, and Aaron with thee: but let not the priests and the people break
through to come up unto the Lord, lest he break forth upon them.

"So Moses went down unto the people, and spake unto them."

Whether the decalogue, as we know it, was a code of law actually delivered
upon Sinai, which German critics very much dispute as being inconsistent
with the stage of civilization at which the Israelites had arrived, but
which is altogether kindred to the Babylonish law with which Moses was
familiar, is immaterial for the present purpose. What is essential is that
beside the decalogue itself there is a considerable body of law chiefly
concerned with the position of servants or slaves, the difference between
assaults or torts committed with or without malice, theft, trespass, and
the regulation of the _lex talionis_. There are beside a variety of
other matters touched upon all of which may be found in the 21st, 22d, and
23d chapters of Exodus.

Up to this point in his show Moses had behaved with discretion and had
obtained a complete success. The next day he went on to demand an
acceptance of his code, which he prepared to submit in form. But as a
preliminary he made ready to take Aaron and his two sons, together with
seventy elders of the congregation up the mountain, to be especially
impressed with a sacrifice and a feast which he had it in his mind to
organize. In the first place, "Moses ... rose up early in the morning, and
builded an altar, ... and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the
Lord....

"And he took the book of the covenant, and read in the audience of the
people: and they said, All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be
obedient."

Had Moses been content to end his ceremony here and to return to the camp
with his book of the covenant duly accepted as law, all might have been
well. But success seems to have intoxicated him, and he conceived an undue
contempt for the intelligence of his audience, being, apparently,
convinced that there were no limits to their credulity, and that he could
do with them as he pleased.

It was not enough for him that he should have them accept an ordinary book
admittedly written by himself. There was nothing overpoweringly impressive
in that. What he wanted was a stone tablet on which his code should be
engraved, as was the famous code of Hammurabi, which he probably knew
well, and this engraving must putatively be done by God himself, to give
it the proper solemnity.

To have such a code as this engraved either by himself or by any workman
he could take into the mountain with him, would be a work of time and
would entail his absence from the camp, and this was a very serious risk.
But he was over-confident and determined to run it, rather than be baulked
of his purpose,

"And Moses rose up, and his minister Joshua; and Moses went up into the
mount of God.

"And he said unto the elders, Tarry you here for us, until we come again
unto you: and, behold, Aaron and Hur are with you: and if any man have
matters to do, let him come unto them. And Moses went into the midst of
the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty
days and forty nights."

But Moses had made the capital mistake of undervaluing the intelligence of
his audience. They had, doubtless, been impressed when Moses, as a
showman, had presented his spectacle, for Moses had a commanding presence
and he had chosen a wonderful locality for his performance. But once he
was gone the effect of what he had done evaporated and they began to value
the exhibition for what it really was. As men of common sense, said they
to one another, why should we linger here, if Moses has played this trick
upon us? Why not go back to Egypt, where at least we can get something to
eat? So they decided to bribe Aaron, who was venal and would do anything
for money.

"And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount,
the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up,
make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man
that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of
him."

When Aaron heard this proposition he showed no objection to accept,
provided the people made it worth his while to risk the wrath of Moses; so
he answered forthwith, "Break off the golden earrings, which are in the
ears of your wives, of your sons, and of your daughters, and bring them
unto me."

These were the ornaments of which the departing Israelites had spoiled the
Egyptians and they must have been of very considerable value. At all
events, Aaron took them and melted them and made them into the image of a
calf, such as he had been used to see in Egypt. The calf was probably made
of wood and laminated with gold. Sir G. Wilkinson thinks that the calf was
made to represent Mnevis, with whose worship the Israelites had been
familiar in Egypt. Then Aaron proclaimed a feast for the next day in honor
of this calf and said, "To-morrow is a feast to the Lord," and they said,
"These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of
Egypt."

"And they rose up early on the morrow, and offered burnt offerings, and
brought peace offerings: and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and
rose up to play."

It was not very long before Moses became suspicious that all was not right
in the camp, and he prepared to go down, taking the two tables of
testimony in his hands. These stone tablets were covered with writing on
both sides, which must have taken a long time to engrave considering that
Moses was on a bare mountainside with probably nobody to help but Joshua.
Of course all that made this weary expedition worth the doing was that, as
the Bible says, "the tables were" to pass for "the work of God, and the
writing was the writing of God." Accordingly, it is not surprising that as
Moses "came nigh unto the camp," and he "saw the calf, and the dancing":
that his "anger waxed hot, and he cast the tables out of his hands, and
brake them beneath the mount.

"And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and
ground it to powder, and strewed it upon the water, and made the children
of Israel drink of it.

"And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast
brought so great a sin upon them?

"And Aaron said, Let not the anger of my lord wax hot: thou knowest the
people, that they are set on mischief.

"For they said unto me, Make us gods, which shall go before us: for as for
this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot
not what is become of him.

"And I said unto them, Whosoever hath any gold, let them break it off. So
they gave it me: then I cast it into the fire, and there came out this
calf.

"And when Moses saw that the people were naked; (for Aaron had made them
naked unto their shame among their enemies:)" that is to say, the people
had come to the feast unarmed, and without the slightest fear or suspicion
of a possible attack; then Moses saw his opportunity and placed himself in
a gate of the camp, and said: "Who is on the Lord's side? Let him come
unto me. And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him.

"And he said unto them, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Put every man
his sword by his side, and go in and out from gate to gate throughout the
camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and
every man his neighbour.

"And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there
fell of the people that day about three thousand men."

There are few acts in all recorded history, including the awful massacres
of the Albigenses by Simon de Montfort and the Abbot Arnold, more
indefensible than this wholesale murder by Moses of several thousand
people who had trusted him, and whom he had entrusted to the care of his
own brother, who participated in their crime, supposing that they had
committed any crime saving the crime of tiring of his dictatorship.

The effect of this massacre was to put Moses, for the rest of his life, in
the hands of the Levites with Aaron at their head, for only by having a
body of men stained with his own crimes and devoted to his fortunes could
Moses thenceforward hope to carry his adventure to a good end. Otherwise
he faced certain and ignominious failure. His preliminary task, therefore,
was to devise for the Levites a reward which would content them. His first
step in this direction was to go back to the mountain and seek a new
inspiration and a revelation more suited to the existing conditions than
the revelation conveyed before the golden calf incident.

Up to this time there is nothing in Jewish history to show that the
priesthood was developing into a privileged and hereditary caste. With the
consecration of Aaron as high priest the process began. Moses spent
another six weeks in seclusion on the mount. And as soon as he returned to
the camp he proclaimed how the people should build and furnish a sanctuary
in which the priesthood should perform its functions. These directions
were very elaborate and detailed, and part of the furnishings of the
sanctuary consisted in the splendid and costly garments for Aaron and his
sons "for glory and for beauty."

"And thou shalt put upon Aaron the holy garments, and anoint him, and
sanctify him; that he may minister unto me in the priest's office. And
thou shalt bring his sons, and clothe them with coats: And thou shalt
anoint them, as thou didst anoint their father, that they may minister
unto me in the priest's office: for their anointing shall surely be an
everlasting priesthood, throughout their generations.

"Thus did Moses: according to all that the Lord commanded him, so did he."

It followed automatically that, with the creation of a great vested
interest centred in an hereditary caste of priests, the pecuniary burden
on the people was correspondingly increased and that thenceforward Moses
became nothing but the representative of that vested interest: as
reactionary and selfish as all such representatives must be. How selfish
and how reactionary may readily be estimated by glancing at Numbers XVIII,
where God's directions are given to Aaron touching what he was to claim
for himself, and what the Levites were to take as their wages for service.
It was indeed liberal compensation. A good deal more than much of the
congregation thought such services worth.

In the first place, Aaron and the Levites with him for their service "of
the tabernacle" were to have "all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance."
But this was a small part of their compensation. There were beside
perquisites, especially those connected with the sacrifices which the
people were constrained to make on the most trifling occasions; as, for
example, whenever  they became _unclean_, through some accident, as
by touching a dead body:

"This shall be thine of the most holy things, reserved from the fire:
every oblation of their's, every meat offering of their's, and every sin
offering of their's, and every trespass offering of their's, which they
shall render unto me, shall be most holy for thee and thy sons.

"In the most holy place shalt thou eat it; every male shall eat it; it
shall be holy unto thee.

"And this is thine.... All the best of the oil, and all the best of the
wine, and of the wheat, the first fruits of them which they shall offer
unto the Lord, them have I given thee; ... every one that is clean in
thine house shall eat of it.

"Everything devoted in Israel shall be thine....

"All the heave offerings of the holy things, which the children of Israel
offer unto the Lord, have I given thee, and thy sons and thy daughters
with thee, by a statute forever: it is a covenant of salt forever before
the Lord unto thee and to thy seed with thee."

Also, on the taking of a census, such as occurred at Sinai, Aaron received
a most formidable perquisite.

The Levites were not to be numbered; but there was to be a complicated
system of redemption at the rate of "five shekels by the poll, after the
shekel of the sanctuary."

"And Moses took the redemption money of them that were over and above them
that were redeemed by the Levites: Of the first-born of the children of
Israel took he the money; a thousand three hundred and three score and
five shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary; And Moses gave the money
of them that were redeemed unto Aaron and to his sons."

Assuming the shekel of those days to have weighed two hundred and twenty-
four grains of silver, its value in our currency would have been about
fifty-five cents, but its purchasing power, twelve hundred years before
Christ, would have been, at the very most moderate estimate, at least ten
for one, which would have amounted to between six and seven thousand
dollars in hard cash for no service whatever, which, considering that the
Israelites were a wandering nomadic horde in the wilderness, was, it must
be admitted, a pretty heavy charge for the pleasure of observing the
performances of Aaron and his sons, in their gorgeous garments.

Also, under any sedentary administration it followed that the high priest
must become the most considerable personage in the community, as well as
one of the richest. And thus as payment for the loyalty to himself of the
Levites during the massacre of the golden calf, Moses created a theocratic
aristocracy headed by Aaron and his sons, and comprising the whole tribe
of Levi, whose advancement in fortune could not fail to create discontent.
It did so: a discontent which culminated very shortly after in the
rebellion of Korah, which brought on a condition of things at Kadesh which
contributed to make the position of Moses intolerable.

Moses was one of those administrators who were particularly reprobated by
Saint Paul; Men who "do evil," as in the slaughter of the feasters who set
up the golden calf, "that good may come," and "whose damnation,"
therefore, "is just." [Footnote: Romans III, 8.]

And Moses wrought thus through ambition, because, though personally
disinterested, he could not endure having his will thwarted. Aaron had
nearly the converse of such a temperament. Aaron appears to have had few
or no convictions; it mattered little to him whether he worshipped Jehovah
on Sinai or the golden calf at the foot of Sinai, provided he were paid at
his own price. And he took care to exact a liberal price. Also the
inference to be drawn from the way in which Moses behaved to him is that
Moses understood what manner of man he was.

Jethro stood higher in the estimation of Moses, and Moses did his best to
keep Jethro with him, but, apparently, Jethro had watched Moses closely
and was not satisfied with his conduct of the exodus. On the eve of
departure from Sinai, just as the Israelites were breaking camp, Moses
sought out Jethro and said to him; "We are journeying unto the place of
which the Lord said, I will give it you; come thou with us, and we will do
thee good; for the Lord has spoken good concerning Israel.

"And he said unto him, I will not go; but I will depart to mine own land,
and to my kindred."

Not discouraged, Moses kept on urging: "Leave us not, I pray thee;
forasmuch as thou knowest how we are to encamp in the wilderness, and thou
mayest be to us instead of eyes.

"And it shall be, if thou go with us, yea, it shall be, that what goodness
the Lord shall do unto us, the same will we do unto thee." It has been
inferred from a passage in Judges, [Footnote: Judges I, 16.] that Moses
induced Jethro to reconsider his refusal and that he did accompany the
congregation in its march to Kadesh, but, on the whole, the text of the
Bible fails to bear out such inference, for there is no subsequent mention
of Jethro in the books which treat directly of the trials of the journey,
although there would seem to have been abundant occasion for Moses to have
called upon Jethro for aid had Jethro been present. In his apparent
absence the march began, under the leadership of the Lord and Moses, very
much missing Jethro.

They departed from the mount: "And the cloud of the Lord was upon them by
day," when they left the camp "to search out a resting-place." Certainly,
on this occasion, the Lord selected a poor spot for the purpose, quite
different from such an one as Jethro would have been expected to have
pointed out; for the children of Israel began complaining mightily, so
much so that it displeased the Lord who sent fire into the uttermost parts
of the camp, where it consumed them.

"And the people cried unto Moses, and when Moses prayed unto the Lord, the
fire was quenched."

This suggestion of a divine fire under the control of Moses opens an
interesting speculation.

The Magi, who were the priests of the Median religion, greatly developed
the practices of incantation and sorcery. Among these rites they
"pretended to have the power of making fire descend on to their altars by
means of magical ceremonies." [Footnote: Lenormant, _Chaldean Magic_,
226, 238.] Moses appears to have been very fond of this particular
miracle. It is mentioned as having been effective here at Taberah, and it
was the supposed weapon employed to suppress Korah's rebellion. Moses was
indeed a powerful enchanter. His relations with all the priestcraft of
central Asia were intimate, and if the Magi had secrets which were likely
to be of use to him in maintaining his position among the Jews, the
inference is that he would certainly have used them to the utmost; as he
did the brazen serpent, the ram's horns at Sinai, and the like. But in
spite of all his miracles Moses found his task too heavy, and he frankly
confessed that he wished himself dead.

"Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families... and the
anger of the Lord was kindled greatly; Moses also was displeased.

"And Moses said unto the Lord, Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy
servant? ... that thou layest the burden of all this people upon me?

"Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou
shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father
beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their
fathers?

"Whence should I have flesh to give unto all this people? for they weep
unto me saying, Give us flesh that we may eat.

"I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for
me.

"And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I
have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my wretchedness."

Leaving aside for the moment all our childish preventions, and considering
this evidence in the cold light of history, it becomes tolerably evident
that Moses had now reached the turning-point in his career, the point
whither he had inexorably tended since the day on which he bid good-bye to
Jethro to visit Egypt and attempt to gain control of the exodus, and the
point to which all optimists must come who resolve to base a religious or
a political movement on the manipulation of the supernatural. However pure
and disinterested the motives of such persons may be at the outset, and
however thoroughly they may believe in themselves and in their mission,
sooner or later, to compass their purpose, they must resort to deception
and thus become impostors who flourish on the credulity of their dupes.

Moses, from the nature of the case, had to make such demands on the
credulity of his followers that even those who were bound to him by the
strongest ties of affection and self-interest were alienated, and those
without such commanding motives to submit to his claim to exact from them
absolute obedience, revolted, and demanded that he should be deposed. The
first serious trouble with which Moses had to contend came to a head at
Hazeroth, the second station after leaving Sinai. The supposed spot is
still used as a watering-place. There Miriam and Aaron attacked Moses
because they were jealous of his wife, whom they decried as an
"Ethiopian." And they said, "Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses?
hath he not spoken also by us?" Instantly, it became evident to Moses that
if this denial of his superior intimacy with God were to be permitted, his
supremacy must end. Accordingly the Lord came down "in the pillar of the
cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and
Miriam: and they both came forth." And the Lord explained that he had no
objection to a prophet; if any one among the congregation had an ambition
to be a prophet he would communicate with him in a dream; but there must
always be a wide difference between such a man or woman and Moses with
whom he would "speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark
speeches." And then God demanded irritably, "Wherefore, then, were ye not
afraid to speak against my servant Moses?" "Afterward the cloud,"
according to the Bible, departed and God with it.

Ever since the dawn of time the infliction of or the cure of disease has
been the stronghold of the necromancer, the wise man, the magician, the
saint, the prophet and the priest, and Moses was no exception to the rule,
only hitherto he had had no occasion to display his powers of this kind.
Nevertheless, among the Hebrews of the exodus, the field for this form of
miracle was large. Leprosy was very prevalent, so much so that in Egypt
the Jews were called a nation of lepers. And in the camp the regulations
touching them were strict and numerous. But the Jews were always a dirty
race.

In chapter XIII of Leviticus, elaborate directions are given as to how the
patient shall be brought before Aaron himself, or at least some other of
the priests, who was to examine the sore and, if it proved to be a
probable case of leprosy, the patient was to be excluded from the camp for
a week. At the end of that time the disease, if malignant, was supposed to
show signs of spreading, in which case there was no cure and the patient
was condemned to civil death. On the contrary, if no virulent symptoms
developed during the week, the patient was pronounced clean and returned
to ordinary life.

The miracle in the case of Miriam was this: When the cloud departed from
off the tabernacle, Miriam was found to be "leprous, white as snow," just
as Moses' hand was found to be white with leprosy after his conversation
with the Lord at the burning bush. Upon this Aaron, who had been as guilty
as Miriam, and was proportionately nervous, made a prayer to Moses: "Alas,
my lord, I beseech thee, lay not the sin upon us, wherein we have done
foolishly.... Let her not be as one dead.

"And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, Heal her now, O God, I beseech
thee."

But the Lord replied: "If her father had but spit in her face, should she
not be ashamed seven days? Let her be shut out from the camp seven days,
and after that let her be received in again."

This was the Mosaic system of discipline. And it was serious for all
parties concerned. Evidently it was very serious for Miriam, who had to
leave her tent and be exiled to some spot in the desert, where she had to
shift for herself. We all know the almost intolerable situation of those
unfortunates who, in the East, are excluded from social intercourse, and
sit without the gate, and are permitted to approach no one. But it was
also a serious infliction for the congregation, since Miriam was a
personage of consequence, and had to be waited for. That is to say, a
million or two of people had to delay their pilgrimage until Moses had
determined how much punishment Miriam deserved for her insubordination,
and this was a question which lay altogether within the discretion of
Moses. In that age there were at least seven varieties of eruptions which
could hardly, if at all, be distinguished, in their early stages, from
leprosy, and it was left to Moses to say whether or not Miriam had been
attacked by true leprosy or not. There was no one, apparently, to question
his judgment, for, since Jethro had left the camp, there was no one to
controvert the Mosaic opinion on matters such as these. Doubtless Moses
was content to give Aaron and Miriam a fright; but also Moses intended to
make them understand that they lay absolutely at his mercy.

After this outbreak of discontent had been thus summarily suppressed and
Miriam had been again received as "clean," the caravan resumed its march
and entered into the wilderness of Paran, which adjoined Palestine, and
from whence an invasion of Canaan, if one were to be attempted, would be
organized. Accordingly Moses appointed a reconnaissance, who in the
language of the Bible are called "spies," to examine the country, report
its condition, and decide whether an attack were feasible.

On this occasion Moses seems to have remembered the lesson he learned at
Sinai. He did not undertake to leave the camp himself for a long interval.
He sent the men whom he supposed he could best trust, among whom were
Joshua and Caleb. These men, who corresponded to what, in a modern army,
would be called the general-staff, were not sent to manufacture a report
which they might have reason to suppose would be pleasing to Moses, but to
state precisely what they saw and heard together with their conclusions
thereon, that they might aid their commander in an arduous campaign; and
this duty they seem, honestly enough, to have performed. But this was very
far from satisfying Moses, who wanted to make a strenuous offensive, and
yet sought some one else to take the responsibility therefor.

The spies were absent six weeks and when they returned were divided in
opinion. They all agreed that Canaan was a good land, and, in verity,
flowing with milk and honey. But the people, most of them thought, were
too strong to be successfully attacked. "The cities were walled and very
great," and moreover "we saw the children of Anak there."

"The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south; and the Hittites, and the
Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the mountains; and the Canaanites
dwell by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan.

"And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at
once, ... for we are well able to overcome it.

"But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against
the people; for they are stronger than we.

"And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched,
... saying, ... all the people that we saw in it are men of great stature.

"And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, ... and we were in our own
sight as grasshoppers, and so were we in their sight."

Had Moses been gifted with military talent, or with any of the higher
instincts of the soldier, he would have arranged to have received this
report in private and would then have acted as he thought best. Above all
he would have avoided anything like a council of war by the whole
congregation, for a vast popular meeting of that kind was certain to
become unmanageable the moment a division appeared in their command, upon
a difficult question of policy.

Moses did just the opposite. He convened the people to hear the report of
the "spies." And immediately the majority became dangerously depressed,
not to say mutinous.

"And all the congregation lifted up their voice, and cried; and the people
wept that night.

"And all the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron:
and the whole congregation said unto them, Would God that we had died in
the land of Egypt! Or would God we had died in this wilderness!...

"And they said one to another, Let us make a captain, and let us return
into Egypt.

"Then Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before all the assembly of the
congregation of the children of Israel."

But Joshua, who was a soldier, when Moses thus somewhat ignominiously
collapsed, retained his presence of mind and his energy. He and Caleb
"rent their clothes," and reiterated their advice.

"And they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying,
The land which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land.

"If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give
it us; a land which floweth with milk and honey.

"Only rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the
land; for they are bread for us: their defence is departed from them...
fear them not.

"But all the congregation bade stone them with stones."

By this time Moses seems to have recovered some composure. Enough, at
least, to repeat certain violent threats of the "Lord."

Nothing is so impressive in all this history as the difference between
Moses when called upon to take responsibility as a military commander, and
Moses when, not to mince matters, he acted as a quack. On the one hand, he
was all vacillation, timidity, and irritability. On the other, all
temerity and effrontery.

In this particular emergency, which touched his very life, Moses vented
his disappointment and vexation in a number of interviews which he
pretended to have had with the "Lord," and which he retailed to the
congregation, just at the moment when they needed, as Joshua perceived, to
be steadied and encouraged.

"How long," vociferated the Lord, when Moses had got back his power of
speech, "will this people provoke me? and how long will it be ere they
believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them?

"I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make
of thee a greater nation and mightier than they."

But when Moses had cooled a little and came to reflect upon what he had
made the "Lord" say, he fell into his ordinary condition of hesitancy.
Supposing some great disaster should happen to the Jews at Kadesh, which
lay not so very far from the Egyptian border, the Egyptians would
certainly hear of it, and in that case the Egyptian army might pursue and
capture Moses. Such a contingency was not to be contemplated, and
accordingly Moses began to make reservations. It must be remembered that
all these ostensible conversations with the "Lord" went on in public; that
is to say, Moses proffered his advice to the Lord aloud, and then retailed
his version of the answer he received.

"Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which
have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying,

"Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he
sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness....

"Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the
greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people from Egypt
even until now.

"And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word."

Had Moses left the matter there it would not have been so bad, but he
could not contain his vexation, because his staff had not divined his
wishes. Those men, though they had done their strict duty only, must be
punished, so he thought, to maintain his ascendancy.

Of the twelve "spies" whom Moses had sent into Canaan to report to him,
ten had incurred his bitter animosity because they failed to render him
such a report as would sustain him before the people in making the
campaign of invasion to which he felt himself pledged, and on the success
of which his reputation depended. Of these ten men, Moses, to judge by the
character of his demands upon the Lord, thought it incumbent on him to
make an example, in order to sustain his own credit.

To simply exclude these ten spies from Palestine, as he proposed to do
with the rest of the congregation, would hardly be enough, for the rest of
the Hebrews were, at most, passive, but these ten had wilfully ignored the
will of Moses, or, as he expressed it, of the Lord. Therefore it was the
Lord's duty, as Moses saw it, to punish them. And this Moses proposed that
the Lord should do in a prompt and awful manner: the lesson being pointed
by the immunity of Joshua and Caleb, the two spies who had had the wit to
divine the will of Moses. Therefore, all ten of these men died of the
plague while the congregation lay encamped at Kadesh, though Joshua and
Caleb remained immune.

Moses, as the commanding general of an attacking army, took a course
diametrically opposed to that of Joshua, and calculated to be fatal to
victory. He vented his irritation in a series of diatribes which he
attributed to the "Lord," and which discouraged and confused his men at
the moment when their morale was essential to success.

Therefore, the Lord, according to Moses, went on:

"But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of
the Lord.

"Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I
did in Egypt and in the wilderness, have tempted me now these ten times,
and have not hearkened to my voice;

"Surely they shall not see the land which I swear unto their fathers,
neither shall any of them that provoked me see it:

"But my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him, and hath
followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereinto he went;..."

Having said all this, and, as far as might be, disorganized the army,
Moses surrendered suddenly his point. He made the "Lord" go on to command:
"Tomorrow turn you, and get you into the wilderness by the way of the Red
Sea." But, not even yet content, Moses assured them that this retreat
should profit them nothing.

"And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, How long shall I
bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against me? I have heard
the murmurings of the children of Israel, which they murmur against me."
And the Lord continued:

"Say unto them, As truly as I live, ... as ye have spoken in mine ears, so
will I do to you.

"Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered
of you, ... from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against
me,

"Doubtless ye shall not come into the land....

"But as for you, your carcases, they shall fall in this wilderness....

"And the men which Moses sent to search the land, who returned, and made
all the congregation to murmur against him, by bringing up a slander upon
the land,--

"Even those men that did bring up the evil report upon the land, died by
the plague before the Lord.

"But Joshua ... and Caleb, ... which were of the men that went to search
the land, lived still.

"And Moses told these sayings unto all the children of Israel and the
people mourned greatly."

The congregation were now completely out of hand. They knew not what Moses
wanted to do, nor did they comprehend what Moses was attempting to make
the Lord threaten: except that he had in mind some dire mischief.
Accordingly, the people decided that the best thing for them was to go
forward as Joshua and Caleb proposed. So, early in the morning, they went
up into the top of the mountain, saying, "We be here, and will go up unto
the place which the Lord hath promised: for we have sinned."

But Moses was more dissatisfied than ever. "Wherefore now do you
transgress the commandment of the Lord? But it shall not prosper."
Notwithstanding, "they presumed to go up unto the hilltop: nevertheless
the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and Moses, departed not out of the
camp.

"Then the Amalekites came down, and the Canaanites, which dwelt in that
hill, and smote them, and discomfited them, even unto Hormah"; which was
at a very considerable distance,--perhaps not less than thirty miles,
though the positions are not very well established.

This is the story as told by the priestly chronicler, who, of course, said
the best that could be said for Moses. But he makes a sorry tale of it.
According to him, Moses, having been disappointed with the report made by
his officers on the advisability of an immediate offensive, committed the
blunder of summoning the whole assembly of the people to listen to it, and
then, in the midst of the panic he had created, he lost his self-
possession and finally his temper. Whereupon his soldiers, not knowing
what to do or what he wanted, resolved to follow the advice of Joshua and
advance.

But this angered Moses more than ever, who committed the unpardonable
crime in the eyes of the soldier; he abandoned his men in the presence of
the enemy and by this desertion so weakened them that they sustained the
worst defeat the Israelites suffered during the whole of their wanderings
in the wilderness. Such a disaster brought on a crisis. The only wonder is
that it had been so long delayed. Moses had had since the exodus a
wonderful opportunity to test the truth of his theories. He had asserted
that the universe was the expression of a single and supreme mind, which
operated according to a fixed moral law. That he alone, of all men,
understood this mind, and could explain and administer its law, and that
this he could and would do were he to obtain absolute obedience to the
commands which he uttered. Were he only obeyed, he would win for his
followers victory in battle, and a wonderful land to which they should
march under his guidance, which was the Promised Land, and thereafter all
was to be well with them.

The disaster at Hormah had demonstrated that he was no general, and even
on that very day the people had proof before their eyes that he knew
nothing of the desert, and that the Lord knew no more than he, since there
was no water at Kadesh, and to ask the congregation to encamp in such a
spot was preposterous. Meanwhile Moses absorbed all the offices of honor
and profit for his family. Aaron and his descendants monopolized the
priesthood, and this was a bitter grievance to other equally ambitious
Levites. In short, the Mosaic leadership was vulnerable on every hand.
Attack on Moses was, therefore, inevitable, and it came from Korah, who
was leader of the opposition.

Korah was a cousin of Moses, and one of the ablest and most influential
men in the camp, to whom Dathan and Abiram and "two hundred and fifty"
princes of the assembly, famous in the congregation, men of renown, joined
themselves. "And they gathered themselves together against Moses and
against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all
the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them:
wherefore then lift you up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord?"

Koran's grievance was that he had been, although a Levite, excluded from
the priesthood in favor of the demands of Aaron and his sons.

"And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face."

And yet something had to be done. Moses faced an extreme danger. His life
hung upon the issue. As between him and Korah he had to demonstrate which
was the better sorcerer or magician, and he could only do this by
challenging Korah to the test of the ordeal: the familiar test of the
second clause of the code of Hammurabi; "If the holy river makes that man
to be innocent, and has saved him, he who laid the spell upon him shall be
put to death. He who plunged into the holy river shall take to himself the
house of him who wove the spell upon him." [Footnote: Code of Laws
promulgated by Hammurabi, King of Babylon. Translated by C. H. W. Johns,
M.A., Section 2.] And so with Elijah, to whom Ahaziah sent a captain of
fifty to arrest him. And Elijah said to the captain of fifty, "If I be a
man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy
fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his
fifty." [Footnote: 2 Kings I, 10.]

In a word, the ordeal was the common form of test by which the enchanter,
the sorcerer, or the magician always was expected to prove himself. Moses
already had tried the test by fire at least once, and probably oftener. So
now Moses reproached Korah because he was jealous of Aaron; "and what is
Aaron, that ye murmur against him?... This do; Take you censers, Korah,
and all his company; and put fire therein, and put incense in them before
the Lord to-morrow; and ... whom the Lord doth choose, he shall be holy:
ye take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi."

But it was not only about the priesthood that Moses had trouble on his
hands. He had undertaken, with the help of the Lord, to lead the
Israelites through the wilderness. But at every step of the way his
incompetence became more manifest. Even there, at that very camp of
Kadesh, there was no water, and all the people clamored. And, therefore,
Dathan and Abiram taunted him with failure, and with his injustice to
those who served him. And Moses had no reply, except that he denied having
abused his power.

"And Moses sent to call Dathan and Abiram, the sons of Eliab: which said,
We will not come up:

"Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of a land that
floweth with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, except thou
make thyself altogether a prince over us?

"Moreover, thou hast not brought us into a land that floweth with milk and
honey, or given us inheritance of fields and vineyards: wilt thou put out
the eyes of these men [probably alluding to the "spies"]? We will not come
up."

This was evidently an exceedingly sore spot. Moses had boasted that,
because the "spies" had rendered to the congregation what they believed to
be a true report instead of such a report as he had expected, the "Lord"
had destroyed them by the plague. And it is pretty evident that the
congregation believed him. It could hardly have been by pure accident that
out of twelve men, the ten who had offended Moses should have died by the
plague, and the other two alone should have escaped. Moses assumed to have
the power of destroying whom he pleased by the pestilence through prayer
to the "Lord," and he, indeed, probably had the power, in such a spot as
an ancient Jewish Nomad camp, not indeed by prayer, but by the very human
means of communicating so virulent a poison as the plague: means which he
very well understood.

Therefore it is not astonishing that this insinuation should have stung
Moses to the quick.

"And Moses was very wroth, and said unto the Lord, Respect not thou their
offering: I have not taken one ass from them, neither have I hurt one of
them."

Then Moses turned to Korah, "Be thou and all thy company before the Lord,
thou, and they, and Aaron, to-morrow:

"And take every man his censer, and put incense in them, and bring ye
before the Lord every man his censer, two hundred and fifty censers."

And Korah, on the morrow, gathered all the congregation against them unto
the door of the tabernacle. And the "Lord" then as usual intervened and
advised Moses to "separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I
may consume them in a moment." And Moses did so. That is to say, he made
an effort to divide the opposition, who, when united, he seems to have
appreciated, were too strong for him.

What happened next is not known. That Moses partially succeeded in his
attempt at division is admitted, for he persuaded Dathan and Abiram and
their following to "depart ... from the tents of these wicked men, and
touch nothing of theirs, lest ye be consumed in all their sins."

Exactly what occurred after this is unknown. The chronicle, of course,
avers that "the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their
houses, and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods."
But it could not have been this or anything like it, for the descendants
of Korah, many generations after, were still doing service in the Temple,
and at the time of the miracle the spectators were not intimidated by the
sight, although all "Israel that were round about them fled at the cry of
them: for they said, Lest the earth swallow us up also.

"And there came out a fire from the Lord, and consumed the two hundred and
fifty men that offered incense."

Notwithstanding all which, the congregation next day were as hostile and
as threatening as ever.

"On the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured
against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the
Lord....

"And they fell upon their faces."

In this crisis of his fate, when it seemed that nothing could save Moses
from a conflict with the mass of his followers, who had renounced him,
Moses showed that audacity and fertility of resource, which had hitherto
enabled him, and was destined until his death to enable him, to maintain
his position, at least as a prophet, among the Jewish people.

The plague was always the most dreaded of visitations among the ancient
Jews: far more terrible than war. It was already working havoc in the
camp, as the death of the "spies" shows us. Moses always asserted his
ability to control it, and at this instant, when, apparently, he and Aaron
were lying on their faces before the angry people, he conceived the idea
that he would put his theurgetic powers to the proof. Suddenly he called
to Aaron to "take a censer and put fire therein from off the altar, and
put on incense, and go quickly unto the congregation, and make an
atonement for them: for there is wrath gone out from the Lord; the plague
is begun."

"And Aaron took as Moses commanded, and ran into the midst of the
congregation; and, behold, the plague was begun among the people: ... and
made an atonement for the people.

"And he stood between the dead and the living; and the plague was stayed.

"Now they that died in the plague were fourteen thousand and seven
hundred, beside them that died about the matter of Korah."

Even this was not enough. The discontent continued, and Moses went on to
meet it by the miracle of Aaron's rod.

Moses took a rod from each tribe, twelve rods in all and on Aaron's rod he
wrote the name of Levi, and Moses laid them out in the tabernacle. And the
next day Moses examined the rods and showed the congregation how Aaron's
rod had budded. And Moses declared that Aaron's rod should be kept for a
token against the rebels: and that they must stop their murmurings "that
they die not."

This manipulation of the plague by Moses, upon what seems to have been a
sudden inspiration, was a stroke of genius in the way of quackery. He was,
indeed, in this way almost portentous. It had a great and terrifying
effect upon the people, who were completely subdued by it. Against
corporeal enemies they might hope to prevail, but they were helpless
against the plague. And they all cried out with one accord, "Behold we
die, we perish, we all perish. Whosoever cometh anything near unto the
tabernacle of the Lord shall die: shall we be consumed with dying?"

As I have already pointed out, Moses was a very great theurgist, as many
saints and prophets have been. When in the actual presence of others he
evidently had the power of creating a belief in himself which approached
the miraculous, so far as disease was concerned. And he presumed on this
power and took correspondingly great risks. The case of the brazen serpent
is an example. The story is--and there is no reason to doubt its
substantial truth--that the Hebrews were attacked by venomous serpents
probably in the neighborhood of Mount Hor, where Aaron died, and thereupon
Moses set up a large brazen serpent on a pole, and declared that whoever
would look upon the serpent should live. Also, apparently, it did produce
an effect upon those who believed: which, of course, is not an
unprecedented phenomenon among faith healers. But what is interesting in
this historical anecdote is not that Moses performed certain faith cures
by the suggestion of a serpent, but that the Israelites themselves, when
out of the presence of Moses, recognized that he had perpetrated on them a
vulgar fraud. For example, King Hezekiah destroyed this relic, which had
been preserved in the Temple, calling it "Nehushtan," "a brazen thing," as
an expression of his contempt. And what is more remarkable still is that
although Hezekiah reigned four or five centuries after the exodus, yet
science had made no such advance in the interval as to justify this
contempt. Hezekiah seems to have been every whit as credulous as were the
pilgrims who looked on the brazen serpent and were healed. Hezekiah "was
sick unto death, and Isaiah came to see him, and told him to set his house
in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.... And Hezekiah wept sore."

Then, like Moses, Isaiah had another revelation in which he was directed
to return to Hezekiah, and tell him that he was to live fifteen years
longer. And Isaiah told the attendants to take "a lump of figs." "And they
took it and laid it on the boil, and he recovered."

Afterward Hezekiah asked of Isaiah how he was to know that the Lord would
keep his word and give him fifteen additional years of life. Isaiah told
him that the shadow should go back ten degrees on the dial. And Isaiah
"cried unto the Lord," and he brought the shadow ten degrees backward "by
which it had gone down in the dial of Ahaz." [Footnote: 2 Kings xx, 11.]
And yet this man Hezekiah, who could believe in this marvellous cure of
Isaiah, repudiated with scorn the brazen serpent as an insult to
credulity. The contrast between Moses, who hesitated not to take all risks
in matters of disease with which he felt himself competent to cope, and
his timidity and hesitation in matters of war, is astounding. But it is a
common phenomenon with the worker of miracles and indicates the limit of
faith at which the saint or prophet has always betrayed the impostor. For
example: Saint Bernard, when he preached in 1146 the Second Crusade, made
miraculous cures by the thousand, so much so that there was danger of
being killed in the crowds which pressed upon him. And yet this same
saint, when chosen by the crusaders four years later, in 1150, to lead
them because of his power to constrain victory by the intervention of God,
wrote, after the crusaders' defeat, in terror to the pope to protect him,
because he was unfit to take such responsibility.

But even with this reservation Moses could not gain the complete
confidence of the congregation and the insecurity of his position finally
broke him down.

At this same place of Kadesh, Miriam died, "and the people chode with
Moses because there was no water for the congregation." [Footnote: Numbers
xx, 8.] Moses thereupon withdrew and, as usual, received a revelation. And
the Lord directed him to take his rod, "and speak ye unto the rock before
their eyes; and it shall give forth his water."

And Moses gathered the congregation and said unto them, "Hear now, ye
rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?"

"And he smote the rock twice: and the water came out abundantly."

But Moses felt that he had offended God, "Because ye believed me not, to
sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not
bring this congregation into the land which I have given them."

Moses had become an old man, and he felt himself unequal to the burden he
had assumed. He recognized that his theory of cause and effect had broken
down, and that the "Lord" whom at the outset he had firmly believed to be
an actual and efficient power to be dominated by him, either could not or
would not support him in emergency. In short, he had learned that he was
an adventurer who must trust to himself. Hence, after Hormah he was a
changed man. Nothing could induce him to lead the Jews across the Jordan
to attack the peoples on the west bank, and though the congregation made a
couple of campaigns against Sihon and Og, whose ruthlessness has always
been a stain on Moses, the probability is that Moses did not meddle much
with the active command. Had he done so, the author of Deuteronomy would
have given the story in more detail and Moses more credit. All that is
attributed to Moses is a division of the conquests made together with
Joshua, and a fruitless prayer to the Lord that he might be permitted to
cross the Jordan.

Meanwhile life was ending for him. His elder sister Miriam died at Kadesh,
and Aaron died somewhat later at Mount Hor, which is supposed to lie about
as far to the east of Kadesh as Hormah is to the west, but there are
circumstances about the death of Aaron which point to Moses as having had
more to do with it than of having been a mere passive spectator thereof.

The whole congregation is represented as having "journeyed from Kadesh and
come unto Mount Hor ... by the coast of the land of Edom," and there the
"Lord" spoke unto Moses and Aaron, and explained that Aaron was to be
"gathered unto his people, ... because ye rebelled ... at the water of
Meribah." Therefore Moses was to "take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and
bring them up unto Mount Hor: and strip Aaron of his garments, and put
them upon Eleazar," ... and that Aaron ... shall die there.

"And they went up into Mount Hor in the sight of all the congregation. And
Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son;
and Aaron died there in the top of the mount: and Moses and Eleazar came
down from the mount." [Footnote: Numbers xx, 22-28.]

Now it is incredible that all this happened as straightforwardly as the
chronicle would have us believe. Aaron was an old man and probably
failing, but his death was not imminent. On the contrary, he had strength
to climb Mount Hor with Moses, without aid, and there is no hint that he
suffered from any ailment likely to end his life suddenly. Moses took care
that he and Eleazar should be alone with Aaron so that there should be no
witness as to what occurred, and Moses alone knew what was expected.

Moses had time to take off the priestly garments, which were the insignia
of office and to put them on Eleazar, and then, when all was ready, Aaron
simply ceased to breathe at the precise moment when it was convenient for
Moses to have him die, for the policy of Moses evidently demanded that
Aaron should live no longer. Under the conditions of the march Moses was
evidently preparing for his own death, and for a complete change in the
administration of affairs. Appreciating that his leadership had broken
down and that the system he had created was collapsing, he had dawdled as
long on the east side of the Jordan as the patience of the congregation
would permit. An advance had become inevitable, but Moses recognized his
own inability to lead it. The command had to be delegated to a younger man
and that man was Joshua. Eleazar, on the other hand, was the only
available candidate for the high priesthood, and Moses took the
opportunity of making the investiture on Mount Hor. So Aaron passed away,
a sacrifice to the optimism of Moses. Next came the turn of Moses himself.
The whole story is told in Deuteronomy. Within, probably, something less
than a year after Aaron's death the "Lord" made a like communication to
Moses.

"Get thee up ... unto Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, that is
over against Jericho;

"And die in the Mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy
people; as Aaron, thy brother died in Mount Hor;

"Because ye trespassed against me among the children of Israel at the
waters of Meribah-Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, because ye sanctified
me not in the midst of the children of Israel.

"And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo, ...
And the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan.

"And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab,
according to the word of the Lord.... But no man knoweth of his sepulchre
unto this day.

"And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was
not dim, nor his natural force abated."

The facts, as preserved by Josephus, appear to have been these: Moses
ascended the mountain with only the elders, the high priest Eleazar, and
Joshua. At the top of the mountain he dismissed the elders, and then, as
he was embracing Joshua and Eleazar and still speaking, a cloud covered
him, and he disappeared in a ravine. In other words, he killed himself.

Such is the story of Moses, a fragment of history interesting enough in
itself, but especially material to us not only because of the development
of the thought dealt with in the following volumes, but of the inferences
which, at the present time, it permits us to draw touching our own
immediate future.

Moses was the first great optimist of whom any record remains, and one of
the greatest. He was the prototype of all those who have followed. He was
a visionary. All optimists must be visionaries. Moses based the social
system which he tried to organize, not on observed facts, but on _a
priori_ theories evolved out of his own mind, and he met with the
failure that all men of that cast of mind must meet with when he sought to
realize his visions. His theory was that the universe about him was the
expression of an infinite mind which operated according to law. That this
mind, or consciousness, was intelligent and capable of communicating with
man. That it did, in fact, so communicate through him, as a medium, and
that other men had only to receive humbly and obey implicitly his
revelations to arrive at a condition nearly approaching, if not absolutely
reaching, perfection, while they should enjoy happiness and prosperity in
the land in which they should be permitted, by an infinite and
supernatural power and wisdom, to dwell. All this is not alien to the
attitude of scientific optimists at the present day, who anticipate
progressive perfection.

Let us consider, for a moment, whither these _a priori_ theories led,
when put in practice upon human beings, including himself. And, in the
first place, it will probably be conceded that no optimist could have, or
ever hope to have, a fairer opportunity to try his experiment than had
Moses on that plastic Hebrew community which he undertook to lead through
Arabia. Also it must be admitted that Moses, as an expounder of a moral
code, achieved success. The moral principles which he laid down have been
accepted as sound from that day to this, and are still written up in our
churches, as a standard for men and women, however slackly they may be
observed. But when we come to mark the methods by which Moses obtained
acceptance of his code by his contemporaries, and, above all, sought to
constrain obedience to himself and to it, we find the prospect unalluring.
To begin with, Moses had only begun the exodus when he learned from his
practical father-in-law that the system he employed was fantastic and
certain to fail: his notion being that he should sit and judge causes
himself, as the mouthpiece of the infinite, and that therefore each
judgment he gave would demand a separate miracle or imposture. This could
not be contemplated. Therefore Moses was constrained to impose his code in
writing, once for all, by one gigantic fraud which he must perpetrate
himself. This he tried at Sinai, unblushingly declaring that the stone
tablets which he produced were "written with the finger of God";
wherefore, as they must have been written by himself, or under his
personal supervision, he brazenly and deliberately lied. His good faith
was obviously suspected, and this suspicion caused disastrous results. To
support his lie Moses caused three thousand unsuspecting and trusting men
to be murdered in cold blood, whose only crime was that they would have
preferred another leadership to his, and because, had they been able to
effect their purpose, they would have disappointed his ambition.

To follow Moses further in the course which optimism enforced upon him
would be tedious, as it would be to recapitulate the story which has
already been told. It suffices to say shortly that, at every camp, he had
to sink to deeper depths of fraud, deception, lying, and crime in order to
maintain his credit. It might be that, as at Meribah, it was only claiming
for himself a miracle which he knew he could not work, and for claiming
which, instead of giving the credit to God, he openly declared he deserved
and must receive punishment; or it might be some impudent quackery, like
the brazen serpent, which at least was harmless; or it might have been
complicated combinations which suggest a deeper shade; as, for example,
the outbreak of the plague, after Korah's rebellion, which bears the
aspect of a successful effort at intimidation to support his own wavering
credit. But the result was always the same. Moses had promised that the
supernatural power he pretended to control should sustain him and give
victory. Possibly, when he started on the exodus he verily believed that
such a power existed, was amenable and could be constrained to intervene.
He found that he had been mistaken on all these heads, and when he
accepted these facts as final, nothing remained for him but suicide, as
has been related. It only remains to glance, for a single moment, at what
befell, when he had gone, the society he had organized on the optimistic
principle of the approach of human beings toward perfection. During the
period of the Judges, when "there was no king in Israel, but every man did
that which was right in his own eyes," [Footnote: Judges xvii, 6.] anarchy
supervened, indeed, but also the whole Mosaic system broke down because of
the imbecility of the men on whom Moses relied to lift the people toward
perfection.

Eli, a descendant of Aaron, was high priest, and a judge, being the
predecessor of Samuel, the last of the judges. Now Eli had two sons who
"were sons of Belial; they knew not the Lord."

Eli, being very old, "heard all that his sons did unto all Israel; and how
they lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle...."
And Eli argued with them; "notwithstanding they harkened not unto the
voice of their father."

Samuel succeeded Eli. He was not a descendant of Aaron, but became a
judge, apparently, upon his own merits. But as a judge he did not
constrain his sons any better than Eli had his, for "they took bribes, and
perverted judgment." So the elders of Israel came to Samuel and said,
"Give us a king to judge us." "And Samuel prayed unto the Lord," though he
disliked the idea. Yet the result was inevitable. The kingdom was set up,
and the Mosaic society perished. Nothing was left of Mosaic optimism but
the tradition. Also there was the Mosaic morality, and what that amounted
to may best, perhaps, be judged by David, who was the most perfect flower
of the perfection to which humanity was to attain under the Mosaic law,
and has always stood for what was best in Mosaic optimism. David's
morality is perhaps best illustrated by the story of Uriah the Hittite.

One day David saw Uriah's wife taking a bath on her housetop and took a
fancy to her. The story is all told in the Second of Samuel. How David
sent for her, took her into the palace, and murdered Uriah by sending him
to Joab who commanded the army, and instructing Joab to set Uriah in the
forefront of the hottest battle, and "retire ye from him that he may be
smitten and die." And Uriah was killed.

Then came the famous parable by Nathan of the ewe lamb. "And David's anger
was greatly kindled against the man; and he said to Nathan, As the Lord
liveth, the man who hath done this thing shall surely die.

"And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man."

And Nathan threatened David with all kinds of disaster and even with
death, and David was very repentant and "he fasted and lay all night upon
the earth." But for all that, when assured that nothing worse was to
happen to him than the loss of the son Bathsheba had borne him, David
comforted Bathsheba. He by no means gave her up. On the contrary, "he went
in unto her ... and she bare him a son, and he called his name Solomon:
and the Lord loved him."

Again the flesh had prevailed. And so it has always been with each new
movement which has been stimulated by an idealism inspired by a belief
that the spirit was capable of generating an impulse which would overcome
the flesh and which could cause men to move toward perfection along any
other path than the least resistant. And this because man is an automaton,
and can move no otherwise. In this point of view nothing can be more
instructive than to compare the Roman with the Mosaic civilization, for
the Romans were a sternly practical people and worshipped force as Moses
worshipped an ideal.

As Moses dreamed of realizing the divine consciousness on earth by
introspection and by prayer, so the Romans supposed that they could attain
to prosperity and happiness on earth by the development of superior
physical force and the destruction of all rivals. Cato the Censor was the
typical Roman landowner, the type of the class which built up the great
vested interest in land which always moved and dominated Rome. He
expressed the Roman ideal in his famous declaration in the Senate, when he
gave his vote for the Third Punic War; "_Delenda est Carthago_," Carthage
must be destroyed. And Carthage was destroyed because to a Roman to
destroy Carthage was a logical competitive necessity. Subsequently, the
Romans took the next step in their social adjustment at home. They deified
the energy which had destroyed Carthage. The incarnation of physical force
became the head of the State;--the Emperor when living, the Divus, when
dead. And this conception gained expression in the law. This godlike
energy found vent in the Imperial will; "_Quod principi placuit, legis
habet vigorem_." [Footnote: Inst. l, 2, 6.]

Nothing could be more antagonistic to the Mosaic philosophy, which invoked
the supernatural unity as authority for every police regulation. Moreover,
the Romans carried out their principle relentlessly, to their own
destruction. That great vested interest which had absorbed the land of
Italy, and had erected the administrative entity which policed it, could
not hold and cultivate its land profitably, in competition with other
lands such as Egypt, North Africa, or Assyria, which were worked by a
cheaper and more resistant people. Therefore the Roman landowners imported
this competitive population from their homes, having first seized them as
slaves, and cultivated their own Italian fields with them after the
eviction of the original native peasants, who could not survive on the
scanty nutriment on which the eastern races throve. [Footnote: I have
dealt with this subject at length in my _Law of Civilization and
Decay_, chapter II, to which I must refer the reader. More fully still
in the French translation. "This unceasing emigration gradually changed
the character of the rural population, and a similar alteration took place
in the army. As early as the time of Cæsar, Italy was exhausted; his
legions were mainly raised in Gaul, and as the native farmers sank into
serfdom or slavery, and then at last vanished, recruits were drawn more
and more from beyond the limits of the empire." I cannot repeat my
arguments here, but I am not aware that they have been seriously
controverted.]

The Roman law, the _Romana lex_, was as gigantic, as original, and as
comprehensive a structure as was the empire which gave to it expression.
Modern European law is but a dilution thereof. The Roman law attained
perfection, as I conceive, about the time of the Antonines, through the
great jurists who then flourished. If one might name a particular moment
at which so vast and complex a movement culminated, one would be tempted
to suggest the reign of Hadrian, who appointed Salvius Julianus to draw up
the _edictum perpetuum_, or permanent edict, in the year 132 A.D.
Thenceforward the magistrate had to use his discretion only when the edict
of Julianus did not apply.

I am not aware that any capital principle of municipal law has been
evolved since that time, and the astonishing power of the Roman mind can
only be appreciated when it is remembered that the whole of this colossal
fabric was original. Modern European law has been only a servile copy.
But, regard being had to the position of the emperor in relation to the
people, and more especially in relation to the vast bureaucracy of Rome,
which was the embodiment of the vested interest which was Rome itself, the
adherence of Roman thought to the path of least resistance was absolute.
"So far as the cravings of Stoicism found historical and political
fulfilment, they did so in the sixty years of Hadrian and the Antonines,
and so far again as an individual can embody the spirit of an age, its
highest and most representative impersonation is unquestionably to be
found in the person of Marcus Antoninus.... Stoicism faced the whole
problem of existence, and devoted as searching an investigation to
processes of being and of thought, to physics and to dialectic, as to the
moral problems presented by the emotions and the will." [Footnote:
_Marcus Aurelius Antoninus_, in English, by Gerald H. Rendall,
Introduction, xxvii.]

Such was stoicism, of which Marcus Aurelius was and still remains the
foremost expression. He admitted that as emperor his first duty was to
sacrifice himself for the public and he did his duty with a constancy
which ultimately cost him his life. Among these duties was the great duty
of naming his successor. The Roman Empire never became strictly
hereditary. It hinged, as perhaps no other equally developed system ever
hinged, upon the personality of the emperor, who incarnated the
administrative bureaucracy which gave effect to the _Pax Romana_ and
the _Romana lex_ from the Euphrates to the Atlantic and from Scotland
to the Tropic of Cancer. Of all men Marcus Aurelius was the most
conscientious and the most sincere, and he understood, as perhaps no other
man in like position ever understood, the responsibility which impinged on
him, to allow no private prevention to impose an unfit emperor upon the
empire But Marcus had a son Commodus, who was nineteen when his father
died, and who had already developed traits which caused foreboding.
Nevertheless, Marcus associated Commodus with himself in the empire when
Commodus was fourteen and Commodus attained to absolute power when Marcus
died. Subsequently, Commodus became the epitome of all that was basest and
worst in a ruler. He was murdered by the treachery of Marcia, his favorite
concubine, and the Senate decreed that "his body should be dragged with a
hook into the stripping room of the gladiators, to satiate the public
fury." [Footnote: _Decline and Fall_, chap. iv.]

From that day Rome entered upon the acute stage of her decline, and she
did so very largely because Marcus Aurelius, the ideal stoic, was
incapable of violating the great law of nature which impelled him to
follow not reason, but the path of least resistance in choosing a
successor; or, in other words, the instinct of heredity. Moreover, this
instinct and not reason is or has been, among the strongest which operate
upon men, and makes them automata. It is the basis upon which the family
rests, and the family is the essence of social cohesion. Also the
hereditary instinct has been the prime motor which has created
constructive municipal jurisprudence and which has evolved religion.

With the death of Marcus Aurelius individual competition may be judged to
have done its work, and presently, as the population changed its character
under the stress thereof, a new phase opened: a phase which is marked, as
such phases usually are, by victory in war. Marcus Aurelius died in 180
A.D. Substantially a century later, in 312, Constantine won the battle of
the Milvian Bridge with his troops fighting under the Labarum, a standard
bearing a cross with the device "_In hoc signo vinces_"; By this sign
conquer. Probably Constantine had himself scanty faith in the Labarum, but
he speculated upon it as a means to arouse enthusiasm in his men. It
served his purpose, and finding the step he had taken on the whole
satisfactory, he followed it up by accepting baptism in 337 A.D.

From this time forward the theory of the possibility of securing divine or
supernatural aid by various forms of incantation or prayer gained steadily
in power for about eight centuries, until at length it became a passion
and gave birth to a school of optimism, the most overwhelming and the most
brilliant which the world has ever known and which evolved an age whose
end we still await.

The Germans of the fourth century were a very simple race, who
comprehended little of natural laws, and who therefore referred phenomena
they did not understand to supernatural intervention. This intervention
could only be controlled by priests, and thus the invasions caused a rapid
rise in the influence of the sacred class. The power of every
ecclesiastical organization has always rested on the miracle, and the
clergy have always proved their divine commission as did Moses. This was
eminently the case with the mediæval Church. At the outset Christianity
was socialistic, and its spread among the poor was apparently caused by
the pressure of servile competition; for the sect only became of enough
importance to be persecuted under Nero, contemporaneously with the first
signs of distress which appeared through the debasement of the denarius.
But socialism was only a passing phase, and disappeared as the money value
of the miracle rose, and brought wealth to the Church. Under the Emperor
Decius, about 250, the magistrates thought the Christians opulent enough
to use gold and silver vessels in their service, and by the fourth century
the supernatural so possessed the popular mind that Constantine, as we
have seen, not only allowed himself to be converted by a miracle, but used
enchantment as an engine of war.

The action of the Milvian Bridge, fought in 312, by which Constantine
established himself at Rome, was probably the point whence nature began to
discriminate decisively against the vested interest of Western Europe.
Capital had already abandoned Italy; Christianity was soon after
officially recognized, and during the next century the priest began to
rank with the soldier as a force in war.

Meanwhile, as the population sank into exhaustion, it yielded less and
less revenue, the police deteriorated, and the guards became unable to
protect the frontier. In 376, the Goths, hard pressed by the Huns, came to
the Danube and implored to be taken as subjects by the emperor. After
mature deliberation the Council of Valens granted the prayer, and some
five hundred thousand Germans were cantoned in Moesia. The intention of
the government was to scatter this multitude through the provinces as
_coloni,_ or to draft them into the legions; but the detachment detailed
to handle them was too feeble, the Goths mutinied, cut the guard to
pieces, and having ravaged Thrace for two years, defeated and killed
Valens at Hadrianople. In another generation the disorganization of the
Roman army had become complete, and Alaric gave it its death-blow in his
campaign of 410.

Alaric was not a Gothic king, but a barbarian deserter, who, in 392, was
in the service of Theodosius. Subsequently he sometimes held imperial
commands, and sometimes led bands of marauders on his own account, but was
always in difficulty about his pay. Finally, in the revolution in which
Stilicho was murdered, a corps of auxiliaries mutinied and chose him their
general. Alleging that his arrears were unpaid, Alaric accepted the
command, and with this army sacked Rome.

During the campaign the attitude of the Christians was more interesting
than the strategy of the soldiers. Alaric was a robber, leading mutineers,
and yet the orthodox historians did not condemn him. They did not condemn
him because the sacred class instinctively loved the barbarians whom they
could overawe, whereas they could make little impression on the
materialistic intellect of the old centralized society. Under the empire
the priests, like all other individuals, had to obey the power which paid
the police; and as long as a revenue could be drawn from the provinces,
the Christian hierarchy were subordinate to the monied bureaucracy who had
the means to coerce them.

Yet only very slowly, as the empire disintegrated, did the theocratic idea
take shape. As late as the ninth century the pope prostrated himself
before Charlemagne, and did homage as to a Roman emperor. [Footnote: Perz,
_Annales Lauressenses_, I, 188.]

Saint Benedict founded Monte Cassino in 529, but centuries elapsed before
the Benedictine order rose to power. The early convents were isolated and
feeble, and much at the mercy of the laity, who invaded and debauched
them. Abbots, like bishops, were often soldiers, who lived within the
walls with their wives and children, their hawks, their hounds, and their
men-at-arms; and it has been said that, in all France, Corbie and Fleury
alone kept always something of their early discipline.

Only in the early years of the most lurid century of the Middle Ages, when
decentralization culminated, and the imagination began to gain its fullest
intensity, did the period of monastic consolidation open with the
foundation of Cluny. In 910 William of Aquitaine draw a charter [Footnote:
Bruel, _Recueil des Chartes de l'Abbaye de Cluny_, I, 124.] which, so
far as possible, provided for the complete independence of his new
corporation. There was no episcopal visitation, and no interference with
the election of the abbot. The monks were put directly under the
protection of the pope, who was made their sole superior. John XI
confirmed this charter by his bull of 932, and authorized the affiliation
of all converts who wished to share in the reform. [Footnote: _Bull.
Clun._ p. 2, col. 1. Also Luchaire, _Manuel des Institutions Françaises_,
93, 95, where the authorities are collected.]

The growth of Cluny was marvellous; by the twelfth century two thousand
houses obeyed its rule, and its wealth was so great, and its buildings so
vast, that in 1245 Innocent IV, the Emperor Baldwin, and Saint Louis were
all lodged together within its walls, and with them all the attendant
trains of prelates and nobles with their servants.

In the eleventh century no other force of equal energy existed. The monks
were the most opulent, the ablest, and the best organized society in
Europe, and their effect upon mankind was proportioned to their strength.
They intuitively sought autocratic power, and during the centuries when
nature favored them, they passed from triumph to triumph. They first
seized upon the papacy and made it self-perpetuating; they then gave
battle to the laity for the possession of the secular hierarchy, which had
been under temporal control since the very foundation of the Church.

According to the picturesque legend, Bruno, Bishop of Toul, seduced by the
flattery of courtiers and the allurements of ambition, accepted the tiara
from the emperor, and set out upon his journey to Italy with a splendid
retinue, and with his robe and crown. On his way he turned aside at Cluny,
where Hildebrand was prior. Hildebrand, filled with the spirit of God,
reproached him with having seized upon the seat of the vicar of Christ by
force, and accepted the holy office from the sacrilegious hand of a
layman. He exhorted Bruno to cast away his pomp, and to cross the Alps
humbly as a pilgrim, assuring him that the priests and people of Rome
would recognize him as their bishop, and elect him according to canonical
forms. Then he would taste the joys of a pure conscience, having entered
the fold of Christ as a shepherd and not as a robber. Inspired by these
words, Bruno dismissed his train, and left the convent gate as a pilgrim.
He walked barefoot, and when after two months of pious meditations he
stood before Saint Peter's, he spoke to the people and told them it was
their privilege to elect the pope, and since he had come unwillingly he
would return again, were he not their choice.

He was answered with acclamations, and on February 2, 1049, he was
enthroned as Leo IX. His first act was to make Hildebrand his minister.

The legend tells of the triumph of Cluny as no historical facts could do.
Ten years later, in the reign of Nicholas II, the theocracy made itself
self-perpetuating through the assumption of the election of the pope by
the college of cardinals, and in 1073 Hildebrand, the incarnation of
monasticism, was crowned under the name of Gregory VII.

With Hildebrand's election, war began. The Council of Rome, held in 1075,
decreed that holy orders should not be recognized where investiture had
been granted by a layman, and that princes guilty of conferring
investiture should be excommunicated. The Council of the next year, which
excommunicated the emperor, also enunciated the famous propositions of
Baronius--the full expression of the theocratic idea. The priest had grown
to be a god on earth.

"So strong in this confidence, for the honour and defence of your Church,
on behalf of the omnipotent God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,
by your power and authority, I forbid the government of the German and
Italian kingdoms, to King Henry, the son of the Emperor Henry, who, with
unheard-of arrogance, has rebelled against your Church. I absolve all
Christians from the oaths they have made or may make to him, and I forbid
that any one should obey him as king." [Footnote: Migne, CXLVIII, 790.]

Henry marched on Italy, but in all European history there has been no
drama more tremendous than the expiation of his sacrilege. To his soldiers
the world was a vast space, peopled by those fantastic beings which are
still seen on Gothic towers. These demons obeyed the monk of Rome, and his
army, melting from about the emperor under a nameless horror, left him
helpless.

Gregory lay like a magician in the fortress of Canossa: but he had no need
of carnal weapons, for when the emperor reached the Alps he was almost
alone. Then his imagination also took fire, the panic seized him, and he
sued for mercy.

On August 7, 1106, Henry died at Liège, an outcast and a mendicant, and
for five long years his body lay at the church door, an accursed thing
which no man dared to bury.

Gregory prevailed because, to the understanding of the eleventh century,
the evidence at hand indicated that he embodied in a high degree the
infinite energy. The eleventh century was intensely imaginative and the
evidence which appealed to it was those phenomena of trance, hypnotism,
and catalepsy which are as mysterious now as they were then, but whose
effect was then to create an overpowering demand for miracle-working
substances. The sale of these substances gradually drew the larger portion
of the wealth of the community into the hands of the clergy, and with
wealth went temporal power. No vested interest in any progressive
community has probably ever been relatively stronger, for the Church found
no difficulty, when embarrassed, in establishing and operating a thorough
system for exterminating her critics.

Under such a pressure modern civilization must have sunk into some form of
caste had the mediæval mind resembled any antecedent mind, but the middle
age, though superficially imaginative, was fundamentally materialistic, as
the history of the crusades showed.

At Canossa the laity conceded as a probable hypothesis that the Church
could miraculously control nature; but they insisted that if the Church
possessed such power, she must use that power for the common good. Upon
this point they would not compromise, nor would they permit delay. During
the chaos of the ninth century turmoil and violence reached a stage at
which the aspirations of most Christians ended with self-preservation; but
when the discovery and working of the Harz silver had brought with it some
semblance of order, an intense yearning possessed both men and women to
ameliorate their lot. If relics could give protection against oppression,
disease, famine, and death, then relics must be obtained, and, if the
cross and the tomb were the most effective relics, then the cross and the
tomb must be conquered at any cost. In the north of Europe especially,
misery was so acute that the people gladly left their homes upon the
slenderest promise of betterment, even following a vagrant like Peter the
Hermit, who was neither soldier nor priest. There is a passage in William
of Tyre which has been often quoted to explain a frenzy which is otherwise
inexplicable, and in the old English of Caxton the words still glow with
the same agony which makes lurid the supplication of the litany,--"From
battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord deliver us":

"Of charyte men spack not, debates, discordes, and warres were nyhe
oueral, in suche wyse, that it seemed, that thende of the world was nyghe,
by the signes that our lord sayth in the gospell, ffor pestylences and
famynes were grete on therthe, ferdfulness of heuen, tremblyng of therthe
in many places, and many other thinges there were that ought to fere the
hertes of men....

"The prynces and the barons brente and destroyed the contrees of theyr
neyghbours, yf ony man had saved ony thynge in theyr kepyng, theyr owne
lordes toke them and put them in prison and in greuous tormentis, for to
take fro them suche as they had, in suche qyse that the chyldren of them
that had ben riche men, men myght see them goo fro dore to dore, for to
begge and gete theyr brede, and some deye for hungre and mesease."
[Footnote: Godeffroy of Bologne, by William, Archbishop of Tyre,
translated from the French by William Caxton, London, 1893, 21, 22.]

Throughout the eleventh century the excitement touching the virtues of the
holy places in Judea grew, until Gregory VII, about the time of Canossa,
perceived that a paroxysm was at hand, and considered leading it, but on
the whole nothing is so suggestive of the latent scepticism of the age as
the irresolution of the popes at this supreme moment. The laity were the
pilgrims and the agitators. The kings sought the relics and took the
cross; the clergy hung back. Robert, Duke of Normandy, for example, the
father of William the Conqueror, died in 1035 from hardship at Nicæa when
returning from Palestine, absorbed to the last in the relics which he had
collected, but the popes stayed at home. Whatever they may have said in
private, neither Hildebrand nor Victor nor Urban moved officially until
they were swept forward by the torrent. They shunned responsibility for a
war which they would have passionately promoted had they been sure of
victory. The man who finally kindled the conflagration was a half-mad
fanatic, a stranger to the hierarchy. No one knew the family of Peter the
Hermit, or whence he came, but he certainly was not an ecclesiastic in
good standing. Inflamed by fasting and penance, Peter followed the throng
of pilgrims to Jerusalem, and there, wrought upon by what he saw, he
sought the patriarch. Peter asked the patriarch if nothing could be done
to protect the pilgrims, and to retrieve the Holy Places. The patriarch
replied, "Nothing, unless God will touch the heart of the western princes,
and will send them to succor the Holy City." The patriarch did not propose
meddling himself, nor did it occur to him that the pope should intervene.
He took a rationalistic view of the Moslem military power. Peter, on the
contrary, was logical, arguing from eleventh-century premises. If he could
but receive a divine mandate, he would raise an invincible army. He
prayed. His prayer was answered. One day while prostrated before the
sepulchre he heard Christ charge him to announce in Europe that the
appointed hour had come. Furnished with letters from the patriarch, Peter
straightway embarked for Rome to obtain Urban's sanction for his design.
Urban listened and gave a consent which he could not prudently have
withheld, but he abstained from participating in the propaganda. In March,
1095, Urban called a Council at Piacenza, nominally to consider the
deliverance of Jerusalem, and this Council was attended by thirty thousand
impatient laymen, only waiting for the word to take the vow, but the pope
did nothing. Even at Clermont eight months later, he showed a disposition
to deal with private war, or church discipline, or with anything in fact
rather than with the one engrossing question of the day, but this time
there was no escape. A vast multitude of determined men filled not only
Clermont but the adjacent towns and villages, even sleeping in the fields,
although the weather was bitterly cold, who demanded to know the policy of
the Church. Urban seems to have procrastinated as long as he safely could,
but, at length, at the tenth session, he produced Peter on the platform,
clad as a pilgrim, and, after Peter had spoken, he proclaimed the war.
Urban declined, however, to command the army. The only effective force
which marched was a body of laymen, organized and led by laymen, who in
1099 carried Jerusalem by an ordinary assault. In Jerusalem they found the
cross and the sepulchre, and with these relics as the foundation of their
power, the laity began an experiment which lasted eighty-eight years,
ending in 1187 with the battle of Tiberias. At Tiberias the infidels
defeated the Christians, captured their king and their cross, and shortly
afterward seized the tomb.

If the eleventh-century mind had been as rigid as the Roman mind of the
first century, mediæval civilization could hardly, after the collapse of
the crusades, have failed to degenerate as Roman civilization degenerated
after the defeat of Varus. Being more elastic, it began, under an
increased tension, to develop new phases of thought. The effort was indeed
prodigious and the absolute movement possibly slow, but a change of
intellectual attitude may be detected almost contemporaneously with the
fall of the Latin kingdom in Palestine. It is doubtless true that the
thirteenth century was the century in which imaginative thought reached
its highest brilliancy, when Albertus Magnus and Saint Thomas Aquinas
taught, when Saint Francis and Saint Clara lived, and when Thomas of
Celano wrote the _Dies Iræ_. It was then that Gothic architecture touched
its climax in the cathedrals of Chartres and Amiens, of Bourges and of
Paris; it was then also that Blanche of Castile ruled in France and that
Saint Louis bought the crown of thorns, but it is equally true that the
death of Saint Louis occurred in 1270, shortly after the thorough
organization of the Inquisition by Innocent IV in 1252, and within two
years or so of the production by Roger Bacon of his _Opus Majus_.

The establishment of the Inquisition is decisive, because it proves that
sceptical thought had been spread far enough to goad the Church to general
and systematic repression, while the _Opus Majus_ is a scientific
exposition of the method by which the sceptical mind is trained.

Roger Bacon was born about 1214, and going early to Oxford fell under the
influence of the most liberal teachers in Europe, at whose head stood
Robert Grosseteste, afterward Bishop of Lincoln. Bacon conceived a
veneration for Grosseteste, and even for Adam de Marisco his disciple, and
turning toward mathematics rather than toward metaphysics he eagerly
applied himself, when he went to Paris, to astrology and alchemy, which
were the progenitors of the modern exact sciences. In the thirteenth
century a young man like Bacon could hardly stand alone, and Bacon joined
the Franciscans, but before many years elapsed he embroiled himself with
his superiors. His friend, Grosseteste, died in 1253, the year after
Innocent IV issued the bull _Ad extirpanda_ establishing the
Inquisition, and Bacon felt the consequences. The general of his order,
Saint Bonaventura, withdrew him from Oxford where he was prominent, and
immured him in a Parisian convent, treating him rigorously, as Bacon
intimated to Pope Clement IV. There he remained, silenced, for some ten
years, until the election of Clement IV, in 1265. Bacon at once wrote to
Clement complaining of his imprisonment, and deploring to the pope the
plight into which scientific education had fallen. The pope replied
directing Bacon to explain his views in a treatise, but did not order his
release. In response Bacon composed the _Opus Majus_.

The _Opus Majus_ deals among other things with experimental science,
and in the introductory chapter to the sixth part Bacon stated the theory
of inductive thought quite as lucidly as did Francis Bacon three and a
half centuries later in the _Novum Organum_. [Footnote: Positis radicibus
sapientiae Latinorum penes Linguas et Mathematicam et Perspectivam, nunc
volo revolvere radices a parte Scientiae Experimentalis, quia sine
experientia nihil sufficienter scire protest. Duo enim simt modi
cognoscendi, scilicet per argumentum et experimentum. Argumentum concludit
et facit nos concedere conclusionem, sed non certificat neque removet
dubitationem ut quiescat animus in intuitu veritatis, nisi eam inveniat
via experientiae; quia multi habent argumenta ad scibilia, sed quia non
habent experientiam, negligunt ea, nee vitant nociva nex persequuntue
bona. J. H. Bridges, _The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon_ (Oxford, 1897), II,
167.]

Clement died in 1268. The papacy remained vacant for a couple of years,
but in 1271 Gregory X came in on a conservative reaction. Bacon passed
most of the rest of his life in prison, perhaps through his own
ungovernable temper, and ostensibly his writings seem to have had little
or no effect on his contemporaries, yet it is certain that he was not an
isolated specimen of a type of intelligence which suddenly bloomed during
the Reformation. Bacon constantly spoke of his friends, but his friends
evidently did not share his temperament. The scientific man has seldom
relished martyrdom, and Galileo's experience as late as 1633 shows what
risks men of science ran who even indirectly attacked the vested interests
of the Church. After the middle of the thirteenth century the danger was
real enough to account for any degree of secretiveness, and a striking
case of this timidity is related by Bacon himself. No one knows even the
name of the man to whom Bacon referred as "Master Peter," but according to
Bacon, "Master Peter" was the greatest and most original genius of the
age, only he shunned publicity. The "Dominus experimentorum," as Bacon
called him, lived in a safe retreat and devoted himself to mathematics,
chemistry, and the mechanical arts with such success that, Bacon insisted,
he could by his inventions have aided Saint Louis in his crusade more than
his whole army. [Footnote: Émile Charles, _Roger Bacon. Sa vie et ses
ouvrages_, 17.] Nor is this assertion altogether fantastic. Bacon
understood the formula for gunpowder, and if Saint Louis had been provided
with even a poor explosive he might have taken Cairo; not to speak of the
terror which Greek fire always inspired. Saint Louis met his decisive
defeat in a naval battle fought in 1250, for the command of the Nile, by
which he drew supplies from Damietta, and he met it, according to Matthew
Paris, because his ships could not withstand Greek fire. Gunpowder, even
in a very simple form, might have changed the fate of the war.

Scepticism touching the value of relics as a means for controlling nature
was an effect of experiment, and, logically enough, scepticism advanced
fastest among certain ecclesiastics who dealt in relics. For example, in
1248 Saint Louis undertook to invade Egypt in defence of the cross.
Possibly Saint Louis may have been affected by economic considerations
also touching the eastern trade, but his ostensible object was a crusade.
The risk was very great, the cost enormous, and the responsibility the
king assumed of the most serious kind. Nothing that he could do was left
undone to ensure success. In 1249 he captured Damietta, and then stood in
need of every pound of money and of every man that Christendom could
raise; yet at this crisis the Church thought chiefly of making what it
could in cash out of the war, the inference being that the hierarchy
suspected that even if Saint Louis prevailed and occupied Jerusalem,
little would be gained from an ecclesiastical standpoint. At all events,
Matthew Paris has left an account, in his chronicle of the year 1249, of
how the pope and the Franciscans preached this crusade, which is one of
the most suggestive passages in thirteenth-century literature:

"About the same time, by command of the pope, whom they obeyed implicitly,
the Preacher and Minorite brethren diligently employed themselves in
preaching; and to increase the devotion of the Christians, they went with
great solemnity to the places where their preaching was previously
indicated, and granted many days of indulgence to those who came to hear
them.... Preaching on behalf of the cross, they bestowed that symbol on
people of every age, sex and rank, whatever their property or worth, and
even on sick men and women, and those who were deprived of strength by
sickness or old age; and on the next day, or even directly afterwards,
receiving it back from them, they absolved them from their vow of
pilgrimage, for whatever sum they could obtain for the favour. What seemed
unsuitable and absurd was, that not many days afterwards, Earl Richard
collected all this money in his treasury, by the agency of Master Bernard,
an Italian clerk, who gathered in the fruit; whereby no slight scandal
arose in the Church of God, and amongst the people in general, and the
devotion of the faithful evidently cooled." [Footnote: Matthew Paris,
_English History_, translated by the Rev. J. A, Giles, II, 309.]

When the unfortunate Baldwin II became Emperor of the East in 1237, the
relics of the passion were his best asset. In 1238, while Baldwin was in
France trying to obtain aid, the French barons who carried on the
government at Constantinople in his absence were obliged to pledge the
crown of thorns to an Italian syndicate for 13,134 perpera, which Gibbon
conjectures to have been besants. Baldwin was notified of the pledge and
urged to arrange for its redemption. He met with no difficulty. He
confidently addressed himself to Saint Louis and Queen Blanche, and
"Although the king felt keen displeasure at the deplorable condition of
Constantinople, he was well pleased, nevertheless, with the opportunity of
adorning France with the richest and most precious treasure in all
Christendom." More especially with "a relic, and a sacred object which was
not on the commercial market." [Footnote: Du Cange, _Histoire de L'empire
de Constantinople sous les empereurs Français_, edition de Buchon, I,
259.]

Louis, beside paying the loan and the cost of transportation which came to
two thousand French pounds (the mark being then coined into £2, 15 sous
and 6 pence), made Baldwin a present of ten thousand pounds for acting as
broker. Baldwin was so well contented with this sale which he closed in
1239, that a couple of years later he sent to Paris all the contents of
his private chapel which had any value. Part of the treasure was a
fragment of what purported to be the cross, but the authenticity of this
relic was doubtful; there was beside, however, the baby linen, the spear-
head, the sponge, and the chain, beside several miscellaneous articles
like the rod of Moses.

Louis built the Sainte Chapelle at a cost of twenty thousand marks as a
shrine in which to deposit them. The Sainte Chapelle has usually ranked as
the most absolutely perfect specimen of mediaeval religious architecture.
[Footnote: On this whole subject of the inter-relation of mediæval
theology with architecture and philosophy the reader is referred to
_Mont-Saint-Michel et Chartres_, by Henry Adams, which is the most
philosophical and thorough exposition of this subject which ever has been
attempted.]

When Saint Louis bought the Crown of Thorns from Baldwin in 1239, the
commercial value of relics may, possibly, be said to have touched its
highest point, but, in fact, the adoration of them had culminated with the
collapse of the Second Crusade, and in another century and a half the
market had decisively broken and the Reformation had already begun, with
the advent of Wycliffe and the outbreak of Wat Tyler's Rebellion in 1381.
For these social movements have always a common cause and reach a
predetermined result.

In the eleventh century the convent of Cluny, for example, had an enormous
and a perfectly justified hold upon the popular imagination, because of
the sanctity and unselfishness of its abbots. Saint Hugh won his sainthood
by a self-denial and effort which were impossible to ordinary men, but
with Louis IX the penitential life had already lost its attractions and
men like Arnold rapidly brought religion and religious thought into
contempt. The famous Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, born, probably, in
1175, died in 1253. He presided over the diocese of Lincoln at the precise
moment when Saint Louis was building the Sainte Chapelle, but Grosseteste
in 1250 denounced in a sermon at Lyons the scandals of the papal court
with a ferocity which hardly was surpassed at any later day.

To attempt even an abstract of the thought of the English Reformation
would lead too far, however fascinating the subject might be. It must
suffice to say briefly that theology had little or nothing to do with it.
Wycliffe denounced the friars as lazy, profligate impostors, who wrung
money from the poor which they afterwards squandered in ways offensive to
God, and he would have stultified himself had he admitted, in the same
breath, that these reprobates, when united, formed a divinely illuminated
corporation, each member of which could and did work innumerable miracles
through the interposition of Christ. Ordinary miracles, indeed, could be
tested by the senses, but the essence of transubstantiation was that it
eluded the senses. Thus nothing could be more convenient to the government
than to make this invisible and intangible necromancy a test in capital
cases for heresy-Hence Wycliffe had no alternative but to deny
transubstantiation, for nothing could be more insulting to the
intelligence than to adore a morsel of bread which a priest held in his
hand. The pretension of the priests to make the flesh of Christ was,
according to Wycliffe, an impudent fraud, and their pretension to possess
this power was only an excuse by which they enforced their claim to
collect fees, and what amounted to extortionate taxes, from the people.
[Footnote: Nowhere, perhaps, does Wycliffe express himself more strongly
on this subject than in a little tract called _The Wicket_, written
in English, which he issued for popular consumption about this time.] But,
in the main, no dogma, however incomprehensible, ever troubled
Protestants, as a class. They easily accepted the Trinity, the double
procession, or the Holy Ghost itself, though no one had the slightest
notion what the Holy Ghost might be. Wycliffe roundly declared in the
first paragraph of his confession [Footnote: Fasciculi Zizaniorum, 115.]
that the body of Christ which was crucified was truly and really in the
consecrated host, and Huss, who inherited the Wycliffian tradition,
answered before the Council of Constance, "Verily, I do think that the
body of Christ is really and totally in the sacrament of the altar, which
was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered, died, and rose again, and sitteth
on the right hand of God the Father Almighty." [Footnote: Foxe, _Acts
and Monuments_, III, 452.] That which has rent society in twain and has
caused blood to flow like water, has never been abstract opinions, but
that economic competition either between states or classes, that lust for
power and wealth, which makes a vested interest. Thus by 1382 the
eucharist had come to represent to the privileged classes power and
wealth, and they would have repudiated Wycliffe even had they felt strong
enough to support him. But they were threatened by an adversary equally
formidable with heresy in the person of the villeins whom the constantly
increasing momentum of the time had raised into a position in which they
undertook to compete for the ownership of the land which they still tilled
as technical serfs.


CHAPTER III.


Now the courts may say what they will in support of the vested interests,
for to support vested interests is what lawyers are paid for and what
courts are made for. Only, unhappily, in the process of argument courts
and lawyers have caused blood to flow copiously, for in spite of all that
can be said to the contrary, men have practically proved that they do own
all the property they can defend, all the courts in Christendom
notwithstanding, and this is an issue of physical force and not at all of
words or of parchments. And so it proved to be in England in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, alike in Church and State. It was a
matter of rather slow development. After the conquest villeins could
neither in fact nor theory acquire or hold property as against their lord,
and the class of landlords stretched upwards from the owner of a knight's
fee to the king on his throne, who was the chief landlord of all, but by
so narrow a margin that he often had enough to do to maintain some vestige
of sovereignty. So, to help himself, it came to pass that the king
intrigued with the serfs against their restive masters, and the abler the
king, the more he intrigued, like Henry I, until the villeins gained very
substantial advantages. Thus it was that toward 1215, or pretty nearly
contemporaneously with the epoch when men like Grosseteste began to show
restlessness under the extortionate corruption of the Church, the villein
was discovered to be able to defend his claim to some portion of the
increment in the value of the land which he tilled and which was due to
his labor: and this title the manorial courts recognized, because they
could not help it, as a sort of tenant right, calling it a customary
tenancy by base service. A century later these services in kind had been
pretty frequently commuted into a fixed rent paid in money, and the serf
had become a freeman, and a rather formidable freeman, too. For it was
largely from among these technical serfs that Edward III recruited the
infantry who formed his line at Crécy in 1346, and the archers of Crécy
were not exactly the sort of men who take kindly to eviction, to say
nothing of slavery. As no one meddled much with the villeins before 1349,
all went well until after Crécy, but in 1348 the Black Death ravaged
England, and so many laborers died that the cost of farming property by
hired hands exceeded the value of the rent which the villeins paid. Then
the landlords, under the usual reactionary and dangerous legal advice,
tried coercion. Their first experiment was the famous Statute of Laborers,
which fixed wages at the rates which prevailed in 1347, but as this
statute accomplished nothing the landlords repudiated their contracts, and
undertook to force their villeins to render their ancient customary
services. Though the lay landlords were often hard masters, the
ecclesiastics, especially the monks, were harder still, and the
ecclesiastics were served by lawyers of their own cloth, whose sharp
practice became proverbial. Thus the law declined to recognize rights in
property existing in fact, with the inevitable result of the peasant
rising in 1381, known as Wat Tyler's Rebellion. Popular rage perfectly
logically ran highest against the monks and the lawyers. Both the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon de Sudbury, the Lord Chancellor, and the
Chief Justice were killed, and the insurgents wished to kill, as Capgrave
has related, "all the men that had learned ony law." Finally the rebellion
was suppressed, chiefly by the duplicity of Richard II. Richard promised
the people, by written charters, a permanent tenure as freemen at
reasonable rents, and so induced them to go home with his charters in
their hands; but they were no sooner gone than vengeance began. Though
Richard had been at the peasants' mercy, who might have killed him had
they wished, punitive expeditions were sent in various directions. One was
led by Richard himself, who travelled with Tresilian, the new Chief
Justice, the man who afterward was himself hanged at Tyburn. Tresilian
worked so well that he is said to have strung up a dozen villeins to a
single beam in Chelmsford because he had no time to have them executed
regularly. Stubbs has estimated that seven thousand victims hardly
satisfied the landlords' sense of outraged justice. What concerns us,
chiefly, is that this repression, however savage, failed altogether to
bring tranquillity. After 1381 a full century of social chaos supervened,
merging at times into actual civil war, until, in 1485, Henry Tudor came
in after his victory at Bosworth, pledged to destroy the whole reactionary
class which incarnated feudalism. For the feudal soldier was neither
flexible nor astute, and allowed himself to be caught between the upper
and the nether millstone. While industrial and commercial capital had been
increasing in the towns, capitalistic methods of farming had invaded the
country, and, as police improved, private and predatory warfare, as a
business, could no longer be made to pay. The importance of a feudal noble
lay in the body of retainers who followed his banner, and therefore the
feudal tendency always was to overcharge the estate with military
expenditure. Hence, to protect themselves from creditors, the landlords
passed the Statute _De Donis_ [Footnote: 13 Edw. I, c. I (A.D.
1284).] which made entails inalienable. Toward the end of the Wars of the
Roses, however, the pressure for money, which could only be raised by
pledging their land, became too strong for the feudal aristocracy. Edward
IV, who was a very able man, perceived, pretty early in his reign, that
his class could not maintain themselves unless their land were put upon a
commercial basis. Therefore he encouraged the judges, in the collusive
litigation known to us as Taltarum's Case, decided in 1472, to set aside
the Statute _De Donis_, by the fiction of the Common Recovery. The
concession, even so, came too late. The combination against them had grown
too strong for the soldiers to resist. Other classes evolved by
competition wanted their property, and these made Henry Tudor king of
England to seize it for them.

Henry's work was simple enough. After Bosworth, with a competent police
force at hand to execute process, he had only to organize a political
court, and to ruin by confiscatory fines all the families strong enough,
or rash enough, to maintain garrisoned houses. So Henry remodelled the
Star Chamber, in 1486, [Footnote: 3 Henry 7, C 1.] to deal with the
martial gentry, and before long a new type of intelligence possessed the
kingdom.

The feudal soldiers being disposed of, it remained to evict the monks, who
were thus left without their natural defenders. No matter of faith was
involved. Henry VIII boasted that in doctrine he was as orthodox as the
pope. There was, however, an enormous monastic landed property to be
redistributed This was confiscated, and appropriated, not to public
purposes, but, as usually happens in revolutions, to the use of the
astutest of the revolutionists. Among these, John Russell, afterward Earl
of Bedford, stood preeminent. Russell had no particular pedigree or
genius, save the acquisitive genius, but he made himself useful to Henry
in such judicial murders as that of Richard Whiting, Abbot of Glastonbury.
He received in payment, among much else, Woburn Abbey, which has since
remained the Bedford country seat, and Covent Garden or Convent Garden,
one of the most valuable parcels of real estate in London. Covent Garden
the present duke recently sold, anticipating, perhaps, some such
legislation as ruined the monks and made his ancestor's fortune. As for
the monks whom Henry evicted, they wandered forth from their homes
beggars, and Henry hanged all of them whom he could catch as vagrants. How
many perished as counterpoise for the peasant massacres and Lollard
burnings of the foregoing two centuries can never be known, nor to us is
it material. What is essential to mark, from the legal standpoint, is that
while this long and bloody revolution, of one hundred and fifty years,
displaced a favored class and confiscated its property, it raised up in
their stead another class of land monopolists, rather more greedy and
certainly quite as cruel as those whom they superseded. Also, in spite of
all opposition, labor did make good its claim to participate more or less
fully in the ownership of the property it cultivated, for while the
holding of the ancient villein grew to be well recognized in the royal
courts as a copyhold estate, villeinage itself disappeared.

Yet, unless I profoundly err, in the revolution of the sixteenth century,
the law somewhat conspicuously failed in its function of moderating
competition, for I am persuaded that competition of another kind
sharpened, and shortly caused a second civil war bloodier than the Wars of
the Roses.

Fifteen years before the convents were seized, Sir Thomas More wrote
_Utopia_, in whose opening chapter More has given an account of a
dinner at Cardinal Morton's, who, by the way, presided in the Star
Chamber. At this dinner one of the cardinal's guests reflected on the
thievish propensities of Englishmen, who were to be found throughout the
country hanged as felons, sometimes twenty together on a single gallows.
More protested that this was not the fault of the poor who were hanged,
but of rich land monopolists, who pastured sheep and left no fields for
tillage. According to More, these capitalists plucked down houses and even
towns, leaving nothing but the church for a sheep-house, so that "by covin
and fraud, or by violent oppression, ... or by wrongs and injuries," the
husbandmen "be thrust out of their own," and, "must needs depart away,
poor, wretched souls, men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children,
widows." The dissolution of the convents accelerated the process, and more
and more of the weaker yeomanry were ruined and evicted. It is
demonstrated that the pauperization of the feebler rural population went
on apace by the passage of poor-laws under Elizabeth, which, in the Middle
Ages, had not been needed and, therefore, were unknown. This movement,
described by More, was the beginning of the system of enclosing common
lands which afterward wrought havoc among the English yeomen, and which, I
suppose, contributed more than any other single cause to the Great
Rebellion of the seventeenth century. In the mediæval village the owners
of small farms enjoyed certain rights in the common land of the community,
affording them pasturage for their cattle and the like, rights without
which small farming could not be made profitable. These commons the land
monopolists appropriated, sometimes giving some shadow of compensation,
sometimes by undisguised force, but on the whole compensation amounted to
so little that the enclosure of the commons must rank as confiscation.
Also this seizure of property would doubtless have caused a convulsion as
lasting as that which followed the insurrection of 1381, or as did
actually occur in Ireland, had it not been for an unparalleled
contemporaneous territorial and industrial expansion. Thorold Rogers
always insisted that between 1563, the year of the passage of the Statute
of Apprentices, [Footnote: 5 Eliz. c. 4.] and 1824, a regular conspiracy
existed between the lawyers "and the parties interested in its success ...
to cheat the English workman of his wages, ... and to degrade him to
irremediable poverty." [Footnote: _Work and Wages_, 398.] Certainly
the land monopolists resorted to strong measures to accumulate land, for
something like six hundred and fifty Enclosure Acts were passed between
1760, the opening of the Industrial Revolution, and 1774, the outbreak of
the American War. But without insisting on Rogers's view, it is not denied
that the weakest of the small yeomen sank into utter misery, becoming
paupers or worse. On the other hand, of those stronger some emigrated to
America, others, who were among the ablest and the boldest, sought fortune
as adventurers over the whole earth, and, like the grandfather of Chatham,
brought home from India as smugglers or even as pirates, diamonds to be
sold to kings for their crowns, or, like Clive, became the greatest
generals and administrators of the nation. Probably, however, by far the
majority of those who were of average capacity found compensation for the
confiscated commons in domestic industry, owning their houses with lots of
land and the tools of their trade. Defoe has left a charming description
of the region about Halifax in Yorkshire, toward the year 1730, where he
found the whole population busy, prosperous, healthy, and, in the main,
self-sufficing. He did not see a beggar or an idle person in the whole
country. So, favored by circumstances, the landed oligarchy met with no
effective resistance after the death of Cromwell, and achieved what
amounted to being autocratic power in 1688. Their great triumph was the
conversion of the House of Commons into their own personal property, about
the beginning of the eighteenth century, with all the guaranties of law.
In the Middle Ages the chief towns of England had been summoned by the
king to send burgesses to Westminster to grant him money, but as time
elapsed the Commons acquired influence and, in 1642, became dominant.
Then, after the Restoration, the landlords conceived the idea of
appropriating the right of representation, as they had appropriated and
were appropriating the common lands. Lord John Russell one day observed in
the House of Commons that the burgesses were originally chosen from among
the inhabitants of the towns they represented, but that, in the reign of
Anne, the landlords, to depress the shipping interest, opened the borough
representation to all qualified persons without regard to domicile.
[Footnote: 36 Hansard, Third Series, 548.] Lord John was mistaken in his
date, for the change occurred earlier, but he described correctly enough
the persistent animus of the landlords. An important part of their policy
turned on the so-called Determination Acts of 1696 and 1729, which defined
the franchises and which had the effect of confirming the titles of
patrons to borough property, [Footnote: Porritt, _Unreformed House of
Commons_, I, 9, _et seq._] thus making a seat in the House of
Commons an incorporeal hereditament fully recognized by law. On this point
so high an authority as Lord Eldon was emphatic. [Footnote: 12 Hansard,
Third Series, 396.] By the time of the American War the oligarchy had
become so narrow that one hundred and fifty-four peers and commoners
returned three hundred and seven members, or much more than a majority of
the House as then organized. [Footnote: Grey's motion for Reform, 30
_Parl. Hist._ 795 (A.D. 1793)] With the privileged class reduced to
these contemptible numbers a catastrophe necessarily followed. Almost
impregnable as the position of the oligarchy appeared, it yet had its
vulnerable point. As Burke told the Duke of Portland, a duke's power did
not come from his title, but from his wealth, and the landlords' wealth
rested on their ability to draw a double rent from their estates, one rent
for themselves, and another to provide for the farmer to whom they let
their acres. Evidently British land could not bear this burden if brought
in competition with other equally good land that paid only a single rent,
and from a pretty early period the landlords appear to have been alive to
this fact. Nevertheless, ocean freights afforded a fair protection, and as
long as the industrial population remained tolerably self-supporting,
England rather tended to export than to import grain. But toward 1760
advances in applied science profoundly modified the equilibrium of English
society. The new inventions, stimulated by steam, could only be utilized
by costly machinery installed in large factories, which none but
considerable capitalists could build, but once in operation the product of
these factories undersold domestic labor, and ruined and evicted the
population of whole regions like Halifax. These unfortunate laborers were
thrust in abject destitution into filthy and dark alleys in cities, where
they herded in masses, in misery and crime. In consequence grain rose in
value, so much so that in 1766 prayers were offered touching its price.
Thenceforward England imported largely from America, and in 1773
Parliament was constrained to reduce the duty on wheat to a point lower
than the gentry conceded again, until the total repeal of the Corn Laws in
1846. [Footnote: John Morley, _The Life of Richard Cobden_, 167, note
5.] The situation was well understood in London. Burke, Governor Pownall,
and others explained it in Parliament, while Chatham implored the
landlords not to alienate America, which they could not, he told them,
conquer, but which gave them a necessary market,--a market as he aptly
said, both of supply and demand. And Chatham was right, for America not
only supplied the grain to feed English labor, but bought from England at
least one third of all her surplus manufactures.

This brings us to the eighteenth century, which directly concerns us,
because the religious superstition, which had previously caused men to
seek in a conscious supreme energy the effective motor in human affairs,
had waned, and the problem presented was reduced to the operation of that
acceleration of movement by the progress of applied science which always
has been, and always must be, the prime cause of the quickening of
economic competition either as between communities or as between
individuals. And this is the capital phenomenon of civilization. For it is
now generally admitted that war is nothing but economic competition in its
acutest form. When competition reaches a certain intensity it kindles into
war or revolution, precisely as when iron is raised to a certain heat it
kindles into flame. And, for the purposes of illustration, possibly the
best method of showing how competition was quickened, and how it affected
adjacent communities during the eighteenth century, is to take navigation,
not only because navigation was much improved during the first three
quarters of that period, but because both England and France competed for
control in America by means of ships. It suffices to mention, very
succinctly, a few of the more salient advances which were then made.

Toward 1761 John Harrison produced the chronometer, by which longitude
could be determined at sea, making the ship independent in all parts of
the world. At the same time more ingenious rigging increased her power of
working to windward. With such advantages Captain Cook became a mighty
discoverer both in the southern and western oceans, charted New Zealand
and much else, and more important than all, in 1759 he surveyed the Saint
Lawrence and piloted ships up the river, of which he had established the
channel. Speaking of Cook naturally leads to the solution of the problem
of the transportation of men, sailors, soldiers, and emigrants, on long
voyages, thereby making population fluid. Cook, in his famous report, read
before the Royal Society in March, 1776, after his second voyage,
established forever the hygienic principles by observing which a ship's
company may safely be kept at sea for any length of time. Previously there
had always been a very high mortality from scurvy and kindred diseases,
which had, of course, operated as a very serious check to human movement.
On land the same class of phenomena were even more marked. In England the
Industrial Revolution is usually held to date from 1760, and, by common
consent, the Industrial Revolution is attributed altogether to applied
science, or, in other words, to mechanical inventions. In 1760 the flying-
shuttle appeared, and coal began to replace wood for smelting. In 1764
Hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny; in 1779 Crompton contrived the
mule; and in 1768 Watt brought the steam-engine to maturity. In 1761 the
first boat-load of coals sailed over the Barton viaduct, which James
Brindley built for the Duke of Bridgewater's canal, to connect Worsley
with Manchester, thus laying the foundation of British inland navigation,
which before the end of the century had covered England; while John
Metcalf, the blind road-builder, began his lifework in 1765. He was
destined to improve English highways, which up to that time had been
mostly impossible for wheeled traffic. In France the same advance went on.
Arthur Young described the impression made on him in 1789 by the
magnificence of the French roads which had been built since the
administration of Colbert, as well as by the canal which connected the
Mediterranean with the Atlantic.

In the midst of this activity Washington grew up. Washington was a born
soldier, engineer, and surveyor with the topographical instinct peculiar
to that temperament. As early as 1748 he was chosen by Lord Fairfax, who
recognized his ability, though only sixteen years old, to survey his vast
estate west of the Blue Ridge, which was then a wilderness. He spent three
years in this work and did it well. In 1753 Governor Dinwiddie sent
Washington on a mission to the French commander on the Ohio, to warn him
to cease trespassing on English territory, a mission which Washington
fulfilled, under considerable hardship and some peril, with eminent
success. Thus early, for he was then only twenty-two, Washington gained
that thorough understanding of the North American river system which
enabled him, many years afterward, to construct the Republic of the United
States upon the lines of least resistant intercommunication. And
Washington's conception of the problem and his solution thereof were, in
substance, this:

The American continent, west of the mountains and south of the Great
Lakes, is traversed in all directions by the Mississippi and its
tributaries, but we may confine our attention to two systems of
watercourses, the one to the west, forming by the Wisconsin and the main
arm of the Mississippi, a thoroughfare from Lake Michigan to the Gulf; and
the other by French Creek and the Allegheny, broken only by one easy
portage, affording a perfect means of access to the Ohio, a river which
has always operated as the line of cleavage between our northern and
southern States. The French starting from Quebec floated from Lake Erie
down the Allegheny to Pittsburgh, the English ascended the Potomac to
Cumberland, and thence, following the most practicable watercourses,
advanced on the French position at the junction of the Allegheny and the
Monongahela. There Washington met and fought them in 1754, and ever after
Washington maintained that the only method by which a stable union among
the colonies could be secured was by a main trunk system of transportation
along the line of the Ohio and the Potomac. This was to be his canal which
should bind north and south, east and west, together by a common interest,
and which should carry the produce of the west, north, and south, to the
Atlantic coast, where it should be discharged at the head of deep-water
navigation, and which should thus stimulate industry adjacent to the spot
he chose for the Federal City, or, in our language, for the City of
Washington. Thus the capital of the United States was to become the
capital of a true nation, not as a political compromise, but because it
lay at the central point of a community made cohesive by a social
circulation which should build it up, in his own words, into a capital, or
national heart, if not "as large as London, yet of a magnitude inferior to
few others in Europe." [Footnote: Washington to Mrs. Fairfax, 16 May,
1798; Sparks, xi, 233.] Maryland and Virginia abounded, as Washington well
knew, in coal and iron. His canal passing through this region would
stimulate industry, and these States would thus become the focus of
exchanges. Manufacturing is incompatible with slavery, hence slavery would
gradually and peacefully disappear, and the extremities of the Union would
be drawn together at what he described as "the great emporium of the
United States." To crown all, a national university was to make this
emporium powerful in collective thought.

Doubtless Grenville and Townshend had not considered the American problem
as maturely as had Washington, but nevertheless, most well-informed
persons now agree that Englishmen in 1763 were quite alive to the
advantages which would accrue to Great Britain, by holding in absolute
control a rich but incoherent body of colonies whose administrative centre
lay in England, and were as anxious that London should serve as the heart
of America as Washington was that America should have its heart on the
Potomac.

Accordingly, England attempted to isolate Massachusetts and pressed an
attack on her with energy, before the whole thirteen colonies should be
able to draw to a unity. On the other hand, Washington, and most sensible
Americans, resisted this attack as resolutely as might be under such
disadvantages, not wishing for independence, but hoping for some
compromise like that which Great Britain has since effected with her
remaining colonies. The situation, however, admitted of no peaceful
adjustment, chiefly because the imbecility of American administration
induced by her incapacity for collective thought, was so manifest, that
Englishmen could not believe that such a society could wage a successful
war. Nor could America have done so alone. She owed her ultimate victory
altogether to Washington and France.

It would occupy too much space for me to undertake to analyze, even
superficially, the process by which, after the Seven Years' War,
competition between America and England reached an intensity which kindled
the American Revolution, but, shortly stated, the economic tension arose
thus: As England was then organized, the estates of the English landlords
had to pay two rents, one to the landlord himself, the other to the farmer
who leased his land, and this it could not do were it brought into direct
competition with equally good land which paid but one profit, and which
was not burdened by an excessive cost of transportation in reaching its
market. As freights between England and America fell because of improved
shipping and the greater safety of the seas, England had to have
protection for her food and she proposed to get it thus: If competing
Continental exports could be excluded from America, and, at the same time,
Americans could be prevented from manufacturing for themselves, the
colonists might be constrained to take what they needed from England, at
prices which would enable labor to buy food at a rate which would yield
the double profit, and thus America could be made to pay the cost of
supporting the landlords. As Cobden afterward observed, the fortunes of
England have turned on American competition. A part of these fortunes were
represented by the Parliamentary boroughs which the landlords owned and
which were confiscated by the Reform Bill, and these boroughs were held by
Lord Eldon to be incorporeal hereditaments: as truly a part of the private
property of the gentry who owned them as church advowsons, or the like.
And the gentry held to their law-making power which gave them such a
privilege with a tenacity which precipitated two wars before they yielded;
but this was naught compared to the social convulsion which rent France,
when a population which had been for centuries restrained from free
domestic movement, burst its bonds and insisted on levelling the barriers
which had immobilized it.

The story of the French Revolution is too familiar to need recapitulation
here: indeed, I have already dealt with it in my _Social Revolutions_; but
the effects of that convulsion are only now beginning to appear, and these
effects, without the shadow of a doubt, have been in their ultimate
development the occasion of that great war whose conclusion we still
await.

France, in 1792, having passed into a revolution which threatened the
vested interests of Prussia, was attacked by Prussia, who was defeated at
Valmy. Presently, France retaliated, under Napoleon, invaded Prussia,
crushed her army at Jena, in 1807, dismembered the kingdom and imposed on
her many hardships. To obtain their freedom the Prussians found it needful
to reorganize their social system from top to bottom, for this social
system had descended from Frederic William, the Great Elector of
Brandenburg (1640-1688), and from Frederic the Great (1740-1786), and was
effete and incapable of meeting the French onset, which amounted, in
substance, to a quickened competition. Accordingly, the new Prussian
constitution, conceived by Stein, put the community upon a relatively
democratic and highly developed educational basis. By the Emancipating
Edict of 1807, the peasantry came into possession of their land, while,
chiefly through the impulsion of Scharnhorst, who was the first chief of
staff of the modern army, the country adopted universal military service,
which proved to be popular throughout all ranks. Previous to Scharnhorst,
under Frederic the Great, the qualification of an officer had been birth.
Scharnhorst defined it as education, gallantry, and intelligence.
Similarly, Gneisenau's conception of a possible Prussian supremacy lay in
its army, its science, and its administration. But the civil service was
intended to incarnate science, and was the product of the modernized
university, exemplified in the University of Berlin organized by William
von Humboldt. Herein lay the initial advantage which Germany gained over
England, an advantage which she long maintained. And the advantage lay in
this: Germany conceived a system of technical education matured and put in
operation by the State. Hence, so far as in human affairs such things are
possible, the intelligence of Germans was liberated from the incubus of
vested interests, who always seek to use education to advance themselves.
It was so in England. The English entrusted education to the Church, and
the Church was, by the necessity of its being, reactionary and hostile to
science, whereas the army, in the main, was treated in England as a social
function, and the officers, speaking generally, were not technically
specially educated at all. Hence, in foreign countries, but especially in
Germany which was destined to be ultimately England's great competitor,
England laid herself open to rather more than a suspicion of weakness, and
indeed, when it came to a test, England found herself standing, for
several years of war, at a considerable disadvantage because of the lack
of education in those departments wherein Germany had, by the attack of
France, been forced to make herself proficient. This any one may see for
himself by reading the addresses of Fichte to the German nation, delivered
in 1807 and 1808, when Berlin was still occupied by the French. In fine,
it was with Prussia a question of competition, brought to its ultimate
tension by war. Prussia had no alternative as a conquered land but to
radically accelerate her momentum, or perish. And so, at the present day,
it may not improbably be with us. Competition must grow intenser.

With England the situation in 1800 was very different. It was less
strenuous. Nothing is more notable in England than to observe how, after
the Industrial Revolution began, there was practically no means by which a
poor man could get an education, save by educating himself. For instance,
in February 1815, four months before Waterloo, George Stephenson took out
a patent for the locomotive engine which was to revolutionize the world.
But George Stephenson was a common laborer in the mines, who had no state
instruction available, nor had he even any private institution at hand in
which the workmen whom he employed in practical construction could be
taught. He and his son Robert, had to organize instruction for themselves
and their employees independently. So it was even with a man like Faraday,
who began life as an errand boy, and later on who actually went abroad as
a sort of valet to Sir Humphry Davy. Davy himself was a self-made man. In
short, England, as a community, did little or nothing by education for
those who had no means, and but little to draw any one toward science. It
was at this precise moment that Germany was cast into the furnace of
modern competition with England, who had, because of a series of causes,
chiefly geographical, topographical, and mineralogical, about a century
the start of her. Against this advantage Germany had to rely exclusively
upon civil and military education. At first this competition by Germany
took a military complexion, and very rapidly wrought the complete
consolidation of Germany by the Austrian and the French wars. But this
phase presently passed, and after the French campaign of 1870 the purely
economic aspect of the situation developed more strenuously still, so much
so that intelligent observers, among whom Lord Roberts was conspicuous,
perceived quite early in the present century that the heat generated in
the conflict must, probably, soon engender war. Nor could it either
theoretically or practically have been otherwise, for the relations
between the two countries had reached a point where they generated a
friction which caused incandescence automatically. And, moreover, the
inflammable material fit for combustion was, especially in Germany,
present in quantity. From the time of Fichte and Scharnhorst downward to
the end of the century, the whole nation had learned, as a sort of gospel,
that the German education produced a most superior engine of economic
competition, whereas the slack education and frivolous amusements of
English civil and military life alike, had gradually created a society apt
to crumble. And it is only needful for any person who has the curiosity,
to glance at the light literature of the Victorian age, which deals with
the army, to see how dominant a part such an amusement as hunting played
in the life of the younger officers, especially in the fashionable
regiments, to be impressed with the soundness of much of this German
criticism.

Assuming, then, for the sake of argument, that these historical premises
are sound, I proceed to consider how they bear on our prospective
civilization.

This is eminently a scientific age, and yet the scientific mind, as it is
now produced among us, is not without tendencies calculated to cause
uneasiness to those a little conversant with history or philosophy. For
whereas no one in these days would dream of utilizing prayer, as did Moses
or Saint Hugh, as a mechanical energy, nevertheless the search for a
universal prime motor goes on unabated, and yet it accomplishes nothing to
the purpose. On the contrary, the effect is one which could neither be
expected nor desired. Instead of being an aid to social coordination, it
stimulates disintegration to a high degree as the war has shown. It has
stimulated disintegration in two ways. First, it has enormously quickened
physical movement, which has already been discussed, and secondly, it has
stimulated the rapidity with which thought is diffused. The average human
being can only absorb and assimilate safely new forms of thought when
given enough time for digestion, as if he were assimilating food. If he be
plied with new thought too rapidly he fails to digest. He has a surfeit,
serious in proportion to its enormity. That is to say, his power of
drawing correct conclusions from the premises submitted to him fails, and
we have all sorts of crude experiments in sociology attempted, which end
in that form of chaos which we call a violent revolution. The ordinary
result is infinite waste fomented by fallacious hopes; in a word,
financial disaster, supplemented usually by loss of life. The experience
is an old one, and the result is almost invariable.

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.]

Wheelwright was made of sterner stuff, and was inflexible. In fact,
however, the difference of dogma, if any existed, was trivial. The clergy
used the cry of heresy to excite odium, just as they called their
opponents Antinomians, or dangerous fanatics. To support these accusations
the synod gravely accepted every unsavory inference which ingenuity could
wring from the tenets of their adversaries; and these, together with the
fables invented by idle gossip, made up the long list of errors they
condemned. Though the scheme was unprincipled, it met with complete
success, and the Antinomians have come down to posterity branded as deadly
enemies of Christ and the commonwealth; yet nothing is more certain than
that they were not only good citizens, but substantially orthodox. On such
a point there is no one among the conservatives whose testimony has the
weight of Winthrop's, who says: "Mr. Cotton ... stated the differences in
a very narrow scantling; and Mr. Shepherd, preaching at the day of
election, brought them yet nearer, so as, except men of good
understanding, and such as knew the bottom of the tenents of those of the
other party, few could see where the difference was." [Footnote: Winthrop,
i. 221.] While Cotton himself complains bitterly of the falsehoods spread
about him and his friends: "But when some of ... the elders of neighbour
churches advertised me of the evill report ... I ... dealt with Mrs.
Hutchinson and others of them, declaring to them the erroneousnesse of
those tenents, and the injury done to myself in fathering them upon mee.
Both shee and they utterly denyed that they held such tenents, or that
they had fathered them upon mee. I returned their answer to the elders....
They answered me they had but one witnesse, ... and that one both to be
known." ... [Footnote: Cotton, _Way of New England Churches_, pp. 39, 40.]
Moreover, it is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding the advantage it
would have given the reactionists to have been able to fix subversive
opinions upon their prominent opponents, it was found impossible to prove
heresy in a single case which was brought to trial. The legislature chosen
in May was apparently unfit for the work now to be done, for the
extraordinary step of a dissolution was decided on, and a new election
held, under circumstances in which it was easy to secure the return of
suitable candidates. The session opened on November 2, and Wheelwright was
summoned to appear. He was ordered to submit, or prepare for sentence. He
replied that he was guilty of neither sedition nor contempt; that he had
preached only the truth of Christ, the application of which was for
others, not for him. "To which it was answered by the court that they had
not censured his doctrine, but left it as it was; but his application, by
which hee laid the magistrates and ministers and most of the people of God
in these churches under a covenant of works." [Footnote: _Short Story_, p.
24.] The prisoner was then sentenced to be disfranchised and banished. He
demanded an appeal to the king; it was refused; and he was given fourteen
days to leave Massachusetts. So he went forth alone in the bitter winter
weather and journeyed to the Piscataqua,--yet "it was marvellous he got
thither at that time, when they expelled him, by reason of the deep snow
in which he might have perished." [Footnote: Wheelwright, Prince Soc. ed.
_Mercurius Americanus_, p. 24.] Nor was banishment by any means the
trivial penalty it has been described. On the contrary, it was a
punishment of the utmost rigor. The exiles were forced suddenly to dispose
of their property, which, in those times, was mostly in houses and land,
and go forth among the savages with helpless women and children. Such an
ordeal might well appall even a brave man; but Wheelwright was sacrificing
his intellectual life. He was leaving books, friends, and the mental
activity, which made the world to him, to settle in the forests among
backwoodsmen; and yet even in this desolate solitude the theocracy
continued to pursue him with persevering hate.

But there were others beside Wheelwright who had sinned, and some pretext
had to be devised by which to reach them. The names of most of his friends
were upon the petition that had been drawn up after his trial. It is true
it was a proceeding with which the existing legislature was not concerned,
since it had been presented to one of its predecessors; it is also true
that probably never, before or since, have men who have protested they
have not drawn the sword rashly, but have come as humble suppliants to
offer their cheeks to the smiters, been held to be public enemies. Such
scruples, however, never hampered the theocracy. Their justice was
trammelled neither by judges, by juries, nor by laws; the petition was
declared to be a seditious libel, and the petitioners were given their
choice of disavowing their act and making humble submission, or exile.

Aspinwall was at once disfranchised and banished. [Footnote: _Mass.
Rec._ i. 207.] Coddington, Coggeshall, and nine more were given leave
to depart within three months, or abide the action of the court; others
were disfranchised; and fifty-eight of the less prominent of the party
were disarmed in Boston alone. [Footnote: _Idem_, i. 223.]

Thus were the early liberals crushed in Massachusetts; the bold were
exiled, the timid were terrified; as a political organization they moved
no more till the theocracy was tottering to its fall; and for forty years
the power of the clergy was absolute in the land.

The fate of Anne Hutchinson makes a fit ending to this sad tale of
oppression and of wrong. In November, 1637, when her friends were crushed,
and the triumphant priests felt that their victim's doom was sure, she was
brought to trial before that ghastliest den of human iniquity, an
ecclesiastical criminal court. The ministers were her accusers, who came
burning with hate to testify to the words she had spoken to them at their
own request, in the belief that the confidence she reposed was to be held
sacred. She had no jury to whose manhood she could appeal, and John
Winthrop, to his lasting shame, was to prosecute her from the judgment
seat. She was soon to become a mother, and her health was feeble, but she
was made to stand till she was exhausted; and yet, abandoned and forlorn,
before those merciless judges, through two long, weary days of hunger and
of cold, the intrepid woman defended her cause with a skill and courage
which even now, after two hundred and fifty years, kindles the heart with
admiration. The case for the government was opened by John Winthrop, the
presiding justice, the attorney-general, the foreman of the jury, and the
chief magistrate of Massachusetts Bay. He upbraided the prisoner with her
many evil courses, with having spoken things prejudicial to the honor of
the ministers, with holding an assembly in her house, and with divulging
the opinions held by those who had been censured by that court; closing in
these words, which sound strangely in the mouth of a New England judge:--

       *       *       *       *       *

We have thought good to send for you ... that if you be in an erroneous
way we may reduce you that so you may become a profitable member here
among us, otherwise if you be obstinate ... that then the court may take
such course that you may trouble us no further, therefore I would entreat
you ... whether you do not justify Mr. Wheelwright's sermon and the
petition.

_Mrs. H._ I am called here to answer before you, but I hear no things
laid to my charge.

_Gov._ I have told you some already, and more I can tell you.

_Mrs. H._ Name one, sir.

_Gov._ Have I not named some already?

_Mrs. H._ What have I said or done?...

_Gov._ You have joined with them in the faction.

_Mrs. H._ In what faction have I joined with them?

_Gov._ In presenting the petition....

_Mrs. H._ But I had not my hand to the petition.

_Gov._ You have counselled them.

_Mrs. H._ Wherein?

_Gov._ Why, in entertaining them.

_Mrs. H._ What breach of law is that, sir?

_Gov._ Why, dishonoring of parents....

_Mrs. H._ I may put honor upon them as the children of God and as they do
honor the Lord.

_Gov._ We do not mean to discourse with those of your sex but only this;
you do adhere unto them, and do endeavor to set forward this faction, and
so you do dishonor us.

_Mrs. H._ I do acknowledge no such thing, neither do I think that I ever
put any dishonor upon you.

       *       *       *       *       *

And, on the whole, the chief justice broke down so hopelessly in his
examination, that the deputy governor, or his senior associate upon the
bench, thought it necessary to interfere.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Dep. Gov._ I would go a little higher with Mrs. Hutchinson. Now ... if
she in particular hath disparaged all our ministers in the land that they
have preached a covenant of works, and only Mr. Cotton a covenant of
grace, why this is not to be suffered...

_Mrs. H._ I pray, sir, prove it, that I said they preached nothing but a
covenant of works....

_Dep. Gov._ If they do not preach a covenant of grace, clearly, then, they
preach a covenant of works.

_Mrs. H._ No, sir, one may preach a covenant of grace more clearly than
another, so I said.

       *       *       *       *       *

Dudley was faring worse than Winthrop, and the divines, who had been
bursting with impatience, could hold no longer. The Rev. Hugh Peters broke
in: "That which concerns us to speak unto, as yet we are sparing in,
unless the court command us to speak, then we shall answer to Mrs.
Hutchinson, notwithstanding our brethren are very unwilling to answer."
And without further urging, that meek servant of Christ went on to tell
how he and others had heard that the prisoner said they taught a covenant
of works, how they had sent for her, and though she was "very tender" at
first, yet upon being begged to speak plainly, she had explained that
there "was a broad difference between our Brother Mr. Cotton and
ourselves. I desired to know the difference. She answered 'that he
preaches the covenant of grace and you the covenant of works, and that you
are not able ministers of the New Testament, and know no more than the
apostles did before the resurrection.'"...

       *       *       *       *       *

_Mrs. H._ If our pastor would show his writings you should see what I
said, and that many things are not so as is reported.

_Mr. Wilson._ Sister Hutchinson, for the writings you speak of I have them
not....

       *       *       *       *       *

Five more divines followed, who, though they were "loth to speak in that
assembly concerning that gentlewoman," yet to ease their consciences in
"the relation wherein" they stood "to the Commonwealth and... unto God,"
felt constrained to state that the prisoner had said they were not able
ministers of the New Testament, and that the whole of the evidence of Hugh
Peters was true, and in so doing they came to an issue of veracity with
Cotton.

An adjournment soon followed till next day, and the presiding justice
seems to have considered his case against his prisoner as closed.

In the morning Mrs. Hutchinson opened her defence by calling three
witnesses, Leverett, Coggeshall, and John Cotton.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Gov._ Mr. Coggeshall was not present.

_Mr. C._ Yes, but I was, only I desired to be silent till I should be
called.

_Gov._ Will you ... say that she did not say so?

_Mr. C._ Yes, I dare say that she did not say all that which they lay
against her.

_Mr. Peters._ How dare you look into the court to say such a word?

_Mr. C._ Mr. Peters takes upon him to forbid me. I shall be silent....

_Gov._ Well, Mr. Leverett, what were the words? I pray speak.

_Mr. L._ To my best remembrance ... Mr. Peters did with much vehemency and
entreaty urge her to tell what difference there was between Mr. Cotton and
them, and upon his urging of her she said: "The fear of man is a snare,
but they that trust upon the Lord shall be safe." And ... that they did
not preach a covenant of grace so clearly as Mr. Cotton did, and she gave
this reason of it, because that as the apostles were for a time without
the Spirit so until they had received the witness of the Spirit they could
not preach a covenant of grace so clearly.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Rev. John Cotton was then called. He was much embarrassed in giving
his evidence, but, if he is to be believed, his brethren, in their anxiety
to make out a case, had colored material facts. He closed his account of
the interview in these words: "I must say that I did not find her saying
they were under a covenant of works, nor that she said they did preach a
covenant of works."

       *       *       *       *       *

_Gov._ You say you do not remember, but can you say she did not speak so?

_Mr. C._ I do remember that she looked at them as the apostles before the
ascension....

_Dep. Gov._ They affirm that Mrs. Hutchinson did say they were not able
ministers of the New Testament.

_Mr. C._ I do not remember it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Hutchinson had shattered the case of the government in a style worthy
of a leader of the bar, but she now ventured on a step for which she has
been generally condemned. She herself approached the subject of her
revelations. To criticise the introduction of evidence is always simpler
than to conduct a cause, but an analysis of her position tends to show not
only that her course was the result of mature reflection, but that her
judgment was in this instance correct. She probably assumed that when the
more easily proved charges had broken down she would be attacked here; and
in this assumption she was undoubtedly right. The alternative presented to
her, therefore, was to go on herself, or wait for Winthrop to move. If she
waited she knew she should give the government the advantage of choosing
the ground, and she would thus be subjected to the danger of having fatal
charges proved against her by hearsay or distorted evidence. If she took
the bolder course, she could explain her revelations as monitions coming
to her through texts in Scripture, and here she was certain of Cotton's
support. Before that tribunal she could hardly have hoped for an
acquittal; but if anything could have saved her it would have been the
sanction given to her doctrines by the approval of John Cotton. At all
events, she saw the danger, for she closed her little speech in these
touching words: "Now if you do condemn me for speaking what in my
conscience I know to be truth, I must commit myself unto the Lord."

_Mr. Nowell._ How do you know that that was the Spirit?

_Mrs. H._ How did Abraham know that it was God?...

_Dep. Gov._ By an immediate voice.

_Mrs. H._ So to me by an immediate revelation.

       *       *       *       *       *

Then she proceeded to state how, through various texts which she cited,
the Lord showed her what He would do; and she particularly dwelt on one
from Daniel. So far all was well; she had planted herself on ground upon
which orthodox opinion was at least divided; but she now committed the one
grave error of her long and able defence. As she went on her excitement
gained upon her, and she ended by something like a defiance and
denunciation: "You have power over my body, but the Lord Jesus hath power
over my body and soul; and assure yourselves thus much, you do as much as
in you lies to put the Lord Jesus Christ from you, and if you go on in
this course you begin, you will bring a curse upon you and your posterity,
and the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

       *       *       *       *       *

_Gov._ Daniel was delivered by miracle. Do you think to be delivered so
too?

_Mrs. H._ I do here speak it before the court. I look that the Lord should
deliver me by his providence....

_Dep. Gov._ I desire Mr. Cotton to tell us whether you do approve of Mrs.
Hutchinson's revelations as she hath laid them down.

_Mr. C._ I know not whether I do understand her, but this I say, if she
doth expect a deliverance in a way of providence, then I cannot deny it.

_Gov._ ... I see a marvellous providence of God to bring things to this
pass.... God by a providence hath answered our desires, and made her to
lay open herself and the ground of all these disturbances to be by
revelations. . . .

_Court._ We all consent with you.

_Gov._ Ey, it is the most desperate enthusiasm in the world....

_Mr. Endicott._ I speak in reference to Mr. Cotton.... Whether do you
witness for her or against her.

_Mr. C._ This is that I said, sir, and my answer is plain, that if she
doth look for deliverance from the hand of God by his providence, and the
revelation be  ... according to a word [of Scripture] that I cannot deny.

_Mr. Endicott._ You give me satisfaction.

_Dep. Gov._ No, no, he gives me none at all....

_Mr. C._ I pray, sir, give me leave to express myself. In that sense that
she speaks I dare not bear witness against it.

_Mr. Nowell._ I think it is a devilish delusion.

_Gov._ Of all the revelations that ever I read of I never read the like
ground laid as is for this. The enthusiasts and Anabaptists had never the
like....

_Mr. Peters._ I can say the same ... and I think that is very disputable
which our brother Cotton hath spoken....

_Gov._ I am persuaded that the revelation she brings forth is delusion.

All the court but some two or three ministers cry out, We all believe it,
we all believe it....

       *       *       *       *       *

And then Coddington stood up before that angry meeting like the brave man
he was, and said, "I beseech you do not speak so to force things along,
for I do not for my own part see any equity in the court in all your
proceedings. Here is no law of God that she hath broken, nor any law of
the country that she hath broke, and therefore deserves no censure; and if
she say that the elders preach as the apostles did, why they preached a
covenant of grace and what wrong is that to them, ... therefore I pray
consider, what you do, for here is no law of God or man broken."

       *       *       *       *       *

_Mr. Peters._ I profess I thought Mr. Cotton would never have took her
part.

_Gov._ The court hath already declared themselves satisfied ... concerning
the troublesomeness of her spirit and the danger of her course amongst us
which is not to be suffered. Therefore if it be the mind of the court that
Mrs. Hutchinson ... shall be banished out of our liberties and imprisoned
till she be sent away let them hold up their hands.

All but three consented.

Those contrary minded hold up yours. Mr. Coddington and Colburn only.

_Gov._ Mrs. Hutchinson, the sentence of the court you hear is that you are
banished from out of our jurisdiction as being a woman not fit for our
society, and are to be imprisoned till the court shall send you away.

_Mrs. H._ I desire to know wherefore I am banished.

_Gov._ Say no more, the court knows wherefore and is satisfied.
[Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ vol. ii. App. 2.]

       *       *       *       *       *

With refined malice she was committed to the custody of Joseph Welde of
Roxbury, the brother of the Rev. Thomas Welde who thought her a Jezebel.
Here "divers of the elders resorted to her," and under this daily torment
rapid progress was made. Probably during that terrible interval her reason
was tottering, for her talk came to resemble ravings. [Footnote: _Brief
Apologie_, p. 59.] When this point was reached the divines saw their
object attained, and that "with sad hearts" they could give her up to
Satan. [Footnote: _Brief Apologie_, p. 59.] Accordingly they "wrote to the
church at Boston, offering to make proof of the same," whereupon she was
summoned and the lecture appointed to begin at ten o'clock. [Footnote:
Winthrop, i. 254.]

"When she was come one of the ruling elders called her forth before the
assembly," and read to her the twenty-nine errors of which she was
accused, all of which she admitted she had maintained. "Then she asked by
what rule such an elder would come to her pretending to desire light and
indeede to entrappe her." He answered that he came not to "entrap her but
in compassion to her soule...."

"Then presently she grew into passion ... professing withall that she held
none of these things ... before her imprisonment." [Footnote: _Brief
Apol._ pp. 59-61.]

The court sat till eight at night, when "Mr. Cotton pronounced the
sentence of admonition ... with much zeal and detestation of her errors
and pride of spirit." [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 256.] An adjournment was
then agreed on for a week and she was ordered to return to Roxbury; but
this was more than she could bear, and her distress was such that the
congregation seem to have felt some touch of compassion, for she was
committed to the charge of Cotton till the next lecture day, when the
trial was to be resumed. [Footnote: _Brief Apol._ p. 62.] At his house
her mind recovered its tone and when she again appeared she not only
retracted the wild opinions she had broached while at Joseph Welde's, but
admitted "that what she had spoken against the magistrates at the court
(by way of revelation) was rash and ungrounded." [Footnote: Winthrop, i.
258.]

But nothing could avail her. She was in the hands of men determined to
make her expiation of her crimes a by-word of terror; her fate was sealed.
The doctrines she now professed were less objectionable, so she was
examined as to former errors, among others "that she had denied inherent
righteousness;" she "affirmed that it was never her judgment; and though
it was proved by many testimonies ... yet she impudently persisted in her
affirmation to the astonishment of all the assembly. So that ... the
church with one consent cast her out.... After she was excommunicated her
spirit, which seemed before to be somewhat dejected, revived again and she
gloried in her sufferings." [Footnote: Winthrop, i. 258.] And all this
time she had been alone; her friends were far away.

That no circumstances of horror might be lost, she and one of her most
devoted followers, Mary Dyer, were nearing their confinements during this
time of misery. Both cases ended in misfortunes over whose sickening
details Thomas Welde and his reverend brethren gloated with a savage joy,
declaring that "God himselfe was pleased to step in with his casting vote
... as clearly as if he had pointed with his finger." [Footnote: _Short
Story_, Preface, Section 5.] Let posterity draw a veil over the shocking
scene.

Two or three days after her condemnation "the governor sent [her] a
warrant ... to depart ... she went by water to her farm at the Mount ...
and so to the island in the Narragansett Bay which her husband and the
rest of that sect had purchased of the Indians." [Footnote: Winthrop, i.
259.]

This pure and noble but most unhappy woman had sinned against the clergy,
past forgiveness here or hereafter. They gibbeted her as Jezebel, and her
name became a reproach in Massachusetts through two hundred years. But her
crimes and the awful ending of her life are best read in the Christian
words of the Rev. Thomas Welde, whose gentle spirit so adorned his holy
office.

"For the servants of God who came over into New England ... seeing their
ministery was a most precious sweete savour to all the saints before she
came hither, it is easie to discerne from what sinke that ill vapour hath
risen which hath made so many of her seduced party to loath now the smell
of those flowers which they were wont to find sweetnesse in. [Footnote:
_Short Story_, p. 40.] ... The Indians set upon them, and slew her and all
the family. [Footnote: Mrs. Hutchinson and her family were killed in a
general massacre of the Dutch and English by the Indians on Long Island.
Winthrop, ii. 136.] ... Some write that the Indians did burne her to death
with fire, her house and all the rest named that belonged to her; but I am
not able to affirme by what kind of death they slew her, but slaine it
seemes she is, according to all reports. I never heard that the Indians in
those parts did ever before this, commit the like outrage ...; and
therefore God's hand is the more apparently seene herein, to pick out this
wofull woman, to make her and those belonging to her, an unheard of heavie
example of their cruelty above al others." [Footnote: _Short Story_,
Preface.]




CHAPTER III.

THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM.


With the ruin of the Antinomians, opposition to the clergy ceased within
the church itself, but many causes combined to prevent the bulk of the
people from participating in the communion. Of those who were excluded,
perhaps even the majority might have found it impossible to have secured
their pastor's approbation, but numbers who would have been gladly
received were restrained by conscientious scruples; and more shrank from
undergoing the ordeal to which they would have been obliged to submit. It
was no light matter for a pious but a sincerely honest man to profess his
conversion, and how God had been pleased to work "in the inward parts of
his soul," when he was not absolutely certain that he had indeed been
visited by the Spirit. And it is no exaggeration to say that to sensitive
natures the initiation was appalling. The applicant had first to convince
the minister of his worthiness, then his name was openly propounded, and
those who knew of any objection to his character, either moral or
religious, were asked to give notice to the presbytery of elders. If the
candidate succeeded in passing this private examination as to his fitness
the following scene took place in church:--

"The party appearing in the midst of the assembly ... the ruling elder
speaketh in this manner: Brethren of this congregation, this man or woman
... hath beene heretofore propounded to you, desiring to enter into church
fellowship with us, and we have not since that heard anything from any of
you to the contrary of the parties admittance but that we may goe on to
receive him: therefore now, if any of you know anything against him, why
he may not be admitted, you may yet speak.... Whereupon, sometimes men do
speak to the contrary ... and so stay the party for that time also till
this new offence be heard before the elders, so that sometimes there is a
space of divers moneths between a parties first propounding and receiving,
and some are so bashfull as that they choose rather to goe without the
communion than undergoe such publique confessions and tryals, but that is
held their fault." [Footnote: Lechford, _Plain Dealing_, pp. 6, 7.]

Those who were thus disfranchised, Lechford, who knew what he was talking
about, goes on to say, soon began to complain that they were "ruled like
slaves;" and there can be no doubt that they had to submit to very
substantial grievances. The administration of justice especially seems to
have been defective. "Now the most of the persons at New England are not
admitted of their church, and therefore are not freemen, and when they
come to be tryed there, be it for life or limb, name or estate, or
whatsoever, they must bee tryed and judged too by those of the church, who
are in a sort their adversaries: how equall that hath been, or may be,
some by experience doe know, others may judge." [Footnote: _Plain
Dealing_, p. 23.]

The government was in fact in the hands of a small oligarchy of saints,
[Footnote: "Three parts of the people of the country remaine out of the
church." _Plain Dealing_, p. 73. A. D. 1642.] who were, in their turn,
ruled by their priests, and as the repression of thought inevitable under
such a system had roused the Antinomians, who were voters, to demand a
larger intellectual freedom, so the denial of ordinary political rights
to the majority led to discontent.

Since under the theocracy there was no department of human affairs in
which the clergy did not meddle, they undertook as a matter of course to
interfere with the militia, and the following curious letter written to
the magistrates by the ministers of Rowley shows how far they carried
their supervision even so late as 1689.

       *       *       *       *       *

ROWLEY, _July_ 24th, 1689.

_May it please your honors,_

The occasion of these lines is to inform you that whereas our military
company have nominated Abel Platts, for ensign, we conceive that it is our
duty to declare that we cannot approve of their choice in that he is
corrupt in his judgment with reference to the Lord's Supper, declaring
against Christ's words of justification, and hereupon hath withdrawn
himself from communion with the church in that holy ordinance some years,
besides some other things wherein he hath shown no little vanity in his
conversation and hath demeaned himself unbecomingly toward the word and
toward the dispensers of it....

SAMUEL PHILLIPS.
EDWARD PAISON. [Footnote: _History of Newbury_, p. 80.]

       *       *       *       *       *

A somewhat similar difficulty, which happened in Hingham in 1645, produced
very serious consequences. A new captain had been chosen for their
company; but a dispute having arisen, the magistrates, on the question
being submitted to them, set the election aside and directed the old
officers to keep their places until the General Court should meet.
Notwithstanding this order the commotion continued to increase, and the
pastor, Mr. Peter Hubbert, "was very forward to have excommunicated the
lieutenant," who was the candidate the magistrates favored. [Footnote:
Winthrop, ii. 222, 223.] Winthrop happened to be deputy governor that
year, and the aggrieved officer applied to him for protection; whereupon,
as the defendants seemed inclined to be recalcitrant, several were
committed in open court, among whom were three of Mr. Hubbert's brothers.

Forthwith the clergyman in great wrath headed a petition to which he
obtained a large number of signatures, in which he prayed the General
Court to take cognizance of the cause, since it concerned the public
liberty and the liberty of the church.

At its next session, the legislature proceeded to examine the whole case,
and Winthrop was brought to trial for exceeding his jurisdiction as a
magistrate. A contest ensued between the deputies and assistants, which
was finally decided by the influence of the elders. The result was that
Winthrop was acquitted and Mr. Hubbert and the chief petitioners were
fined. [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 227.]

In March the constable went to Hingham to collect the money, [Footnote:
1645-46, 18 March.] but he found the minister indisposed to submit in
silence. About thirty people had collected, and before them all Mr.
Hubbert demanded the warrant; when it was produced he declared it
worthless because not in the king's name, and then went on to add that the
government "was not more then a corporation in England, and ... had not
power to put men to death ... that for himself he had neither horn nor
hoofe of his own, nor anything wherewith to buy his children cloaths ...
if he must pay the fine he would pay it in books, but that he knew not for
what they were fined, unlesse it were for petitioning: and if they were so
waspish they might not be petitioned, then he could not tell what to say."
[Footnote: _New Eng. Jonas_, Marvin's ed. p. 5.]

Unluckily for Mr. Hubbert he had taken the popular side in this dispute
and had thus been sundered from his brethren, who sustained Winthrop, and
in the end carried him through in triumph; and not only this, but he was
suspected of Presbyterian tendencies, and a committee of the elders who
had visited Hingham to reconcile some differences in the congregation had
found him in grave fault. The government was not sorry, therefore, to make
him a public example, as appeared not only by these proceedings, but by
the way he was treated in the General Court the next autumn. He was
accordingly indicted for sedition, tried and convicted in June, fined
twenty pounds, and bound over to good behavior in forty pounds more.
[Footnote: _New Eng. Jonas_, p. 6., 2 June, 1646.] Such a disturbance
as this seems to have been all that was needed to bring the latent
discontent to a focus.

William Vassal had been an original patentee and was a member of the first
Board of Assistants, who were appointed by the king. Being, however, a man
of liberal views he had not found Massachusetts congenial; he had returned
to England after a stay of only a month, and when he came again to America
in 1635, he had settled at Scituate, the town adjoining Hingham, but in
the Plymouth jurisdiction. Having both wealth and social position he
possessed great influence, and he now determined to lead an agitation for
equal rights and liberty of conscience in both colonies at once, by
petitioning the legislatures, and in case of failure there, presenting
similar petitions to Parliament.

Bradford was this year [Footnote: 1645.] governor of Plymouth, and Edward
Winslow was an assistant. Winslow himself had been governor repeatedly,
was a thorough-going churchman, and deep in all the councils of the
conservative party. There was, however, no religious qualification for the
suffrage in the old colony, and the complexion of its politics was
therefore far more liberal than in Massachusetts; so Vassal was able to
command a strong support when he brought forward his proposition. Winslow,
writing to his friend Winthrop at Boston, gives an amusing account of his
own and Bradford's consternation, and the expedients to which they were
forced to resort in the legislature to stave off a vote upon the petition,
when Vassal made his motion in October, 1645.

"After this, the first excepter [Vassal] having been observed to tender
the view of a scroule from man to man, it came at length to be tendered to
myself, and withall, said he, it may be you will not like this. Having
read it, I told him I utterly abhorred it as such as would make us odious
to all Christian commonweales: But at length he told the governor
[Bradford] he had a written proposition to be propounded to the court,
which he desired the court to take into consideration, and according to
order, if thought meet, to be allowed: To this the deputies were most made
beforehand, and the other three assistants, who applauded it as their
Diana; and the sum of it was, to allow and maintaine full and free
tollerance of religion to all men that would preserve the civill peace and
submit unto government; and there was no limitation or exception against
Turke, Jew, Papist, Arian, Socinian, Nicholaytan, Familist, or any other,
&c. But our governor and divers of us having expressed the sad
consequences would follow, especially myselfe and Mr. Prence, yet
notwithstanding it was required, according to order, to be voted: But the
governor would not suffer it to come to vote, as being that indeed would
eate out the power of Godlines, &c.... You would have admired to have seen
how sweet this carrion relished to the pallate of most of the deputies!
What will be the issue of these things, our all ordering God onely
knows.... But if he have such a judgment for this place, I trust we shall
finde (I speake for many of us that groane under these things) a resting
place among you for the soales of our feet." [Footnote: _Hutch.
Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. i. 174.]

As just then nothing more could be done in Plymouth, proceedings were
transferred to Massachusetts. Samuel Maverick is a bright patch of color
on the sad Puritan background. He had a dwelling at Winnisime, that "in
the yeare 1625 I fortified with a pillizado and fflankers and gunnes both
belowe and above in them which awed the Indians who at that time had a
mind to cutt off the English." [Footnote: Mass. _Hist. Soc. Proceedings_,
Oct. 1884, p. 236.] When Winthrop landed, he found him keeping open house,
so kindly and freehanded that even the grim Johnson relaxes when he speaks
of him: "a man of very loving and curteous behaviour, very ready to
entertaine strangers, yet an enemy to the reformation in hand, being
strong for the lordly prelatical power." [Footnote: _Wonder-Working
Providence_, Poole's ed. p. 37.]

This genial English churchman entertained every one at his home on
Noddle's Island, which is now East Boston: Vane and Lord Ley, and La Tour
when he came to Boston ruined, and even Owen when he ran off with another
man's wife, and so brought a fine of £100 on his host. Josselyn says with
much feeling: "I went a shore upon Noddles Island to Mr. Samuel Maverick,
... the only hospitable man in the whole countrey." He was charitable
also, and Winthrop relates how, when the Indians were dying of the
smallpox, he, "his wife and servants, went daily to them, ministered to
their necessities, and buried their dead, and took home many of their
children." He was generous, too, with his wealth; and when the town had to
rebuild the fort on Castle Island much of the money came from him.

But, as Endicott told the Browns, when he shipped them to England, because
their practice in adhering to their Episcopal orders tended to "mutiny,"
"New England was no place for such as they." One by one they had gone,--
the Browns first, and afterward William Blackstone, who had found it best
to leave Boston because he could not join the church; and now the pressure
on Maverick began to make him restive. Though he had been admitted a
freeman in the early days, he was excluded from all offices of importance;
he was taxed to support a church of which he disapproved, yet was forced
to attend, though it would not baptize his children; and he was so
suspected that, in March, 1635, he had been ordered to remove to Boston,
and was forbidden to lodge strangers for more than one night without leave
from a magistrate. Under such circumstances he could not but sympathize
with Vassal in his effort to win for all men equal rights before the law.
Next after him in consequence was Dr. Robert Childe, who had taken a
degree at Padua, and who, though not a freeman, had considerable interests
in the country,--a man of property and standing. There were five more
signers of the petition: Thomas Burton, John Smith, David Yale, Thomas
Fowle, and John Dand, but they do not require particular notice. They
prayed that "civil liberty and freedome be forthwith granted to all truly
English, equall to the rest of their countrymen, as in all plantations is
accustomed to be done, and as all free-borne enjoy in our native
country.... Further that none of the English nation ... be banished
unlesse they break the known lawes of England.... We therefore humbly
intreat you, in whose hands it is to help ... for the glory of God ... to
give liberty to the members of the churches of England not scandalous in
their lives ... to be taken into your congregations, and to enjoy with you
all those liberties and ordinances Christ hath purchased for them, and
into whose name they are baptized... or otherwise to grant liberty to
settle themselves here in a church way according to the best reformations
of England and Scotland. If not, we and they shall be necessitated to
apply our humble desires to the Honorable Houses of Parliament."
[Footnote: _New Eng. Jonas_, Marvin's ed. pp. 13-15.]

This petition was presented to the court on May 19, 1646; but the session
was near its close, and it was thought best to take no immediate steps.
The elders, however, became satisfied that the moment had come for a
thorough organization of the church, and they therefore caused the
legislature to issue a general invitation to all the congregations to send
representatives to a synod to be held at Cambridge. But notwithstanding
the inaction of the authorities, the clergy were perfectly aware of the
danger, and they passed the summer in creating the necessary indignation
among the voters: they bitterly denounced from their pulpits "the sons of
Belial, Judasses, sons of Corah," "with sundry appellations of that nature
... which seemed not to arise from a gospel spirit." Sometimes they
devoted "a whole sermon, and that not very short," to describing the
impending ruin and exhorting the magistrates "to lay hold upon" the
offenders. [Footnote: _New Eng. Jonas_, Marvin's ed. p. 19.] Winthrop
had been chosen governor in May, and, when the legislature met in October,
he was made chairman of a committee to draft an answer to Childe. This
document may be found in Hutchinson's Collection. As a state paper devoted
to the discussion of questions of constitutional law it has little merit,
but it may have been effective as a party manifesto. A short adjournment
followed till November, when, on reassembling, the elders were asked for
their advice upon this absorbing topic.

"Mr. Hubbard of Hingham came with the rest, but the court being informed
that he had an hand in a petition, which Mr. Vassall carried into England
against the country in general, the governour propounded, that if any
elder present had any such hand, &c., he would withdraw himself." Mr.
Hubbert sitting still a good space, one of the deputies stated that he was
suspected, whereupon he rose and said he knew nothing of such a petition.

Then Winthrop replied that he "must needs deliver his mind about him," and
though he had no proof about the petition, "yet in regard he had so much
opposed authority and offered such contempt to it, ... he thought he would
(in discretion) withdraw himself, &c., whereupon he went out." [Footnote:
Winthrop, ii. 278.]

The ministers who remained then proceeded to define the relations of
Massachusetts toward England, and the position they assumed was very
simple.

"I. We depend upon the state of England for protection and immunities of
Englishmen.... II. We conceive ... we have granted by patent such full and
ample power ... of making all laws and rules of our obedience, and of a
full and final determination of all cases in the administration of
justice, that no appeals or other ways of interrupting our proceedings do
lie against us." [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 282.]

In other words, they were to enjoy the privileges and safeguards of
British subjects without yielding obedience to British law.

Under popular governments the remedy for discontent is free discussion;
under despotisms it is repression. In Massachusetts energetic steps were
promptly taken to punish the ring-leaders in what the court now declared
to be a conspiracy. The petitioners were summoned, and on being questioned
refused to answer until some charge was made. A hot altercation followed,
which ended in the defendants tendering an appeal, which was refused; and
they were committed for trial. [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 285.] A species of
indictment was then prepared in which they were charged with publishing
seditious libels against the Church of Christ and the civil government.
The gravamen of the offence was the attempt to persuade the people "that
the liberties and privileges in our charter belong to all freeborn
Englishmen inhabitants here, whereas they are granted only to such as the
governour and company shall think fit to receive into that fellowship."
[Footnote: _Idem_.] The appeal was held criminal because a denial of
the jurisdiction of the government. The trial resembled Wheelwright's.
Like him the defendants refused to make submission, but persisted
"obstinately and proudly in their evil practice;" that is to say, they
maintained the right of petition and the legality of their course. They
were therefore fined: Childe £50; Smith £40; Maverick, because he had not
yet appealed, £10; and the others £30 each; three magistrates dissented.

Childe at once began hasty preparations to sail. To prevent him Winthrop
called the assistants together, without, however, giving the dissenting
magistrates notice, and arranged to have him arrested and searched.

One striking characteristic of the theocracy was its love for inflicting
mental suffering upon its victims. The same malicious vindictiveness which
sent Morton to sea in sight of his blazing home, and which imprisoned Anne
Hutchinson in the house of her bitterest enemy, now suggested a scheme for
making Childe endure the pangs of disappointment, by allowing him to
embark, and then seizing him as the ship was setting sail. And though the
plan miscarried, and the arrest had to be made the night before, yet even
as it was the prisoner took his confinement very "grievously, but he could
not help it." [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 294.]

Nothing criminating was found in his possession, but in Dand's study,
which was ransacked, copies of two petitions were discovered, with a
number of queries relating to certain legal aspects of the charter, and
intended to be submitted to the Commissioners for the Plantations at
London.

These petitions were substantially those already presented, except that,
by way of preamble, the story of the trial was told; and how the ministers
"did revile them, &c., as far as the wit or malice of man could, and that
they meddled in civil affaires beyond their calling, and were masters
rather than ministers, and ofttimes judges, and that they had stirred up
the magistrates against them, and that a day of humiliation was appointed,
wherein they were to pray against them." [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 293.]

Such words had never been heard in Massachusetts. The saints were aghast.
Winthrop speaks of the offence as "being in nature capital," and Johnson
thought the Lord's gracious goodness alone quelled this malice against his
people.

Of course no mercy was shown. It is true that the writings were lawful
petitions by English subjects to Parliament; that, moreover, they had
never been published, but were found in a private room by means of a
despotic search. Several of the signers were imprisoned for six months and
then were punished in May:--

  Doctor Childe, (imprisonment till paid,)       £200
  John Smith,         "          "    "           100
  John Dand,          "          "    "           200
  Tho. Burton,        "          "    "           100
  Samuel Maverick, for his offence in being party
                   to ye conspiracy, (imprisonment
                   till paid,)                    100
 Samuel Maverick, for his offence in breaking his
                  oath and in appealing against ye
                  intent of his oath of a freeman, 50
[Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ iii, 113. May 26, 1647. £200 was the equivalent of
about $5,000.]

The conspirators of the poorer class were treated with scant ceremony. A
carpenter named Joy was in Dand's study when the officers entered. He
asked if the warrant was in the king's name. "He was laid hold on, and
kept in irons about four or five days, and then he humbled himself...for
meddling in matters belonging not to him, and blessed God for these irons
upon his legs, hoping they should do him good while he lived." [Footnote:
Winthrop, ii. 294.]

But though the government could oppress the men, they could not make their
principles unpopular, and the next December after Vassal and his friends
had left the colony, the orthodox Samuel Symonds of Ipswich wrote
mournfully to Winthrop: "I am informed that coppies of the petition are
spreading here, and divers (specially young men and women) are taken with
it, and are apt to wonder why such men should be troubled that speake as
they doe: not being able suddenly to discerne the poyson in the sweet
wine, nor the fire wrapped up in the straw." [Footnote: Felt's _Eccl.
Hist._ i. 593.] The petitioners, however, never found redress. Edward
Winslow had been sent to London as agent, and in 1648 he was able to write
that their "hopes and endeavours ... had been blasted by the special
providence of the Lord who still wrought for us." And Winthrop piously
adds: "As for those who went over to procure us trouble, God met with them
all. Mr. Vassall, finding no entertainment for his petitions, went to
Barbadoes," [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 321.] ... "God had brought" Thomas
Fowle "very low, both in his estate and in his reputation, since he joined
in the first petition." And "God had so blasted" Childe's "estate as he
was quite broken." [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 322.]

Maverick remained some years in Boston, being probably unable to abandon
his property; during this interval he made several efforts to have his
fine remitted, and he did finally secure an abatement of one half. He then
went to England and long afterward came back as a royal commissioner to
try his fortune once again in a contest with the theocracy.

Dr. Palfrey has described this movement as a plot to introduce a direct
government by England by inducing Parliament to establish Presbyterianism.
By other than theological reasoning this inference cannot be deduced from
the evidence. All that is certainly known about the leaders is that they
were not of any one denomination. Maverick was an Episcopalian; Vassal was
probably an Independent like Cromwell or Milton; and though the elders
accused Childe of being a Jesuit, there is some ground to suppose that he
inclined toward Geneva. So far as the testimony goes, everything tends to
prove that the petitioners were perfectly sincere in their effort to gain
some small measure of civil and religious liberty for themselves and for
the disfranchised majority.

Viewed from the standpoint of history and not of prejudice, the events of
these early years present themselves in a striking and unmistakable
sequence.

They are the phenomena that regularly attend a certain stage of human
development,--the absorption of power by an aristocracy. The clergy's rule
was rigid, and met with resistance, which was crushed with an iron hand.
Was it defection from their own ranks, the deserters met the fate of
Wheelwright, of Williams, of Cotton, or of Hubbert; were politicians
contumacious, they were defeated or exiled, like Vane, or Aspinwall, or
Coddington; were citizens discontented, they were coerced like Maverick
and Childe. The process had been uninterrupted alike in church and state.
The congregations, which in theory should have included all the
inhabitants of the towns, had shrunk until they contained only a third or
a quarter of the people; while the churches themselves, which were
supposed to be independent of external interference and to regulate their
affairs by the will of the majority, had become little more than the
chattels of the priests, and subject to the control of the magistrates who
were their representatives. This system has generally prevailed; in like
manner the Inquisition made use of the secular arm. The condition of
ecclesiastical affairs is thus described by the highest living authority
on Congregationalism:--

"Our fathers laid it down--and with perfect truth--that the will of
Christ, and not the will of the major or minor part of a church, ought to
govern that church. But somebody must interpret that will. And they
quietly assumed that Christ would reveal his will to the elders, but would
not reveal it to the church-members; so that when there arose a difference
of opinion as to what the Master's will might be touching any particular
matter, the judgment of the elders, rather than the judgment even of a
majority of the membership, must be taken as conclusive. To all intents
and purposes, then, this was precisely the aristocracy which they affirmed
that it was not. For the elders were to order business in the assurance
that every truly humble and sincere member would consent thereto. If any
did not consent, and after patient debate remained of another judgment, he
was 'partial' and 'factious,' and continuing 'obstinate,' he was
'admonished' and his vote 'nullified;' so that the elders could have their
way in the end by merely adding the insult of the apparent but illusive
offer of cooperation to the injury of their absolute control. As Samuel
Stone of Hartford no more tersely than truly put it, this kind of
Congregationalism was simply a 'speaking Aristocracy in the face of a
silent Democracy.'" [Footnote: _Early New England Congregationalism, as
seen in its Literature_, p. 429. Dr. Dexter.]

It is true that Vassal's petition was the event which made the ministers
decide to call a synod [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 264.] by means of an
invitation of the General Court; but it is also certain that under no
circumstances would the meeting of some such council have been long
delayed. For sixteen years the well-known process had been going on, of
the creation of institutions by custom, having the force of law; the stage
of development had now been reached when it was necessary that those
usages should take the shape of formal enactments. The Cambridge platform
therefore marks the completion of an organization, and as such is the
central point in the history of the Puritan Commonwealth. The work was
done in August, 1648: the Westminster Confession was promulgated as the
creed; the powers of the clergy were minutely defined, and the duty of the
laity stated to be "obeying their elders and submitting themselves unto
them in the Lord." [Footnote: _Cambridge Platform,_ ch. x. section 7.] The
magistrate was enjoined to punish "idolatry, blasphemy, heresy," and to
coerce any church becoming "schismatical."

In October, 1649, the court commended the platform to the consideration of
the congregations; in October, 1651, it was adopted; and when church and
state were thus united by statute the theocracy was complete.

The close of the era of construction is also marked by the death of those
two remarkable men whose influence has left the deepest imprint upon the
institutions they helped to mould: John Winthrop, who died in 1649, and
John Cotton in 1652.

Winthrop's letters to his wife show him to have been tender and gentle,
and that his disposition was one to inspire love is proved by the
affection those bore him who had suffered most at his hands. Williams and
Vane and Coddington kept their friendship for him to the end. But these
very qualities, so amiable in themselves, made him subject to the
influence of men of inflexible will. His dream was to create on earth a
commonwealth of saints whose joy would be to walk in the ways of God. But
in practice he had to deal with the strongest of human passions. In 1634,
though supported by Cotton, he was defeated by Dudley, and there can be no
doubt that this was caused by the defection of the body of the clergy. The
evidence seems conclusive, for the next year Vane brought about an
interview between the two at which Haynes was present, and there Haynes
upbraided him with remissness in administering justice. [Footnote:
Winthrop, i. 178.] Winthrop agreed to leave the question to the ministers,
who the next morning gave an emphatic opinion in favor of strict
discipline. Thenceforward he was pliant in their hands, and with that day
opened the dark epoch of his life. By leading the crusade against the
Antinomians he regained the confidence of the elders and they never again
failed him; but in return they exacted obedience to their will; and the
rancor with which he pursued Anne Hutchinson, Gorton, and Childe cannot be
extenuated, and must ever be a stain upon his fame.

As Hutchinson points out, in early life his tendencies were liberal, but
in America he steadily grew narrow. The reason is obvious. The leader of
an intolerant party has himself to be intolerant. His claim to eminence as
a statesman must rest upon the purity of his moral character, his calm
temper, and his good judgment; for his mind was not original or brilliant,
nor was his thought in advance of his age. Herein he differed from his
celebrated contemporary, for among the long list of famous men, who are
the pride of Massachusetts, there are few who in mere intellectual
capacity outrank Cotton. He was not only a profound scholar, an eloquent
preacher, and a famous controversialist, but a great organizer, and a
natural politician. He it was who constructed the Congregational
hierarchy; his publications were the accepted authority both abroad and at
home; and the system which he developed in his books was that which was
made law by the Cambridge Platform.

Of medium height, florid complexion, and as he grew old some tendency to
be stout, but with snowy hair and much personal dignity, he seems to have
had an irresistible charm of manner toward those whom he wished to
attract.

Comprehending thoroughly the feelings and prejudices of the clergy, he
influenced them even more by his exquisite tact than by his commanding
ability; and of easy fortune and hospitable alike from inclination and
from interest, he entertained every elder who went to Boston. He
understood the art of flattery to perfection; or, as Norton expressed it,
"he was a man of ingenuous and pious candor, rejoicing (as opportunity
served) to take notice of and testifie unto the gifts of God in his
brethren, thereby drawing the hearts of them to him...." [Footnote:
Norton's _Funeral Sermon_, p. 37.] No other clergyman has ever been able
to reach the position he held with apparent ease, which amounted to a
sort of primacy of New England. His dangers lay in the very fecundity of
his mind. Though hampered by his education and profession, he was
naturally liberal; and his first miscalculation was when, almost
immediately on landing, he supported Winthrop, who was in disgrace for the
mildness of his administration, against the austerer Dudley.

The consciousness of his intellectual superiority seems to have given him
an almost overweening confidence in his ability to induce his brethren to
accept the broader theology he loved to preach; nor did he apparently
realize that comprehension was incompatible with a theocratic government,
and that his success would have undermined the organization he was
laboring to perfect. He thus committed the error of his life in
undertaking to preach a religious reformation, without having the
resolution to face a martyrdom. But when he saw his mistake, the way in
which he retrieved himself showed a consummate knowledge of human nature
and of the men with whom he had to deal. Nor did he ever forget the
lesson. From that time forward he took care that no one should be able to
pick a flaw in his orthodoxy; and whatever he may have thought of much of
the policy of his party, he was always ready to defend it without
flinching.

Neither he nor Winthrop died too soon, for with the completion of the task
of organization the work that suited them was finished, and they were
unfit for that which remained to be done. An oligarchy, whose power rests
on faith and not on force, can only exist by extirpating all who openly
question their pretensions to preeminent sanctity; and neither of these
men belonged to the class of natural persecutors,--the one was too gentle,
the other too liberal. An example will show better than much argument how
little in accord either really was with that spirit which, in the regular
course of social development, had thenceforward to dominate over
Massachusetts.

Captain Partridge had fought for the Parliament, and reached Boston at the
beginning of the winter of 1645. He was arrested and examined as a
heretic. The magistrates referred the case to Cotton, who reported that
"he found him corrupt in judgment," but "had good hope to reclaim him."
[Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 251.] An instant recantation was demanded; it was
of course refused, and, in spite of all remonstrance, the family was
banished in the snow. Winthrop's sad words were: "But sure, the rule of
hospitality to strangers, and of seeking to pluck out of the fire such as
there may be hope of, ... do seem to require more moderation and
indulgence of human infirmity where there appears not obstinacy against
the clear truth." [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 251.]

But in the savage and bloody struggle that was now at hand there was no
place for leaders capable of pity or remorse, and the theocracy found
supremely gifted chieftains in John Norton and John Endicott.

Norton approaches the ideal of the sterner orders of the priesthood. A
gentleman by birth and breeding, a ripe scholar, with a keen though
polished wit, his sombre temper was deeply tinged with fanaticism. Unlike
so many of his brethren, temporal concerns were to him of but little
moment, for every passion of his gloomy soul was intensely concentrated on
the warfare he believed himself waging with the fiend. Doubt or compassion
was impossible, for he was commissioned by the Lord. He was Christ's
elected minister, and misbelievers were children of the devil whom it was
his sacred duty to destroy. He knew by the Word of God that all save the
orthodox were lost, and that heretics not only perished, but were the
hirelings of Satan, who tempted the innocent to their doom; he therefore
hated and feared them more than robbers or murderers. Words seemed to fail
him when he tried to express his horror: "The face of death, the King of
Terrours, the living man by instinct turneth his face from. An unusual
shape, a satanical phantasm, a ghost, or apparition, affrights the
disciples. But the face of heresie is of a more horrid aspect than all ...
put together, as arguing some signal inlargement of the power of darkness
as being diabolical, prodigeous, portentous." [Footnote: _Heart of New
Eng. Rent_, p. 46.] By nature, moreover, he had in their fullest measure
the three attributes of a preacher of a persecution,--eloquence,
resolution, and a heart callous to human suffering. To this formidable
churchman was joined a no less formidable magistrate.

No figure in our early history looms out of the past like Endicott's. The
harsh face still looks down from under the black skull-cap, the gray
moustache and pointed beard shading the determined mouth, but throwing
into relief the lines of the massive jaw. He is almost heroic in his
ferocious bigotry and daring,--a perfect champion of the church.

The grim Puritan soldier is almost visible as, standing at the head of his
men, he tears the red cross from the flag, and defies the power of
England; or, in that tremendous moment, when the people were hanging
breathless on the fate of Christison, when insurrection seemed bursting
out beneath his feet, and his judges shrunk aghast before the peril, we
yet hear the savage old man furiously strike the table, and, thanking God
that he at least dares to do his duty, we see him rise alone before that
threatening multitude to condemn the heretic to death.




CHAPTER IV.

THE ANABAPTISTS.


The Rev. Thomas Shepard, pastor of Charlestown, was such an example, "in
word, in conversation, in civility, in spirit, in faith, in purity, that
he did let no man despise his youth;" [Footnote: _Magnalia_, bk. 4,
ch. ix. Section 6.] and yet, preaching an election sermon before the
governor and magistrates, he told them that "anabaptisme ... hath ever
been lookt at by the godly leaders of this people as a scab." [Footnote:
_Eye Salve_, p. 24.] While the Rev. Samuel Willard, president of Harvard,
declared that "such a rough thing as a New England Anabaptist is not to be
handled over tenderly." [Footnote: _Ne Sutor_, p. 10.]

So early as 1644, therefore, the General Court "Ordered and agreed, yt if
any person or persons within ye iurisdiction shall either openly condemne
or oppose ye baptizing of infants, or go about secretly to seduce others
from ye app'bation or use thereof, or shall purposely depart ye
congregation at ye administration of ye ordinance, ... and shall appear to
ye Co't willfully and obstinately to continue therein after due time and
meanes of conviction, every such person or persons shallbe sentenced to
banishment." [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ ii. 85. 13 November, 1644.]

The legislation, however, was unpopular, for Winthrop relates that in
October, 1645, divers merchants and others petitioned to have the act
repealed, because of the offense taken thereat by the godly in England,
and the court seemed inclined to accede, "but many of the elders ...
entreated that the law might continue still in force, and the execution of
it not suspended, though they disliked not that all lenity and patience
should be used for convincing and reclaiming such erroneous persons.
Whereupon the court refused to make any further order." [Footnote:
Winthrop, ii. 251.] And Edward Winslow assured Parliament in 1646, when
sent to England to represent the colony, that, some mitigation being
desired, "it was answered in my hearing. 'T is true we have a severe law,
but wee never did or will execute the rigor of it upon any.... But the
reason wherefore wee are loath either to repeale or alter the law is,
because wee would have it ... to beare witnesse against their judgment,
... which we conceive ... to bee erroneous." [Footnote: _Hypocrisie
Unmasked_, 101.]

Unquestionably, at that time no one had been banished; but in 1644 "one
Painter, for refusing to let his child be baptized, ... was brought before
the court, where he declared their baptism to be anti-Christian. He was
sentenced to be whipped, which he bore without flinching, and boasted that
God had assisted him." [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ i. 208, note.] Nor was
his a solitary instance of severity. Yet, notwithstanding the scorn and
hatred which the orthodox divines felt for these sectaries, many very
eminent Puritans fell into the errors of that persuasion. Roger Williams
was a Baptist, and Henry Dunster, for the same heresy, was removed from
the presidency of Harvard, and found it prudent to end his days within the
Plymouth jurisdiction. Even that great champion of infant baptism,
Jonathan Mitchell, when thrown into intimate relations with Dunster, had
doubts.

"That day ... after I came from him I had a strange experience; I found
hurrying and pressing suggestions against Pædobaptism, and injected
scruples and thoughts whether the other way might not be right, and infant
baptism an invention of men; and whether I might with good conscience
baptize children and the like. And these thoughts were darted in with some
impression, and left a strange confusion and sickliness upon my spirit.
Yet, methought, it was not hard to discern that they were from the _Evil
One_; ... And it made me fearful to go needlessly to Mr. D.; for methought
I found a venom and poison in his insinuations and discourses against
Pædobaptism." [Footnote: _Magnalia_, bk. 4, ch. iv. Section 10.]

Henry Dunster was an uncommon man. Famed for piety in an age of
fanaticism, learned, modest, and brave, by the unremitting toil of
thirteen years he raised Harvard from a school to the position which it
has since held; and though very poor, and starving on a wretched and ill-
paid pittance, he gave his beloved college one hundred acres of land at
the moment of its sorest need. [Footnote: Quincy's _History of Harvard_,
i. 15.] Yet he was a criminal, for he would not baptize infants, and he
met with the "lenity and patience" which the elders were not unwilling
should be used toward the erring.

He was indicted and convicted of disturbing church ordinances, and
deprived of his office in October, 1654. He asked for leave to stay in the
house he had built for a few months, and his petition in November ought to
be read to understand how heretics were made to suffer:--

"1st. The time of the year is unseasonable, being now very near the
shortest day, and the depth of winter.

"2d. The place unto which I go is unknown to me and my family, and the
ways and means of subsistance....

"3d. The place from which I go hath fire, fuel, and all provisions for man
and beast, laid in for the winter.... The house I have builded upon very
damageful conditions to myself, out of love for the college, taking
country pay in lieu of bills of exchange on England, or the house would
not have been built....

"4th. The persons, all beside myself, are women and children, on whom
little help, now their minds lie under the actual stroke of affliction and
grief. My wife is sick, and my youngest child extremely so, and hath been
for months, so that we dare not carry him out of doors, yet much worse now
than before.... Myself will willingly bow my neck to any yoke of personal
denial, for I know for what and for whom, by grace I suffer." [Footnote:
_History of Harvard_, i. 18.]

He had before asked Winthrop to cause the government to pay him what it
owed, and he ended his prayer in these words: "Considering the poverty of
the country, I am willing to descend to the lowest step; and if nothing
can comfortably be allowed, I sit still appeased; desiring nothing more
than to supply me and mine with food and raiment." [Footnote: _Idem_,
i. 20.] He received that mercy which the church has ever shown to those
who wander from her fold; he was given till March, and then, with dues
unpaid, was driven forth a broken man, to die in poverty and neglect.

But Jonathan Mitchell, pondering deeply upon the wages he saw paid at his
very hearthstone, to the sin of his miserable old friend, snatched his own
soul from Satan's jaws. And thenceforward his path lay in pleasant places,
and he prospered exceedingly in the world, so that "of extream lean he
grew extream fat; and at last, in an extream hot season, a fever arrested
him, just after he had been preaching.... Wonderful were the lamentations
which this deplorable death fill'd the churches of New England withal....
Yea ... all New England shook when that pillar fell to the ground."
[Footnote: _Magnalia_, bk. 4, ch. iv. Section 16.]

Notwithstanding, therefore, clerical promises of gentleness, Massachusetts
was not a comfortable place of residence for Baptists, who, for the most
part, went to Rhode Island; and John Clark [Footnote: For sketch of
Clark's life see _Allen's Biographical Dictionary_.] became the
pastor of the church which they formed at Newport about 1644. He had been
born about 1610, and had been educated in London as a physician. In 1637
he landed at Boston, where he seems to have become embroiled in the
Antinomian controversy; at all events, he fared so ill that, with several
others, he left Massachusetts 'resolving, through the help of Christ, to
get clear of all [chartered companies] and be of ourselves.' In the course
of their wanderings they fell in with Williams, and settled near him.

Clark was perhaps the most prominent man in the Plantations, filled many
public offices, and was the commissioner who afterward secured for the
colony the famous charter that served as the State Constitution till 1842.

Obediah Holmes, who succeeded him as Baptist minister of Newport, is less
well known. He was educated at Oxford, and when he emigrated he settled at
Salem; from thence he went to Seaconk, where he joined the church under
Mr. Newman. Here he soon fell into trouble for resisting what he
maintained was an "unrighteous act" of his pastor's; in consequence he and
several more renounced the communion, and began to worship by themselves;
they were baptized and thereafter they were excommunicated; the inevitable
indictment followed, and they, too, took refuge in Rhode Island.
[Footnote: Holmes's Narrative, Backus, i. 213.]

William Witter [Footnote: For the following events, see "_Ill Newes from
New England" Mass. Hist. Coll._ fourth series, vol. ii.] of Lynn was an
aged Baptist, who had already been prosecuted, but, in 1651, being blind
and infirm, he asked the Newport church to send some of the brethren to
him, to administer the communion, for he found himself alone in
Massachusetts. [Footnote: Backus, i. 215.] Accordingly Clark undertook the
mission, with Obediah Holmes and John Crandall.

They reached Lynn on Saturday, July 19, 1651, and on Sunday stayed within
doors in order not to disturb the congregation. A few friends were
present, and Clark was in the midst of a sermon, when the house was
entered by two constables with a warrant signed by Robert Bridges,
commanding them to arrest certain "erroneous persons being strangers." The
travellers were at once seized and carried to the tavern, and after dinner
they were told that they must go to church.

Gorton, like many another, had to go through this ordeal, and he speaks of
his Sundays with much feeling: "Only some part of those dayes they brought
us forth into their congregations, to hear their sermons ... which was
meat to be digested, but only by the heart or stomacke of an ostrich."
[Footnote: _Simplicitie's Defence_, p. 57.]

The unfortunate Baptists remonstrated, saying that were they forced into
the meeting-house, they should be obliged to dissent from the service, but
this, the constable said, was nothing to him, and so he carried them away.
On entering, during the prayer, the prisoners took off their hats, but
presently put them on again and began reading in their seats. Whereupon
Bridges ordered the officers to uncover their heads, which was done, and
the service was then quietly finished. When all was over, Clark asked
leave to speak, which, after some hesitation, was granted, on condition he
would not discuss what he had heard. He began to explain how he had put on
his hat because he could not judge that they were gathered according to
the visible order of the Lord; but here he was silenced, and the three
were committed to custody for the night. On Tuesday they were taken to
Boston, and on the 31st were brought before Governor Endicott. Their trial
was of the kind reserved by priests for heretics. No jury was impanelled,
no indictment was read, no evidence was heard, but the prisoners were
reviled by the bench as Anabaptists, and when they repudiated the name
were asked if they did not deny infant baptism. The theological argument
which followed was cut short by a recommitment to await sentence.

That afternoon John Cotton exhorted the judges from the pulpit. He
expounded the law, and commanded them to do their duty; he told them that
the rejection of infant baptism would overthrow the church; that this was
a capital crime, and therefore the captives were "foul murtherers."
[Footnote: _Ill Newes_, p. 56.] Thus inspired, the court came in toward
evening.

The record recites a number of misdemeanors, such as wearing the hat in
church, administering the communion to the excommunicated, and the like,
but no attempt was made to prove a single charge. [Footnote: _Ill Newes_,
pp. 31-44.] The reason is obvious: the only penalty provided by statute
for the offence of being a Baptist was banishment, hence the only legal
course would have been to dismiss the accused. Endicott condemned them to
fines of twenty, thirty, and five pounds, respectively, or to be whipped.
Clark understood his position perfectly, and from the first had demanded
to be shown the law under which he was being tried. He now, after
sentence, renewed the request. Endicott well knew that in acting as the
mouthpiece of the clergy he was violating alike justice, his oath of
office, and his honor as a judge; and, being goaded to fury, he broke out:
You have deserved death; I will not have such trash brought into our
jurisdiction. [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 33.] Holmes tells the rest: "As I
went from the bar, I exprest myself in these words,--I blesse God I am
counted worthy to suffer for the name of Jesus; whereupon John Wilson
(their pastor, as they call him) strook me before the judgement seat, and
cursed me, saying, The curse of God ... goe with thee; so we were carried
to the prison." [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 47.]

All the convicts maintained that their liberty as English subjects had
been violated, and they refused to pay their fines. Clark's friends,
however, alarmed for his safety, settled his for him, and he was
discharged.

Crandall was admitted to bail, but being misinformed as to the time of
surrender, he did not appear, his bond was forfeited, and on his return to
Boston he found himself free.

Thus Holmes was left to face his punishment alone. Actuated apparently by
a deep sense of duty toward himself and his God, he refused the help of
friends, and steadfastly awaited his fate. As he lay in prison he suffered
keenly as he thought of his birth and breeding, his name, his worldly
credit, and the humiliation which must come to his wife and children from
his public shame; then, too, he began to fear lest he might not be able to
bear the lash, might flinch or shed tears, and bring contempt on himself
and his religion. Yet when the morning came he was calm and resolute;
refusing food and drink, that he might not be said to be sustained by
liquor, he betook himself to prayer, and when his keeper called him, with
his Bible in his hand, he walked cheerfully to the post. He would have
spoken a few words, but the magistrate ordered the executioner to do his
office quickly, for this fellow would delude the people; then he was
seized and stripped, and as he cried, "Lord, lay not this sin unto their
charge," he received the first blow. [Footnote: _Ill Newes_, pp. 48, 56.]

They gave him thirty lashes with a three-thonged whip, of such horrible
severity that it was many days before he could endure to have his
lacerated body touch the bed, and he rested propped upon his hands and
knees. [Footnote: Backus, i. 237, note. MS. of Gov. Jos. Jencks.] Yet, in
spite of his torture, he stood firm and calm, showing neither pain nor
fear, breaking out at intervals into praise to God; and his dignity and
courage so impressed the people that, in spite of the danger, numbers
flocked about him when he was set free, in sympathy and admiration. John
Spur, being inwardly affected by what he saw and heard, took him by the
hand, and, with a joyful countenance, said: "Praised be the Lord," and so
went back with him. That same day Spur was arrested, charged with the
crime of succoring a heretic. Then said the undaunted Spur: "Obediah
Holmes I do look upon as a godly man: and do affirm that he carried
himself as did become a Christian, under so sad an affliction." "We will
deal with you as we have dealt with him," said Endicott. "I am in the
hands of God," answered Spur; and then his keeper took him to his prison.
[Footnote: _Ill Newes_, p. 57.]

Perhaps no persecutor ever lived who was actuated by a single motive:
Saint Dominic probably had some trace of worldliness; Henry VIII. some
touch of bigotry; and this was preeminently true of the Massachusetts
elders. Doubtless there were among them men like Norton, whose fanaticism
was so fierce that they would have destroyed the heretic like the wild
beast, as a child of the devil, and an abomination to God. But with the
majority worldly motives predominated: they were always protesting that
they did not constrain men's consciences, but only enforced orderly
living. Increase Mather declared: in "the same church there have been
Presbyterians, Independents, Episcopalians, and Antipædobaptists, all
welcome to the same table of the Lord when they have manifested to the
judgment of Christian charity a work of regeneration in their souls."
[Footnote: _Vindication of New Eng._ p. 19.] And Winslow solemnly
assured Parliament, "Nay, some in our churches" are "of that judgment, and
as long as they [Baptists] carry themselves peaceably as hitherto they
doe, wee will leave them to God." [Footnote: _Hypocrisie Unmasked_, p.
101. A. D. 1646.]

Such statements, although intended to convey a false impression, contained
this much truth: provided a man conformed to all the regulations of the
church, paid his taxes, and held his tongue, he would not, in ordinary
circumstances, have been molested under the Puritan Commonwealth. But the
moment he refused implicit obedience, or, above all, if he withdrew from
his congregation, he was shown no mercy, because such acts tended to shake
the temporal power. John Wilson, pastor of Boston, was a good example of
the average of his order. On his death-bed he was asked to declare what he
thought to be the worst sins of the country. "'I have long feared several
sins, whereof one,' he said, 'was Corahism: that is, when people rise up
as Corah against their ministers, as if they took too much upon them, when
indeed they do but rule for Christ, and according to Christ.'" [Footnote:
_Magnalia_, bk. 3, ch. iii. Section 17.] Permeated with this love of
power, and possessed of a superb organization, the clergy never failed to
act on public opinion with decisive effect whenever they saw their worldly
interests endangered. Childe has described the attack which overwhelmed
him, and Gorton gives a striking account of their process of inciting a
crusade:--

"These things concluded to be heresies and blasphemies.... The ministers
did zealously preach unto the people the great danger of such things, and
the guilt such lay under that held them, stirring the people up to labour
to find such persons out and to execute death upon them, making persons so
execrable in the eyes of the people, whom they intimated should hold such
things, yea some of them naming some of us in their pulpits, that the
people that had not seen us thought us to be worse by far in any respect
then those barbarous Indians are in the country.... Whereupon we heard a
rumor that the Massachusets was sending out an army of men to cut us off."
[Footnote: _Simplicitie's Defence_, p. 32.]

The persecution of the Baptists lays bare this selfish clerical policy.
The theory of the suppression of heresy as a sacred duty breaks down when
it is conceded that the heretic may be admitted to the orthodox communion
without sin; therefore the motives for cruelty were sordid. The ministers
felt instinctively that an open toleration would impair their power; not
only because the congregations would divide, but because these sectaries
listened to "John Russell the shoemaker." [Footnote: _Ne Sutor_, p. 26.]
Obviously, were cobblers to usurp the sacerdotal functions, the
superstitious reverence of the people for the priestly office would not
long endure: and it was his crime in upholding this sacrilegious practice
which made the Rev. Thomas Cobbett cry out in his pulpit "against Gorton,
that arch-heretick, who would have al men to be preachers." [Footnote:
_Simplicities Defence_, p. 32. See _Ne Sutor_, p. 26.]

Therefore, though Winslow solemnly protested before the Commissioners at
London that Baptists who lived peaceably would be left unmolested, yet
such of them as listened to "foul-murtherers" [Footnote: "_Ill Newes_,"
_Mass. Hist. Coll._ fourth series, vol. ii. p. 56.] were denounced by the
divines as dangerous fanatics who threatened to overthrow the government,
and were hunted through the country like wolves.

Thomas Gould was an esteemed citizen of Charles-town, but, unfortunately
for himself, he had long felt doubt concerning infant baptism; so when, in
1655, a child was born to him, he "durst not" have it christened. "The
elder pressed the church to lay me under admonition, which the church was
backward to do. Afterward I went out at the sprinkling of children, which
was a great trouble to some honest hearts, and they told me of it. But I
told them I could not stay, for I lookt upon it as no ordinance of Christ.
They told me that now I had made known my judgment I might stay.... So I
stayed and sat down in my seat when they were at prayer and administring
the service to infants. Then they dealt with me for my unreverent
carriage." [Footnote: Gould's Narrative, Backus, i. 364-366.] That is to
say, his pastor, Mr. Symmes, caused him to be admonished and excluded from
the communion. In October, 1656, he was presented to the county court for
"denying baptism to his child," convicted, admonished, and given till the
next term to consider of his error; and gradually his position at
Charlestown became so unpleasant that he went to church at Cambridge,
which was a cause of fresh offence to Mr. Symmes. [Footnote: _History of
Charlestown_, Frothingham, p. 164.]

From this time forward for several years, though no actual punishment
seems to have been inflicted, Gould was subjected to perpetual annoyance,
and was repeatedly summoned and admonished, both by the courts and the
church, until at length he brought matters to a crisis by withdrawing, and
with eight others forming a church, on May 28, 1665.

He thus tells his story: "We sought the Lord to direct us, and taking
counsel of other friends who dwelt among us, who were able and godly, they
gave us counsel to congregate ourselves together; and so we did, ... to
walk in the order of the gospel according to the rule of Christ, yet
knowing it was a breach of the law of this country.... After we had been
called into one or two courts, the church understanding that we were
gathered into church order, they sent three messengers from the church to
me, telling me the church required me to come before them the next Lord's
day." [Footnote: Gould's Narrative, Backus, i. 369.] That Sunday he could
not go, but he promised to attend on the one following; [Footnote: Gould's
Narrative, Backus, i. 371.] and his wife relates what was then done: "The
word was carried to the elder, that if they were alive and well they would
come the next day, yet they were so hot upon it that they could not stay,
but master Sims, when he was laying out the sins of these men, before he
had propounded it to the church, to know their mind, the church having no
liberty to speak, he wound it up in his discourse, and delivered them up
to Satan, to the amazement of the people, that ever such an ordinance of
Christ should be so abused, that many of the people went out; and these
were the excommunicated persons." [Footnote: Mrs. Gould's Answer, Backus,
i. 384.] The sequence is complete: so long as Gould confined his heresy to
pure speculation upon dogma he was little heeded; when he withheld his
child from baptism and went out during the ceremony he was admonished,
denied the sacrament, and treated as a social outcast; but when he
separated, he was excommunicated and given to the magistrate to be
crushed.

Passing from one tribunal to another the sectaries came before the General
Court in October, 1665: such as were freemen were disfranchised, and all
were sentenced, upon conviction before a single magistrate of continued
schism, to be imprisoned until further order. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._
vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 291.] The following April they were fined four pounds
and put in confinement, where they lay till the 11th of September, when
the legislature, after a hearing, ordered them to be discharged upon
payment of fines and costs. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 2,
p. 316.]

How many Baptists were prosecuted, and what they suffered, is not known,
as only an imperfect record remains of the fortunes of even the leaders of
the movement; this much, however, is certain, they not only continued
contumacious, but persecution added to their numbers. So at length the
clergy decided to try what effect a public refutation of these heretics
would have on popular opinion. Accordingly the governor and council,
actuated by "Christian candor," ordered the Baptists to appear at the
meeting-house, at nine o'clock in the morning, on the 14th of April, 1668;
and six ministers were deputed to conduct the disputation. [Footnote:
Backus, i. 375.]

During the immolation of Dunster the Rev. Mr. Mitchell had made up his
mind that he "would have an argument able to remove a mountain" before he
would swerve from his orthodoxy; he had since confirmed his faith by
preaching "more than half a score ungainsayable sermons" "in defence of
this comfortable truth," and he was now prepared to maintain it against
all comers. Accordingly this "worthy man was he who did most service in
this disputation; whereof the effect was, that although the erring
brethren, as is usual in such cases, made this their last answer to the
arguments which had cast them into much confusion: 'Say what you will we
will hold our mind.' Yet others were happily established in the right ways
of the Lord." [Footnote: _Magnalia_, bk. 4, ch. iv. Section 10.]

Such is the account of Cotton Mather: but the story of the Baptists
presents a somewhat different view of the proceedings. "It is true there
were seven elders appointed to discourse with them.... and when they were
met, there was a long speech made by one of them of what vile persons they
were, and how they acted against the churches and government here, and
stood condemned by the court. The others desiring liberty to speak, they
would not suffer them, but told them they stood there as delinquents and
ought not to have liberty to speak.... Two days were spent to little
purpose; in the close, master Jonathan Mitchel pronounced that dreadful
sentence against them in Deut. xvii. 8, to the end of the 12th, and this
was the way they took to convince them, and you may see what a good effect
it had." [Footnote: Mrs. Gould's Answer, Backus, i. 384, 385.]

The sentence pronounced by Mitchell was this: "And the man that will do
presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest that standeth to
minister there before the Lord thy God, or unto the judge, even that man
shall die: and thou shalt put away the evil from Israel." [Footnote:
_Deut._ xvii. 12.]

On the 27th of May, 1668, Gould, Turner, and Farnum, "obstinate &
turbulent Annabaptists," were banished under pain of perpetual
imprisonment. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. ii, pp. 373-375.]
They determined to stay and face their fate: afterward they wrote to the
magistrates:--

       *       *       *       *       *

HONOURED SIRS: ... After the tenders of our service according to Christ,
his command to your selves and the country, wee thought it our duty and
concernment to present your honours with these few lines to put you in
remembrance of our bonds: and this being the twelfth week of our
imprisonment, wee should be glad if it might be thought to stand with the
honour and safety of the country, and the present government thereof, to
be now at liberty. For wee doe hereby seriously profess, that as farre as
wee are sensible or know anything of our own hearts, wee do prefer their
peace and safety above our own, however wee have been resented otherwise:
and wherein wee differ in point of judgment wee humbly beeseech you, let
there be a bearing with us, till god shal reveale otherwise to us; for
there is a spirit in man and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them
understanding, therefore if wee are in the dark, wee dare not say that wee
doe see or understand, till the Lord shall cleare things up to us. And to
him wee can appeale to cleare up our innocency as touching the government,
both in your civil and church affaires. That it never was in our hearts to
thinke of doing the least wrong to either: but have and wee hope, by your
assistance, shal alwaies indeavour to keepe a conscience void of offence
towards god and men. And if it shal be thought meete to afforde us our
liberty, that wee may take that care, as becomes us, for our families, wee
shal engage ourselves to be alwayes in a readines to resigne up our
persons to your pleasure. Hoping your honours will be pleased seriously to
consider our condition, wee shall commend both you and it to the wise
disposing and blessing of the Almighty, and remaine your honours faithful
servants in what we may.

THO: GOLD
WILL: TURNER
JOHN FARNUM. [Footnote: _Mass. Archives_, x. 220.]

       *       *       *       *       *

Such were the men whom the clergy daily warned their congregations "would
certainly undermine the churches, ruine order, destroy piety, and
introduce prophaneness." [Footnote: _Ne Sutor_, p. 11.] And when they
appealed to their spotless lives and their patience under affliction, they
were told "that the vilest hereticks and grossest blasphemers have
resolutely and cheerfully (at least sullenly and boastingly) suffered as
well as the people of God." [Footnote: _Ne Sutor_, p. 9.]

The feeling of indignation and of sympathy was, notwithstanding, strong;
and in spite of the danger of succoring heretics, sixty-six inhabitants,
among whom were some of the most respected citizens of Charlestown,
petitioned the legislature for mercy: "They being aged and weakly men; ...
the sense of this their ... most deplorable and afflicted condition hath
sadly affected the hearts of many ... Christians, and such as neither
approve of their judgment or practice; especially considering that the men
are reputed godly, and of a blameless conversation.... We therefore most
humbly beseech this honored court, in their Christian mercy and bowels of
compassion, to pity and relieve these poor prisoners." [Footnote: Backus,
i. 380, 381.] On November 7, 1668, the petition was voted "scandalous &
reproachful," the two chief promoters were censured, admonished, and fined
ten and five pounds respectively; the others were made, under their own
hands, to express their sorrow, "for giving the court such just ground of
offence." [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 413.]

The shock was felt even in England. In March, 1669, thirteen of the most
influential dissenting ministers wrote from London earnestly begging for
moderation lest they should be made to suffer from retaliation; but their
remonstrance was disregarded. [Footnote: Backus, i. 395.] What followed is
not exactly known; the convicts would seem to have lain in jail about a
year, and they are next mentioned in a letter to Clark written in
November, 1670, in which he was told that Turner had been again arrested,
but that Gould had eluded the officers, who were waiting for him in
Boston; and was on Noddle's Island. Subsequently all were taken and
treated with the extremest rigor; for in June, 1672, Russell was so
reduced that it was supposed he could not live, and he was reported to
have died in prison. Six months before Gould and Turner had been thought
past hope; their sufferings had brought them all to the brink of the
grave. [Footnote: Backus, i. 398-404, 405.] But relief was at hand: the
victory for freedom had been won by the blood of heretics, as devoted, as
fearless, but even unhappier than they; and the election of Leverett, in
1673, who was opposed to persecution, marks the moment when the hierarchy
admitted their defeat. During his administration the sectaries usually met
in private undisturbed; and soon every energy of the theocracy became
concentrated on the effort to repulse the ever contracting circle of
enemies who encompassed it.

During the next few years events moved fast. In 1678 the ecclesiastical
power was so shattered that the Baptists felt strong enough to build a
church; but the old despotic spirit lived even in the throes of death, and
the legislature passed an act forbidding the erection of unlicensed
meeting-houses under penalty of confiscation. Nevertheless it was
finished, but on the Sunday on which it was to have been opened the
marshal nailed the doors fast and posted notices forbidding all persons to
enter, by order of the court. After a time the doors were broken open, and
services were held; a number of the congregation were summoned before the
court, admonished, and forbidden to meet in any public place; [Footnote:
June 11, 1680. _Mass. Rec._ v. 271.] but the handwriting was now glowing
on the wall, priestly threats had lost their terror; the order was
disregarded; and now for almost two hundred years Massachusetts has been
foremost in defending the equal rights of men before the law.

The old world was passing away, a new era was opening, and a few words are
due to that singular aristocracy which so long ruled New England. For two
centuries Increase Mather has been extolled as an eminent example of the
abilities and virtues which then adorned his order. In 1681, when all was
over, he published a solemn statement of the attitude the clergy had held
toward the Baptists, and from his words posterity may judge of their
standard of morality and of truth.

"The Annabaptists in New England have in their narrative lately published,
endeavoured to ... make themselves the innocent persons and the Lord's
servants here no better than persecutors.... I have been a poor labourer
in the Lord's Vineyard in this place upward of twenty years; and it is
more than I know, if in all that time, any of those that scruple infant
baptism, have met with molestation from the magistrate merely on account
of their opinion." [Footnote: Preface to _Ne Sutor_.]




CHAPTER V.

THE QUAKERS.


The lower the organism, the less would seem to be the capacity for
physical adaptation to changed conditions of life; the jelly-fish dies in
the aquarium, the dog has wandered throughout the world with his master.
The same principle apparently holds true in the evolution of the
intellect; for while the oyster lacks consciousness, the bee modifies the
structure of its comb, and the swallow of her nest, to suit unforeseen
contingencies, while the dog, the horse, and the elephant are capable of a
high degree of education. [Footnote: _Menial Evolution in Animals_,
Romanes, Am. ed. pp. 203-210.]

Applying this law to man, it will be found to be a fact that, whereas the
barbarian is most tenacious of custom, the European can adopt new fashions
with comparative ease. The obvious inference is, that in proportion as the
brain is feeble it is incapable of the effort of origination; therefore,
savages are the slaves of routine. Probably a stronger nervous system, or
a peculiarity of environment, or both combined, served to excite
impatience with their surroundings among the more favored races, from
whence came a desire for innovation. And the mental flexibility thus
slowly developed has passed by inheritance, and has been strengthened by
use, until the tendency to vary, or think independently, has become an
irrepressible instinct among some modern nations. Conservatism is the
converse of variation, and as it springs from mental inertia it is always
a progressively salient characteristic of each group in the descending
scale. The Spaniard is less mutable than the Englishman, the Hindoo than
the Spaniard, the Hottentot than the Hindoo, and the ape than the
Hottentot. Therefore, a power whose existence depends upon the fixity of
custom must be inimical to progress, but the authority of a sacred caste
is altogether based upon an unreasoning reverence for tradition,--in
short, on superstition; and as free inquiry is fatal to a belief in those
fables which awed the childhood of the race, it has followed that
established priesthoods have been almost uniformly the most conservative
of social forces, and that clergymen have seldom failed to slay their
variable brethren when opportunity has offered. History teems with such
slaughters, some of the most instructive of which are related in the Old
Testament, whose code of morals is purely theological.

Though there may be some question as to the strict veracity of the author
of the Book of Kings, yet, as he was evidently a thorough churchman, there
can be no doubt that he has faithfully preserved the traditions of the
hierarchy; his chronicle therefore presents, as it were, a perfect mirror,
wherein are reflected the workings of the ecclesiastical mind through many
generations. According to his account, the theocracy only triumphed after
a long and doubtful struggle. Samuel must have been an exceptionally able
man, for, though he failed to control Saul, it was through his intrigues
that David was enthroned, who was profoundly orthodox; yet Solomon lapsed
again into heresy, and Jeroboam added to schism the even blacker crime of
making "priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons of
Levi," [Footnote: I Kings xii. 31.] and in consequence he has come down to
posterity as the man who made Israel to sin. Ahab married Jezebel, who
introduced the worship of Baal, and gave the support of government to a
rival church. She therefore roused a hate which has made her immortal; but
it was not until the reign of her son Jehoram that Elisha apparently felt
strong enough to execute a plot he had made with one of the generals to
precipitate a revolution, in which the whole of the house of Ahab should
be murdered and the heretics exterminated. The awful story is told with
wonderful power in the Bible.

"And Elisha the prophet called one of the children of the prophets, and
said unto him, Gird up thy loins, and take this box of oil in thine hand,
and go to Ramoth-gilead: and when thou comest thither, look out there
Jehu, ... and make him arise up ... and carry him to an inner chamber;
then take the box of oil, and pour it on his head, and say, Thus saith the
Lord, I have anointed thee king over Israel....

"So the young man ... went to Ramoth-gilead.... And he said, I have an
errand to thee, O captain....

"And he arose, and went into the house; and he poured the oil on his head,
and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I have anointed thee
king over the people of the Lord, even over Israel.

"And thou shalt smite the house of Ahab thy master, that I may avenge the
blood of my servants the prophets....

"For the whole house of Ahab shall perish: ... and I will make the house
of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, ... and the dogs
shall eat Jezebel....

"Then Jehu came forth to the servants of his lord: ... And he said, Thus
spake he to me, saying, Thus saith the Lord, I have anointed thee king
over Israel.

"Then they hasted, ... and blew with trumpets, saying, Jehu is king. So
Jehu ... conspired against Joram....

"But king Joram was returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds which
the Syrians had given him, when he fought with Hazael king of Syria....

"So Jehu rode in a chariot, and went to Jezreel; for Joram lay there....

"And Joram ... went out ... in his chariot, ... against Jehu.... And it
came to pass, when Joram saw Jehu, that he said, Is it peace, Jehu? And he
answered, What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and
her witchcrafts are so many?

"And Joram turned his hands, and fled, and said to Ahaziah, There is
treachery, O Ahaziah.

"And Jehu drew a bow with his full strength, and smote Jehoram between his
arms, and the arrow went out at his heart, and he sunk down in his
chariot....

"But when Ahaziah the king of Judah saw this, he fled by the way of the
garden house. And Jehu followed after him, and said, Smite him also in the
chariot. And they did so....

"And when Jehu was come to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it; and she painted
her face, and tired her head, and looked out at a window.

"And as Jehu entered in at the gate, she said, Had Zimri peace, who slew
his master?...

"And he said, Throw her down. So they threw her down: and some of her
blood was sprinkled on the wall, and on the horses: and he trod her under
foot....

"And Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria. And Jehu wrote letters, ... to the
elders, and to them that brought up Ahab's children, saying, ... If ye be
mine, ... take ye the heads of ... your master's sons, and come to me to
Jezreel by to-morrow this time.... And it came to pass, when the letter
came to them, that they took the king's sons, and slew seventy persons,
and put their heads in baskets, and sent him them to Jezreel....

"And he said, Lay ye them in two heaps at the entering in of the gate
until the morning....

"So Jehu slew all that remained of the house of Ahab in Jezreel, and all
his great men, and his kinsfolks, and his priests, until he left him none
remaining.

"And he arose and departed, and came to Samaria. And as he was at the
shearing house in the way, Jehu met with the brethren of Ahaziah king of
Judah....

"And he said, Take them alive. And they took them alive, and slew them at
the pit of the shearing house, even two and forty men; neither left he any
of them....

"And when he came to Samaria, he slew all that remained unto Ahab in
Samaria, till he had destroyed him, according to the saying of the Lord,
which he spake to Elijah.

"And Jehu gathered all the people together, and said unto them, Ahab
served Baal a little; but Jehu shall serve him much. Now therefore call
unto me all the prophets of Baal, all his servants, and all his priests;
let none be wanting: for I have a great sacrifice to do to Baal; whosoever
shall be wanting, he shall not live. But Jehu did it in subtilty, to the
intent that he might destroy the worshippers of Baal....

"And Jehu sent through all Israel: and all the worshippers of Baal came,
so that there was not a man left that came not. And they came into the
house of Baal; and the house of Baal was full from one end to another....

"And it came to pass, as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt
offering, that Jehu said to the guard and to the captains, Go in, and slay
them; let none come forth. And they smote them with the edge of the sword;
and the guard and the captains cast them out....

"Thus Jehu destroyed Baal out of Israel." [Footnote: 2 _Kings_ ix., x.]

Viewed from the standpoint of comparative history, the policy of
theocratic Massachusetts toward the Quakers was the necessary consequence
of antecedent causes, and is exactly parallel with the massacre of the
house of Ahab by Elisha and Jehu. The power of a dominant priesthood
depended on conformity, and the Quakers absolutely refused to conform; nor
was this the blackest of their crimes: they believed that the Deity
communicated directly with men, and that these revelations were the
highest rule of conduct. Manifestly such a doctrine was revolutionary. The
influence of all ecclesiastics must ultimately rest upon the popular
belief that they are endowed with attributes which are denied to common
men. The syllogism of the New England elders was this: all revelation is
contained in the Bible; we alone, from our peculiar education, are capable
of interpreting the meaning of the Scriptures: therefore we only can
declare the will of God. But it was evident that, were the dogma of "the
inner light" once accepted, this reasoning must fall to the ground, and
the authority of the ministry be overthrown. Necessarily those who held so
subversive a doctrine would be pursued with greater hate than less harmful
heretics, and thus contemplating the situation there is no difficulty in
understanding why the Rev. John Wilson, pastor of Boston, should have
vociferated in his pulpit, that "he would carry fire in one hand and
faggots in the other, to burn all the Quakers in the world;" [Footnote:
_New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 124.] why the Rev. John Higginson
should have denounced the "inner light" as "a stinking vapour from hell;"
[Footnote: _Truth and Innocency Defended_, ed. 1703, p. 80.] why the
astute Norton should have taught that "the justice of God was the devil's
armour;" [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 9.] and why
Endicott sternly warned the first comers, "Take heed you break not our
ecclesiastical laws, for then ye are sure to stretch by a halter."
[Footnote: _Idem_, p. 9.]

Nevertheless, this view has not commended itself to those learned
clergymen who have been the chief historians of the Puritan commonwealth.
They have, on the contrary, steadily maintained that the sectaries were
the persecutors, since the company had exclusive ownership of the soil,
and acted in self-defence.

The case of Roger Williams is thus summed up by Dr. Dexter: "In all
strictness and honesty he persecuted them--not they him; just as the
modern 'Come-outer,' who persistently intrudes his bad manners and
pestering presence upon some private company, making himself, upon
pretence of conscience, a nuisance there; is--if sane--the persecutor,
rather than the man who forcibly assists, as well as courteously requires,
his desired departure." [Footnote: _As to Roger Williams_, p. 90.]

Dr. Ellis makes a similar argument regarding the Quakers: "It might appear
as if good manners, and generosity and magnanimity of spirit, would have
kept the Quakers away. Certainly, by every rule of right and reason, they
ought to have kept away. They had no rights or business here.... Most
clearly they courted persecution, suffering, and death; and, as the
magistrates affirmed, 'they rushed upon the sword.' Those magistrates
never intended them harm, ... except as they believed that all their
successive measures and sharper penalties were positively necessary to
secure their jurisdiction from the wildest lawlessness and absolute
anarchy." [Footnote: _Mass. and its Early History_, p. 110] His conclusion
is: "It is to be as frankly and positively affirmed that their Quaker
tormentors were the aggressive party; that they wantonly initiated the
strife, and with a dogged pertinacity persisted in outrages which drove
the authorities almost to frenzy...." [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 104]

The proposition that the Congregationalists owned the territory granted by
the charter of Charles I. as though it were a private estate, has been
considered in an earlier chapter; and if the legal views there advanced
are sound, it is incontrovertible, that all peaceful British subjects had
a right to dwell in Massachusetts, provided they did not infringe the
monopoly in trade. The only remaining question, therefore, is whether the
Quakers were peaceful. Dr. Ellis, Dr. Palfrey, and Dr. Dexter have
carefully collected a certain number of cases of misconduct, with the view
of proving that the Friends were turbulent, and the government had
reasonable grounds for apprehending such another outbreak as one which
occurred a century before in Germany and is known as the Peasants' War.
Before, however, it is possible to enter upon a consideration of the
evidence intelligently, it is necessary to fix the chronological order of
the leading events of the persecution.

The twenty-one years over which it extended may be conveniently divided
into three periods, of which the first began in July, 1656, when Mary
Fisher and Anne Austin came to Boston, and lasted till December, 1661,
when Charles II. interfered by commanding Endicott to send those under
arrest to England for trial. Hitherto John Norton had been preeminent, but
in that same December he was appointed on a mission to London, and as he
died soon after his return, his direct influence on affairs then probably
ceased. He had been chiefly responsible for the hangings of 1659 and 1660,
but under no circumstances could they have been continued, for after four
heretics had perished, it was found impossible to execute Wenlock
Christison, who had been condemned, because of popular indignation.

Nevertheless, the respite was brief. In June, 1662, the king, in a letter
confirming the charter, excluded the Quakers from the general toleration
which he demanded for other sects, and the old legislation was forthwith
revived; only as it was found impossible to kill the schismatics openly,
the inference, from what occurred subsequently, is unavoidable, that the
elders sought to attain their purpose by what their reverend historians
call "a humaner policy," [Footnote: _As to Roger Williams_, p. 134.]
or, in plain English, by murdering them by flogging and starvation. Nor
was the device new, for the same stratagem had already been resorted to by
the East India Company, in Hindostan, before they were granted full
criminal jurisdiction. [Footnote: Mill's _British India_, i. 48, note.]

The Vagabond Act was too well contrived for compassing such an end, to
have been an accident, and portions of it strongly suggest the hand of
Norton. It was passed in May, 1661, when it was becoming evident that
hanging must be abandoned, and its provisions can only be explained on the
supposition that it was the intention to make the infliction of death
discretionary with each magistrate. It provided that any foreign Quaker,
or any native upon a second conviction, might be ordered to receive an
unlimited number of stripes. It is important also to observe that the whip
was a two-handed implement, armed with lashes made of twisted and knotted
cord or catgut. [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 357, note.]
There can be no doubt, moreover, that sundry of the judgments afterward
pronounced would have resulted fatally had the people permitted their
execution. During the autumn following its enactment this statute was
suspended, but it was revived in about ten months.

Endicott's death in 1665 marks the close of the second epoch, and ten
comparatively tranquil years followed. Bellingham's moderation may have
been in part due to the interference of the royal commissioners, but a
more potent reason was the popular disgust, which had become so strong
that the penal laws could not be enforced.

A last effort was made to rekindle the dying flame in 1675, by fining
constables who failed in their duty to break up Quaker meetings, and
offering one third of the penalty to the informer. Magistrates were
required to sentence those apprehended to the House of Correction, where
they were to be kept three days on bread and water, and whipped.
[Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 60.] Several suffered during this revival,
the last of whom was Margaret Brewster. At the end of twenty-one years the
policy of cruelty had become thoroughly discredited and a general
toleration could no longer be postponed; but this great liberal triumph
was only won by heroic courage and by the endurance of excruciating
torments. Marmaduke Stevenson, William Robinson, Mary Dyer, and William
Leddra were hanged, several were mutilated or branded, two at least are
known to have died from starvation and whipping, and it is probable that
others were killed whose fate cannot be traced. The number tortured under
the Vagabond Act is unknown, nor can any estimate be made of the misery
inflicted upon children by the ruin and exile of parents.

The early Quakers were enthusiasts, and therefore occasionally spoke and
acted extravagantly; they also adopted some offensive customs, the most
objectionable of which was wearing the hat; all this is immaterial. The
question at issue is not their social attractiveness, but the cause whose
consequence was a virulent persecution. This can only be determined by an
analysis of the evidence. If, upon an impartial review of the cases of
outrage which have been collected, it shall appear probable that the
conduct of the Friends was sufficiently violent to make it credible that
the legislature spoke the truth, when it declared that "the prudence of
this court was exercised onely in making provission to secure the peace &
order heere established against theire attempts, whose designe (wee were
well assured by our oune experjence, as well as by the example of theire
predecessors in Munster) was to vndermine & ruine the same;" [Footnote:
_Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 385.] then the reverend historians of
the theocracy must be considered to have established their proposition.
But if, on the other hand, it shall seem apparent that the intense
vindictiveness of this onslaught was due to the bigotry and greed of power
of a despotic priesthood, who saw in the spread of independent thought a
menace to the ascendency of their order, then it must be held to be
demonstrated that the clergy of New England acted in obedience to those
natural laws, which have always regulated the conduct of mankind.


CHRONOLOGY.


1656, July. First Quakers came to Boston.

1656, 14 Oct. First act against Quakers passed. Providing that ship-
masters bringing Quakers should be fined £100. Quakers to be whipped and
imprisoned till expelled. Importers of Quaker books to be fined. Any
defending Quaker opinions to be fined, first offence, 40s.; second, £4;
third, banishment.

1657, 14 Oct. By a supplementary act; Quakers returning after one
conviction for first offence, for men, loss of one ear; imprisonment till
exile. Second offence, loss other ear, like imprisonment. For females;
first offence, whipping, imprisonment. Second offence, idem. Third
offence, men and women alike; tongue to be bored with a hot iron,
imprisonment, exile. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 309.]

1658. In this year Rev. John Norton actively exerted himself to secure
more stringent legislation; procured petition to that effect to be
presented to court.

1658, 19 Oct. Enacted that undomiciled Quakers returning from banishment
should be hanged. Domiciled Quakers upon conviction, refusing to
apostatize, to be banished, under pain of death on return. [Footnote:
_Idem_, p. 346.]

Under this act the following persons were hanged:

1659, 27 Oct. Robinson and Stevenson hanged.

1660, 1 June. Mary Dyer hanged. (Previously condemned, reprieved, and
executed for returning.)

1660-1661, 14 Mar. William Leddra hanged.

1661, June. Wenlock Christison condemned to death; released.

1661, 22 May. Vagabond Act. Any person convicted before a county
magistrate of being an undomiciled or vagabond Quaker to be stripped naked
to the middle, tied to the cart's tail, and flogged from town to town to
the border. Domiciled Quakers to be proceeded against under Act of 1658 to
banishment, and then treated as vagabond Quakers. The death penalty was
still preserved but not enforced. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 2,
p. 3.]

1661, 9 Sept. King Charles II. wrote to Governor Endicott directing the
cessation of corporal punishment in regard to Quakers, and ordering the
accused to be sent to England for trial.

1661. 27 Nov. Vagabond Act suspended.

1662. 28 June. The company's agents, Bradstreet and Norton, received from
the king his letter of pardon, etc., wherein, however, Quakers are
excepted from the demand made for religious toleration.

1662, 8 Oct. Encouraged by the above letter the Vagabond law revived.

1664-5, 15 March. Death of John Endicott. Bellingham governor.
Commissioners interfere on behalf of Quakers in May. The persecution
subsides.

1672, 3 Nov. Persecution revived by passage of law punishing persons found
at Quaker meeting by fine or imprisonment and flogging. Also fining
constables for neglect in making arrests and giving one third the fine to
informers. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 60.]

1677, Aug. 9. Margaret Brewster whipped for entering the Old South in
sackcloth.


TURBULENT QUAKERS.


1656, Mary Prince.        1662, Deborah Wilson.
1658, Sarah Gibbons.      1663, Thomas Newhouse.
  "   Dorothy Waugh.        "   Edward Wharton.
1660, John Smith.         1664, Hannah Wright. [Footnote: Uncertain.]
1661, Katherine Chatham.    "   Mary Tomkins.
  "   George Wilson.      1665, Lydia Wardwell.
1662, Elizabeth Hooton.   1677, Margaret Brewster.

"It was in the month called July, of this present year [1656] when Mary
Fisher and Ann Austin arrived in the road before Boston, before ever a law
was made there against the Quakers; and yet they were very ill treated;
for before they came ashore, the deputy governor, Richard Bellingham (the
governor himself being out of town) sent officers aboard, who searched
their trunks and chests, and took away the books they found there, which
were about one hundred, and carried them ashore, after having commanded
the said women to be kept prisoners aboard; and the said books were, by an
order of the council, burnt in the market-place by the hangman.... And
then they were shut up close prisoners, and command was given that none
should come to them without leave; a fine of five pounds being laid on any
that should otherwise come at, or speak with them, tho' but at the window.
Their pens, ink, and paper were taken from them, and they not suffered to
have any candle-light in the night season; nay, what is more, they were
stript naked, under pretence to know whether they were witches [a true
touch of sacerdotal malignity] tho' in searching no token was found upon
them but of innocence. And in this search they were so barbarously misused
that modesty forbids to mention it: And that none might have communication
with them a board was nailed up before the window of the jail. And seeing
they were not provided with victuals, Nicholas Upshal, one who had lived
long in Boston, and was a member of the church there, was so concerned
about it, (liberty being denied to send them provision) that he purchased
it of the jailor at the rate of five shillings a week, lest they should
have starved. And after having been about five weeks prisoners, William
Chichester, master of a vessel, was bound in one hundred pound bond to
carry them back, and not suffer any to speak with them, after they were
put on board; and the jailor kept their beds ... and their Bible, for his
fees." [Footnote: Sewel, p. 160.]

Endicott was much dissatisfied with the forbearance of Bellingham, and
declared that had he "been there ... he would have had them well whipp'd."
[Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 10.] No exertion was spared,
nevertheless, to get some hold upon them, the elders examining them as to
matters of faith, with a view to ensnare them as heretics. In this,
however, they were foiled.

On the authority of Hutchinson, Dr. Dexter [Footnote: _As to Roger
Williams_, p. 127.] and r. Palfrey complain [Footnote: Palfrey, ii.
464.] that Mary Prince reviled two of the ministers, who "with much
moderation and tenderness endeavored to convince her of her errors."
[Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ i. 181.] A visitation of the clergy was a
form of torment from which even the boldest recoiled; Vane, Gorton,
Childe, and Anne Hutchinson quailed under it, and though the Quakers
abundantly proved that they could bear stripes with patience, they could
not endure this. She called them "Baal's priests, the seed of the
serpent." Dr. Ellis also speaks of "stinging objurgations screamed out ...
from between the bars of their prisons." [Footnote: _Mem. Hist. of
Boston_, i. 182.] He cites no cases, but he probably refers to the same
woman who called to Endicott one Sunday on his way from church: "Woe unto
thee, thou art an oppressor." [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ i. 181.] If
she said so she spoke the truth, for she was illegally imprisoned, was
deprived of her property, and subjected to great hardship.

In October, 1656, the first of the repressive acts was passed, by which
the "cursed" and "blasphemous" intruders were condemned to be "comitted to
the house of correction, and at theire entrance to be seuerely whipt and
by the master thereof to be kept constantly to worke, and none suffered to
converse or speak with them;" [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 1,
p. 278.] and any captain knowingly bringing them within the jurisdiction
to be fined one hundred pounds, with imprisonment till payment.

"When this law was published at the door of the aforenamed Nicholas
Upshall, the good old man, grieved in spirit, publickly testified against
it; for which he was the next morning sent for to the General Court, where
he told them that: 'The execution of that law would be a forerunner of a
judgment upon their country, and therefore in love and tenderness which he
bare to the people and place, desired them to take heed, lest they were
found fighters against God.' For this, he, though one of their church-
members, and of a blameless conversation, was fined £20 and £3 more for
not coming to church, whence the sense of their wickedness had induced him
to absent himself. They also banished him out of their jurisdiction,
allowing him but one month for his departure, though in the winter season,
and he a weakly ancient man: Endicott the governor, when applied to on his
behalf for a mitigation of his fine, churlishly answered, 'I will not bate
him a groat.'" [Footnote: Besse, ii. 181.]

Although, after the autumn of 1656, whippings, fines, and banishments
became frequent, no case of misconduct is alleged until the 13th of the
second month, 1658, when Sarah Gibbons and Dorothy Waugh broke two bottles
in Mr. Norton's church, after lecture, to testify to his emptiness;
[Footnote: This charge is unproved.] both had previously been imprisoned
and banished, but the ferocity with which Norton at that moment was
forcing on the persecution was the probable incentive to the trespass.
"They were sent to the house of correction, where, after being kept three
days without any food, they were cruelly whipt, and kept three days longer
without victuals, though they had offered to buy some, but were not
suffered." [Footnote: Besse, ii. 184.]

In 1661 Katharine Chatham walked through Boston, in sackcloth. This was
during the trial of Christison for his life, when the terror culminated,
and hardly needs comment.

George Wilson is charged with having "rushed through the streets of
Boston, shouting: 'The Lord is coming with fire and sword!'" [Footnote:
_As to Roger Williams_, p. 133.] The facts appear to be these: in 1661,
just before Christison's trial, he was arrested, without any apparent
reason, and, as he was led to prison, he cried, that the Lord was coming
with fire and sword to plead with Boston. [Footnote: _New England Judged_,
ed. 1703, p. 351.] At the general jail delivery [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._
vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 19. Order passed 28 May, 1661.] in anticipation of the
king's order, he was liberated, but soon rearrested, "sentenced to be tied
to the cart's tail," and flogged with so severe a whip that the Quakers
wanted to buy it "to send to England for the novelty of the cruelty, but
that was not permitted." [Footnote: Besse, ii. 224.]

Elizabeth Hooton coming from England in 1661, with Joan Brooksup, "they
were soon clapt up in prison, and, upon their discharge thence, being
driven with the rest two days' journey into the vast, howling wilderness,
and there left ... without necessary provisions." [Footnote: Besse, ii.
228, 229.] They escaped to Barbadoes. "Upon their coming again to Boston,
they were presently apprehended by a constable, an ignorant and furious
zealot, who declared, 'It was his delight, and he could rejoice in
following the Quakers to their execution as much as ever.'" Wishing to
return once more, she obtained a license from the king to buy a house in
any plantation. Though about sixty, she was seized at Dover, where the
Rev. Mr. Rayner was settled, put into the stocks, and imprisoned four days
in the dead of winter, where she nearly perished from cold. [Footnote:
Besse, ii. 229.] Afterward, at Cambridge, she exhorted the people to
repentance in the streets, [Footnote: "Repentance! Repentance! A day of
howling and sad lamentation is coming upon you all from the Lord."] and
for this crime, which is cited as an outrage to Puritan decorum,
[Footnote: _As to Roger Williams_, p. 133.] she was once more apprehended
and "imprisoned in a close, stinking dungeon, where there was nothing
either to lie down or sit on, where she was kept two days and two nights
without bread or water," and then sentenced to be whipped through three
towns. "At Cambridge she was tied to the whipping-post, and lashed with
ten stripes with a three-stringed whip, with three knots at the end: At
Watertown she was laid on with ten stripes more with rods of willow: At
Dedham, in a cold frosty morning, they tortured her aged body with ten
stripes more at a cart's tail." The peculiar atrocity of flogging from
town to town lay in this: that the victim's wounds became cold between the
times of punishment, and in winter sometimes frozen, which made the
torture intolerably agonizing. Then, as hanging was impossible, other
means were tried to make an end of her: "Thus miserably torn and beaten,
they carried her a weary journey on horseback many miles into the
wilderness, and toward night left her there among wolves, bears, and other
wild beasts, who, though they did sometimes seize on living persons, were
yet to her less cruel than the savage-professors of that country. When
those who conveyed her thither left her, they said, 'They thought they
should never see her more.'" [Footnote: Besse, ii. 229. See _New England
Judged_, p. 413.]

The intent to kill is obvious, and yet Elizabeth Hooton suffered less than
many of those convicted and sentenced after public indignation had forced
the theocracy to adopt what their reverend successors are pleased to call
the "humaner policy" of the Vagabond Act. [Footnote: _As to Roger
Williams_, p. 134.]

Any want of deference to a clergyman is sure to be given a prominent place
in the annals of Massachusetts; and, accordingly, the breaking of bottles
in church, which happened twice in twenty-one years, is never omitted.

In 1663 "John Liddal, and Thomas Newhouse, having been at meeting" (at
Salem), "were apprehended and ... sentenced to be whipt through three
towns as vagabonds," which was accordingly done.

"Not long after this, the aforesaid Thomas Newhouse was again whipt
through the jurisdiction of Boston for testifying against the persecutors
in their meeting-house there; at which time he, in a prophetick manner,
having two glass bottles in his hands, threw them down, saying, 'so shall
you be dashed in pieces.'" [Footnote: Besse, ii. 232.]

The next turbulent Quaker is mentioned in this way by Dr. Dexter: "Edward
Wharton was 'pressed in spirit' to repair to Dover and proclaim 'Wo,
vengeance, and the indignation of the Lord' upon the court in session
there." [Footnote: _As to Roger Williams_, p. 133.] This happened in
the summer of 1663, and long ere then he had seen and suffered the
oppression that makes men mad. He was a peaceable and industrious
inhabitant of Salem; in 1659 he had seen Robinson and Stevenson done to
death, and, being deeply moved, he said, "the guilt of [their] blood was
so great that he could not bear it;" [Footnote: Besse, ii. 205.] he was
taken from his home, given twenty lashes and fined twenty pounds; the next
year, just at the time of Christison's trial, he was again seized, led
through the country like a notorious offender, and thrown into prison,
"where he was kept close, night and day, with William Leddra, sometimes in
a very little room, little bigger than a saw-pit, having no liberty
granted them."

"Being brought before their court, he again asked, 'What is the cause, and
wherefore have I been fetcht from my habitation, where I was following my
honest calling, and here laid up as an evil-doer?' They told him, that
'his hair was too long, and that he had disobeyed that commandment which
saith, Honour thy father and mother.' He asked, 'Wherein?' 'In that you
will not,' said they, 'put off your hat to magistrates.' Edward replied,
'I love and own all magistrates and rulers, who are for the punishment of
evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well.'" [Footnote: Besse,
ii. 220.]

Then Rawson pronounced the sentence: "You are upon pain of death to depart
this jurisdiction, it being the 11th of this instant March, by the one and
twentieth of the same, on the pain of death.... 'Nay [said Wharton], I
shall not go away; therefore be careful what you do.'" [Footnote: Besse,
ii. 221.]

And he did not go, but was with Leddra when he died upon the tree. On the
day Leddra suffered, Christison was brought before Endicott, and commanded
to renounce his religion; but he answered: "Nay, I shall not change my
religion, nor seek to save my life; ... but if I lose my life for Christ's
sake and the preaching of the gospel, I shall save it." They then sent him
back to prison to await his doom. At the next court he was brought to the
bar, where he demanded an appeal to England; but in the midst a letter was
brought in from Wharton, signifying, "That whereas they had banished him
on pain of death, yet he was at home in his own house at Salem, and
therefore proposing, 'That they would take off their wicked sentence from
him, that he might go about his occasions out of their jurisdiction.'"
[Footnote: Besse, ii. 222, 223.]

Endicott was exasperated to frenzy, for he felt the ground crumbling
beneath him; he put the fate of Christison to the vote, and failed to
carry a condemnation. "The governor seeing this division, said, 'I could
find it in my heart to go home;' being in such a rage, that he flung
something furiously on the table. ...Then the governor put the court to
vote again; but this was done confusedly, which so incensed the governor
that he stood up and said, 'You that will not consent record it: I thank
God I am not afraid to give judgment...Wenlock Christison, hearken to your
sentence: You must return unto the place from whence you came, and from
thence to the place of execution, and there you must be hang'd until you
are dead, dead, dead.'" [Footnote: Sewel, p. 279.] Thereafter Wharton
invoked the wrath of God against the theocracy.

To none of the enormities committed, during these years are the divines
more keenly alive than to the crime of disturbing what they call "public
Sabbath worship;" [Footnote: _As to Roger Williams_, p. 139.] and since
their language conveys the impression that such acts were not only very
common, but also unprovoked, whereas the truth is that they were rare, it
cannot fail to be instructive to relate the causes which led to the
interruption of the ordination of that Mr. Higginson, who called the
"inner light" "a stinking vapour from hell." [Footnote: Ordained July 8,
1660. _Annals of Salem_.]

John and Margaret Smith were members of the Salem church, and John was a
freeman. In 1658, Margaret became a Quaker, and though in feeble health,
she was cast into prison, and endured the extremities of privation; her
sufferings and her patience so wrought upon her husband that he too became
a convert, and a few weeks before the ceremony wrote to Endicott:

"O governour, governour, do not think that my love to my wife is at all
abated, because I sit still silent, and do not seek her ... freedom, which
if I did would not avail.... Upon examination of her, there being nothing
justly laid to her charge, yet to fulfil your wills, it was determined,
that she must have ten stripes in the open market place, it being very
cold, the snow lying by the walls, and the wind blowing cold.... My love
is much more increased to her, because I see your cruelty so much enlarged
to her." [Footnote: Besse, ii. 208, 209.]

Yet, though laboring under such intense excitement, the only act of
insubordination wherewith this man is charged was saying in a loud voice
during the service, "What you are going about to set up, our God is
pulling down." [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ i. 187.]

Dr. Dexter also speaks with pathos of the youth of some of the criminals.

"Hannah Wright, a mere girl of less than fifteen summers, toiled ... from
Oyster Bay ... to Boston, that she might pipe in the ears of the court 'a
warning in the name of the Lord.'" [Footnote: _As to Roger Williams,_ p.
133.] This appears to have happened in 1664, [Footnote: Besse, ii. 234.
_New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 461.] yet the name of Hannah Wright is
recorded among those who were released in the general jail delivery in
1661, [Footnote: Besse, ii. 224.] when she was only twelve; and her sister
had been banished. [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 461.]

But of all the scandals which have been dwelt on for two centuries with
such unction, none have been made more notorious than certain
extravagances committed by three women; and regarding them, the reasoning
of Dr. Dexter should be read in full.

"The Quaker of the seventeenth century ... was essentially a coarse,
blustering, conceited, disagreeable, impudent fanatic; whose religion
gained subjective comfort in exact proportion to the objective comfort of
which it was able to deprive others; and which broke out into its choicest
exhibitions in acts which were not only at that time in the nature of a
public scandal and nuisance, but which even in the brightest light of this
nineteenth century ... would subject those who should be guilty of them to
the immediate and stringent attention of the police court. The disturbance
of public Sabbath worship, and the indecent exposure of the person--
whether conscience be pleaded for them or not--are punished, and rightly
punished, as crimes by every civilized government." [Footnote: _As to
Roger Williams_, pp. 138, 139.]

This paragraph undoubtedly refers to Mary Tomkins, who "on the First Day
of the week at Oyster River, broke up the service of God's house ... the
scene ending in deplorable confusion;" [Footnote: _As to Roger Williams_,
p. 133.] and to Lydia Wardwell and Deborah Wilson, who appeared in public
naked.

Mary Tomkins and Alice Ambrose came to Massachusetts in 1662; landing at
Dover, they began preaching at the inn, to which a number of people
resorted. Mr. Rayner, hearing the news, hurried to the spot, and in much
irritation asked them what they were doing there? This led to an argument
about the Trinity, and the authority of ministers, and at last the
clergyman "in a rage flung away, calling to his people, at the window, to
go from amongst them." [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 362.]
Nothing was done at the moment, but toward winter the two came back from
Maine, whither they had gone, and then Mr. Rayner saw his opportunity. He
caused Richard Walden to prosecute them, and as the magistrate was
ignorant of the technicalities of the law, the elder acted as clerk, and
drew up for him the following warrant:--

       *       *       *       *       *

To the Constables of Dover, Hampton, Salisbury, Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich,
Wenham, Linn, Boston, Roxbury, Dedham, and until these vagabond Quakers
are carried out of this jurisdiction. You and every of you are required,
in the King's Majesty's name, to take these vagabond Quakers, Anne
Coleman, Mary Tomkins and Alice Ambrose, and make them fast to the cart's
tail, and driving the cart through your several towns, to whip them on
their backs, not exceeding ten stripes apiece on each of them in each
town, and so to convey them from constable to constable, till they come
out of this jurisdiction, as you will answer it at your peril: and this
shall be your warrant.

Per me                    RICHARD WALDEN.
At Dover, dated December the 22d, 1662. [Footnote: Besse, ii. 227.]

       *       *       *       *       *

The Rev. John Rayner pronounced judgment of death by flogging, for the
weather was bitter, the distance to be walked was eighty miles, and the
lashes were given with a whip, whose three twisted, knotted thongs cut to
the bone.

"So, in a very cold day, your deputy, Walden, caused these women to be
stripp'd naked from the middle upward, and tyed to a cart, and after a
while cruelly whipp'd them, whilst the priest stood and looked, and
laughed at it.... They went with the executioner to Hampton, and through
dirt and snow at Salisbury, half way the leg deep, the constable forced
them after the cart's tayl at which he whipp'd them." [Footnote: _New
England Judged_, pp. 366, 367.]

Had the Reverend John Rayner but followed the cart, to see that his three
hundred and thirty lashes were all given with the same ferocity which
warmed his heart to mirth at Dover, before his journey's end he would
certainly have joyed in giving thanks to God over the women's gory
corpses, freezing amid the snow. His negligence saved their lives, for
when the ghastly pilgrims passed through Salisbury, the people to their
eternal honor set the captives free.

Soon after, on Sunday,--"Whilst Alice Ambrose was at prayer, two
constables ... came ... and taking her ... dragged her out of doors, and
then with her face toward the snow, which was knee deep, over stumps and
old trees near a mile; when they had wearied themselves they ... left the
prisoner in an house ... and fetched Mary Tomkins, whom in like manner
they dragged with her face toward the snow....On the next morning, which
was excessive cold, they got a canoe ... and so carried them to the
harbour's mouth, threatning, that 'They would now so do with them, as that
they would be troubled with them no more.' The women being unwilling to
go, they forced them down a very steep place in the snow, dragging Mary
Tomkins over the stumps of trees to the water side, so that she was much
bruised, and fainted under their hands: They plucked Alice Ambrose into
the water, and kept her swimming by the canoe in great danger of drowning,
or being frozen to death. They would in all probability have proceeded in
their wicked purpose to the murthering of those three women, had they not
been prevented by a sudden storm, which drove them back to the house
again. They kept the women there till near midnight, and then cruelly
turned them out of doors in the frost and snow, Alice Ambrose's clothes
being frozen hard as boards.... It was observable that those constables,
though wicked enough of themselves, were animated by a ruling elder of
their church, whose name corresponded not with his actions, for he was
called Hate-evil Nutter, he put those men forward, and by his presence
encouraged them." [Footnote: Besse, ii. 228.]

Subsequently, Mary Tomkins committed the breach of the peace complained
of, which was an interruption of a sermon against Quaker preaching.
[Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 386.]

Deborah Wilson, one of the women who went abroad naked, was insane, the
fact appearing of record subsequently as the judgment of the court. She
was flogged. [Footnote: _Quaker Invasion_, p. 104.]

Lydia Wardwell was the daughter of Isaac Perkins, a freeman. She married
Eliakim Wardwell, son of Thomas Wardwell, who was also a citizen. They
became Quakers; and the story begins when the poor young woman had been a
wife just three years. "At Hampton, Priest Seaborn Cotton, understanding
that one Eliakim Wardel had entertained Wenlock Christison, went with some
of his herd to Eliakim's house, having like a sturdy herdsman put himself
at the head of his followers, with a truncheon in his hand." Eliakim was
fined for harboring Christison, and "a pretty beast for the saddle, worth
about fourteen pound, was taken ... the overplus of [Footnote: Sewel, p.
340.] which to make up to him, your officers plundred old William Marston
of a vessel of green ginger, which for some fine was taken from him, and
forc'd it into Eliakim's house, where he let it lie and touched it not;
... and notwithstanding he came not to your invented worship, but was
fined ten shillings a day's absence, for him and his wife, yet was he
often rated for priest's hire; and the priest (Seaborn Cotton, old John
Cotton's son) to obtain his end and to cover himself, sold his rate to a
man almost as bad as himself, ... who coming in pretence of borrowing a
little corn for himself, which the harmless honest man willingly lent him;
and he finding thereby that he had corn, which was his design, Judas-like,
he went ... and measured it away as he pleased."

"Another time, the said Eliakim being rated to the said priest, Seaborn
Cotton, the said Seaborn having a mind to a pied heifer Eliakim had, as
Ahab had to Naboth's vineyard, sent his servant nigh two miles to fetch
her; who having robb'd Eliakim of her, brought her to his master."...

"Again the said Eliakim was had to your court, and being by them fined,
they took almost all his marsh and meadow-ground from him to satisfie it,
which was for the keeping his cattle alive in winter ... and [so] seized
and took his estate, that they plucked from him most of that he had."
[Footnote: _New England Judged,_ ed. 1703, pp. 374-376.] Lydia Wardwell,
thus reduced to penury, and shaken by the daily scenes of unutterable
horror through which she had to pass, was totally unequal to endure the
strain under which the masculine intellect of Anne Hutchinson had reeled.
She was pursued by her pastor, who repeatedly commanded her to come to
church and explain her absence from communion. [Footnote: Besse, ii. 235.]
The miserable creature, brooding over her blighted life and the torments
of her friends, became possessed with the delusion that it was her duty to
testify against the barbarity of flogging naked women; so she herself went
in among them naked for a sign. There could be no clearer proof of
insanity, for it is admitted that in every other respect her conduct was
exemplary.

Her judges at Ipswich had her bound to a rough post of the tavern, in
which they sat, and then, while the splinters tore her bare breasts, they
had her flesh cut from her back with the lash. [Footnote: _New England
Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 377.]

"Thus they served the wife, and the husband escaped not free; ... he
taxing Simon Broadstreet,  ... for upbraiding his wife ... and telling
Simon of his malitious reproaching of his wife who was an honest woman ...
and of that report that went abroad of the known dishonesty of Simon's
daughter, Seaborn Cotton's wife; Simon in a fierce rage, told the court,
'That if such fellows should be suffered to speak so in the court, he
would sit there no more:' So to please Simon, Eliakim was sentenc'd to be
stripp'd from his waste upward, and to be bound to an oak-tree that stood
by their worship-house, and to be whipped fifteen lashes; ... as they were
having him out ... he called to Seaborn Cotton ... to come and see the
work done (so far was he from being daunted by their cruelty), who hastned
out and followed him thither, and so did old Wiggins, one of the
magistrates, who when Eliakim was tyed to the tree and stripp'd, said ...
to the whipper... 'Whip him a good;' which the executioner cruelly
performed with cords near as big as a man's little finger;... Priest
Cotton standing near him ... Eliakim ... when he was loosed from the tree,
said to him, amongst the people, 'Seaborn, hath my py'd heifer calv'd
yet?' Which Seaborn, the priest, hearing stole away like a thief."
[Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, pp. 377-379.]

As Margaret Brewster was the last who is known to have been whipped, so is
she one of the most famous, for she has been immortalized by Samuel
Sewall, an honest, though a dull man.

"July 8, 1677. New Meeting House Mane: In sermon time there came in a
female Quaker, in a canvas frock, her hair disshevelled and loose like a
Periwigg, her face as black as ink, led by two other Quakers, and two
other followed. It occasioned the greatest and most amazing uproar that I
ever saw. Isaiah 1. 12, 14." [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Coll._ fifth series,
v. 43.]

In 1675 the persecution had been revived, and the stories the woman heard
of the cruelties that were perpetrated on those of her own faith inspired
her with the craving to go to New England to protest against the wrong; so
she journeyed thither, and entered the Old South one Sunday morning
clothed in sackcloth, with ashes on her head.

At her trial she asked for leave to speak: "Governour, I desire thee to
hear me a little, for I have something to say in behalf of my friends in
this place: ... Oh governour! I cannot but press thee again and again, to
put an end to these cruel laws that you have made to fetch my friends from
their peaceable meetings, and keep them three days in the house of
correction, and then whip them for worshipping the true and living God:
Governour! Let me entreat thee to put an end to these laws, for the desire
of my soul is, that you may act for God, and then would you prosper, but
if you act against the Lord and his blessed truth, you will assuredly come
to nothing, the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." ...

"Margaret Brewster, You are to have your clothes stript off to the middle,
and to be tied to a cart's tail at the South Meeting House, and to be
drawn through the town, and to receive twenty stripes upon your naked
body."

"The will of the Lord be done: I am contented." ...

_Governour._ "Take her away." [Footnote: Besse, ii. 263, 264.]

So ends the sacerdotal list of Quaker outrages, for, after Margaret
Brewster had expiated her crime of protesting against the repression of
free thought, there came a toleration, and with toleration a deep
tranquillity, so that the very name of Quaker has become synonymous with
quietude. The issue between them and the Congregationalists must be left
to be decided upon the legal question of their right as English subjects
to inhabit Massachusetts; and secondarily upon the opinion which shall be
formed of their conduct as citizens, upon the testimony of those witnesses
whom the church herself has called. But regarding the great fundamental
struggle for liberty of individual opinion, no presentation of the
evidence could be historically correct which did not include at least one
example of the fate that awaited peaceful families, under this
ecclesiastical government, who roused the ire of the priests.

Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick were an aged couple, members of the Salem
church, and Lawrence was a freeman. Josiah, their eldest son, was a man;
but they had beside a younger boy and girl named Daniel and Provided.

The father and mother were first arrested in 1657 for harboring two
Quakers; Lawrence was soon released, but a Quaker tract was found upon
Cassandra. [Footnote: Besse, ii. 183.] Although no attempt seems to have
been made to prove heresy to bring the case within the letter of the law,
the paper was treated as a heretical writing, and she was imprisoned for
seven weeks and fined forty shillings.

Persecution made converts fast, and in Salem particularly a number
withdrew from the church and began to worship by themselves. All were soon
arrested, and the three Southwicks were again sent to Boston, this time to
serve as an example. They arrived on the 3d of February, 1657; without
form of trial they were whipped in the extreme cold weather and imprisoned
eleven days. Their cattle were also seized and sold to pay a fine of £4
l3s. for six weeks' absence from worship on the Lord's day.

The next summer, Leddra, who was afterwards hanged, and William Brend went
to Salem, and several persons were seized for meeting with them, among
whom were the Southwicks. A room was prepared for the criminals in the
Boston prison by boarding up the windows and stopping ventilation.
[Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 64.] They were refused
food unless they worked to pay for it; but to work when wrongfully
confined was against the Quaker's conscience, so they did not eat for five
days. On the second day of fasting they were flogged, and then, with
wounds undressed, the men and women together were once more locked in the
dark, close room, to lie upon the bare boards, in the stifling July heat;
for they were not given beds. On the fourth day they were told they might
go if they would pay the jail fees and the constables; but they refused,
and so were kept in prison. On the morrow the jailer, thinking to bring
them to terms, put Brend in irons, neck and heels, and he lay without food
for sixteen hours upon his back lacerated with flogging.

The next day the miserable man was ordered to work, but he lacked the
strength, had he been willing, for he was weak from starvation and pain,
and stiffened by the irons. And now the climax came. The jailer seized a
tarred rope and beat him till it broke; then, foaming with fury, he
dragged the old man down stairs, and, with a new rope, gave him ninety-
seven blows, when his strength failed; and Brend, his flesh black and
beaten to jelly, and his bruised skin hanging in bags full of clotted
blood, was thrust into his cell. There, upon the floor of that dark and
fetid den, the victim fainted. But help was at hand; an outcry was raised,
the people could bear no more, the doors were opened, and he was rescued.
[Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 66.]

The indignation was deep, and the government was afraid. Endicott sent his
own doctor, but the surgeon said that Brend's flesh would "rot from off
his bones," and he must die. And now the mob grew fierce and demanded
justice on the ruffian who had done this deed, and the magistrates nailed
a paper on the church door promising to bring him to trial.

Then it was that the true spirit of his order blazed forth in Norton, for
the jailer was fashioned in his own image, and he threw over him the
mantle of the holy church. He made the magistrates take the paper down,
rebuking them for their faintness of heart, saying to them:--

William "Brend endeavoured to beat our gospel ordinances black and blue,
if he then be beaten black and blue, it is but just upon him, and I will
appear in his behalf that did so." [Footnote: Besse, ii. 186.] And the man
was justified, and commanded to whip "the Quakers in prison ... twice a
week, if they refused to work, and the first time to add five stripes to
the former ten, and each time to add three to them.... Which order ye sent
to the jaylor, to strengthen his hands to do yet more cruelly; being
somewhat weakened by the fright of his former doings." [Footnote: _New
England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 67.]

After this the Southwicks, being still unable to obtain their freedom,
sent the following letter to the magistrates, which is a good example of
the writings of these "coarse, blustering, ... impudent fanatics:"--
[Footnote: _As to Roger Williams_, p. 138.]

       *       *       *       *       *

_This to the Magistrates at Court in Salem._

FRIENDS,

Whereas it was your pleasures to commit us, whose names are under-written,
to the house of correction in Boston, altho' the Lord, the righteous Judge
of heaven and earth, is our witness, that we had done nothing worthy of
stripes or of bonds; and we being committed by your court, to be dealt
withal as the law provides for foreign Quakers, as ye please to term us;
and having some of us, suffered your law and pleasures, now that which we
do expect, is, that whereas we have suffered your law, so now to be set
free by the same law, as your manner is with strangers, and not to put us
in upon the account of one law, and execute another law upon us, of which,
according to your own manner, we were never convicted as the law
expresses. If you had sent us upon the account of your new law, we should
have expected the jaylor's order to have been on that account, which that
it was not, appears by the warrant which we have, and the punishment which
we bare, as four of us were whipp'd, among whom was one that had formerly
been whipp'd, so now also according to your former law. Friends, let it
not be a small thing in your eyes, the exposing as much as in you lies,
our families to ruine. It's not unknown to you the season, and the time of
the year, for those that live of husbandry, and what their cattle and
families may be exposed unto; and also such as live on trade; we know if
the spirit of Christ did dwell and rule in you, these things would take
impression on your spirits. What our lives and conversations have been in
that place, is well known; and what we now suffer for, is much for false
reports, and ungrounded jealousies of heresie and sedition. These thing
lie upon us to lay before you. As for our parts, we have true peace and
rest in the Lord in all our sufferings, and are made willing in the power
and strength of God, freely to offer up our lives in this cause of God,
for which we suffer; Yea and we do find (through grace) the enlargements
of God in our imprisoned state, to whom alone we commit ourselves and
families, for the disposing of us according to his infinite wisdom and
pleasure, in whose love is our rest and life.

From the House of Bondage in Boston wherein we are made captives by the
wills of men, although made free by the Son, John 8, 36. In which we
quietly rest, this 16th of the 5th month, 1658.

LAWRENCE  |
CASSANDRA | SOUTHWICK
JOSIAH    |
SAMUEL SHATTOCK
JOSHUA BUFFUM. [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 74.]

       *       *       *       *       *

What the prisoners apprehended was being kept in prison and punished under
an _ex post facto_ law, and this was precisely what was done. When
brought into court they demanded to be told the crime wherewith they were
charged. They were answered: "It was 'Entertaining the Quakers who were
their enemies; not coming to their meetings; and meeting by themselves.'
They adjoyned, 'That as to those things they had already fastned their law
upon them.' ... So ye had nothing left but the hat, for which (then) ye
had no law. They answered--that they intended no offence to ye in coming
thither ... for it was not their manner to have to do with courts. And as
for withdrawing from their meetings, or keeping on their hats, or doing
anything in contempt of them, or their laws, they said, the Lord was their
witness ... that they did it not. So ye rose up, and bid the jaylor take
them away." [Footnote: _New England Judged,_ ed. 1703, p. 85.]

An acquittal seemed certain; yet it was intolerable to the clergy that
these accursed blasphemers should elude them when they held them in their
grasp; wherefore, the next day, the Rev. Charles Chauncy, preaching at
Thursday lecture, thus taught Christ's love for men: "Suppose ye should
catch six wolves in a trap ... [there were six Salem Quakers] and ye
cannot prove that they killed either sheep or lambs; and now ye have them
they will neither bark nor bite: yet they have the plain marks of wolves.
Now I leave it to your consideration whether ye will let them go alive,
yea or nay." [Footnote: _Idem_, pp. 85, 86.]

Then the divines had a consultation, "and your priests were put to it, how
to prove them as your law had said: and ye had them before you again, and
your priests were with you, every one by his side (so came ye to your
court) and John Norton must ask them questions, on purpose to ensnare
them, that by your standing law for hereticks, ye might condemn them (as
your priests before consulted) and when this would not do (for the Lord
was with them, and made them wiser than your teachers) ye made a law to
banish them, upon pain of death...." [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 87.]

After a violent struggle, the ministers, under Norton's lead, succeeded,
on the 19th of October, 1658, in forcing the capital act through the
legislature, which contained a clause making the denial of reverence to
superiors, or in other words, the wearing the hat, evidence of Quakerism.
[Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, pp. 100, 101; _Mass. Rec._ vol.
iv. pt. 1, p. 346.]

On that very day the bench ordered the prisoners at Ipswich to be brought
to the bar, and the Southwicks were bidden to depart before the spring
elections. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 349.] They did
not go, and in May were once more in the felon's dock. They asked what
wrong they had done. The judges told them they were rebellious for not
going as they had been commanded. The old man and woman piteously pleaded
"that they had no otherwhere to go," nor had they done anything to deserve
banishment or death, though £100 (all they had in the world) had been
taken from them for meeting together. [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed.
1703, p. 106.]

"Major-General Dennison replied, that 'they stood against the authority of
the country, in not submitting to their laws: that he should not go about
to speak much concerning the error of their judgments: but,' added he,
'you and we are not able well to live together, and at present the power
is in our hand, and therefore the stronger must send off.'" [Footnote:
Besse, ii. 198.]

The father, mother, and son were banished under pain of death. The aged
couple were sent to Shelter Island, but their misery was well-nigh done;
they perished within a few days of each other, tortured to death by
flogging and starvation.

Josiah was shipped to England, but afterward returned, was seized, and in
the "seventh month, 1661, you had him before you, and at which according
to your former law, he should have been tried for his life."

"But the great occasion you took against him, was his hat, which you
commanded him to pull off: 'He told your governour he could not.' You
said, 'He would not.' He told you, 'It was a cross to his will to keep it
on; ... and that he could not do it for conscience sake.' ... But your
governour told him, 'That he was to have been tryed for his life, but that
you had made your late law to save his life, which, you said, was mercy to
him.' Then he asked you, 'Whether you were not as good to take his life
now, as to whip him after your manner, twelve or fourteen times at the
cart's tail, through your towns, and then put him to death afterward?'" He
was condemned to be flogged through Boston, Roxbury, and Dedham; but he,
when he heard the judgment, "with arms stretched out, and hands spread
before you, said, 'Here is my body, if you want a further testimony of the
truth I profess, take it and tear it in pieces ... it is freely given up,
and as for your sentence I matter it not.'" [Footnote: _New England
Judged_, ed. 1703, pp. 354-356.]

This coarse, blustering, impudent fanatic had, indeed, "with a dogged
pertinacity persisted in outrages which "had driven" the authorities
almost to frenzy; "therefore they tied him to a cart and lashed him for
fifteen miles, and while he "sang to the praise of God," his tormentor
swung with all his might a tremendous two-handed whip, whose knotted
thongs were made of twisted cat-gut; [Footnote: _New England Judged_,
ed. 1703, p. 357, note.] thence he was carried fifteen miles from any
town into the wilderness." [Footnote: Besse, ii. 225.]

An end had been made of the grown members of the family, but the two
children were still left. To reach them, the device was conceived of
enforcing the penalty for not attending church, since "it was well known
they had no estate, their parents being already brought to poverty by
their rapacious persecutors." [Footnote: Sewel, p. 223.]

Accordingly, they were summoned and asked to account for their absence
from worship. Daniel answered "that if they had not so persecuted his
father and mother perhaps he might have come." [Footnote: _New England
Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 381.] They were fined; and on the day on which
they lost their parents forever, the sale as slaves of this helpless boy
and girl was authorized to satisfy the debt. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._
vol. iv. pt. 1, p. 366.]

Edmund Batter, treasurer of Salem, brought the children to the town, and
went to a shipmaster who was about to sail, to engage a passage to
Barbadoes. The captain made the excuse that they would corrupt his ship's
company. "Oh, no," said Batter, "you need not fear that, for they are poor
harmless creatures, and will not hurt any body." ... "Will they not so?"
broke out the sailor, "and will ye offer to make slaves of so harmless
creatures?" [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 112.]

Thus were free-born English subjects and citizens of Massachusetts dealt
with by the priesthood that ruled the Puritan Commonwealth.

None but ecclesiastical partisans can doubt the bearing of such evidence.
It was the mortal struggle between conservatism and liberality, between
repression and free thought. The elders felt it in the marrow of their
bones, and so declared it in their laws, denouncing banishment under pain
of death against those "adhering to or approoving of any knoune Quaker, or
the tenetts & practices of the Quakers, ... manifesting thereby theire
compliance with those whose designe it is to ouerthrow the order
established in church and commonwealth." [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv.
pt. 1, p. 346.]

Dennison spoke with an unerring instinct when he said they could not live
together, for the faith of the Friends was subversive of a theocracy.
Their belief that God revealed himself directly to man led with logical
certainty to the substitution of individual judgment for the rules of
conduct dictated by a sacred class, whether they claimed to derive their
authority from their skill in interpreting the Scriptures, or from
traditions preserved by Apostolic Succession. Each man, therefore, became,
as it were, a priest unto himself, and they repudiated an ordained
ministry. Hence, their crime resembled that of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat,
who "made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the sons
of Levi;" [Footnote: Jeroboam's sin is discussed in _Ne Sutor_, p.
25; _Divine Right of Infant Baptism_, p. 26.] and it was for this
reason that John Norton and John Endicott resolved upon their
extermination, even as Elisha and Jehu conspired to exterminate the house
of Ahab.

That they failed was due to no mercy for their victims, nor remorse for
the blood they made to flow, but to their inability to control the people.
Nothing is plainer upon the evidence, than that popular sympathy was never
with the ecclesiastics in their ferocious policy; and nowhere does the
contrast of feeling shine out more clearly than in the story of the
hanging of Robinson and Stevenson.

The figure of Norton towers above his contemporaries. He held the
administration in the hollow of his hand, for Endicott was his mouthpiece;
yet even he, backed by the whole power of the clergy, barely succeeded in
forcing through the Chamber of Deputies the statute inflicting death.

"The priests and rulers were all for blood, and they pursued it.... This
the deputies withstood, and it could not pass, and the opposition grew
strong, for the thing came near. Deacon Wozel was a man much affected
therewith; and being not well at that time that he supposed the vote might
pass, he earnestly desired the speaker ... to send for him when it was to
be, lest by his absence it might miscarry. The deputies that were against
the ... law, thinking themselves strong enough to cast it out, forbore to
send for him. The vote was put and carried in the affirmative,--the
speaker and eleven being in the negative and thirteen in the affirmative:
so one vote carried it; which troubled Wozel so ... that he got to the
court, ... and wept for grief, ... and said 'If he had not been able to
go, he would have crept upon his hands and knees, rather than it should
have been.'" [Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, pp. 101, 102.]

After the accused had been condemned, the people, being strongly moved,
flocked about the prison, so that the magistrates feared a rescue, and a
guard was set.

As the day approached the murmurs grew, and on the morning of the
execution the troops were under arms and the streets patrolled. Stevenson
and Robinson were loosed from their fetters, and Mary Dyer, who also was
to die, walked between them; and so they went bravely hand in hand to the
scaffold. The prisoners were put behind the drums, and their voices
drowned when they tried to speak; for a great multitude was about them,
and at a word, in their deep excitement, would have risen. [Footnote:
_Idem_, pp. 122, 123.]

As the solemn procession moved along, they came to where the Reverend John
Wilson, the Boston pastor, stood with others of the clergy. Then Wilson
"fell a taunting at Robinson, and, shaking his hand in a light, scoffing
manner, said, 'Shall such Jacks as you come in before authority with your
hats on?' with many other taunting words." Then Robinson replied, "Mind
you, mind you, it is for the not putting off the hat we are put to death."
[Footnote: _New England Judged_, ed. 1703, p. 124.]

When they reached the gallows, Robinson calmly climbed the ladder and
spoke a few words. He told the people they did not suffer as evil-doers,
but as those who manifested the truth. He besought them to mind the light
of Christ within them, of which he testified and was to seal with his
blood.

He had said so much when Wilson broke in upon him: "Hold thy tongue, be
silent; thou art going to dye with a lye in thy mouth." [Footnote:
_Idem_, p. 125.] Then they seized him and bound him, and so he died;
and his body was "cast into a hole of the earth," where it lay uncovered.

Even the voters, the picked retainers of the church, were almost equally
divided, and beyond that narrow circle the tide of sympathy ran strong.

The Rev. John Rayner stood laughing with joy to see Mary Tomkins and Alice
Ambrose flogged through Dover, on that bitter winter day; but the men of
Salisbury cut those naked, bleeding women from the cart, and saved them
from their awful death.

The Rev. John Norton sneered at the tortures of Brend, and brazenly
defended his tormentor; but the Boston mob succored the victim as lie lay
fainting on the boards of his dark cell.

The Rev. Charles Chauncy, preaching the word of God, told his hearers to
kill the Southwicks like wolves, since he could not have their blood by
law; but the honest sailor broke out in wrath when asked to traffic in the
flesh of our New England children.

The Rev. John Wilson jeered at Robinson on his way to meet his death, and
reviled him as he stood beneath the gibbet, over the hole that was his
grave; but even the savage Endicott knew well that all the trainbands of
the colony could not have guarded Christison to the gallows from the
dungeon where he lay condemned.

Yet awful as is this Massachusetts tragedy, it is but a little fragment of
the sternest struggle of the modern world. The power of the priesthood
lies in submission to a creed. In their onslaughts on rebellion they have
exhausted human torments; nor, in their lust for earthly dominion, have
they felt remorse, but rather joy, when slaying Christ's enemies and their
own. The horrors of the Inquisition, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, the
atrocities of Laud, the abominations of the Scotch Kirk, the persecution
of the Quakers, had one object,--the enslavement of the mind.

Freedom of thought is the greatest triumph over tyranny that brave men
have ever won; for this they fought the wars of the Reformation; for this
they have left their bones to whiten upon unnumbered fields of battle; for
this they have gone by thousands to the dungeon, the scaffold, and the
stake. We owe to their heroic devotion the most priceless of our
treasures, our perfect liberty of thought and speech; and all who love our
country's freedom may well reverence the memory of those martyred Quakers
by whose death and agony the battle in New England has been won.




CHAPTER VI.

THE SCIRE FACIAS.


Had the Puritan Commonwealth been in reality the thing which its
historians have described; had it been a society guided by men devoted to
civil liberty, and as liberal in religion as was consistent with the
temper of their age, the early relations of Massachusetts toward Great
Britain might now be a pleasanter study for her children. Cordiality
toward Charles I. would indeed have been impossible, for the Puritans well
knew the fate in store for them should the court triumph. Gorges was the
representative of the despotic policy toward America, and so early as
1634, probably at his instigation, Laud became the head of a commission,
with absolute control over the plantations, while the next year a writ of
_quo warranto_ was brought against the patent. [Footnote: See introduction
to _New Canaan_, Prince Soc. ed.] With Naseby, however, these dangers
vanished, and thenceforward there would have been nothing to mar an
affectionate confidence in both Parliament and the Protector.

In fact, however, Massachusetts was a petty state, too feeble for
independence, yet ruled by an autocratic priesthood whose power rested
upon legislation antagonistic to English law; therefore the ecclesiastics
were jealous of Parliament, and had little love for Cromwell, whom they
found wanting in "a thorough testimony against the blasphemers of our
days." [Footnote: Diary of Hull, Palfrey, ii. 400, 401, and note.]

The result was that the elders clung obstinately to every privilege which
served their ends, and repudiated every obligation which conflicted with
their ambition. Clerical political morality seldom fails to be
instructive, and the following example is typical of that peculiar mode of
reasoning. The terms of admission to ordinary corporations were fixed by
each organization for itself, but in case of injustice the courts could
give relief by setting aside unreasonable ordinances, and sometimes
Parliament itself would interfere, as it did upon the petition against the
exactions of the Merchant Adventurers. Now there was nothing upon which
the theocracy more strongly insisted than that "our charter doeth expresly
give vs an absolute & free choyce of our oune members;" [Footnote:
_Mass. Rec._ v. 287.] because by means of a religious test the ministers
could pack the constituencies with their tools; but on the other hand they
as strenuously argued "that no appeals or other ways of interrupting our
proceedings do lie against us," [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 283.] because
they well knew that any bench of judges before whom such questions might
come would annul the most vital of their statutes as repugnant to the
British Constitution.

Unfortunately for these churchmen, their objects, as ecclesiastical
politicians, could seldom be reconciled with their duty as English
subjects. At the outset, though made a corporation within the realm, they
felt constrained to organize in America to escape judicial supervision.
They were then obliged to incorporate towns and counties, to form a
representative assembly, and to levy general taxes and duties, none of
which things they had power to do. Still, such irregularities as these,
had they been all, most English statesmen would have overlooked as
unavoidable. But when it came to adopting a criminal code based on the
Pentateuch, and, in support of a dissenting form of worship, fining and
imprisoning, whipping, mutilating, and hanging English subjects without
the sanction of English law; when, finally, the Episcopal Church itself
was suppressed, and peaceful subjects were excluded from the corporation
for no reason but because they partook of her communion, and were
forbidden to seek redress by appealing to the courts of their king, it
seems impossible that any self-respecting government could have long been
passive.

At the Restoration Massachusetts had grown arrogant from long impunity.
She thought the time of reckoning would never come, and even in trivial
matters seemed to take a pride in slighting Great Britain and in vaunting
her independence. Laws were enacted in the name of the Commonwealth, the
king's name was not in the writs, nor were the royal arms upon the public
buildings; even the oath of allegiance was rejected, though it was
unobjectionable in form. She had grown to believe that were offence taken
she had only to invent pretexts for delay, to have her fault forgotten in
some new revolution. General Denison, at the Quaker trials, put the
popular belief in a nut-shell: "This year ye will go to complain to the
Parliament, and the next year they will send to see how it is; and the
third year the government is changed." [Footnote: Sewel, p. 280.]

But, beside these irritating domestic questions, the corporation was
bitterly embroiled with its neighbors. Samuel Gorton and his friends were
inhabitants of Rhode Island, and were, no doubt, troublesome to deal with;
but their particular offence was ecclesiastical. An armed force was sent
over the border and they were seized. They were brought to Boston and
tried on the charge of being "blasphemous enemies of the true religion of
our Lord Jesus Christ, and of all his holy ordinances, and likewise of all
civil government among his people, and particularly within this
jurisdiction." [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 146.] All the magistrates but
three thought that Gorton ought to die, but he was finally sentenced to an
imprisonment of barbarous cruelty. The invasion of Rhode Island was a
violation of an independent jurisdiction, the arrest was illegal, the
sentence an arbitrary outrage. [Footnote: See paper of Mr. Charles Deane,
_New Eng. Historical and Genealogical Register_, vol. iv.]

Massachusetts was also at feud in the north, and none of her quarrels
brought more serious results than this with the proprietors of New
Hampshire and Maine. The grant in the charter was of all lands between the
Charles and Merrimack, and also all lands within the space of three miles
to the northward of the said Merrimack, or to the northward of any part
thereof, and all lands lying within the limits aforesaid from the Atlantic
to the South Sea.

Clearly the intention was to give a margin of three miles beyond a river
which was then supposed to flow from west to east, and accordingly the
territory to the north, being unoccupied, was granted to Mason and Gorges.
Nor was this construction questioned before 1639--the General Court having
at an early day measured off the three miles and marked the boundary by
what was called the Bound House.

Gradually, however, as it became known that the Merrimack rose to the
north, larger claims were made. In 1641 the four New Hampshire towns were
absorbed with the consent of their inhabitants, who thus gained a regular
government; another happy consequence was the settlement of sundry eminent
divines, by whose ministrations the people "were very much civilized and
reformed." [Footnote: Neal's New England, i. 210.]

In 1652 a survey was made of the whole river, and 43° 40' 12" was fixed as
the latitude of its source. A line extended east from three miles north of
this point came out near Portland, and the intervening space was forthwith
annexed. The result of such a policy was that Charles had hardly been
crowned before complaints poured in from every side. Quakers, Baptists,
Episcopalians, all who had suffered persecution, flocked to the foot of
the throne; and beside these came those who had been injured in their
estates, foremost of whom were the heirs of Mason and Gorges. The pressure
was so great and the outcry so loud that, in September, 1660, it was
thought in London a governor-general would be sent to Boston; [Footnote:
Leverett to Endicott. Hutch. Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 40.] and, in point
of fact, almost the first communication between the king and his colony
was his order to spare the Quakers.

The outlook was gloomy, and there was hesitation as to the course to
pursue. At length it was decided to send Norton and Bradstreet to England
to present an address and protect the public interests. The mission was
not agreeable; Norton especially was reluctant, and with reason, for he
had been foremost in the Quaker persecutions, and was probably aware that
in the eye of English law the executions were homicide.

However, after long vacillation, "the Lord so encouraged and strengthened"
his heart that he ventured to sail. [Footnote: Feb. 11, 1661-2. Palfrey,
ii. 524.] So far as the crown was concerned apprehension was needless, for
Lord Clarendon was prime minister, whose policy toward New England was
throughout wise and moderate, and the agents were well received. Still
they were restless in London, and Sewel tells an anecdote which may partly
account for their impatience to be gone.

"Now the deputies of New England came to London, and endeavored to clear
themselves as much as possible, but especially priest Norton, who bowed no
less reverently before the archbishop, than before the king....

"They would fain have altogether excused themselves; and priest Norton
thought it sufficient to say that he did not assist in the bloody trial,
nor had advised to it. But John Copeland, whose ear was cut off at Boston,
charged the contrary upon him: and G. Fox, the elder, got occasion to
speak with them in the presence of some of his friends, and asked Simon
Broadstreet, one of the New England magistrates, 'whether he had not a
hand in putting to death those they nicknamed Quakers?' He not being able
to deny this confessed he had. Then G. Fox asked him and his associates
that were present, 'whether they would acknowledge themselves to be
subjects to the laws of England? and if they did by what law they had put
his friends to death?' They answered, 'They were subjects to the laws of
England; and they had put his friends to death by the same law, as the
Jesuits were put to death in England.' Hereupon G. Fox asked, 'whether
they did believe that those his friends, whom they had put to death, were
Jesuits, or jesuitically affected?' They said 'Nay.' 'Then,' replied G.
Fox, 'ye have murdered them; for since ye put them to death by the law
that Jesuits are put to death here in England, it plainly appears, you
have put them to death arbitrarily, without any law.' Thus Broadstreet,
finding himself and his company ensnar'd by their own words, ask'd, 'Are
you come to catch us?' But he told them 'They had catch'd themselves, and
they might justly be questioned for their lives; and if the father of
William Robinson (one of those that were put to death) were in town, it
was probable he would question them, and bring their lives into jeopardy.
For he not being of the Quakers persuasion, would perhaps not have so much
regard to the point of forbearance, as they had.' Broadstreet seeing
himself thus in danger began to flinch and to sculk; for some of the old
royalists were earnest with the Quakers to prosecute the New England
persecutors. But G. Fox and his friends said, 'They left them to the Lord,
to whom vengeance belonged, and he would repay it.' Broadstreet however,
not thinking it safe to stay in England, left the city, and with his
companions went back again to New England." [Footnote: Sewel, p. 288.]

The following June the agents were given the king's answer [Footnote:
1662, June 28.] to their address and then sailed for home. It is certainly
a most creditable state paper. The people of Massachusetts were thanked
for their good will, they were promised oblivion for the past, and were
assured that they should have their charter confirmed to them and be safe
in all their privileges and liberties, provided they would make certain
reforms in their government. They were required to repeal such statutes as
were contrary to the laws of England, to take the oath of allegiance, and
to administer justice in the king's name. And then followed two
propositions that were crucial: "And since the principle and foundation of
that charter was and is the freedom of liberty of conscience, wee do
hereby charge and require you that that freedom and liberty be duely
admitted," especially in favor of those "that desire to use the Book of
Common Prayer." And secondly, "that all the freeholders of competent
estates, not vicious in conversations, orthodox in religion (though of
different perswasions concerning church government) may have their vote in
the election of all officers civill or millitary." [Footnote: Hutch.
Coll., Prince Soc. ed. ii. 101-103.]

However judicious these reforms may have been, or howsoever strictly they
conformed with the spirit of English law, was immaterial. They struck at
the root of the secular power of the clergy, and they roused deep
indignation. The agents had braved no little danger, and had shown no
little skill in behalf of the commonwealth; and the fate of John Norton
enables us to realize the rancor of theological feeling. The successor of
Cotton, by general consent the leading minister, in some respects the most
eminent man in Massachusetts, he had undertaken a difficult mission
against his will, in which he had acquitted himself well; yet on his
return he was so treated by his brethren and friends that he died in the
spring of a broken heart. [Footnote: April 5, 1663.]

The General Court took no notice of the king's demands except to order the
writs to run in the royal name. [Footnote: Oct. 8, 1662. _Mass. Rec._
vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 58.] And it is a sign of the boldness, or else of the
indiscretion, of those in power, that this crisis was chosen for striking
a new coin, [Footnote: 1662, May 7.]--an act confessedly illegal and
certain to give offence in England, both as an assumption of sovereignty
and an interference with the currency.

From the first Lord Clarendon paid some attention to colonial affairs, and
he appears to have been much dissatisfied with the condition in which he
found them. At length, in 1664, he decided to send a commission to New
England to act upon the spot.

Great pressure must have been brought by some who had suffered, for Samuel
Maverick, the Episcopalian, who had been fined and imprisoned in 1646 for
petitioning with Childe, was made a member. Colonel Richard Nichols, the
head of the board, was a man of ability and judgment; the choice of Sir
Robert Carr and Colonel George Cartwright was less judicious.

The commissioners were given a public and private set of instructions,
[Footnote: Public Instructions, Hutch. _Hist._ i. 459.] and both were
admirable. They were to examine the condition of the country and its laws,
and, if possible, to make some arrangement by which the crown might have a
negative at least upon the choice of the governor; they were to urge the
reforms already demanded by the king, especially a larger toleration, for
"they doe in truth deny that liberty of conscience to each other, which is
equally provided for and granted to every one of them by their charter."
[Footnote: Private Instructions _O'Callaghan Documents_, iii. 58.]
They were directed to be conciliatory toward the people, and under no
circumstances to meddle with public worship, nor were they to press for
any sudden enforcement of the revenue acts. On one point alone they were
to insist: they were instructed to sit to hear appeals in causes in which
the parties alleged they had been wronged by colonial decisions.

Unquestionably the chancellor was right in principle. The only way whereby
such powerful corporations as the trade-guilds or the East India Company
could be kept from acts of oppression was through the appellate
jurisdiction, by which means their enactments could be brought before the
courts, and those annulled which in the opinion of the judges transcended
the charters. The Company of Massachusetts Bay was a corporation having
jurisdiction over many thousand English subjects, only a minority of whom
were freemen and voters. So long, therefore, as she remained within the
empire, the crown was bound to see that the privileges of the English
Constitution were not denied within her territory. Yet, though this is
true, it is equally certain that the erection of a commission of appeal
without an act of Parliament was irregular. The stretch of prerogative,
nevertheless, cannot be considered oppressive when it is remembered that
Massachusetts was a corporation which had escaped from the realm to avoid
judicial process, and which refused to appear and plead; hence Lord
Clarendon had but this alternative: he could send judges to sit upon the
spot, or he could proceed against the charter in London. The course he
chose may have been illegal, but it was the milder of the two.

The commissioners landed on July 23, 1664, but they did not stay in
Boston. Their first business was to subdue the Dutch at New York, and they
soon left to make the attack. The General Court now recurred, for the
first time, to the dispatch which their agents had brought home, and
proceeded to amend the law relating to the franchise. They extended the
qualification by enacting that Englishmen who presented a certificate
under the hands of the minister of the town that they were orthodox in
religion and not vicious in life, and who paid, beside, 10s. at a
single rate, might become freemen, as well as those who were church-
members. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 117.] The effect
of such a change could hardly have been toward liberality, rather,
probably, toward concentration of power in the church. However slight,
there was some popular control over the rejection of an applicant to join
a congregation; but giving a certificate was an act that must have
depended on the pastor's will alone.

The court then drew up an address to the king: "If your poore subjects,
... doe... prostrate themselues at your royal feete, & begg yor favor, wee
hope it will be graciously accepted by your majestje, and that as the high
place you sustejne on earth doeth number you here among the gods, [priests
can cringe as well as torture] so you will jmitate the God of heaven, in
being ready... to receive their crjes...," [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol.
iv. pt. 2, p. 129.] And he was implored to reflect on the affliction
of heart it was to them, that their sins had provoked God to permit their
adversaries to procure a commission, under the great seal, to four persons
to hear appeals. When this address reached London it caused surprise. The
chancellor was annoyed. He wrote to America, pointing out that His Majesty
would hardly think himself well used at complaints before a beginning had
been made, and a demand that his commission should be revoked before his
commissioners had been able to deliver their instructions. "I know," he
said, "they are expressly inhibited from intermedling with, or instructing
the administration of justice, according to the formes observed there; but
if in truth, in any extraordinary case, the proceedings there have been
irregular, and against the rules of justice, as some particular cases,
particularly recommended to them by His Majesty, seeme to be, it cannot be
presumed that His Majesty hath or will leave his subjects of New England,
without hope of redresse by an appeale to him, which his subjects of all
his other kingdomes have free liberty to make." [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._
i. 465.]

The campaign against New York was short and successful, and the
commissioners were soon at leisure. As they had reason to believe that
Massachusetts would prove stubborn, they judged it wiser to begin with the
more tractable colonies first. They therefore went to Plymouth, [Footnote:
Feb. 1664-5.] and, on their arrival, according to their instructions,
submitted the four following propositions:--

First. That all householders should take the oath of allegiance, and that
justice should be administered in the king's name.

Second. That all men of competent estates and civil conversation, though
of different judgments, might be admitted to be freemen, and have liberty
to choose and be chosen officers, both civil and military.

Third. That all men and women of orthodox opinions, competent knowledge,
and civil lives not scandalous, should be admitted to the Lord's Supper
[and have baptism for their children, either in existing churches or their
own].

Fourth. That all laws ... derogatory to his majesty should be repealed.
[Footnote: Palfrey, ii. 601.]

Substantially the same proposals were made subsequently in Rhode Island
and Connecticut. They were accepted without a murmur. A few appeal cases
were heard, and the work was done.

The commissioners reported their entire satisfaction to the government,
the colonies sent loyal addresses, and Charles returned affectionate
answers.

Massachusetts alone remained to be dealt with, but her temper was in
striking contrast to that of the rest of New England. The reason is
obvious. Nowhere else was there a fusion of church and state. The people
had, therefore, no oppressive statutes to uphold, nor anything to conceal.
Provided the liberty of English subjects was secured to them they were
content to obey the English Constitution. On the other hand, Massachusetts
was a theocracy, the power of whose priesthood rested on enactments
contrary to British institutions, and which, therefore, would have been
annulled upon appeal. Hence the clerical party were wild with fear and
rage, and nerved themselves to desperate resistance.

"But alasse, sir, the commission impowering those commisioners to heare
and determine all cases whatever, ... should it take place, what would
become of our civill government which hath binn, under God, the heade of
that libertie for our consciences for which the first adventurers ... bore
all ... discouragements that encountered them ... in this wildernes."
Rather than submit, they protested they had "sooner leave our place and
all our pleasant outward injoyments." [Footnote: Court to Boyle. _Hutch.
Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 113.]

Under such conditions a direct issue was soon reached. The General Court,
in answer to the commissioners' proposals, maintained that the observance
of their charter was inconsistent with appeals; that they had already
provided an oath of allegiance; that they had conformed to his majesty's
requirements in regard to the franchise; and lastly, in relation to
toleration, there was no equivocation. "Concerning the vse of the Common
Prayer Booke"... we had not become "voluntary exiles from our deare native
country, ... could wee haue seene the word of God, warranting us to
performe our devotions in that way, & to haue the same set vp here; wee
conceive it is apparent that it will disturbe our peace in our present
enjoyments." [Footnote: 1665. _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt. 2, p.200]

Argument was useless. The so-called oath of allegiance was not that
required by Parliament; the alteration in the franchise was a sham; while
the two most important points, appeals to England and toleration in
religion, were rejected. The commissioners, therefore, asked for a direct
answer to this question: "Whither doe yow acknowledge his majestjes
comission ... to be of full force?" [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv.
pt. 2, p.204] They were met by evasion. On the 23d of May they gave notice
that they should sit the next morning to hear the case of Thos. Deane et
al. vs. The Gov. & Co. of Mass. Bay, a revenue appeal. Forthwith the
General Court proclaimed by trumpet that the hearing would not be
permitted.

Coercion was impossible, as no troops were at hand. The commissioners
accordingly withdrew and went to Maine, which they proceeded to sever from
Massachusetts. [Footnote: June, 1665] In this they followed the king's
instructions, who himself acted upon the advice of the law officers of the
crown, who had given an opinion sustaining the claim of Gorges. [Footnote:
Charles II.'s letter to Inhabitants of Maine. _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc.
ed. ii. 110; Palf. ii. 622.]

The triumph was complete. All that the English government was then able to
do was to recall the commissioners, direct that agents should be sent to
London at once, and forbid interference with Maine. No notice was taken of
the order to send agents; and in 1668 possession was again taken of the
province, and the courts of the company once more sat in the county of
York. [Footnote: July, 1668. Report of Com. _Mass. Rec._ vol. iv. pt.
2, p. 401.]

This was the culmination of the Puritan Commonwealth. The clergy were
exultant, and the Rev. Mr. Davenport of New Haven wrote in delight to
Leverett:--

"Their claiming power to sit authoritatively as a court for appeales, and
that to be managed in an arbitrary way, was a manifest laying of a
groundworke to undermine your whole government established by your
charter. If you had consented thereunto, you had plucked downe with your
owne hands that house which wisdom had built for you and your
posterity.... As for the solemnity of publishing it, in three places, by
sounding a trumpet, I believe you did it upon good advice, ... for
declaring the courage and resolution of the whole countrey to defend their
charter liberties and priviledges, and not to yeeld up theire right
voluntarily, so long as they can hold it, in dependence upon God in
Christ, whose interest is in it, for his protection and blessing, who will
be with you while you are with him." [Footnote: Davenport to Leverett.
_Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 119.]

Although the colonists were alarmed at their own success, there was
nothing to fear. At no time before or since could England have been so
safely defied. In 1664 war was begun against Holland; 1665 was the year of
the plague; 1666 of the fire. In June, 1667, the Dutch, having dispersed
the British fleets, sailed up the Medway, and their guns were heard in
London. Peace became necessary, and in August Clarendon was dismissed from
office. The discord between the crown and Parliament paralyzed the nation,
and the wastefulness of Charles kept him always poor. By the treaty of
Dover in 1670 he became a pensioner of Louis XIV. The Cabal followed,
probably the worst ministry England ever saw; and in 1672, at Clifford's
suggestion, the exchequer was closed and the debt repudiated to provide
funds for the second Dutch war. In March fighting began, and the
tremendous battles with De Ruyter kept the navy in the Channel. At length,
in 1673, the Cabal fell, and Danby became prime minister.

Although during these years of disaster and disgrace Massachusetts was not
molested by Great Britain, they were not all years during which the
theocracy could tranquilly enjoy its victory.

So early as 1671 the movements of the Indians began to give anxiety; and
in 1675 Philip's War broke out, which brought the colony to the brink of
ruin, and in which the clergy saw the judgment of God against the
Commonwealth, for tenderness toward the Quakers. [Footnote: _Reforming
Synod, Magnalia_, bk. 5, pt. 4.]

With the rise of Danby a more regular administration opened, and, as
usual, the attention of the government was fixed upon Massachusetts by the
clamors of those who demanded redress for injuries alleged to have been
received at her hands. In 1674 the heirs of Mason and Gorges, in despair
at the reoccupation of Maine, proposed to surrender their claim to the
king, reserving one third of the product of the customs for themselves.
The London merchants also had become restive under the systematic
violation of the Navigation Acts. The breach in the revenue laws had,
indeed, been long a subject of complaint, and the commissioners had
received instructions relating thereto; but it was not till this year that
these questions became serious.

The first statute had been passed by the Long Parliament, but the one that
most concerned the colonies was not enacted till 1663. The object was not
only to protect English shipping, but to give her the entire trade of her
dependencies. To that end it was made illegal to import European produce
into any plantation except through England; and, conversely, colonial
goods could only be exported by being landed in England.

The theory upon which this legislation was based is exploded; enforced, it
would have crippled commerce; but it was then, and always had been, a dead
letter at Boston. New England was fast getting its share of the carrying
trade. London merchants already began to feel the competition of its cheap
and untaxed ships, and manufacturers to complain that they were undersold
in the American market, by goods brought direct from the Continental
ports. A petition, therefore, was presented to the king, to carry the law
into effect. No colonial office then existed; the affairs of the
dependencies were assigned to a committee of the Privy Council, called the
Lords of Committee of Trade and Plantations; and on these questions being
referred by them to the proper officers, the commissioners of customs
sustained the merchants; the attorney-general, the heirs of Mason and
Gorges. [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 281; Chalmers's _Political Annals of
the United Colonies_, p. 262.] The famous Edward Randolph now appears.
The government was still too deeply embarrassed to act with energy. A
temporizing policy was therefore adopted; and as the experiment of a
commission had failed, Randolph was chosen as a messenger to carry the
petitions and opinions to Massachusetts; together with a letter from the
king, directing that agents should be sent in answer thereto. After
delivering them, he was ordered to devote himself to preparing a report
upon the country. He reached Boston June 10, 1676. Although it was a time
of terrible suffering from the ravages of the Indian war, the temper of
the magistrates was harsher than ever.

The repulse of the commissioners had convinced them that Charles was not
only lazy and ignorant, but too poor to use force; and they also believed
him to be so embroiled with Parliament as to make his overthrow probable.
Filled with such feelings, their reception of Randolph was almost brutal.
John Leverett was governor, who seems to have taken pains to mark his
contempt in every way in his power. Randolph was an able, but an
unscrupulous man, and probably it would not have been difficult to have
secured his good-will. Far however from bribing, or even flattering him,
they so treated him as to make him the bitterest enemy the Puritan
Commonwealth ever knew.

Being admitted into the council chamber, he delivered the letter.
[Footnote: Randolph's Narrative. _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii.
240.] The governor opened it, glanced at the signature, and, pretending
never to have heard of Henry Coventry, asked who he might be. He was told
he was his majesty's principal secretary of state. He then read it aloud
to the magistrates. Even the fierce Endicott, when he received the famous
"missive" from the Quaker Shattock, "laid off his hat ... [when] he look'd
upon the papers," [Footnote: Sewel, p. 282.] as a mark of respect to his
king; but Leverett and his council remained covered. Then the governor
said "that the matters therein contained were very inconsiderable things
and easily answered, and it did no way concern that government to take any
notice thereof;" and so Randolph was dismissed. Five days after he was
again sent for, and asked whether he "intended for London by that ship
that was ready to saile?" If so, he could have a duplicate of the answer
to the king, as the original was to go by other hands. He replied that he
had other business in charge, and inquired whether they had well
considered the petitions, and fixed upon their agents so soon. Leverett
did not deign to answer, but told him "he looked upon me as Mr. Mason's
agent, and that I might withdraw." The next day he saw the governor at his
own house, who took occasion, when Randolph referred to the Navigation
Acts, to expound the legal views of the theocracy. "He freely declared to
me that the lawes made by your majestie and your Parliament obligeth them
in nothing but what consists with the interest of that colony, that the
legislative power is and abides in them solely ... and that all matters in
difference are to be concluded by their finall determination, without any
appeal to your majestie, and that your majestie ought not to retrench
their liberties, but may enlarge them." [Footnote: Randolph's Narrative.
_Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 243.] One last interview took
place when Randolph went for dispatches for England, after his return from
New Hampshire; then he "was entertained by" Leverett "with a sharp reproof
for publishing the substance of my errand into those parts, contained in
your majestie's letters, ... telling me that I designed to make a
mutiny.... I told him, if I had done anything amisse, upon complaint made
to your majestie he would certainly have justice done him."...

"At my departure ... he ... intreated me to give a favourable report of
the country and the magistrates thereof, adding that those that blessed
them God would blesse, and those that cursed them God would curse." And
that "they were a people truely fearing the Lord and very obedient to your
majestie." [Footnote: _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 248.] And
so the royal messenger was dismissed in wrath, to tell his story to the
king.

The legislature met in August, 1676, and a decision had to be made
concerning agents. On the whole, the clergy concluded it would be wiser to
obey the crown, "provided they be, with vtmost care & caution, qualified
as to their instructions." [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 99.]
Accordingly, after a short adjournment, the General Court chose William
Stoughton and Peter Bulkely; and having strictly limited their power to a
settlement of the territorial controversy, they sent them on their
mission. [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 114.]

Almost invariably public affairs were seen by the envoys of the Company in
a different light from that in which they were viewed by the clerical
party at home, and these particularly had not been long in London before
they became profoundly alarmed. There was, indeed, reason for grave
apprehension. The selfish and cruel policy of the theocracy had borne its
natural fruit: without an ally in the world, Massachusetts was beset by
enemies. Quakers, Baptists, and Episcopalians whom she had persecuted and
exiled; the heirs of Mason and Gorges, whom she had wronged; Andros, whom
she had maligned; [Footnote: He had been accused of countenancing aid to
Philip when governor of New York. O'Callaghan Documents, iii. 258.] and
Randolph, whom she had insulted, wrought against her with a government
whose sovereign she had offended and whose laws she had defied. Even her
English friends had been much alienated. [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 278,
279.]

The controversy concerning the boundary was referred to the two chief
justices, who promptly decided against the Company; [Footnote: See
Opinion; Chalmers's _Annals_, p. 504.] and the easy acquiescence of the
General Court must raise a doubt as to their faith in the soundness of
their claims. And now again the fatality which seemed to pursue the
theocracy in all its dealings with England led it to give fresh
provocation to the king by secretly buying the title of Gorges for twelve
hundred and fifty pounds. [Footnote: May, 1677. Chalmers's _Annals_,
pp. 396, 397. See notes, Palfrey, iii. 312.]

Charles had intended to settle Maine on the Duke of Monmouth. It was a
worthless possession, whose revenue never paid for its defence; yet so
stubborn was the colony that it made haste to anticipate the crown and
thus become "Lord Proprietary" of a burdensome province at the cost of a
slight which was never forgiven. Almost immediately the Privy Council had
begun to open other matters, such as coining and illicit trade; and the
attorney-general drew up a list of statutes which, in his opinion, were
contrary to the laws of England. The agents protested that they were
limited by their instructions, but were sharply told that his majesty did
not think of treating with his own subjects as with foreigners, and it
would be well to intimate the same to their principals. [Footnote:
Palfrey, iii. 309.] In December, 1677, Stoughton wrote in great alarm that
something must be done concerning the Navigation Acts or a breach would be
inevitable. [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ i. 288.] And the General Court
saw reason in this emergency to increase the tension by reviving the
obnoxious oath of fidelity to the country, [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v.
154.]--the substitute for the oath of allegiance,--and thus gave Randolph
a new and potent weapon. In the spring [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 316, 317;
Chalmers's _Annals_, p. 439.] the law officers gave an opinion that
the misdemeanors alleged against Massachusetts were sufficient to avoid
her patent; and the Privy Council, in view of the encroachments and
injuries which she had continually practised on her neighbors, and her
contempt of his majesty's commands, advised that a _quo warranto_ should
be brought against the charter. Randolph was appointed collector at
Boston. [Footnote: 1678, May 31.]

Even Leverett now saw that some concessions must be made, and the General
Court ordered the oath of allegiance to be taken; nothing but perversity
seems to have caused the long delay. [Footnote: Oct. 2, 1678. _Mass.
Rec._ v. 193. See Palfrey, iii. 320, note 2.] The royal arms were also
carved in the court-house; and this was all, for the clergy were
determined upon those matters touching their authority. The agents were
told, "that which is farr more considerable then all these is the interest
of the Lord Jesus & of his churches ... which ought to be farr dearer to
us than our liues; and ... wee would not that by any concessions of ours,
or of yours... the least stone should be put out of the wall." [Footnote:
_Mass. Rec._ v. 202.]

Both agents and magistrates were, nevertheless, thoroughly frightened, and
being determined not to yield, in fact, they resorted to a policy of
misrepresentation, with the hope of deceiving the English government.
[Footnote: See Answers of Agents, Chalmers's _Annals_, p. 450.] Stoughton
and Bulkely had already assured the Lords of Committee that the "rest of
the inhabitants were very inconsiderable as to number, compared with those
that were acknowledged church-members." [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 318.]
They were in fact probably as five to one. The General Court had been
censured for using the word Commonwealth in official documents, as
intimating independence. They hastened to assure the crown that it had
not of late been used, and should not be thereafter; [Footnote: _Mass.
Rec._ v. 198. And see, in general, the official correspondence, pp.
197-203.] yet in November, 1675, commissions were thus issued. [Footnote:
Palfrey, iii. 322.] But the breaking out of the Popish plot began to
absorb the whole attention of the government at London; and the agents,
after receiving a last rebuke for the presumption of the colony in buying
Maine, were at length allowed to depart. [Footnote: Nov. 1679.]

Nearly half a century had elapsed since the emigration, and with the
growth of wealth and population changes had come. In March, John Leverett,
who had long been the head of the high-church party, died, and the
election of Simon Bradstreet as his successor was a triumph for the
opposition. Great as the clerical influence still was, it had lost much of
its old despotic power, and the congregations were no longer united in
support of the policy of their pastors. This policy was singularly
desperate. Casting aside all but ecclesiastical considerations, the clergy
consistently rejected any compromise with the crown which threatened to
touch the church. Almost from the first they had recognized that
substantial independence was necessary in order to maintain the theocracy.
Had the colony been strong, they would doubtless have renounced their
allegiance; but its weakness was such that, without the protection of
England, it would have been seized by France. Hence they resorted to
expedients which could only end in disaster, for it was impossible for
Massachusetts, while part of the British Empire, to refuse obedience at
her pleasure to laws which other colonies cheerfully obeyed.

Without an ally, no resistance could be made to England, when at length
her sovereignty should be asserted; and an armed occupation and military
government were inevitable upon a breach.

Though such considerations are little apt to induce a priesthood to
surrender their temporal power, they usually control commercial
communities. Accordingly, Boston and the larger towns favored concession,
while the country was the ministers' stronghold. The result of this
divergence of opinion was that the moderate party, to which Bradstreet and
Dudley belonged, predominated in the Board of Assistants, while the
deputies remained immovable. The branches of the legislature thus became
opposed; no course of action could be agreed on, and the theocracy drifted
to its destruction.

The duplicity characteristic of theological politics grew daily more
marked. In May, 1679, a law had been passed forbidding the building of
churches without leave from the freemen of the town or the General Court.
[Footnote: Mass. Rec. v. 213.] On the 11th of June, 1680, three persons
representing the society of Baptists were summoned before the legislature,
charged with the crime of erecting a meeting-house. They were admonished
and forbidden to meet for worship except with the established
congregations; and their church was closed. [Footnote: Mass. Rec. v. 271.]
That very day an address was voted to the king, one passage of which is as
follows: "Concerning liberty of conscience, ... that after all, a
multitude of notorious errors ... be openly broached, ... amongst us, as
by the Quakers, &c., wee presume his majesty doeth not intend; and as for
other Prottestant dissenters, that carry it peaceably & soberly, wee trust
there shallbe no cause of just complaint against us on their behalfe."
[Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 287.]

Meanwhile Randolph had renewed his attack. He declared that in spite of
promises and excuses the revenue laws were not enforced; that his men were
beaten, and that he hourly expected to be thrown into prison; whereas in
other colonies, he asserted, he was treated with great respect. [Footnote:
June, 1680. Palfrey, iii. 340.] There can be no doubt ingenuity was used
to devise means of annoyance, and certainly the life he was made to lead
was hard. In March [Footnote: March 15, 1680-1.] he sailed for home, and
while in London he made a series of reports to the government which seem
to have produced the conviction that the moment for action had come. In
December he returned, commissioned as deputy-surveyor and auditor-general
for all New England, except New Hampshire. When Stoughton and Bulkely were
dismissed, the colony had been commanded to send new agents within six
months. In September, 1680, another royal letter had been written, in
which the king dwelt upon the misconduct of his subjects, "when ... we
signified unto you our gracious inclination to have all past deeds
forgotten... wee then little thought that those markes of our grace and
favour should have found no better acceptance amoung you.... We doe
therefore by these our letters, strictly command and require you, as you
tender your allegiance unto us, and will deserve the effects of our grace
and favour (which wee are enclyned to afford you) seriously to reflect
upon our commands; ... and particularly wee doe hereby command you to send
over, within three months after the receipt hereof, such... persons as you
shall think fitt to choose, and that you give them sufficient instructions
to attend the regulation and settlement of that our government."
[Footnote: Sept. 30. _Hutch. Coll. _, Prince Soc. ed. ii. 261.]

The General Court had not thought fit to regard these communications, and
now Randolph came charged with a long and stern dispatch, in which agents
were demanded forthwith, "in default whereof, we are fully resolved, in
Trinity Term next ensuing, to direct our attorney-general to bring a quo
warranto in our court of kings-bench, whereby our charter granted unto
you, with all the powers thereof, may be legally evicted and made void;
and so we bid you farewel." [Footnote: Chalmers's _Annals_, p. 449.]

Hitherto the clerical party had procrastinated, buoyed up by the hope that
in the fierce struggle with the commons Charles might be overthrown; but
this dream ended with the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament, and
further inaction became impossible. Joseph Dudley and John Richards were
chosen agents, and provided with instructions bearing the peculiar tinge
of ecclesiastical statesmanship.

They were directed to represent that appeals would be intolerable; and,
for their private guidance, the legislature used these words: "We
therefore doe not vnderstand by the regulation of the gouernment, that any
alteration of the patent is intended; yow shall therefore neither doe nor
consent to any thing that may violate or infringe the liberties &
priuiledges granted to us by his majesties royall charter, or the
gouernment established thereby; but if any thing be propounded that may
tend therevnto, yow shall say, yow haue received no instruction in that
matter." [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 349.] With reference to the
complaints made against the colony, they were to inform the king "that wee
haue no law prohibbiting any such as are of the perswasion of the church
of England, nor haue any euer desired to worship God accordingly that haue
been denyed." [Footnote: _Mass. Rec._ v. 347. March 23.]

Such a statement cannot be reconciled with the answer made the
commissioners; and the laws compelled Episcopalians to attend the
Congregational worship, and denied them the right to build churches of
their own.

"As for the Annabaptists, they are now subject to no other poenal statutes
then those of the Congregational way." This sophistry is typical. The law
under which the Baptist church was closed applied in terms to all
inhabitants, it is true; but it was contrived to suppress schism, it was
used to coerce heretics, and it was unrepealed. Moreover, it would seem as
though the statute inflicting banishment must then have still been in
force.

The assurances given in regard to the reform of the suffrage were
precisely parallel:--

"For admission of ffreemen, wee humbly conceive it is our liberty, by
charter, to chuse whom wee will admitt into our oune company, which yet
hath not binn restrayned to Congregational men, but others haue been
admitted, who were also provided for according to his majestjes
direction." [Footnote: 1681-2, March 23.]

Such insincerity gave weight to Randolph's words when he wrote: "My lord,
I have but one thing to reminde your lordship, that nothing their agents
can say or doe in England can be any ground for his majestie to depend
upon." [Footnote: Randolph to Clarendon. _Hutch. Coll._, Prince Soc.
ed. ii. 277]

With these documents and one thousand pounds for bribery, soon after
increased to three, [Footnote: Chalmers's _Annals_, p. 461.] Dudley
and Richards sailed. Their powers were at once rejected at London as
insufficient, and the decisive moment came. [Footnote: _Idem_, p.
413.] The churchmen of Massachusetts had to determine whether to accept
the secularization of their government or abandon every guaranty of
popular liberty. The clergy did not hesitate before the momentous
alternative: they exerted themselves to the utmost, and turned the scale
for the last time. [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ i. 303, note.] In fresh
instructions the agents were urged to do what was possible to avert, or at
least delay, the stroke; but they were forbidden to consent to appeals, or
to alterations in the qualifications required for the admission of
freemen. [Footnote: 1683, March 30. _Mass. Rec._ v. 390.] They had
previously been directed to pacify the king by a present of two thousand
pounds; and this ill-judged attempt at bribery had covered them with
ridicule. [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ i. 303, note.]

Further negotiation would have been futile. Proceedings were begun at
once, and Randolph was sent to Boston to serve the writ of _quo warranto_;
[Footnote: 1683, July 20.] he was also charged with a royal declaration
promising that, even then, were submission made, the charter should be
restored with only such changes as the public welfare demanded. [Footnote:
_Mass. Rec._ v. 422, 423.] Dudley, who was a man of much political
sagacity, had returned and strongly urged moderation. The magistrates were
not without the instincts of statesmanship: they saw that a breach with
England must destroy all safeguards of the common freedom, and they voted
an address to the crown accepting the proffered terms. [Footnote: 1683, 15
Nov. Hutch. _Hist._ i. 304.] But the clergy strove against them: the
privileges of their order were at stake; they felt that the loss of their
importance would be "destructive to the interest of religion and of
Christ's kingdom in the colony," [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 381.] and they
roused their congregations to resist. The deputies did not represent the
people, but the church. They were men who had been trained from infancy by
the priests, who had been admitted to the communion and the franchise on
account of their religious fervor, and who had been brought into public
life because the ecclesiastics found them pliable in their hands. The
influence which had moulded their minds and guided their actions
controlled them still, and they rejected the address. [Footnote: Nov. 30.
Palfrey, iii. 385.] Increase Mather took the lead. He stood up at a great
meeting in the Old South, and exhorted the people, "telling them how their
forefathers did purchase it [the charter], and would they deliver it up,
even as Ahab required Naboth's vineyard, Oh! their children would be bound
to curse them." [Footnote: Palfrey, iii. 388, note 1.]

All that could be resolved on was to retain Robert Humphrys of the Middle
Temple to interpose such delays as the law permitted; but no attempt was
made at defence upon the merits of their cause, probably because all knew
well that no such defence was possible.

Meanwhile, for technical reasons, the _quo warranto_ had been abandoned,
and a writ of _scire facias_ had been issued out of chancery. On June 18,
1684, the lord keeper ordered the defendant to appear and plead on the
first day of the next Michaelmas Term. The time allowed was too short for
an answer from America, and judgment was entered by default. [Footnote:
Decree entered June 21, 1684; confirmed, Oct. 23. Palfrey, iii. 393,
note.] The decree was arbitrary, but no effort was made to obtain relief.
The story, however, is best told by Humphrys himself:--

"It is matter of astonishment to me, to think of the returnes I haue had
from you in the affaire of your charter; that a prudent people should
think soe little, in a thing of the greatest moment to them.

"Which charge I humbly justify in the following particulars, and yet at
the same time confess that all you could haue done would but haue gained
more time, and spent more money, since the breaches assigned against you,
were as obvious as vnanswerable, soe as all the service your councill and
friends could haue done you here, would haue onely served to deplore, not
prevent the inevitable loss.

"When I sent you the lord keeper's order of the 18th of June 1684
requireing your appeareing peromptorily the first day of Michaelmas Tearme
then next, and pleading to yssue ... you may remember I sent with it such
drafts of lettres of attorney, to pass vnder your comon seale as were
essentially necessary to empower and justify such appearance, and pleading
for you here, which you could not imagine but that you must haue had due
time to returne them in, noe law compelling impossibilities.

"When the first day of that Michaelmas Tearme came, and your lettres of
attorney neither were, nor indeed could be return'd ... I applyd by
councill to the Court of Chancery to enlarge that time urgeing the
impossibility of hauing a returne from you in the time allotted.... But it
is true my lord keeper cutt the ground from under us which wee stood upon,
by telling us the order of the 18th of June was a surprize upon his
lordship and that he ought not to haue granted it, for that every
corporacon ought to haue an attorney in every court to appeare to his
majesties suite, and that London had such.... However certainely you ought
when my lettres were come to you, nunc pro tune, to haue past the lettres
of attorney I sent you under your comon seale and sent them me, and not to
haue stopt them upon any private surmises from other hands then his you
had entrusted in that matter; and the rather for that the judgments of
law, espetially those taken by defaults for non appearances, are not like
the laws of the Medes and Persians irrevocable, but are often on just
grounds sett aside by the court here, and the defendants admitted to plead
as if noe such judgments had been entred vp, and the very order it selfe
of the 18th of June guies you a home instance of it.

"And indeed I did therefore forbeare giueing you an account of a further
time being denyd, and the entry of judgment against you, expecting you
would before such lettre could haue reacht you haue sent me the lettres of
attorney vnder your corporacon seale that the court might haue been moved
to admitt your appearance and plea and waiued the judgment.

"But instead of those lettres of attorney under your seale you sent me an
address to his late majesty, I confess judiciously drawne. But it is my
wonder in which of your capacityes you could imagine it should be
presented to his majesty, for if as a corporacon, a body politique, it
should have been putt under your corporacon seale if as a private comunity
it should haue been signed by your order. But the paper has neither
private hand nor publique seale to it and soe must be lost....

"In this condicon what could a man doe for you, nothing publiquely for he
had noe warrant from you to justify the accon." [Footnote: _Mass.
Archives_, cvi. 343.]

So perished the Puritan Commonwealth. The child of the Reformation, its
life sprang from the assertion of the freedom of the mind; but this great
and noble principle is fatal to the temporal power of a priesthood, and
during the supremacy of the clergy the government was doomed to be both
persecuting and repressive. Under no circumstance could the theocracy have
endured: it must have fallen by revolt from within if not by attack from
without. That Charles II. did in fact cause its overthrow gives him a
claim to our common gratitude, for he then struck a decisive blow for the
emancipation of Massachusetts; and thus his successor was enabled to open
before her that splendid career of democratic constitutional liberty which
was destined to become the basis of the jurisprudence of the American
Union.




CHAPTER VII.

THE WITCHCRAFT.


The history of the years between the dissolution of the Company of
Massachusetts Bay and the reorganization of the country by William III. in
1692 has little bearing upon the development of the people; for the
presidency of Dudley and the administration of Andros were followed by a
revolution that paralyzed all movement. During the latter portion of this
interval the colony was represented at London by three agents, of whom
Increase Mather was the most influential, who used every effort to obtain
the reëstablishment of the old government; they met, however, with
insuperable obstacles. Quietly to resume was impossible; for the obstinacy
of the clergy, in refusing all compromise with Charles II., had caused the
patent to be cancelled; and thus a new grant had become necessary. Nor was
this all, for the attorney and solicitor general, with whom the two chief
justices concurred, [Footnote: _Parentator_, p. 139] gave it as their
opinion that, supposing no decree had been rendered, and the same powers
were exercised as before, a writ of _scire facias_ would certainly be
issued, upon which a similar judgment would inevitably be entered. These
considerations, however, became immaterial, as the king was a statesman,
and had already decided upon his policy. His views had little in common
with those held by the Massachusetts ecclesiastics, and when the Rev. Mr.
Mather first read the instrument in which they had been embodied, he
declared he "would sooner part with his life than consent unto such
minutes." [Footnote: _Parentator_, p. 134.] He grew calmer, however, when
told that his "consent was not expected nor desired;" and with that
energy and decision for which he was remarkable, at once secured the
patronage.

The constitutional aspect of the Provincial Charter is profoundly
interesting, and it will be considered in its legal bearings hereafter.
Its political tendencies, however, first demand attention, for it wrought
a complete social revolution, since it overthrew the temporal power of the
church. Massachusetts, Maine, and Plymouth were consolidated, and within
them toleration was established, except in regard to Papists; the
religious qualification was swept away, and in its stead freeholders of
forty shillings per annum, or owners of personal property to the value of
forty pounds sterling, were admitted to the franchise; the towns continued
to elect the house of representatives, and the whole Assembly chose the
council, subject to the approval of the executive. [Footnote: Hutch.
_Hist._ ii. 15, 16] The governor, lieutenant-governor, and secretary
were appointed by the crown; the governor had a veto, and the king
reserved the right to disallow legislation within three years of the date
of its enactment. Thus the theocracy fell at a single blow; and it is
worthy of remark that thenceforward prosecutions for sedition became
unknown among the people of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Yet, though
the clerical oligarchy was no longer absolute, the ministers still exerted
a prodigious influence upon opinion. Not only did they speak with all the
authority inherited with the traditions of the past; not only had they or
their predecessors trained the vast majority of the people from their
cradles to reverence them more than anything on earth, but their compact
organization was as yet unimpaired, and at its head stood the two Mathers,
the pastors of the Old North Church. Thus venerated and thus led, the
elders were still able to appeal to the popular superstition and
fanaticism with terrible effect.

Widely differing judgments have been formed of these two celebrated
divines; the ecclesiastical view is perhaps well summed up by the Rev.
John Eliot, who thus describes the President of Harvard: "He was the
father of the New England clergy, and his name and character were held in
veneration, not only by those, who knew him, but by succeeding
generations." [Footnote: _Biographical Dictionary_, p. 312.] All must
admit his ability and learning, while in sanctimoniousness of deportment
he was unrivalled. His son Cotton says he had such a "gravity as made all
sorts of persons, wherever he came, to be struck with a sensible awe of
his presence, ... yea, if he laughed on them, they believed it not." "His
very countenance carried the force of a sermon with it." [Footnote:
_Parentator_, p. 40.] He kept a strict account of his mental condition,
and always was pleased when able to enter in his diary at the end of the
day, "heart serious." He was unctuous in his preaching, and wept much in
the pulpit; he often mentions being "quickened at the Lord's table [during
which] tears gushed from me before the Lord," [Footnote: _Parentator_, p.
48.] but of his self-sacrifice, his mercy, and his truth, his own acts and
words are the best evidence that remain.

When the new government was about to be put in operation, an extraordinary
amount of patronage lay at the disposal of the crown; for, beside the
regular executive officers, the entire council had to be named, since they
could not be elected until a legislature had been organized to choose
them. Increase Mather, Elisha Cooke, and Thomas Oakes were acting as
agents, and all had been bitterly opposed to the new charter; but of the
three, the English ministers thought Mather the most important to secure.
And now an odd coincidence happened in the life of this singular man. He
suddenly one day announced himself convinced that the king's project was
not so intolerable as to be unworthy of support; and then it very shortly
transpired that he had been given all the spoil before the patent had
passed the seals. [Footnote: Palfrey, iv. 85.] The proximity of these
events is interesting as bearing on the methods of ecclesiastical
statesmen, and it is also instructive to observe how thorough a master of
the situation this eminent divine proved himself to be. He not only
appointed all his favorite henchmen to office, but he rigidly excluded his
colleagues at London, who had continued their opposition, and every one
else who had any disposition to be independent. His creature, Sir William
Phips, was made governor; William Stoughton, who was bred for the church,
and whose savage bigotry endeared him to the clergy, was lieutenant-
governor; and the council was so packed that his excellent son broke into
a shout of triumph when he heard the news:--

"The time has come! the set time has come! I am now to receive an answer
of so many prayers. All the councellors of the province are of my own
father's nomination; and my father-in-law, with several related unto me,
and several brethren of my own church are among them. The governor of the
province is not my enemy, but one whom I baptized; namely, Sir William
Phips, one of my own flock, and one of my dearest friends." [Footnote:
Cotton Mather's _Diary_; Quincy's _History of Harvard_, i. 60.]
Such was the government the theocracy left the country as its legacy when
its own power had passed away, and dearly did Massachusetts rue that fatal
gift in her paroxysms of agony and blood.

At the close of the seventeenth century the belief in witchcraft was
widespread, and among the more ignorant well-nigh universal. The
superstition was, moreover, fostered by the clergy, who, in adopting this
policy, were undoubtedly actuated by mixed motives. Their credulity
probably made them for the most part sincere in the unbounded confidence
they professed in the possibility of compacts between the devil and
mankind; but, nevertheless, there is abundant evidence in their writings
of their having been keenly alive to the fact that men horror-stricken at
the sight of the destruction of their wives and children by magic would
grovel in the submission of abject terror at the feet of the priest who
promised to deliver them.

The elders began the agitation by sending out a paper of proposals for
collecting stories of apparitions and witchcrafts, and in obedience to
their wish Increase Mather published his "Illustrious Providences" in
1683-4. Two chapters of this book were devoted to sorceries, and the
reverend author took occasion to intimate his opinion that those who might
doubt the truth of his relations were probably themselves either heretics
or wizards. This movement of the clergy seems to have highly inflamed the
popular imagination, [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ ii. 24.] yet no immediate
disaster followed; and the nervous exaltation did not become deadly until
1688. In the autumn of that year four children of a Boston mason named
Goodwin began to mimic the symptoms they had so often heard described; the
father, who was a pious man, called in the ministers of Boston and
Charlestown, who fasted and prayed, and succeeded in delivering the
youngest, who was five. Meanwhile, one of the daughters had "cried out
upon" an unfortunate Irish washerwoman, with whom she had quarrelled.
Cotton Mather was now in his element. He took the eldest girl home with
him and tried a great number of interesting experiments as to the relative
power of Satan and the Lord; among others he gravely relates how when the
sufferer was tormented elsewhere he would carry her struggling to his own
study, into which entering, she stood immediately upon her feet, and cried
out, "They are gone! They are gone! They say they cannot--God won't let
'em come here." [Footnote: _Memorable Providences_, pp. 27, 28]

It is not credible that an educated and a sane man could ever have
honestly believed in the absurd stuff which he produced as evidence of the
supernatural; his description of the impudence of the children is amazing.

"They were divers times very near burning or drowning of themselves, but
... by their own pittiful and seasonable cries for help still procured
their deliverance: which made me consider, whether the little ones had not
their angels, in the plain sense of our Saviour's intimation.... And
sometimes, tho' but seldome, they were kept from eating their meals, by
having their teeth sett when they carried any thing to their mouthes."
[Footnote: _Idem_, pp. 15-17.]

And it was upon such evidence that the washerwoman was hanged. There is an
instant in the battle as the ranks are wavering, when the calmness of the
officers will avert the rout; and as to have held their soldiers then is
deemed their highest honor, so to have been found wanting is their
indelible disgrace; the people stood poised upon the panic's brink, their
pastors lashed them in.

Cotton Mather forthwith published a terrific account of the ghostly
crisis, mixed with denunciations of the Sadducee or Atheist who
disbelieved; and to the book was added a preface, written by the four
other clergymen who had assisted with their prayers, the character of
which may be judged by a single extract. "The following account will
afford to him that shall read with observation, a further clear
confirmation, that, there is both a God, and a devil, and witchcraft: that
there is no outward affliction, but what God may, (and sometimes doth)
permit Satan to trouble his people withal." [Footnote: _Memorable
Providences_, Preface.] Not content with this, Mather goaded his
congregation into frenzy from the pulpit. "Consider also, the misery of
them whom witchcraft may be let loose upon. What is it to fall into the
hands of devils?... O what a direful thing is it, to be prickt with pins,
and stab'd with knives all over, and to be fill'd all over with broken
bones? 'Tis impossible to reckon up the varieties of miseries which those
monsters inflict where they can have a blow. No less than death, and that
a languishing and a terrible death will satisfie the rage of those
formidable dragons." [Footnote: _Discourse on Witchcraft_, p. 19.] The
pest was sure to spread in a credulous community, fed by their natural
leaders with this morbid poison, and it next broke out in Salem village in
February, 1691-2. A number of girls had become intensely excited by the
stories they had heard, and two of them, who belonged to the family of the
clergyman, were seized with the usual symptoms. Of Mr. Parris it is enough
to say that he began the investigation with a frightful relish. Other
ministers were called in, and prayer-meetings lasting all day were held,
with the result of throwing the patients into convulsions. [Footnote:
Calef's _More Wonders_, p. 90 _et seq._] Then the name of the witch was
asked, and the girls were importuned to make her known. They refused at
first, but soon the pressure became too strong, and the accusations began.
Among the earliest to be arrested and examined was Goodwife Cory. Mr.
Noyes, teacher of Salem, began with prayer, and when she was brought in
the sufferers "did vehemently accuse her of afflicting them, by biting,
pinching, strangling, &c., and they said, they did in their fits see her
likeness coming to them, and bringing a book for them to sign." [Footnote:
_Idem_, p. 92] By April the number of informers and of the suspected had
greatly increased and the prisons began to fill. Mr. Parris behaved like a
madman; not only did he preach inflammatory sermons, but he conducted the
examinations, and his questions were such that the evidence was in truth
nothing but what he put in the mouths of the witnesses; yet he seems to
have been guilty of the testimony it was his sacred duty to truly record
[Footnote: _Grounds of Complaint against Parris_, Section 6; _More
Wonders_, p. 96 (_i.e._ 56).]. And in all this he appears to have had the
approval and the aid of Mr. Noyes. Such was the crisis when Sir William
Phips landed on the 14th of May, 1692; he was the Mathers' tool, and the
result could have been foretold. Uneducated and credulous, he was as clay
in the hands of his creators; and his first executive act was to cause the
miserable prisoners to be fettered. Jonathan Cary has described what
befell his wife: "Next morning the jaylor put irons on her legs (having
received such a command) the weight of them was about eight pounds; these
irons and her other afflictions, soon brought her into convulsion fits, so
that I thought she would have died that night." [Footnote: _More Wonders_,
p. 97]

At the beginning of June the governor, by an arbitrary act, created a
court to try the witches, and at its head put William Stoughton. Even now
it is impossible to read the proceedings of this sanguinary tribunal
without a shudder, and it has left a stain upon the judiciary of
Massachusetts that can never be effaced.

Two weeks later the opinion of the elders was asked, as it had been of
old, and they recommended the "speedy and vigorous prosecutions of such as
have rendered themselves obnoxious," [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ ii. 53.]
nor did their advice fall upon unwilling ears. Stoughton was already
at work, and certain death awaited all who were dragged before that cruel
and bloodthirsty bigot; even when the jury acquitted, the court refused to
receive the verdict. The accounts given of the legal proceedings seem
monstrous. The preliminary examinations were conducted amid such "hideous
clamours and screechings," that frequently the voice of the defendant was
drowned, and if a defence was attempted at a trial, the victim was
browbeaten and mocked by the bench. [Footnote: _More Wonders_, p. 102.]

The ghastly climax was reached in the case of George Burroughs, who had
been the clergyman at Wells. At his trial the evidence could hardly be
heard by reason of the fits of the sufferers. "The chief judge asked the
prisoner, who he thought hindered these witnesses from giving their
testimonies? and he answered, he supposed it was the devil. That
honourable person then replied, How comes the devil so loath to have any
testimony born against you? Which cast him into very great confusion."
Presently the informers saw the ghosts of his two dead wives, whom they
charged him with having murdered, stand before him "crying for vengeance;"
yet though much appalled, he steadily denied that they were there. He also
roused his judges' ire by asserting that "there neither are, nor ever
were, witches." [Footnote: _Idem_, pp. 115-119.]

He and those to die with him were carried through the streets of Salem in
a cart. As he climbed the ladder he called God to witness he was innocent,
and his words were so pathetic that the people sobbed aloud, and it seemed
as though he might be rescued even as he stood beneath the tree. Then when
at last he swung above them, Cotton Mather rode among the throng and told
them of his guilt, and how the fiend could come to them as an angel of
light, and so the work went on. They cut him down and dragged him by his
halter to a shallow hole among the rocks, and threw him in, and there they
lay together with the rigid hand of the wizard Burroughs still pointing
upward through his thin shroud of earth. [Footnote: _More Wonders_,
pp. 103, 104.]

By October it seemed as though the bonds of society were dissolving;
nineteen persons had been hanged, one had been pressed to death, and eight
lay condemned; a number had fled, but their property had been seized and
they were beggars; the prisons were choked, while more than two hundred
were accused and in momentary fear of arrest; [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 110.]
even two dogs had been killed. The plague propagated itself; for the
only hope for those cried out upon was to confess their guilt and turn
informers. Thus no one was safe. Mr. Willard, pastor of the Old South, who
began to falter, was threatened; the wife of Mr. Hale, pastor of Beverly,
who had been one of the great leaders of the prosecutions, was denounced;
Lady Phips herself was named. But the race who peopled New England had a
mental vigor which even the theocracy could not subdue, and Massachusetts
had among her sons liberal and enlightened men, whose voice was heard,
even in the madness of the terror. Of these, the two Brattles, Robert
Calef, and John Leverett were the foremost; and they served their mother
well, though the debt of gratitude and honor which she owes them she has
never yet repaid.

On the 8th, four days before the meeting of the legislature, and probably
at the first moment it could be done with safety, Thomas Brattle wrote an
admirable letter, [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Coll._ first series, v. 61.] in
which he exposed the folly and wickedness of the delusion with all
the energy the temper of the time would bear; had he miscalculated, his
error of judgment would probably have cost him his life. At the meeting of
the General Court the illegal and blood-stained commission came to an end,
and as the reaction slowly and surely set in, Phips began to feel alarm
lest he should he called to account in England; accordingly, he tried to
throw the blame on Stoughton: "When I returned, I found people much
dissatisfied at the proceedings of the court; ... The deputy-governor,
[Stoughton] notwithstanding, persisted vigorously in the same method....
When I put an end to the court, there was at least fifty persons in
prison, in great misery by reason of the extreme cold and their
poverty.... I permitted a special superior court to be held at Salem, ...
on the third day of January, the lieutenant-governor being chief judge....
All ... were cleared, saving three.... The deputy-governor signed a
warrant for their speedy execution, and also of five others who were
condemned at the former court.... But ... I sent a reprieve; ... the
lieutenant-governor upon this occasion was enraged and filled with
passionate anger, and refused to sit upon the bench at a superior court,
at that time held at Charlestown; and, indeed, hath from the beginning
hurried on these matters with great precipitancy, and by his warrant hath
caused the estates, goods, and chattels of the executed to be seized and
disposed of without my knowledge or consent." [Footnote: Phips to the Earl
of Nottingham, Feb. 21, 1693. Palfrey, iv. 112, note 2.] Some months
earlier, also, just before the meeting of the legislature, he had called
on Cotton Mather to defend him against the condemnation he had even then
begun to feel, and the elder had responded with a volume which remains as
a memorial of him and his compeers [Footnote: _Wonders of the Invisible
World_.] He gave thanks for the blood that had already flowed, and
prayed to God for more." They were some of the gracious words, inserted in
the advice, which many of the neighbouring ministers, did this summer
humbly lay before our honourable judges: 'We cannot but with all
thankfulness, acknowledge the success which the merciful God has given
unto the sedulous and assiduous endeavours of our honourable rulers, to
detect the abominable witchcrafts which have been committed in the
country; humbly praying that the discovery of those mysterious and
mischievous wickednesses, may be perfected.' If in the midst of the many
dissatisfactions among us, the publication of these trials, may promote
such a pious thankfulness unto God, for justice being so far, executed
among us, I shall rejoyce that God is glorified; and pray that no wrong
steps of ours may ever sully any of his glorious works." [Footnote:
_Wonders of the Invisible World_, pp. 82, 83.]

"These witches ... have met in hellish randez-vouszes.... In these hellish
meetings, these monsters have associated themselves to do no less a thing
than to destroy the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, in these parts of
the world.... We are truly come into a day, which by being well managed
might be very glorious, for the exterminating of those, accursed
things,... But if we make this day quarrelsome,... Alas, O Lord, my flesh
trembles for fear of thee, and I am afraid of thy judgments." [Footnote:
_Idem_, pp. 49-60.]

While reading such words the streets of Salem rise before the eyes, with
the cart dragging Martha Cory to the gallows while she protests her
innocence, and there, at her journey's end, at the gibbet's foot, stands
the Rev. Nicholas Noyes, pointing to the dangling corpses, and saying:
"What a sad thing it is to see eight firebrands of hell hanging there."
[Footnote: _More Wonders_, p. 108.]

The sequence of cause and effect is sufficiently obvious. Although at a
moment when the panic had got beyond control, even the most ultra of the
clergy had been forced by their own danger to counsel moderation, the
conservatives were by no means ready to abandon their potent allies from
the lower world; the power they gave was too alluring. "'Tis a strange
passage recorded by Mr. Clark, in the life of his father, That the people
of his parish refusing to be reclaimed from their Sabbath breaking, by all
the zealous testimonies which that good man bore against it; at last [one
night] ... there was heard a great noise, with rattling of chains, up and
down the town, and an horrid scent of brimstone.... Upon which the guilty
consciences of the wretches, told them, the devil was come to fetch them
away; and it so terrify'd them, that an eminent reformation follow'd the
sermons which that man of God preached thereupon." [Footnote: _Wonders
of the Invisible World_, p. 65.] They therefore saw the constant
acquittals, the abandonment of prosecutions, and the growth of incredulity
with regret. The next year Cotton Mather laid bare the workings of their
minds with cynical frankness. "The devils have with most horrendous
operations broke in upon our neighbourhood, and God has at such a rate
overruled all the fury and malice of those devils, that ... the souls of
many, especially of the rising generation, have been thereby waken'd unto
some acquaintance with religion; our young people who belonged unto the
praying meetings, of both sexes, apart would ordinarily spend whole nights
by the whole weeks together in prayers and psalms upon these occasions;
... and some scores of other young people, who were strangers to real
piety, were now struck with the lively demonstrations of hell ... before
their eyes.... In the whole--the devil got just nothing, but God got
praises, Christ got subjects, the Holy Spirit got temples, the church got
addition, and the souls of men got everlasting benefits." [Footnote:
_More Wonders_, p. 12.]

Mather prided himself on what he had done. "I am not so vain as to say
that any wisdom or virtue of mine did contribute unto this good order of
things; but I am so just as to say, I did not hinder this good."
[Footnote: _Idem_, p. 12.] Men with such beliefs, and lured onward by
such temptations, were incapable of letting the tremendous power
superstition gave them slip from their grasp without an effort on their
own behalf; and accordingly it was not long before the Mathers were once
more at work. On the 10th of September, 1693, or about nine months after
the last spasms at Salem, and when the belief in enchantments was fast
falling into disrepute, a girl named Margaret Rule was taken with the
accustomed symptoms in Boston. Forthwith these two godly divines repaired
to her bedside, and this is what took place:--

       *       *       *       *       *

Then Mr. M---- father and son came up, and others with them, in the whole
were about thirty or forty persons, they being sat, the father on a stool,
and the son upon the bedside by her, the son began to question her:

Margaret Rule, how do you do? Then a pause without any answer.

_Question._ What. Do there a great many witches sit upon you?
_Answer._ Yes.

_Question._ Do you not know that there is a hard master?

Then she was in a fit. He laid his hand upon her face and nose, but, as he
said, without perceiving breath; then he brush'd her on the face with his
glove, and rubb'd her stomach (her breast not being covered with the bed
clothes) and bid others do so too, and said it eased her, then she
revived.

_Q._ Don't you know there is a hard master? _A._ Yes.

_Reply._ Don't serve that hard master, you know who.

_Q._ Do you believe? Then again she was in a fit, and he again rub'd
her breast &c.... He wrought his fingers before her eyes and asked her if
she saw the witches? _A._ No....

_Q._ Who is it that afflicts you? _A._ I know not, there is a
great many of them....

_Q._ You have seen the black man, hant you? _A._ No.

_Reply._ I hope you never shall.

_Q._ You have had a book offered you, hant you?

_A._ No.

_Q._ The brushing of you gives you ease, don't it?

_A._ Yes. She turn'd herselfe, and a little groan'd.

_Q._ Now the witches scratch you, and pinch you, and bite you, don't
they? _A._ Yes. Then he put his hand upon her breast and belly, viz.
on the clothes over her, and felt a living thing, as he said; which moved
the father also to feel, and some others.

_Q._ Don't you feel the live thing in the bed?

_A._ No....

_Q._ Shall we go to pray ... spelling the word.

_A._ Yes. The father went to prayer for perhaps half an hour, chiefly
against the power of the devil and witchcraft, and that God would bring
out the afflicters.... After prayer he [the son] proceeded.

_Q._ You did not hear when we were at prayer did you? _A._ Yes.

_Q._ You don't hear always? you don't hear sometimes past a word or
two, do you? _A._ No. Then turning him about said, this is just
another Mercy Short....

_Q._ What does she eat or drink? _A._ Not eat at all; but drink
rum. [Footnote: _More Wonders_, pp. 13, 14.]

       *       *       *       *       *

To sanctify to the godly the ravings of this drunken and abandoned wench
was a solemn joy to the heart of this servant of Christ, who gave his life
to "unwearied cares and pains, to rescue the miserable from the lions and
bears of hell," [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 10.] therefore he prepared
another tract. But his hour was well-nigh come. Though it was impossible
that retribution should be meted out to him for his crimes, at least he
did not escape unscathed, for Calef and the Brattles, who had long been on
his father's track and his, now seized him by the throat. He knew well
they had been with him in the chamber of Margaret Rule, that they had
gathered all the evidence; and so when Calef sent him a challenge to stand
forth and defend himself, he shuffled and equivocated.

At length a rumor spread abroad that a volume was to be published exposing
the whole black history, and then the priest began to cower. His Diary is
full of his prayers and lamentations. "The book is printed, and the
impression is this week arrived here.... I set myself to humble myself
before the Lord under these humbling and wondrous dispensations, and
obtain the pardon of my sins, that have rendered me worthy of such
dispensations....

"28d. 10m. Saturday.--The Lord has permitted Satan to raise an
extraordinary storm upon my father and myself. All the rage of Satan
against the holy churches of the Lord falls upon us. First Calf's book,
and then Coleman's, do set the people in a mighty ferment. All the
adversaries of the churches lay their heads together, as if, by blasting
of us, they hoped utterly to blow up all. The Lord fills my soul with
consolations, inexpressible consolations, when I think on my conformity to
my Lord Jesus Christ in the injuries and reproaches that are cast upon
me....

"5d. 2m. Saturday [1701].--I find the enemies of the churches are set with
an implacable enmity against myself; and one vile fool, namely, R. Calf,
is employed by them to go on with more of his filthy scribbles to hurt my
precious opportunities of glorifying my Lord Jesus Christ. I had need be
much in prayer unto my glorious Lord that he would preserve his poor
servant from the malice of this evil generation, and of that vile man
particularly." [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._ 1855-58, pp. 290-293.]

"More Wonders of the Invisible World" appeared in 1700, and such was the
terror the clergy still inspired it is said it had to be sent to London to
be printed, and when it was published no bookseller in Boston dared to
offer it in his shop. [Footnote: _Some Few Remarks_, p. 9.] Yet though it
was burnt in the college yard by the order of Increase Mather, it was
widely read, and dealt the deathblow to the witchcraft superstition
of New England. It did more than this: it may be said to mark an era in
the intellectual development of Massachusetts, for it shook to its centre
that moral despotism which the pastors still kept almost unimpaired over
the minds of their congregations, by demonstrating to the people the
necessity of thinking for themselves. But what the fate of its authors
would have been had the priests still ruled may be guessed by the
onslaught made on them by those who sat at the Mathers' feet. "Spit on,
Calf; thou shalt be but like the viper on Pauls hand, easily shaken off,
and without any damage to the servant of the Lord." [Footnote:
_Idem_, p. 22.]




CHAPTER VIII.

BRATTLE CHURCH.


If the working of the human mind is mechanical, the quality of its action
must largely depend upon the training it receives. Viewed as civilizing
agents, therefore, systems of education might be tested by their tendency
to accelerate or retard the intellectual development of the race. The
proposition is capable of being presented with almost mathematical
precision; the receptive faculty begins to fail at a comparatively early
age; thereafter new opinions are assimilated with increasing difficulty
until the power is lost. This progressive period of life, which is at best
brief, may, however, be indefinitely shortened by the interposition of
artificial obstacles, which have to be overcome by a waste of time and
energy, before the reason can act with freedom; and when these obstacles
are sufficiently formidable, the whole time is consumed and men are
stationary. The most effectual impediments are those prejudices which are
so easily implanted in youth, and which acquire tremendous power when
based on superstitious terrors. Herein, then, lies the radical divergence
between theological and scientific training: the one, by inculcating that
tradition is sacred, that accurate investigation is sacrilege, certain to
be visited with terrific punishment, and that the highest moral virtue is
submission to authority, seeks to paralyze exact thought, and to produce a
condition in which dogmatic statements of fact, and despotic rules of
conduct, will be received with abject resignation; the other, by
stimulating the curiosity, endeavors to provoke inquiry, and, by
encouraging a scrutiny of what is obscure, tries to put the mind in an
impartial and questioning attitude toward all the phenomena of the
universe.

The two methods are irreconcilable, and spring from the great primary
instincts which are called conservatism and liberality. Necessarily the
movement of any community must correspond exactly with the preponderance
of liberalism. Where the theological incubus is unresisted it takes the
form of a sacred caste, as among the Hindoos; appreciable advance then
ceases, except from some external pressure, such as conquest. The same
tendencies in a mitigated form are seen in Spain, whereas Germany is
scientific.

Such being the ceaseless conflict between these natural forces, the
vantage-points for which the opposing parties have always struggled in
western Europe are the pulpits and the universities. Through women the
church can reach children at their most impressionable age, while at the
universities the teachers are taught. Obviously, if a priesthood can
control both positions their influence must be immense. At the beginning
of any movement the conservatives are almost necessarily in possession,
and their worst reverses have come from defection from within; for unless
their organization is so perfect as not only to be animated by a single
purpose, but capable of being controlled by a single will, liberals will
penetrate within the fold, and if they can maintain their footing and
preach with the authority of the ancient tradition it leads to revolution.
It was thus the Reformation was accomplished.

The clergy of Massachusetts, with the true priestly instinct, took in the
bearings of their situation from the instant they recognized that their
political supremacy was passing away, and in order to keep their
organization in full vigor they addressed themselves with unabated energy
to enforcing the discipline which had been established; at the same time
they set the ablest of their number on guard at Harvard. But the task was
beyond their strength; they might as well have tried to dam the rising
tide with sand.

There is a limit to the capacity of even the most gifted man, and Increase
Mather committed a fatal error when he tried to be professor, clergyman,
and statesman at once. He was, it is true, made president in 1685, but the
next year John Leverett and William Brattle were chosen tutors and
fellows, who soon developed into ardent liberals; so it happened that when
the reverend rector went abroad in 1688, in his character of politician,
he left the college in the complete control of his adversaries. He was
absent four years, and during this interval the man was educated who was
destined to overthrow the Cambridge Platform, the corner-stone of the
conservative power.

Benjamin Colman was one of Leverett's favorite pupils and the intimate
friend of Pemberton. As he was to be a minister, he stayed at Cambridge
until he took his master's degree in 1695; he then sailed at once for
England in the Swan. When she had been some weeks at sea she was attacked
by a French privateer, who took her after a sharp action. During the fight
Colman attracted attention by his coolness; but he declared that though he
fired like the rest, "he was sensible of no courage but of a great deal of
fear; and when they had received two or three broadsides he wondered when
his courage would come, as he had heard others talk." [Footnote: _Life
of B. Colman_, p. 6.]

After the capture the Frenchmen stripped him and put him in the hold, and
had it not been for a Madame Allaire, who kept his money for him, he might
very possibly have perished from the exposure of an imprisonment in
France, for his lungs were delicate. Moreover, at this time of his life he
was always a pauper, for he was not only naturally generous, but so
innocent and confiding as to fall a victim to any clumsy sharper. Of
course he reached London penniless and in great depression of spirits; but
he soon became known among the dissenting clergy, and at length settled at
Bath, where he preached two years. He seems to have formed singularly
strong friendships while in England, one of which was with Mr. Walter
Singer, at whose house he passed much time, and who wrote him at parting,
"Methinks there is one place vacant in my affections, which nobody can
fill beside you. But this blessing was too great for me, and God has
reserved it for those that more deserved it.--I cannot but hope sometimes
that Providence has yet in store so much happiness for me, that I shall
yet see you." [Footnote: _Life of B. Colman_, p. 48.]

Meanwhile opinion was maturing fast at home; the passions of the
witchcraft convulsion had gone deep, and in 1697 a movement began under
the guidance of Leverett and the Brattles to form a liberal Congregational
church. The close on which the meetinghouse was to stand was conveyed by
Thomas Brattle to trustees on January 10, 1698, and from the outset there
seems to have been no doubt as to whom the pastor should be. On the 10th
of May, 1699, a formal invitation was dispatched to Colman by a committee,
of which Thomas Brattle was chairman, and it was accompanied by letters
from many prominent liberals. Leverett wrote, "I shall exceedingly rejoice
at your return to your country. We want persons of your character. The
affair offered to your consideration is of the greatest moment." William
Brattle was even more emphatic, while Pemberton assured him that "the
gentlemen who solicit your return are mostly known to you--men of repute
and figure, from whom you may expect generous treatment; ... I believe
your return will be pleasing to all that know you, I am sure it will be
inexpressibly so to your unfeigned friend and servant." [Footnote: _Life
of B. Colman_, pp. 43, 44.] It was, however, thought prudent to have
him ordained in London, since there was no probability that the clergy of
Massachusetts would perform the rite. When he landed in November, after an
absence of four years, he was in the flush of early manhood, highly
trained for theological warfare, having seen the world, and by no means in
awe of his old pastor, the reverend president of Harvard.

The first step after his arrival was to declare the liberal policy, and
this was done in a manifesto which was published almost at once. [Footnote:
_History of Brattle St. Church_, p. 20.]  The efficiency of the
Congregational organization depended upon the perfection of the guard
which the ministers and the congregations mutually kept over each other.
On the one hand no dangerous element could creep in among the people
through the laxness of the elder, since all candidates for the communion
had to pass through the ordeal of a public examination; on the other the
orthodoxy of the ministers was provided for, not only by restricting the
elective body to the communicants, but by the power of the ordained clergy
to "except against any election of a pastor who ... may be ... unfit for
the common service of the gospel." [Footnote: Propositions determined by
the Assembly of Ministers. _Magnalia_, bk. 5, Hist. Remarks, Section
8.]

The declaration of the Brattle Street "undertakers" cut this system at the
root, for they announced their intention to dispense with the relation of
experiences, thus practically throwing their communion open to all
respectable persons who would confess the Westminster Creed; and more
fatal still, they absolutely destroyed the homogeneousness of the
ecclesiastical constituency: "We cannot confine the right of chusing a
minister to the male communicants alone, but we think that every baptized
adult person who contributes to the maintenance, should have a vote in
electing." [Footnote: _History of Brattle St. Church_, p. 25, Prop.
16.]

They also proposed several innovations of minor importance, such as
relaxing the baptismal regulations, and somewhat changing the established
service by having the Bible read without comment.

Their temporal power was gone, toleration was the law of the land they had
once possessed, and now an onslaught was to be made upon the intellectual
ascendency which the clergy felt certain of maintaining over their people,
if only they could enforce obedience in their own ranks. The danger, too,
was the more alarming because so insidious; for, though their propositions
seemed reasonable, it was perfectly obvious that should the liberals
succeed in forcing their church within the pale of the orthodox communion,
discipline must end, and the pulpits might at any time be filled with men
capable of teaching the most subversive doctrines. Although such might be
the inexorable destiny of the Massachusetts hierarchy, it was not in
ecclesiastical human nature to accept the dispensation with meekness, and
the utterances of the conservative divines seem hardly to breathe the
spirit of that gospel they preached at such interminable length.

Yet it was very difficult to devise a scheme of resistance. They were
powerless to coerce; for, although Increase Mather had taken care, when at
the summit of his power, to have a statute passed which had the effect of
reënacting the Cambridge Platform, it had been disapproved by the king;
therefore, moral intimidation was the only weapon which could be employed.
Now, aside from the fact that men like Thomas Brattle and Leverett were
not timorous, their position was at this moment very strong from the stand
they had taken in the witchcraft troubles, and worst of all, they were
openly supported by William Brattle, who was already a minister, and by
Pemberton, who was a fellow of Harvard, and soon to be ordained.

The attack was, however, begun by Mr. Higginson, and Mr. Noyes, of
witchcraft memory, in a long rebuke, whose temper may be imagined from
such a sentence as this: "We cannot but think you might have entered upon
your declaration with more reverence and humility than so solemnly to
appeal to God, your judge, that you do it with all the sincerity and
seriousness the nature of your engagement commands from you; seeing you
were most of you much unstudied in the controversial points of church
order and discipline, and yet did not advise with the neighboring churches
... but with a great deal of confidence and freedom, set up by
yourselves." The letter then goes on to adjure them to revoke the
manifesto, and adjust matters with the "neighbouring elders," "that so the
right hand of fellowship may be given to your pastor by other pastors, ...
and that you may not be the beginning of a schism that will dishonour God,
... and be a matter of triumph to the bad." [Footnote: _History of Brattle
St. Church_, pp. 29-37.]

Cotton Mather's Diary, however, gives the most pleasing view of the high
churchmen:--

"1699. 7th, 10th m. (Dec.) I see another day of temptation begun upon the
town and land. A company of headstrong men in the town, the chief of whom
are full of malignity to the holy ways of our churches, have built in the
town another meetinghouse. To delude many better meaning men in their own
company, and the churches in the neighbourhood, they passed a vote in the
foundation of the proceedings that they would not vary from the practice
of these churches, except in one little particular.

"But a young man born and bred here, and hence gone for England, is now
returned hither at their invitation, equipped with an ordination to
qualify him for all that is intended on his returning and arriving here;
these fallacious people desert their vote, and without the advice or
knowledge of the ministers in the vicinity, they have published, under the
title of a manifesto, certain articles that utterly subvert our churches,
and invite an ill party, through all the country, to throw all into
confusion on the first opportunities. This drives the ministers that would
be faithful unto the Lord Jesus Christ, and his interests in the churches,
unto a necessity of appearing for their defence. No little part of these
actions must unavoidably fall to my share. I have already written a large
monitory letter to these innovators, which, though most lovingly penned,
yet enrages their violent and imperious lusts to carry on the apostacy."

"1699. 5th d. 11th m. (Saturday.) I see Satan beginning a terrible shake
in the churches of New England, and the innovators that had set up a new
church in Boston (a new one indeed!) have made a day of temptation among
us. The men are ignorant, arrogant, obstinate, and full of malice and
slander, and they fill the land with lies, in the misrepresentations
whereof I am a very singular sufferer. Wherefore I set apart this day
again for prayer in my study, to cry mightily unto God." [Footnote:
_History of Harvard_, Quincy, i. 486, 487, App. x.]

"21st d. 11th m. The people of the new church in Boston, who, by their
late manifesto, went on in an ill way, and in a worse frame, and the town
was filled with sin, and especially with slanders, wherein especially my
father and myself were sufferers. We two, with many prayers and studies,
and with humble resignation of our names unto the Lord, prepared a
faithful antidote for our churches against the infection of the example,
which we feared this company had given them, and we put it into the press.
But when the first sheet was near composed at the press, I stopped it,
with a desire to make one attempt more for the bringing of this people to
reason. I drew up a proposal, and, with another minister, carried it unto
them, who at first rejected it, but afterward so far embraced it, as to
promise that they will the next week publicly recognize their covenant
with God and one another, and therewithall declare their adherence to the
Heads of Agreement of the United Brethren in England, and request the
communion of our churches in that foundation." [Footnote: _History of
Harvard_, i. 487, App. x.]

This last statement is marked by the exuberance of imagination for which
the Mathers are so famed. In truth, Dr. Mather had nothing to do with the
settlement. The facts were these: after Brattle Street Church was
organized, the congregation voted that Mr. Colman should ask the ministers
of the town to keep a day of prayer with them. On the 28th of December,
1699, they received the following suggestive answer:--

       *       *       *       *       *

MR. COLMAN:

Whereas you have signified to us that your society have desired us to join
with them in a public fast, in order to your intended communion, our
answer is, that as we have formerly once and again insinuated unto you,
that if you would in due manner lay aside what you call your manifesto,
and resolve and declare that you will keep to the heads of agreement on
which the United Brethren in London have made their union, and then
publicly proceed with the presence, countenance, and concurrence of the
New England churches, we should be free to give you our fellowship and our
best assistance, which things you have altogether declined and neglected
to do; thus we must now answer, that, if you will give us the satisfaction
which the law of Christ requires for your disorderly proceedings, we shall
be happy to gratify your desires; otherwise, we may not do it, lest ... we
become partakers of the guilt of those irregularities by which you have
given just cause of offence....

INCREASE MATHER.
JAMES ALLEN. [Footnote: _History of Brattle St. Church_, p. 55.]

       *       *       *       *       *

Under the theocracy a subservient legislature would have voted the
association "a seditious conspiracy," and the country would have been
cleared of Leverett, Colman, the Brattles, and their abettors; but in 1700
the priests no longer manipulated the constituencies, and there was actual
danger to the conservative cause from their violence; therefore Stoughton
exerted himself to muzzle the Mathers, and he did succeed in quieting them
for the moment, though Sewall seems to intimate that they submitted with
no very good grace: [1699/1700.] "January 24th. The Lt Govr [Stoughton]
calls me with him to Mr. Willards, where out of two papers Mr. Wm Brattle
drew up a third for an accommodation to bring on an agreement between the
new-church and our ministers; Mr. Colman got his brethren to subscribe
it.... January 25th. Mr. I. Mather, Mr. C. Mather, Mr. Willard, Mr.
Wadsworth, and S. S. wait on the Lt Govr at Mr. Coopers: to confer about
the writing drawn up the evening before. Was some heat; but grew calmer,
and after lecture agreed to be present at the fast which is to be observed
January 31." [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Coll._ fifth series, vi. 2.]

Humility has sometimes been extolled as the crowning grace of Christian
clergymen, but Cotton Mather's Diary shows the intolerable arrogance of
the early Congregational divines.

"A wonderful joy filled the hearts of our good people far and near, that
we had obtained thus much from them. Our strife seemed now at an end;
there was much relenting in some of their spirits, when they saw our
condescension, our charity, our compassion. We overlooked all past
offences. We kept the public fast with them ... and my father preached
with them on following peace with holiness, and I concluded with prayer."
[Footnote: _History of Harvard_, i. 487, App. x.]

Yet, although there had been this ostensible reconciliation, those who
have appreciated the sensitiveness to sin, of him whom Dr. Eliot calls the
patriarch and his son, must already feel certain they were incapable of
letting Colman's impiety pass unrebuked; indeed, the Diary says the
"faithful antidote" was at that moment in the press, and it was not long
before it was published, sanctified by their prayers. The patriarch began
by telling how he was defending the "cause of Christ and of his churches
in New England," and "if we espouse such principles... we then give away
the whole Congregational cause at once." [Footnote: _Order of the
Gospel_, pp. 8, 9.] He assured his hearers that a "wandering Levite"
like Colman was no more a pastor than he who "has no children is a
father," [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 102.] he was shocked at the
abandonment of the relation of experiences, and was so scandalized at
reading the Bible without comment he could only describe it as "dumb." In
a word, there was nothing the new congregation had done which was not
displeasing to the Lord; but if they had offended in one particular more
than another it was in establishing a man in "the pastoral office without
the approbation of neighbouring churches or elders." [Footnote:
_Idem_, p. 8.] To this solemn admonition Colman and William Brattle
had the irreverence to prepare a reply smacking of levity; nevertheless,
they began with a grave and noble definition of their principles. "The
liberties and privileges which our Lord Jesus Christ has given to his
church ... consist ... in ... that our consciences be not imposed on by
men or their traditions." "We are reflected on as casting dishonour on our
parents, & their pious design in the first settlement of this land....
Some have made this the great design, to be freed from the impositions of
men in the worship of God.... In this we are risen up to make good their
grounds." [Footnote: _Gospel Order Revived_, Epistle Dedicatory.]

They then went on to expose the abuse of public relations of experiences:
"But this is the misery, the more meek and fearful are hereby kept out of
God's house, while the more conceited and presumptuous never boggle at
this, or anything else. But it seems there is a gross corruption of this
laudable practice which the author does well to censure; and that is, when
some, who have no good intention of their own, get others to devise a
relation for them." [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 9.] They even dared to
intimate that it did not savor of modesty for the patriarch "to think any
one of his sermons, or short comments, can edifie more than the reading of
twenty chapters." [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 15.] And then they added some
sentences, which were afterward declared by the venerable victim to be as
scurrilous as other portions of the pamphlet were profane.

"We are assured, the author is esteemed more a Presbyterian than a
Congregational man, by scores of his friends in London. He is lov'd and
reverenced for a moderate spirit, a peaceable disposition, and a temper so
widely different from his late brothers in London.... Did our reverend
author appear the same here, we should be his easie proselites too. But we
are loath to say how he forfeits that venerable character, which might
have consecrated his name to posterity, more than his learning, or other
honorary titles can." [Footnote: _Gospel Order Revived_, pp. 34, 35.]

No printer in Boston dared to be responsible for this ribaldry, and when
it came home from New York and was actually cast before the people, words
fail to convey the condition into which the patriarch was thrown. At last
his emotions found a vent in a tract which he prepared jointly with his
son.

"A moral heathen would not have done as he has done. [Footnote:
_Collection of Some of the More Offensive Matters_, Preface.]... There is
no one thing, which does more threaten or disgrace New-England, than want
of due respect unto superiors. [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 10.]... It is a
disgrace to the name of Presbyterian, that such as he is should pretend
unto it. [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 12.]... and if our children should learn
from them, ... we may tremble to think, what a flood of profaneness and
atheism would break in upon us, and ripen us for the dreadfullest
judgments of God. [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 7.]... They assault him [the aged
president] with a volley of rude jeers and taunts, as if they were so many
children of Bethel." [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 8.]  Among these taunts some
struck deep, for they are quoted at length. "'Abundance of people have
long obstinately believed, that the contest on his part, is more for
lordship and dominion, than for truth.' But there are many more such
passages, which laid altogether, would make a considerable dung-hil."
[Footnote: _Idem_, p. 9.] They dwelt with pathos upon those sacred rites
desecrated by these "unsanctified" "young men" in their "miserable
pamphlet." "The Lord is exceedingly glorified, and his people are edified,
by the accounts, which the candidates, of the communion in our churches
give of that self-examination which is by plain institution ... a
qualification, of the communicants. Now these think it not enough to
charge the churches, which require & expect such accounts, with
exceedingly provoking the Lord. But of the tears dropt by holy souls
on those occasions, they say with a scoff, 'whether they be for joy or
grief, we are left in the dark.'" [Footnote: _Collection of Some of the
More Offensive Matters_, p. 6.]  But the suffering divines found peace
in knowing that Christ himself would inflict the punishment upon these
abandoned men which the priests would have meted out with holy joy had
they still possessed the power.

"Considering that the things contained in their pamphlet, are a deep
apostasy, in conjunction with such open impiety, and profane scurrility
against the holy wayes in which our fathers walked, in case it become the
sin of the land, (as it will do if not duely testified against) we may
fear that some heavy judgment will come upon the whole land. And will not
the holy Lord Jesus Christ, who walks in the midst of his golden
candlesticks, make all the churches to know ... that these men have
provoked the Lord!" [Footnote: _Idem_, pp. 18, 19.]

Yet, notwithstanding the Mathers' piteous prayers, God heeded them not,
and the rising tide that was sweeping over them soon drowned their cries.
Brattle Street congregation became an honored member of the orthodox
communion, the principles which animated its founders spread apace, and
the name of Benjamin Colman waxed great in the land. The liberals had
penetrated the stronghold of the church.




CHAPTER IX.

HARVARD COLLEGE.


For more than two centuries one ceaseless anthem of adulation has been
chanted in Massachusetts in honor of the ecclesiastics who founded Harvard
University, and this act has not infrequently been cited as
incontrovertible proof that they were both liberal and progressive at
heart. The laudation of ancestors is a task as easy as it is popular; but
history deals with the sequence of cause and effect, and an examination of
facts, apart from sentiment, tends to show that in building a college the
clergy were actuated by no loftier motive than intelligent self-interest,
if, indeed, they were not constrained thereto by the inexorable exigencies
of their position.

The truth of this proposition becomes apparent if the soundness of the
following analysis be conceded.

There would seem to be a point in the pathway of civilization where every
race passes more or less completely under the dominion of a sacred caste;
when and how the more robust have emerged into freedom is uncertain, but
enough is known to make it possible to trace the process by which this
insidious power is acquired, and the means by which it is perpetuated. A
flood of light has, moreover, been shed on this class of subjects by the
recent remarkable investigations among the Zuñis. [Footnote: Made by Mr.
F. H. Cushing, of the Bureau of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution.]

Most American Indians are in the matriarchal period of development, which
precedes the patriarchal; and it is then, should they become sedentary,
that caste appears to be born. Some valuable secret, such as a cure for
the bite of the rattlesnake, is discovered, and this gives the finder, and
chosen members of his clan with whom he shares it, a peculiar sanctity in
the eyes of the rest of the tribe. Like facts, however, become known to
other clans, and then coalitions are made which take the form of esoteric
societies, and from these the stronger savages gradually exclude the
weaker and their descendants. Meanwhile an elaborate ritual is developed,
and so an hereditary priesthood comes into life, which always claims to
have received its knowledge by revelation, and which teaches that
resistance to its will is sacrilege. Nevertheless the sacerdotal power is
seldom firmly established without a struggle, the memory whereof is
carefully preserved as a warning of the danger of incurring the divine
wrath. A good example of such a myth is the fable of the rebellious Zuñi
fire-priest, who at the prayer of his orthodox brethren was destroyed with
all his clan by a boiling torrent poured from the burning mountain, sacred
to their order, by the avenging gods. Compare this with the story of
Korah; and it is interesting to observe how the priestly chronicler, in
order to throw the profounder awe about his class, has made the great
national prophet the author of the exclusion of the body of the Levites
from the caste, in favor of his own brother. "And they gathered themselves
together against Moses and against Aaron, and said unto them, Ye take too
much upon you, seeing all the congregation are holy, ... wherefore then
lift ye up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord?

"And when Moses heard it, he fell upon his face." Then he told Korah and
his followers, who were descendants of Levi and legally entitled to act as
priests by existing customs, to take censers and burn incense, and it
would appear whether the Lord would respect their offering. So every man
took his censer, and Korah and two hundred and fifty more stood in the
door of the tabernacle.

Then Moses said, if "the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, with
all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the pit; then ye
shall understand that these men have provoked the Lord....

"And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and their houses,
and all the men that appertained unto Korah, and all their goods.

"They, and all that appertained to them, went down alive into the pit, and
the earth closed upon them:... And all Israel that were round about them
fled at the cry of them: for they said, Lest the earth swallow us up
also." [Footnote: _Numbers_ xvi.] Traces of a similar conflict are
found in Hindoo sacred literature, and probably the process has been well-
nigh universal. The caste, therefore, originates in knowledge, real and
pretended, kept by secret tradition in certain families, and its power is
maintained by systematized terrorism. But to learn the mysteries and
ritual requires a special education, hence those destined for the
priesthood have careful provision made for their instruction. The youthful
Zuñi is taught at the sacred college at the shrine of his order; the pious
Hindoo lives for years with some famous Brahmin; as soon as the down came
on the cheek, the descendants of Aaron were taken into the Temple at
Jerusalem, and all have read how Hannah carried the infant Samuel to the
house of the Lord at Shiloh, and how the child did minister unto the Lord
before Eli the priest.

These facts seem to lead to well-defined conclusions when applied to New
England history. In their passionate zeal the colonists conceived the idea
of reproducing, as far as they could, the society of the Pentateuch, or,
in other words, of reverting to the archaic stage of caste; and in point
of fact they did succeed in creating a theocratic despotism which lasted
in full force for more than forty years. Of course, in the seventeenth
century such a phase of feeling was ephemeral; but the phenomena which
attended it are exceptionally interesting, and possibly they are somewhat
similar to those which accompany the liberation of a primitive people.

The knowledge which divided the Massachusetts clergy from other men was
their supposed proficiency in the interpretation of the ancient writings
containing the revelations of God. For the perpetuation of this lore a
seminary was as essential to them as an association of priests for the
instruction of neophytes is to the Zuni now, or as the training at the
Temple was to the Jews. In no other way could the popular faith in their
special sanctity be sustained. It is also true that few priesthoods have
made more systematic use of terror. The slaughter of Anne Hutchinson and
her family was exultingly declared to be the judgment of God for defaming
the elders. Increase Mather denounced the disobedient Colman in the words
of Moses to Korah; Cotton Mather revelled in picturing the torments of the
bewitched; and, even in the last century Jonathan Edwards frightened
people into convulsions by his preaching. On the other hand, it is obvious
that the reproduction of the Mosaic law could not in the nature of things
have been complete; and the two weak points in the otherwise strong
position of the clergy were that the spirit of their age did not permit
them to make their order hereditary, nor, although their college was a
true theological school, did they perceive the danger of allowing any lay
admixture. The tendency to weaken the force of the discipline is obvious,
yet they were led to abandon the safe Biblical precedent, not only by
their own early associations, but by their hatred of anything savoring of
Catholicism.

Men to be great leaders must exalt their cause above themselves; and if so
godly a man as the Rev. Increase Mather can be said to have had a human
failing it was an inordinate love of money and of flattery. The first of
these peculiarities showed itself early in life when, as his son says, he
was reluctant to settle at the North Church, because of "views he had of
greater service elsewhere." [Footnote: _Parentator_, p. 25.] In other
words, the parish was not liberal; for it seems "the deacons ... were not
spirited like some that have succeeded them; and the leaders of the more
honest people also, were men of a low, mean, sordid spirit.... For one of
his education, and erudition, and gentlemanly spirit, and conversation, to
be so creepled and kept in such a depressing poverty!--In these
distresses, it was to little purpose for him to make his complaint unto
man! If he had, it would have been basely improved unto his disadvantage."
[Footnote: _Idem_, p. 30.] His diary teemed with repinings. "Oh! that
the Lord Jesus, who hears my complaints before him, would either give an
heart to my people to look after my comfortable subsistance among them, or
... remove me to another people, who will take care of me, that so I may
be in a capacity to attend his work, and glorify his name in my
generation." [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 33.] However, matters mended with
him, for we are assured that "the Glorious One who knew the works, and the
service and the patience of this tempted man, ordered it, that several
gentlemen of good estate, and of better spirit, were become the members of
his church;" and from them he had "such filial usages... as took away from
him all room of repenting, that he had not under his temptations
prosecuted a removal from them." [Footnote: _Parentator_, pp. 34, 35.]

The presidency of Harvard, though nominally the highest place a clergyman
could hold in Massachusetts, had always been one of poverty and self-
denial; for the salary was paid by the legislature, which, as the
unfortunate Dunster had found, was not disposed to be generous. Therefore,
although Mr. Mather was chosen president in 1685, and was afterward
confirmed as rector by Andros, he was far too pious to be led again into
those temptations from which he had been delivered by the interposition of
the Glorious One; and the last thing he proposed was to go into residence
and give up his congregation. Besides, he was engrossed in politics and
went to England in 1688, where he stayed four years. Meanwhile the real
control of education was left in the hands of Leverett, who was appointed
tutor in 1686, and of William Brattle, who was in full sympathy with his
policy. Among the many powers usurped by the old trading company was that
of erecting corporations; hence the effect of the judgment vacating the
patent had been to annul the college charter which had been granted by the
General Court; [Footnote: 23 May, 1650. _Mass. Rec._ iii. 195.] and
although the institution had gone on much as usual after the Revolution,
its position was felt to be precarious. Such being the situation when the
patriarch came home in 1692 in the plenitude of power, he conceived the
idea of making himself the untrammelled master of the university, and he
forthwith caused a bill to be introduced into the legislature which would
certainly have produced that result. [Footnote: _Province Laws_, 1692-93,
c. 10.] Nor did he meet with any serious opposition in Massachusetts,
where his power was, for the moment, well-nigh supreme. His difficulty lay
with the king, since the fixed policy of Great Britain was to foster
Episcopalianism, and of course to obtain some recognition for that sect at
Cambridge. And so it came to pass that all the advantage he reaped by the
enactment of this singular law was a degree of Doctor of Divinity
[Footnote: Sept. 5, 1692. Quincy's _History of Harvard_, i. 71.] which he
gave himself between the approval of the bill by Phips and its rejection
at London. The compliment was the more flattering, however, as it was the
first ever granted in New England. But the clouds were fast gathering over
the head of this good man. Like many another benefactor of his race, he
was doomed to experience the pangs inflicted by ingratitude, and indeed
his pain was so acute he seldom lost an opportunity of giving it public
expression; to use his own words of some years later, "these are the last
lecture sermons... to be preached by me.... The ill treatment which I have
had from those from whom I had reason to have expected better, have
discouraged me from being any more concerned on such occasions."
[Footnote: Address to Sermon, _The Righteous Man a Blessing_, 1702.]

Certainly he was in a false position; he was necessarily unappreciated by
the liberals, and he had not only alienated many staunch conservatives by
his acceptance of the charter, but he had embittered them, by rigorously
excluding all except his particular faction from Phips's council. To his
deep chagrin, the elections of 1693 went in favor of many of these
thankless men, and his discontent soon took the form of an intense longing
to go abroad in some official position which would give him importance.
The only possible opening seemed to be to get himself made agent to
negotiate a charter for Harvard; and therefore he soon had "angelical"
suggestions that God needed him in England to glorify his name.

"1693. September 3d. As I was riding to preach at Cambridge, I prayed to
God,--begged that my labors might be blessed to the souls of the students;
at the which I was much melted. Also saying to the Lord, that some
workings of his Providence seemed to intimate, that I must be returned to
England again; ... I was inexpressibly melted, and that for a considerable
time, and a stirring suggestion, that to England I must go. In this there
was something extraordinary, either divine or angelical."

"December 30th. Meltings before the Lord this day when praying, desiring
being returned to England again, there to do service to his name, and
persuasions that the Lord will appear therein."

"1694. January 27th. Prayers and supplications that tidings may come from
England, that may be some direction to me, as to my returning thither or
otherwise, as shall be most for his glory."

"March 13th. This morning with prayers and tears I begged of God that I
might hear from my friends and acquaintance in England something that
should encourage and comfort me. Such tidings are coming, but I know not
what it is. God has heard me." [Footnote: _History of Harvard_, i. 475,
476, App. ix.]

His craving to escape from the country was increased by the nagging of the
legislature; for so early as December, 1693, the representatives passed
the first of a long series of resolves, "that the president of Harvard
College for the time being shall reside there, as hath been accustomed in
time past." [Footnote: _Court Rec._ vi. 316.] Now this was precisely
what the Reverend Doctor was determined he would not do; nor could he
resign without losing all hope of his agency; so it is not surprising that
as time went on he wrestled with the Deity.

1698. "September 25th. This day as I was wrestling with the Lord, he gave
me glorious and heart-melting persuasions, that he has work for me to do
in England, for the glory of his name. My soul rejoiceth in the Lord."
[Footnote: _History of Harvard_, i. 480, App. ix.]

Doubtless his trials were severe, but the effect upon his temper was
unfortunate. He brought forward scheme after scheme, and the corporation
was made to address the legislature, and then the legislature was pestered
to accede to the prayer of the corporation, until everybody was wrought to
a pitch of nervous irritation; he himself was always jotting in his Diary
what he had on foot, mixed with his hopes and prayers.

"1696. December 11th. I was with the representatives in the General Court,
and did acquaint them with my purpose of undertaking a voyage for England
in the spring (if the Lord will), in order to the attainment of a good
settlement for the college."

"December 28th. The General Court have done nothing for the poor
college.... The corporation are desirous that I should go to England on
the college's account."

1696. "April 19th (Sabbath.) In the morning, as I was praying in my
closet, my heart was marvellously melted with the persuasion, that I
should glorify Christ in England."

"1697. June 7th. Discourse with ministers about the college, and the
corporation unanimously desired me to take a voyage for England on the
college's account." [Footnote: _History of Harvard_, i. 476, App. ix.]

But of what the senior tutor was doing with the rising generation he took
no note at all. His attention was probably first attracted by rumors of
the Brattle Church revolt, for not till 1697 was he able to divert his
thoughts from himself long enough to observe that all was not as it should
be at Cambridge. Then, at length, he made an effort to get rid of Leverett
by striking his name from the list of fellows when a bill for
incorporation was brought into the legislature; but this crafty politician
had already become too strong in the house of representatives, of which he
was soon after made speaker.

Two years later, however, the conservative clergy made a determined effort
and prepared a bill containing a religious test, which they supported with
a petition praying "that, in the charter for the college, our holy
religion may be secured to us and unto our posterity, by a provision, that
no person shall be chosen president, or fellow, of the college, but such
as declare their adherence unto the principles of reformation, which were
espoused and intended by those who first settled the country ... and have
hitherto been the general profession of New England." [Footnote:
_Idem_, i. 99.] This time they narrowly missed success, for the bill
passed the houses, but was vetoed by Lord Bellomont.

Hitherto Cotton Mather had shown an unfilial lack of interest in his
father's ambition to serve the public; but this summer he also began to
have assurances from God. One cause for his fervor may have been the death
of the Rev. Mr. Morton, who was conceded to stand next in succession to
the presidency, and he therefore supposed himself to be sure of the office
should a vacancy occur. [Footnote: _Idem_, i. 102.]

"1699. 7th d. 4th m. (June.) The General Court has, divers times of late
years, had under consideration the matter of the settlement of the
college, which was like still to issue in a voyage of my father to
England, and the matter is now again considered. I have made much prayer
about it many and many a time. Nevertheless, I never could have my mind
raised unto any particular faith about it, one way or another. But this
day, as I was (may I not say) in the spirit, it was in a powerful manner
assured me from heaven, that my father should one day be carried into
England, and that he shall there glorify the Lord Jesus Christ;... And
thou, O Mather the younger, shalt live to see this accomplished!"
[Footnote: _History of Harvard_, i. 482, 483, App. x.]

"16th d. 5th m. (July.) Being full of distress in my spirit, as I was at
prayer in my study at noon, it was told me from heaven, that my father
shall be carried from me unto England, and that my opportunities to
glorify the Lord Jesus Christ will, on that occasion, _be gloriously
accommodated_."

"18th d. 5th m.... And now behold a most unintelligible dispensation! At
this very time, even about noon, instead of having the bill for the
college enacted, as was expected, the governor plainly rejected it,
because of a provision therein, made for the religion of the country."

After the veto the patriarch seems to have got the upper hand for a
season, and to have made some arrangement by which he evicted his
adversary, as appears by a very dissatisfied letter written by Leverett in
August, 1699: "As soon as I got home I was informed, that Rev. President
(I. M.), held a corporation at the college the 7th inst., and the said
corporation, after the publication of the _new settlement_, made
choice of Mr. Flynt to be one of the tutors at college.... I have not the
late act for incorporating the college at hand, nor have I seen the new
temporary settlement; but I perceive, that all the members of the late
corporation were not notified to be at the meeting. I can't say how legal
these late proceedings are; but it is wonderful, that an establishment for
so short a time as till October next, should be made use of so soon to
introduce an unnecessary addition to that society." [Footnote: _History
of Harvard_, i. 500, App. xvi.]

A long weary year passed, during which Dr. Mather must have suffered
keenly from the public ingratitude; still, at its end he was happy, since
he felt certain of being rewarded by the Lord; for, just as the earl's
administration was closing, he had succeeded by unremitting toil in so
adjusting the legislature as to think the spoil his own; when, alas,
suddenly, without warning, in the most distressing manner, the prize
slipped into Bellomont's pocket. How severely his faith was tried appears
from his son's Diary.

"1700. 16th d. 4th mo. (Lord's Day.) I am going to relate one of the most
astonishing things that ever befell in all the time of my pilgrimage.

"A particular faith had been unaccountably produced in my father's heart,
and in my own, that God will carry him unto England, and there give him a
short but great opportunity to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ, before his
entrance into the heavenly kingdom. There appears no probability of my
father's going thither but in an agency to obtain a charter for the
college. This matter having been for several years upon the very point of
being carried in the General Assembly, hath strangely miscarried when it
hath come to the birth. It is now again before the Assembly, in
circumstances wherein if it succeed not, it is never like to be revived
and resumed any more....

"But the matter in the Assembly being likely now to come unto nothing, I
was in this day in extreme distress of spirit concerning it.... After I
had finished all the other duties of this day, I did in my distress cast
myself prostrate on my study floor before the Lord.... I spread before him
the consequences of things, and the present posture and aspect of them,
and, having told the Lord, that I had always taken a particular faith to
be a work of heaven on the minds of the faithful, but if it should prove a
deceit in that remarkable instance which was now the cause of my agony, I
should be cast into a most wonderful confusion; I then begged of the Lord,
that, if my particular faith about my father's voyage to England were not
a delusion, he would be pleased to renew it upon me. All this while my
heart had the coldness of a stone upon it, and the straitness that is to
be expected from the lone exercise of reason. But now all on the sudden I
felt an inexpressible force to fall on my mind, an afflatus, which cannot
be described in words; _none knows it but he that has it_.... It was
told me, that the Lord Jesus Christ loved my father, and loved me, and
that he took delight in us, as in two of his faithful servants, and that
he had not permitted us to be deceived in our particular faith, but that
my father should be carried into England, and there glorify the Lord Jesus
Christ before his passing into glory....

"Having left a flood of tears from me, by these rages from the invisible
world, on my study floor, I rose and went into my chair. There I took up
my Bible, and the first place that I opened was at Acts xxvii. 23-25,
'There stood by me an angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, saying,
Fear not, thou must be brought before Caesar.' ... A new flood of tears
gushed from my flowing eyes, and I broke out into these expressions.
'What! shall my father yet appear before Caesar! Has an angel from heaven
told me so! And must I believe what has been told me! Well then, it shall
be so! It shall be so!'"

"And now what shall I say! When the affair of my father's agency after
this came to a turning point in the court, it strangely miscarried! All
came to nothing! Some of the Tories had so wrought upon the governor,
that, though he had first moved this matter, and had given us both
directions and promises about it, yet he now (not without base
unhandsomeness) deferred it. The lieutenant-governor, who had formerly
been for it, now (not without great ebullition of unaccountable prejudice
and ingratitude) appeared, with all the little tricks imaginable, to
confound it. It had for all this been carried, had not some of the council
been inconveniently called off and absent. But now the whole affair of the
college was left unto the management of the Earl of Bellamont, so that all
expectation of a voyage for my father unto England, on any such occasion,
is utterly at an end." [Footnote: _History of Harvard_, i. 484-486,
App. x.]

During all these years the legislature had been steadily passing
resolutions requiring the president to go into residence; and in 1698 they
went so far as to vote him the liberal salary, for that age, of two
hundred pounds, and appointed a committee to wait upon him. Judge Sewall
describes the interview:--

"Mr. President expostulated with Mr. Speaker ... about the votes being
alter'd from 250 [£.?]." ... "We urg'd his going all we could; I told him
of his birth and education here; that he look'd at work rather than wages,
all met in desiring him.... Objected want of a house, bill for corporation
not pass'd ... must needs preach once every week, which he preferred
before the gold and silver of the West-Indies. I told him would preach
twice aday to the students. He said that [exposition] was nothing like
preaching." [Footnote: Sewall's _Diary_. _Mass. Hist. Coll._ fifth series,
v. 487.] And in this the patriarch spoke the truth; for if there was
anything he loved more than money it was the incense of adulation which
steamed up to his nostrils from a great congregation. Of course he
declined; and yet this importunity pained the good man, not because there
was any conflict in his mind between his duty to a cause he held sacred
and his own interest, but because it was "a thing contrary to the faith
marvellously wrought into my soul, that God will give me an opportunity to
serve and glorify Christ in England, I set the day apart to cry to heaven
about it." [Footnote: _History of Harvard_, vi. 481, App. ix.]

There were limits, however, even to the patience of the Massachusetts
Assembly with an orthodox divine; and no sooner was the question of the
agency decided by the appointment of Bellomont, than it addressed itself
resolutely to the seemingly hopeless task of forcing Dr. Mather to settle
in Cambridge or resign his office. On the 10th of July, 1700, they voted
him two hundred and twenty pounds a year, and they appointed a committee
to obtain from him a categorical answer. This time he thought it prudent
to feign compliance; and after a "suitable place... for the reception and
entertainment of the president" had been prepared at the public expense,
he moved out of town and stayed till the 17th of October, when he went
back to Boston, and wrote to tell Stoughton his health was suffering. His
disingenuousness seems to have given Leverett the opportunity for which he
had been waiting; and his acting as chairman of a committee appointed by
the representatives suggests his having forced the issue; it was resolved
that, should Mr. Mather be absent from the college, his duties should
devolve upon Samuel Willard, the vice-president; [Footnote: _History of
Harvard_, i. 111; _Court Rec._ vii. 172, 175.] and in March the committee
apparently reported the president's house to be in good condition.
Stimulated by this hint, the doctor went back to Cambridge and stayed a
little more than three months, when he wrote a characteristic note to
Stoughton, who was acting governor. "I promised the last General Court to
take care of the college until the Commencement. Accordingly I have been
residing in Cambridge these three months. I am determined (if the Lord
will) to return to Boston the next week, and no more return to reside in
Cambridge; for it is not reasonable to desire me to be (as, out of respect
to the public interest, I have been six months within this twelve) any
longer absent from my family.... I do therefore earnestly desire, that the
General Court would... think of another president.... It would be fatal to
the interest of religion, if a person disaffected to the order of the
Gospel, professed and practised in these churches, should preside over
this society. I know the General Assembly, out of their regard to the
interest of Christ, will take care to prevent it." [Footnote: _History of
Harvard_, i. 501, App. xvii.] Yet though he himself begged the legislature
to select his successor, in his inordinate vanity he did not dream of
being taken at his word; so when he was invited to meet both houses in the
council chamber he explained with perfect cheerfulness how "he was now
removed from Cambridge to Boston, and ... did not think fitt to continue
his residence there, ... but, if the court thought fit to desire he should
continue his care of the colledge as formerly, he would do so." [Footnote:
_Court Records_, vii. 229.]

Increase Mather delighted to blazon himself as Christ's foremost champion
in the land. He predicted, and with reason, that should those who had been
already designated succeed him at Harvard, it would be fatal to that cause
to which his life was vowed. The alternative was presented of serving
himself or God, and to him it seemed unreasonable of his friends to expect
of him a choice. And yet when, as was his wont, he would describe himself
from the pulpit, as a refulgent beacon blazing before New England, he
would use such words as these: "Every ... one of a publick spirit ... will
deny himself as to his worldly interests, provided he may thereby promove
the welfare of his people.... He will not only deny himself, but if called
thereto, will encounter the greatest difficulties and dangers for the
publicks sake." [Footnote: Sermon, _The Publick Spirited Man_, pp. 7, 9.]

The man had presumed too far; the world was wearying of him. On September
6, 1701, the government was transferred to Samuel Willard, the vice-
president, and Harvard was lost forever. [Footnote: _History of Harvard_,
i. 116.]

No education is so baleful as the ecclesiastical, because it breeds the
belief in men that resistance to their will is not only a wrong to their
country and themselves, but a sacrilege toward God. The Mathers were now
to give an illustration of the degree to which the theocratic training
debauched the mind; and it is only necessary to observe that Samuel
Sewall, who tells the story, was educated for the ministry, and was
perhaps as staunch a conservative as there was in the province.

1701, "October 20. Mr. Cotton Mather came to Mr. Wilkins's shop, and there
talked very sharply against me as if I had used his father worse than a
neger; spake so loud that people in the street might hear him.... I had
read in the morn Mr. Dod's saying; Sanctified afflictions are good
promotions. I found it now a cordial."

"October 9. I sent Mr. Increase Mather a hanch of very good venison; I
hope in that I did not treat him as a negro."

"October 2, 1701. I, with Major Walley and Capt. Samuel Checkly, speak
with Mr. Cotton Mather at Mr. Wilkins's.... I told him of his book of the
Law of Kindness for the Tongue, whether this were correspondent with that.
Whether correspondent with Christ's rule:

"He said, having spoken to me before there was no need to speak to me
again; and so justified his reviling me behind my back. Charg'd the
council with lying, hypocrisy, tricks, and I know not what all. I ask'd
him if it were done with that meekness as it should; Answer'd, Yes.
Charg'd the council in general, and then shew'd my share, which was my
speech in council; viz. If Mr. Mather should goe to Cambridge again to
reside there with a resolution not to read the Scriptures, and expound in
the Hall: I fear the example of it will do more hurt than his going
thither will doe good. This speech I owned.... I ask'd him if I should
supose he had done somthing amiss in his church as an officer; whether it
would be well for me to exclaim against him in the street for it."

"Thorsday October 23. Mr. Increase Mather said at Mr. Wilkins's, If I am a
servant of Jesus Christ, some great judgment will fall on Capt. Sewall, or
his family." [Footnote: Sewall's _Diary. Mass. Hist. Coll._ fifth series,
vi. 43-45.]

Had the patriarch been capable of a disinterested action, for the sake of
those principles he professed to love, he would have stopped Willard's
presidency, no matter at what personal cost, for he knew him to be no
better than a liberal in disguise, and he had already quarrelled bitterly
with him in 1697 when he was trying to eject Leverett. Sewall noted on
"Nov. 20.... Mr. Willard told me of the falling out between the president
and him about chusing fellows last Monday. Mr. Mather has sent him word,
he will never come to his house more till he give him satisfaction."
[Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Coll._ fifth series, v. 464.] But they had in
reality separated years before; for when, in the witchcraft terror,
Willard was cried out upon, and had to look a shameful death in the face,
he learned to feel that the men who were willing to risk their lives to
save him were by no means public enemies. And so, as the vice-president
lived in Boston, the administration of the college was left very much to
Leverett and the Brattles, who were presently reinstated.

Joseph Dudley was the son of that old governor who wrote the verses about
the cockatrice to be hatched by toleration, yet he inherited very little
of his father's disposition. He was bred for the ministry, and as the
career did not attract him, he turned to politics, in which he made a
brilliant opening. At first he was the hope of the high churchmen, but
they afterward learned to hate him with a rancor exceptional even toward
their enemies. And he gave them only too good a handle against him, for he
was guilty of the error of selling himself without reserve to the Andros
government. At the Revolution he suffered a long imprisonment, and
afterward went to England, where he passed most of William's reign. There
his ability soon brought him forward, he was made lieutenant-governor of
the Isle of Wight, was returned to Parliament, and at last appointed
governor by Queen Anne. Though Massachusetts owes a deeper debt to few of
her chief magistrates, there are few who have found scantier praise at the
hands of her historians. He was, it is true, an unscrupulous politician
and courtier, but his mind was broad and vigorous, his policy wise and
liberal, and at the moment of his power his influence was of inestimable
value.

Among his other gifts, he was endowed with infinite tact, and when working
for his office he managed not only to conciliate the Mathers, but even to
induce the son to write a letter in his favor; and so when he arrived in
1702 they were both sedulous in their attentions in the expectation of
controlling him. A month had not passed, however, before this ominous
entry was made in the younger's diary:--

"June 16, 1702. I received a visit from Governour Dudley.... I said to him
... I should be content, I would approve it, ... if any one should say to
your excellency, 'By no means let any people have cause to say, that you
take all your measures from the two Mr. Mathers.' By the same rule I may
say without offence,' By no means let any people say, that you go by no
measures in your conduct, but Mr. Byfield's and Mr. Leverett's.'... The
WRETCH went unto those men and told them, that I had advised him to be no
ways advised by them; and inflamed them into an implacable rage against
me." [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Coll._ first series, iii. 137.]

Leverett, on the contrary, now reached his zenith; from the house he
passed into the council and became one of Dudley's most trusted advisers.
The Mathers were no match for these two men, and few routs have been more
disastrous than theirs. Lord Bellomont's sudden death had put an end to
all hope of obtaining a charter by compromise with England, and no further
action had been taken, when, on September 12, 1707, Willard died. On the
28th of October the fellows met and chose John Leverett president of
Harvard College; and then came a demonstration which proved not only
Increase Mather's prescience, when he foretold how a liberal university
would kill a disciplined church, but which shows the mighty influence a
devoted teacher can have upon his age. Thirty-nine ministers addressed
Governor Dudley thus:--

"We have lately, with great joy, understood the great and early care that
our brethren, who have the present care and oversight of the college at
Cambridge, have taken, ... by their unanimous choice of Mr. John Leverett,
... to be the president ... Your Excellency personally knows Mr. Leverett
so well, that we shall say the less of him. However, we cannot but give
this testimony of our great affection to and esteem for him; that we are
abundantly satisfied ... of his religion, learning, and other excellent
accomplishments for that eminent service, a long experience of which we
had while he was senior fellow of that house; for that, under the wise and
faithful government of him, and the Rev. Mr. Brattle, of Cambridge, the
greatest part of the now rising ministry in New England were happily
educated; and we hope and promise ourselves, through the blessing of the
God of our fathers, to see religion and learning thrive and flourish in
that society, under Mr. Leverett's wise conduct and influence, as much as
ever yet it hath done." [Footnote: _History of Harvard_, i. 504, App. xx.]

His salary was only one hundred and fifty pounds a year; but the man
worked for love of a great cause, and did not stop to haggle. Nor were he
and Dudley of the temper to leave a task half done. Undoubtedly at the
governor's instigation, a resolve was introduced into the Assembly
reviving the Act of 1650 by which the university had been incorporated,
and it is by the sanction of this lawless and masterly feat of
statesmanship that Harvard has been administered for almost two hundred
years.

Sewall tells how Dudley went out in state to inaugurate his friend. "The
governour prepared a Latin speech for instalment of the president. Then
took the president by the hand and led him down into the hall;... The
governour sat with his back against a noble fire.... Then the governour
read his speech ... and mov'd the books in token of their delivery. Then
president made a short Latin speech, importing the difficulties
discouraging, and yet that he did accept: ... Clos'd with the hymn to the
Trinity. Had a very good dinner upon 3 or 4 tables.... Got home very well.
_Laus Deo._" [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Coll._ fifth series, vi. 209.]

Nor did Dudley fail to provide the new executive with fit support. By the
old law he had revived the corporation was reduced to seven; of this board
Leverett himself was one, and on the day he took his office both the
Brattles and Pemberton were also appointed. And more than this, when, a
few years later, Pemberton died, the arch-rebel, Benjamin Colman, was
chosen in his place. The liberal triumph was complete, and in looking back
through the vista of the past, there are few pages of our history more
strongly stamped with the native energy of the New England mind than this
brilliant capture of Harvard, by which the ancient cradle of bigotry and
superstition was made the home of American liberal thought. As for the
Mathers, when they found themselves beaten in fair fight, they conceived a
revenge so dastardly that Pemberton declared with much emotion he would
humble them, were he governor, though it cost him his head. Being unable
longer to withstand Dudley by honorable means, they tried to blast him by
charging him with felony. Their letters are too long to be reproduced in
full; but their purport may be guessed by the extracts given, and to this
day they remain choice gems of theocratic morality.

       *       *       *       *       *

SIR, That I have had a singular respect for you, the Lord knows; but that
since your arrival to the government, my charitable expectations have been
greatly disappointed, I may not deny....

1st. I am afraid you cannot clear yourself from the guilt of bribery and
unrighteousness....

2d. I am afraid that you have not been true to the interest of your
country, as God (considering his marvellous dispensations towards you) and
his people have expected from you....

3d. I am afraid that you cannot clear yourself from the guilt of much
hypocrisy and falseness in the affair of the college....

4th. I am afraid that the guilt of innocent blood is still crying in the
ears of the Lord against you. I mean the blood of Leister and Milburn. My
Lord Bellamont said to me, that he was one of the committee of Parliament
who examined the matter; and that those men were not only murdered, but
barbarously murdered....

5th. I am afraid that the Lord is offended with you, in that you
ordinarily forsake the worship of God in the holy church to which you are
related, in the afternoon on the Lord's day, and after the publick
exercise, spend the whole time with some persons reputed very ungodly men.
I am sure your father did not so.... Would you choose to be with them or
such as they are in another world, unto which you are hastening?... I am
under pressures of conscience to bear a publick testimony without respect
of persons.... I trust in Christ that when I am gone, I shall obtain a
good report of my having been faithful before him. To his mercy I commend
you, and remain in him,

Yours to serve,
I. MATHER. [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Coll._ first series, iii. 126.]
BOSTON, _January_ 20, 1707-8.
To the Governour.

       *       *       *       *       *

BOSTON, _Jan_. 20, 1707-8.

Sir, There have appeared such things in your conduct, that a just concern
for the welfare of your excellency seems to render it necessary, that you
should be _faithfully_ advised of them.... You will give me leave to
write nothing, but in a style, whereof an ignorant mob, to whom (as well
as the General Assembly) you think fit to communicate what _fragments_ you
please of my letters, must be _competent judges_. I must proceed
accordingly.... I weakly believed that the wicked and horrid things done
before the righteous Revolution, had been heartily repented of; and that
the rueful business at New York, which many illustrious persons ... called
a barbarous murder, ... had been considered with such a repentance, as
might save you and your family from any further storms of heaven for the
revenging of it.... Sir, your _snare_ has been that thing, the _hatred_
whereof is most expressly required of the _ruler_, namely COVETOUSNESS.
When a governour shall make his government more an engine to enrich
himself, than to _befriend his country_, and shall by the unhallowed
hunger of riches be prevailed withal to do many wrong, base, dishonourable
things; it is a covetousness which will shut out from the kingdom of
heaven; and sometimes the _loss of a government on earth_ also is the
punishment of it.... The main channel of that covetousness has been the
reign of bribery, which you, sir, have set up in the land, where it was
hardly known, till you brought it in fashion.... And there lie affidavits
before the queen and council, which affirm that you have been guilty of it
in very many instances. I do also know that you have....

Sir, you are sensible that there is a judgment to come, wherein the
glorious Lord will demand, how far  you aimed at serving him in your
government; ... how far you did in your government encourage those that
had most of his image upon them, or place your eyes on the wicked of the
land. Your _age_ and _health_, as well as other circumstances, greatly
invite you, sir, to entertain _awful thoughts_ of this matter, and
solicit the divine mercy through the only sacrifice.... Yet if the
troubles you brought on yourself should procure your abdication and recess
unto a more private condition, and your present _parasites_ forsake
you, as you _may be sure they will_, I should think it my duty to do
you all the good offices imaginable.

Finally, I can forgive and forget injuries; and I hope I am somewhat ready
for _sunset_; the more for having discharged the duty of this letter....

Your humble and faithful servant,

COTTON MATHER. [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Coll._ first series, iii. 128.]

       *       *       *       *       *

But these venomous priests had tried their fangs upon a resolute and an
able man. Dudley shook them off like vermin.

       *       *       *       *       *

GENTLEMEN, Yours of the 20th instant I received; and the contents, both as
to the matter and manner, astonish me to the last degree. I must think you
have extremely forgot your own station, as well as my character; otherwise
it had been impossible to have made such an open breach upon all the laws
of decency, honour, justice, and Christianity, as you have done in
treating me with an air of superiority and contempt, which would have been
greatly culpable towards a Christian of the lowest order, and is
insufferably rude toward one whom divine Providence has honoured with the
character of your governour....

Why, gentlemen, have you been so long silent? and suffered sin to lie upon
me years after years?  You cannot pretend any new information as to the
main of your charge; for you have privately given your tongues a loose
upon these heads, I am well assured, when you thought you could serve
yourselves by exposing me. Surely murder, robberies, and other such
flaming immoralities were as reprovable then as now....

Really, gentlemen, conscience and religion are things too solemn,
venerable, or sacred, to be played with, or made a covering for actions so
disagreeable to the gospel, as these your endeavours to expose me and my
most faithful services to contempt; nay, to unhinge the government....

I desire you will keep your station, and let fifty or sixty good
ministers, your equals in the province, have a share in the government of
the college, and advise thereabouts as well as yourselves, and I hope all
will be well....

I am your humble servant,

J. DUDLEY.

To the Reverend Doctors Mathers. [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Coll._ first
series, iii. 135.]




CHAPTER X.

THE LAWYERS.


In the age of sacred caste the priest is likewise the law-maker and the
judge, and as succeeding generations of ecclesiastics slowly spin the
intricate web of their ceremonial code, they fail not to teach the people
that their holy ordinances were received of yore from divine lips by some
great prophet.  This process is beautifully exemplified in the Old
Testament: though the complicated ritualism of Leviticus was always
reverently attributed to Moses, it was evidently the work of a much later
period; for the present purpose, however, its date is immaterial, it
suffices to follow the account the scribes thought fit to give in Kings.

Long after the time of Solomon, Josiah one day sent to inquire about some
repairs then being made at the Temple, when suddenly, "Hilkiah the high
priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in
the house of the Lord." And he gave the book to Shaphan.

"And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book... he
rent his clothes." And he was greatly alarmed for fear of the wrath of the
Lord, because their fathers had not hearkened unto the words of this book;
as indeed it was impossible they should, since they knew nothing about it.
So, to find out what was best to be done, he sent Hilkiah and others to
Huldah the prophetess, who told them that the wrath of the Lord was indeed
kindled, and he would bring evil unto the land; but, because Josiah's
heart had been tender, and he had humbled himself, and rent his clothes,
and wept when he had heard what was spoken, he should be gathered into his
grave in peace, and his eyes should not see the evil. [Footnote: 2 _Kings_
xxii.]

Such is an example of the process whereby a compilation of canonical
statutes is brought into practical operation by adroitly working upon the
superstitions fears of the civil magistrate; at an earlier period the
priests administer justice in person.

Eli judged Israel forty years, and Samuel went on circuit all the days of
his life; "and he went from year to year in circuit to Bethel, and Gilgal,
and Mizpeh, and judged Israel in all those places." [Footnote: 1
_Samuel_ iv., vii.] But, sooner or later, the time must come when a
soldier is absolutely necessary, both to fight foreign enemies and to
enforce obedience at home; and then some chief is set up whom the clergy
think they can control: thus Samuel anointed Saul to be captain over the
Lord's inheritance. [Footnote: 1 _Samuel_ x.] So long as the king is
submissive to authority all goes well, but any insubordination is promptly
punished; and this was the fate of Saul. On one occasion, when he was in
difficulty and Samuel happened to be away, he was so rash as to sacrifice
a burnt offering himself; his presumption offended the prophet, who
forthwith declared that his kingdom should not continue. [Footnote: 1
_Samuel_ xiii.] After this the relations between them went from bad to
worse, and it was not long before the priest began to intrigue with David,
whom he presently anointed. [Footnote: _Idem_, xvi.] The end of it was
that Saul was defeated in battle, as Samuel's ghost foretold, for not
obeying "the voice of the Lord;" and after a struggle between the houses
of Saul and David, all the elders of Israel went to Hebron, where David
made a league with them, and in return they anointed him king. [Footnote:
2 _Samuel_ v.].

Thenceforward, or from the moment when a layman assumed control of the
temporal power, the Jewish chronicles teem with the sins and the disasters
of those rulers who did not walk in the way of their fathers, or who, in
other words, were restive under ecclesiastical dictation.

So long as this period lasts, during which the sovereign is forced to obey
the behests of the priesthood, an arbitrary despotism is inevitable; nor
can the foundation of equal justice and civil liberty be laid until first
the military, and then the legal profession, has become distinct and
emancipated from clerical control, and jurisprudence has grown into the
recognized calling of a special class.

These phenomena tend to explain the peculiar and original direction taken
by legal thought in Massachusetts, for they throw light upon the
influences under which her first generation of lawyers grew up, whose
destiny it was to impress upon her institutions the form they have ever
since retained.

The traditions inherited from the theocracy were vicious in the extreme.
For ten years after the settlement the clergy and their aristocratic
allies stubbornly refused either to recognize the common law or to enact a
code; and when at length further resistance to the demands of the freemen
was impossible, the Rev. Nathaniel Ward drew up "The Body of Liberties,"
which, though it perhaps sufficiently defined civil obligations, contained
this extraordinary provision concerning crimes:--

"No mans life shall be taken away, no mans honour or good name shall be
stayned, no mans person shall be arested, restrayned, banished,
dismembred, nor any wayes punished, ... unlesse it be by virtue or equitie
of some expresse law of the country waranting the same, ... or in case of
the defect of a law in any parteculer case by the word of God. And in
capitall cases, or in cases concerning dismembring or banishment according
to that word to be judged by the Generall Court." [Footnote: _Mass. Hist.
Coll._ third series, viii. 216]

The whole of the subtle policy, whereof this legislation forms a part,
well repays attentive study. The relation of the church to the state was
not unlike that of Samuel toward Saul, for no public man could withstand
its attack, as was demonstrated by the fate of Vane. Much of the story has
been told already in describing the process whereby the clergy acquired a
substantial ascendency over the executive and legislature, through their
command of the constituencies which it was the labor of their lives to
fill with loyal retainers. Nothing therefore remains to be done but to
trace the means they employed to invest their order with judicial
attributes.

From the outset lawyers were excluded from practice, so the magistrates
were nothing but common politicians who were nominated by the priests;
thus the bench was not only filled with trusty partisans without
professional training or instincts, but also, as they were elected
annually, they were practically removable at pleasure should they by any
chance rebel. Upon these points there is abundant evidence: "The
government was first by way of charter, which was chiefly managed by the
preachers, who by their power with the people made all the magistrates &
kept them so intirely under obedience, that they durst not act without
them. Soe that whensoever anything strange or unusuall was brought before
them, they would not determine the matter without consulting the
preachers, for should any bee soe sturdy as to presume to act of himself
without takeing advice & directions, he might bee sure of it, his
magistracy ended with the year. He could bee noe magistrate for them, that
was not approved and recommended from the pulpit, & he could expect little
recommendation who was not the preacher's most humble servant. Soe they
who treated, caressed & presented the preachers most, were the rulers &
magistrates among the people." [Footnote: An Account of the Colonies,
etc., Lambeth MSS. Perry's _Historical Collections_, iii. 48.]

From the decisions of such a judiciary the only appeal lay to a popular
assembly, which could always be manipulated. Obviously, ecclesiastical
supervision over the ordinary course of litigation was amply provided for.
The adjudication of the more important controversies was reserved; for it
was expressly enacted that doubtful questions and the higher crimes should
be judged according to the Word of God. This master-stroke resembled
Hilkiah's when he imposed his book on Josiah; for on no point of
discipline were the ministers so emphatic as on the sacred and absolute
nature of their prerogative to interpret the Scriptures; nor did they fail
to impress upon the people that it was a sin akin to sacrilege for the
laity to dispute their exposition of the Bible.

The deduction to be drawn from these premises is plain. The assembled
elders, acting in their advisory capacity, constituted a supreme tribunal
of last resort, wholly superior to carnal precedent, and capable of
evolving whatsoever decrees they deemed expedient from the depths of their
consciousness. [Footnote: See Gorton's case, Winthrop, ii. 146.] The
result exemplifies the precision with which a cause operating upon the
human mind is followed by its consequence; and the action of this
resistless force is painfully apparent in every state prosecution under
the Puritan Commonwealth, from Wheelwright's to Margaret Brewster's. The
absorption of sacerdotal, political, and juridical functions by a single
class produces an arbitrary despotism; and before judges greedy of earthly
dominion, flushed by the sense of power, unrestrained by rules of law or
evidence, and unopposed by a resolute and courageous bar, trials must
become little more than conventional forms, precursors of predetermined
punishments.

After a period of about half a century these social conditions underwent
radical change, but traditions remained that deeply affected the
subsequent development of the people, and produced a marked bent of
thought in the lawyers who afterward wrote the Constitution.

At the accession of William III. great progress had been made in the
science of colonial government; charters had been granted to Connecticut
and Rhode Island in 1662 and 1663, which, except in the survival of the
ancient and meaningless jargon of incorporation, had a decidedly modern
form. By these regular local representative governments were established
with full power of legislation, save in so far as limited by clauses
requiring conformity with the law of England; and they served their
purpose well, for both were kept in force many years after the Revolution,
Rhode Island's not having been superseded until 1843.

The stubborn selfishness of the theocracy led to the adoption of a less
liberal policy toward Massachusetts. The nomination of the executive
officers was retained by the crown, and the governor was given very
substantial means of maintaining his authority; he could reject the
councillors elected by the Assembly; he appointed the judges and sheriffs
with the advice of this body, whose composition he could thus in a measure
control; he had a veto, and was commander-in-chief. Appeals to the king in
council were also provided for in personal actions where the matter in
difference exceeded three hundred pounds.

On the other hand, the legislature made all appropriations, including
those for the salaries of the governor and judges, and was only limited in
its capacity to enact statutes by the clause invariably inserted in these
patents.

This, therefore, is the precise moment when the modern theory of
constitutional limitations first appears defined; distinct from the
ancient corporate precedents. By a combination of circumstances also, a
sufficient sanction for the written law happened to be provided, thus
making the conception complete, for the tribunal of last resort was an
English court sustained by ample physical force; nevertheless the great
principle of coordinate departments of government was not yet understood,
and substantial relief against legislative usurpation had to be sought in
a foreign jurisdiction. To lawyers of our own time it is self-evident that
the restrictions of an organic code must be futile unless they are upheld
by a judiciary not only secure in tenure and pay, but removed as far as
may be from partisan passions. This truth, however, remained to be
discovered amid the abuses of the eighteenth century, for the position of
the provincial bench was unsatisfactory in the last degree. The justices
held their commissions at the king's pleasure, but their salaries were at
the mercy of the deputies; they were therefore subject to the caprice of
antagonistic masters. Nor was this the worst, for the charter did not
isolate the judicial office. Under the theocracy the policy of the clergy
had been to suppress the study of law in order to concentrate their own
power; hence no training was thought necessary for the magistrate, no
politician was considered incompetent to fill the judgment-seat because of
ignorance of his duty, and the office-hunter, having got his place by
influence, was deemed at liberty to use it as a point of vantage, from
whence to prosecute his chosen career. For example, the first chief
justice was Stoughton, who was appointed by Phips, probably at the
instigation of Increase Mather. As he was bred for the church, he could
have had no knowledge to recommend him, and his peculiar qualifications
were doubtless family connections and a narrow and bigoted mind; he was
also lieutenant-governor, a member of the council, and part of the time
commander-in-chief.

Thomas Danforth was the senior associate, who is described by Sewall as "a
very good husbandman, and a very good Christian, and a good councillor;"
but his reputation as a jurist rested upon a spotless record, he having
been the most uncompromising of the high church managers.

Wait Winthrop was a soldier, and was not only in the council, but so
active in public life that years afterward, while on the bench, he was set
up as a candidate for governor in opposition to Dudley.

John Richards was a merchant, who had been sent to England as agent in
1681, just when the troubles came to a crisis; but the labors by which he
won the ermine seem plain enough, for he was bail for Increase Mather when
sued by Randolph, and was appointed by Phips. Samuel Sewall was brought up
to preach, took to politics on the conservative side, and was regularly
chosen to the council.

This motley crew, who formed the first superior court, had but one trait
in common: they belonged to the clique who controlled the patronage; and
as it began so it continued to the end, for Hutchinson, the last chief
justice but one, was a merchant; yet he was also probate judge,
lieutenant-governor, councillor, and leader of the Tories. In so
intelligent a community such prostitution of the judicial office would
have been impossible but for the pernicious tradition that the civil
magistrate needed no special training to perform his duty, and was to take
his law from those who expounded the Word of God.

And there was another inheritance, if possible, more baleful still. The
legislature, under the Puritan Commonwealth, had been the court of last
resort, and it was by no means forward to abandon its prerogative. It was
consequently always ready to listen to the complaints of suitors who
thought themselves aggrieved by the decisions of the regular tribunals,
and it was fond of altering the course of justice to make it conform to
what the members were pleased to call equity. This abuse finally took such
proportions that Hutchinson remonstrated vigorously in a speech to the
houses in 1772.

"Much time is usually spent ... in considering petitions for new trials at
law, for leave to sell the real estates of persons deceased, by their
executors, or administrators, and the real estates of minors, by their
guardians. All such private business is properly cognizable by the
established judicatories.... A legislative body ... is extremely improper
for such decisions. The polity of the English government seldom admits of
the exercise of this executive and judiciary power by the legislature, and
I know of nothing special in the government of this province, to give
countenance to it." [Footnote: Mass. State Papers, 1765-1775, p. 314.]

The disposition to interfere in what did not concern them was probably
aggravated by the presence of judicial politicians in the popular
assemblies, who seem to have been unable to resist the temptation of
intriguing to procure legislation to affect the litigation before them.
But the simplest way to illustrate the working of the system in all its
bearings will be to give a history of a celebrated case finally taken on
appeal to the Privy Council. The cause arose in Connecticut, it is true,
but the social condition of the two colonies was so similar as to make
this circumstance immaterial.

Wait Winthrop, [Footnote: This report of Winthrop v. Lechmere is taken
from a MS. brief in the possession of Hon. R. C. Winthrop.] grandson of
the first John Winthrop, died intestate in 1717, leaving two children,
John, of New London, and Anne, wife of Thomas Lechmere, of Boston. The
father intended his son should take the land according to the family
tradition, and in pursuance of this purpose he put him in actual
possession of the Connecticut property in 1711; but he neglected to make a
will.

By the common law of England real estate descended to the eldest son of
him who was last seised; but in 1699 the Assembly had passed a statute of
distribution, copied from a Massachusetts act, which directed the probate
court, after payment of debts, to make a "distribution of ... all the
residue ... of the real and personal estate by equal portions to and among
the children ... except the eldest son ... who shall have two shares."

Here, then, at the threshold, the constitutional question had to be met,
as to whether the colonial enactment was not in conflict with the
restriction in the charter, and therefore void. Winthrop took out letters
of administration, and Lechmere became one of the sureties on his bond.
There was no disagreement about the personalty, but the son's claim to the
land was disputed, though suit was not brought against him till 1723.

The litigation began in Boston, but was soon transferred to New London,
where, in July, 1724, Lechmere petitioned for an account. Winthrop
forthwith exhibited an inventory of the chattels, and moved that it should
be accepted as final; but the judge of probate declined so to rule. Then
Lechmere prayed for leave to sue on the bond in the name of the judge. His
prayer was granted, and he presently began no less than six actions in
different forms.

Much time was consumed in disposing of technicalities, but at length two
test cases were brought before the superior court. One, being in substance
an action on the bond, was tried on the general issue, and the verdict was
for the defendant. The other was a writ of partition, wherein Anne was
described as co-heir with her brother. It was argued on demurrer to the
declaration, and the defendant again prevailed.

Thus, so far as judicial decision could determine private rights to
property, Winthrop had established his title; but he represented the
unpopular side in the controversy, and his troubles were just beginning.
Christopher Christophers was the judge of probate, he was also a justice
of the superior court, and a member of the Assembly, of which body the
plaintiff's counsel was speaker. In April, 1725, when Lechmere had finally
exhausted his legal remedies, he addressed a petition to the legislature,
where he had this strong support, and which was not to meet till May,
stating the impossibility of obtaining relief by ordinary means, and
asking to have one of the judgments set aside and a new trial ordered, in
such form as to enable him to maintain his writ of partition,
notwithstanding the solemn decision against him by the court of last
resort. The defendant in vain protested that no error was alleged, no new
evidence produced, nor any matter of equity advanced which might justify
interference: the Assembly had determined to sustain the statute of
distributions, and it accordingly resolved that in cases of this
description relief ought to be given in probate by means of a new grant of
administration, to be executed according to the terms of the act.

Winthrop was much alarmed, and with reason, for he saw at once the
intention of the legislature was to induce the judges to assume an
unprecedented jurisdiction; he therefore again offered his account, which
Christophers rejected, and he appealed from the decision. Lechmere also
applied for administration on behalf of his wife; and upon his prayer
being denied, pending a final disposition of Winthrop's cause, he too went
up. In March, 1725-6, final judgment was rendered, the judges holding that
both real and personal property should be inventoried. Winthrop thereupon
entered his appeal to the Privy Council, whose jurisdiction was
peremptorily denied.

From what afterward took place, the inference is that Christophers shrank
from assuming alone so great a responsibility as now devolved upon him,
and persuaded his brethren to share it with him; for the superior court
proceeded to issue letters of administration to Lechmere, and took his
bond, drawn to themselves personally, for the faithful performance of his
trust. This was a most high-handed usurpation, for the function of the
higher tribunal in these matters was altogether appellate, it having
nothing to do with such executive business as taking bonds, which was the
province of the judge of probate.

However this may have been, progress was thenceforward rapid. In April
Lechmere produced a schedule of debts, which have at this day a somewhat
suspicious look, and when they were allowed, he petitioned the legislature
for leave to sell land to pay them. Winthrop appeared and presented a
remonstrance, which "the Assembly, observing the common course of justice,
and the law of the colony being by application to the said Assembly, when
the judgments of the superior courts are grievous to any person...
dismissed," and immediately passed an act authorizing the sale, and making
the administrators' deed good to convey a title.

Then Winthrop was so incautious as to make a final effort: he filed a
protest and caution against any illegal interference with his property
pending his appeal, declaring the action already taken to be contrary to
the common and statute law of England, and to the tenor of the charter.

The Assembly being of the opinion that this protest "had in it a great
show of contempt," caused Winthrop to be arrested and brought to the bar;
there he not only defended his representations as reasonable, but avowed
his determination to lay all these proceedings before the king in council.
"This was treated as an insolent contemptuous and disorderly behaviour" in
the prisoner, "as declaring himself _coram non judice_, and putting
himself on a par with them, and impeaching their authoritys and the
charter; and his said protest was declared to be full of reflections, and
to terrifie so far as in him lay all the authorities established by the
charter." So they imprisoned him three days and fined him twenty pounds
for his contemptuous words.

This leading case was afterward elaborately argued in London, and judgment
was entered for Winthrop, upon the ground that the statute of distribution
was in conflict with the charter and therefore void; but as Connecticut
resolutely refused to abandon its own policy, the utmost confusion
prevailed for seventeen years regarding the settlement of estates. During
all this time the local government made unremitting efforts to obtain
relief, and seems to have used pecuniary as well as legal arguments to
effect its purpose; at all events, it finally secured a majority in the
Privy Council, who reversed Winthrop v. Lechmere, in Clark v. Tousey. The
same question was raised in Massachusetts in 1737, in Phillips v. Savage,
but enough influence was brought to bear to prevent an adverse decision.
[Footnote: _Conn. Coll. Rec._ vii. 191, note; _Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc._
1860-62, pp. 64-80, 165-171.] A possible distinction between the two cases
also lay in the fact that the Massachusetts act had received the royal
assent.

The history of this litigation is interesting, not only as illustrating
the defects in provincial justice, but as showing the process by which the
conception of constitutional limitations became rooted in the minds of the
first generation of lawyers; and in point of fact, they were so thoroughly
impregnated with the theory as to incline to carry it to unwarrantable
lengths. For example, so justly eminent a counsel as James Otis, in his
great argument on the Writs of Assistance in 1761, solemnly maintained the
utterly untenable proposition that an act of Parliament "against the
Constitution is void: an act against natural equity is void: and if an act
of Parliament should be made, in the very words of this petition, it would
be void." [Footnote: Quincy's _Reports_, p. 474.] While so sound a man,
otherwise, as John Adams wrote, in 1776, to Mr. Justice Cushing: "You have
my hearty concurrence in telling the jury the nullity of acts of
Parliament.... I am determined to die of that opinion, let the _jus
gladii_ say what it will." [Footnote: _Works of J. Adams_, ix. 390.]

On looking back at Massachusetts as she was in the year 1700, permeated
with the evil theocratic traditions, without judges, teachers, or books,
the mind can hardly fail to be impressed with the unconquerable energy
which produced great jurists from such a soil; and yet in 1725 Jeremiah
Gridley graduated from Harvard, who may fairly be said to have been the
progenitor of a famous race; for long before the Revolution, men like
Prat, Otis, and John Adams could well have held their own before any court
of Common Law that ever sat. Such powerful counsel naturally felt a
contempt for the ignorant politicians who for the most part presided over
them, which they took little pains to hide. Ruggles one day had an aged
female witness who could find no chair and complained to him of
exhaustion. He told her to go and sit on the bench. His honor, in some
irritation, calling him to account, he replied: "I really thought that
place was made for old women." Hutchinson says of himself: "It was an
eyesore to some of the bar to have a person at the head of the law who had
not been bred to it." But he explains with perfect simplicity how his
occupation as chief justice "engaged his attention, and he applied his
intervals to reading the law." [Footnote: _Diary and Letters of Thomas
Hutchinson_, p. 66.]

The British supremacy closed with the evacuation of Boston, and the colony
then became an independent state; yet in that singularly homogeneous
community, which had always been taught to regard their royal patents as
the bulwark of their liberties, no one seems to have seriously thought it
possible to dispense with a written instrument to serve as the basis of
the social organization. Accordingly, in 1779, the legislature called a
convention to draft a Constitution; and it was the good fortune of the
lawyers, who were chosen as delegates, to have an opportunity, not only to
correct those abuses from which the administration of justice had so long
suffered, but to carry into practical operation their favorite theory, of
the limitation of legislative power by the intervention of the courts. The
course pursued was precisely what might have been predicted of the
representatives of a progressive yet sagacious people. Taking the old
charter as the foundation whereon to build, they made only such
alterations as their past experience had shown them to be necessary; they
adopted no fanciful schemes, nor did they lightly depart from a system
with which they were acquainted; and their almost servile fidelity to
their precedent, wherever it could be folio wed, is shown by the following
extracts relating to the legislative and executive departments.


CHARTER.


And we doe further for vs our heires and successors give and grant to the
said governor and the Great and Generall Court or Assembly of our said
province or territory for the time being full power and authority from
time to time to make ordaine and establish all manner of wholsome and
reasonable orders laws statutes and ordinances directions and instructions
either with penalties or without (soe as the same be not repugnant or
contrary to the lawes of this our realme of England) as they shall judge
to be for the good and welfare of our said province or territory and for
the gouernment and ordering thereof and of the people inhabiting or who
shall inhabit the same and for the necessary support and defence of the
government thereof.


CONSTITUTION.


And further, full power and authority are hereby given and granted to the
said General Court, from time to time, to make, ordain, and establish, all
manner of wholesome and reasonable orders, laws, statutes, and ordinances,
directions and instructions, either with penalties or without; so as the
same be not repugnant or contrary to this constitution, as they shall
judge to be for the good and welfare of this commonwealth, and for the
government and ordering thereof, and of the subjects of the same, and for
the necessary support and defence of the government thereof.


CHARTER.


The governour of our said province for the time being shall have authority
from time to time at his discretion to assemble and call together the
councillors or assistants of our said province for the time being and that
the said governour with the said assistants or councillors or seaven of
them at the least shall and may from time to time hold and keep a councill
for the ordering and directing the affaires of our said province.


CONSTITUTION.


The governour shall have authority, from time to time at his discretion,
to assemble and call together the councillors of this commonwealth for the
time being; and the governour, with the said councillors, or five of them
at least, shall, and may, from time to time, hold and keep a council, for
the ordering and directing the affairs of the commonwealth, agreeably to
the constitution and the laws of the land.

       *       *       *       *       *

The clause concerning the council is curious as an instance of the
survival of an antiquated form. In the province the body had a use, for it
was a regular upper chamber; but when, in 1779, a senate was added, it
became an anomalous and meaningless third house; yet it is still regularly
elected, though its inutility is obvious. So long ago as 1814 John Adams
had become very tired of it; he then wrote: "This constitution, which
existed in my handwriting, made the governor annually elective, gave him
the executive power, shackled with a council, that I now wish was
annihilated." [Footnote: _Works of J. Adams_, vi. 465.]

On the other hand, the changes made are even more interesting, as an
example of the evolution of institutions. The antique document was
simplified by an orderly arrangement and division into sections; the
obsolete jargon of incorporation was eliminated, which had come down from
the mediaeval guilds; in the dispute with England the want of a bill of
rights had been severely felt, so one was prefixed; and then the
convention, probably out of regard to symmetry, blotted their otherwise
admirable work by creating an unnecessary senate. But viewed as a whole,
the grand original conception contained in this instrument, making it loom
up a landmark in history, is the theory of the three coordinate
departments in the administration of a democratic commonwealth, which has
ever since been received as the corner-stone of American constitutional
jurisprudence.

Though this assertion may at first sight seem too sweeping, it is borne
out by the facts. During the first sessions of the Continental Congress no
question was more pressing than the reorganization of the colonies should
they renounce their allegiance to the crown, nor was there one in regard
to which the majority of the delegates were more at sea. From, their
peculiar education the New Englanders were exceptions to the general rule,
and John Adams in particular had thought out the problem in all its
details. His conversation so impressed some of his colleagues that he was
asked to put his views in a popular form. His first attempt was a short
letter to Richard Henry Lee, in November, 1775, in which he starts with
this proposition as fundamental: "A legislative, an executive, and a
judicial power comprehend the whole of what is meant and understood by
government. It is by balancing each of these powers against the other two,
that the efforts in human nature towards tyranny can alone be checked and
restrained, and any degree of freedom preserved in the constitution."
[Footnote: _Works of J. Adams_, iv. 186.]

His next tract, written in 1776 at the request of Wythe of Virginia, was
printed and widely circulated, and similar communications were sent in
reply to applications from New Jersey, North Carolina, and possibly other
States. The effect of this discussion is apparent in all of the ten
constitutions afterward drawn, with the exception of Pennsylvania's, which
was a failure; but none of them passed beyond the tentative or embryonic
stage. It therefore remained for Massachusetts to present the model, which
in its main features has not yet been superseded.

A first attempt was deservedly rejected by the people, and the work was
not done until 1779; but the men who then met in convention at Cambridge
knew precisely what they meant to do. Though the executive and the
legislature were a direct inheritance, needing but little change, a deep
line was drawn between the three departments, and the theory of the
coordinate judiciary was first brought to its maturity within the
jurisdiction where it had been born. To attain this cherished object was
the chief labor of the delegates, for to the supreme court was to be
intrusted the dangerous task of grappling with the representative chambers
and enforcing the popular charter. Therefore they made the tenure of the
judges permanent; they secured their pay; to obtain impartiality they
excluded them from political office; while on the other hand they confined
the legislature within its proper sphere, to the end that the government
they created might be one of laws and not of men.

The experiment has proved one of those memorable triumphs which mark an
era. Not only has the great conception of New England been accepted as the
fundamental principle of the Federal Union, but it has been adopted by
every separate State; and more than this, during the one hundred and six
years since the people of our Commonwealth wrote their Constitution, they
have had as large a measure of liberty and safety under the law as men
have ever known on earth. There is no jurisdiction in the world where
justice has been purer or more impartial; nor, probably, has there ever
been a community, of equal numbers, which has produced more numerous or
more splendid specimens of juridical and forensic talent.

When freed from the incubus of the ecclesiastical oligarchy the range of
intellectual activity expanded, and in 1780 Massachusetts may be said,
without exaggeration, to have led the liberal movement of the world; for
not only had she won almost in perfection the three chief prizes of modern
civilization, liberty of speech, toleration, and equality before the law;
but she had succeeded in formulating those constitutional doctrines by
which, during the nineteenth century, popular self-government has reached
the highest efficiency it has ever yet attained.

A single example, however, must suffice to show what the rise of the class
of lawyers had done for individual security and liberty in that
comparatively short interval of ninety years.

Theocratic justice has been described; the trials of Wheelwright, and of
Anne Hutchinson, of Childe, of Holmes, and of Christison have been
related; and also the horrors perpetrated before that ghastly tribunal of
untrained bigots, which condemned the miserable witches undefended and
unheard. [Footnote: In England, throughout the eighteenth century, counsel
were allowed to speak in criminal trials, in cases of treason and
misdemeanor only. Nor is the conduct of Massachusetts in regard to witches
peculiar. Parallel atrocities might probably be adduced from the history
of every European nation, even though the procedure of the courts were
more regular than was that of the Commission of Phips. The relation of the
priest to the sorcerer is a most interesting phenomenon of social
development; but it would require a treatise by itself.] For the honor of
our Common wealth let the tale be told of a state prosecution after her
bar was formed.

In 1768 the British Ministry saw fit to occupy Boston with a couple of
regiments, a force large enough to irritate, but too small to overawe, the
town. From the outset bad feeling prevailed between the citizens and the
soldiers, but as the time went on the exasperation increased, and early in
1770 that intense passion began to glow which precedes the outbreak of
civil war. Yet though there were daily brawls, no blood was shed until the
night of the 5th of March, when a rabble gathered about the sentry at the
custom-house in State Street. He became frightened and called for help,
Captain Preston turned out the guard, the mob pelted them, and they fired
on the people without warning. A terrific outbreak was averted by a
species of miracle, but the troops had to be withdrawn, and Preston and
his men were surrendered and indicted for murder.

John Adams, who was a liberal, heart and soul, had just come into leading
practice. His young friend Josiah Quincy was even more deeply pledged to
the popular cause. On the morning after the massacre, Preston, doubtless
at Hutchinson's suggestion, sent Adams a guinea as a retaining fee, which,
though it seemed his utter ruin to accept, he did not dream of refusing.
What Quincy went through may be guessed from his correspondence with his
father.

       *       *       *       *       *

BRAINTREE, March 22, 1770.

MY DEAR SON, I am under great affliction at hearing the bitterest
reproaches uttered against you, for having become an advocate for those
criminals who are charged with the murder of their fellow-citizens. Good
God! Is it possible? I will not believe it.

Just before I returned home from Boston, I knew, indeed, that on the day
those criminals were committed to prison, a sergeant had inquired for you
at your brother's house; but I had no apprehension that it was possible an
application would be made to you to undertake their defence. Since then I
have been told that you have actually engaged for Captain Preston; and I
have heard the severest reflections made upon the occasion, by men who had
just before manifested the highest esteem for you, as one destined to be a
saviour of your country. I must own to you, it has filled the bosom of
your aged and infirm parent with anxiety and distress, lest it should not
only prove true, but destructive of your reputation and interest; and I
repeat, I will not believe it, unless it be confirmed by your own mouth,
or under your own hand.

Your anxious and distressed parent,

JOSIAH QUINCY.

       *       *       *       *       *

BOSTON, March 26, 1770.

HONOURED SIR, I have little leisure, and less inclination, either to know
or to take notice of those ignorant slanderers who have dared to utter
their "bitter reproaches" in your hearing against me, for having become an
advocate for criminals charged with murder.... Before pouring their
reproaches into the ear of the aged and infirm, if they had been friends,
they would have surely spared a little reflection on the nature of an
attorney's oath and duty....

Let such be told, sir, that these criminals, charged with murder, are not
yet legally proved guilty, and therefore, however criminal, are entitled,
by the laws of God and man, to all legal counsel and aid; that my duty as
a man obliged me to undertake; that my duty as a lawyer strengthened the
obligation.... This and much more might be told with great truth; and I
dare affirm that you and this whole people will one day rejoice that I
became an advocate for the aforesaid "criminals," charged with the murder
of our fellow-citizens.

I never harboured the expectation, nor any great desire, that all men
should speak well of me. To enquire my duty, and to do it, is my aim....
When a plan of conduct is formed with an honest deliberation, neither
murmuring, slander, nor reproaches move.... There are honest men in all
sects,--I wish their approbation;--there are wicked bigots in all
parties,--I abhor them.

I am, truly and affectionately, your son,

JOSIAH QUINCY, Jr. [Footnote: _Memoir of Josiah Quincy, Jr._ pp. 26, 27.]

       *       *       *       *       *

Many of the most respected citizens asserted and believed that the
soldiers had fired with premeditated malice, for the purpose of revenge;
and popular indignation was so deep and strong that even the judges were
inclined to shrink. As Hutchinson was acting governor at the time, the
chief responsibility fell on Benjamin Lynde, the senior associate, who was
by good fortune tolerably competent. He was the son of the elder Lynde,
who, with the exception of Paul Dudley, was the only provincial chief
justice worthy to be called a lawyer.

The juries were of course drawn from among those men who afterward fought
at Lexington and Bunker Hill, and, like the presiding judge and the
counsel, they sympathized with the Revolutionary cause. Yet the prisoners
were patiently tried according to the law and the evidence; all that
skill, learning, and courage could do for them was done, the court charged
impartially, and the verdicts were, Not guilty.




CHAPTER XI.

THE REVOLUTION.


Status appears to be that stage of civilisation whence advancing
communities emerge into the era of individual liberty. In its most perfect
development it takes the form of caste, and the presumption is the
movement toward caste begins upon the abandonment of a wandering life, and
varies in intensity with the environment and temperament of each race, the
feebler sinking into a state of equilibrium, when change by spontaneous
growth ceases to be perceptible. So long as the brain remains too feeble
for sustained original thought, and man therefore lacks the energy to
rebel against routine, this condition of existence must continue, and its
inevitable tendency is toward rigid distinctions of rank, and as a
necessary consequence toward the limitation of the range of ambition, by
the conventional lines dividing the occupations of the classes. Such at
least in a general way was the progression of the Jews, and in a less
marked degree of the barbarians who overran the Roman Empire. Yet even
these, when they acquired permanent abodes, gravitated strongly enough
toward caste to produce a social system based on monopoly and privilege
which lasted through many centuries. On the other hand, the democratic
formula of "equality before the law" best defines the modern conception of
human relations, and this maxim indicates a tone of thought directly the
converse of that which begot status; for whereas the one strove to raise
impassable barriers against free competition in the struggle for
existence, the ideal of the other is to offer the fullest scope for the
expansion of the faculties.

As in Western Europe church and state alike rested upon the customs of the
Middle Ages, a change so fundamental must have wrought the overthrow, not
only of the vastest vested interests, but of the profoundest religious
prejudices, consequently, it could not have been accomplished peaceably;
and in point of fact the conservatives were routed in two terrific
outbreaks, whereof the second was the sequence of the first, though
following it after a considerable interval of time. By the wars of the
Reformation freedom of thought was gained; by the revolutions of the
eighteenth century, which swept away the incubus of feudalism, liberty of
action was won; and as Massachusetts had been colonized by the radicals of
the first insurrection, it was not unnatural that their children should
have led the second. So much may be readily conceded, and yet the
inherited tendency toward liberalism alone would have been insufficient to
have inspired the peculiar unanimity of sentiment which animated her
people in their resistance to Great Britain, and which perhaps was
stronger among her clergy, whose instincts regarding domestic affairs were
intensely conservative, than among any other portion of her population.
The reasons for this phenomenon are worthy of investigation, for they are
not only interesting in themselves, but they furnish an admirable
illustration of the irresistible action of antecedent and external causes
on the human mind.

Under the Puritan Commonwealth the church gave distinction and power, and
therefore monopolized the ability which sought professional life; but
under the provincial government new careers were opened, and intellectual
activity began to flow in broader channels. John Adams illustrates the
effect produced by the changed environment; when only twenty he made this
suggestive entry in his Diary: "The following questions may be answered
some time or other, namely,--Where do we find a precept in the Gospel
requiring Ecclesiastical Synods? Convocations? Councils? Decrees? Creeds?
Confessions? Oaths? Subscriptions? and whole cart-loads of other trumpery
that we find religion encumbered with in these days?" [Footnote: _Works
of J. Adams_, ii. 5.]

Such men became lawyers, doctors, or merchants; theology ceased to occupy
their minds; and gradually the secular thought of New England grew to be
coincident with that of the other colonies.

Throughout America the institutions favored individuality. No privileged
class existed among the whites. Under the careless rule of Great Britain
habits of personal liberty had taken root, which showed themselves in the
tenacity wherewith the people clung to their customs of self-government;
and so long as these usages were respected, under which they had always
lived, and which they believed to be as well established as Magna Charta,
there were not in all the king's broad dominions more loyal subjects than
men like Washington, Jefferson, and Jay.

The generation now living can read the history of the Revolution
dispassionately, and to them it is growing clear that our ancestors were
technically in the wrong. For centuries Parliament has been theoretically
absolute; therefore it might constitutionally tax the colonies, or do
whatsoever else with them it pleased. Practically, however, it is self-
evident that the most perfect despotism must be limited by the extent to
which subjects will obey, and this is a matter of habit; rebellions,
therefore, are usually caused by the conservative instinct, represented by
the will of the sovereign, attempting to enforce obedience to customs
which a people have outgrown.

In 1776, though the Middle Ages had passed, their traditions still
prevailed in Europe, and probably the antagonism between this survival of
a dead civilization and the modern democracy of America was too deep for
any arbitrament save trial by battle. Identically the same dispute had
arisen in England the century before, when the commons rebelled against
the prerogatives of the crown, and Cromwell fought like Washington, in the
cause of individual emancipation; but the movement in Great Britain was
too radical for the age, and was followed by a reaction whose force was
not spent when George III. came to the throne.

Precedent is only inflexible among stationary races, and advancing nations
glory in their capacity for change; hence it is precisely those who have
led revolt successfully who have won the brightest fame. If, therefore, it
be admitted that they should rank among mankind's noblest benefactors, who
have risked their lives to win the freedom we enjoy, and which seems
destined to endure, there are few to whom posterity owes a deeper debt
than to our early statesmen; nor, judging their handiwork by the test of
time, have many lived who in genius have surpassed them. In the fourth
article of their Declaration of Rights, the Continental Congress resolved
that the colonists "are entitled to a free and exclusive power of
legislation in their several provincial legislatures, ... in all cases of
taxation and internal polity, subject only to the negative of their
sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used and accustomed. But,
... we cheerfully consent to the operation of such acts of Parliament as
are, _bona fide_, restrained to the regulation of our external commerce."

In 1778 a statute was passed, of which an English jurist wrote in 1885:
"One act, indeed, of the British Parliament might, looked at in the light
of history, claim a peculiar sanctity. It is certainly an enactment of
which the terms, we may safely predict, will never be repealed and the
spirit never be violated.... It provides that Parliament' will not impose
any duty, tax or assessment whatever, payable in any of his majesty's
colonies ... except only such duties as it may be expedient to impose for
the regulation of commerce.'" [Footnote: _The Law of the Constitution_,
Dicey, p. 62.]

Thus is the memory of their grievance held sacred by the descendants of
their adversaries after the lapse of a century, and the local self-
government for which they pleaded has become the immutable policy of the
empire. The principles they laid down have been equally enduring, for they
proclaimed the equality of men before the law, the corner-stone of modern
civilization, and the Constitution they wrote still remains the
fundamental charter of the liberties of the republic of the United States.

Nevertheless it remains true that secular liberalism alone could never
have produced the peculiarly acrimonious hostility to Great Britain
wherein Massachusetts stood preeminent, whose causes, if traced, will be
found imbedded at the very foundation of her social organization, and to
have been steadily in action ever since the settlement. Too little study
is given to ecclesiastical history, for probably nothing throws so much
light on certain phases of development; and particularly in the case of
this Commonwealth the impulses which moulded her destiny cannot be
understood unless the events that stimulated the passions of her clergy
are steadily kept in view.

The early aggrandizement of her priests has been described; the inevitable
conflict with the law into which their ambition plunged them, and the
overthrow of the theocracy which resulted therefrom, have been related;
but the causes that kept alive the old exasperation with England
throughout the eighteenth century have not yet been told.

The influence of men like Leverett and Colman tended to broaden the
church, but necessarily the process was slow; and there is no lack of
evidence that the majority of the ministers had little relish for the
toleration forced upon them by the second charter. It is not surprising,
therefore, to find the sectaries soon again driven to invoke the
protection of the king.

Though doubtless some monastic orders have been vowed to poverty, it will
probably be generally conceded that a life of privation has not found
favor with divines as a class; and one of the earliest acts of the
provincial legislature bid each town choose an able and orthodox minister
to dispense the Word of God, who should be "suitably encouraged" by an
assessment on all inhabitants without distinction. This was for many years
a bitter grievance to the dissenting minority; but there was worse to
come; for sometimes the majority were heterodox, when pastors were elected
who gave great scandal to their evangelical brethren. Therefore, for the
prevention of "atheism, irreligion and prophaness," [Footnote: _Province
Laws_, 1715, c. 17.] it was enacted in 1775 that the justices of the
county should report any town without an orthodox minister, and thereupon
the General Court should settle a candidate recommended to them by the
ordained elders, and levy a special tax for his support. Nor could men
animated by the fervent piety which raised the Mathers to eminence in
their profession be expected to sit by tamely while blasphemers not only
worshipped openly, but refused to contribute to their incomes.

"We expect no other but Satan will show his rage against us for our
endeavors to lessen his kingdom of darkness. He hath grievously afflicted
me (by God's permission) by infatuating or bewitching three or four who
live in a corner of my parish with Quaker notions, [who] now hold a
separate meeting by themselves." [Footnote: Rev. S. Danforth, 1720.
_Mass. Hist. Coll._ fourth series, i.]

The heretics, on their side, were filled with the same stubborn spirit
which had caused them "obstinately and proudly" to "persecute" Norton and
Endicott in earlier days. In 1722 godly preachers were settled at
Dartmouth and Tiverton, under the act, the majority of whose people were
Quakers and Baptists; and the Friends tell their own story in a petition
they presented to the crown in 1724: "That the said Joseph Anthony and
John Siffon were appointed assessors of the taxes for the said town of
Tiverton, and the said John Akin and said Philip Tabor for the town of
Dartmouth, but some of the said assessors being of the people called
Quakers, and others of them also dissenting from the Presbyterians and
Independents, and greatest part of the inhabitants of the said towns being
also Quakers or Anabaptists ... the said assessors duly assessed the other
taxes ... relating to the support of government ... yet they could not in
conscience assess any of the inhabitants of the said towns anything for or
towards the maintenance of any ministers.

"That the said Joseph Anthony, John Siffon, John Akin and Philip Tabor,
(on pretence of their non-compliance with the said law) were on the 25th
of the month called May, 1723, committed to the jail aforesaid, where they
still continue prisoners under great sufferings and hardships both to
themselves and families, and where they must remain and die, if not
relieved by the king's royal clemancy and favour." [Footnote: Gough's
_Quakers_, iv. 222, 223.]

A hearing was had upon this petition before the Privy Council, and in
June, 1724, an order was made directing the remission of the special taxes
and the release of the prisoners, who were accordingly liberated in
obedience thereto, after they had been incarcerated for thirteen months.

The blow was felt to be so severe that the convention of ministers the
next May decided to convene a synod, and Dr. Cotton Mather was appointed
to draw up a petition to the legislature.

"Considering the great and visible decay of piety in the country, and the
growth of many miscarriages, which we fear may have provoked the glorious
Lord in a series of various judgments wonderfully to distress us.... It is
humbly desired that ... the ... churches ... meet by their pastors ... in
a synod, and from thence offer their advice upon.... What are the
miscarriages whereof we have reason to think the judgments of heaven, upon
us, call us to be more generally sensible, and what may be the most
evangelical and effectual expedients to put a stop unto those or the like
miscarriages." [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ 3d ed. ii. 292, note.]

The "evangelical expedient" was of course to revive the Cambridge
Platform; nor was such a scheme manifestly impossible, for the council
voted "that the synod ... will be agreeable to this board, and the
reverend ministers are desired to take their own time, for the said
assembly; and it is earnestly wished the issue thereof may be a happy
reformation." [Footnote: Chalmers's _Opinions_, i. 8.] In the house
of representatives this resolution was read and referred to the next
session.

Meanwhile the Episcopalian clergymen of Boston, in much alarm, presented a
memorial to the General Court, remonstrating against the proposed measure;
but the council resolved "it contained an indecent reflection on the
proceedings of that board," [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 9.] and dismissed
it. Nothing discouraged, the remonstrants applied for protection to the
Bishop of London, who brought the matter to the attention of the law
officers of the crown. In their opinion to call a synod would be "a
contempt of his majesty's prerogative," and if "notwithstanding, ... they
shall continue to hold their assembly, ... the principal actors therein
[should] be prosecuted ... for a misdemeanour." [Footnote: Chalmers's
_Opinions_, p. 13.]

Steadily and surely the coil was tightening which was destined to strangle
the established church of Massachusetts; but the resistance of the
ministers was desperate, and lent a tinge of theological hate to the
outbreak of the Revolution. They believed it would be impossible for them
to remain a dominant priesthood if Episcopalianism, supported by the
patronage of the crown, should be allowed to take root in the land; yet
the Episcopalians represented conservatism, therefore they were forced to
become radicals, and the liberalism they taught was fated to destroy their
power.

Meanwhile their sacred vineyard lay open to attack upon every side. At
Boston the royal governors went to King's Chapel and encouraged the use of
the liturgy, while an inroad was made into Connecticut from New York.
Early in the century a certain Colonel Heathcote organized a regular
system of invasion. He was a man eminently fitted for the task, being
filled with zeal for the conversion of dissenters. "I have the charity to
believe that, after having heard one of our ministers preach, they will
not look upon our church to be such a monster as she is represented; and
being convinced of some of the cheats, many of them may duly consider of
the sin of schism." [Footnote: Conn. _Church Documents_, i. 12.]

"They have abundance of odd kind of laws, to prevent any dissenting ...
and endeavour to keep the people in as much blindness and unacquaintedness
with any other religion as possible, but in a more particular manner the
church, looking upon her as the most dangerous enemy they have to grapple
withal, and abundance of pains is taken to make the ignorant think as bad
as possible of her; and I really believe that more than half the people in
that government think our church to be little better than the Papist, and
they fail not to improve every little thing against us." [Footnote: Conn.
_Church Documents_, i. 9.]

He had little liking for the elders, whom he described as being "as
absolute in their respective parishes as the Pope of Rome;" but he felt
kindly toward "the passive, obedient people, who dare not do otherwise
than obey." [Footnote: _Idem_, i. 10.] He explained the details of
his plan in his letters, and though he was aware of the difficulties, he
did not despair, his chief anxiety being to get a suitable missionary. He
finally chose the Rev. Mr. Muirson, and in 1706 began a series of
proselytizing tours. Nevertheless, the clergyman was wroth at the
treatment he received.

       *       *       *       *       *

HONOR'D SIR, I entreat your acceptance of my most humble and hearty thanks
for the kind and Christian advice you were pleased to tender me in
relation to Connecticut.... I know that meekness and moderation is most
agreeable to the mind of our blessed Saviour, Christ, who himself was meek
and lowly, and would have all his followers to learn that lesson of
him.... I have duly considered all these things, and have carried myself
civilly and kindly to the Independent party, but they have ungratefully
resented my love; yet I will further consider the obligations that my holy
religion lays upon me, to forgive injuries and wrongs, and to return good
for their evil.... I desired only a liberty of conscience might be allowed
to the members of the National Church of England; which, notwithstanding,
they seemed unwilling to grant, and left no means untried, both foul and
fair, to prevent the settling the church among them; for one of their
justices came to my lodging and forewarned me, at my peril, from
preaching, telling me that I did an illegal thing in bringing in new ways
among them; the people were likewise threatened with prison, and a
forfeiture of £5 for coming to hear me. It will require more time than you
will willingly bestow on these lines to express how rigidly and severely
they treat our people, by taking their estates by distress, when they do
not willingly pay to support their ministers.... They tell our people that
they will not suffer the house of God to be defiled with idolatrous
worship and superstitious ceremonies.... They say the sign of the cross is
the mark of the beast and the sign of the devil, and that those who
receive it are given to the devil....

Honored sir, your most assured friend, ...

GEO. MUIRSON.
RYE, _9th January_, 1707-8. [Footnote: _Conn. Church Documents_, i. 29.]

       *       *       *       *       *

However, in spite of his difficulties, he was able to boast that "I have
... in one town, ... baptized about 32, young and old, and administered
the Holy Sacrament to 18, who never received it before. Each time I had a
numerous congregation." [Footnote: _Conn. Church Documents_, i. 23.]

The foregoing correspondence was with the secretary of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel, which had been incorporated in 1701, and had
presently afterward appointed Colonel Heathcote as their agent. They could
have chosen no more energetic representative, nor was it long before his
exertions began to bear fruit. In 1707 nineteen inhabitants of Stratford
sent a memorial to the Bishop of London, the forerunner of many to come.
"Because by reason of the said laws we are not able to support a minister,
we further pray your lordship may be pleased to send one over with a
missionary allowance from the honourable corporation, invested with full
power, so as that he may preach and we hear the blessed Gospel of Jesus
Christ, without molestation and terror." [Footnote: _Idem_, i. 34.]

The Anglican prelates conceived it to be their duty to meddle with the
religious concerns of New England; therefore, by means of the organization
of the venerable society, they proceeded to plant a number of missions
throughout the country, whose missionaries were paid from the corporate
funds. Whatever opinion may be formed of the wisdom of a policy certain to
exasperate deeply so powerful and so revengeful a class as the
Congregational elders, there can be no doubt the Episcopalians achieved a
measure of success, in the last degree alarming, not only among the laity,
but among the clergy themselves. Mr. Reed, pastor of Stratford, was the
first to go over, and was of course deprived of his parish; his defection
was followed in 1722 by that of the rector of Yale and six other
ministers; and the Rev. Joseph Webb, who thought the end was near, wrote
in deep affliction to break the news to his friends in Boston.

       *       *       *       *       *

FAIRFIELD, _Oct._ 2, 1722.

REVEREND AND HONOURED SIR, The occasion of my now giving you the trouble
of these few lines is to me, and I presume to many others, melancholy
enough. You have perhaps heard before now, or will hear before these come
to hand, (I suppose) of the revolt of several persons of figure among us
unto the Church of England. There's the Rev. Mr. Cutler, rector of our
college, and Mr. Daniel Brown, the tutor thereof. There are also of
ordained ministers, pastors of several churches among us, the Rev.
Messieurs following, viz. John Hart of East Guilford, Samuel Whittlesey of
Wallingford, Jared Eliot of Kennelworth, ... Samuel Johnson of West-Haven,
and James Wetmore of North-Haven. They are the most of them reputed men of
considerable learning, and all of them of a virtuous and blameless
conversation. I apprehend the axe is hereby laid to the root of our civil
and sacred enjoyments; and a doleful gap opened for trouble and confusion
in our churches.... It is a very dark day with us; and we need pity,
prayers and counsel. [Footnote: Rev. Joseph Webb to Dr. C. Mather.
_Mass. Hist. Coll._ second series, ii. 131.]

       *       *       *       *       *

From the tone in which these tidings were received it is plain that the
charity and humility of the golden age of Massachusetts were not yet
altogether extinct among her ecclesiastics. The ministers published their
"sentiments" in a document beginning as follows:--

"These new Episcopalians have declared their desire to introduce an
usurpation and a superstition into the church of God, clearly condemned in
the sacred Scriptures, which our loyalty and chastity to our Saviour,
obliges us to keep close unto; and a tyranny, from which the whole church,
which desires to be reformed, has groaned that it may be delivered.... The
scandalous conjunction of these unhappy men with the Papists is, perhaps,
more than what they have themselves duly considered." [Footnote: The
Sentiments of the Several Ministers in Boston. _Mass. Hist. Coll._
second series, ii. 133.] In "A Faithful Relation" of what had happened it
was observed: "It has caused some indignation in them," (the people) "to
see the vile indignity cast by these cudweeds upon those excellent
servants of God, who were the leaders of the flock that followed our
Saviour into this wilderness: and upon the ministry of them, and their
successours, in which there has been seen for more than forescore years
together, the power and blessing of God for the salvation of many
thousands in the successive generations; with a success beyond what any of
them which set such an high value on the Episcopal ordination could ever
boast of!... It is a sensible addition, unto their horrour, to see the
horrid character of more than one or two, who have got themselves
qualified with Episcopal ordination, ... and come over as missionaries,
perhaps to serve scarce twenty families of such people, in a town of
several hundred families of Christians, better instructed than the very
missionaries: to think, that they must have no other ministers, but such
as are ordained, and ordered by them, who have sent over such tippling
sots unto them: instead of those pious and painful and faithful
instructors which they are now blessed withal!" [Footnote: "A Faithful
Relation of a Late Occurrence." _Mass. Hist. Coll._ second series, ii.
138, 139.]

Only three of the converts had the fortitude to withstand the pressure to
which they were exposed: Cutler, Johnson, and Brown went to England for
ordination; there Brown died of small-pox, but Cutler returned to Boston
as a missionary, and as he, too, possessed a certain clerical aptitude for
forcible expression, it is fitting he should relate his own experiences:--

"I find that, in spite of malice and the basest arts our godly enemies can
easily stoop to, that the interest of the church grows and penetrates into
the very heart of this country.... This great town swarms with them
"(churchmen)," and we are so confident of our power and interest that, out
of four Parliament-men which this town sends to our General Assembly, the
church intends to put up for two, though I am not very sanguine about our
success in it.... My church grows faster than I expected, and, while it
doth so, I will not be mortified by all the lies and affronts they pelt me
with. My greatest difficulty ariseth from another quarter, and is owing to
the covetous and malicious spirit of a clergyman in this town, who, in
lying and villany, is a perfect overmatch for any dissenter that I know;
and, after all the odium that he contracted heretofore among them, is
fully reconciled and endeared to them by his falsehood to the church."
[Footnote: Dr. Timothy Cutler to Dr. Zachary Grey, April 2, 1725, Perry's
_Collection_, iii. 663.]

Time did not tend to pacify the feud. There was no bishop in America, and
candidates had to be sent to England for ordination; nor without such an
official was it found possible to enforce due discipline; hence the
anxiety of Dr. Johnson, and, indeed, of all the Episcopalian clergy, to
have one appointed for the colonies was not unreasonable. Nevertheless,
the opposition they met with was acrimonious in the extreme, so much so as
to make them hostile to the charters themselves, which they thought
sheltered their adversaries.

"The king, by his instructions to our governor, demands a salary; and if
he punishes our obstinacy by vacating our charter, I shall think it an
eminent blessing of his illustrious reign." [Footnote: Dr. Cutler to Dr.
Grey, April 20, 1731. Perry's _Coll._ iii.]

Whitefield came in 1740, and the tumult of the great revival roused fresh
animosities.

"When Mr. Whitefield first arrived here the whole town was alarmed.... The
conventicles were crowded; but he chose rather our Common, where
multitudes might see him in all his awful postures; besides that, in one
crowded conventicle, before he came in, six were killed in a fright. The
fellow treated the most venerable with an air of superiority. But he
forever lashed and anathematized the Church of England; and that was
enough.

"After him came one Tennent, a monster! impudent and noisy, and told them
all they were damn'd, damn'd, damn'd! This charmed them, and in the most
dreadful winter that i ever saw, people wallowed in the snow night and day
for the benefit of his beastly brayings; and many ended their days under
these fatigues. Both of them carried more money out of these parts than
the poor could be thankful for." [Footnote: Dr. Cutler to Dr. Grey, Sept.
24, 1743. Perry's _Coll._ iii. 676.]

The excitement was followed by its natural reaction conversions became
numerous, and the unevangelical temper this bred between the rival
clergymen is painfully apparent in a correspondence wherein Dr. Johnson
became involved. Mr. Gold, the Congregationalist minister of Stratford,
whom he called a dissenter, had said of him "that he was a thief, and
robber of churches, and had no business in the place; that his church
doors stood open to all mischief and wickedness, and other words of like
import." He therefore wrote to defend himself: "As to my having no
business here, I will only say that to me it appears most evident that I
have as much business here at least as you have,--being appointed by a
society in England incorporated by royal charter to provide ministers for
the church people in America; nor does his majesty allow of any
establishment here, exclusive of the church, much less of anything that
should preclude the society he has incorporated from providing and sending
ministers to the church people in these countries." [Footnote: _Life of
Dr. Samuel Johnson_, p. 108.] To which Mr. Gold replied:--

       *       *       *       *       *

As for the pleas which you make for Col. Lewis, and others that have broke
away disorderly from our church, I think there's neither weight nor truth
in them; nor do I believe such poor shifts will stand them nor you in any
stead in the awful day of account; and as for your saying that as bad as
you are yet you lie open to conviction,--for my part I find no reason to
think you do, seeing you are so free and full in denying plain matters of
fact.... I don't think it worth my while to say anything further in the
affair, and as you began the controversy against rule or justice, so I
hope modesty will induce you to desist; and do assure you that if you see
cause to make any more replies, my purpose is, without reading of them, to
put them under the pot among my other thorns and there let one flame
quench the matter.... HEZ. GOLD.

STRATFORD, _July_ 21, 1741. [Footnote: _Life of Dr. Samuel Johnson,_
p. 111.]

       *       *       *       *       *

And so by an obvious sequence of cause and effect it came to pass that the
clergy were early ripe for rebellion, and only awaited their opportunity.
Nor could it have been otherwise. An autocratic priesthood had seen their
order stripped of its privileges one by one, until nothing remained but
their moral empire over their parishioners, and then at last not only did
an association of rival ecclesiastics send over emissaries to steal away
their people, but they proposed to establish a bishop in the land. The
thought was wormwood. He would be rich, he would live in a palace, he
would be supported by the patronage and pomp of the royal governors; the
imposing ceremonial would become fashionable; and in imagination they
already saw themselves reduced to the humble position of dissenters in
their own kingdom. Jonathan Mayhew was called a heretic by his more
conservative brethren, but he was one of the ablest and the most acrid of
the Boston ministers. He took little pains to disguise his feelings, and
so early as 1750 he preached a sermon, which was once famous, wherein he
told his hearers that it was their duty to oppose the encroachment of the
British prelates, if necessary, by force.

"Suppose, then, it was allowed, in general, that the clergy were a useful
order of men; that they ought to be esteemed very highly in love for their
work's sake, and to be decently supported by those they serve, 'the
laborer being worthy of his reward.' Suppose, further, that a number of
reverend and right reverend drones, who worked not; who preached, perhaps,
but once a year, and then not the gospel of Jesus Christ, but the divine
right of tithes, the dignity of their office as ambassadors of Christ, ...
suppose such men as these, spending their lives in effeminacy, luxury, and
idleness; ... suppose this should be the case, ... would not everybody be
astonished at such insolence, injustice, and impiety?" [Footnote:
"Discourse concerning Unlimited Submission," Jonathan Mayhew.  Thornton's
_American Pulpit_, pp. 71, 72.] "Civil tyranny is usually small in its
beginning, like 'the drop of a bucket,' till at length, like a mighty
torrent... it bears down all before it.... Thus it is as to ecclesiastical
tyranny also--the most cruel, intolerable, and impious of any. From small
beginnings, 'it exalts itself above all that is called God and that is
worshipped.' People have no security against being unmercifully priest-
ridden but by keeping all imperious bishops, and other clergymen who love
to 'lord it over God's heritage,' from getting their foot into the stirrup
at all.... For which reason it becomes every friend to truth and human
kind, every lover of God and the Christian religion, to bear a part in
opposing this hateful monster." [Footnote:  Preface to "A Discourse
concerning Unlimited Submission," Jonathan Mayhew. Thornton's _Amer.
Pulpit_, pp. 50, 51.]

Between these envenomed priests peace was impossible; each year brought
with it some new aggression which added fuel to the flame. In 1763, Mr.
Apthorp, missionary at Cambridge, published a pamphlet, in answer, as he
explained, to "some anonymous libels which appeared in our newspapers ...
grossly reflecting on the society & their missionaries, & in particular on
the mission at Cambridge." [Footnote: East Apthorp to the Secretary, June
25, 1763. Perry's _Coll._ iii. 500.]

By this time the passions of the Congregationalist divines had reached a
point when words seemed hardly adequate to give them expression. The Rev.
Ezra Stiles wrote to Dr. Mayhew in these terms:--

"Shall we be hushed into silence, by those whose tender mercies are
cruelty; and who, notwithstanding their pretence of moderation, wish the
subversion of our churches, and are combined, in united, steady and
vigorous effort, by all the arts of subtlety and intreague, for our ruin?"
[Footnote: Dr. Ezra Stiles to Dr. Mayhew, 1763. _Life of Mayhew_, p. 246.]

Mr. Stiles need have felt no anxiety, for, according to Mr. Apthorp, "this
occasion was greedily seized, ... by a dissenting minister of Boston, a
man of a singular character, of good abilities, but of a turbulent &
contentious disposition, at variance, not only with the Church of England,
but in the essential doctrines of religion, with most of his own party."
[Footnote: East Apthorp to the Secretary. Perry's _Coll._ iii. 500.]
He alluded to a tract written by Dr. Mayhew in answer to his pamphlet, in
which he reproduced the charge made by Mr. Stiles: "The society have long
had a formal design to dissolve and root out all our New-England churches;
or, in other words, to reduce them all to the Episcopal form." [Footnote:
_Observations on the Charter, etc. of the Society_, p. 107.] And
withal he clothed his thoughts in language which angered Mr. Caner:--

"A few days after, Mr. Apthorpe published the enclosed pamphlet, in
vindication of the institution and conduct of the society, which
occasioned the ungenteel reflections which your grace will find in Dr.
Mayhew's pamphlet, in which, not content with the personal abuse of Mr.
Apthorpe, he has insulted the missions in general, the society, the Church
of England, in short, the whole rational establishment, in so dirty a
manner, that it seems to be below the character of a gentleman to enter
into controversy with him. In most of his sermons, of which he published a
great number, he introduces some malicious invectives against the society
or the Church of England, and if at any time the most candid and gentle
remarks are made upon such abuse, he breaks forth into such bitter and
scurrilous personal reflections, that in truth no one cares to have
anything to do with him. His doctrinal principles, which seem chiefly
copied from Lord Shaftsbury, Bolingbroke, &c., are so offensive to the
generalty of the dissenting ministers, that they refuse to admit him a
member of their association, yet they appear to be pleased with his
abusing the Church of England." [Footnote: Rev. Mr. Caner to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, June 8, 1763. Perry's _Coll._ iii. 497,
498.]

The Archbishop of Canterbury himself now interfered, and tried to calm the
tumult by a candid and dignified reply to Dr. Mayhew, in which he labored
to show the harmlessness of the proposed bishopric.

"Therefore it is desired, that two or more bishops may be appointed for
them, to reside where his majesty shall think most convenient [not in New
England, but in one of the Episcopalian colonies]; that they may have no
concern in the least with any person who do not profess themselves to be
of the Church of England, but may ordain ministers for such as do; ... and
take such oversight of the Episcopal clergy, as the Bishop of London's
commissaries in those parts have been empowered to take, and have taken,
without offence. But it is not desired in the least that they should hold
courts ... or be vested with any authority, now exercised either by
provincial governors or subordinate magistrates, or infringe or diminish
any privileges and liberties enjoyed by any of the laity, even of our own
communion." [Footnote: _An Answer to Dr. Mayhew's Observations_, etc.
Dr. Secker, p. 51.]

But the archbishop should have known that the passions of rival
ecclesiastics are not to be allayed. The Episcopalians had become so
exasperated as to want nothing less than the overthrow of popular
government. Dr. Johnson wrote in 1763: "Is there then nothing more that
can be done either for obtaining bishops or demolishing these pernicious
charter governments, and reducing them all to one form in immediate
dependence on the king? I cannot help calling them pernicious, for they
are indeed so as well for the best good of the people themselves as for
the interests of true religion." [Footnote: _Life of Samuel Johnson_,
p. 279.]

The Congregationalists, on the other hand, inflamed with jealousy, were
ripe for rebellion. On March 22, 1765, the Stamp Act became law, and the
clergy threw themselves into the combat with characteristic violence.
Oliver had been appointed distributor, but his house was attacked and he
was forced to resign. The next evening but one the rabble visited
Hutchinson, who was lieutenant-governor, and broke his windows; and there
was general fear of further rioting. In the midst of this crisis., on the
25th of August, Dr. Mayhew preached a sermon in the West Meeting-house
from the text, "I would they were even cut off which trouble you."
[Footnote: _Galatians_ v. 12.] I That this discourse was in fact an
incendiary harangue is demonstrated by what followed. At nightfall on the
26th a fierce mob forced the cellars of the comptroller of the customs,
and got drunk on the spirits stored within; then they went on to
Hutchinson's dwelling: "The doors were immediately split to pieces with
broad axes, and a way made there, and at the windows, for the entry of the
mob; which poured in, and filled, in an instant, every room.... They
continued their possession until daylight; destroyed ... everything ...
except the walls, ... and had begun to break away the brick-work."
[Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ iii. 124.] His irreplaceable collection of
original papers was thrown into the street; and when a bystander
interfered in the hope of saving some of them, "answer was made, that it
had been resolved to destroy everything in the house; and such resolve
should be carried to effect." [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 125, note.] Malice so
bitter bears the peculiar ecclesiastical tinge, and is explained by the
confession of one of the ring-leaders, who, when subsequently arrested,
said he had been excited by the sermon, "and that he thought he was doing
God service." [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 123.]

The outbreak met with general condemnation, and Dr. Mayhew, who saw he had
gone too far, tried to excuse himself:--

"SIR,--I take the freedom to write you a few lines, by way of condolence,
on account of the almost unparalleled outrages committed at your house
last evening; and the great damage which I understand you have suffered
thereby. God is my witness, that, from the bottom of my heart, I detest
these proceedings; that I am most sincerely grieved at them, and have a
deep sympathy with you and your distressed family on this occasion."
[Footnote: Mayhew to Hutchinson. _Life of Mayhew_, p. 420.]

Nevertheless, the repeal of the Stamp Act, which pacified the laity, left
the clergy as hot as ever; and so early as 1768, when no one outside of
the inmost ecclesiastical circle yet dreamed of independence, but when the
Rev. Andrew Eliot thought the erection of the bishopric was near, he
frankly told Hollis he anticipated war.

"You will see by this pamphlet, how we are cajoled. A colony bishop is to
be a more innocent creature than ever a bishop was, since diocesan bishops
were introduced to lord it over God's heritage. ... Can the A-b-p, and his
tools, think to impose on the colonists by these artful
representations.... The people of New England are greatly alarmed; the
arrival of a bishop would raise them as much as any one thing.... Our
General Court is now sitting. I have hinted to some of the members, that
it will be proper for them to express their fears of the setting up an
hierarchy here. I am well assured a motion will be made to this
purpose.... I may be mistaken, but I am persuaded the dispute between
Great Britain and her colonies will never be _amicably_ settled.... I
sent you a few hasty remarks on the A-b-p's sermon. ... I am more and more
convinced of the meanness, art--if he was not in so high a station, I
should say, falsehood--of that Arch-Pr-l-te." [Footnote: Thomas Seeker.
Andrew Eliot to Thomas Hollis, Jan. 5, 1768. _Mass. Hist. Coll._
fourth series, iv. 422.]  An established priesthood is naturally the
firmest support of despotism; but the course of events made that of
Massachusetts revolutionary. This was a social factor whose importance it
is hard to overestimate; for though the influence of the elders had much
declined during the eighteenth century, their political power was still
immense; and it is impossible to measure the degree in which the drift of
feeling toward independence would have been arrested had they been
thoroughly loyal. At all events, the evidence tends to show that it is
most improbable the first blood would have been shed in the streets of
Boston had it been the policy of Great Britain to conciliate the
Congregational Church; if, for example, the liberals had been forced to
meet the issue of taxation upon a statute designed to raise a revenue for
the maintenance of the evangelical clergy. How potent an ally King George
lost by incurring their hatred may be judged by the devotion of the
Episcopalian pastors, many of whom were of the same blood as their
Calvinistic brethren, often, like Cutler and Johnson, converts. They all
showed the same intensity of feeling; all were Tories, not one wavered;
and they boasted that they were long able to hold their parishioners in
check.

In September, 1765, those of Connecticut wrote to the secretary, "although
the commotions and disaffection in this country are very great at present,
relative to what they call the imposition of stamp duties, yet ... the
people of the Church of England, in general, in this colony, as we hear,
... and those, in particular, under our respective charges, are of a
contrary temper and conduct; esteeming it nothing short of rebellion to
speak evil of dignities, and to avow opposition to this last act of
Parliament....

"We think it our incumbent duty to warn our hearers, in particular, of the
unreasonableness and wickedness of their taking the least part in any
tumult or opposition to his majesty's acts, and we have obvious reasons
for the fullest persuasion, that they will steadily behave themselves as
true and faithful subjects to his majesty's person and government."
[Footnote: _Conn. Church Doc._ ii. 81.]

Even so late as April, 1775, Mr. Caner, at Boston, felt justified in
making a very similar report to the society: "Our clergy have in the midst
of these confusions behaved I think with remarkable prudence. None of them
have been hindered from exercising the duties of their office since Mr.
Peters, tho' many of them have been much threat'ned; and as their people
have for the most part remained firm and steadfast in their loyalty and
attachment to goverment, the clergy feel themselves supported by a
conscious satisfaction that their labors have not been in vain."
[Footnote: Perry's _Coll._ iii. 579.]

Nor did they shrink because of danger from setting an example of passive
obedience to their congregations. The Rev. Dr. Beach graduated at Yale in
1721 and became the Congregational pastor of Newtown. He was afterward
converted, and during the war was forbidden to read the prayers for the
royal family; but he replied, "that he would do his duty, preach and pray
for the king, till the rebels cut out his tongue." [Footnote: _O'Callaghan
Documents_, iii. 1053, 8vo ed.]

In estimating the energy of a social force, such as ecclesiasticism, the
indirect are often more striking than the direct manifestations of power,
and this is eminently true of Massachusetts; for, notwithstanding her
ministers had always been astute and indefatigable politicians, their
greatest triumphs were invariably won by some layman whose mind they had
moulded and whom they put forward as their champion. From John Winthrop,
who was the first, an almost unbroken line of these redoubtable partisans
stretched down to the Revolution, where it ended with him who is perhaps
the most celebrated of all.

Samuel Adams has been called the last of the Puritans. He was indeed the
incarnation of those qualities which led to eminence under the theocracy.
A rigid Calvinist, reticent, cool, and brave, matchless in intrigue, and
tireless in purpose, his cause was always holy, and therefore sanctified
the means.

Professor Hosmer thus describes him: "It was, however, as a manager of men
that Samuel Adams was greatest. Such a master of the methods by which a
town-meeting may be swayed, the world has never seen. On the best of terms
with the people, the shipyard men, the distillers, the sailors, as well as
the merchants and ministers, he knew precisely what springs to touch. He
was the prince of canvassers, the very king of the caucus, of which his
father was the inventor.... As to his tact, was it ever surpassed?"
[Footnote: Hosmer's _Samuel Adams_, p. 363.] A bigot in religion, he
had the flexibility of a Jesuit; and though he abhorred Episcopalians, he
proposed that Mr. Duché should make the opening prayer for Congress, in
the hope of soothing the southern members. Strict in all ceremonial
observances, he was loose in money matters; yet even here he stood within
the pale, for Dr. Cotton Mather was looser, [Footnote: See Letter on
behalf of Dr. Cotton Mather to Sewall, _Mass. Hist. Coll._ fourth
series, ii. 122.] who was the most orthodox of divines.

The clergy instinctively clave to him, and gave him their fullest
confidence. When there was any important work to do they went to him, and
he never failed them. On January 5, 1768, the Rev. Dr. Eliot told Hollis
he had suggested to some of the members of the legislature to remonstrate
against the bishops. [Footnote: _Mass. Hist. Coll._ fourth series, iv.
422.] A week later the celebrated letter of instructions of the house
to the agent, De Berdt, was reported, which, was written by Adams; and it
is interesting to observe how, in the midst of a most vigorous protest on
the subject, he broke out: "We hope in God such an establishment will
never take place in America, and we desire you would strenuously oppose
it." [Footnote: _Mass. State Papers_, 1765-1775, p. 132.]

The subtle but unmistakable flavor of ecclesiasticism pervades his whole
long agitation. He handled the newspapers with infinite skill, and the way
in which he used the toleration granted the Canadian Catholics after the
conquest, as a goad wherewith to inflame the dying Puritan fanaticism, was
worthy of St. Ignatius. He moved for the committee who reported the
resolutions of the town of Boston in 1772; his spirit inspired them, and
in these also the grievance of Episcopacy plays a large part. How strong
his prejudices were may be gathered from a few words: "We think therefore
that every design for establishing ... a bishop in this province, is a
design both against our civil and religious rights." [Footnote: _Votes
and Proceedings of Boston_, Nov. 20, 1772, p. 28.]

The liberals, as loyal subjects of Great Britain, grieved over her policy
as the direst of misfortunes, which indeed they might be driven to resist,
but which they strove to modify.

Washington wrote in 1774: "I am well satisfied, ... that it is the ardent
wish of the warmest advocates for liberty, that peace and tranquillity,
upon constitutional grounds, may be restored, and the horrors of civil
discord prevented." [Footnote: Washington to Mackenzie. _Washington's
Writings_, ii. 402.] Jefferson affirmed: "Before the commencement of
hostilities ... I never had heard a whisper of a disposition to separate
from Great Britain; and after that, its possibility was contemplated with
affliction by all." While John Adams solemnly declared: "For my own part,
there was not a moment during the Revolution, when I would not have given
everything I possessed for a restoration to the state of things before the
contest began, provided we could have had a sufficient security for its
continuance." [Footnote: Note of Sparks, _Washington's Writings_, ii.
501.]

In such feelings Samuel Adams had no share. In each renewed aggression he
saw the error of his natural enemy, which brought ever nearer the
realization of the dream of independence he had inherited from the past;
for the same fierce passion burned within him that had made Endicott
mutilate his flag, and Leverett read his king's letter with his hat on;
and the guns of Lexington were music in his ears.

He was not a lawyer, nor a statesman, in the true meaning of the word, but
he was a consummate agitator; and if this be remembered, his career
becomes clear. When he conceived the idea of the possibility of
independence is uncertain; probably soon after the passage of the Stamp
Act, but the evidence is strong that so early as 1768 he had deliberately
resolved to precipitate some catastrophe which would make reconciliation
impossible, and obviously an armed collision would have suited his purpose
best.

Troops were then first ordered to Boston, and at one moment he was tempted
to cause their landing to be resisted. An old affidavit is still extant,
presumably truthful enough, which brings him vividly before the mind as he
went about the town lashing up the people.

"Mr. Samuel Adams ... happened to join the same party ... trembling and in
great agitation.... The informant heard the said Samuel Adams then say ...
'If you are men, behave like men. Let us take up arms immediately, and be
free, and seize all the king's officers. We shall have thirty thousand men
to join us from the country.' ... And before the arrival of the troops ...
at the house of the informant ... the said Samuel Adams said: 'We will not
submit to any tax, nor become slaves.... The country was first settled by
our ancestors, therefore we are free and want no king.' ... The informant
further sayeth, that about a fortnight before the troops arrived, the
aforesaid Samuel Adams, being at the house of the informant, the informant
asked him what he thought of the times. The said Adams answered, with
great alertness, that, on lighting the beacon, we should be joined with
thirty thousand men from the country with their knapsacks and bayonets
fixed, and added, 'We will destroy every soldier that dare put his foot on
shore. His majesty has no right to send troops here to invade the country,
and I look upon them as foreign enemies!'" [Footnote: Wells's _Samuel
Adams_, i. 210, 211.]

Maturer reflection must have convinced him his design was impracticable,
for he certainly abandoned it, and the two regiments disembarked in peace;
but their position was unfortunate. Together they were barely a thousand
strong, and were completely at the mercy of the populous and hostile
province they had been sent to awe.

The temptation to a bold and unscrupulous revolutionary leader must have
been intense. Apparently it needed but a spark to cause an explosion; the
rabble of Boston could be fierce and dangerous when roused, as had been
proved by the sack of Hutchinson's house; and if the soldiers could be
goaded into firing on the citizens, the chances were they would be
annihilated in the rising which would follow, when a rupture would be
inevitable. But even supposing the militia abstained from participating in
the outbreak, and the tumult were suppressed, the indignation at the
slaughter would be deep enough to sustain him in making demands which the
government could not grant.

Hutchinson and the English officers understood the danger, and for many
months the discipline was exemplary, but precautions were futile. Though
he knew full well how to be all things to all men, the natural
affiliations of Samuel Adams were with the clergy and the mob, and in the
ship-yards and rope-walks he reigned supreme. Nor was he of a temper to
shrink from using to the utmost the opportunity his adversaries had put in
his hands, and he forthwith began a series of inflammatory appeals in the
newspapers, whereof this is a specimen: "And are the inhabitants of this
town still to be affronted in the night as well as the day by soldiers
arm'd with muskets and fix'd bayonets?... Will the spirits of people, as
yet unsubdued by tyranny, unaw'd by the menaces of arbitary power, submit
to be govern'd by military force?" [Footnote: Vindex, _Boston Gazette_,
Dec. 5, 1768.]

In 1770 it was notorious that "endeavors had been systematically pursued
for many months, by certain busy characters, to excite quarrels,
rencounters, and combats, single or compound, in the night, between the
inhabitants of the lower class and the soldiers, and at all risks to
enkindle an immortal hatred between them." [Footnote: Autobiography of
John Adams. _Works of J. Adams_, ii. 229.] And it is curious to
observe how the British always quarrelled with the laborers about the
wharves; and how these, the closest friends of Adams, were all imbued with
the theory he maintained, that the military could not use their weapons
without the order of a civil magistrate. Little by little the animosity
increased, until on the 2d of March there was a very serious fray at
Gray's rope-walk, which was begun by one of the hands, who knocked down
two soldiers who spoke to him in the street. Although Adams afterward
labored to convince the public that the tragedy which happened three days
later was the result of a deliberately matured conspiracy to murder the
citizens for revenge, there is nothing whereon to base such a charge; on
the contrary, the evidence tends to exonerate the troops, and the verdicts
show the opinion of the juries. There was exasperation on both sides, but
the rabble were not restrained by discipline, and on the night of the 5th
of March James Crawford swore he he saw at Calf's corner "about a dozen
with sticks, in Quaker Lane and Green's Lane, met many going toward King
Street. Very great sticks, pretty large cudgells, not common walking
canes.... At Swing bridge the people were walking from all quarters with
sticks. I was afraid to go home, ... the streets in such commotion as I
hardly ever saw in my life. Uncommon sticks such as a man would pull out
of an hedge.... Thomas Knight at his own door, 8 or 10 passed with sticks
or clubs and one of them said 'D--n their bloods, let us go and attack the
main guard first.'" [Footnote: Kidder's _Massacre_, p. 10.] The crown
witnesses testified that the sentry was surrounded by a crowd of thirty or
forty, who pelted him with pieces of ice "hard and large enough to hurt
any man; as big as one's fist." And ha said "he was afraid, if the boys
did not disperse, there would be trouble." [Footnote: _Idem_, p. 138.]
When the guard came to his help the mob grew still more violent, yelling
"bloody backs," "lobster scoundrels," "damn you, fire! why don't you
fire?" striking them with sticks.

"Did you observe anybody strike Montgomery, or was a club thrown? The
stroke came from a stick or club that was in somebody's hand, and the blow
struck his gun and his arm." "Was he knocked down?... He fell, I am
sure.... His gun flew out of hand, and as he stooped to take it up, he
fell himself.... Was any number of people standing near the man that
struck his gun? Yes, a whole crowd, fifty or sixty." [Footnote: Kidder's
_Massacre_, pp. 138, 139.] When the volley came at last the rabble
fell back, and the 29th was rapidly formed before the main guard, the
front rank kneeling, that the fire might sweep the street. And now when
every bell was tolling, and the town was called to arms, and infuriated
men came pouring in by thousands, Hutchinson showed he had inherited the
blood of his great ancestress, who feared little upon earth; but then,
indeed, their adversaries have seldom charged the Puritans with cowardice
in fight. Coming quickly to the council chamber he passed into the
balcony, which overhung the kneeling regiment and the armed and maddened
crowd, and he spoke with such calmness and courage that even then he was
obeyed. He promised that justice should be done and he commanded the
people to disperse. Preston and his men were at once surrendered to the
authorities to await their trial.

The next day Adams was in his glory. The meeting in the morning was as wax
between his fingers, and his friend, the Rev. Dr. Cooper, opened it with
fervent prayer. A committee was at once appointed to demand the withdrawal
of the troops, but Hutchinson thought he had no power and that Gage alone
could give the order. Nevertheless, after a conference with Colonel
Dalrymple he was induced to propose that the 29th should be sent to the
Castle, and the 14th put under strict restraint. [Footnote: Kidder's
_Massacre_, p. 43.] To the daring agitator it seemed at last his hour
was come, for the whole people were behind him, and Hutchinson himself
says "their spirit" was "as high as was the spirit of their ancestors when
they imprisoned Andros." As the committee descended the steps of the State
House to go to the Old South where they were to report, the dense crowd
made way for them, and Samuel Adams as he walked bare-headed through their
lines continually bowed to right and left, repeating the catchword, "Both
regiments or none." His touch on human passions was unerring, for when the
lieutenant-governor's reply was read, the great assembly answered with a
mighty shout, "Both regiments or none," and so instructed he returned.
Then the nature of the man shone out; the handful of troops were helpless,
and he was as inflexible as steel. The thin, strong, determined, gray-eyed
Puritan stood before Hutchinson, inwardly exulting as he marked his
features change under the torture. "A multitude highly incensed now wait
the result of this application. The voice of ten thousand freemen demands
that both regiments be forthwith removed.... Fail not then at your peril
to comply with this requisition!" [Footnote: Hosmer's _Samuel Adams_,
p. 173.] It was the spirit of Norton and of Endicott alive again, and he
was flushed with the same stern triumph at the sight of his victim's pain:
"It was then, if fancy deceived me not, I observed his knees to tremble. I
thought I saw his face grow pale (and I enjoyed the sight)." [Footnote:
Adams to Warren. Wells's Samuel Adams, i. 324.]

Probably nothing prevented a complete rupture but the hopeless weakness of
the garrison, for Hutchinson, feeling the decisive moment had come, was
full of fight. He saw that to yield would destroy his authority, and he
opposed concession, but he stood alone, the officers knew their position
was untenable, and the council was unanimous against him. "The Lt G.
endeavoured to convince them of the ill consequence of this advice, and
kept them until late in the evening, the people remaining assembled; but
the council were resolute. Their advice, therefore, he communicated to Col
Dalrymple accompanied with a declaration, that he had no authority to
order the removal of the troops. This part Col. D. was dissatisfied with,
and urged the Lt G. to withdraw it, but he refused, and the regiments were
removed. He was much distressed, but he brought it all upon himself by his
offer to remove one of the regiments. No censure, however, was passed upon
him." [Footnote: _Diary and Letters of T. Hutchinson_, p. 80.]

Had the pacification of his country been the object near his heart, Samuel
Adams, after his victory, would have abstained from any act however
remotely tending to influence the course of justice; for he must have
known that it was only by such conduct the colonists could inspire respect
for the motives which actuated them in their resistance. A capital
sentence would have been doubly unfortunate, for had it been executed it
would have roused all England; while had the king pardoned the soldiers,
as assuredly he would have done, a deep feeling of wrong would have
rankled in America.

A fanatical and revolutionary demagogue, on the other hand, would have
longed for a conviction, not only to compass his ends as a politician, but
to glut his hate as a zealot.

Samuel Adams was a taciturn, secretive man, whose tortuous course would
have been hard to follow a century ago; now the attempt is hopeless. Yet
there is one inference it seems permissible to draw: his admirers have
always boasted that he was the inspiration of the town meetings,
presumably, therefore, the the votes passed at them may be attributed to
his manipulation. And starting from this point, with the help of
Hutchinson and his own writings, it is still possible to discern the
outlines of a policy well worthy of a theocratic statesman.

The March meeting began on the 12th. On the 13th it was resolved:--

"That ---- be and they hereby are appointed a committee for and in behalf
of the town to find out who those persons are that were the perpetrators
of the horred murders and massacres done and committed in King Street on
several of the inhabitants in the evening of the 5th instant and take such
examinations and depositions as they can procure, and lay the whole
thereof before the grand inquest in order that such perpetrators may be
indicted and brought to tryal for the same, and upon indictments being
found, said committee are desired to prepare matters for the king's
attorney, to attend at their tryals in the superior court, subpoena all
the witnesses, and do everything necessary for bringing those murtherers
to that punishment for such crimes, as the laws of God and man require."
[Footnote: _Records of Boston_, v. 232.]

A day or two afterward a number of Adams's friends, among whom were some
of the members of this committee, dined together, and Hutchinson tells
what he persuaded them to do.

"The time for holding the superior court for the county of Suffolk was the
next week after the tragical action in King Street. Although bills were
found by the grand jury, yet the court, considering the disordered state
of the town, had thought fit to continue the trials over to the next term,
when the minds of people would be more free from prejudice." "A
considerable number of the most active persons in all publick measures of
the town, having dined together, went in a body from table to the superior
court then sitting, and Mr. Adams, at their head and in behalf of the
town, pressed the bringing on the trial the same term with so much spirit,
that the judges did not think it advisable to abide by their own order,
but appointed a day for the trials, and adjourned the court for that
purpose." [Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ iii. 285, 286 and note.]

The justices must afterward have grown ashamed of their cowardice, for Rex
_v._ Preston did not come on until the autumn, and altogether very little
was accomplished by these attempts to interfere with the due
administration of the law. "A committee had been appointed by the town to
assist in the prosecution of the soldiers ... but this was irregular. The
courts, according to the practice in the province, required no prosecutors
but the officers of the crown; much less would they have thought it proper
for the principal town in the province to have brought all its weight,
which was very great, into court against the prisoners." [Footnote:
_Idem_, iii. 286, note.]

Nevertheless, Adams had by no means exhausted his resources, for it was
possible so to inflame the public mind that dispassionate juries could
hardly be obtained.

At the same March meeting another committee was named, who were to obtain
a "particular account of all proceedings relative to the massacre in King
Street on Monday night last, that a full and just representation may be
made thereof?" [Footnote: Kidder's _Massacre_, p. 23.] The reason
assigned for so unwonted a proceeding as the taking of _ex parte_
testimony by a popular assembly concerning alleged murders, for which men
were to be presently tried for their lives, was the necessity for
controverting the aspersions of the British officials; but the probable
truth of this explanation must be judged by the course actually pursued.
On the 19th the report was made, consisting of "A Short Narrative of the
Horrid Massacre in Boston," together with a number of depositions; and
though perhaps it was natural, under the circumstances, for such a
pamphlet to have been highly partisan, it was unnatural for its authors to
have assumed the burden of proving that a deliberately planned conspiracy
had existed between the civilians and the military to murder the citizens;
especially as this tremendous charge rested upon no better foundation than
the fantastic falsehoods of "a French boy, whose evidence appeared to the
justice so improbable, and whose character was so infamous, that the
justice, who was one of the most zealous in the cause of liberty, refused
to issue a warrant to apprehend his master, against whom he swore."
[Footnote: Hutch. _Hist_. iii. 279, 280.] "Then I went up to the
custom-house door and knocked, ... I saw my master and Mr. Munroe come
down-stairs, and go into a room; when four or five men went up stairs,
pulling and hauling me after them.... When I was carried into the chamber,
there was but one light in the room, and that in the corner of the
chamber, when I saw a tall man loading a gun (then I saw two guns in the
room) ... there was a number of gentlemen in the room. After the gun was
loaded, the tall man gave it to me, and told me to fire, and said he would
kill me if I did not; I told him I would not. He drawing a sword out of
his cane, told me, if I did not fire it, he would run it through my guts.
The man putting the gun out of the window, it being a little open, I fired
it side way up the street; the tall man then loaded the gun again.... I
told him I would not fire again; he told me again, he would run me through
the guts if I did not. Upon which I fired the same way up the street.
After I fired the second gun, I saw my master in the room; he took a gun
and pointed it out of the window; I heard the gun go off. Then a tall man
came and clapped me on the shoulders above and below stairs, and said,
that's my good boy, I'll give you some money to-morrow.... And I ran home
as fast as I could, and sat up all night in my master's kitchen. And
further say, that my master licked me the next night for telling Mrs.
Waldron about his firing out of the custom-house. And for fear that I
should be licked again, I did deny all that I said before Justice Quincy,
which I am very sorry for. [Footnote: Kidder's _Massacre_, p. 82.
Deposition 58.]

"CHARLOTTE BOURGATE + (his mark)."

       *       *       *       *       *

While it is inconceivable that a cool and sagacious politician, whose
object was to convince Parliament of the good faith of Massachusetts,
should have relied upon such incredible statements to sway the minds of
English statesmen and lawyers, it is equally inconceivable lie should not
have known they were admirably adapted to still further exasperate an
already excited people; and that such was his purpose must be inferred
from the immediate publication of the substance of this affidavit in the
newspapers. [Footnote: _Boston Gazette_, March 19, 1770.]

Without doubt a vote was passed on the 26th of March, a week after the
committee had presented their report, desiring them to reserve all the
printed copies not sent to Europe, as their distribution might tend to
bias the juries; but even had this precaution been observed, it came too
late, for the damage was done when the Narrative was read in Faneuil Hall;
in fact, however, the order was eluded, for "many copies, notwithstanding,
got abroad, and some of a second edition were sent from England, long
before the trials of the officer and soldiers came on." [Footnote: Hutch.
_Hist._ iii. 279.] And at this cheap rate a reputation for magnanimity was
earned.

How thoroughly the clergy sympathized with their champion appears from
their clamors for blood. As the time drew near it was rumored Hutchinson
would reprieve the prisoners, should they be convicted, till the king's
pleasure could be known. Then Dr. Chauncy, the senior minister of Boston,
cried out in his pulpit: "Surely he would not counteract the operation of
the law, both of God and of man! Surely he would not suffer the town and
land to lie under the defilement of blood! Surely he would not make
himself a partaker in the guilt of murder, by putting a stop to the
shedding of their blood, who have murderously spilt the blood of others!"
[Footnote: Hutch. _Hist._ iii. 329, note.]  Adams attended when the
causes were heard and took notes of the evidence; and one of the few
occasions in his long life on which his temper seems to have got beyond
control was when the accused were acquitted. His writings betray
unmistakable chagrin; and nothing is more typical of the man, or of the
clerical atmosphere wherein he had been bred, than his comments upon the
testimony on which the lives of his enemies hung. His piety caused him to
doubt those whose evidence was adverse to his wishes, though they appeared
to be trying to speak the truth. "The credibility of a witness perhaps
cannot be impeach'd in court, unless he has been convicted of perjury: but
an immoral man, for instance one who will commonly prophane the name of
his maker, certainly cannot be esteemed of equal credit by a jury, with
one who fears to take that sacred name in vain: It is impossible he should
in the mind of any man." [Footnote: _Boston Gazette_, Jan. 21, 1771.]

And yet this rigid Calvinist, this incarnation of ecclesiasticism, had no
scruple in propagating the palpable and infamous lies of Charlotte
Bourgate, when by so doing he thought it possible to further his own ends.
He was bitterly mortified, for he had been foiled. Yet, though he had
failed in precipitating war, he had struck a telling blow, and he had no
reason to repine. Probably no single event, before fighting actually
began, left so deep a scar as the Boston massacre; and many years later
John Adams gave it as his deliberate opinion that, on the night of the 5th
of March, 1770, "the foundation of American independence was laid." Nor
was the full realization of his hopes long delayed. Gage occupied Boston
in 1774. During the winter the tireless agitator, from his place in the
Provincial Congress, warned the people to fight any force sent more than
ten miles from the town; and so when Paul Revere galloped through
Middlesex on the night of the 18th of April he found the farmers ready.
Samuel Adams had slept at the house of the Rev. Jonas Clark. Before
sunrise the detachment sent to seize him was close at hand. While they
advanced, he escaped; and as he walked across the fields toward Woburn, to
the sound of the guns of Lexington, he exclaimed, in a burst of passionate
triumph, "What a glorious morning is this!"

Massachusetts became the hot-bed of rebellion because of this unwonted
alliance between liberality and sacerdotalism. Liberality was her
birthright; for liberalism is the offspring of intellectual variation,
which makes mutual toleration of opinion a necessity; but that her church
should have been radical at this crisis was due to the action of a long
chain of memorable causes.

The exiles of the Reformation were enthusiasts, for none would then have
dared defy the pains of heresy, in whom the instinct onward was feebler
than the fear of death; yet when the wanderers reached America the mental
growth of the majority had culminated, and they had passed into the age of
routine; and exactly in proportion as their youthful inspiration had been
fervid was their later formalism intense. But similar causes acting on the
human mechanism produce like results; hence bigotry and ambition fed by
power led to persecution. Then, as the despotism of the preachers
deepened, their victims groaning in their dungeons, or furrowed by their
lash, implored the aid of England, who, in defence of freedom and of law,
crushed the theocracy at a blow. And the clergy knew and hated their enemy
from the earliest days; it was this bitter theological jealousy which
flamed within Endicott when he mutilated his flag, and within Leverett
when he insulted Randolph; it was a rapacious lust for power and a furious
detestation of rival priests which maddened the Mathers in their onslaught
upon Dudley, which burned undimmed in Mayhew and Cooper, and in their
champion, Samuel Adams, and which at last made the hierarchy cast in its
lot with an ally more dangerous far than those prelates whom it deemed its
foe. For no church can preach liberality and not be liberalized. Of a
truth the momentary spasm may pass which made these conservatives
progressive, and they may once more manifest their reactionary nature,
but, nevertheless, the impulsion shall have been given to that automatic,
yet resistless, machinery which produces innovation; wherefore, in the
next generation, the great liberal secession from the Congregational
communion broke the ecclesiastical power forever. And so, through toil and
suffering, through martyrdoms and war, the Puritans wrought out the
ancient destiny which fated them to wander as outcasts to the desolate New
England shore; there, amidst hardship and apparent failure, they slowly
achieved their civil and religious liberty, and conceived that
constitutional system which is the root of our national life; and there in
another century the liberal commonwealth they had builded led the battle
against the spread of human oppression; and when the war of slavery burst
forth her soldiers rightly were the first to fall; for it is her
children's heritage that, wheresoever on this continent blood shall flow
in defence of personal freedom, there must the sons of Massachusetts
surely be.







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