REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT IN MASSACHUSETTS.

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his own communion, he now recommended, by the exercise of meekness, charity and forbearance. The great fundamental principles of Christianity, progressively acquiring a more exclusive and absorbing influence on his mind, he began to labor for the conversion of the Indians; and, in addition to the benefits of which his ministry among them was productive to this race of people, he acquired over them an influence which he rendered highly advantageous to his old associates in Massachusetts, whom he was enabled frequently to apprize of conspiracies formed against them by the savages in their vicinity, and revealed to him by the tribes with whom he maintained relations of friendship. Endicott's vehemence was not less mellowed by time and the ascendency of sound wisdom and piety. He remained in Massachusetts; and at a later period held for many years the chief office in its government, with great public advantage and general

esteem.

The colony of Massachusetts had continued, meanwhile, to advance in the attainment of stability and prosperity, and to extend its settlements; and in 1634, an important and beneficial change took place in its municipal constitution. The mortality that had prevailed among the Indians, had vacated a great many stations formerly occupied by their tribes; and as most of these were advantageously situated, the colonists took possession of them with an eagerness that dispersed their settlements widely over the face of the country. This necessarily led to the introduction of representative government, and, accordingly, at the period of convoking the general court, the freemen, instead of personally attending it, which was the literal prescription of the provincial charter, elected representatives in their several districts, whom they authorized to appear in their name and act in their behalf. The representatives were admitted, and henceforward considered themselves, in conjunction with the governor and council of assistants, as the supreme legislative body of the province.

The abstract wisdom of this innovation could not admit of doubt; and, in defence of its legitimacy, it was forcibly urged that the colonists were only making an improved and necessary access to the enjoyment of an advantage already bestowed on them, and preventing their assemblies from becoming either too numerous to transact business, or inadequate to represent the general interest and administer the general will. The number of freemen had greatly increased since the charter was granted; many resided at a distance from the places where the general courts or assemblies of the freemen were held; personal attendance had become inconvenient; and, in such circumstances, little if any

blame can attach to the colonists for making with their own hands the improvement that was necessary to preserve their existing rights, instead of applying to the government of England, which was steadily pursuing the plan of subverting the organs of liberty in the mother country, and had already begun to exhibit an altered countenance towards the colonial community. In consequence of this important measure, the colony advanced beyond the state of a mercantile society or corporation, and acquired by its own act the condition of a commonwealth endowed with political liberty. The representatives of the people having established themselves in their office, asserted its inherent rights, by enacting that no legal ordinance should be framed within the province, no tax imposed, and no public officer appointed in future, except by the provincial legislature.

The increasing violence and injustice of the royal government in England coöperated so forcibly with the tidings that were circulated of the prosperity of Massachusetts,-and the simple frame of ecclesiastical policy that had been established in the colony, presented a prospect so desirable, and, by the comparison. which it invited, exposed the gorgeous hierarchy and recent superstitious innovations in the ceremonies of the English church to so much additional odium,-that the flow of emigration seemed rather to enlarge than subside, and crowds of new settlers continued to flock to New England. Among the passengers in a fleet of twenty vessels that arrived in the year 1635, were two persons who afterwards made a distinguished figure in a more conspicuous scene. One of these was Hugh Peters, the celebrated chaplain and counsellor of Oliver Cromwell, and the other was Vane, whose father, Sir Henry Vane, the elder, enjoyed the dignity of a privy counsellor at the English court. Peters, who united an active and enterprising genius with the warmest devotion to the interests of religion and liberty, became minister of Salem, where he not only discharged his sacred functions with zeal and advantage, but roused the planters to new courses of useful industry, and encouraged them by his own successful example. His labors were blessed with a produce not less honorable than enduring. The spirit which he fostered has continued to prevail with unabated vigor; and nearly two centuries after his death, the piety, good morals, and industry, by which Salem has always been characterized, have been ascribed, with just and grateful commemoration, to the effects of Peters' residence there. He remained in New England till the year 1641, when, at the request of the colonists, he went to transact some business for them in the mother country, from which he was fated never to return. But

his race remained in the land which had been thus highly indebted to his virtue; and the name of Winthrop, one of the most honored in New England, was again acquired and transmitted by his daughter. Vane, afterwards Sir Henry Vane, the younger, had been for some time restrained from indulging his wish to proceed to New England, by the prohibition of his father, who was at length induced to waive his objections by the interference of the king. A young man of patrician family, animated with such ardent devotion to the cause of pure religion and liberty, that, relinquishing all his prospects in Britain, he chose to settle in an infant colony, which as yet afforded but little more than a bare subsistence to its inhabitants, was received in New England with the fondest regard and admiration. He was then little more than twenty-four years of age. His youth, which seemed to magnify the sacrifice he had made, increased no less the impression which his manners and appearance were calculated to produce. The deep, thoughtful composure of his aspect and demeanor stamped a serious grace, and somewhat, according to our conceptions, of angelic grandeur on the bloom of manhood; his countenance disclosed the surface of a character not less resolute than profound, and of which the energy was not extinguished, but concentrated into a sublime and solemn calm. He possessed a prompt and clear discernment of the spirits of other men, and a wonderful mastery over his own. He has been charged with a wild enthusiasm, by some who have remarked the intensity with which he pursued purposes, which to them have appeared worthless and ignoble; and with hypocrisy by others, who have contrasted the vigor of his resolutions with the calmness of his manners. But a juster consideration, perhaps, may suggest that it was the habitual energy of his determination, that repressed every symptom of vehement impetuosity, and induced an equality of manner that scarcely appeared to exceed the pitch of a grave, deliberate constancy. So much did his mind predominate over his senses, that though constitutionally timid, and keenly susceptible of impressions of pain, yet his whole life was one continued course of great and daring enterprise; and when, amid the wreck of his fortune and the treachery of his associates, death was presented to himself in the appalling form of a bloody execution, he prepared for it with a heroic and smiling intrepidity, and encountered it with tranquil and dignified resignation. The man who could so command himself, was formed to acquire a powerful ascendency over the minds of others. He was admitted a freeman of Massachusetts; and extending his claims to respect, by the address and ability which he displayed in conducting business, he was

elected governor, in the year subsequent to his arrival, by unanimous choice, and with the highest expectations of a happy and advantageous administration. These hopes, however, were disappointed. Vane, not finding in the political affairs of the colonists, a field wide enough for the excursion of his active spirit, embarked its energy in their theological discussions; and, unfortunately connecting himself with a party who had conceived singularly just and profound views of Christian doctrine, but associated them with some dangerous errors, and discredited them by a wild extravagance of behavior, he very soon witnessed the abridgment of his usefulness and the decline of his popularity, and returned to England.

The incessant flow of emigration to Massachusetts, causing the inhabitants of some of the towns to feel themselves straitened for room, suggested the formation of additional establishments. A project of founding a new settlement on the banks of the river Connecticut, was now embraced by Hooker, one of the ministers of Boston, and a hundred of the members of his congregation. After enduring extreme hardship, and encountering the usual difficulties that attended the foundation of civilized society in this quarter of America, with the usual display of fortitude and resolution, they at length succeeded in establishing a plantation, which gradually enlarged into the flourishing State of Connecticut.

CHAPTER XL.

MASSACHUSETTS CONTINUED.-Foundation of the province of Connecticut.-The Narraganset Indians.-The Pequods.-Indian wars.-Sassacus and Mason.Victory over the Pequods, and extirpation of that tribe.-Atrocities of the Indian wars.-Internal dissensions in Massachusetts.-Doctrines of Mrs. Hutchinson.Their effects upon the colony.

SOME Dutch settlers from New York, who had, in 1633, occupied a post in Connecticut, were compelled to surrender it to the British colonists, who, moreover, obtained shortly after from Lord Brooke, and Lords Say and Sele, the grant of a district, which these noblemen had acquired in the same quarter, with the intention of flying from the royal tyranny to America. Thomas Hooker, a clergyman, made the first permanent settlement in Connecticut. Hooker and his comrades at first carried with them a commission from the government of Massachusetts; but subsequently, ascertaining that their territory was beyond the jurisdiction of the authorities of Massachusetts, they combined themselves, by a voluntary association, into a body politic, constructed on the model of the colonial society from which they had separated. They continued in this condition till the Restoration, when they obtained a charter for themselves, from King Charles the Second. That this secession from the colony of Massachusetts was occa