been so often acknowledged to be the master principle of the greatest movements in the modern world. The religions of Greece and Rome were portions of the political systems of these countries. The Scipios, the Crassuses, and Julius Cæsar himself, were high priests. It was, doubtless, owing, in part, to this example, that, at an early period after the first introduction of Christianity, the heads of the Church so entirely mistook the spirit of this religion, that, in imitation of the splendid idolatry, which was passing away, they aimed at a new combination of Church and State, which received but too much countenance, from the policy of Constantine. This abuse, with ever multiplying and aggravated calamitous consequences, endured, without any effectual check, till the first blow was aimed at the supremacy of the papal power, by Philip the Fair, of France, in the fourteenth century, who laid the foundation of the liberties of the Gallican church, by what may be called the Catholic Reformation. After an interval of two hundred years, this example was followed and improved upon by the Princes in Germany, who espoused the Protestant Reformation of Luther, and in a still more decisive manner, by Henry the Eighth, in England; at which period, we may accordingly date the second great step in the march of religious liberty. Much more, however, was yet to be effected, toward the dissolution of the political bond between Church and State. Hitherto, a domestic was substituted for a foreign yoke, and the rights of private conscience had, perhaps, gained but little in the exchange. In the middle of the sixteenth century, and among the exiles, whom the tyranny of Queen Mary had driven to the free cities on the Rhine, the ever-memorable sect of Puritans arose. On their return to England, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, they strenuously opposed themselves to the erection and peculiarities of the English national Church. Nearly as we have now reached, both in simplicity of principle and point of time, to our pilgrim forefathers, there is one more purifying process to go through, one more generation to pass away. The major part of the Puritans themselves, while they rejected some of the forms, and disliked the organization of the English Church, adhered, in substance, to the constitution of the Genevan Church, and their descendants were willing, a century later, to accept of an establishment by law in Scotland. It remained, therefore, to shake off the last badge of subjection, and take the last step in the progress of reform, by asserting the independence of each single church. This principle may be considered as firmly established, from the time of John Robinson, who may be called the father of the Independent churches. His own, at Leyden, was the chief of these, and fidelity to their principles was the motive of their departure from Holland, and the occasion of their settlement at Plymouth. Although there are many persons, entitled to great respect, who will not concur in the foregoing statement, of the nature of the dissent of our forefathers from the church of England, yet none, on a large view of the subject, will be unwilling to allow, that this was the great age of general improvement. It was the age, when the discoveries of the Spanish, Portuguese, and English, navigators had begun to exert a stimulating influence on the world at large; and the Old continent and the New, like the magnetic poles, commenced those momentous processes of attraction and repulsion, from which, so much of the activity of both has since proceeded. It was the period, when the circulation of knowledge had become general; and books, in all languages, were in the hands of a very large class, in every country. The history of Europe, in all its states, shows the extent and vehemence of the consequent fermentation. With their new engines of improvement and new principles of right, the communities of men rushed forward in the course of reform; some with firmness and vigor, proportioned to the greatness of the object in view; most with tumult and desperation, proportioned to the duration and magnitude of their injuries; and none with entire success. The most that was effected, in the Wost fortunate states, was a compromise, between the new claims and the old abuses. Absolute kings stipulated to be no longer absolute; and free citizens preferred what they called petitions of right. In this way, and after infinite struggles, a tolerable foundation for considerable practical liberty was laid on two principles, in the abstract false, as principles of government, -that of acquiescence on the part of the sovereign, and prescription in favor of the people. So firmly established are these principles, by consent of the statesmen of the freest country in Europe, as the best and only foundation of civil rights, that, so late as the last years of the eighteenth century, a work, of ingenuity seldom, of eloquence never, surpassed, was written by Mr. Burke, to prove, that the people of England have not a right to appoint and to remove their rulers; and that, if they ever had the right, they deliberately renounced it, at what is called the glorious revolution of 1688, for themselves and their posterity forever. The work of reform is, of course, rendered exceedingly difficult, in Europe, by the length of time for which great abuses have existed, and the extent to which these abuses are interwoven with the whole system. We cannot but regard it as the plain interposition of Providence, that, at the critical point of time, when the most powerful springs of improvement were in operation, a chosen company of pilgrims, who were actuated by these springs of improvement, in all their strength, who had purchased the privilege of dissent at the high price of banishment from the civilized world, and who, with the dust of their feet, had shaken off many of the abuses and errors which had been accumulating, for thousands of years, came over to these distant, unoccupied shores. I know not that the work of thorough reform could be safely trusted to any other hands. I can credit their disinterestedness, when they maintain the equality of ranks; for no rich forfeitures of attainted lords await them in the wilderness. I need not question the sincerity with which they assot the rights of conscience; for the plundered treasures of an ancient hierarchy are not to seal their doctrine. They rested the edifice of their civil and religious liberties, on a foundation, as pure as the snows around them. Blessed be the spot, the only one on earth, where such a foundation was ever laid! Blessed be the spot, the only one on earth, where man has attempted to establish the good, without beginning with the sad, the odious, the often suspicious, task of pulling down the bad! III. Under these auspices, the Pilgrims landed on the coast of New England. They found it a region of moderate fertility, offering an unsubdued wilderness to the hand of labor, with a climate, temperate, indeed, but, compared with that which they had left, verging somewhat near to either extreme; and a soil, which promised neither gold nor diamonds, nor any thing but what should be gained from it by patient industry. This was but a poor reality for that dream of Oriental luxury, with which America had filled the imaginations of men. The visions of Indian wealth, of mines of silver and gold, and fisheries of pearl, with which the Spanish adventurers in Mexico and Peru had astonished the ears of Europe, were but poorly fulfilled on the bleak, rocky, and sterile, plains of New England. No doubt, in the beginning of the settlement, these circumstances operated unfavorably on the growth of the colony. In the nature of things, it is mostly adventurers, who incline to leave their homes and native land, and risk the uncertainty of another hemisphere; and a climate and soil like ours furnished but little attraction to the adventuring class. Captain Smith, in his zeal to promote the growth of New England, is at no little pains to show, that the want of mineral treasures was amply compensated by the abundant fishery of the coast; and having sketched, in strong colors, the prosperity and wealth of the states of Holland, he adds, "Divers, I know, may allege many other assistances, but this is the chiefest mine, and the sea the source of those silver streams of their virtue, which hath made them now the very miracle of industry, the only pattern of perfection for these affairs; and the benefit of fishing is that primum mobile* that turns all their spheres to this height of plenty, strength, honor, and exceeding great admiration."+ While we smile at this overwrought panegyric, on the primitive resource of our fathers, we cannot but acknowledge, that it has foundation in truth. It is, doubtless, to the untempting qualities of our climate and soil, and the conditions of industry and frugality, on which alone the prosperity of the colony could be secured, that we are to look for a full share of the final success of the enterprise. To this, it is to be ascribed, that the country itself was not preoccupied by a crowded population of savages, like the West India Islands and Mexico, who, placed upon a soil, yielding, almost spontaneously, a superabundance of food, had multiplied into populous empires, and made a progress in the arts, which served no other purpose, than to give strength and permanence to some of the most frightful systems of despotism, that ever afflicted humanity; systems, uniting all that is most horrible in depraved civilization and wild barbarity. The problem, indeed, is hard to be solved, in what way, and by what steps, a continent, possessed by savage tribes, is to be lawfully occupied and colonized by civilized man. But this question was divested of much of its practical difficulty, by the scantiness of the native population, which our fathers found in New England, * The first cause of motion, the mainspring, the first impulse. |