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cipline even more rigid than those which they had left. There is no other such example in history. And it was quite as much from dislike of this discipline, which was by no means suited to people of vicious habits, as from any other motive, that men like Gardiner and Morton were first drawn into acts of hostility against the colony. Had it been less tolerant of gross immorality, perhaps Laud would have lost two of his most efficient coadjutors. Had they found a greater degree of that liberty which means license, and less of that which signifies law, they might have remained to contaminate our atmosphere with the breath of their freedom. If such men were among the instruments, through whom “the supervision of the government at home was exercising itself to retain the most liberal features of the charters" against the efforts of the Puritans, then is it very clear to us, that the latter were perfectly right in adopting the most vigorous measures to counteract their influence.

In truth, the period of thirty years from the first settlement at Plymouth, in 1620, was one of continual and incessant anxiety to the Puritans. And, even after the Church of England had fallen, they were not without fears of the authority of the Westminster Assembly, which made demonstration of a disposition to rule over them. The successful resistance made to the attempt conclusively proves how little they felt of sympathy with either party in that contest for the supremacy between the Church and Presbytery, into which our New York brethren seek so earnestly to impel them. They were of the class of Independents, who had no protectors with a particle of good-will in the highest places in England, until Cromwell came forward, and took into his own hands the reins of government, which the contention of others contributed quite as much as any efforts of his own to place there.

It is a striking passage in one of the historical works of Mr. Sharon Turner, in which, upon looking back at the peculiar coincidences which seemed absolutely requisite to the production of the Reformation, and which at the fitting moment I did accordingly happen, he deduces, from what to mortal eyes were mere accidents, an inference of the existence of "a mysterious force perceptibly operative, which alters and overturns human affairs, and tramples down dignity and power."

And after extorting the unwilling homage of the Epicurean Lucretius to this truth,

"Usque adeo res humanas vis ABDITA quædam

Obierit; et pulchros fasceis sævasque secures
Proculcare, ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur,"

he leads the philosophical student gradually, but certainly, to identify it with a provident God. With very similar feelings to his, have we often called to mind the remarkable train of events which singularly concurred, from both sides of the Atlantic, to develope a wholly new system of social polity in this quarter of the globe. It would seem as if every shade of opinion in the old world had, in the first place, had its opportunity of occupying a place upon the new, and as if these had all been continually subjected since to mutual attrition and reciprocal modification, as well by reason of the closer drawing of the ties of intercourse between them, as of the process of fusion, which goes on even to this day in the new settlements. Whatever the ultimate result of this new formation of character may be, which cannot now be foreseen by the wisest, the share which the Puritan settlements of New England will have contributed can never be overlooked, even by the most superficial of observers. It surely was not for nothing, that they passed through the seven times heated furnace of affliction, and brought out with them in safety the institutions which they cherished as the apple of their eye. Nor yet was it for nothing, that they emerged from the critical age of revolutions without having been called to battle, and, with their social system hardened into strength, at the very moment when that of the mother country was crumbling into its original elements under the effect of ferocious conflicts. There may be some persons, who would find fault with them. for resolutely adhering to the only mode, by which these results could have been brought about; and others, who might not have been inclined to regret it, if a hazardous liberality had ended in Massachusetts, as it did in the Catholic colony of Maryland, by establishing the authority of the English church. We hold no community of feeling with such men, wherever they may be. For, had this result been the will of Providence, New England must have ceased to be New England, and her subsequent history would have borne another face upon its pages. We respect the talents, and the learn

ing, and the piety, which have distinguished the Church of England. But we do not forget,, that passive submission to the divine right of kings has been a political doctrine not unfrequently heard in former days in her pulpits, nor that the test of church-membership has until very lately been applied at every avenue to official distinction in Great Britain. Hence, if there was intolerance among us, her example was not likely to have relieved us from the odium we incur on account of it; whilst her high-toned monarchical theories might have had a wide sphere of influence at a subsequent day, and have thrown much weight into the scale of the mother country, when the ultimate struggle for independence came on.

We now come down to the last charge, and the only one with a show of good foundation, which we see in the whole article of our New York contemporaries; the charge of religious intolerance. And, inasmuch as this is by no means a very new charge, nor one which is commonly denied to be just, nor one which either Professor Kingsley or Mr. Bacon undertakes to repel, we were a little surprised to see such a labor of quotation to establish it. The object appears to have been to bring it to bear upon civil questions, with which it has nothing to do. The institutions of the colonies were founded upon the principles of freedom, not made for the Puritans in their earlier charters, but deduced from them by themselves, notwithstanding that their religion was intolerThe same fact was observable at the same time in the mother country, with only the addition, that a monarch and a bishop were adopting Thorough" as their motto in the labor of subversion. The mind of man had hardly been long enough liberated from Papal shackles, to find its way to the ultimate consequences of a new principle. The lesson of

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tolerating what we consider to be erroneous opinions, is one at all times learned with great difficulty, and particularly where the subjects of difference are thought to be of momentous importance. Even when perfectly understood, which is scarcely the case before mature age, the practice of it is carried on under the perpetual resistance of man's passions and prejudices. Contention will inevitably breed anger, and this, in its turn, stimulates to immoderate triumph after victory, instead of that sacrificing concession, to make which throws the struggle inward upon one's self. We are not very sure, that even in

our day and generation, when we are so much inclined to boast of our superior light, there are not occasional evidences furnished us of the existence of a temper, which would need only the same power and the same provocation that Romanism had, again to kindle the fires of Smithfield, and to revive the watchword of St. Bartholomew. We do not censure any intolerant measures of the Puritans the less on that account; but, in view of their comparative ignorance of the truth, we are disposed to temper our sentence with mercy. Let him only who is wholly without sin in this respect cast the first stone. We seek to vent no reproaches upon unconscious error.

Nothing remains, if we except a trifling and somewhat hypercritical objection, made to the mode in which Mr. Bacon speaks of the settlements with the Indians for lands. We had supposed the main point involved to be the spirit in which the Puritans treated their claim of ownership, but are met with an application of the principle laid down by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Johnson vs. McIntosh, in 1823; a method of treating the subject, which we suppose is the natural effect of the preference, acknowledged so frankly by our brethren, of the doctrines of their own age over those of their predecessors. But, as some of our readers may still wish to know precisely what those predecessors thought of the subject, without the light of our modern judges to guide them, we will venture to quote for their satisfaction from the instructions given to Endicott by the government of the Company, upon the occasion of the first settlement of Massachusetts.

"Whereas in our last, wee advised you to make composicon with such of the salvages as did pretend any tytle, or lay clayme to any of the land within the territoryes granted to us by his Majesty's charter, wee pray you now, bee carefull to discover and find out all such pretenders, and by advice of the councell there to make such reasonable composicon with them, as may free us and yourselves from any scruple of intrusion; and to this purpose, if it might be convenyently done, to compound and conclude with them all, or as many as you can, at one tyme, not doubting but, by your discreet ordering of this business, the Natives wil-be willing to treat and compound with you upon very easie conditions."

We do not intend to go into the consideration of the nice question in political economy, whether the consideration given according to these instructions was an equivalent or not. It

is sufficient for us, that whatever title the Indians pretended to claim was met by acknowledgment, and a readiness to make compensation for the property taken. Inasmuch as value passed on both sides, it seems to us fair enough to consider the transactions as bargains, in which each party obtained articles they valued more, in exchange for such as they valued less. The mere fact, that the Indians' deeds contain the words "give, grant, and yield up," will be no argument against this view of the subject to those who remember, that most deeds in fee simple run in a similar manner. It is a remark made

by Hutchinson, that the lands thus obtained were, with some exceptions, not worth the cost which it had taken to bring them into cultivation; so that, after all, the Indians may have obtained, for their qualified right of possession, quite as much as any person would consider its value. In the whole matter we see no stress to be laid upon any portion, excepting that which manifests the spirit of justice, and respect for the rights of others, in which the settlement commenced. And this we do not understand our brethren of New York as wishing to dispute.

We have now done with the article upon the "Politics of the Puritans" in the "New York Review"; an article which, we must be allowed to think, does no honor to the pages of that able magazine, and which, for a disingenuous use of authorities, and an illiberal spirit, upon colonial history, has not been exceeded since the days of George Chalmers. Perhaps, if the authors should again incline to search out materials in the "Planter's Plea" for an attack upon the motives and principles of our ancestors, they will give more deliberate consideration to the passages with which we now close our task. We recommend them most particularly to their attention, for the manly and generous tone which contrasts so strongly with their own.

"Now, for the better preventing of such suspitions and jealousies, and the ill affections to this worke, that may arise thereupon; two things are earnestly requested of such as passe their censures upon it, or the persons that undertake it. The first is, that although in this barren and corrupt age, wherein we live, all our actions are generally swayed and carried on by private interests; insomuch as sincere intentions of furthering the common good (grounded upon that love through which wee are commanded to serve one another) be the won

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