THE END OF ANDROS.

215

records of the General Court with a simple account of the circumstances and the word "Finis."

The "end" did not come immediately, however,

for the tyranny of Andros aroused so much indignation that, when the news of the landing of William of Orange, in England, reached Boston, the Governor was seized and thrown into prison, though the messenger who brought the information had been himself imprisoned by Andros, immediately upon his

arrival.

The tyrannical Governor under restraint, the people took the reins into their own hands, declaring that they committed their "enterprise to Him who hears the cries of the oppressed," and calling upon the other colonists to join in prayers, and "all just actions for the defence of the land." A General Court was elected and began its sessions in May, 1689, as under the old charter. Similar action was taken in Rhode Island, at Plymouth, and in Connecticut, the Colonial Charter was taken from its hidingplace, and new chapters were begun in the Public Records after the "finis" of 1687.* This was a Protestant revolution in England, and it was a grand movement in favor of Protestant liberty in America. Boston was its starting-place, but its influence was limited only by the extent of the Colonies. It was the last great revolution in England, and on our Continent it was the precursor of all the movements in favor of enfranchisement that have followed since.

*The Massachusetts Colony had eight Governors before the arrival of Andros, in 1686: John Winthrop, 1630-33, 1637-39, 1642-43, 1646-48; Thomas Dudley, 1634, 1640, 1645, 1650; John Haynes, 1635; Henry Vane, 1636; Richard Bellingham, 1641, 1654, 1665–72; John Endicott, 1644, 1649, 1651-53, 1655-64; John Leverett, 1663-78; Simon Bradstreet, 1679-86.

The Colony of Connecticut had also eight Governors from 1639 to 1687: To 1655, John Haynes and Edward Hopkins occupied the office (most of the time alternately), except that in 1642, George Wyllys was chosen for one year; in 1655, Thomas Wells was Governor, and again in 1658; John Webster followed in 1656; John Winthrop, in 1657, and serving after Thomas Wells, from 1659 to 1675; William Leete followed from 1676 to 1682; and Robert Treat, from 1683 to '87. The Colony of New Haven had but three Governors before its union with Connecticut: Theophilus Eaton, 1643-57; Francis Newman 1658-60; and William Lette, from 1661 to 1667.

CHAPTER XI.

BREAKING F

LOOKING TOWARDS INDEPENDENCE.

I

T was now settled that not the French nor the Spanish, but the English should mould the destinies of the New World; but the settlers who had left their homes in the Mother-Country, had begun to feel that it would not always be theirs to look over seas for laws and government. Outside observers had likewise seen, perhaps more clearly than the settlers themselves, that a separation would come in time between the Colonies and England. In 1750, Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, then prior of the Sorbonne at Paris, in an essay

*

on The Progress of the Human Mind, said, "Colonies are like fruits, which hold to the tree only until their

* It was this Turgot who inscribed under a portrait of Franklin, the epigram, “Eripuit cælo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis." (He snatched lightning from Heaven, and the sceptre from the tyrant. )

maturity; when sufficient for themselves, they do that which Carthage once did, that which some day America will do." Both Washington and Jefferson said that before 1775, they had never heard so much as a whisper of a desire to separate from the MotherCountry, and yet the Colonies were gradually learn

ing that there was strength for them in union, and that as their circumstances widely differed, so also their interests were not the same with those of England, and it was only necessary that they should have mutual grievances to bring them to make a common cause against her.

*

* John Adams said, after peace had been declared, “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." Mr. Madison said, that in his opinion the real object of every class of people in the war was the reëstablishment of the colonial relations as they had been before the trouble began, and that independence was sought only after this was despaired of.

NEW ENGLAND UNITES.

219

They had felt the necessity of union as long ago as 1637, when, as we have seen, the league of the New England settlements had been proposed, but not carried out, in consequence of a difference between Connecticut and Massachusetts as to their relative importance in such a federation. From that day to this, there has been the same controversy about the relative rights of members of the federation, and the amount of power reserved by each member for independent action. There has always been a discussion of the centralization of power and of State rights. Connecticut gave way to Massachusetts, and in 1643, that State found itself at the head of a confederacy called "The United Colonies of New England.' Rhode Island was left out of the league; there was strife between the members themselves, and they showed that they were "united," principally when there were acts of violence to be done or resisted. The league expired after a feeble life of a half century. The last meeting was held at Hartford, September 5, 1684. Still there was a meagre union in the Postoffice department, established by the home government in 1710. Letters were taken from Portsmouth to Philadelphia regularly, but towns to the inland, and those off this line of travel, were very solitary. They had to depend upon chance opportunities for correspondence, and as there were no wheeled vehicles in use away from the seaboard before the Revolution, travel was effected on horseback, and produce was carried on sleds in winter and on oxcarts in summer.

Danger led to the first American Congress. It was called by Massachusetts in 1690, at the time. when the people were breathing more freely after the