New England might have been settled, like Virginia, by the advocates of prelacy and the divine right of kings. The deadly incubus of caste, and of aristocratic exemptions from labor, and the expenses of government, would have borne down New England to the level of the old civilization. But the omniscient God had all these contingencies before him, and controlled the events which were likely to interfere with the certainty and high moral purposes of his general plan. Hence it was not courtiers nor nobles, not the scions of wornout pretending families, but hard-handed, brave-souled, practical men, who were to colonize New England; and, at the right time, Providence sent them out on their great mission.

PLYMOUTH COLONY.

Who can describe the gratitude and joy of these wandering pilgrims? True, they were shivering with cold; they were surrounded by savages whose hostility they must dread even when they seemed to be friendly. Fierce hunger gnawed at their vitals, and gaunt famine stared them in the face; but their Christian heroism endured the trial. They knelt as they stepped upon the rock, and poured out their souls in prayer to Him whose glory they sought; and he heard and answered.

They proceeded at once to build a town; and what should they call it? On the map made by Capt. Smith, the harbor had been called "Plymouth." They had finally sailed from Plymouth in dear Old England. It was providential: they were in Plymouth again in New England; and Plymouth it should be.

Now God appeared in charge of this vast but unimposing interest. He moved the savages to say, "Welcome, Englishmen!" or, when they would not listen to moderate counsel, he would permit the redoubtable Standish to scatter them as chaff before the wind. He would give the emigrants Indian corn and fish and game enough to keep the colony

from extinction by starvation, and yet he would drive them by hunger and want to the cultivation of the soil.

They had commenced to exercise the rights of freemen; but would this be tolerated? Would the crown be satisfied with assurances of loyalty in every thing not in conflict with the word of God, and grant them civil and religious freedom? It was at least very improbable.

At the end of a year, thirty-five additional colonists arrived; and Cushman was with them. He brought a patent for the Pilgrims from the Council for New England. This made Massachusetts distinct from Virginia. They could not be identical. Their settlements were too remote; and they were to represent rival, and in some respects antagonist ideas of man and liberty. They must demonstrate their theories, and try the strength of their opposing principles, quite apart from each other, before the great facts of their unity could become evident and practical.

Cushman would make but a brief stay; lecture the people severely "on the sin and danger of self-love;" gather his cargo of "furs, sassafras, clapboards, and wainscots," worth about twenty-four hundred dollars; and hasten back to report to" the merchant adventurers" the prospects of their investments in money and Puritan industry for seven years. He would also become "a confidential agent" of the Plymouth Colony in London. We can but wish he had brought over a supply of provisions in "The Fortune," as the colonists were near to starving; and that he had succeeded in securing a charter of liberty from the government: but they must do without this charter until they have full opportunity to strengthen their self-reliance, and battle energetically with conservative repression at home.

LIBERTY REVEALS HER FORM AND STRENGTH.

How much we wish that good John Robinson could come from Leyden with the company left behind, when the Pil

grims sail from Delfthaven! He would be a power in the struggles with the crown. But he never came. By the cruel plottings of " the adventurers in England," he was refused a passage; and the Church of the Pilgrims must be denied the privilege of hearing the voice and receiving the care of their own beloved pastor, that bigoted Churchmen might force upon them the yoke of a State religion and the services of a dreaded ritual. This, as it was fit, would be one of the first issues with the despotism from which they had fled. "The character of the Church had for many years been fixed by a sacred covenant. As the Pilgrims landed, their institutions were already perfected. Democratic liberty and independent Christian worship at once existed in America." This principle they could therefore by no means give up. "For the first eight years, there was no pastor" but Robinson in Holland. "Lyford, sent out by the London partners," makes the attempt to bring them under the control of Church authority; but he is rejected, and expelled from the colony. They prefer to worship in their own simple way, and wait the action of Providence to give them a pastor after their own hearts. The fort they had erected for defence against the Indians became their house of worship, as near to heaven and acceptable to God as any gorgeous cathedral in England. Brewster, the ruling elder, and such. private members as had the gift of prophecy, officiated as exhorters. On Sunday afternoons, a question was propounded, to which all spoke who had any thing to say." So the Pilgrims stand firm, and refuse yet to come under the bondage of ceremonies. I suppose the Yankees have the irreverence to smile, even at this day, when they read, that, in 1623, Robert Gorges, the son of Sir Ferdinand, "appointed lieutenant-general of New England, with power to restrain interlopers' not less than to regulate the affairs of the corporation," brought with him one "Morrill, an Episcopal clergyman, who was provided with a commission for the superin† Hildreth, i. 175.

*Bancroft, i. 313.

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tendence of ecclesiastical affairs. Instead of establishing a hierarchy, Morrill, remaining in New England about a year, wrote a description of the country in verse; while the civil dignity of Robert Gorges ended in a short-lived dispute with Weston. They came to plant a hierarchy and a general government, and they produced only a fruitless quarrel and

a dull poem.

"The grand charter of Plymouth" neither advanced nor impeded New England in matters of civil liberty. Neither their independence nor thrift waited for charter rights. Going on with their characteristic plan of managing for themselves, they bought out the "English adventurers," whose capital had furnished the means for beginning their colony. Submitting to a monopoly from eight of their own number for six years, they began to assert the rights of property in their own labor, and work their way up to business independ

ence.

And all this was done in the name of religion, and in firm dependence upon Almighty God. His guidance was humbly invoked upon every occasion, and the promotion of his glory avowed as the grand motive of all their resistance to tyranny, and vigorous efforts to constitute a government upon the basis of justice. To divest the history of Massachusetts of its divine element would be to utterly destroy it.

COLONIES INCREASE.

Plymouth will soon be the centre of a neighborhood of colonies. Englishmen were rapidly coming to the apprehension that a splendid empire would some day arise in America. A lucrative trade seemed to be easily within reach, and they promptly grasped for advantages which might soon be beyond reach.

An early attempt at a settlement near Weymouth had resulted disastrously. This was now renewed. But the most

*Bancroft, i. 326.

important demonstration began in 1624, near Cape Ann. It was meant to be a profitable business enterprise; but it received a higher impulse from "White, a minister of Dorchester, a Puritan, but not a Separatist. Roger Conant, having already left New Plymouth for Nantasket," became the agent and the hero of this adventure. The merchants, discouraged by the want of profits, settled honorably with those they had employed, and gave up "the unprofitable scheme;" but Conant, "inspired as it were by some superior instinct," united with White and a few others, determined to persist in the endeavor to establish a colony; "and, making choice of Salem as opening a convenient place of refuge for the exiles for religion, they resolved to remain as sentinels of Puritanism on the Bay of Massachusetts."

In 1628, four years later, a more formidable combination of Puritan strength and enterprise appears in England for the religious colonization of New England. "The constraints of the English laws, and the severities of the English hierarchy," threw the advocates of freedom more fully than ever upon the care of Providence. Great names, and men full of business energy and religious zeal, are found in the organization which followed. They wished "a charter from the crown," obtained the friendship of the Earl of Warwick and Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and secured from the Council of Plymouth for New England "a large district on the Charles River." "Endicott, who, 'ever since the Lord in mercy had revealed himself unto him,' had maintained the straitest judgment against the outward form of God's worship as prescribed by English statutes; a man of dauntless courage, and that cheerfulness which accompanies courage; benevolent, though austere; firm, though choleric; of a rugged nature, which his stern principles of nonconformity had not served to mellow, was selected as a 'fit instrument to begin the wilderness-work.'" With "his wife and family, the hostages of his irrevocable attachment to the New World," he arrived in September. His party, with those he found there,