numbered some fifty or sixty; and with these he "founded the oldest town in the colony, soon to be called Salem," and with eagle eye began to move about the future "hub of the universe."

"Thomas Walford, a blacksmith," was now at Charlestown; "William Blackstone, an Episcopal clergyman," was on the opposite peninsula; "Samuel Maverick, son of a pious nonconformist minister," but "himself a prelatist," was on "the island now known as East Boston ;" and "stragglers" were "at Nantasket and farther south." A small beginning, one would say, for the elegant commercial city of Boston, "the Athens of America," only a little more than two hundred years ago. Let us hope that" the unruly company in what is now Quincy" profited by the faithfulness of our Puritan governor, who "visited them in person," and "rebuked them for their profane revels, and monished them to look there should be better walking."

We now come to an epoch of great importance in the history of America. A new monarch had ascended the throne of England. Urged by "the time-serving courtier, Lord Dorchester," and prompted by fear of the Dutch, who "were already trading in the Connecticut River," and the French, who "claimed New England as within the limits of New France," and discouraged by the repeated failures of "the prelatical party," and finally moved by "an offer of 'Boston men' that promised good to the plantation," on the 4th of March, 1629, "a few days only before Charles I., in a public State paper, avowed his purpose of reigning without a parliament, the broad seal of England was put to the letters-patent for Massachusetts."

"The charter, which was cherished for more than half a century as the most precious boon, constituted a body politic by the name of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." The "governor, deputy, and eighteen assistants," were to be "elected annually by the freemen or members of the corporation." This was a most

important concession, made by a despotic sovereign. Providence directed the profligate Charles II. to record the judgment, that "the principle and foundation of the charter of Massachusetts was the freedom of liberty of conscience;" and would see that the privileges it conferred should be passed over unimpaired to the struggling Puritans of New England. The advocates of prelacy and civil despotism would not emigrate in large numbers to the land of trials and fanatical reformers; but swarms of praying Pilgrims would come hither, and be sure to construe every word of the charter, and the very neglects of the king, in favor of their own asserted rights. This alone was necessary to found successfully the great free State of Massachusetts.

With this charter came a goodly company of emigrants, and just in time to revive the drooping spirits of the remnants of former colonists settled in and about Salem. Charlestown received a portion of the new population, and a town was laid out "about the hill." Higginson, the ordained teacher of Salem, availed himself of the press to rouse attention in England to the claims of this new country, and was successful. "The concessions of the Massachusetts charter seemed to the Puritans like a summons from heaven, inviting them to America ;" and on they came.

The 28th of July, 1629, marks another grand transition period in the history of freedom in America. On this day, "Matthew Cradock, governor of the company," proposed "the transfer of the government of the plantation to those that should inhabit there;" and this would bring "persons of worth and quality" to the New World. "Wealthy commoners, zealous Puritans, were confirmed in the desire of founding a new and a better commonwealth beyond the Atlantic, even though it might involve the sale of their hereditary estates, and hazard the inheritance of their children."

Now the noble Winthrop appears with his eleven associates, who "bound themselves in the presence of God, by the word of a Christian, that if, before the end of September,

an order of the court should legally transfer the whole government, together with the patent, they would themselves pass the seas to inhabit and continue in New England." Singularly enough, "two days after this covenant had been executed, a general consent appeared, by the erection of hands, that the government and patent should be settled in New England." Henceforth the officers of the colony would reside in the midst of the people.

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The new emigration set forward; and, " during the season of 1630, seventeen vessels brought over not far from a thousand souls, beside horses, kine, goats, and all that was most necessary for planting, fishing, and ship-building."

John Winthrop was elected governor, and he was a man of rare excellences. Mild, loving, and firm, he was well adapted to overcome the discontents of his comrades. A royalist and conformist at home, he, nevertheless, had a strong desire for "gospel purity," and the highest forms of liberty under the British Government. He would be an heroic representative of the transition period from the Ref ormation to Republicanism, an inflexible defender of order and progressive freedom.

Salem did not suit Winthrop as the head of the colony. Looking for a better place, on the 17th of June, 1630, he sailed into Boston Harbor; and, as the result of the examination, headquarters were soon removed to Charlestown; and Boston, with its populous environs, soon begins its career of greatness and wealth as the commercial and civil metropolis of a great State.

It is not necessary to trace farther the growth of colonies in Massachusetts. We have advanced far enough to obtain a clear and comprehensive view of the vital principles which constructed and developed the civil and religious institutions of the Commonwealth. Let us now observe a little more minutely the application and limitations of these principles.

CHRISTIANITY AND FREEDOM IN MASSACHUSETTS.

We have seen with what a profound sense of responsibility to God the Puritans renounced their homes in England, and became pilgrims in quest of liberty. It is not now, however, their acknowledgment of God merely that requires our attention. The argument is deeper. The question is, What power was alone sufficient to produce the phenomena which have passed before us? In examining the history of discoveries in America, and considering the colonization of Virginia and the minor members of the Southern group, we have found that restless vagrancy and ambitious avarice could produce daring adventure, and heroic efforts to found despotic institutions. We have seen also the struggles of a purer vitalizing force in the midst of these dominant impulses, gradually forcing its way to position as the true and rightful forming power of nations.

In the movement now under consideration, the representative colonists are stripped of all State patronage, and are exiles first in a land of civilization, and then in a land of savages. Simple subsistence would seem to be enough to tax their highest energies. If comfort and abundance should be achieved, it must, one would say, be the result of an entire devotion to worldly pursuits. But they make a mere incident of worldly pursuits. Their grand absorbing object is the worship and glory of God. They see that freedom of conscience for themselves is indispensable to this result. A clearer light shines deep down into their souls, and far out into the world and the future, and reveals liberty from thraldom of sin, from oppressions of governments civil and ecclesiastical, as the inherent, inalienable right of all good men. Whence but from heaven could this light come? The world, in its highest efforts of reason, has refused to supply it. The light from God is clear and searching and steady. Coming from this source, how evidently would it be adequate to reveal the spirit and designs of human freedom as deter

mined in the original creation of mind, and to show the enormous crime of usurpation which denies, and attempts to crush, these inborn rights!

In the same way must we account for that firm adherence to right amidst the storms of persecution and the trials of colonization which the history of the Pilgrims reveals. What need had they to go to Amsterdam or Leyden or Plymouth? They had nothing to do but "conform " to the wicked exactions of despotic power, and go on and prosper like other subjects of the British crown. But the souls of the martyrs were in them. Suffering and right were to them infinitely preferable to royal favor and a dishonored conscience. And how came it so? No worldly power, no selfish philosophy, ever gave them or others this lofty heroism while they floated with the mass of unquestioning sycophants in the wake of power. Admitting, however, that the plans of God for the emancipation of thought and conscience had matured; that he had opened a virgin hemisphere for the planting and growth of a higher, purer civilization; and that he himself would undertake, by the discipline of suffering and inward regeneration, to provide the men for the movement which would illustrate these grand designs: what could have been more appropriate than the strange power of endurance and enterprise for the vindication of liberty which we have seen in these Puritan Pilgrims?

Just as evidently would the active agency of God in the souls of the colonists connect inseparably the rights of conscience and civil liberty. It is, however, in exact conformity with this theory of the providential colonization of New England, that the conflict should show our Puritan sires constantly engaged in the spirit of earnest prayer; that, when they formed the basis of constitutional government in "The Mayflower," they should do every thing in the name of God, and in solemn dependence upon his wisdom and grace; that all attempts to coerce them should utterly fail, serving only to render more illustrious their supreme devotion to