a double vote. It consisted first of one, then of five, and finally of seven councillors, called 'assistants.' So little were political honors coveted at New Plymouth, that it became necessary to inflict a fine upon such as, being chosen, declined to serve as governor or assistant. None, however, were to be obliged to serve for two years in succession." *

New Hampshire asserted the rights of self-government, and with great boldness defied the measures of power.

By the people on the Island of Rhode Island, it was "unanimously agreed upon that the government which this body politic doth attend unto in this island, and the jurisdiction thereof in favor of our province, is a democracie of popular government; that is to say, it is the power of the body of freemen orderly assembled, or major part of them, to make or constitute just lawes by which they will be regulated, and to depute from among themselves such ministers as shall see them faithfully executed between man and man."

In November, 1681, there was a legislature of true representatives of the honest people in West New Jersey; "of men who said thee and thou, and wore their hats in presence of beggar or king." "They framed their government on the basis of humanity. Neither faith nor wealth nor race was respected. They met in the wilderness as men, and founded society on equal rights." †

New York, in public assembly held in 1683, said, "Supreme legislative power shall forever be and reside in the governor, council, and people met in general assembly."

Pennsylvania in 1693, in contest with Fletcher, governor under William and Mary, would not allow that their legislative acts required even "the great seal of the proprietary." "We know the laws to be our laws," the "poor men" who "represented the people" said; "and we are in the enjoyment of them. The sealing does not make the law, but the consent of governor, council, and assembly." ·

Thus one colony after another took up the same position in effect; and the Northern group also became a unit in affirming the right of the people to make laws for themselves.

The statutes of freedom, rising directly up from Nature, defining practical justice according to the subtle, all-pervading public sense, in distinction from the sophistries of learned dishonesty, became the materials of State governments, and, at length, of the fundamental constitution of the Great Republic.

THE RIGHT OF TAXATION.

The home government assumed the right to tax the American colonists wholly in the interests of the crown, allowing them no representation in Parliament. This was the grand question at issue: Had the government of England the right to judge for the people of America, without information direct from them, what they ought to pay? Was the king in council the lord paramount of the colonies, so that he could, at discretion, appropriate such avails of the labor of men, virtually expatriated, as he chose? The American people said, "No. Taxation without representation is oppression. We cannot, will not, submit to it."

At first, this seemed to England a mere freak of these colonists; an indication that indulgence had produced haughtiness, and contempt of authority; and it was deemed only a question of convenience how far this should be indulged, and when it should be effectually put down.

But gradually it assumed the proportions of a grave issue, and became a question of principle, which could not be determined by mere prerogative.

As early as 1624, the voice of Virginia, as we have seen in another connection, was clear and firm upon this question. Let her words of independent manhood be repeated: "The governor shall not lay any tax or ympositions upon the colony, their lands or commodities, otherway than by

the authoritie of the General Assembly, to be levyed and ymployed as the said Assembly shall appoynt." Mark the language. "The governor shall not." No weak petition, no words of imploring suffering, but words of authority, bringing out thus early the feeling of sovereignty in the colonists, destined to appear in the world's future as a new function of our common manhood.

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In 1634, this contest began to assume distinctness in Massachusetts. The mild and liberal Winthrop, cautiously representing the crown, finally suggested that the power question resided in the "assistants." But no influence could allay the spirit of personal independence which Providence intended to develop. Officers were not masters in America; certainly not upon questions of civil rights so sacred as those which then pressed upon the hearts of New England's bravest, noblest men.

"The people established a reformation of such things as they judged to be amiss in the government;" and, among other things, a “law against arbitrary taxation" was passed. "None but the immediate representatives of the people might dispose of lands, or raise money. Thus early did Massachusetts echo the voice of Virginia, like the mountains replying to the thunder, or like deep calling unto deep."*

In 1683, New York, in her first free Assembly under English rule, responded to Virginia and Massachusetts in the same clear, ringing notes of freedom, "No tax shall be assessed, on any pretence whatever, but by the consent of the Assembly."

"It were madness," cried out the Quakers of West New Jersey against the Duke of York, " to leave a free country to plant a wilderness, and give another person an absolute right to tax us at will. The King of England cannot take his subjects' goods without their consent."

Let this controversy go on for a quarter of a century, till

* Bancroft, i. 367.

royalty returns from its banishment, and Puritanism in England is reduced to cruel subjection amid the death-throes of liberty, and what will then be the condition of the contest in the New World? Then, it is presumed, prerogatives may be absolute in New England. Parliament formally assumed it; and the subsidy of "five per cent on all merchandise exported from or imported into the kingdom of England," or "any of his Majesty's dominions thereunto belonging," granted to Charles II., was made by express definition to apply to the American colonies.

But the king could by no possible means obtain his fiveper-cent subsidy from America. The temper of the people would not allow it. It was unlawful. The colonies were not bound by any act of Parliament, unless expressly named; and it was useless to levy the tax.

Nor would a hundred-years' conflict subdue American resistance to such high-handed injustice. The final decision was in Boston Harbor, where the resistance of the people to "taxation without representation" dashed the cargo of tea into the ocean. The people of these colonies could listen to the growl and murmur of power; they could bleed, and, if need be, die, in defence of their rights: but they could by no means bow down their necks to the yoke of oppression. God had sent them to America for an entirely different purpose.

THE RIGHT OF FREE SPEECH, A FREE BALLOT, AND A FREE PRESS.

The time had come when "the freemen of every town in the Bay State were busy in inquiring into their liberties and privileges." Said the representative of royal prerogative, "Elections cannot be safe there long;" but the people answered by publishing boldly their understanding of human rights, and going on with the "elections."

The English Government began to realize that to enforce the high prerogatives of the crown in America would require absolute and continuous subjugation. This was no

trifle; and the men in power roused themselves to a more vigorous and determined effort.

"The general patent of New England was surrendered" by royalists "to the king." The Plymouth Colony, greatly desiring release from the overshadowing influence of her powerful neighbor, determined to secure of the king "a confirmation of their respective grants," and a repeal of the Massachusetts patent. The company was arraigned before the court. Terrible persecutions followed. The malicious cruelty of the infamous Laud condemned men to the most horrible mutilations for the crime of longing to be free. Wentworth stirred up the resentment of power firmly resisted. "The very genius of that nation of people," he said, "leads them always to oppose, both civilly and ecclesiastically, all that ever authority ordains for them." The faithful Prynne stood before the bar of tyranny a second time for daring to write and speak, to print and publish, his principles. "I thought," said Lord Finch, "that Prynne had lost his ears already; but there is something left yet:" and an officer of the court displayed the mutilated organs. "I pray to God," replied Prynne, "you may have ears to hear Christians," said he, as he presented the stumps of his ears to be grubbed out by the hangman's knife, "stand fast, be faithful to God and your country, or you will bring on yourselves and your children perpetual slavery." This was the noblest heroism, the highest moral grandeur. The spirit of the martyrs was in this life-and-death struggle for liberty. Its friends were "enforced by heaps to desert their native country. Nothing but the wide ocean, and the savage deserts of America, could hide and shelter them from the fury of the bishops." But even this poor resort was soon denied, and Puritan sufferers were forbidden the right of expatriation.

me.

In the mean time, two grand movements in New England revealed the presence and active power of Providence in behalf of liberty. The people were about to exercise their