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rights in an election. Conservatism was alarmed. The determined Cotton delivered a sermon to the masses of assembled freemen "against rotation in office." But the people boldly advanced; and now for the first time the ballot-box, the palladium of American liberty, appeared. It was henceforth to be the grand reliance of the people, and must and should be free.

By the side of the ballot a free press promptly arranged itself. It began to sound out its notes of liberty in 1639, and no power on earth could thenceforth silence or destroy it.

Let us see what further these feeble colonists will do. In firm and dignified language they will attempt remonstrance against the cruel tyranny which seeks to deprive them of vested rights, and cautiously warn the king by foreshadowing the probable future. "If the patent be taken from us, the common people will conceive that his Majesty hath cast them off, and that hereby they are freed from their allegiance and subjection, and therefore will be ready to confederate themselves under a new government for their necessary safety and subsistence, which will be of dangerous example unto other plantations, and perilous to ourselves of incurring his Majesty's displeasure.”

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But God interposed. Before this remonstrance reached the throne, the Scots had risen against Romish prayers and the superstitions of Prelacy. The monarch went down, and the colonists had twenty years of neglect in which to grow. "Twenty-one thousand two hundred" emigrants had reached New England before the Long Parliament. They had come in "two hundred and ninety-eight ships," "and the cost of the plantations had been almost a million of dollars." "In a little more than ten years, fifty towns and villages had been planted; between thirty and forty churches built; and strangers, as they gazed, could not but acknowledge God's blessing on the endeavors of the planters."* The liberty embodied in the commonwealth could not well

* Bancroft, i. 415.

avoid extending its influence to the New World. In March, 1643, in response to the petitions of the colony presented by Hugh Peters and his two colleagues, as special messengers, charged with the general duty of vindicating colonial rights, the House of Commons publicly acknowledged that "the plantations in New England had, by the blessing of the Almighty, had good and prosperous success, without any public charge to the parent State;" "and their imports and exports were freed from all taxation" "until the House of Commons shall take action to the contrary."

For the time being, the people breathed more freely. The blessings of firmness in the defence of the right were beginning to appear, and liberty must gather strength for the terrific battles yet to come. American freemen would, whenever emergency required, show that the elective franchise was, with them, no merely nominal thing. By choosing for important responsibilities "men of the inferior sort," and rejecting every man nominated by an aristocratic caucus, the people of Boston took occasion to teach the magistrates that they were not to receive dictation from power, even amongst themselves. The freedom of the ballot, free speech, and a free press, had become so dear to the people, that they would be guarded by the most vigilant care, and defended at all hazards. They were the very soul of American liberty. In 1683, the people of New York in a free Assembly said, "Every freeholder and freeman shall vote for representatives without restraint; no freeman shall suffer but by judgment of his peers; and all trials shall be by a jury of twelve men." Said the Quakers of West New Jersey, "The General Assembly shall be chosen, not by the confused way of cries and voices, but by the balloting-box. Every man is capable to choose or be chosen. We lay a foundation for after-ages to understand their liberty as Christians and as men, that they may not be brought into bondage but by their own consent; for we put THE POWER IN THE PEOPLE."

THE RIGHT OF CONSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY, AND OF UNION FOR THE COMMON DEFENCE.

During the early history of the American colonies, the pen had been busy. In every settlement, there were documents and records, which, in strong rhetoric and stern logic, defined the rights of the people. These gradually combined in the forms of fundamental law; and the era of constitutions

came on.

In May, 1635, "to limit the direction of the Executive, the people demanded a written constitution; and a commission was appointed" "to frame a body of grounds of laws in resemblance to a Magna Charta," "to serve as a bill of rights. The ministers, as well as the General Court, were to pass judgment upon the work." Cotton would lead the people to seek their model in "the laws from God to Moses." ligion controlled every thing; and this stern old Puritan divine wrote to his "friends in Holland," "The order of the churches and the commonwealth is now so settled in New England by common consent, that it brings to mind the new heaven and new earth wherein dwells righteousness."

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The era of neglect, and consequent unparalleled prosperity, which preceded the Restoration, the people thought favorable for giving more definite constitutional form to a "body of liberties." The magistrates, who had acquired a love of power, hardly saw the necessity for it; but the people saw it, and Cotton had already prepared what he thought would serve the purpose, and probably prevent something more radical and disloyal, fortifying every part of it with texts of Scripture.

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But to Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich belongs the honor of framing the fundamental code," which combined "the humane doctrines of the common law with the principles of natural right and equity, as deduced from the Bible." "After mature deliberation, this model,' which, for its comprehensiveness, may vie with any similar record from the days of

Magna Charta, was adopted in December, 1641, as The Body of Liberties' of the Massachusetts Colony."

This was a representative government, including in general and in detail nearly all the great essential rights of freemen. These Puritan minds were, however, yet a little hazy on the subjects of slavery and religious toleration. "There shall never be any bond-slaverie, villanage, or captivitie amongst us, unless it be lawful captives taken in just warres, and such strangers as willingly selle themselves or are sold to us; and these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God, established in Israel concerning such persons, doth morally require. This exempts none from servitude who shall be judged by authoritie.” "If any

man stealeth a man or mankind, he shall surely be put to death."

Witchcraft was classed with blasphemy, and provided with the punishment ordered in the laws of Moses. The crimes now recognized in civilized countries as capital offences, and several in addition, were punishable with death.

The practice and forms of religion were free to the virtu ous and orthodox.

Thus fairly commenced the formal assertion of constitutional rights, which would be repeated by different colonies and combinations, until the celebrated Articles of Confedera tion issued from an American Congress, and finally the noble Constitution of the United States of America came from the people in representative convention assembled at the close of the Revolutionary War.

The year 1643 marks an important epoch in the progress of American liberty. The desire for union amongst the colonies, which had been seeking expression since the Pequod War in 1637, assumed definite form. "The united colonies of New England" were "made all as one." The alleged

motives for the confederacy were "protection against the encroachments of the Dutch and the French, security against the tribes of savages," and "the liberties of the gospel in purity and peace."

Connecticut, jealous of the leadership of Massachusetts, demanded for each State a negative on the acts of the confederation. Massachusetts refused; and Connecticut was driven, by fear of the Dutch, to waive her doctrine of State rights. Plymouth Colony led the way in determining that the acts of the confederation should have no force until they were "confirmed by a majority of the people."

This first form of the Union included "the colonies and separate governments of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven."

The guidance of Providence thus early appeared in the growth and elevation of national ideas. They were apparently the result of increasing illumination on the great subjects of human rights and despotic assumptions, and of a common danger of rivals and enemies in the immediate neighborhood of the colonies. But, if the wisest men of the times foresaw but dimly that another much more formidable necessity for union would arise, God, under whose direction the nation was forming, saw that coming necessity clearly, and provided for it.

It is natural to ask why the plantations of Providence and Rhode Island were not admitted into this confederacy. The answer, we presume, ought to be substantially that assigned for not taking in the people beyond the Piscataqua: "They ran a different course, both in their ministry and civil administration." They would not be Puritans. The old prejudice against Roger Williams is very evident. The Puritans had too high a sense of the sacredness of their orthodoxy to seem to indorse the grievous heresies of Providence by political association with them. The Island of Rhode Island could not be admitted, ostensibly because the friends of Anne Hutchinson had refused the jurisdiction of Plymouth. If there was a deeper reason, it was probably in the fact that they were nonconformists with respect to the Church of the Puritans.

These facts are due here, notwithstanding their exposure

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