of consolation,'* it was proclaimed by Roger Williams in 1635; and for this among other grave offences, he was sentenced to banishment. He fled to RhodeIsland; and there in the code of laws for the colony planted by his energy and sagacity, we read for the first time, since Christianity ascended the throne of the Cæsars, the declaration, that 'conscience should be free, and men should not be punished for worshipping God in the way they were persuaded he required,'—a declaration, which, to the honor of Rhode-Island, she has never departed from,-a declaration, which puts to shame many a realm of wider domains and loftier pretensions. It still shines among her laws with an argument in its support in the shape of a preamble, which has rarely been surpassed in power of thought or felicity of expression.† Massachusetts may blush, that the Catholic colony of Lord Baltimore, and the Quaker, the blameless Quaker colony of Penn, were originally founded on the same generous principles of Christian right, long before she felt or acknowledged them.

While, then, we joyfully celebrate this anniversary, let us remember, that our forefathers had their faults, as well as virtues; that their example is not always a safe pattern for our imitation; but some

* In the Planter's Plea,' published in London in 1630, the writer says that Nahum Keike is perfect Hebrew, and by interpretation means 'The bosom of consolation.'

† It is almost in totidem verbis with the act of Virginia of 1785, which has been attributed to Mr. Madison. To which state the merit of the original draft belongs, I am unable to say, as I have not the means of tracing it in Rhode-Island acts earlier than in the Digest of 1798.

1 Pitkin's Hist. 56, 67; Chalmers, p. 218; 2 Proud's Hist. Append.

times a beacon of solemn warning. Let us do, not what they did, but what with our lights and advantages they would have done, must have done, from the love of country, and the love of truth. Is there any one, who would now for a moment justify the exclusion of every person from political rights and privileges, who is not a Congregationalist of the straitest sect in doctrine and discipline? Is there any one, who would exclude the Episcopalian, the Baptist, the Methodist, the Quaker, or the Universalist, not merely from power and Christian fellowship, but from breathing the same air, and enjoying the same sunshine, and reaping the same harvest, because he walks not in the same faith, and kneels not at the same altar, with himself? Is there any one, who would bring back the by-gone penalties, and goad on tender consciences to hypocrisy or selfdestruction? Is there any one, that would light the faggot to burn the innocent? that would stain the temples of God with the blood of martyrdom? that would cut off all the charities of human life, and in a religious warfare, arm the father against the son, the mother against the daughter, the wife against the husband? that would bind all posterity in the fetters of his own creed, and shipwreck their consciences? If any such there be, whatever badge they may wear, they are enemies to us and our institutions. They would sap the foundations of our civil as well as religious liberties. They would betray us into worse than Egyptian bondage. the doctrines of such men, if any such there be, I would say with the earnestness of the apostolical

Of

exhortation, Touch not, taste not, handle not.' If ever there could be a case, in which intolerance would rise almost into the dignity of a virtue, it would be, when its object was to put down intolerance. No-let us cling with a holy zeal to the Bible, and the Bible only, as the religion of Protestants. Let us proclaim with Milton, that neither traditions, nor councils, nor canons of any visible church, much less edicts of any civil magistrate, or civil session, but the Scripture only, can be the final judge or rule in matters of religion, and that only in the conscience of every Christian to himself. Let us inscribe on the walls of our dwellinghouses, in our temples, in our halls of legislation, in our courts of justice, the admirable declaration of Queen Mary (the consort of William the Third), than which a nobler precept of wisdom never fell from uninspired lips- It is not in the power of men to believe what they please; and therefore, they should not be forced in matters of religion contrary to their persuasions and their consciences.'

*

I pass with unmixed pleasure to other and more grateful topics, where approbation need not be slow, or praise parsimonious. If, in laying the foundations of this Christian commonwealth, our forefathers were governed in respect to religion by a spirit unworthy of Protestantism, it was far otherwise in respect to their civil institutions. Here, a wise forecast and sound policy directed all their operations; so wise and so sound, that the lapse of two hundred years

9 Hist. Collect. 251.

has left unchanged the body of their legislation, and in a general sense added little to their securities for public or private rights. There is no reason to suppose, that they were opposed to monarchy as a suitable form of government for the mother country, or that opposition to the civil establishments mingled in the slightest degree with the motives of their emigration. There is just as little reason to suppose, that they desired or would have acquiesced in the establishment of a colonial monarchy or aristocracy. On the contrary we know, that they refused to confer the magistracy for life; and that they repelled every notion of an hereditary nobility in their celebrated answer to the propositions of Lord Say and Seale. This attachment to the form of government of the mother country was not only sincere, but continued down to the Revolution. Their descendants took many opportunities to evince it; and some of the most powerful appeals made by the patriots of the Revolution to the British Crown are filled with eloquent professions of loyalty. The formation of a Republic was the necessary result of the final separation from England. The controversy was then narrowed down to the consideration of what form of government they might properly adopt. All their habits, principles, and institutions prohibited the existence of a real or titular peerage. They had no materials for a king. They were, as they had been from the beginning, essentially republicans. They followed the lead of their existing institutions; and

3 Hutch. Collect. 326.

† 1 Hutch. Hist. 490, 493, 494.

the most striking change introduced by them was the choice of a governor by themselves, as a substitute for the like choice by the Crown.

Their connexion with and dependence upon the mother country grew up from their national allegiance, and was confirmed by the sense of their own weakness and the desire of protection. In return for this protection they were ready to admit a sovereign right in Parliament to regulate to some, though an undefined extent, their foreign intercourse, and in the Crown to supervise their colonial legislation. But they never did admit the right of Parliament or the Crown to legislate generally for them, or to interfere with their domestic polity. On the contrary, from the first they resisted it, as an encroachment upon their liberties. This was more emphatically true of Massachusetts, than of any other of the Colonies. The commissioners of Charles the Second in 1665 reported, that she was the last and hardliest persuaded to use his majesty's name in the forms of justice;'-that her inhabitants' proclaimed by sound of trumpet, that the General Court was the supremest judicatory in all that province;' that the commissioners pretending to hear appeals was a breach of their privileges;' and that they should not permit it.'* In short, the commissioners well described 'their way of government, as commonwealth like.'† Even in relation to foreign commerce their strong sense of independence was illustrated by the complaint, that no notice was taken of the act of navi

* 3 Hutch. Collect. 417, 418.

† Id. p. 422.