CHAP. XIV. general suffrage, whose power, always subordinate to the gen→ eral will, was, at the desire of Bradford, specially restricted by a council of five, and afterwards of seven assistants. In the council, the governor had but a double vote. For more than eighteen years, the whole body of the male inhabitants constituted the legislature; the state was governed, like our towns, as a strict democracy; and the people were frequently convened to decide on executive not less than on judicial questions. At length, the increase of population, and its diffusion over a wider territory, led to the introduction of the representative system, and each town sent its committee to the general court. We subsequently find the colony a distinct member of the earliest American Confederacy; but it is chiefly as guides and pioneers that the fathers of the old colony merit gratitude.

Debt of graitude to the Pilgrims.

"Through scenes of gloom and misery, the Pilgrims showed the way to an asylum for those who would go to the wilderness for the purity of religion or the liberty of conscience. Accustomed 'in their native land to no more than a plain country life and the innocent trade of husbandry,' they set the example of colonizing New England, and formed the mould for the civil and religious character of its institutions. Enduring every hardship themselves, they were the servants of posterity, the benefactors of succeeding generations. In the history of the world, many pages are devoted to commemorate the men who have besieged cities, subdued provinces, or overthrown empires. In the eye of reason and of truth, a colony is a better offering than a victory; the citizens of the United States should rather cherish the memory of those who founded a state on the basis of democratic liberty; the fathers of the country; the men who, as they first trod the soil of the New World, scattered the seminal principles of republican freedom and national independence. They enjoyed, in anticipation, the thought of their extending influence, and the fame which their grateful successors would award to their virtues. of small beginnings,' said Bradford, 'great things have been produced; and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many, yea, in some sort to our whole nation.'-'Let it not be grievous to you,' --such was the consolation offered from England to the Pil

Out

grims in the season of their greatest sufferings,-'let it not CHAP. XIV. be grievous to you, that you have been instruments to break the ice for others. The honour shall be yours to the world's end.'"

honours.

Governor Bradford lived to the age of sixty-nine. He Posthumous rejoiced in beholding the reward of his labours. The refuge of freedom, which he had anticipated as he embarked with the first Pilgrims in the Mayflower, had been realized. It may be that he looked forward with still higher hopes, and anticipated the future history not of the colony only, but of the vast continent which he had helped to rescue from the wandering savage, that it might become the home of a race sprung from the old Saxon Fathers of England. He died on the 9th of May 1657, "lamented," says Mather, "by all the colonies of New England, as a common blessing and father to them all." He was laid to rest, amid the Fathers of New England, on the brow of Burial Hill, from whence he had so often looked out in earlier years over the broad ocean that lay before him, watching in hope of tidings and of help from the land of his birth. Two centuries had elapsed since the landing of the Fathers at Plymouth, when, on the 22d of December 1820, the founding of New England and its liberties was celebrated with unwonted honours and rejoicing by the inheritors of their great bequest. The name of William Bradford, the Governor of New England, was then breathed with pride and veneration, and his memory revived as chief among the Fathers of the state. Subscriptions were entered into to provide some fit memorial of his worth, and in 1825, a marble monument was erected on the Burial Hill at Plymouth, to mark the spot where he and his son William lie interred.

CHAPTER XV.

PURITAN ACQUISITION OF NEW ENGLAND.

So I have known a country on the earth,
Where darkness sat upon the living waters,

And brutal ignorance, and toil and dearth,

Were the hard portion of its sons and daughters;
And yet where they who should have oped the door
Of charity and light, for all men's finding,

Squabbled for words upon the altar-floor,

And rent the Book, in struggles for the binding.

CHARLES DICKENS.

CHAP. XV. In previous chapters we have followed out the early hisFidelity of tory of the planting of New England with considerable the Pilgrims. minuteness. The first years of occupation of their chosen place of settlement, were years of anxiety, apprehension, and suffering. It was a constant warfare against foes without and within. Famine stared them in the face; armed savages menaced them in the field; death stalked amid their ranks, and threatened their utter annihilation; and from within, their worst foes appeared among those on whom their only hope had seemed to depend. It was a struggle for life, wherein the most undaunted courage seemed hardly equal to the strife. But the Pilgrim Fathers were as the forlorn hope of liberty to the persecuted Nonconformists of England; and even when most fearful, they yielded to no thought of retreat. There was the appointed place of conflict, and the only choice they seem ever to have placed before themselves was victory or death. It was with something of the calmness of the soldier on the battle-field that the survivors of the Mayflower Pilgrims committed their friends to the grave, on the bleak shores of Plymouth Bay, in that first dreadful winter of their landing. They had fallen the foremost in the strife, and their companions stepped onward into the breach.

We must glance back at the history of England during CHAP. XV. the first years of the Pilgrim colony, in order fully to appreciate the deep sympathy and interest with which many there were watching the tidings they should send back from their wild refuge beyond the Atlantic. Even among the selfish band of merchant adventurers, there were some who sympathized more sincerely in the welfare of the colonists than in the success of their adventure. “Assuredly," writes one of them in 1627, "unless the Lord be merciful to us and the whole land in general, our condition is far worse than yours. Wherefore if the Lord should send persecution here, which is much to be feared, and should put into our mind to fly for refuge, I know no place safer than to come to you."

to the Puri

In the earlier pages of this volume, the reader may trace Inducements out the progress of events in England which had brought tan emigra good men to feel that their condition was worse even than tion. those who, amid the uncultivated wastes of the New World, endured such privations and braved such dangers as few men would willingly encounter. The contrast between the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts was great indeed, but not more marked than the difference of feeling with which the English nation regarded the one and the other. These two causes combined to accelerate a change in the relations between the Crown and the people pregnant with the most momentous consequences. Queen Elizabeth was no less haughty an assertor of absolute power than her father had been, and watched with proud jealousy the slightest encroachments on her prerogatives. Her inclinations, moreover, were far more papistical than puritan. When we view her character and tastes as they are developed in all the most prominent manifestations of her unbiassed will, it cannot be considered any great lack of charity to affirm that policy more than principle determined her adherance to Protestantism. In referring to the revival of the Papal party in England during Queen Elizabeth's reign, a recent advocate of the entire system of polity which she established thus remarks :-" To render such a party needless, by satisfying reasonable expectations, was one reason for adopting Edward's reformation. But it was not the only reason. Romish prejudice, it is true, seems to have per

CHAP. XV vaded two-thirds of the nation. This majority, however, was far less considerable for intellect than for numbers, hence it was justly, necessarily, called upon for extensive concessions. Of the more intellectual minority, a large portion had no other wish than to see restored the system that Queen Mary overthrew. It had not only stood the test of many learned inquiries, but also a crowd of martyrs had sealed it with their blood. Even at this time it is impossible to think of these self-devoted victims without feeling them to have stamped a holy and venerable character upon the Edwardian church. But Elizabeth came to the throne among their acquaintances and relatives. Thousands of anecdotes now lost, must have then embalmed their memories in every part of England. To depart from a system that had come off so gloriously, naturally appeared something like sacrilege to many judicious minds. It was a system also dear both to the Queen and the primate, and each of them had large claims upon Protestants from important services. If Elizabeth had embraced Romish principles, many of her difficulties, both at home and abroad, would have immediately vanished. Her actual determination was the greatest advantage ever yet gained by the Protestant cause. But although willing thus to disoblige a majority of her own subjects, and to incur serious risks from Queen Eliza- foreign states, she was partial to many of the religious beth's partiality to forms usages in which she had been bred. The pomp and cereand ceremo- mony of Romish worship were agreeable to her taste. Hence the royal chapel, though it stood alone, long and repeatedly exhibited, to the scandal of many zealous Protestants, but greatly to the satisfaction of all with Romish prejudices, an altar, decorated with crucifix and lights. Archbishop Parker was, probably, far less fond of such imposing externals than his royal mistress, though he hesitated at first as to the expediency of retaining crosses. Having, indeed, concealed himself at home during the Marian persecution, he had never seen Protestantism under any other form than that which it wore in Edward's reign. He had accordingly no thought of reconstructing a church upon some alleged reference to Scripture merely-a principle hitherto unacknowledged by his countrymen. He was imbued with a deep veneration for antiquity, and had no

nies.