quakers, it persecuted no heretics. Its early legislation CHAP. is the breath of reason and charity; and Jonathan Edwards did but sum up the political history of his native commonwealth for a century, when, anticipating, and in his consistency excelling, Godwin and Bentham, he gave Calvinism its political euthanasia, by declaring virtue to consist in universal love.

In Boston, with Henry Vane and Anne Hutchinson, "Calvinism ran to seed;" and the seed was "incorruptible." Election implies faith, and faith freedom. Claiming the Spirit of God as the companion of man, the Antinomians asserted absolute freedom of mind. For predestination they substituted consciousness. "If the ordinances be all taken away, Christ cannot be;" the forms of truth may perish; truth itself is immortal. "God will be ordinances to us." The exiled doctrine, which established conscience as the highest court of Wh appeal, fled to the island gift of Miantonómoh; and the records of Rhode Island, like the beautiful career of Henry Vane, are the commentary on the true import of the creed.

Faith in predestination alone divided the Antinomians from the Quakers. Both reverenced and obeyed the voice of conscience in its freedom. The near resemblance was perceived so soon as the fame of George Fox reached America; and the principal followers of Anne Hutchinson, Coddington, Mary Dyer, Henry Bull, and a majority of the people, avowed themselves to be Quakers.

Thus had the principle of freedom of mind, first asserted for the common people, under a religious form, by Wickliffe, been pursued by a series of plebeian sects, till it at last reached a perfect development, coinciding with the highest attainment of European philosophy..

wright.

CHAP. XVIII.

By giving a welcome to every sect, America was safe against narrow bigotry. At the same time, the moral unity of the forming nation was not impaired. Of the various parties into which the reformation divided the people, each, from the proudest to the most puny sect, rallied round a truth. But as truth never contradicts itself, the collision of sects could but eliminate error; and the American mind, in the largest sense eclectic, struggled for universality, while it asserted freedom. How had the world been governed by despotism and bigotry; by superstition and the sword; by the ambition of conquest and the pride of privilege! And now the happy age gave birth to a people which was to own no authority as the highest, but the free conviction of the public mind.

Thus had Europe given to America her sons and her culture. She was the mother of our men, and of the ideas which guided them to greatness. The relations of our country to humanity were already wider. The three races, the Caucasian, the Ethiopian and the American, were in presence of one another on our soil. Would the red man disappear entirely from the forests, which, for thousands of years, had sheltered him safely? Would the black man, in the end, be benefited by the crimes of mercantile avarice? At the close of the middle age, the Caucasian race was in nearly exclusive possession of the elements of civilization, while the Ethiopian remained in insulated barbarism. No commerce connected it with Europe; no intercourse existed by travel, by letters, or by war; it was too feeble to attempt an invasion of a Christian prince or an Arab dynasty. The slave-trade united the races by an indissoluble bond; the first ship that brought Africans to America, was a sure pledge, that,

XVII.

in due time, ships from the New World would carry CHAP. the equal blessings of Christianity to the burning plains of Nigritia, that descendants of Africans would toil for the benefits of European civilization.

That America should benefit the African, was always the excuse for the slave-trade. Would America benefit Europe? The probable influence of the New World on the Old became a prize question at Paris; but not one of the writers divined the true answer. They looked for it in commerce, in mines, in natural productions; and they should have looked for revolutions, as a consequence of moral power. The Greek colonists planted free and prosperous cities; and in a following century, each metropolis, envying the happiness of its daughters, imitated its institutions, and rejected kings. Rome, a nation of soldiers, planted colonies by the sword; and retributive justice merged its liberties in absolute despotism. The American colonists founded their institutions on popular freedom, and "set an example to the nations." Already the plebeian outcasts, the Anglo-Saxon emigrants, were the hope of the world. We are like the Parthians, said Norton in Boston; our arrows wound the more for our flight. "Jotham upon Mount Gerizim is bold to utter his apologue."

We have finished the colonization of our country; the history of its wardship follows. The relations of the rising colonies, the representatives of democratic freedom, are chiefly with France and England;-with the monarchy of France, which was the representative of absolute despotism, having subjected the three estates of the realm, the clergy by a treaty with the pope, feudalism by standing armies, the communal institutions by executive patronage and a vigorous police; with the

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CHAP. parliament of England, which was the representative of aristocratic liberties, and had ratified royalty, primogeniture, corporate charters, the peerage, tithes, prelates, prescriptive franchises, and every established immunity and privilege. The three nations and the three systems were, by the revolution of 1688, brought into direct contrast with one another. At the same time, the English world was lifted out of theological forms, and entered upon the career of commerce, which had been prepared by the navigation acts and by the mutual treaties for colonial monopoly with France and Spain. The period through which we have passed shows why we are a free people; the coming period will show why we are a united people. We shall meet no scenes of more adventure than the early scenes in Virginia, none of more sublimity than the Pilgrims at Plymouth. But we are about to enter on a wider theatre; and, as we trace the progress of commercial ambition through events which shook the globe from the wilds beyond the Alleghanies to the ancient abodes of civilization in Hindostan, we shall still see that the selfishness of evil defeats itself, and God rules in the affairs of men.

END OF VOL. II.