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asked no absolution; they paid no tithes; they saw in CHAP the priest nothing more than a man ; ordination was no more than an approbation of the officer, which might be expressed by the brethren, as well as by other ministers; the church, as a place of worship, was to them but a meeting-house; they dug no graves in consecrated earth; unlike their posterity, they married without a minister, and buried the dead without a prayer. Witchcraft had not been made the subject of skeptical consideration; and in the years in which Scotland sacrificed hecatombs to the delusion, there were three victims in New England. Dark crimes, that seemed without a motive, may have been pursued under that name; I find one record of a trial for witch craft, where the prisoner was proved a murderess.3

On every subject but religion, the mildness of Puritan legislation corresponded to the popular character of Puritan doctrines. Hardly a nation of Europe has as yet made its criminal law so humane as that of early New England. A crowd of offences was at one sweep brushed from the catalogue of capital crimes. The idea was never received, that the forfeiture of life may be demanded for the protection of property; the punishment for theft, for burglary, and highway robbery, was far more mild than the penalties imposed even by modern American legislation. Of divorce I have found no example; yet a clause in one of the statutes recognizes the possibility of such an event. Divorce from bed and board, the separate maintenance without the dissolution of the marriage contract, an anomaly in Protestant legislation, that punishes the innocent more than the guilty, was utterly abhorrent from their prin

3 Records, ii. 54, 55,

1 Trumbull's Conn. i. 283. 2 Shepherd's Clear Sunshine, 36. VOL. I. 59

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CHAP. ciples. The care for posterity was every where visible Since the sanctity of the marriage-bed is the safeguard of families, and can alone interest the father in the welfare and instruction of his offspring, its purity was protected by the penalty of death; a penalty which was inexorably enforced against the guilty wife and her paramour. If in this respect the laws were more severe, in another they were more lenient, than modern manners approve. The girl whom youth and affection betrayed into weakness, was censured, pitied, and forgiven; the law compelled the seducer of innocence to marry the person who had imposed every obligation by the concession of every right. The law implies an extremely pure community; in no other would it find a place in the statute-book; in no other would public opinion tolerate the rule. Yet it need not have surprised the countrymen of Raleigh, or the subjects of the grand-children of Clarendon.o

The benevolence of the early Puritans appears from other examples. Their thoughts were always fixed on posterity. Domestic discipline was highly valued ; but if the law was severe against the undutiful child, it was also severe against a faithless parent. The slave-trade was forbidden under penalty of death. The earliest laws, till 1654, did not permit any man's person to be kept in prison for debt, except when there was an appearance of some estate which the debtor would not produce.3-Even the brute creation was not forgotten; and cruelty towards animals was a civil offence. The sympathies of the colonists were wide; a regard for Protestant Germany is as old as emigration; and, during the thirty years' war, the whole

1 Winthrop, ii. 157–159. 2 Pepys' Diary, i. 81. 3 Col. Laws, 48

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people of New England held fasts and offered prayers CHAP. for the success of their Saxon brethren.

The first years of the residence of Puritans in America, were years of great hardship and affliction ; it is an error to suppose that this short season of distress was not promptly followed by abundance and happiness. The people were full of affections; and the objects of love were around them. They struck root in the soil immediately. They enjoyed religion. They were, from the first, industrious, and enterprising, and frugal; and affluence followed of course. When persecution ceased in England, there were already in New England" thousands who would not change their place for any other in the world ;" and they were tempted in vain with invitations to the Bahama Isles, to Ireland, to Jamaica, to Trinidad. The purity of morals completes the picture of colonial felicity. "As Ireland will not brook venomous beasts, so will not that land vile livers." One might dwell there "from year to year, and not see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a beggar." The consequence was universal health-one of the chief elements of public happiness. The average duration of life in New England, compared with Europe, was doubled; and the human race was so vigorous, that of all who were born into the world, more than two in ten, full four in nineteen, attained the age of seventy. Of those who lived beyond ninety, the proportion, as compared with European tables of longevity, was still more remarkable.

I have dwelt the longer on the character of the early Puritans of New England, for they are the

1 New England's First Fruits, printed 1643, p. 23, 26.

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CHAP. parents of one third the whole white population of the X. United States. Within the first fifteen years,—and

there was never afterwards any considerable increase from England, we have seen that there came over twenty-one thousand two hundred persons, or four thousand families. Their descendants are now not far from four millions. Each family has multiplied on the average to one thousand souls. To New York and Ohio, where they constitute half the population, they have carried the Puritan system of free schools; and their example is spreading it through the civilized world.

Historians have loved to eulogize the manners and virtues, the glory and the benefits, of chivalry. Puritanism accomplished for mankind far more. If it had the sectarian crime of intolerance, chivalry had the vices of dissoluteness. The knights were brave from gallantry of spirit; the Puritans from the fear of God The 'knights were proud of loyalty; the Puritans of liberty. The knights did homage to monarchs, in whose smile they beheld honor, whose rebuke was the wound of disgrace; the Puritans, disdaining ceremony, would not bow at the name of Jesus, nor bend the knee to the King of Kings. Chivalry delighted in outward show, favored pleasure, multiplied amusements, and degraded the human race by an exclusive respect for the privileged classes; Puritanism bridled the passions, commanded the virtues of self-denial, and rescued the name of man from dishonor. The former

valued courtesy; the latter, justice. The former adorned society by graceful refinements; the latter founded national grandeur on universal education. The institutions of chivalry were subverted by the gradually-increasing weight, and knowledge, and opu

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lence of the industrious classes; the Puritans, rallying CHAP. upon those classes, planted in their hearts the undying principles of democratic liberty.

The golden age of Puritanism was passing away. 1660 Time was silently softening its asperities, and the revolutions of England prepared an era in its fortunes. Massachusetts never acknowledged Richard Cromwell; it read clearly in the aspect of parties the impending restoration. The protector had left the benefits of self-government and the freedom of commerce to New England and to Virginia; and Maryland, by the act of her inhabitants, was just beginning to share in the same advantages. Would the dynasty of the Stuarts deal benevolently with the colonies? Would it imitate the magnanimity of Cromwell, and suffer the staple of the south still to seek its market freely throughout the world? Could the returning monarch forgive the friends of the Puritans in England? Would he show favor to the institutions that the outcasts had reared beyond the Atlantic?

END OF VOL. I.