displace officers of justice, as they, or the greatest part of them, shall by free consent agree unto." To the Long Parliament, and especially to Sir Henry Vane, Rhode Island owes its existence as a political state.

A double triumph awaited Williams on his return 1644. to New England. He arrived at Boston, and letters from the parliament insured him a safe reception from those who had decreed his banishment. But what honors were prepared for the happy negotiator, on his return to the province which he had founded! As he reached Seekonk, he found the water covered with a fleet of canoes; all Providence had come forth to welcome the return of its benefactor. Receiving their successful ambassador, the group of boats started for the opposite shore; and, as they paddled across the stream, Roger Williams, placed in the centre of his grateful fellow-citizens, and glowing with the purest joy, "was elevated and transported out of himself."

And now came the experiment of the efficacy of popular sovereignty. The value of a moral principle may be tried on a small community as well as a large one; the experiment on magnetism, made with a child's toy, gives as sure a result as when the agency of that subtle power is watched in its influence on the globe. There were already several towns in the new state, filled with the strangest and most incongruous elements,-Anabaptists and Antinomians, fanatics (as its enemies asserted) and infidels; so that, if a man had lost his religious opinions, he might have been sure to find them again in some village of Rhode Island. All men were equal; all might meet and debate in the public assemblies; all might aspire to office; the people, for a season, constituted itself its own tribune, and every public law required confirmation in the primary assemblies. The little "democracie," which, at the beat of the drum or the voice of the herald, used to assemble beneath an oak or by the open seaside, was famous for its "headiness and tumults," its stormy town-meetings, and the angry feuds of its herdsmen and shepherds; but, true as the needle to the pole, the popular will instinctively pursued the popular interest. Amidst the jarring quarrels of rival statesmen in the plan

1647.

tations, good men were chosen to administer the government; and the spirit of mercy, of liberality and May 19. wisdom, was impressed on its legislation. "Our popularitie," say their records, "shall not, as some conjecture it will, prove an anarchie, and so a common tirannie; for we are exceeding desirous to preserve every man safe in his person, name, and estate."

Nov.

1652.

Yet danger still menaced. The executive council 1651. of state in England had granted to Coddington a April 3. commission for governing the islands; and such a dismemberment of the territory of the narrow state must have terminated in the division of the remaining soil between the adjacent governments. Williams again returned to England; and, with John Clarke, his colleague in the mission, was again successful. The Oct. 2. dangerous commission was vacated, and the charter and union of what now forms the state of Rhode Island confirmed. The general assembly, in its gratitude, desired that Williams might himself obtain from the sovereign authority in England an appointment as governor, for a year, over the whole colony. But, if gratitude blinded the province, ambition did not blind its benevolent envoy. Williams refused to sanction a measure which would have furnished a most dangerous precedent, and was content with the honor of doing good. His success with the executive council was due to the intercession of Sir Henry Vane. "Under God, the sheet-anchor of Rhode Island was Sir

1654. Aug. 27.

Henry." "From the first beginning of the Providence colony," thus did the town-meeting address Sir Henry Vane, "you have been a noble and true friend to an outcast and despised people; we have ever reaped the sweet fruits of your constant loving-kindness and favor. We have long been free from the iron yoke of wolvish bishops: we have sitten dry from the streams of blood spilt by the wars in our native country. We have not felt the new chains of the Presbyterian tyrants, nor in this colony have we been consumed by the over-zealous fire of the (so called) godly Christian magistrates. We have not known what an excise means; we have almost forgotten what tithes are.

We have long drunk of the cup of as great liberties as any people, that we can hear of, under the whole heaven. When we are gone, our posterity and children after us shall read, in our town records, your loving-kindness to us, and our real endeavor after peace and righteousness."

1640.

1642.

Mar. 1.

Far different were the early destinies of the province of Maine. A general court was held at Saco, June 25. under the auspices of the lord proprietary, who had drawn upon paper a stately scheme of government, with deputies and counsellors, a marshal and a treasurer of the public revenue, chancellors, and a master of the ordnance, and every thing that the worthy old man deemed essential to his greatness. Sir Ferdinando had "travailed in the cause above forty years," and expended above twenty thousand pounds; yet all the regalia which Thomas Gorges, his trusty and well-beloved cousin and deputy, could find in the principality, were not enough for the scanty furniture of a cottage. Agamenticus, though in truth but "a poor village," soon became a chartered borough; like another Romulus, the veteran soldier resolved to perpetuate his name, and, under the name of Gorgeana, the land round York became as good a city as seals and parchment, a nominal mayor and aldermen, a chancery court and a court-leet, sergeants and white rods, can make of a town of less than three hundred inhabitants and its petty officers. Yet the nature of Gorges was generous, and his piety sinHe sought pleasure in doing good; fame, by advancing Christianity among the heathen; a durable monument, by erecting houses, villages, and towns. The contemporary and friend of Raleigh, he adhered to schemes in America for almost half a century; and, long after he became convinced of their unproductiveness, was still bent on plans of colonization, at an age when other men are but preparing to die with decorum. Firmly attached to the monarchy, he never disobeyed his king, except that, as a churchman and a Protestant, he refused to serve against the Huguenots. When the wars in England broke out, the septuagenarian royalist buckled on his armor and gave his last strength to the defence of the unfortunate Charles. In America, his

cere.

fortunes had met with a succession of untoward 1643. events. April 7. The patent for Lygonia had been purchased by Rigby, a republican member of the Long Parliament; and a dispute ensued between the deputies of

the respective proprietaries. In vain did Cleaves, 1644. the agent of Rigby, solicit the assistance of Massa

1645.

chusetts; the colony warily refused to take part in the strife. Both aspirants now solicited the Bay magistrates to act as umpires. The cause was learnedly June 3. argued in Boston, and the decree of the court was oracular. Neither party was allowed to have a clear right; and both were enjoined to live in peace. But how could Vines and Cleaves assert their authority? On the

death of Gorges, the people repeatedly wrote to his 1647-8. heirs. No answer was received; and such commis

1649. July.

May 30.

sioners as had authority from Europe gradually withdrew. There was no relief for the colonists but in themselves; and the inhabitants of Piscataqua, Gorgeana, and Wells, following the American precedent, with free and unanimous consent formed themselves into a body politic for the purposes of self-government. Massachusetts readily offered its protection. The great 1652. charter of the Bay company was unrolled before the general court in Boston; and, "upon perusal of the instrument, it was voted that this jurisdiction extends from the northernmost part of the river Merrimack, and three miles more, north, be it one hundred miles, more or lesse, from the sea; and then upon a straight line east and west to each sea." The words were precise. Nothing remained but to find the latitude of a point three miles to the north of the remotest waters of the Merrimack, and to annex the territory of Maine which lies south of that parallel; for the grant to Massachusetts was prior to the patents under which Rigby and the heirs of Gorges had been disputing. The "engrasping" Massachusetts promptly despatched commissioners

to the eastward to settle the government. The re1652-3. monstrances of Edward Godfrey, then governor of the province, a loyal friend to the English monarchy and the English church, were disregarded; and one town after

another, yielding in part to menaces and armed force, gave in its adhesion. Great care was observed to guard the rights of property; every man was confirmed in his possessions; the religious liberty of the Episcopalians was left unharmed; the privileges of citizenship were extended to all inhabitants; and the eastern country gradually, yet reluctantly, submitted to the necessity of the change. When the claims of the proprietaries in England were urged before Cromwell, many inhabitants of the towns of York, Kittery, Wells, Saco, and Cape Porpoise, yet not a 1656. majority, remonstrated. To sever them from Massachusetts would be to them "the subverting of all civil order."

1644.

By following the most favorable interpretation of its charter, Massachusetts extended its frontier to the islands in Casco Bay. Within the year after the confederation of the four Calvinist colonies, the government of Massachusetts was brought nearer to its present form. The discontent of the deputies at the separate negative of the assistants came to its height, when, on an appeal to the general court, the assistants and the deputies sitting together reversed a decision of the lower court, and the assistants, by their separate act, immediately restored it.

The time had come for a change; but, instead of March. the old proposition to take from the magistrates their negative, and so introduce the system of one irresponsible, absolute chamber, better thoughts arose, and, "as the groundwork for government and order in the issuing of business of greatest and highest consequence," it was agreed that the magistrates and deputies should sit in separate chambers, each of which should have the right to originate orders and laws, and each have a negative on the acts of the other. So far the form of the Massachusetts government was established as it now exists; but as yet no separate negative was allowed to the governor.

With the increase of English freedom, the dangers which had menaced Massachusetts appeared to pass away; its government began to adventure on a more lenient policy; the sentence of exile against Wheelwright was rescinded; a proposition was made to extend the franchises of the com