within themselves all the conceit, hate, cruelty, and ignorance, which so often attend those men who have borne persecution for the sake of their religion; yet, in spite of all these things, they were enabled at length, after singular toil, with great patience, and prudence too, and by a mighty courage, to win their way against hard fortune. They did this because they governed themselves, and for many years were so poor as to offer no temptation to the government at home to notice them. While left to themselves to live as they could, and succeed as they might, they acquired not only the habits of independence, but the habits of self-government. They learned to be obedient to the determinations of the majority, and to acknowledge the supremacy of the law. They also, by bitter experience, learned to know the proper limits of the majority's power. Learning those limits, the majority ceased to trench upon the wishes of the minority, in all cases not involving the general weal. They, in their own persons, had vindicated the sacred rights of conscience. But they had done so, because they believed that they alone were in the right -that they alone had been enlightened by the true faith. Conceiving themselves to be thus particularly blessed, and especially favoured, they desired to communicate their peculiar blessing, belief not being a riches that becomes less by being shared, so they insisted upon all who came within their dominion accepting their word for the true gospel wisdom; and when they found stubborn people who did not put implicit faith in these pretensions-people who were very like themselves, and also conceived that they alone had the

right insight into mysterious things-our worthy friends, the liberty-seeking puritans, began to persecute, showing that their resistance under persecution by no means was accompanied by a hatred of persecution. They did not blame the persecutors of themselves because they were persecutors, but because they persecuted the truth, which they, the persecuted, believed to reside in their own persons alone. When they obtained the upper hand, they therefore persecuted in their turn. But in time, they learned that such conduct was folly, as well as wickedness. Thus, by degrees, they affixed due limits to power; and learning accurately what these limits ought to be, they submitted themselves cheerfully to all the decisions of the majority made within these limits, which limits the majority, on the other hand, in consequence of this same teaching of experience, learned never to pass-never to wish to pass. This teaching has given the New Englander his peculiar fitness for self-government - a fitness which shows itself most strikingly when he is called upon to brave the difficulties of a new settlement, and which has consequently made him the pioneer of the western wilds-the real founder of the Prairie States. A new settlement of men from New England, all brought together by chance, and without any predetermined arrangement, at once, by a sort of instinct, fall into order. Suppose a band of veteran soldiers-men long accustomed to discipline, and to act with one another-these men, after a day's march, halt, pile their arms, and prepare to encamp for the night; one is here cutting wood, another is there bringing water from the stream, some are making a fire, and pre

paring their evening meal, and some are arranging their lodgings for the night;-on a sudden, while they are thus engaged, separated and all (not in disorder) but without order, an alarm is given, the enemy is near. Watch these men, and count the minutes it takes them to be in line, each one occupying his proper position. All as if by magic is now order; the officer commands, the force is in array, and the great military instrument, a body of men drilled to act in concert, and in obedience to a law, is there in a moment to be seen, a beautiful, compact, and regular mass, formed at once out of elements apparently confused and heterogeneous. Such is an accurate illustration of a new settlement by new England men, and of old Englandmen also, for they have the same habit of obedience in the right place, and capacity for command, when to command is necessary. This inestimable quality is possessed by no people in the same degree; a Frenchman, for example, has it not. With him, all government is force. When in command, he transgresses the limits which every majority ought to set to its own power; and when he is to obey, and thinks himself oppressed, he fights. The consequence is, and the evil thereof is a misfortune for mankind, the French nation has not yet acquired the faculty of self-command. That faculty can only be acquired by experience, and that experience is a slow and dangerous process when the learners are a powerful, energetic, and in other things, an intelligent nation.

The Charter of Massachusetts was granted by Charles I. in 1629, and constituted, as a body politic, the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay.

The administration of its affairs was intrusted to the governor, deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants, who were to be elected annually by the stockholders of the corporation. Of the stockholders, there were four quarterly meetings in the year, in which laws were passed, and supervision exercised; but the affairs were under the immediate direction of the governor and assistants. The laws of the Company needed not the king's approval, because they were looked upon as the bye-laws of an ordinary corporation; and as this corporation was created for the purpose of planting a colony, the laws which it made respecting that colony, and the regulation of its affairs, were bye-laws of the Company made in pursuance of the end for which the corporation was chartered, and such bye-laws were therefore within the purview of the corporate powers. By a general clause of the charter, (which, however, was not necessary, because the effect of the clause is a rule of common law,) the Company was forbid to "make laws repugnant to the laws and statutes of the realm,"-a sort of vague rule which answers little purpose, creating doubt, indeed, but in no way guiding the Company, or the Courts of Law, who might have to decide whether the Company had transgressed the law. The observations of Mr. Bancroft on this charter are pertinent to my present purpose. He says

"The political condition of the colonists was not deemed by Charles a subject worthy of his consideration. Full legislative and executive authority was conferred not on the emigrants, but on the company, so long as the charter of the corporation remained in England. The associates

E

in London were to establish ordinances, to settle forms of government, to name all necessary officers, to prescribe their duties, and to establish and to establish a criminal code. Massachusetts was not erected into a province, to be governed by laws of its own enactment: it was reserved for the corporation to decide what degree of civil rights its colonists should enjoy. The charter on which the freemen of Massachusetts succeeded in erecting a system of independent representative liberty, did not secure to them a single privilege of self-government, but left them as the Virginians had been left, without one valuable franchise, at the mercy of a corporation within the realm. This was so evident, that some of those who had already emigrated, clamoured that they were become slaves."*

The charter contained no provision for the residence of the rulers of the company. It was supposed that they would remain in England, and hold their courts there; but there was no direct provision by which they were compelled to do so. "What if the governor, deputy, assistants, and freemen should themselves emigrate, and thus beat down the distinction between the colony and the corporation? The history of Massachusetts is the counterpart to that of Virginia; the latter obtained its greatest liberty by the abrogation of the charter of its company; the former by a transfer of its charter, and a daring construction of its powers by the successors of the original patentees."†

* Bancroft, vol. i. p. 344.

+ Idem, 345.