taking the votes was at the same time reformed; and, instead of the erection of hands, the ballot-box was introduced. "The people established a reformation of such things as they judged to be amiss in the government."

It was further decreed that the whole body of the freemen should be convened only for the election of the magistrates; to these, with deputies to be chosen by the several towns, the powers of legislation and appointment were henceforward intrusted. The trading corporation became a representative democracy.

The law against arbitrary taxation followed. None but the immediate representatives of the people might dispose of lands or raise money. Thus early did Massachusetts echo the voice of Virginia, like deep calling unto deep. The state was filled with the hum of village politicians; "the freemen of every town on the bay were busily inquiring into their liberties and privileges." With the exception of the principal of universal suffrage, the representative democracy was as perfect two centuries ago as it is to-day. Even the magistrates, who acted as judges, held their office by the annual popular choice. "Elections cannot be safe there long," said the lawyer Lechford. The same prediction has been made these two hun

dred and fifty years. The public mind, ever in perpetual agitation, is still easily shaken, even by slight and transient impulses; but, after all vibrations, it follows the laws of the moral world, and safely recovers its balance.

To limit the discretion of the executive, of which the people were persistently jealous, they next demanded a written constitution; and, in May, 1635, a commission was appointed "to frame a body of grounds of laws in resemblance to a magna charta," to serve as a bill of rights, on which the ministers, as well as the general court, were to pass judgment. A year having passed without a report, the making of a draft of laws was intrusted to a larger committee, of which Cotton was a member. His colleagues remained inactive, but Cotton compiled in an exact method "all the judicial laws from God by Moses, so far as they were of moral, that is, of perpetual and universal, equity;" and he urged the establishment of a "theocraty, God's government over God's people." But his code

was never adopted. In March, 1638, the several towns were ordered before the coming June to deliver in writing to the governor the heads of the laws which they held to be necessary and fundamental; and, from these materials and their own wisdom, a numerous body, of whom Nathaniel Ward was one, were instructed to perfect the work.

The relative powers of the assistants and the deputies remained for nearly ten years-from 1634 to 1644—the subject of discussion and contest. Both were elected by the people; the former by the whole colony, the latter by the several towns. The two bodies sat together in convention for the transaction of business; but, when their joint decision displeased the assistants, the latter claimed and exercised the further right of a separate negative vote on their joint proceedings. popular branch grew impatient, and desired to overthrow the veto power; yet the authority of the patricians was for the time maintained, sometimes by wise delay, sometimes by "a judicious sermon."

The

The controversy had required the arbitrament of the elders, for the rock on which the state rested was religion; a common faith had gathered, and still bound the people together. They were exclusive, for they had come to the outside of the world for the privilege of living by themselves. Fugitives from persecution, they shrank from contradiction as from the approach of peril. And why should they open their asylum to their oppressors? Religious union was made the bulwark of the exiles against expected attacks from the hierarchy of England. The wide continent of America invited colonization; they claimed their own narrow domains for "the brethren." Their religion was their life; they welcomed none but its adherents; they could not tolerate the scoffer, the infidel, or the dissenter; and the whole people met together in their congregations. Such was the system, cherished as the stronghold of their freedom and their happiness. "The order of the churches and the commonwealth," wrote Cotton to friends in Holland, "is now so settled in New England by common consent that it brings to mind the new heaven and new earth wherein dwells righteousness."

CHAPTER XV.

THE PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.

WHILE the state was thus connecting by the closest bonds the energy of its faith with its form of government, Roger Williams, after remaining two years or a little more in Plymouth, accepted a second invitation to Salem. The ministers in the bay and of Lynn used to meet once a fortnight at each other's houses, to debate some question of moment; at this, in November, 1633, Skelton and Williams took some exception, for fear the custom might grow into a presbytery or a superintendency, to the prejudice of the church's liberties; but such a purpose was disclaimed, and all were clear that no church or person can have power over another church. Not long afterward, in January, 1634, complaints were made against Williams for a paper which he had written at Plymouth, to prove that a grant of land in New England from an English king could not be perfect except the grantees “compounded with the natives." The opinion sounded like treason against the charter of the colony; Williams was willing that the offensive manuscript should be burned; and so explained its purport that the court, applauding his temper, declared "the matters not so evil as at first they seemed."

Yet his generosity and forbearance did not allay a jealousy of his radical opposition to the established system of theocracy, which he condemned, because it plucked up the roots of civil society and brought all the strifes of the state into the garden and paradise of the church. The government avoided an explicit rupture with the church of England; Williams would hold no communion with it on account of its intolerance; "for," said he, "the doctrine of persecution for cause of

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conscience is most evidently and lamentably contrary to the doctrine of Jesus Christ." The magistrates insisted on the presence of every man at public worship; Williams reprobated the law; the worst statute in the English code was that which did but enforce attendance upon the parish church. To compel men to unite with those of a different creed he regarded as an open violation of their natural rights; to drag to public worship the irreligious and the unwilling seemed only like requiring hypocrisy. "An unbelieving soul is dead in sin," such was his argument; and to force the indifferent from one worship to another "was like shifting a dead man into several changes of apparel." "No one should be bound to worship, or," he added, " to maintain a worship, against his own consent." "What!" exclaimed his antagonists, amazed at his tenets; "is not the laborer worthy of his hire?" "Yes," replied he, "from them that hire him."

The magistrates were selected exclusively from the members of the church; with equal propriety, reasoned Williams, might "a doctor of physick or a pilot" be selected according to his skill in theology and his standing in the church.

It was objected to him that his principles subverted all good government. The commander of the vessel of state, replied Williams, may maintain order on board the ship, and see that it pursues its course steadily, even though the dissenters of the crew are not compelled to attend the public prayers of their companions.

But the controversy finally turned on the question of the rights and duty of magistrates to guard the minds of the people against corrupting influences, and to punish what would seem to them error and heresy. Magistrates, Williams protested, are but the agents of the people, or its trustees, on whom no spiritual power in matters of worship can ever be conferred, since conscience belongs to the individual, and is not the property of the body politic; and with admirable dialectics, clothing the great truth in its boldest and most general forms, he asserted that "the civil magistrate may not intermeddle even to stop a church from apostasy and heresy," "that his power extends only to the bodies and goods and outward estate of men." With corresponding distinctness,

he foresaw the influence of his principles on society. "The removal of the yoke of soul-oppression," to use the words in which, at a later day, he confirmed his early view, "as it will prove an act of mercy and righteousness to the enslaved nations, so it is of binding force to engage the whole and every interest and conscience to preserve the common liberty and peace."

The same magistrates who punished Eliot, the apostle of the Indian race, for censuring their measures, could not brook the independence of Williams; and the circumstances of the times seemed to them to justify their apprehensions. An intense jealousy was excited in England against Massachusetts; "members of the general court received intelligence of some episcopal and malignant practices against the country;" and the magistrates on the one hand were careful to avoid all unnecessary offence to the English government, on the other were consolidating their own institutions, and even preparing for resistance. It was in this view that the freeman's oath was appointed, by which every freeman was obliged to pledge his allegiance, not to King Charles, but to Massachusetts. There was room for scruples on the subject; and an English lawyer would have questioned the legality of the measure. The liberty of conscience, for which Williams contended, denied the right of a compulsory imposition of an oath: when, in March, 1635, he was summoned before the court, he could not renounce his belief; and his influence was such "that the government was forced to desist from that proceeding." To the magistrates he seemed the ally of a civil faction; to himself he appeared only to make a frank avowal of truth. Before the tribunals, he spoke with the distinctness of clear and settled convictions. He was fond of discussion; and to the end of his life was always ready for controversy, as the means "to bolt out the truth to the bran."

The court at Boston remained as yet undecided; the church of Salem-those who were best acquainted with Williamstaking no notice of the recent investigations, elected him their teacher. Immediately the ministers met together, and declared any one worthy of banishment who should obstinately assert that "the civil magistrate might not intermed