After sickness abated, privation and want remained to be encountered. Yet, when in April the Mayflower was despatched for England, not one returned in her, while just before autumn new emigrants arrived. In July, an embassy from the little colony to Massassoit, their ally, performed through the forests and on foot, confirmed the treaty of amity, and prepared the way for a trade in furs.

The influence of the English over the aborigines was rapidly extended. A sachem, who menaced their safety, was compelled to sue for mercy; and, in September, nine chiefs subscribed an instrument of submission to King James. The bay of Massachusetts and harbor of Boston were explored. The supply of bread was scanty; but, at their rejoicing together after the harvest, the colonists had great plenty of wild fowl and venison, so that they feasted Massassoit with some ninety of his men.

Canonicus, the sachem of the Narragansetts, whose territory had escaped the ravages of the pestilence, at first desired to treat of peace; in 1622, a bundle of arrows, wrapped in the skin of a rattlesnake, was his message of hostility. But, when Bradford sent back the skin stuffed with powder and shot, his courage quailed, and he sued for amity.

The returns from agriculture were uncertain so long as the system of common property prevailed. After the harvest of 1623, there was no general want of food; in the spring of that year, each family planted for itself; and parcels of land, in proportion to numbers, were assigned for tillage, though not for inheritance. This arrangement produced contented labor and universal industry; "even women and children now went into the field to work." In the spring of 1624, every person obtained a little land in perpetual fee, and neat cattle were introduced. Before many harvests, so much corn was raised that the Indians, preferring the chase to tillage, looked to the men of Plymouth for their supply.

The fur trade was an object of envy; and Thomas Weston, who had been active among the London adventurers in establishing the colony, desired to engross its profits. In 1622, a patent for land near Weymouth, the first plantation in Boston harbor, was easily obtained; and sixty men were sent over.

Helpless at their arrival, they intruded themselves, for most of the summer, upon the unrequited hospitality of the people of Plymouth. In their own plantation, they were soon reduced to necessity by their want of thrift and injustice toward the Indians; and a plot was formed for their destruction. But Massassoit revealed the design to his allies; and the planters at Weymouth were saved by the wisdom of the older colony and the intrepid gallantry of Standish. It was "his capital exploit." Some of the rescued men went to Plymouth; some sailed for England. One short year saw the beginning and decay of Weston's adventure.

The partnership of the Plymouth men with English merchants proved oppressive; for it kept from them their pastor. Robinson and the rest of his church at Leyden were longing to rejoin their brethren; the adventurers in England refused to provide them a passage, and attempted, with but short success, to force upon the colony a clergyman more friendly to the established church. Offended by opposition, and discouraged at the small returns from their investments, they became ready to prey upon their associates in America. A ship was despatched to rival them in their business; goods, which were sent for their supply, were sold to them at an advance of seventy per cent. The curse of usury, which always falls so heavily upon new settlements, did not spare them; for, being left without help from the partners, they were obliged to borrow money at fifty per cent and at thirty per cent interest. At last the emigrants purchased the entire rights of the English adventurers; and the common property was equitably divided. For a six years' monopoly of trade, eight of the most enterprising men assumed all the engagements of the colony; so that the cultivators of the soil became really freeholders; neither debts nor rent-day troubled them.

Hardly were they planted in America when their enterprise took a wide range; before Massachusetts was settled, they had acquired rights at Cape Ann, as well as an extensive domain on the Kennebec; and they were the first of the English to establish a post on the Connecticut. But the progress of population was very slow; and at the end of ten years the colony contained no more than three hundred souls. Robin

son died at Leyden; his heart was in America, where his memory will never die. The remainder of his people, and with them his wife and children, came over, so soon as means could be provided to defray the costs.

The frame of civil government in the old colony was of the utmost simplicity. A governor was chosen by general suffrage, whose power, always subordinate to the common will, was, at the desire of Bradford, in 1624, restricted by a council of five, and, in 1633, of seven, assistants. In the council, the governor had but a double vote. There could be no law or imposition without consent of the freemen. For more than eighteen years "the whole body of the male inhabitants" constituted the legislature; the state was governed, like a town, as a strict democracy; and the people were frequently convened to decide on executive not less than on judicial questions. At length, in 1639, after the increase of population, and its dif fusion over a wider territory, each town sent its committee to a general court.

The men of Plymouth exercised self-government without the sanction of a royal charter, which it was ever impossible for them to obtain; it was, therefore, in themselves that their institutions found the guarantee for stability. They never hesitated to punish small offences; it was only after some scruples that they inflicted capital punishment. Their doubts being once removed, they exercised the same authority as the charter governments. Death was, by subsequent laws, made the penalty for several crimes, but was never inflicted except for murder. House-breaking and highway robbery were offences unknown in their courts, and too little apprehended to be made subjects of severe legislation.

"To enjoy religious liberty was the known end of the first comers' great adventure into this remote wilderness;" and they desired no increase but from the friends of their communion. Yet their residence in Holland had made them acquainted with various forms of Christianity; a wide experience had emancipated them from bigotry; and they were never betrayed into the excesses of religious persecution, though they sometimes permitted a disproportion between punishment and crime. In 1645, a majority of the house of delegates were in

favor of an act to "allow and maintain full and free toleration to all men that would preserve the civil peace and submit unto government; and there was no limitation or exception against Turk, Jew, Papist, Arian, Socinian, Nicolaitan, Familist, or any other;" but the governor refused to put the question, and so stifled the law.

It is as guides and pioneers that the fathers of the old colony merit gratitude. Through scenes of gloom and misery they showed the way to an asylum for those who would go to the wilderness for the liberty of conscience. Accustomed "in their native land to a plain country life and the innocent trade of husbandry," they set the example of colonizing New England with freeholders, and formed the mould for the civil and religious character of its institutions. They enjoyed, in anticipation, the fame which their successors would award to them. "Out of small beginnings," said Bradford, "great things have been produced; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone to many, yea, in some sort to our whole nation." "Let it not be grievous to you -such was the consolation offered from England to the pilgrims in the season of their greatest sufferings-"let it not be grievous to you that you have been instruments to break the ice for others. The honor shall be yours to the world's end.” "Yea, the memory of the adventurers to this plantation shall never die."

CHAPTER XIII.

NEW ENGLAND'S PLANTATION.

WHILE the king was engaged in the overthrow of the London company, its more loyal rival in the West of England sought new letters-patent with a great enlargement of their domain. The remonstrances of the Virginia corporation and the rights of English commerce could delay for two years, but not defeat, the measure that was pressed by the friends of the monarch. On the third of November, 1620, King James incorporated forty of his subjects-some of them members of his household and his government, the most wealthy and powerful of the English nobility-as "The Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing New England, in America." The territory, which was conferred on them in absolute property, with unlimited powers of legislation and government, extended from the fortieth to the forty-eighth degree of north latitude, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The grant included the fisheries; and a revenue was considered certain from a duty to be imposed on all tonnage employed in them.

The patent placed emigrants to New England under the absolute authority of the corporation, and it was through grants from that plenary power, confirmed by the crown, that institutions the most favorable to colonial independence and the rights of mankind came into being. The French derided the action of the British monarch in bestowing lands and privileges which their own sovereign seventeen years before had appropriated. The English nation was incensed at the largess of immense monopolies by the royal prerogative; and in April, 1621, Sir Edwin Sandys brought the grievance before