strifes of rivalry never became heated; in the choice of magistrates, gifts of learning and genius were valued, but the state was content with virtue and single-mindedness; and the public welfare never suffered at the hands of plain men. Roger Williams was ever a welcome guest at Hartford; and "that heavenly man, John Haynes," would say to him: "I think, Mr. Williams, I must now confesse to you that the most wise God hath provided and cut out this part of the world as a refuge and receptacle for all sorts of consciences." There never existed a persecuting spirit in Connecticut; and "it had a scholar to their minister in every town or village." Religious speculation was carried to the highest degree of refinement, alike in its application to moral duties and to the mysterious questions on the nature of God, of liberty, and of the soul. A hardy race multiplied along the alluvion of the streams, and subdued less inviting fields; its population for a century doubled once in twenty years, in spite of considerable emigration. Religion united with the pursuits of agriculture to form a people of steady habits. The domestic wars were discussions of knotty points in theology; the concerns of the parish, the merits of the minister, were the weightiest affairs; and a church reproof the heaviest calamity. The strifes of the parent country, though they sometimes occasioned a levy among the sons of the husbandmen, never brought an enemy over their border. No fears of midnight ruffians disturbed the sweetness of slumber; the best house required no fastening but a latch, lifted by a string.

Industry enjoyed the abundance which it created. No great inequalities of condition excited envy or raised political feuds; wealth could display itself only in a larger house and a fuller barn. There was venison from the hills; salmon, in their season, not less than shad, from the rivers; and sugar from the maple of the forest. For a foreign market little was produced beside cattle; and, in return for them, but few foreign luxuries stole in. Even so late as 1713, the number of seamen did not exceed one hundred and twenty. The soil had originally been justly divided, or held as common property in trust for the public, and for new-comers. There was for a long time hardly a lawyer in the land. The husbandman

who held his own plough and fed his own cattle, was the great man of that day; no one was superior to the matron, who, with her busy daughters, kept the hum of the wheel incessantly alive, spinning and weaving every article of their dress. Life was uniform. The only revolution was from the time of sowing to the time of reaping; from the plain dress of the week to the more trim attire of Sunday. There was nothing morose in the Connecticut character. Frolic mingled with innocence; and the annual thanksgiving to God was, from primitive times, as joyous as it was sincere.

One question distressed and divided families. Without inward experience of the truth and power of Christianity, no one of a congregation of Calvinists was admitted to take the covenant which gave admission to the communion table; and the rite of baptism was administered to the children of those only who were communicants. There grew up an increasing number of parents of blameless lives, who did not become members of the church and yet wished baptism for their children. Influenced by their condition, the general court of Connecticut expressed a desire for a council of ministers of the four confederated Calvinistic colonies. The general court of Massachusetts proposed to refer the question to a general synod, and of itself went so far as to appoint fifteen ministers of its own colony as its delegates. Connecticut readily followed the example; but Plymouth kept aloof; and the austere colony of New Haven, guided by the inflexible Davenport, not only refused to send delegates, but by letter strongly rebuked the measure as fraught with dangers to religion. Yet, in February, 1657, the synod, representing the two colonies which, in extent of territory and in numbers, far outweighed the rest, sanctioned the baptizing of children of parents who themselves had been baptized, and though they were not ready to assume all the obligations of church members, would yet promise to give their offspring a Christian education. This mode of settlement was called in derision "the half-way covenant."

By the customs of the Congregational churches, the vote of a synod was but a recommendation, leaving the decision to each church for itself. In 1662, a Massachusetts synod repeated the advice which had before been given in conjunc

tion with Connecticut; and the general court sent it to the several towns "for the consideration of all the churches and people." There, in Massachusetts, legislative action on the matter ended. In 1664, the general court of Connecticut, after its absorption of New Haven, recommended the less exclusive system to the churches; but the majority of them adhered stiffly to the ancient rule.

The frugality of private life had its influence on public expenditure. Half a century after the concession of the charter, the annual expenses of the government did not exceed eight hundred pounds. The wages of the chief justice were ten shillings a day while on service. In each county a magistrate acted as judge of probate, and the business was transacted with small expense to the fatherless.

There were common schools from the first. Nor was it long before a small college, such as the day of small things permitted, began to be established; and Yale owes its birth "to ten worthy fathers, who, in 1700, assembled at Branford, and each one, laying a few volumes on a table, said: 'I give these books for the founding of a college in this colony.'"

But the political education of the people is due to the happy organization of towns, which here, as throughout all New England, constituted each settlement in its local affairs a selfgoverning democracy. In the ancient republics, citizenship had been an hereditary privilege. In Connecticut, it was acquired by inhabitancy, was lost by removal. Each townmeeting was a legislative body; and all inhabitants, the affluent and the more needy, the reasonable and the foolish, were members with equal franchises. There the taxes of the town were discussed and levied; there its officers were chosen ; there roads were laid out and bridges voted; there the minister was elected, the representatives to the assembly were instructed. The debate was open to all; wisdom asked no favors; the churl abated nothing of his pretensions. Whoever reads the records of these village commonwealths will be perpetually coming upon some little document of rare political sagacity. When Connecticut emerged into scenes where a new political world was to be created, the rectitude that had

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ordered the affairs of a neighborhood showed itself in the field and in council.

During the intervening century, we shall rarely have occasion to recur to Connecticut: its institutions were perfected, and, with transient interruptions, were unharmed. To describe its condition is but to enumerate the blessings of self-government, as exercised by a community of thoughtful freeholders, who have neither a nobility nor a populace. How dearly it remembered the parent island is told by the English names of its towns. Could Charles II. have looked back upon earth, and seen what security his gift of a charter had conferred, he might have gloried in an act which redeemed his life from the charge of having been unproductive of public happiness. In a proclamation, Connecticut, under its great seal, told the world that its days under the charter were "halcyon days of peace." Time, as it advances, may unfold scenes of more wealth and of wider action, but not of more contentment and purity.

Rhode Island was fostered by Charles II. with still greater liberality. When Roger Williams had succeeded in obtaining from the Long Parliament the confirmed union of the territories that now constitute the state, he returned to America, leaving John Clarke as the agent of the colony in England. Never did a young commonwealth possess a more faithful friend; and never did a young people cherish a fonder desire for the enfranchisement of mind. "Plead our case," they had said to him in previous instructions, which Gorton and others had drafted, "in such sort as we may not be compelled to exercise any civil power over men's consciences; we do judge it no less than a point of absolute cruelty." And now that the hereditary monarch was restored and duly acknowledged, they had faith that "the gracious hand of Providence would preserve them in their just rights and privileges." "It is much in our hearts," they urged in their petition to Charles II., "to hold forth a lively experiment, that a most flourishing civil state may stand, and best be maintained, with a full liberty of religious concernments." The good-natured monarch listened to their petition; Clarendon exerted himself in their behalf; the making trial of religious freedom in a nook of a remote

continent could not appear dangerous; it might at once build up another rival to Massachusetts and solve a problem in the history of man. The charter, retarded only by controversies about bounds, on the eighth of July, 1663, passed the seals, and, with new principles, embodied all that had been granted to Connecticut. The supreme authority was committed to a governor, deputy governor, ten assistants, and deputies from the towns. The scruples of the inhabitants were so respected that no oath of allegiance was required of them; the laws were to be agreeable to those of England, yet with the kind reference "to the constitution of the place, and the nature of the people;" and the monarch proceeded to exercise, as his brother attempted to do in England, and as by the laws of England he could not do within the realm, the dispensing power in matters of religion: "No person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any difference in opinion in matters of religion; every person may at all times freely and fully enjoy his own judgment and conscience in matters of religious concernments."

No joy could be purer than that of the colonists when, in November, 1663, the news was spread abroad that "George Baxter, the most faythful and happie bringer of the charter," had arrived. On the beautiful island of Rhode Island, the whole people gathered together, "for the solemn reception of his majesty's gracious letters-patent." It was "a very great meeting and assembly." The letters of the agent "were opened, and read with good delivery and attention;" the charter was next taken forth from the precious box that contained it, and "was read by Baxter, in the audience and view of all the people; and the letters with his majesty's royal stamp and the broad seal, with much beseeming gravity were held up on high, and presented to the perfect view of the people."

This charter of government, establishing a political system which few beside the Rhode Islanders themselves then believed to be practicable, remained in existence till it became the oldest constitutional charter in the world. The probable population of Rhode Island, at the time of its reception, may have