.

In June, the law-giver of Rhode Island, with five companions, embarked on the stream; a frail Indian canoe contained the founder of an independent state and its earliest citizens. Tradition has marked the spring of water near which they landed. To express unbroken confidence in the mercies of God, he called the place PROVIDENCE. "I desired," said he, "it might be for a shelter for persons distressed for conscience."

In his new abode, "My time," wrote Williams of himself, "was not spent altogether in spiritual labors; but day and night, at home and abroad, on the land and water, at the hoe, at the oar, for bread." Within two years others fled to his asylum. The land which he occupied was within the territory of the Narragansetts. In March, 1638, an Indian deed from Canonicus and Miantonomoh made him the undisputed possessor of an extensive domain; but he "always stood for liberty and equality, both in land and government." The soil became his "own as truly as any man's coat upon his back;" and he "reserved to himself not one foot of land, not one tittle of political power, more than he granted to servants and strangers." "He gave away his lands and other estate to them that he thought were most in want, until he gave away all."

So long as the number of inhabitants was small, public affairs were transacted by a monthly town meeting. A commonwealth was built up where the will of the greater number of householders or masters of families, and such others as they should admit into their town fellowship, should govern the state; yet "only in civil things; " God alone was respected as the Ruler of conscience.

At a time when Germany was desolated by the implacable wars of religion; when even Holland could not pacify vengeful sects; when France was still to go through the fearful struggle with bigotry; when England was gasping under the despotism of intolerance; almost half a century before William Penn became an American proprietary; and while Descartes was constructing modern philosophy on the method of free reflection-Roger Williams asserted the great doctrine of intellectual liberty, and made it the corner-stone of a political con

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stitution. It became his glory to found a state upon that principle, and to stamp himself upon its rising institutions, in characters so deep that the impress has remained to the present day, and can never be erased without the total destruction of the work. The principles which he first sustained amid the bickerings of a colonial parish, next asserted in the general court of Massachusetts, and then introduced into the wilds on Narragansett bay, he found occasion, in 1644, to publish in England, and to defend as the basis of the religious freedom of mankind; so that, borrrowing the language employed by his antagonist in derision, we may compare him to the lark, the pleasant bird of the peaceful summer, that, affecting to soar aloft, springs upward from the ground, takes his rise from pale to tree," and at last utters his clear carols through the skies of morning. He was the first person in modern Christendom to establish civil government on the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law; and in its defence he was the harbinger of Milton, the precursor and the superior of Jeremy Taylor. For Taylor limited his toleration to a few Christian sects; the wisdom of Williams compassed mankind. Taylor favored partial reform, commended lenity, argued for forbearance, and entered a special plea in behalf of each tolerable sect; Williams would permit persecution of no opinion, of no religion, leaving heresy unharmed by law, and orthodoxy unprotected by the terrors of penal statutes. Taylor clung to the necessity of positive regulations enforcing religion and eradicating error, like the poets, who first declare their hero to be invulnerable, and then clothe him in earthly armor; Williams was willing to leave Truth alone, in her own panoply of light, believing that, if in the ancient feud between Truth and Error the employment of force could be entirely abrogated, Truth would have much the best of the bargain. High honors are justly awarded to those who advance the bounds of human knowledge, but a moral principle has a much wider and nearer influence on human happiness; nor can any discovery be of more direct benefit to society than that which is to establish in the world the most free activity of reason and a perpetual religious peace. Had the territory of Rhode

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Island been large, the world would at once have been filled with wonder and admiration at its history. The excellency of the principles on which it rested its earliest institutions is not diminished by the narrowness of the land in which they were for the first time tested. Let, then, the name of Roger Williams be preserved in universal history as one who advanced moral and political science, and made himself a benefactor of his race.

The most touching trait in the founder of Rhode Island was his conduct toward those who had driven him out of their society. He says of them truly: "I did ever, from my soul, honor and love them, even when their judgment led them to afflict me." In his writings he inveighs against the spirit of intolerance, and never against his persecutors or the colony of Massachusetts. We shall presently behold him requite their severity by exposing his life at their request and for their benefit. It is not strange, then, if "many hearts were touched with relentings." The half-wise Cotton Mather concedes that many judicious persons confessed him to have had the root of the matter in him; and the immediate witnesses of his actions declared him, from "the whole course and tenor of his life and conduct, to have been one of the most disinterested men that ever lived, a most pious and heavenly minded soul."

CHAPTER XVI.

COLONIZATION OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, RHODE ISLAND, AND CONNECTICUT.

RHODE ISLAND was the offspring of Massachusetts; but the loss of a few inhabitants was not sensibly felt in the parent colony. When the first difficulties of encountering the wilderness had been surmounted, and an apprehension had arisen of evil days that were to befall England, the stream of emigration flowed with a full current to Massachusetts; "Godly people there began to apprehend a special hand of Providence in raising this plantation, and their hearts were generally stirred to come over." The new settlers were so many that there was no room for them all in the earlier places of abode; and Simon Willard, a trader, joining with Peter Bulkeley, a minister from St. John's College in Cambridge, a man of wealth, benevolence, and great learning, became chief instruments in extending the frontier. Under their guidance, at the fall of the leaf in 1635, a band of twelve families, toiling through thickets of ragged bushes, and clambering over crossed trees, made their way along Indian paths to the green meadows of Concord. A tract of land six miles square was purchased for the planters of the squaw sachem and a chief to whom, according to Indian laws of property, it belonged. The suffering settlers burrowed for their first shelter under a hillside. The cattle sickened on the wild fodder; sheep and swine were destroyed by wolves; there was no flesh but game. The long rains poured through the insufficient roofs of their smoky cottages, and troubled even the time for sleep. Yet the men labored willingly, for they had their wives and little ones about them. The forest rung with their psalms;

and "the poorest people of God in the whole world,” unable "to excel in number, strength, or riches, resolved to strive to excel in grace and in holiness." That New England village will one day engage the attention of the world.

Meantime, the fame of the liberties of Massachusetts extended widely. Among those who came in 1635 was the fiery Hugh Peter, who had been pastor of a church of English exiles in Rotterdam, a republican of energy and eloquence, not always tempering enterprise with judgment. At the same time came Henry Vane, the younger, "for conscience' sake." "He liked not the discipline of the church of England, of which none of the ministers would give him the sacrament standing." "Neither persuasions of the bishops nor authority of his parents prevailed with him ;" and, from "obedience of the gospel," he cheerfully "forsook the preferments of the court of Charles for the ordinances of religion in their purity in New England."

The freemen of Massachusetts, pleased that a young man of his rank and ability agreed with them in belief and shared their exile, in 1636, elected him their governor. The choice was unwise, for neither age nor experience entitled him to the distinction. He came but as a sojourner, and was not imbued with the genius of the place; his clear mind, fresh from the public business of England, saw distinctly what the colonists did not wish to see-the wide difference between their practice under their charter and the meaning of that instrument on the principles of English jurisprudence.

At first, the arrival of Vane seemed a pledge for the emigration of men of the highest rank. Several English peers, especially Lord Say and Seal, a Presbyterian, a friend to the Puritans, yet with but dim perceptions of the true nature of civil liberty, and Lord Brooke, a man of charity and meekness, an early friend to tolerance, had begun to negotiate for such changes as would offer them inducements for removing to America. They demanded a division of the general court into two branches, that of assistants and of representatives—a change which, from domestic reasons, was ultimately adopted; but they further required an acknowledgment of their own hereditary right to a seat in the upper house. The fathers of