EARLY RHODE ISLAND

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EARLY RHODE ISLAND

CHAPTER I

FOUNDATIONS OF RHODE ISLAND. 1636.

The long controversy between advocates of Massachusetts and of Rhode Island is losing interest by reason of the change evolved in the relative importance of the issues. The principles of Roger Williams have become so much more weighty, while the world has been advancing three centuries in a political development not much affected by governmental control of religion that the details of his disputes with Massachusetts Bay are of less account. However the technical rights of the disputants may be made out, the fact remains that Williams was banished from his political home and deprived of his spiritual privileges.

Massachusetts made an absolute theocracy.

Connecticut made a limited theocracy, which conducted a much better developed and more orderly Puritan system of living than prevailed in Massachusetts.

Rhode Island constituted a limited democracy freed from theocratic control.

These are the great historic landmarks; to ascertain and to mark out this development in the events of the time is the true historic question. To appreciate the changes of sentiment concerning these great functions of government, let us compare the present conception¹ of

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“toleration” with the idea held in New England in the days of Williams.

Thomas Shepard in 1645 knew what was wanted among his brethren and his deep emotion revealed itself as he named his discourse “Lamentations.” He says “to cut off the hand of the magistrate from touching men for their consciences (a boundless toleration of all Religions, Hubbard, 1676) will certainly in time (if it get ground) be the utter overthrow, as it is the undermining of the Reformation begun. This opinion is but one of the fortresses and strongholds of Sathan.”²

“Touching the conscience,” that is the root of the theocratic system, which separated Williams and his followers from the government founded on it. However great and splendid the organization of the state, man was born first. Roger Williams saw, not only thought, but saw with inward vision that man should look through organized government directly, to the author and ruler of his being—to God.

Toleration was the main doctrine, but the same habit of mind and view of practical government ran through

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the consciousness of the average Puritan. The Durfees, father and son, true descendants of Rhode Island, comprehended the large differences between Massachusetts Bay and the outcast colony on Narragansett Bay. Job Durfee said the Puritan understanding “was not the freedom of the individual mind from the domination of the spiritual order, but merely the freedom of their particular church; and just as the English government had thrown off the tyranny of the Pope, to establish the tyranny of the bishops, they threw off the tyranny of the bishops to establish the tyranny of the brethren.”³

Thomas Durfee⁴ defined that soul-liberty was not secured by grant, but by limitation, being “the constitutional declaration of the right in its widest meaning, covering not only freedom of faith and worship, but also freedom of thought and speech in every legitimate form. The right has never been expressed with more completeness. ‘Only in civil things’ was no lucky hit, but the mature fruit of life and experience.”

It is well to seek for the birth of “civil things” the assured conception of the “limitation,” as Judge Durfee expresses it. Early in 1637 Williams writes⁵ Governor Winthrop, “the frequent experience of your loving ear, ready and open toward me (in what your conscience permitted) as also of that excellent spirit of wisdom and prudence wherewith the Father of Lights hath endued you, embolden me to request a word of private advise.” There was a broad difference at this moment in Williams’ mind between masters of families and proprietors deriving from Williams purchaser from the Sachems, and seller of the land to his companions; and “those few young men”

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who were coming in to be admitted as residents and citizens. He was contemplating in this letter two subscriptions: the first for the proprietors, and it was somewhat elaborate, for “late inhabitants of the Massachusetts (upon occasion of some differences of conscience) being, permitted to depart from the limits of that Patent.” The other subscription for the young men and others, was in substance the compact afterwards adopted, except that it does not reach the apothegm, “only in civil things.”

Showing that he had not begun to consider (he never did enter into and fully comprehend) the difference between a patriarchal bargain or proprietor’s sale and a political solution which might embrace a world-state, he asks, “whether I may not lawfully desire this of my neighbors, that as I freely subject myself to common consent, and shall not bring in any person into the town without their consent; so also that against my consent no person be violently brought in and received.” All these meditations and queries he had not suggested to his neighbors, but waited until he “can see cause upon your loving counsel.”

In May of this year he wrote Winthrop⁶ again, “notwithstanding our differences concerning the worship of God and the ordinances ministered by Antichrist’s power, you have been always pleased lovingly to answer my boldness in civil things.” He asks what he shall answer to “one unruly person” who has proposed often in town meeting, “for a better government than the country hath yet, and let’s not to particularize by a general Governor, etc.”

These debates and doubts were solved on the 20th of August. The “second comers” by political action put

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into definite shape the simplest possible form of government⁷ “only in civil things.”⁸

Years ago Mr. Straus brought forward the statement⁹ of the eminent Gervinus in 1853, showing that Roger Williams has established a “small new society” based on “entire liberty of conscience and the uncontrolled power of the majority in secular affairs. The ‘theories’ of Europe were here brought into practice.” It was freely prophesied that these democratic movements would soon end themselves. But the institutions have not only maintained themselves, but have “spread over the whole union.” They have given laws to one-quarter of the globe, and “they stand in the background of every democratic struggle in Europe.”

Mr. Richman called attention to Dr. Borgeaud, of the Faculty of Law in Geneva, a more recent authority in this domain of history. His view of Roger Williams is that his “mind was at once enthusiastic and systematic; he was a theologian who had been brought up by a lawyer.”¹⁰ The disciple of Coke, an Anglican lawyer, took on the beliefs of Brown,¹¹ the separatist theologian. Williams pushed these views further, even to the complete separation of civil and religious matters, and to an absolute democracy. In Rhode Island his community afterward became the “Kernel of a State.” It accepted the charter granted by Parliamentary England. Citing from

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the records of the acceptance, Borgeaud says, “these texts bear date 1647. If we compare them with what was taking place in Europe during this memorable year, we shall be ready to allow that this is the first great date in the history of modern democracy.”¹²

When Williams was in London¹³ procuring this charter, he was associated with Milton, Vane, and especially with the great revolutionist, Cromwell. He kept up his personal and friendly relations with him.

We are not to assume that Rhode Island was the sole source of democracy in New England. It simply carried the European movement—through the inspiration of Williams—to its highest end and legitimate outcome in practical political government. Connecticut and Massachusetts were one to two centuries in arriving at equivalent results. The imagination can hardly set forth what might have been, if Massachusetts had grasped her whole opportunity in the seventeenth century.¹⁴

Borgeaud says, “if we trace the origin of American democracy among the charters and constitutions of the New England States, we find a startling proof of the close connection, which we must recognize between the two great movements (Reformation and Democracy) of modern thought.”¹⁵ Again he defines the influence of Calvin,

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“Presbyterianism is Calvinism tempered by aristocratic tendencies of Calvin. Independency, or as first called, Congregationalism, is Calvinism without Calvin.”¹⁶

The German, Jellinek, sets forth the germinal idea inhering in the final principles of our community. It interests us, as being essentially the same as that propounded earlier by our own citizen, Thomas Durfee. As we cited from Durfee, it was “not only freedom of faith and worship, but also freedom of thought and speech in every legitimate form.” Jellinek says the Americans gradually acquired a constitutional recognition of the principle that “there exists a right not conferred upon the citizen, but inherent in man, that acts of conscience and expressions of religious convictions stand inviolable over against the state as the exercise of a higher right.”¹⁷

Probably all will agree that however great and magnificent the organization of the state may be, that man is yet greater. The state, through Magna Charta and other great political monuments, has brought down the statutes of freedom. But freedom of conscience was not enacted by statute, it was the fruit of the Gospel. The inherent and sacred right of the individual as established legally was not the work of any revolution in Europe. “Its first apostle was not Lafayette, but Roger Williams, who, driven by powerful and deep religious enthusiasm, went into the wilderness in order to found a government of religious liberty.”¹⁸

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It was not holiday work in the plantations on Narragansett Bay, as the following pages will make manifest. The German philosopher states, “to recognize the true boundaries between the individual and the community is the highest problem that thoughtful consideration of human society has to solve.”¹⁹ That this people kept unimpaired the precious “kernel of a state,” as the Genevan doctor terms it, through all the turmoil was a marvel of the moment and a permanent boon to mankind.

This seething democracy of Providence, which impresses European scholars so forcibly, was established in the middle seventeenth century, and was nourished by the informal parliament in almost constant session at John Smith’s mill,²⁰ as well as in irregular conferences that were ante-chambers of the town meetings. In these disputations and debates, the public business was threshed out, before formal political action was instituted. Like many incipient communities in history, this democratic government might have come to naught, had it not been anchored to the state and fastened to the crown by the charter of Charles II. There is a divinity doth hedge a king, which prevailed in those days. This was plainly apparent to Roger Williams. We are obliged to criticise him often for his communistic vagaries and his inconsistent ways in mere statecraft. But he was well-grounded in the great principles of authority underlying all practicable government. In 1654-5 there was a party pushing soul-liberty and the power of the individual toward anarchy. A paper was sent to the town asserting that “it was blood-guiltiness, and against the rule of the Gospel, to execute judgment upon transgressors against the private or public weal.”

Williams wrote to the town a masterly letter, defining

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individual liberty and the limits of governing power in the state. “There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth, or a human combination, or society. Both Papists and Protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship. . . . I never denied that, notwithstanding their liberty of conscience, the commander of this ship ought to command the ship’s course, yea, and also to command that justice, peace, and sobriety, be kept and practiced, both among the seamen and all the passengers. . . . If any shall mutiny, and rise up against their commanders and officers; if any should preach or write that there ought to be no commanders because all are equal in Christ, I never denied, but in such cases, whatever is pretended, the commander or commanders may judge, resist, compel, and punish such transgressors.”²¹

In a noble letter to Major Mason, of Connecticut, June 22, 1670,²² Williams sets forth his own story with an account of his sufferings in settling the plantation. And he pictures in most graphic style the truly great concerns of citizens, in particular his consciousness of the high mission of himself and his fellows. “To mind not our own, but every man the things of another; yea, and to suffer wrong, and part with what we judge is right, yea, our lives and (as poor women martyrs have said) as many as there be hairs upon our heads, for the name of God and the son of God his sake. This is humanity, yea, this is Christianity. . . . The matter with us is not about these children’s toys of land, meadows, cattle, government, etc. But here all over this colony a great number of weak and distressed souls, scattered, are flying hither from Old

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and New England, the most High and Only Wise hath, in His infinite wisdom, provided this country and this corner as a shelter for the poor and persecuted, according to their several persuasions.”

Mr. Richman considers Williams’ system to have been religious in his own view, but not so according to the prevailing opinions of the time. He prefers to class his opinions as “ethico-political.”²³ We are to remember in placing a principle and in making categories that, nearly three centuries of progress—which the opinions of Williams and those like him have greatly affected—have passed since these colonies were struggling to begin political life. Some plain facts of the case have been neglected, both by the persecutors of Williams and by his advocates. Reformers must offend against the established order, by which and in which they are conditioned. The radical must go to the root of existing things, or he cannot grasp or even touch the evil he would combat.

Williams struck at the foundations of the Puritan church, and the social system carried with it. It was absolutely necessary that individuals should revolt against the old before a starting point for new life could be attained. Williams was literally a voice crying in the wilderness—so far as a representative of the individual soul was concerned. To him, his idea, his daimon was the simplest principle possible—and two and a half centuries of progress have proved that he was right. To them, this simplicity was complex beyond measure, and destructive of established order.

Greece, Rome, Teutonic mark and meeting penetrated by Hebrew insight, political England, are engraved deep in the lines of our heredity But it is in the enlarging growth of the modern mind after the Reformation that

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Rhode Island has an especial place in history, as my citations from European scholars have shown. As Roger Williams led in soul-liberty, so with his fellows he developed a community, a possible state, giving superiority to the individual man practical democracy in short. Rough in poverty, rude in education, these pioneers kept their individual entity springing from Williams, Harris, Gorton, Coddington, and Clarke, as the following pages will show; which individual spirit finally pervaded and flavored the peoples roundabout. The most stormy town meeting, the boldest privateer, the stoutest Revolutionary soldier, the most adventurous merchant, carried forward this principle of expanding growth, proceeding from Williams’ discovery and the struggle of pioneers for political life. A soul freed from ecclesiastical oppression and the bonds of expiring feudalism, must possess at last material things. Progress was slow in attaining such wealth and culture as the surrounding colonies inherited passively. But through every political and social movement a discerning eye can trace the individual man forming a larger community of individuals; thus lifting his own life and social opportunity into a freer atmosphere. If this were not so, how could the little state acquire wealth relatively equal to the most favored quarters of the Union. How else could a modern republican state be formed on accidental charters of the commonwealth and of Charles II.; which latter charter should essentially outlast two centuries, unchanged.

Wherever we turn in the record of the past, signs of representative government appear, as a great controlling principle seeking expression as history opens out. Japanese scholars claim that this is not confined to. Anglo-Saxon nor even to Aryan nations; but prevails East and West. “I believe that the seed of representative government

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is implanted in the very nature of human society and of the human mind.”²⁴

So far as our own part of the large question is concerned, let us look into the course of affairs in Massachusetts and Connecticut, to learn by contrast the true essence and the essential characteristics of our own institutions here in Rhode Island.

The colony of Massachusetts existed for fifty-five years under a royal charter granted to the “Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in England.” The charter empowered the freemen of the Company forever to elect from their own number, a Governor, Deputy-Governor, and eighteen Assistants, and to make laws “not repugnant to the laws of England.” The executive, not including the assistants, was authorized, but not required, to administer to freemen the oaths of supremacy and allegiance.

Winthrop, the Governor, with Deputy-Governor and Assistants, had been chosen in England. There were some preliminary meetings at Salem, but the first American Court of Assistants was convened at Boston, August 23, 1630. Some one hundred and eighteen persons gave notice at this Court asking admission as freemen. There were eight plantations or towns that participated in this assembly. The Court voted that Assistants only should be chosen by the Company at large, and that the Assistants with the Governor and Deputy-Governor, elected from themselves, should have the power of “making laws and choosing officers to execute the same.” This movement, erratic in a democratic government, lasted only about two years. May 9, 1632, the freemen resumed the right of election, limiting the choice of Governor to one of the existing Assistants.

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These issues are interesting as revealing the tides of public sentiment for more or less aristocratic restriction in the process of government.

In 1634 there were about three hundred and fifty freemen, more than two-thirds of whom, according to Palfrey, had been admitted since the establishment of the religious test, some three years previous. It was “ordered and agreed that, for the time to come, no man shall be admitted to the freedom of this body politic, but such as are members of some of the churches within the limits of the same.”²⁵ As Borgeaud²⁶ remarks, “by law the civic government was distinct from the ecclesiastical, but in fact was strictly subordinate. The pastors and elders spoke in the name of the Divine Will revealed in the Bible.” Compare the opinion after more than three-score years’ experience of a sufficiently orthodox interpreter, Cotton Mather,²⁷ given below.

A curious side-light is thrown on the working of democracy in New England, by the aberrations of the freemen in creating and abolishing a “Standing Council for life.” It was a new order of magistrates not contemplated by the charter, constituted March 8, 1686. Winthrop, Dudley, and Endicott only were appointed under this authority “for term of their lives, as a standing council, not to be removed but upon due conviction of crime, insufficiency, or for some weighty cause, the Governor for the time being to be always President of this Council and to have such further power out of Court as the General Court

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shall from time to time endue them withal.”²⁸ It was claimed that this movement proceeded from Cotton, who derived his inspiration from Lord Sayand SeIe.²⁹ The act lasted only two years, and Mr. Savage³⁰ claimed that this institution was the only example of a political election for life in our country. It was a bone of contention until 1642. The extraordinary tenacity of this socio-political barnacle shows that Cotton, not to speak of Winthrop, did not easily give up the hope of bringing some of the ragged offshoots of feudalism across the Atlantic, to be planted in the soil of the new Puritanism. Winthrop treats the affair earnestly, though patiently. His caustic sagacity in construing popular characteristics speaks forth in the following general consideration. “And here may be observed how strictly the people would seem to stick to their patent, when they think it makes for their advantage, but are content to decline it where it will not warrant such liberties as they have taken up without warrant from thence, as appears in their strife for three deputies,” etc.³¹

These are small matters, but they were beginnings of popular government and they indicate one set of conditions which hampered Roger Williams in any search after soul-liberty. Puritans like Winthrop and Dudley were not only church-bound, they were so wrapped in the panoply of a feudal aristocracy that they could not conceive

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of freedom—whether ecclesiastical or political—in any modern sense.

In 1648 the Magistrates and Deputies established bicameral legislation, the great modern improvement adopted, by all the colonies and by the Union of the States. As Winthrop states, “there fell out a great business upon a very small occasion.” Mrs. Sherman’s sow, or her claim for one, became the occasion of a suit against Captain Keayne. The suit went through the inferior courts, and coming into the General Court set Magistrates and Deputies at variance, and in a most unseemly way. Sympathy for the poor woman against a rich man affected the more popular representatives—the deputies—and jealousy between the two classes of legislators or judges confused the whole matter. The judicious saw that opportunity for such disputes must be stopped, and henceforth the two houses held their sessions “apart by themselves.” Moreover, according to the Governor, “this order determined the great contention about the negative voice.”

Without doubt the simple trading corporation, while making plantations, put forth more essential powers than was ever intended in England; whether in controlling the souls of men, or in extending the ground-work of a state. But such was inevitable. A corporation puts forth suckers of sovereignty, and these branch out into more and more power, as contingent life forces the issues.

Mr. Charles Francis Adams sums up his conclusions, “the organization of the Massachusetts colony was distinctly and indisputably legal, commercial and corporate; and not religious, ecclesiastical or feudal.”³² In this he is supported by Professor Parker and Judge Chamberlain and by Doyle in his Puritan Colonies. Others have viewed the matter differently, and much learning has been devoted

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to this historic question. We may be content with the poetic rendering and rare insight of James Russell Lowell, as he interprets the founding of Massachusetts Bay through “the divine principle of Authority based on the common interest and common consent.”

A definition of an ordinary charter prevailing in the seventeenth century runs thus: The owner does what he will with his cattle “only by virtue of a grant and charter from both his and their maker.” A royal charter, based on land and the feudal tendencies then inhering in land, conveys legal and commercial privileges; but in the hands of an active, intelligent body of freemen, it conveys much more. The Frenchman De Castine says “a charter cannot create liberty; it verifies it.” No words could more clearly explain the legitimate course of the chartered colonies of New England.

It has been customary to treat Massachusetts Bay as the headquarters and general source of Puritanism in New England. But Connecticut was a better example in applying the principles of the Puritans to every-day living; it was more advanced, and, so to speak, more civilized in the application. This was not by chance, but by natural political evolution. The Connecticut men fully believed in theocracy; in a state governed by the immediate direction of God; yet this principle was to be in some degree regulated by the action of the people, and not absolutely controlled by the “inspiration” of certain pastors and elders of the church rendering the will of God.

Let us examine the beginnings of government in this colony. Hooker’s migration from the Bay had occurred in 1686. A commission issued from the General Court of Massachusetts, March 8, 1636, to eight of the persons who “had resolved to transplant themselves and their estates unto the River of Connecticut.” This commission

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was plainly limited, in that it took “rise from the desier of the people whoe removed, whoe judged it in Convenience to goe away without any frame of Government, not from any clame of the Massachusetts Jurisdiction ower them by virtew of Patent.”³³

This was manifestly a semi-political and not a corporate and commercial evolution of power. The forthcoming Yankees were careful to take to themselves only one side of the obligation; to profit by receiving the attributes of power, without rendering any allegiance in return. But they took a political prerogative, not a commercial privilege; a function of government and not a function of trade. Just as the colony of Massachusetts, based on territorial grants with trading privileges from the British Crown, made war and peace or coined money if necessary, so it put out a sucker of practical sovereignty which rooted in the Connecticut valley.

The planters met January 14, 1638-9, and adopted the “eleven fundamental orders,”³⁴ by which the colony was substantially governed until the year 1818, though it obtained legitimate authority by charter from the British Crown, as we shall see later on. This is an early record of a “frame of government.” The men of Connecticut claim it to be the first written constitution in history.

The germ of constitutional government in Connecticut, whether it was by a formal constitution or otherwise, is justly considered by investigators to have been in a sermon of Thomas Hooker preached before the General Court in May, 1688, viz., “The foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people,—The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God’s own allowance,—They who have power to appoint officers and

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magistrates, it is in their power also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place into which they call them.”³⁵

These views, as has been stated indirectly, were advanced to a higher ground than that held by the rulers of Massachusetts Bay. They were still entangled in those jungles of sovereignty—where church members only administered the state—jungles which easily put forth essential tyranny. The Connecticut men found it better to get out and move on. As above stated, it was not chance, but political sagacity which precipitated the issue. We should study Hooker’s Survey of Church Discipline,³⁶ published after his death in 1648. As cited below, we find a dim recognition of the absolute difference in administration of spiritual and temporal things; and this perception of Hooker’s brought about important results in Connecticut. It is true, the freemen were practically church members, but pastor or elder could not go into town meeting and cry out in form or substance “thus saith the Lord” after such teaching as Hooker gave them.

Hooker was thoroughly Puritan, and believed in theocratic ascendancy. Yet though he might be loyal to the dictates of conscience, he perceived that the will of the

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citizen and his political action, whether as ruler, judge, or constable, must be firmly set within the “bounds and limitations” of power constituted in a legitimate way. This is of the essence of constitution-making.

If we adopt the large historic view of Bancroft in regarding the Puritan, these beginnings of government in Connecticut are worthy of constant notice. He says, though the superficial may sneer at their extemporaneous prayers and other formalities, if we look to the genius of the sect itself, “Puritanism was religion struggling for the people.” Great England—freed in parts—absolutely persecuted Nonconformists, until the repeal of the penal statutes in 1690; driving two thousand ministers out of their livings in 1662. Even after that repeal some statutes had to be “liberally interpreted” through the nineteenth century to give Nonconformists practical religious and political liberty. Puritans might live, as it were, in a detached and drained receiver, but the atmosphere around was not free. Occasionally now an unscrupulous politician sneers at the “nonconforming conscience.” A disinterested critic might remark that, it may prove to be quite as important in England’s future as the betting-book or tennis-racket. As Emerson remarked, it would be well to stop the people from doing many things, before stopping their praying.

On the other hand, Puritanism proscribed in England was virtually established in Massachusetts, where it blocked religious liberty until well into the nineteenth century.

The development of Connecticut was not toward liberty of conscience, but along the lines of a modified theocracy. By a series of legislative acts in 1697, 1699, 1708,³⁷ the colony riveted an ecclesiastical system firmly on the necks

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of all citizens. The act of 1708 was very positive, approving “the confession of faith, heads of agreement and regulations in the administration of discipline agreed to by the synod at Saybrook and enacting that all churches thus united in doctrine, worship, and discipline, should be owned and acknowledged established by law.”³⁸ Political government might proceed without interference from church or clergy, as Hooker had laid down. But the conscience of the individual must be held by the church. Provision was made “for the ease of such as soberly dissent from the way of worship and ministry established.” But however the dissenter might think, he must³⁹ pay as ordinary citizens did and could not be excused “from paying any such minister or town dues, as are now or shall be hereafter due.”⁴⁰

After much discussion of these questions in the agitation for the constitution which replaced the charter in 1818; these restrictions were swept away and religion was left entirely to voluntary support. With all his powerful eloquence, Dr. Lyman Beecher preached against this, declaring “it would open the floodgates of ruin on the state.” Connecticut writers have called this condition of things “complete religious liberty.” Their conception of liberty within the bounds of Connecticut assumed in naïve manner that this was equivalent to liberty everywhere. Their society being homogeneous and sufficient unto itself, liberty of opinion elsewhere did not enter into consideration. This quietism is finely expressed in the words of one of her ablest sons, Leonard Bacon, uttered in 1859. He claimed that Episcopal, Baptist and Methodist churches formed there were of the Connecticut sort, and

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“is there no meaning in the fact that not one of our churches, and only one of our parishes fell in the Unitarian defection?”⁴¹

The excellent political system of Connecticut created a thriving and contented community under the charter, as well as under the constitution. Perhaps no people in the world were more happy. But such closed circuits and local districts of universal truth could not survive the free communication and exchange of thought prevailing in modern times. The “land of steady habits,” like other parts of the United States, has become free in thought and the open ground of liberty of conscience.

It is fair to observe that Thomas Hooker was the greater statesman, while Roger Williams was the greater prophet. Hooker brought a candle into state management that lighted a community through peaceful life for one or two centuries. Roger Williams kindled a flaming torch⁴² in the fire of truth, which burned through the fierce democratic disputes and town-contentions of the plantations until its serene beams are now shed abroad through the civilized world.

If we revert to the main colony, the home of Pilgrims and Puritans, the early political aspirations of Massachusetts can be hardly separated from the strong theocratic tendency which moved her in applying a religious test to practical government. There are not only the prominent

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proceedings like the banishment of Williams and the Antinomians, the expulsion of Baptists and Quakers, but other incidents, which show a constant administration of affairs on the narrow lines held by the Independent Congregational churches. In 1629, Endicott sent out John and Samuel Browne, because they insisted on using the Prayer Book. “New England was no place for such as they.” The case of William Vassall in 1646⁴³ is very interesting.

It is pathetic to enter into the doings of Massachusetts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and to perceive the struggles of well-meaning men trying to work out their idea of good, yet producing only evil. The ecclesiastical politicians of that time were centuries behind either Connecticut or Rhode Island; but they fancied they were the Lord’s anointed. From John Cotton and Hubbard, through Cotton Mather to Quincy and Palfrey, one story filled the ears of these men and colored their imagination, when applied to the facts of history and government. In their distorted vision, an inevitable, providential necessity⁴⁴ forced the admisistration [sic] of their state from one form of bigotry to another, until the widening political and social activities of the community compelled her into a complete separation of church and state.

When the nineteenth century was well advanced, Massachusetts finally swept away the despotic foundations of

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her religious system. In the words of Mr. C. F. Adams, “a modified form of toleration was grudgingly admitted into the first constitution of the state in 1780; it was not until 1833 that complete liberty of conscience was made part of the fundamental law.”⁴⁵

The Puritans of the Bay fondly fancied that they were creating a commonwealth, which through the support and interaction of the churches should absorb the old political functions of a state, and thus turn the world at large into a kingdom of heaven. Orderly political development was impossible under this fanciful ideal; it was the lack of such development that kept Massachusetts seething and vibrating in political unrest. The actual movement developing a modern state was in the opposite direction, just as Mr. Doyle⁴⁶ viewing us from Europe, clearly comprehended. The “worldly people,” the men in the street in Massachusetts as in other states, worked out a political freedom culminating in the American Revolution; this finally penetrated the congregations of the churches and converted them to practical Christianity. No episode in history indicates more dearly the large currents of evolution, which turn the swirling eddies of theocratic culture to wider political development. As the eighteenth century moved on, America discovered, by the second quarter of the nineteenth she had developed into practical politics, the large idea that a free democratic expression at the polls was better political freedom and even better religion than imperial decree, mandate of synod or papal bull.

It is often asserted in apology for the early rulers of the Bay that, their course was inevitable—under the tacit assumption that theocratic absolutism was the only possible

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working government. But the Netherlands had a comparatively liberal administration, and Connecticut, as we have shown, under Hooker was adapting theocracy to democratic representation without persecution. We need not change the colors of the rainbow to justify Cotton and his fellow managers. At least, we can go as far as Winthrop in his confession that there was “too much” theocracy.

There are two constant marvels in this bit of history, as especially developed in these three colonies of the new and newest England. 1. That, the idea of Roger Williams once formulated, worked itself so slowly into the consciousness of other communities, even in the adjoining districts of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

2. That a civic principle deemed so revolutionary in the seventeenth century should have affected the political and social development of Rhode Island so little, as the principle emerged from theory and was adopted into the life of a state. Rhode Island has been noted for oddities and particular individualities. Yet these personal differences have affected very little the steady development of the community along the lines inevitable to the progress of America. In increase of population it has averaged with the whole Union, surpassing most Eastern states. In industrial progress and in acquisition of property, it is equal to any district of the United States. It is true that the infant colony suffered from the vagaries of wild theorists; Samuel Gorton and those like him who drifted into these open harbors. But there came with them much free thought which grew and prospered. Political order in some way established itself over and through these chaotic elements of life.

The individual man may be odd in that he is uncommon, but he must be strong, whatever his social condition and

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environment. In all the military development of our country—that superior test which welds the right arm of individual men into the true consolidation of the state—Rhode Island has shown that individual liberty works toward the highest patriotism. In the old French and Spanish wars, in the struggles with Great Britain, in our tremendous civil war, Rhode Island, notwithstanding her strong Quaker heredity, was ever at the front.

We could not fully comprehend the historic foundations of Rhode Island, without considering the relative bearing of the neighboring governments. We would submit that Massachusetts is set forth as an absolute theocracy. Connecticut starting under a theocratic impulse, limited that form of rule by the first practical democracy in representative action the world had known. Rhode Island after turbulent struggles and contention, was brought by her charters into civic life, based on soul-liberty and protected by the crown. This new form of democracy, the achievement of men freed from every form of absolutism—whether ecclesiastical or feudal—lived unto itself, and now attracts the attention of the civilized world.

Roger Williams stands out in these studies, larger and more heroic as time goes on. He did not create or invent soul-liberty. The great impulses of humanity spring forth as the occasion ripens, and seldom can be wholly attributed to any one man. But some one man gives effective life to each and every one of them. Primitive men could conceive of a hero only in a demigod. We find the man in history heroic, who had the courage to enforce a great principle. Williams could brave power and place, in his assured conviction that his soul was bound to its Creator, by ties that neither law nor custom, neither priest nor magistrate should any longer control.

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Williams was not skillful or wise in politics. He was a good man of business in his private affairs. Mr. Dorr comments on this, as we know that he was so poor in the first home on Towne street, that Winslow, visiting them, gave Mrs. Williams a gold piece. He did not profit by selling lands to the first settlers, but he acquired in trade an independent property. He sold his trading house at Wickford to get funds to pay his expenses in London, while procuring the charter. So, he was ready always to sacrifice himself for the community. But in developing a state out of turbulent, democratic town-meetings, in disputes with Harris and others, he was not able to separate the body politic from his own communistic bent, or the vagaries of his individual will.

The little community of the plantation appreciated him according to its own fashion and circumstance. He was buried with military honors, and his fellow soldiers of the Indian war fired a volley over his grave. Yet there were no inscriptions over this grave for three generations.

Thomas Durfee states that “historians urge that he was eccentric, pugnacious, persistent, troublesome. Undoubtedly he was.” With all his failings he was the trusted and beloved friend of Winthrop, the best of the Puritans. His nature was large enough to recognize in the Governor of the Bay “that excellent spirit of wisdom and prudence wherewith the father of lights hath endued you.” Urquhart could say⁴⁷ “he did approve himself a man of such discretion and inimitably sanctified parts that an archangel from heaven could not have shown more goodness and less ostentation.” This might indicate a defective man; but not a worthless man even by the standards of Massachusetts Bay.

Whatever the limitations of his personality, whatever

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petty ordinances and powers of state the rulers of Salem might bring against him, in historic perspective these facts and proceedings fade like rushlights in the rays of the sun. He was driven from home and the body politic for conscience’s sake. In this sublime offering of himself on the altar of conscience, he made the principle sacred and appealed to the hearts of men. No longer a mere disputant in theology, he became a heroic leader of men. The founder of Rhode Island becomes greater in history as the principle he embodied spreads its influence far and wide in the world’s development.

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