176 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OP 



their countrymen, him who had been their Stadtholder, their Prince of 

 Orange. Thus British rule became less of" foreign rale to them ; and 

 thus the revolution of 1688 may be referred to as having contributed 

 a harmonizing influence to the progress of the American union. 



The Dutch dominion in America, adverse as it was to union in one 

 respect, by parting the northern from the southern English colonies, in 

 another respect exerted an influence favorable to colonial combination. 

 It was not only the presence of hostile Indian tribes on the New Eng- 

 land frontier, but it was also tiie neighborhood of the Dutch, "that 

 prompted the first effort of colonial union ; that of the united colonies 

 of New England" which had its beginning in 1G43, the first "confede- 

 racy," the first time the word " contederacy" was used in America. It 

 was the first of these combinations, serving to show how it was a sense 

 of common danger, the sense of strength and security in united action, 

 which, by slow and safe gradations, was to bring the several colonies 

 into union, disclosing, from time to time, how natural it would be for 

 the sentiment of social union, which all the while, no doubt, however 

 unrecognised at tlie time, was orowinsf strons:, to be converted into 

 poUtiad union ; how the sense of brotherhood, of a community of citi- 

 zenship would imperceptibly prepare itself to assume political form 

 and consistency. 



I cannot pause to comment on that earh' confederacy, its principles, 

 its system, and its uses. It purported to be " a ycrpeiuallerigue of friend- 

 ship and amity," and it contained provision for its enlargement by the 

 admission of other colonies into confederacy with the four colonies who 

 were the contracting parties. Limited as this confederacy was in 

 the number of its members, cautiously restricted as it was in its 

 powers, and close and pressing as the dangers were, five years were 

 consumed in the planning of it; iKrpctiml as it professed to be, it lasted 

 no more than about forty years ; no other colony was added to it, and 

 as the dangers which suggested it passed away, the confederacy lost 

 its intei'est, and when its existence ceased incidentally with the abro- 

 gation of the New England charters, in the reign of James II, no effort 

 was made to renew it. The old Saxon principle of distinctive local 

 government was at work even within the narrow circuit of these kin- 

 dred Puritan colonies, and no adequate motive for union presented itself. 

 There are traces of mutual jealousies there ; especially was there jea- 

 lousy of the centralizing authority of Massachusetts. This feeling was 

 manifest in the solicitude on the part of the Plymouth colony to preserve 

 its separate existence. It breaks out in the bitter humor of a not very 

 felicitous pun on the Bay colony, in a despatch fiom the Plymouth 

 agent to the Plymouth governor, when, writing from London in 1091, 

 he says : " All the frame of Heaven moves upon one axis, and the 

 whole of New England's interest seems designed to be loaden on one 

 bottom, and her particular motion to be concentric to the Massachusetts 

 tropic. You know who are wont to trot after the bay horse." — (Wis- 

 waU to Hinckly, Nov. 5, 1G91. Hutch. I, 365.) 



In the New England confederacy, unanimity in religious creed was 

 an essential principle of political concord, an inipediment to the pro- 

 gress of union, if the confederacy had continued, for admission was 

 refused to their dissenting fellow-colonists of Rhode Island. The Purit- 



