WERE NO DEMIGODS. 469 



who dissented from the Established Church would have 

 compelled all to come into their own private views, had 

 the power been with them. In 1645, a minister in New 

 England wrote &quot; It is said that men ought to have 

 liberty of conscience, and that it is persecution to debar 

 them of it. I can rather stand amazed than reply to 

 this. It is an astonishment that the brains of men 

 should be parboiled to such impious ignorance.&quot; And 

 lloger Williams, the founder of New Providence, in 

 Rhode Island, is represented as a &quot; stubborn Brownist ; 

 keen, unpliant, illiberal, unforbearing, and passionate.&quot; 

 He insisted u that the civil magistrate had no right 

 to restrain or direct the consciences of men, and that 

 anything short of unlimited toleration for all religious 

 systems was detestable persecution.&quot; He was perse 

 cuted and driven from Salem by the other settlers ; but 

 he was himself as severe upon those who differed from 

 him, and as intolerant as they. 



It is no use either denying or palliating such things. 

 They were no worse than thousands they had left at 

 home *, but certainly they were no better. They had 

 subsequently an advantage over their English contem 

 poraries, in so far as those things which the advancing 

 reason of men, whether at home or abroad, recognised 

 to be right, they were enabled at once to adopt ; while 

 existing institutions, interests, and habits presented 

 obstacles in England which could be only slowly set 

 aside, and with difficulty overcome. But that compara 

 tive slowness observable among us, especially as respects 

 political progress, is for the benefit of mankind, inas 

 much as it enables us to see the working of changes 

 among men of our own race before we introduce them 

 among ourselves to modify them, so as to adapt them 

 to the habits and circumstances, and thus to make them 

 more conducive to the welfare of our home people. It 

 serves as a moral drag also on that tendency to too rapid 



