ON THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION 143 
draw from the neighbourhood, the reasons which they 
alleged were so ludicrous as to make it plain that they 
were merely set forth as pretexts to do duty instead 
of the real reasons. It was alleged, for example, that 
they had not room enough to pasture their cattle. The 
men who said this must have had to hold their sides 
to keep from bursting with laughter. Not enough room 
in Cambridge for five hundred people to feed their 
cattle! Why, then, did they not simply send a swarm 
into the adjacent territory, — into what was by and by 
to be parcelled out as Lexington and Concord and 
Acton? Why flit a hundred miles through the wilder- 
ness and seek an isolated position open to attack from 
many quarters? Itis impossible to read the fragmen- 
tary records without seeing that the weighty questions 
were kept back; but there is one telltale fact which is 
worth reams of written description. In the state 
which these men went away and founded on the banks 
of our noble river there was no limitation of the suf- 
frage to members of the churches. In words of per- 
fect courtesy the ministers and magistrates of Boston 
deprecated the removal of a light-giving candlestick, 
but the candlestick could not be prevailed on to stay, 
and the leave so persistently sought was reluctantly 
granted. 
A wholesale migration ensued. About eight hundred 
persons made their way through the forest to their new 
homes on the farther bank of the Connecticut River. 
The Dorchester congregation made the settlement 
which they called at first by the same name, but presently 
changed it to Windsor. The men from Watertown 
built a new Watertown lower down, which was pres- 
ently rechristened Wethersfield; and between them 
