96 AUTHENTIC HISTORY 



dom exists only ' ivherc the laws rule, and the inoi^e are parties to the 



laws.'' 



" On these foundations was his colony erected. His merit will be the 

 more justly appreciated by adverting to the state of the American colo- 

 nies planted antecedently to the year 1780. These were Massachusetts, 

 New Hampshire, Ehode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, 

 Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina. The New England provinces 

 sprang Irom the natural and selfish desires of their founders to withdraw 

 themselves from power and oppression. Eeligious toleration and civil 

 liberty were not appreciated by them as rights essential to the happiness 

 of the human race. The rights of conscience the puritans of these pro- 

 vinces demanded were such as protected themselves from the gibbet and 

 lash, which they applied to force the consciences of others. Their civil 

 rights they regarded as exclusive property, acquired by purchase, the 

 evidence of which was in their charter. Whilst Penn was offering to 

 the world a communion of religious and civil freedom, the saints of Mas- 

 sachusetts excluded from the benefits of their government all who were 

 not members of their church, and piously flagellated or hanged those 

 who were not convinced of its infallibility. Eoger Williams, proscribed 

 and expelled for his own opinions, was the first to teach that the civil 

 magistrate might not interfere in religious matters, and that to punish men 

 for opinion was persecution. New York, without a charter or an assem- 

 bly, was subject to the caprice of its governors, in civil as in ecclesiasti- 

 cal matters. New Jersey had a free, a liberal, but an impracticable 

 constitution. The attempt to establish in that province the basis of a 

 free government, though unsuccessful, and throwing the administration 

 into the hands of the crown, was not useless. The people were intro- 

 duced to the knowledge of sound political principles, which were never 

 altogether abandoned. Maryland, possessing the most liberal and the 

 best digested constitution that has emanated from a British monarch, 

 and the most independent of the royal power, had been involved in civil 

 war and religious persecutions during the revolution, and was now 

 reduced to order and good government, by the resumption of executive 

 power by the Calverts. But the Catholic faith of its governors and 

 principal inhabitants, rendered its policy suspected by Protestants. Caro- 

 lina was the subject of a most fanciful experiment of the renowned Locke, 

 who framed for it an aristocratical constitution, totally inconsistent with 

 the light of the age in which he lived; establishing an hereditary nobility, 

 with large and unalienable landed estates, and the church of England as 

 the religion of the state. Penn wisely modelled the royal charter for his 

 province, as closely as possible upon the Maryland grant; and, though 

 at the first institution of the government, he was doubtful of the pro- 

 priety of giving the assembly the power to originate laws, experience 



