Governor Winthrop, like Governor Berkeley of Virginia,' did not believe in giving the privilege of voting to all who asked it. He and his friends wanted a state governed not by the majority, but by a select few. "The best part of a community," said he, "is always the least, and of that part the wiser are still less."

tations or estates like those of Virginia. But what the colonists could not get from the land, they got either directly or indirectly from the sea. Thousands of men were engaged in the cod fisheries on the banks of Newfoundland, and many were employed in the construction of vessels. Boston, it is said, had then the best shipbuilders in the world.. Massachusetts had also a thriving commerce with the West Indies. The colonists sent out cargoes of staves and lumber, and imported quantities of sugar and molasses from which they distilled the famous "New England rum," an article which most people then considered one of the necessaries of life.

81. Banishment of Roger Williams and Mrs. Hutchinson. It was partly in accordance with this exclusive view that the Puritans of Massachusetts banished Roger Williams. He had come from England as a minister, and was settled over the church in Salem. He was one of the very few men of that day who thoroughly believed in religious freedom, or, as he called it," soul liberty." "No one,” said he, “should be bound to maintain a worship against his own consent." To say that was to strike directly at the law of Massachusetts, which required every man to attend public worship and to pay for its support. But not only did

1 See Paragraph 55.

Roger Williams get into trouble on account of his denial of the right of one man to interfere in any way whatever with the liberty of another's conscience, but he greatly alarmed the Massachusetts authorities by his political utterances. The Company held their territory by a charter given by the king. Mr. Williams denied that the king had any power to give them the land, because it belonged first of all to the Indians. This was a new and startling way of looking at things, and the colonists feared that free utterance of this kind might provoke the English sovereign to take away their charter. Roger Williams was ordered (1635) to leave the colony. Later, an attempt was made to arrest him and send him to England. Williams escaped. It was winter and the weather was bitterly cold. The fugitive took refuge among the Indians, who fed and sheltered him. The next spring he reached Narragansett Bay, and founded what is now the beautiful city of Providence.

Whatever faults the exiled minister may have had, and whatever mistakes of judgment he may have made, we should never forget that he first demanded the right of entire religious liberty for all men.

The same year Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, a woman of remarkable ability and unblemished character, attacked many of the Massachusetts clergy about their religious belief, which seemed to her more a matter of form than of faith. She lectured or preached every week, and her influence was so great that a company of soldiers that had been raised to fight the Indians refused to march because their chaplain did not agree with Mrs. Hutchinson.

The General Court thought it was bad enough to have an Indian war on hand without having also a war of words about creeds. They decided that Mrs. Hutchinson was, as they said, "like Roger Williams, or worse," and compelled her to leave the colony. Later, the Baptists were forbidden to preach in Massachusetts and were punished when they refused to obey the command.

These were harsh measures, but the colonists believed that it was their duty to maintain their Puritan faith at any cost, and they did it. Roger Williams soon had a chance to show that he could

forgive those who had despitefully used him. The Pequots,' an Indian tribe of Connecticut, were plotting a massacre of the white settlers of that part of the country, and were trying to stir up the Narragansetts to attack Massachusetts. Williams used his influence with the latter tribe to such good effect that they refused to fight. Thus the exiled minister was probably the means of saving the people of Boston and surrounding towns from the horrors of an Indian war.

82. Public Schools; Harvard University; Eliot's Work among the Indians. In 1635 provision was made for the establishment of a public school in Boston. In the course of a few years free instruction was provided for every white child in Massachusetts. This was the beginning of the common school system of the United States. Not satisfied with thus doing what no country in Europe had ever done, the General Court voted in 1636 to give four hundred pounds 2 or what was equal to an entire year's tax of the colony-to found a college at Newtown, afterward called Cambridge. It is said that "this was the first legislative assembly in which the people, through their representatives, ever gave their own money to found a place of education." Two years later the Rev. John Harvard of Charlestown left his library of three hundred and twenty volumes, and half of his estate, or about seven hundred and fifty pounds,3— to the college. The General Court out of gratitude ordered the new institution the first English college in America - to be called by his name: such was the origin of Harvard University.*

-

The interest felt in the college was so great and so universal

1 The Pequots inhabited the valley of the Pequot, or Thames, River, in Eastern Connecticut.

2 Four hundred pounds: a sum probably equal in cash to $10,000 now; but as the vote was a whole year's tax, it was the same as if the State should give that amount to-day, which would be over five millions!

8 It would represent about $20,000 now.

4 The next colleges in order of time were William and Mary College, Virginia, 1693, and Yale University, Connecticut, 1701.

ELIOT AND THE INDIANS.

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that at one time (1645) every family throughout New England gave either a peck of corn or twelve pence in money towards its support. The people were poor, but they were determined, as they said, “that learning should not be buried in the graves of their fathers."

Another object of founding the college was to educate and christianize the Indians. Pastor John Robinson, of the Pilgrim church of Leyden, Holland,1 once wrote of Myles Standish, after that valiant captain had fought a battle with the natives: "O how happy a thing it would have been if you had converted some before you killed any!" The captain never turned missionary, but Rev. John Eliot of Massachusetts resolved that he would con

vert some.

He labored for many years among the Indians in the vicinity of Boston with great success. After preaching he used to give the men tobacco, and the women apples, to help them digest the sermons, some of which were full three hours long.

Eliot also translated the Scriptures into the Indian language. That Bible is probably the only one in existence of which it is doubtful whether there is more than a single person now living who can read a chapter of it. When we come to King Philip's War, many years after Eliot began his noble work, we shall see how the colonies reaped the fruit of the labors of the "Apostle to the Indians."

83. The New England Confederacy. — In 1643 Massachusetts Bay united with Plymouth and with the two western colonies of Connecticut and New Haven in a league for mutual defence. The league was maintained for over forty years. Rhode Island and Maine wished to join it, but were refused, because the first had established freedom of worship, and the second maintained the worship of the Church of England. In that day the Puritans could not conscientiously associate themselves with either.

1

The object of the confederacy was twofold: First, the colonies sought to protect themselves against hostile Indians and against the Dutch, who were anxious to get possession of the territory

into a republic.

After the confederacy had ceased to exist the remembrance of it helped the colonists to unite against the French, who threatened, in 1750, to drive them out of the land. Still later, when trouble with England came, the fact that there had once been such an organization as the so-called "United Colonies of New England" prepared the way for that great and permanent confederacy of all the colonies, north and south, known first as the "United Colonies of America," and finally as the "United States of America."

84. The Coming of the Friends, or Quakers. In 1656 the citizens of Massachusetts kept a solemn day of fasting and prayer on account of the news of the doings in England of a strange people called Quakers. It was said that they were turning the world upside down with their preaching, and that if they were not stopped they would destroy all churches and all modes of government. A fortnight after that fast-day the inhabitants of Boston heard to

1 One object of the confederacy was to secure the return of runaway slaves to their masters.

2 The words "you shall bear true faith and allegiance to our sovereign Lord King Charles " were now dropped from the oath required by Massachusetts of its governors and chief office-holders.