“Like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at far distance, true colors and shapes.”Milton,History of England.
“Like one who had set out on his way by night, and travelled through a region of smooth or idle dreams, our history now arrives on the confines, where daylight and truth meet us with a clear dawn, representing to our view, though at far distance, true colors and shapes.”
Milton,History of England.
When Great Britain, looking through the eyes of the Long Parliament in 1641, glanced across the Atlantic, she was surprised to see that the despised bantling of 1620 had, against all discouragements, staggered to its feet, and stood a nation, self-sustaining, robust, independent.
Already twenty-one thousand Pilgrims were permanently seated in New England;[1048]fifty prosperous villages[1049]peeped from the openings in the long unbroken forests. The steeples of forty churches pointed their white fingers to the sky.[1050]The rude log-cabins of the first months of settlement had been replaced by well-built houses.[1051]Agriculture climbed the hill-sides. Commerce played by the sea-shore. Trade laughed and chaffed and dickered in the market-place. The spindle and theloom nodded merrily to each other over their work, as they labored side by side in the fabrication of “cotton and woollen and linen cloth;” for manufactures were even thus early established in New England.[1052]
And the Pilgrims had a foreign influence. When a Madeira merchant visited Boston in 1642, he told Winthrop that the West Indian Jesuits taught that the “New-Englanders were the worst of all heretics, and that they were the cause of the civil war in the British island, and of the downfall of Archbishop Laud.”[1053]
The Pilgrims in England cordially recognized their kinship to the exiles. When the Parliament held regal prerogatives, in 1641, the colonists were urgently advised to solicit the admission of their delegates to its floor. “But upon consulting about it,” says Winthrop, “we declined the motion, for this consideration, that if we should put ourselves under the protection of the Parliament, we should then be subject to all its laws, or at least to such as the Commons might be pleased to impose on us; which might be inconvenient, and prove very prejudicial to us.”[1054]And when, a twelvemonth later, “letters arrived inviting the colonial churches to send representatives to the Westminster Assembly of Divines, the same sagacity led them to neglect the invitation. The love of political independence declined even benefits. NewEngland spoke almost as one sovereign to another.”[1055]
The Pilgrims were singularly jealous of their franchises, and they never neglected an opportunity to consolidate and enlarge their liberty. And now, since the days had come when England was rent by the demon of war, when the throne tottered to its fall, when exultant republicanism, speaking through the lips of Cromwell, shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!” as the head of a royal despot was struck off, the colonists had ample time in which to develop and define their rights.
Thus, exciting and momentous as were the scenes enacted on the European stage, and deeply as the Forefathers were interested in the issue, they were not won to overlook their own home drama. They were busy at this very time in reaping the benefits of secure and liberal domestic legislation. A bill of rights was promulgated; and under this, “though universal suffrage was not established, every man, whether citizen or alien, received the right of introducing any business into any public assembly, and of taking part in its deliberations. Then Massachusetts, by special law, offered free welcome and aid, at the public cost, to Christians of any nationality who might fly beyond the Atlantic ‘to escape from wars or famine, or the oppression of their persecutors.’ Thus the fugitive and the downtrodden were, by statute, made the guests of the commonwealth. Pilgrim hospitality was as wide as misfortune.”[1056]
This noble legislation was but the forerunner of a yet more significant act. In 1643, after several prior ineffectual essays, the four chief colonies of New England clasped hands in a confederacy.[1057]Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Haven, and Plymouth, by solemn and free agreement, became the “United Colonies of New England.”[1058]The Dutch Republic was the model of this union;[1059]and the reasons which impelled the Pilgrims to cement it are recited in the preamble to the twelve Articles of Agreement:
“Whereas, we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to enjoy the liberties of the gospel in purity and peace; and whereas, in our settling—by a wise providence of God—we are farther dispersed upon the seacoasts and rivers than was at first intended, so that we cannot, according to our desires, with convenience communicate in one government and jurisdiction; and whereas we live encompassed with people of several nations and strange languages, which may hereafter prove injurious to us or our posterity; and forasmuch as the natives have formerly committed sundry insolences and outrages upon several plantations of the English, and have of late combined themselves against us; and seeing, by reason of these sad distractions in England, which the Indians have heard of, and bywhich they know we are hindered from that humble way of seeking advice or reaping those comfortable fruits of protection which at other times we might well expect; we hereby conceive it our bounden duty, without delay, to enter into a present consociation for mutual help and strength in all our future concernments; that, as in nation and religion, so in other respects, we be and continue one.”[1060]
The old Hindoo dreamed that he saw the human race led out to its varied fortune. First, he saw men bitted and curbed, and the reins went back to an iron hand. But his dream changed on and on, until at last he saw men led by reins that came from the brain and ran back into shadowy fingers. It was the type of progress. The first was despotism; the last was a government of ideas, of morals, of the normal forces of society.[1061]The New England Confederation was the forerunner of a mightier union; and when Liberty saw it, she cried, “Eureka!” and thanked God.
The machinery of the league was very simple, very sensible, and very effective. The colonies were co-equal. Each appointed two commissioners, who formed a directory, which was to hold an annual session. The commissioners were empowered to assemble more frequently if necessity pressed; and they could deliberate on all matters which were “the proper concomitants or consequents of confederation.”[1062]“The affairs of peace and war exclusivelybelonged to them. They were authorized to make internal improvements at the common charge, assessed according to population. They too were the guardians to see equal and speedy justice assured to all the confederates in every jurisdiction; but each colony carefully reserved its respective local rights, as the badges of continued independence; so that, while the commissioners might decree war and levy troops, they had no executive power, but were dependent on the states for the execution of the plans they matured and voted.”[1063]
Two bodies of colonists were rigidly excluded from this union. Gorges’ pioneers, beyond the Piscataqua, were not admitted, because “they ran a different course” from the Pilgrims, “both in their ministry and in their civil administration.” Providence and Rhode Island were shut out, partly because they were not esteemed sufficiently strong and settled to add strength to the league, and also because they were regarded as the haunts of heresy and fanaticism.[1064]It was thought that the confederacy, in order to be effective, should be homogeneous. On that basis it was launched; and, surviving “the jealousies of the Long Parliament, it met with favor from the Protector, remained safe from censure at the restoration of the Stuarts,” and walked buoyantly on, scattering its benefactions on the right hand and on the left, until James II. vacated the New England charters, in 1686.[1065]
The colonial union was the crowning service of the founders of New England to humanity. Now they began, one by one, to descend into the grave, worn to early death by a toilsome grapple with the rough and grinding forces of nature. But in their footsteps trudged their sons, succeeding to the same blessed inheritance of faith, and love, and godly energy.[1066]
Travellers tell us that at Florence there is a rich table, worth a thousand crowns, made of precious stones neatly inlaid, in whose construction thirtymen were employed daily for fifteen years. The Pilgrim Fathers were twice that time in carving out and inlaying New England with churches, andfree schools, and printing-presses, and manufactures. Think of their task. “That gore of land, a few hundred miles wide and long, which lies between the St. Lawrence and the Atlantic ocean, and seems to have been formed of the leavings and fragments after the rest of the continent was made, whose ribs stick out past all covering; which hassand enough to scour the world; where there are no large rivers, but many nimble little ones, which seem to have been busy since the flood in taking exercise over rifts and rocks. This was their field of action. The only indigenous productions were ice, Indians, and stunted trees. Trading and commercial adventurers had essayed to effect a settlement in vain. The soil was too hard even for Indians and rovers. It was apparently set apart for a wilderness, and it had peculiar aptitudes for keeping man away from it. Its summers were short, its winters were long, its rocks were innumerable, its soil was thin.” Yet the Pilgrims entered and subdued this waste, making it to bud with churches and to bloom with schools; cultivating it to the sterile hill-tops; dotting the landscape with neat farm-houses, factories, mills, the evidences and the tokens of a ripe, full civilization.
But the fierce struggle with nature left its scars upon the Pilgrims, and it has marked their children. They had to seize and impress into their service every help. This begot the inventive faculty, and the habit of looking at every thing from the angle of its utility. This it was which strung factories on every stream-side, as gold beads are hung on a silver cord; which used every drop of water a dozen times over in turning wheels before it was suffered to run, weary and fretted, to the sea; which sent the little feet toddling to the woodpile to pick up chips; which made labor-saving machines, those gnomes whose cunning fingers wereto work up the black earth and the hard rock into golden grains.
“Looking, therefore, at civilization in New England, we see a people beginning without aristocracy or hierarchical forms. We see the leading men among them educated and honorable; the working men devoted to agriculture and owners of the soil. We see all resisting the incoming of a state church, persistently opposing a distant but domineering court; and, singularly enough, through nigh two centuries of savage and civilized war, steadily refusing to organize a standing army, trusting to the native valor of the mass. Thus the commonalty educated themselves by daily practice in self-government, until, at this present time, rulers there are simply lay-figures for show-days.”
“The Pilgrims were readers. Drunkenness, pauperism, filth, and dilapidation, nowhere abounded. They were thrifty, and industrious, and frugal; and so, though the land was poor, they lived in comfort. Money was hard to get, and carefully spent; no man lavished it, or lent it except on good security; yet nowhere else was there such a constant contribution for the relief of suffering or the cure of secular and religious ignorance; nowhere else would men more quickly risk life and health to serve a fellow. As there was no aristocracy, so there was no inferior or pariah class, except when, at an unguarded moment, negro slavery crept in for a time. But servitude was so palpably contrary to the genius and principles of the Pilgrims, that itwas banished as soon as the mind and conscience grappled with it;” for the corner-stone of New England was religion, and the top-stone was honest, self-respecting, well-paid, and skilled labor. Religion and labor begot that spirit which has tamed the continent, cheered it with churches and schools, set the busy spindles humming and the shuttles flying, plunged into the earth and into the sea, run over the prairies, talking by lightning from the Atlantic to the Pacific, until the whole land where men are intelligent, industrious, and free, seems singing and smiling at its daily work.
The Pilgrim Fathers literally obeyed the injunction of the great German poet—they knew the aim and reason of yesterday; they worked well to-day for worthy things, calmly trusting the future’s hidden season, and believing with unquestioning faith that their children would eat of the fruit of the tree which they had planted in a sterile soil and under wintry skies. Patient in waiting, they never hurried; they did not dig up their seed every twelve hours to see whether it had sprouted. Without haste, they were also without rest; and in their treatment of causes, they never paused to worry and fret about effects; for they knew that justice was the best policy, and that the steady every-day bravery which vaunteth not itself is more than a match for the Hotspur valor which presumes that any cause is good which is desperately defended.
The Pilgrims were men of conscience; and this they carried with them into work and into statesmanship.Quincy Adams once, in a happy moment, called New England “the colony of conscience.” It was a religious plantation, not an essay for trade. “He that made religion as twelve and the world as thirteen had not the spirit of a true New England man.” “Religion was the object of the Pilgrims; it was also their consolation. With this the wounds of the outcast were healed, and the tears of exile were sweetened.”
Puritanism has been finely called religion struggling for the people—evoking, in the logical sequence of events, political equality. “Those peculiar outward emblems, which were its badges at first, were of transient duration; like the clay and ligaments with which the graft is held in its place, made to be brushed away as soon as the scion is firmly united. The spirit of the Pilgrims was a life-giving spirit; activity, thrift, intelligence, liberty, followed in its train; and as for courage, a coward and a Puritan never went together. ‘He that prays best and preaches best will fight best;’ such was the judgment of Cromwell, the greatest soldier of his age.”
From any enumeration of the elements of the early colonial felicity, purity of morals must not be omitted. “As Ireland would not brook venomous serpents, so would not that land vile livers.” One might dwell there “from year to year, and not see a drunkard, nor hear an oath, nor meet a beggar.” The consequence was wide-spread health, one of the chief promoters of social happiness.
As for the soil, it was owned by the colonists. It was bought and paid for. The little farms, the straggling villages, the slowly-growing towns, were the absolute private property of their occupants; and in a time of unusual commotion, when their settlements, for which they had done and dared so much, seemed menaced with subversion—seemed liable to be converted into a receptacle for all the spawn of England—the Pilgrims assumed to decide, standing on their own grounds, who should be welcomed among them as fellow-citizens, who should be treated as guests, and who should be bidden to depart, never to return under the heaviest penalty.
Yet “on every subject but religion, the mildness of Puritan legislation corresponded to the popular character of the Puritan doctrines. Hardly a European nation has as yet made its criminal code as humane as was that of early New England. The Pilgrims brushed a crowd of offences at one sweep from the catalogue of capital crimes. They never countenanced the idea that the forfeiture of human life may be demanded for the protection of material interests. The punishment for theft, burglary, highway robbery, was far more mild than the penalties imposed even by modern American legislation. Domestic discipline was highly valued; but if the law was severe against the child who was undutiful, it was also severe against the parent who was faithless. The earlier laws did not decree imprisonment for debt, except when there was an appearance of some estate which the debtor would not produce.Even the brute creation was not forgotten; and cruelty to animals was a civil offence. The sympathies of the colonists were wide; a regard for Protestant Germany was as old as emigration; and during the Thirty Years’ war, the Pilgrims held fasts and offered prayers for the success of the Saxon cause”—crowned with the gospel.
But the glory of the Pilgrim Fathers was their faith. They trusted God, and acted. The secret of their strength and success was the open Bible and the family altar. They were men, and therefore not infallible. They sometimes erred grievously, and walked limping and awry; but they always meant right, and with God’s word as a lamp to their feet, they could not stray and grope far or long from the sunlight. To much that the Pilgrim conscientiously believed, and with his whole heart accepted, the present age has grown careless; we are lukewarm or indifferent upon some points which he esteemed vital; but it is small credit to us, if we are tolerant of error simply because we care little for truth. In former times New England was not latitudinarian; and, clad in her sparkling snow, crowned with her evergreen pine, the glory of her brow was justice, the splendor of her eye was liberty, the strength of her hands was industry, the whiteness of her bosom was faith; for the Pilgrims were men of absolute conviction. Moral earnestness was the key with which they unlocked the treasure-house of success. They were always true to their highest conceptions; and they could sayas Paul said to Agrippa, “I obeyed the heavenly vision.”
Yet they were not visionaries, but they made that fine distinction between material nature and spirituality: “giving to Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things which are God’s.” Thus it was that, though they were the most practical of men, they were also the most spiritual—wedding a paradox.
The curse of our age is materialism. We kindle only within the sphere of material interests and pursuits. On higher subjects we are as cold as an ice-field on the breast of Alp. There is an apotheosis of dirt. Men do not half believe in what they cannot see, and feel, and handle. They group about them the tokens of their skill—steam-engines, and telegraphs, and sewing-machines—and worship these as the ultimate good, saying, “See, these are the realities of life.”
The Pilgrim spirit protests against this tendency. It comes to remind us that the controllers of the present, the moulders of the future, are not the babblers who plead for an unreal realism; that they are not the heaviest brains of the epoch, but the heroes of religious earnestness, men inspired by drinking from the spiritual springs, men who go forth to fight like the red knight of Odessa, with the cross emblazoned on their shield, and with Christ buried in their hearts. Behind intellect there must be a ground-swell of religious earnestness, else brains are a snare, and useless. Rousseau, and Voltaire,and Pascal, do not mark the ages. Name them anywhere, and scores of vacant eyes will ask you, “Who are they?” The Luthers, the Calvins, the Ridleys, the Brewsters, shake the world, seize all hearts, and educate the centuries, because they were fired by conviction, and built for God.
This is the lesson which the story of the Pilgrims teaches us. Let us heed it; and then, clasping hands with the martyrs and apostles, we too may press forward with our “garlands and singing-robes about us,” and by battling for Christ, insure for ourselves in the long hereafter a blessed rest and a fragrant memory.