THE PILGRIM REPUBLIC.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

The ignorance still existing on this subject is almost incredible. We find men of education who seem to have no exact information respecting the PILGRIM FATHERS. . . . Quarterly-reviewers, members of Parliament, Christian divines, and ecclesiastical historians speak of them with the same complacent disregard of facts. . . . The only remedy is MORE LIGHT! — Hidden Church (Rev. Dr. Waddington, London, 1860).

THE

HE above criticism, written for Old England, is not inapplicable to New England, even to that region which counts Plymouth Rock among its choicest treasures; for those celebrations of "Forefathers' Day" are altogether exceptional in which no enthusiastic orator exhibits a misunderstanding of some of the following elementary facts:

The Pilgrim Fathers, the founders of our Plymouth, the pioncer Colony of New England, were not Puritans. They never were called by that name, either by themselves or their contemporaries. They were Separatists, slightingly called Brownists, and in time became known as Independents or Congregationalists. As Separatists they were oppressed and maligned by the Puritans. They did not restrict voting or office-holding to their church-members. They heartily welcomed to their little State all men of other sects, or of no sects, who adhered to the essentials of Christianity and were ready to conform to the local laws and customs.1

1 They were in advance of their brethren in England; much in advance of ... their sister Colony of Massachusetts, with whom, in this respect, they have been unjustly classed. — Steele's Life of Brewster, p. 395.

We must take the point of view afforded by the civilization of their time.

The territory of New Plymouth was absolutely their private domain; they had obtained the title from the King's grantees, and also by purchase from the natives at prices deemed fair by each contracting party. "With a great price" obtained they "freedom to worship God" as their consciences dictated, and they did not invite their former persecutors to come in and revive hostilities in this new home. Their church was very dear to them, and zealots who intruded for the purpose of warring against it were ordered to seek other fields. Another great motive for their removal to the wilderness had been the rearing of their children apart from the evil communications of the Old World; and of all who desired to share their domicile they consistently required a conformity to their standard of the proprieties of life. In short, they sought to found an asylum for persecuted Congregationalism; and they never professed to establish an arena for the enemies of that order. No person had any claim to share their private estate without the consent of its owners.

They treated the Indians of their Colony with scrupulous justice, protecting them from their enemies, relieving them from distress, and requiring their rights to be respected by others.

Though their laws would now be harsh, they were generally mild for that age, and were usually administered with a degree of reason and mercy not before known to governments.1

We must extend to them the same justice we shall have occasion to ask from posterity.-W. H. Prescott.

The Plymouth Colony was more tolerant than the later Colony of Massachusetts Bay. T. W. Higginson, Harper's Magazine, July, 1880.

Church-of-England people and Baptists dwelt continuously in Plymouth in peace, except such as openly sought to overturn the Independent churches. Visitors of all beliefs and no belief were entertained, to their host's subsequent privation, for months together, so hospitable were they.-Steele's Brewster. [But this excellent author is led by Thacher into the misstatement that Plymouth restricted voting and office-holding to church-members.]

1 At the accession of James I. England made 31 crimes capital. This number gradually increased to 223! Massachusetts Bay made 13 crimes capital; and the Virginia Colony had 17, including Unitarianism, sacrilege, adultery, defrauding the public treasury, false-witness, and the third offence of refusing to attend public worship! Connecticut surpassed Massachusetts; but her socalled "Blue Laws" are fictitious, being the work of one Peters, who had been