pains to have it put upon record in Massachusetts, that even the provisional government under which the first stakes were to be driven, derived its power not from that chartered Governor and Company, nor from the grant of the Earl of Warwick to certain noblemen and gentlemen in England, but from the desire and consent of the people. When that provisional government (limited by its commission to one year) had expired, a " General Court," consisting of magistrates and committees from the towns, appears upon the record as a matter of course, without any explanation. May 1=11, 1637.)* As yet there was no written or formal constitution, but the committees, or deputies from the several towns, "chose their magistrates, installed them into their government, took oath of them for the execution of justice according to God, and engaged themselves to submit to their government and the execution of justice by their means, and dispensed by the authority which they put upon them by choice." By that General Court war was waged, taxes were imposed and collected, trade was regulated, all the legislative functions of government were performed as there was need. At the close of the year that court declared itself dissolved, and its successor was constituted in the same way, for the ensuing year. (April, 1638.) Before the ensuing year had rounded its course, a written constitution was established, (Jan. 14=24, 1639)—the first in the history of nations.

The preamble of that constitution begins by devoutly acknowledging the Divine Providence which had brought the inhabitants of the three towns to their new abode. Then, having affirmed the principle that "where a people are gathered together, the Word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God;" it proceeds, "We do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves as one public State or Commonwealth, and do, for ourselves and our successors, and such as shall be adjoined to us at any

*Conn. Col. Rec., i, 9.

†Thomas Hooker to John Winthrop, in Collections of Conn. Historical Society, i, 13, 14.

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time hereafter, enter into combination and confederation together, to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, as also the discipline of the churches which according to the truth of said gospel is now practiced among us ;—As also in our civil affairs to be guided and governed according to such laws, rules, orders, and decrees, as shall be made, ordered, and decreed, as followeth." Then follow the eleven Fundamental Orders, by which civil offices are instituted and defined, and the election of officers is provided for, and according to which the self-government of the new "public State or Commonwealth" is to be conducted,-all power reverting, year by year, to the people from whom it proceeds.

In the light of these details we see vividly, what the Congregational churches of Connecticut had to do with the beginning of civil government on the river two hundred and forty years ago. 1. The founding of the colony in those three towns was by and for the churches; and in each town the church, having been constituted by the mutual agreement of its members, and by their covenant with each other and with God, was the first rudiment of organized social life. 2. From the method in which these churches were formed, by agreement and covenant, without seeking to derive their rights and powers from any other source than Christ himself, it was an obvious and easy step to the formation of a "public State or Commonwealth" by the same method of agreement and covenant-a Commonwealth deriving its rights of selfgovernment directly from the will of God.

We have other testimony, showing more definitely under whose teaching and influence that first written constitution of a civil government was formed. Among the Puritans of old time, it was a custom to take notes of the sermons which they heard; and so Henry Wolcott, Junior, (a leading man. in the settlement of Windsor,) used to make his stenographic record of sermons in a book which was preserved by his descendants-though to them, generation after generation, it was a sealed book. Not many years ago, there was brought forth from that book, by patient and skillful deciphering, a sermon (or rather the heads of a sermon) preached by Thomas

Hooker at Hartford, May 31, 1638. It was a week-day lecture; for May 31, that year, was Thursday. That it was preached on some occasion of general concourse, may be inferred from the matter of it, and from the fact that Mr. Henry Wolcott, Jr., from Windsor, was there taking notes. From the text, Deut. i, 13, "Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you," the preacher deduced these three heads of "doctrine." I. "The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance." II. "The privilege of election, which belongs to the people, must not be exercised according to their humors, but according to the blessed will and law of God." III. "They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them." In illustration and support of these doctrines, the preacher affirmed, as a principle of "reason" or common-sense, that "the foundation of authority [in civil government] is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people." When he came to the "uses"-or, as we should say, the application of his discourse-he called on his hearers to acknowledge thankfully "God's faithfulness" towards them, and the good providence which had made it practicable for them thus to "choose" their own "public magistrates in the fear of God, and "to set the bounds and limitations of the power" with which their magistrates should be investedthat good providence which (in other words) had made them free to organize their infant commonwealth by "such measures as God doth command and vouchsafe." Most naturally did the preacher conclude his discourse with an appeal, which the short-hand reporter summed up in the words, "Exhortation—to persuade us, as God hath given us liberty, to take it."* That sermon by Thomas Hooker from the pulpit of the First Church in Hartford, is the earliest known suggestion of a fundamental law, enacted not by royal charter, nor by concession from any previously existing government, but by the people themselves—a primary and supreme law by which the government is constituted, and which not only provides for *J. H. Trumbull, in Collections of Conn. Historical Society, i, 19–21.

the free choice of magistrates by the people, but also "sets the bounds and limitations of the power and place to which" each magistrate is called.

Remember the date of that Thursday lecture, May 31= June 10, 1638-nearly eight months before the eleven articles of the first written constitution were "sentenced, ordered, and decreed" in a full assembly of the people. We may reasonably assume that others besides Henry Wolcott, Jr., took notes of it,—at least we may believe that others took careful notice of it and remembered it. We may be sure that the doctrine and the exhortation of the sermon were talked about not only among the leading men, such as Haynes, Ludlow, and the rest, but by the farmers in their corn-fields, and in casual meetings of two or three, and (as the days grew short and the evenings long) by neighbors. gathered around some glowing fireside. We may be sure that many a text not only from the Old Testament, but from Rom. xiii, and many other New Testament passages, was handled in sermons on Sabbath-days and lecture-days, and that the doctrine propounded by Mr. Hooker was discussed in the two other pulpits. We may be sure that the first draught of the Fundamental Orders was made early enough to be carefully considered; that every word of it was judiciously pondered, and every phrase corrected that seemed dubious; that even the omission of all reference to the king, or to any superior authority in England, was not accidental; and that, when the finished instrument was submitted to the people, they knew what they were doing, and what was to be the significancy and effect of their vote. They knew that in the exercise of a Divine Right they were establishing civil government in what had been, but was never more to be, a wilderness; and that the government which they were establishing was to be administered by chosen servants of the people constantly responsible to the people for the exercise of powers strictly bounded and limited. The entire proceeding was a great advance beyond the political wisdom of former times; and what the three churches of Connecticut had to do with the development of that political wisdom in

the three towns of Connecticut, is too manifest to be disputed.

Before any white man had settled on the soil of Connecticut, the entire territory of our State had become in English law the property of the Puritan Earl of Warwick. In 1632, he transferred that possession to several noblemen and gentlemen who, by his deed or patent, were constituted proprietors of Connecticut. It was with the consent-or at least the acquiescence of these proprietors as represented by their agents at Boston,* that the colony was established on the river. It was under a similar arrangement that the originally independent towns which, after a little while, became the New Haven colony, were planted. Those proprietors or patentees, Lord Say-and-Seal, Lord Brook, Lord Rich, and eight distinguished knights and gentlemen, of whom one was John Pym, and another was John Hampden-were among the most advanced leaders of the reforming party of England; and they seem to have cared less for the uncertain power of governing their territory than for having it planted with Englishmen of the right sort. Let us look then, at the beginning of civil government in this part of Connecticut, and see what was the relation of the Congregational churches to that beginning.

On the 26th of July,=5th of August, 1637, the ship Hector arrived at Boston, in company with another ship, both from London. In these vessels came a distinguished company of emigrants of whom the two most conspicuous were John Davenport lately vicar of the parish of St. Stephens, Coleman street, London, and Theophilus Eaton, of the same parish, an eminent merchant. Others of the company were from the same metropolitan parish, following the late vicar in his exile. They had come to New England-the leaders and their followers-with the intention of becoming a church, and of making a "plantation" or settlement for that purpose. They were welcomed at Boston, as bringing a large increase of strength to New England; and many offers were made to them both in Massachusetts and in the Plymouth colony.

*J. H. Trumbull, Historical Notes on the Constitution of Conn., 5.