mother country. For, said Winthrop, "if we in America should forbear to unite for offence and defence against a common enemy till we have leave from England, our throats might be cut before the messenger could be half seas through." This relation of dependence upon the mother country was unhappily established from the very beginning. It was enshrined in the covenant signed in the cabin of the Mayflower: "We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign King James," etc. The colonists thus never suffered themselves to forget that they were liegemen of a sovereign on the other side of the Atlantic. Herein lay the fatal seeds of misunderstanding—of encroachment on the side of the home Government, of revolt on that of the growing colony, and ultimately of revolution. This was the beginning of woes, the full measure of which came in 1765."1

The Government, represented by Strafford, Laud, and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, saw that, powerless as they were to check the rising liberties of the colonies, they could, at any rate, succeed in reducing the dimensions of the evil by staying the tide of emigration. None but the poorest, and socially the most uninfluential, were allowed to leave the country without a special permission, and these were required to take the oath of supremacy and allegiance to the King. On April 30, 1637, the following proclamation was issued: "The King being informed that great numbers of his subjects are yearly transported into New England with their families and whole estates, that they might be out of the reach of

1 See Goldwin Smith's United States, pp. 6, 7.

ecclesiastical authority, His Majesty therefore commands that his officers of the several ports should suffer none to pass without licence from the Commissioners of the Plantations, and a testimonial from their minister of their conformity to the orders and discipline of the Church." To stop the flight of the ministers, the following Order of Council was published: "Whereas it is observed that such ministers as are unconformable to the discipline and ceremonies of the Church do frequently transport themselves to the plantations, where they take liberty to nourish their factious and sysmatical humours to the hindrance of the good, conformity, and unity of the Church, we therefore expressly command you, in His Majesty's name, to suffer no clergyman to transport himself without a testimonial from the Archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop of London." This edict did not produce any appreciable effect in restraining those who were bent on leaving the country. A squadron of eight ships in the Thames, preparing to set sail for the New World, was arrested by order of the Privy Council. It has been alleged that Hampden and Cromwell, with other illustrious patriots, were on board this fleet, intending to seek in the New World the rights and privileges which they had sought vainly in the Old; but this statement appears to rest upon no basis of fact, and on the face of it, it is a most improbable story; and yet, improbable as it is, it is avouched by Hallam,1 Hume, and other historians.

1 Hallam's History, vol. ii. p. 58: "Men of a higher rank than the first colonists, and now become hopeless alike of the civil and religious liberties of England; men of capacious and commanding

Loss to the mother country represented by New England.—Neal, the Puritan historian, basing his statements on Mather's History of New England, says that during twelve years of Laud's administration there went. over the sea about four thousand planters, carrying with them materials, in money and cattle, etc., to the value of not less than one hundred and ninety-two thousand pounds. Upon the whole, it has been computed that the four settlements of New England, viz. Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven, all which were accomplished before the civil wars, drained England of four or five hundred thousand pounds in money (a very great sum in those days); and if the persecution of the Puritans had continued twelve years longer, it is thought that a fourth part of the riches of the kingdom would have passed out of it through this channel." 1

The Long Parliament met in 1640. This marked the turn of the tide for the Puritans both at home and abroad. It not only stayed the tide of emigration, but induced many to return to their native land. The population of New England, fed by the continuous stream of emigration

minds, formed to be the legislators and generals of an infant republic, -the wise and cautious Lord Say, the acknowledged chief of the Independent sect; the brave, open, and enthusiastic Lord Brooke ; Sir Arthur Haselrig Hampden, ashamed of a country for whose rights he had fought alone; Cromwell, panting with energies that he could neither control nor explain, and whose unconquerable fire was still wrapt in smoke to every eye but that of his kinsman Hampden, were preparing to embark for America, when Laud, for his own and his master's cause, procured an Order of Council to stop their departure.”

1 Neal, vol. i. p. 546; Palfrey's History of New England, vol. i. p. 584.

between the years 1620 and 1640, reached to between twenty-three and twenty-four thousand. But from 1640 there set in a return tide, which did not cease to flow for that same century and a quarter, so that, in that period, more persons passed from New England to the mother country than came out from the mother country to New England. It must not be supposed, however, on this account, that New England continued to be the sterile, inhospitable soil and clime that it was to the first settlers. Nowhere was man's power to subjugate by his indomitable will the forces of nature, and make them subservient to his happiness and prosperity, more singularly displayed. When the persecutions ceased in England there were dwelling in New England thousands who would not change their country for any other in the world. At one time Cromwell offered the colonists the rich and sunny land of Jamaica in exchange for their own. At another time he proposed to transplant them to Ireland; but, wisely for themselves and for the world, they preferred to remain where they were. "As Ireland will not brook venomous beasts, so will not that land vile livers.' One might dwell there "from year to year, and not see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a beggar." The consequence was a marked increase of health and longevity. The average duration of life in New England, as compared with Europe, was doubled; and the human race was so vigorous that of all who were born into the world, more than two in ten, full four in nineteen, attained the age of seventy. Of those who lived beyond ninety, the proportion, as compared with European tables of longevity, was still more remarkable. "I have dwelt

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the longer," continues Mr. Bancroft, " on the character of the early Puritans of New England, for they were the parents of one third the whole white population of the United States as it was in 1834. Within the first fifteen years—and there was never afterwards any considerable increase from England-we have seen that there came over twenty-one thousand two hundred persons, or four thousand families. Their descendants were in 1834 not far from four millions.2 Each family has multiplied on the average to one thousand souls. To New York and Ohio, where they then constituted half the population, they carried the Puritan system of free schools; and their example is spreading it through the civilised world."

The progress which had been made in New England in the planting of free institutions, and the measure in which civil and religious freedom was possessed and enjoyed, can be best appreciated, as De Tocqueville 3 has pointed out, by running our eye, even rapidly, over the then existing condition of Europe. In every portion of that continent absolutism still reigned. The aspirations of the people were stifled; they were systematically exploited in the

1 "It would probably be coming somewhere near the truth to divide the present [this was written in 1858] white population of the United States into three equal parts-one part belonging to the New England stock, one the posterity of English who settled in the other Atlantic colonies, and another consisting of the aggregate of Irish, Scotch, French, Dutch, German, Swedish, Spanish, and other immigrants, and their descendants."-See Preface to Palfrey's History of New England, ix.

2 Bancroft's History of the United States, revised edition, vol. i. p. 375. The population of the United States is now not far from seventy millions.

3 De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. i. 42, 43.