is always the least, and of that best part the wiser part is always the lesser." Hooker, on the other hand, held that "in matters which concern the common good, a general council, chosen by all, to transact businesses which concern all, I conceive most suitable to rule, and most safe for relief of the whole." To this position Hooker steadfastly adhered, and in the course of a sermon preached by him, after Connecticut had commenced its separate and independent existence, he maintained that "the foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people; that the choice of the public magistrates belongs to the people of God's own allowance; and that they who have the power to appoint officers and magistrates have the right also to set the bounds and limitation of the power and place unto which they call them." The government of Connecticut was settled on a purely democratic basis, and its Constitution was the "first written Constitution of modern democracy," and more, perhaps, than any other man, Thomas Hooker deserves to be called the father of American democracy. "Well knowing," its preamble recited, "where a people are gathered together the Word of God requires that to maintayne the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affayres of the people at all seasons as occasion shall require; doe

1 "We have passed from the world of unwritten to that of written Constitutions, from a world of government by usage, tradition, and chartered privileges, wrested from kings, to a world of government by public reason embodied in codes of political law."-The United States, an Outline of Political History, by Goldwin Smith, D.C.L., p. 20.

therefore associate and conjoyne ourselues to be as one Publicke State or Commonwealth, and doe, for ourselves and our successors, and such as shall be adjoyned to us hereafter, enter into Combination and Confederation together, to maintayne and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ which we now professe, as also the discipline of the Churches; which, according to the truth of the said Gospell, is now practised amongst us; as also in our civill affairs to be guided and governed according to such Lawes and Rules, Orders and Decrees as shall be made, ordered, and decreed, as followeth : "1 What is omitted from the written Constitution is almost as significant as what it contains. Such expressions as those introduced into the compact drawn up in the cabin of the Mayflower, "dread sovereign," or "gracious King," are conspicuous by their absence. Connecticut recognised no allegiance to the British Crown, nor to any government outside its own bounds. It refused to make church membership a condition of exercising the franchise, and also church attendance compulsory, in this respect departing from the practice of Massachusetts, and conforming to the example of New Plymouth. "More than two centuries have elapsed; the world has been made. wiser by the most varied experience; political institutions have become the theme on which the most. powerful and cultivated minds have been employed, and So many constitutions have been framed or reformed, stifled or subverted, that memory may despair of a complete catalogue; but the people of Connecticut have found no reason to deviate essentially

1 Dr. Borgeaud's Rise of Modern Democracy, p. 121.

from the frame of government established by their fathers."

New Hampshire.-The settlement of New Hampshire in 1623 need not detain us further than to note that of its four towns, two were founded by Antinomians driven out from Boston. The other two were founded by Episcopalians, and were the first-fruits of the colonising efforts of Gorges and Mason. In 1641, at the request of a majority of the settlers, this colony was added to Massachusetts.

New Haven. The colony of New Haven was founded in 1638 under the leadership of John Davenport, a clergyman, and Theophilus Eaton, a merchant, possessed of considerable substance. Davenport was very apprehensive lest his flock should be led away by the Antinomian heresy which had broken out in Massachusetts, and for this and other reasons connected with the insufficiency of Massachusetts as a place of trade, they wished to withdraw from its jurisdiction and set up an independent government of their own. Each of the towns was to be governed by seven ecclesiastical officers, known as "pillars of the Church." These seven were to gather round them others who were eligible for membership in the Church, and these were to be the nucleus of the new State. The Bible was their statute-book, and "the choice of magistrates, legislation, the rights of inheritance, and all matters of that kind were to be decided according to the rules of Holy Scripture." They re

1 Bancroft's History, vol. i. p. 302, revised edition, p. 319.

2 Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven, ed. Ch. J. Hoadley (Hartford, 1857), p. 12.

unfit for this, for the State This law had the effect of the settlers in the town of

jected trial by jury, that being no part of the Mosaic law. Church membership was the condition of citizenship; he who was not fit for that was must be "according to God." disfranchising more than half New Haven, nearly half in Guildford, and less than one-fifth in Milford. "The first leaders of the colony of New Haven represent the clerical tendencies of Congregationalism.” 1 Thus New Haven, even as to its basis of government, was the very opposite of Connecticut; it was less democratic even than Massachusetts; it was indeed an absolute theocracy, but founded upon the voluntary concurrence of the people themselves. It maintained its separate existence, however, for only about twenty-five years; at the end of that time it was annexed to Connecticut.

The Pequot Indians.-Immediately after the little federation of towns in Connecticut had been formed, and before they had taken the step of separating from Massachusetts, they found themselves threatened by a new and alarming peril. The various tribes of Indians inhabiting the regions in the midst of which the colonists had made their home, always regarded the latter as game to be hunted down, tomahawked, and, if possible, exterminated. Of these tribes the Iroquois and the Pequots were the most cruel, vindictive, and ruthless. The latter were living in close neighbourhood to the settlers in the Connecticut valley, and they had seven hundred warriors at their command. The Pequot Indians formed an alliance with their hereditary enemies, the 1 Dr. Borgeaud's Rise of Modern Democracy, p. 135.

Narragansetts, and conceived the design of falling upon the colonists, who were less than two hundred in number. This conspiracy was frustrated by Roger Williams, who, with consummate skill and courage, succeeded in dissolving this ill-starred alliance. Writing many years afterwards, he says: "I had my share of service to the whole land in that Pequot business . . . the Lord helped me immediately to put my life into my hand, and scarce acquainting my wife, to ship myself all alone, in a poor canoe, and to cut through a stormy wind, with great seas, every minute in hazard of life, to the sachem's house. Three days and nights my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequot ambassadors, whose hands and arms, methought, reeked with the blood of my countrymen massacred by them on Connecticut river, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also.”1 Williams was so far successful that he was able to prevail upon the Narragansett chiefs to refrain from their design, and the result was, they made a treaty of alliance with the English. But the Pequots were implacable, and were not to be turned from their hostile purpose. Connecticut appealed to Massachusetts and Plymouth for aid, which was readily granted. A fierce battle ensued, one fought at desperate odds on the part of the colonists; but the savages could make no stand

1 "Williams' opportunities of studying the Indian character were perhaps greater than those of any other man of his time. He was always an advocate for justice towards them. But he seems to have had no better opinion of them than Mr. Parkman (see his Jesuits in North America), calling them sharply and shortly wolves endowed with men's brains."-Lowell's Among my Books, New England Two Centuries Ago, p. 277.