Page images
PDF
EPUB

THE PURITANS OF NEW ENGLAND

EDWIN P. WHIPPLE

This extract forms the conclusion of Mr. Whipple's review of Neal's "History of the Puritans," which first appeared in the North American Review, January, 1845. This review is found in Vol. I. of Mr. Whipple's "Essays and Reviews," and is here reprinted by special permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, the publishers.

The Puritans-there is a charm in that word which will never be lost on a New England ear. It is closely associated with all that is great in New England history. It is hallowed by a thousand memories of obstacles overthrown, of dangers nobly braved, of sufferings unshrinkingly borne, in the service of freedom and religion. It kindles at once the pride of ancestry, and inspires the deepest feelings of national veneration. It points to examples of valor in all its modes of manifestation,-in the hall of debate, on the field of battle, before the tribunal of power, at the martyr's stake. It is a name which will never die out of New England hearts. Wherever virtue resists temptation, wherever men meet death for religion's sake, wherever the gilded baseness of the world stands abashed before conscientious principles, there will be the spirit of the Puritans.

They have left deep and broad marks of their influence on human society. Their children, in all times, will rise up and call them blessed. A thousand witnesses of their courage, their industry, their sagacity, their invincible perseverance in well-doing, their love

WILLIAM PENN

9

of free institutions, their respect for justice, their hatred of wrong, are all around us, and bear grateful evidence daily to their memory. We cannot forget them, even if we had sufficient baseness to wish it. Every spot of New England earth has a story to tell of them; every cherished institution of New England society bears the print of their minds.

The strongest element of New England character has been transmitted with their blood. So intense is our sense of affiliation with their nature, that we speak of them universally as our "fathers." And though their fame everywhere else were weighed down with calumny and hatred, though the principles for which they contended, and the noble deeds they performed, should become the scoff of sycophants and oppressors, and be blackened by the smooth falsehoods of the selfish and the cold, there never will be wanting hearts in New England to kindle at their virtues, nor tongues and pens to vindicate their name.

WILLIAM PENN

ROBERT J. BURDETTE

An extract from Mr. Burdette's "Life of William Penn," published in 1882, in the "American Worthies" Series. Copyright by the publishers, Henry Holt & Company. Reprinted by permission.

Born in stormy times, William Penn walked amid troubled waters all his days. In an age of bitter persecution and unbridled wickedness, he never wronged

his conscience. A favored member of a court where statesmanship was intrigue and trickery, and where the highest morality was corruption, he never stained his hand with a bribe. Living under a government at war with the people, and educated in a school that taught the doctrine of passive obedience, his lifelong dream was of a popular government, of a state where the people ruled.

In his early manhood, at the bidding of conscience, against the advice of his nearest friends, in opposition to stern paternal commands, against every dictate of worldly wisdom and human prudence, in spite of all the dazzling temptations of ambition so alluring to the heart of a young man, he turned aside from the broad, fair highway to wealth, position, and distinction that the hands of a king opened before him, and casting his lot with the sect which was weakest and most unpopular in England, through paths that were tangled with trouble and lined with pitiless thorns of persecution, he walked into honor and fame and the reverence of the world, such as royalty could not promise and could not give him.

In the land where he planted his model state, today no descendant bears his name. In the religious society for which he suffered imprisonment, persecution, and banishment from home, to-day no child of his blood and name walks in Christian fellowship or stands uncovered in worship. His name has faded out of the living meetings of the Friends, out of the land that crowns his memory with sincerest reverence. Even the uncertain stone that would mark his grave

[blocks in formation]

stands doubtingly among the kindred ashes that hallow the ground where he sleeps.

But his monument, grander than storied column of granite or noble shapes of bronze, is set in the glit tering brilliants of mighty states between the seas. His noblest epitaph is written in the state that bears his honored name. The little town he planned to be his capital has become a city larger in area than any European capital he knew. Beyond his fondest

dreams has grown the state he planted in the wilderness by "deeds of peace." Out of the gloomy mines that slept beneath its mountains while he lived, the measureless wealth of his model state sparkles and glows on millions of hearthstones. From its forests of derricks and miles of creeping pipe-lines, the world is lighted from the state of Penn, with a radiance to which the sons of the founder's sons were blind. Roaring blast and smoky forge and ringing hammer are tearing and beating the wealth of princes from the mines that the founder never knew.

Clasping the continent, from sea to sea stretches a chain of states as free as his own. From sunrise to sunset reaches a land where the will of the people is the supreme law, a land that never felt the pressure of a throne and never saw a sceptre. And in the heart of the city that was his capital, in an old historic hall still stands the bell that first, in the name of the doctrines that he taught his colonists, proclaimed liberty throughout the land and to the inhabitants thereof. This is his monument; and every noble charity gracing the state he founded is his epitaph.

ENGLAND AND THE AMERICAN COLONIES

EDMUND BURKE

Taken from the peroration of Burke's speech on "Conciliation with the Colonies," delivered in the House of Commons, March 22, 1775.

My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties, which, though light as air, yet are as strong as the links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government,—they will cling and grapple to you; and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing, and their privileges another; that these two things may exist without any mutual relation,-the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened; and everything hastens to decay and dissolution.

As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, wherever that chosen race--the sons of England-worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you. The more they multiply, the more friends will you have; the more ardently they love liberty, the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere: it is a weed that grows in every soil. But until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you. This is

« PreviousContinue »