great speech argued that public criticism is a necessary safeguard for free government, and that, to prevent the crushing out of a legitimate and needed criticism, the jury in such a trial must decide whether the words used were libelous or true. This cause, said he, is "not the Cause of a poor Printer alone, nor of New York alone," but of "every free Man on the Main of America." He called upon the jury to guard the liberty "to which Nature and the Laws of our Country have given us the Right, the Liberty of exposing and opposing arbitrary Power (in these parts of the World at least) by speaking and writing the Truth." "A free people," he exclaimed bluntly, "are not obliged by any Law to support a Governor who goes about to destroy a Province." The jury insisted upon this right, and declared Zenger "Not guilty." Gouverneur Morris afterward styled this acquittal "the morning star of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America.”

The whole constitutional conflict outlined in this chapter was one of the chief preparations for the Revolution; and

Preparation for the Revolution

the training secured by the colonists in these. struggles explains the skill with which they waged the long opposition to George III, from 1760 to 1775, before the contest became open war. The English historian, Doyle, says of the period 1690-1760: "The demands made upon the colonists, [and] the restrictions imposed upon them, were often in perfect conformity with equity and reason. [But] it can seldom be said that the method of enforcement [by England] was sympathetic, or even intelligent. . . . The temper of mind, the habits of thought and action, which made successful resistance possible [at the time of the Revolution] had their origin in these disputes, which had kept alive an abiding spirit of bitterness and vindictiveness between the colonists and those set in authority over them, and had furnished the former with continuous training in the arts of political conflict."

CHAPTER VIII

COLONIAL LIFE

BEFORE we pass to the separation from England, it remains to gather up a number of topics vitally related to colonial life, which have not fitted into our brief chronological story. Some of these have to do mainly with peculiarities due to existence on a distant frontier; some belong essentially to the age.

"Blue

England

1. Much colonial legislation goes under the name of Blue Laws. The term signifies either undue severity in punishing ordinary crime, or unreasonable interference with personal liberty. In the first sense, that of Laws bloody laws, the colonists could not be blamed in New by Europeans of their day. Everywhere, life was still harsh and cruel; but American legislation was more humane and rational than that of England or France. True, many barbarities did survive. The pillory and whipping post, with clipping of ears, were in universal use. As late as 1748, a Virginian law required every parish to have these instruments ready, and suggested also a ducking stool for "brabbling women." Prison life was unspeakably foul and horrible. Death was the penalty for many deeds not now considered capital crimes in any civilized land; and many punishments seem to us ingeniously repulsive, such as branding for robbery or other crimes. (In nearly any part of the world outside New England the Hester of Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter would have borne the shameful insignia of her sin, not worked upon her dress, but burnt upon her flesh.) When the colonies were growing up, there were over fifty offenses punishable with death in England. This number increased to about two hundred before the "sanguinary chaos" was reformed in the nineteenth

century.

66

Not more than eighteen offenses were ever 'capital" in New England. Virginia ran the number up to twenty-seven; but in large part this was due to her cruel slave laws, which were rarely enforced.

In the second meaning of Blue Laws, that of inquisitorial legislation, New England comes in for just criticism. Not that she was much worse than the rest of the world even in that. To-day, as a rule, legislation aims to correct a man's conduct only where it directly affects other people; but in that day, all over Christendom, the state tried to regulate conduct purely personal. This was because state and church were so closely connected. In Virginia, the colonial law required attendance at church, and forbade traveling on Sunday. In the Puritan colonies such legislation was more minutely vexing, and more rigorously enforced. But even here the many laws against "immodest fashions and costly apparel" had to yield somewhat to the gentle Puritan mothers — as is manifest in a naïve entry of Winthrop's in 1638:

"The court, taking into consideration the great disorder general through the country in costliness of apparel, and following new fashions, sent for the elders of the churches, and conferred with them about it, and laid it upon them, as belonging to them, to redress it, by urging it upon the consciences of their people, which they promised to do. But little was done about it; for divers of the elders' wives, etc., were in some measure partners in this general disorder."

Moreover, the most common specific charges against New England are wholly false. It is still widely believed that in Connecticut the law forbade a woman to kiss her child on Sunday; that it prohibited playing on "any instrument of music except the drum, trumpet, and jewsharp"; and that it required "all males" to have their hair "cut round according to a cap." These "laws" are merely Peters' in- the ingenious vengeance of a fugitive Tory clergyman (S. A. Peters), who during the Revolution published in England a History of Connecticut. The ve

And Mr.

ventions

THE DECAY OF PURITANISM

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racity of the Reverend Mr. Peters may be judged from other items in his History. He pictures the inhabitants of a Connecticut village fleeing from their beds, mistaking the croaking of an "army of thirsty frogs" (on their way from one pond to another) for the yells of an attacking party of French and Indians; and he describes the rapids of the Connecticut River thus, "Here water is consolidated without frost, by pressure, by swiftness, between the pinching, sturdy rocks, to such a degree of induration that an iron crow [bar] floats smoothly down its current!" This quaint book contains a list of forty-five alleged "Blue Laws." Some are essentially correct, and most have some basis in fact; but a few are the mere malicious inventions mentioned above, and it is by these almost alone that the "code" is generally known.

of Puritans

2. Soon after 1650 there began a slow decay in Puritanism. The historian Freeman complains that students of history go wrong because they think that "all the An- The three cients lived at the same time." Nor have all generations the Moderns lived at the same time. It is essen- in the 17th tial to see the colonist of 1730 or 1700 as a century different creature from his great grandfather of 1660 or 1630. Even in the first century in Massachusetts, the three generations had each its own character. The first great generation of founders (the leaders, at least) were strong, genial, tactful men, broadened by European culture and by wide experience in camp and court, and preserving a fine dignity, sometimes tender graces even, in their stern frontier lives. Their Puritanism was sometimes somber, but never petty. It was like the noble Puritanism of Milton in his youth, the splendid enthusiasm of the "spacious Elizabethan days," sobered and uplifted by moral earnestness and religious devotion. Winthrop and Cotton and their fellows, who had left ancestral manor houses to dwell in rude cabins for conscience' sake, lived an exalted poem day by day in their unfaltering conviction of the Divine abiding within them and around them. But their children

could not easily rise to this height. As early as 1646, the Massachusetts General Court laments the desecration of the Sabbath by "youths and maydes" "uncivilly walkinge in the streets and fields. . . and otherwise misspending that precious time"; and in the records of Watertown for 1669 we read, "It was agreed that the selectmen shall take their turnes, every man his Day, to site upon the Gallary to looke to the youthes. . . in the time of publike exercises on the Lords Days, and that the two Constables shalbe desired to take their turnes to site there also."

Grown to manhood, these sons and grandsons of the founders laid aside frivolity, it is true, and became solemn and stern; but they show Puritanism in the sere. The necessities of frontier life made them nimble-witted, inquisitive, pushing, better able than their fathers "to find their way in the woods" and to rear crops and children under New World conditions. But the unceasing struggle and petty privations (theirs not by choice now, but by compulsion), made their lives harsh and unlovely and bitter. Most of the finer thought and broad outlook of the first generation fell away, and they had never felt its splendid self-sacrifice. Faith gave way to formula; inspiration was replaced by tradition and cant. The second generation lost the poetry out of Puritanism; the third generation began to lose the power. Much that is vital to man always remained. Puritanism continued to teach the supremacy of conscience with emphasis never excelled in religious movements; and, in its darkest period, sweet and gentle lives sometimes blossomed out of it. But before 1700 it showed a great decline.

That decay was associated with a marked increase in gloom in New England life. Gloom had been an incident An increase of Puritanism in its best day: now it became so of gloom dominant as to distort religion. The damnation scene of Wigglesworth's Day of Doom was long the most popular "poetry" in New England. Two extracts may indicate its character for literature and for thought: