This legislative, and prescribed rules and modes of government, until the first planters of Connecticut came together for the great work on January 14, 1638–9. daring spring into political independence could only have proceeded from men accustomed to some self-created form of public organization ."-BALDWIN: Three Constitutions of Connecticut. CHAPTER X. Who Inspired the Constitution-Hooker-The Sermon-Wolcott's Doctrine Reasons Notes Trumbull's Interpretation In the absence of all record evidence, any estimate of an individual's share or influence in making the constitution of 1639 must be one of conjecture and comparison rather than of demonstration. From a single source, a ray of light shines through the historic lines, and marks one of the sources of their inspiration. It falls on the stalwart figure of a minister of the First Church in Hartford, great in his calling,-Thomas Hooker. He was a Nonconformist, driven out of England by Laud's pursuivants, frozen out of Massachusetts by the oligarchy of magistrates and clerical brethren, and made a democrat, a hater of tyranny and absolutism, an opportunist in the highest sense, when here in Connecticut a way providentially opened to him to vision the rights of a people who would be truly free; and withal great enough never in book or sermon, by voice or pen, so far as history discloses, to make claim to prophecy or honor above his fellows or friends who dared with him, in the face of kingship and its royal grants, to write the first declaration of independence. It is only in the vociferous laudations of some recent writers that the historic orders are described as "Hooker's constitution." For two hundred and twenty-two years after the constitution was written, the honors of its authorship were in general given to Haynes, Hooker, and Ludlow. Then the late Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull deciphered and interpreted some notes of lectures and sermons delivered in Windsor and Hartford from April, 1638, to April, 1641, made by Henry Wolcott, Jr., of Windsor, in a note book now one of the treasures of the Connecticut Historical Society. One of these sermons was preached by Mr. Hooker, May 31, 1638, before the General Court; and under the heads "Doctrine" and "Reasons," Wolcott sets down in his manuscript, in a quaint alphabet and in arbitrary signs, these proposi tions from the lips of the preacher : 66 Doctrine."-I. That the choice of the public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance. II. The privilege of election, which belongs to the people, therefore must not be exercised according to their humors, but according to the blessed will and law of God. III. They who have the power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place into which they call them. "Reasons."-I. Because the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people. II. Because, by a free choice, the hearts of the people will be more inclined to the love of the persons (chosen), and more ready to yield (obedience). III. Because of that duty and engagement of the people. Upon these broad "doctrines" of liberty, foretokened in an earlier letter to Governor Winthrop, and novel in that exact form to all the world, save the freemen of the Connecticut plantation, -rests the constitution. So runs the consensus of opinion between writers of colonial history who, hypercritical, accord too little honor to Hooker, and those who, overzealed, accord too much. The truth is made plain in the equipoise of these scholarly opinions : "It is on the banks of the Connecticut, under the mighty preaching of Thomas Hooker, and in the constitution to which he gave life, if not form, that we draw the first breath of that atmosphere which is now so familiar to us."-JOHNSTON: History of Connecticut. "It marked the beginnings of American democracy, of which Thomas Hooker deserves more than any other man to be called the father."-FISKE: Beginnings of New England. "In so few and such words did young Mr. Wolcott of Windsor set down the substance of that great manifesto of liberty, how little deeming that his jottings are the sole record by which more than two centuries later it shall be redeemed from oblivion, and laurel with new and imperishable honor the memory of the divine and statesman who gave it voice."-TWICHELL: Winthrop. "The outline of principle and idea, the inspiration and spirit of them, were Thomas Hooker's."—Walker : First Church in Hartford. "The man who first visioned and did much to make possible our American democracy."-ELLIOTT: History of New England. All this is true, historically true; and still |