Charter and the Common Law, modified by the particular reverence for the Word of God, which was the characteristic feature of the country and age.

"No man's life shall be taken away, no man's honor or good name shall be stained, no man's person shall be arrested, restrained, banished, dismembered, nor any ways punished, no man shall be deprived of his wife or children, no man's goods or estate shall be taken away, nor any way indamaged, under color of law or countenance of authority, unless it be by virtue or equity of some express law of the country warranting the same, established by a General Court, and sufficiently published; or, in case of the defect of the law in any particular case, by the Word of God. And in capital cases, or in cases concerning dismembering or banishment, according to that Word to be judged by the General Court."

We find no reason to doubt that the government of Massachusetts was faithfully administered according to the spirit of this broad and excellent provision of law both before and after its enactment. Great allowance should be made for the circumstances in which the Colony was placed, and for the temper which was created in the people by the ardor of their religious faith, and by their sudden emancipation from the apprehensions and restraints to which they were subject while in the mother land. A restless spirit, an excess of zeal, an impatience of any control, and a "conscientious contentious" disposition were widely manifested in Massachusetts from the beginning. We can discern enough that must have sorely tried the patience of the magistrates, before they resorted to any decisive measures for ridding themselves of the evil. Weeds and brambles sprang up fast in that little spot in the wilderness, which they had hoped to fence in and cultivate with jealous care as a peculiar garden for their God. Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson in Boston, Roger Williams and Mr. Endicott, in Salem, Mary Dyer and her Quaker brothers and sisters, broached heresies which were as subversive of just authority in government, as they were shocking to orthodoxy in religion. We are wont to blame the magistrates of those days for drawing the reins too tight, for governing over much, for the prying and inquisitorial manner in which they regulated private conduct and belief. But we do not enough

consider the difficulties of their position, and the vehement and intractable character of the religious enthusiasts whom they governed. It is easy for the stable government of a populous and flourishing state, at the present time, to disregard the senseless proceedings of the hot-headed few, who bellow forth doctrines at war with all religious belief and all the institutions of society. Such extravagances make no impression on the good sense of the bulk of the community, and the authors of them are sufficiently punished by contemptuous neglect. But it was otherwise when a few hundred Puritans, over two centuries ago, formed their feeble and isolated settlements in the wilderness, surrounded by savage foes, and thousands of miles from any effectual aid. They could not afford to disregard Antinomian heresies and Fifth Monarchy views of government. When the Pequod war was on the eve of breaking out, half of the citizens of Boston had to be disarmed before the decided will of the majority could be carried out, by banishing from the Colony a fanatical female preacher, who denounced most of the clergymen and magistrates as being under a covenant of works, which, in the language of those days, implied that they were possessed of the devil, and who taught that the Holy Ghost dwelt personally in those justified saints who thundered out these terrible anathemas.

We cannot feel much sympathy even for the case of the illustrious founder of Rhode Island. Those who have fully examined the case of Roger Williams may well doubt which of the two parties to it was the persecutor, and which the persecuted. This excellent man, but hot-headed controversialist, began by excommunicating his own church at Salem, because they refused to excommunicate all the other churches, who had not yet repented of the deadly sin of having once conformed to the Church of England; and he continued by excommunicating his own wife because she remained in communion with the church of which he had been pastor. For some time, he would neither say grace or return thanks at his own table, if this poor unregenerate woman, as he called her, was present at it. True, he was the first to proclaim the doctrine of universal religious toleration; a very natural dogma

for one who stood absolutely alone in his opinions, and who excommunicated all the world for refusing to join him. But the most dangerous offence which he gave was in persuading Mr. Endicot to cut the cross out of the king's colors, an unpardonable insult to the government at home, on which the Colonists depended for toleration, if not for protection; and which they instructed Mr. Downing, in England, to explain away, as the act of an individual, so that it might not operate to their injury. Williams also denied the rights of the Colonists to the lands which they held, saying that they belonged to the Indians, and that King James told a lie when he affirmed that the country became the property of the crown by right of discovery. After vainly expostulating with him for months, we cannot see that it argued any great want of charity on the part of the magistrates to give the preacher of these mad doctrines notice, that, within six weeks, he must leave their jurisdiction. He had to travel only forty miles in order to get out of it.

But we had no intention of entering at so much length upon an apology for the fathers of Massachusetts. We do not believe, indeed, that their conduct or their principles stand in any need of an apology, though some unfounded strictures upon their policy have been so frequently repeated that they seem to have affected even the fair and candid mind of the editor of these volumes. It is hazardous to differ from Mr. Savage on any point relating to the early history of New England; but we must avow our conviction that he has often judged the conduct of Winthrop and his colleagues a little too harshly. Perhaps an honest and firm purpose not to yield to any undue partiality for the writer of the work upon which he has bestowed so much loving toil, has unconsciously hurried his mind into the opposite extreme. Perhaps, also, his judgment was a little warped by the fact that, among those who suffered from the rigid policy of the early governors of New England, were some whom he is deservedly proud to claim as his own ancestors. But when the essential facts of the history are not disputed, his candor will readily forgive those who have arrived at different conclusions respecting the judgment that is to be passed upon them; and he will even

pardon us if we have not spoken with befitting respect of the theological and political opinions of his seven-times-greatgrandmother. For our own part, the study of every authentic record of the sayings and the doings of these men only increases our admiration of the prudence and the statesmanship, as well as the uprightness, the self-denial, and the piety with which they governed their little commonwealth, and laid the foundations of the present character and present prosperity of New England.

ART. IV. Memorials and Correspondence of CHARLES JAMES Fox. Edited by the RT. HON. LORD JOHN RUSSELL, M. P. Philadelphia, Blanchard & Lea. 1853. 2 vols. 12mo.

"THERE is not a better man in England than Lord John Russell; but his worst failure is, that he is utterly ignorant of all moral fear; there is nothing he would not undertake. I believe he would perform the operation for the stone, build St. Peter's, or assume (with or without ten minutes' notice) the command of the Channel fleet; and no one would discover, from his manner, that the patient had died, the church tumbled down, and the Channel fleet been knocked to atoms." * The witty Canon of St. Paul's, whose own versatility was hardly less than that which he has here so epigrammatically described, would have beheld with astonishment the literary freaks of the many-sided Premier; for the experience of the last year enables us to say that he would undertake, with alacrity, to write the Life or edit the Correspondence of any man in England, from the Duke of Wellington down to Joseph Grimaldi; and from any light that Lord John would condescend to throw upon the subject, an uninformed reader would be left to guess which of his victims penetrated the columns of Marmont at Salamanca, and which nightly amused her Majesty's subjects at Astley's.

There are many things which the distinguished politician who edits this compilation has done exceedingly well; but

there are some things he certainly has done equally ill. He is Jack the Giant-killer, who was active in the slaughter of the kindred monsters of Rotten-borough and Corn-law; but he is also "the little boy who chalked 'No Popery' on Cardinal Wiseman's door, and then ran away." (Vide Punch.) If he was not so sanguine as to anticipate, with the impulsive Brougham, that every peasant in England would, through the potent influences of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, be educated to understand Bacon, he has done all that one man can do to realize the hope of William Cobbett, that every poor man in the realm might have bacon to eat. Unfortunately, however, Lord John's administrative career was cut short by the accession of the Conservatives to power; and during the brief interval for which they retained it, the public were presented with the Life and Correspondence of Moore, and the Memorials and Correspondence of Fox, as the fruits of the Ex-Premier's leisure.

The former of these two productions has been already noticed in this Review, and we allude to it again only to compare it with Lord John's more recent effort. It was not entirely the editor's fault that that work gave so little satisfaction; for it was Moore's misfortune that he had nothing better to do than to keep a Diary, in which he had the indiscretion to chronicle the very smallest of beer; - good and bad," poor Tom" set it all down, very little in malice, and nothing extenuating. How sorry he was to leave his darling Bessie how delighted he was to be invited to sing his pretty melodies before applauding peers and lovely Right Honorableshis little griefs and his great joys his dinners, and his “ices at Tortoni's." (Moore's journal, while at Paris, is as full of allusions to "ices," as if it had been originally kept on papyrus, and written in hieroglyphics, by a religiously-inclined gentleman of Thebes, some five hundred years before the invasion of Cambyses.) The bard of Erin, we fear, would have prized more highly the connection of his name with that of a scion of the House of Bedford, than all the laurels that fashion and taste have placed upon the brow of him who sang that more than Elysian transit through the Valley of Cashmere.