but by the hope of communicating its sacred inspiration to the natives of the country, and of redeeming the numerous souls of these barbarians, from the flames of eternal perdition. By the operation of these powerful causes, they were enabled to prosecute enterprizes and triumph over difficulties, insuperable in the ordinary mood and temper of the human mind.

Although the inhabitants of this state, by long and unintermitted injuries, were attached, with a superstitious reverence, to the dogmas of their religion; their heavenly contemplations, and theological disputes, appear very rarely to have abstracted them from their temporal or municipal concerns. It was in Massachusetts, that the first rays of independence beamed upon our country; that the sparks of the revolution, first kindled into flame. And the history of mankind, does not furnish the example of a people, who have risen with a more rapid ascent, to the same elevation of prosperity, or have defended, with a more resolute, high-spirited and dignified courage, the rational principles of political freedom.

CONNECTICUT.

In the province of Connecticut the first settlements were made at Hartford, in 1635, by emigrations

from Massachusetts, and contained, at the end of the succeeding year, about eight hundred inhabitants.

This scheme of colonization does not appear to have been induced by the temptations of climate, by the advantages of position or fertility of soil; but to have been undertaken by those who were distinguished in their sect for a more romantic or enthusiastic spirit of devotion. They sought, perhaps, in the intricate labyrinths of the desert, a retreat less accessible to the infidelity which, in Massachusetts, had assailed the integrity of the church. From a detail of the calamities and perils of the enterprize, the adventurers seem to have courted the approbation of heaven by a display of religious intrepidity. Leaving a colony already established, in want of population and surrounded by a superfluous waste of territory, whole congregations, men, women, and children, preceded by their clergy, subsisting on the milk of their cattle, penetrated a region unexplored and almost impervious to man or beast. The intermediate wilderness, through which they passed, in solemn and awful procession, rung, it is said, with the praises of God. The Indians followed them in silent admiration.

A second settlement was made at New Haven, in 1637, by emigrants immediately from England, of still more rigid and inflexible sanctity. Their earliest ecclesiastical ordinance, was to prohibit from the privileges of freemen, and their children from the

rites of baptism, all such as were not in full communion with the church, or did not conform implicitly with the formalities of the established religion. And this regulation they maintained, against the recommendation of a more liberal policy by the citizens of Hartford, with a stubborn and relentless pertinacity. All civil magistrates were chosen from the clergy, or from the most devout and influential members of the church, whom they called pillars; and the decisions of these holy men were received, in the affairs of government, as the oracles of truth. They were particularly distinguished by their antipathy to quakers. The laws of God, as delivered to Moses and the prophets, were adopted as their code of jurisprudence, and were declared sufficient for the administration of the temporal as well as spiritual concerns of the commonwealth. But although vice was prohibited among them rather by manners and by the habits of industry and good order, than by laws, they soon discovered the necessity of a departure from their favourite system of legislation.

Some commercial regulations of these two colonies interrupted their harmony with their neighbours of Massachusetts, and religious discussions involved them in frequent discord with each other. Their political institutions were purely republican, and they have preserved them with little alteration or vicissi

tude to the present day. They were united under the same jurisdiction in 1665, from a necessity of cooperation against the contiguous tribes of savages, with whom they maintained a perpetual and sanguinary warfare. In battle they were no less skillful and intrepid soldiers, than in peace they were industrious husbandmen, rigid moralists, and bigoted theologians.

RHODE ISLAND.

A religious controversy in Massachusetts occasion éd, in the year 1636, the settlement of Rhode Island, where the weaker party sought refuge from the fury of their implacable antagonists. They had incurred the displeasure of the community, and were banished, by the authority of the magistrates, principally, for preaching and attempting to propagate the doctrine of toleration. This was regarded by the divines of Massachusetts as an impious rebellion against heaven, or what they esteemed no less iniquitous against the sacred authority of the puritanical church. It was, besides, a transgression of the fundamental laws of the province; for here, as well as in Connecticut, no individual was entitled to the freedom of the body politic, who did not believe in the infallibility of the established hierarchy, and yield an implicit obedience to its sacred institutions.

Rhode Island became, henceforth, an asylum for the unfortunate; for the victims of colonial as well as of European persecution, and its inhabitants have, at all times, been distinguished for their hospitality, humanity and liberality of sentiment.

NEWHAMPSHIRE.

Settlements had been made from the adjacent colonies in New Hampshire, as early as 1623; but, existing under distinct and imperfect systems of government, were united in 1641, though with much opposition, to Massachusetts. They remained under this authority, with some temporary exceptions, until the year 1741, when they assumed a separate and independent jurisdiction. Being exposed to perpetual warfare with the savage tribes in the vicinity, they nourished a hardy and martial youth, for the service of their country, who were deservedly esteemed among the most brave and gallant soldiers of the revolution.

It was computed, in 1642, that about twenty-five thousand emigrants had arrived upon the shores of New England. Fifty towns or villages had been founded, and contained nearly eight thousand men capable of bearing arms. But the revolution of the mother country and consequent ascendance of the