he bends his neck, with voluntary submission, to the yoke, remains with a brutal instinct within the narrow eircle of his servitude and subsistence, and is removed, but by the lash, from the dominions of his master. Those who are bound by the charities of social refinement, by friendship, consanguinity, or the love of country, are impelled to expatriation only by the force of irresistible causes; and, when disunited, by the pressure of honorable misfortune, from the affections and congenialities which consecrate the land of their nativity, animated by a spirit of independence, by piety to heaven and love for posterity, they are driven, by the excitement of these generous feelings, to seclusion or solitude, where, remote from the converse and inhumanity of their fellow creatures, they may enjoy the fruits of their industry, and security from pride, oppression, and injustice.

The dominions of the English in America, were, two centuries ago, covered by their native forests, and inhabited by a race of warlike and fierce barbarians, ignorant of the enjoyments, and uncorrupted by the arts of civilized life. The face of this vast desert is now smoothed, and its fertile plains pour out their abundant treasures to the husbandman. A people thus engaged in the occupations of agriculture must necessarily possess or acquire those social virtues which are inseparable from that peaceful and

innocent life. Those who maintain their liberties or assert their independence, must be endowed with faculties adequate to the conception of their rights, and with courage to defend them.

The colonists proceeding, for the most part, from the same country, speaking the same language, and governed by similar institutions, were characterized by general features of resemblance; but local and accidental causes, and religion, which has a power ful influence in modifying the human mind, occasioned a variety of genius and dispositions among them, which their subsequent intercourse and political union have not altogether obliterated. To comprehend these peculiarities we must refer to the history of their original establishments and institutions.

MASSACHUSETTS.

The first settlements of this province were begun in the reign of king James the first, and in the year 1620. The reformation was scarcely effected in England by the propagation of the doctrines of Luther, when a new system of religion, under the auspices of Calvin, again excited the ungovernable spirit of ecclesiastical dissention. The proselytes of the latter, to escape the persecutions of their more powerful antagonists, retired into Holland, and there observed, for some years, the ceremonies of their religion, in

liberty, security and neglect; and enjoyed a privilege, unusual in that age, of following the guidance of the faculties they had received from the Deity in offering him the homage of their devotions. But, fearing contamination from the poisonous contact of other persuasions, and dreading, from the social intercourse and matrimonial intermixture of strangers, the final extinction of their sect, they resolved tomigrate to America. There they hoped to worship God in peace, during their own lives, and transmit their religion unadulterated into the bosom of their posterity. From their extreme opposition to the exterior pomp and ceremony of the Catholic church, from the pure and abstract nature of their divinity, and from the plainness of their dress and deportment, they acquired or assumed the appellation of puritans. They were obnoxious to the British government from the democratical tendency of their doctrines.

These forefathers of New England, consisting of one hundred souls, bore with them their aged parents and infant children, left the tombs of their relations, and traversed, in the infancy of navigation, an ocean of three thousand miles. They established their colony, amidst a race of wild and ferocious savages, in the rains and storms of an intemperate winter and in the frightful regions of a wilderness untrodden by civilized man. An enterprize more bold and adventu

rous, more glorious and important in its consequences, has seldom been achieved by human courage and ambition. Their first habitations were at New Plymouth. The anniversary of their landing is yet celebrated among their descendants by thanksgiving and by such emblematic festivities and ceremonies as represent the frugal simplicity, resignation and christain courage of these pious apostles of their liberty and religion. The stone first consecrated by their footsteps, is transported, as a monument of the memorable event, to the centre of the town, and will, no doubt, be visited in future ages, as an object of curiosity or veneration.

The sin of puritanism, which continued at this time to be persecuted with unmitigated rigour in England, furnished to the infant colony an increase of inhabitants. The first important expedition, composed of fifteen hundred persons, arrived in Massachusetts, and founded, in 1630, the towns of Salem, Charleston, and Boston. In this adventure were many personages of distinction and fortune. Some who were afterwards notorious in the English revolution. Oliver Cromwell, Hampden, Pym and others, who had perhaps, been harmless in the new world, were detained, after their embarkation, by an improvident prohibition of their sovereign, and reserved for the subversion of his throne.

ntain their existence amidst the dan

that oned them. But the ferocity of the savage and the vild beast, and even the deplorable. calamities of hunger, exhibited to the imagination of these holy adventurers a much less terrific and disgus ting spectacle than that which they had left behind them; the latin prayers, the printed service, organs, ecclesiastical mitres, the gorgeous drapery and pont pous exhibitions of the church of Rome, and the sa tisfaction they experienced, of being so far removed from the odious aspect of bishops, prelates and the half refined, temporising followers of Luther admi nistered a consolation to them, amidst the severities. of the seasons, the looms and sickly atmosphere the desert, equal to the Tutest afflictions of their ad versity. By previous sufferin by the rigours of po verty and persecution, they had already been hardened into a constitutional bravery, and were now animated not only by the inaccessible security of their religion,