Part 12

The historians of New-England boast much of the happiness all parties there enjoy in not being subject, as in England, to sacramental test by way of qualification for preferment in the State; on which account, with peculiar propriety, it might be called a free country. The truth is, there never has been occasion for such a test-act. The Assemblies never appointed any, because the magistrates are annually chosen by the people, of whom the far greater part are church members; and this church-membership, in its consequences, destroys all liberty in a communicant, who is necessitated to swear to promote the interests of that church he is a member of, and is duly informed by the minister what that interest is. The minister is the eye of conscience to all freemen in his parish, and tells them that they will perjure themselves if they give their votes to an episcopalian, or any person who is not a member of the Church of the _Sober Dissenters_. Those freemen dare not go counter to the minister’s dictate, any more than a true Mussulman dare violate the sacred law of Mahomet. What need, then, is there of a civil test, when a religious test operates much more powerfully, and will ever keep Churchmen, Separatists, Quakers, Baptists, and other denominations from governmental employments in Connecticut, and confine them to the Old and New Lights; whilst the test act in England prevents no dissenter from holding any civil or military commission whatsoever? Upon this subject Mr. Neal has exerted himself in so signal a manner, that he ought to be styled the Champion of New-England. He represents that there were two State factions in New-England: the one out of place he calls spies and malcontents, chiefly because they had no share in the government. He adds, p. 615: “I can assure the world that religion is no part of the quarrel; for there is no sacramental test for preferment in the State.”--Many people in New-England have not been able to assign a reason for Mr. Neal’s choosing to hide one truth by telling another, viz. that there was no statute in New-England to oblige a man to receive the sacrament among the _Sober Dissenters_ as a qualification for civil office. This assertion is really true; and when Mr. Neal speaks a truth, he, above all men, ought to have credit for it. But Mr. Neal well knew it to be the truth, also, that no man could be chosen a corporal in the train-band unless he was a member of the Church of the _Sober Dissenters_, because then every voter was subject to a religious test of the Synod or Consociation. Mr. Neal, indeed, seems to think that a civil test is heresy itself, but that a religious test is liberty, is gospel, and renders “all parties of christians in New-England easy--a happy people.” The reason, however, of his muffling truth with truth, was, he wrote for the Old Lights and against the New Lights for hire; the New Lights being the minority, and out of place in the State. Those two sects differed about the coercive power of the civil magistrate. The Old Lights held that the civil magistrate was a creature framed on purpose to support ecclesiastical censure with the sword of severity; but the New Lights maintained that the magistrate had no power or right to concern himself with Church excommunication, and that excommunication was all the punishment any one could undergo in this world, according to the rules of the Gospel. These were, and always have been, two great articles of faith in New-England; nevertheless, Mr. Neal says he can assure the world that “religion is no part of the quarrel.” I hope Mr. Neal did not mean to quibble, as the New-Englanders generally do, by Jesuitism, viz. that religion is peaceable and admits not of quarrels; and yet, if he did not, he meant not a full representation of the matter, for he well knew that the difference in respect to the intent and power of the magistrates was a religious point, and formed the partition wall between the Old and New Lights. The civilians and magistrates were too wise to countenance the New Lights, who promised little good to them; while the Old Lights gave them a power of punishing, even unto death, those whom they had anathematized, and who would not submit to their censures by penitence and confession. The Old Lights, in short, supported the practice of the inquisitors of Spain and Archbishop Laud--the ostensible occasion of their ancestors flying from England to the wilderness of America.

But Mr. Neal contented not himself with one mistake; he added, “that the people of New-England are a dutiful and loyal people.” They never merited this character, and they always had too much honesty and religion to claim it. From the first they have uniformly declared, in Church and State, that America is a new world, subject to the people residing in it, and that none but enemies of the country would appeal from their courts to the King in Council. They never have prayed for any earthly king by name. They have always called themselves republicans, and enemies to kingly government, to temporal and spiritual lords. They hate the idea of a Parliament, consisting of King, Lords, and Commons; they declare that the three branches should be but one, the king having only a single vote with the other members. Upon this point they have always quarrelled with the governors. They never have admitted one law of England to be in force among them till passed by their assemblies. They have sent agents to fight against the kings of England. They deny the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London, which extends over America by a royal patent. They hold Jesus to be the only King, whom if they love and obey they will not submit, because they have not submitted, to the laws of the King of Great Britain.

Mr. Neal, furthermore, professes his want of conception why the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts should send missionaries into New-England, when Oliver Cromwell had, in 1640, instituted a society to propagate christian knowledge there. Mr. Neal might have learnt the cause of this phenomenon from the charter granted to the first-mentioned society by King William III., who was a friend to civil and christian liberty, and who endeavoured to suppress the intolerable persecutions in his days prevailing in New-England. But, besides, Mr. Neal could not but know that there were many Churchmen in New-England desirous of the use of the liturgy and discipline of the English Church; and for what reason should they not have ministers of their own persuasion, as well as the sober and conscientious dissenters? I hope my readers will not think me a partial advocate for the Church of England, which, perhaps, has lost the opportunity of civilizing, christianizing, and moderating the burning zeal of the dissenters of New-England, who were honest in their religion merely by the sinful omission of not sending a bishop to that country, who would have effected greater things among them than an army of 50,000 men. I avow myself to be liberal-minded towards all sects and parties; and, if I had power, I would convert all sorts of ministers into popes, cardinals, prelates, dominies, potent presbyters, and rich Quakers, that the world might be excused from hearing again of preaching, defamation, insurrections, and spiritual jurisdictions, which result more from pride, poverty, avarice, and ambition, than the love of peace and christianity.

It has been said by the deists, and other politicians, that ministers, by preaching, have done more hurt than good in the christian world. If the idea will hold in any part it will be in New-England, where each sect preaches, for Gospel, policy and defamation of its neighbour; whence the lower classes think that christianity consists in defending their own peculiar Church and modes, and subverting those of others, at any rate; while the higher ranks value religion and the Gospel as laws of a foreign country, and the merchants powwowers, subtle, cruel, and greedy of riches and dominion over all people. For this reason the savages have taken an aversion to the protestant religion, and they say they would rather follow Hobbomockow and the Roman priests than New-England christians, who persecute one another, and killed their ancestors with a pocky Gospel. With scorn they cry out: “We value not your Gospel, which shews so many roads to Kicktang; some of them must be crooked, and lead to Hobbomockow. We had, therefore, better continue Indians like our ancestors, or be Catholics, who tell us of only one way to Kicktang, or the invisible God.”

_Laws._--A stranger in the colony, upon hearing the inhabitants talk of religion, liberty, and justice, would be induced to believe that the christian and civil virtues were their distinguishing characteristics; but he soon finds his mistake in fixing his abode among them. Their laws grind the poor, and their religion is to oppress the oppressed. The poll-tax is unjust and cruel. The poor man is compelled to pay for his bread eighteen shillings per annum, work four days on the highways, serve in the militia four days, and pay three shillings for his hut, without a window in it. The best house and richest man in the colony pays no more!

The law is pretended to exempt episcopalians, Anabaptists, Quakers, and others, from paying rates to the _Sober Dissenters_, but, at the same time, gives the _Sober Dissenters_ power to tax them for minister, school, and town rates, by a general quota; and no law or court can put asunder what the town has joined together. The law also exempts from paying to _Sober Dissenters_ all Churchmen “who live so near that they can and do attend Church.” But hence, if a man is sick, and does not attend more than twenty-six Sabbaths in a year, he becomes legally a _Sober Dissenter_; and if the meeting lies between him and the Church, he does not live so near the Church that he can attend, because it is more than a Sabbath-day’s journey, and therefore unnecessary travel.[38]

The law provides whipping, stocks, and fines, for such as do not attend public worship on the Sabbath. The Grand Jury complains, and the Justice inflicts the punishment. This has been the practice for many years. About 1750, Mr. Pitt, a Churchman, was whipped for not attending meeting. Mr. Pitt was an old man. The episcopal clergy wrote to England, complaining of this cruel law. The Governor and Council immediately broke the Justice who punished Mr. Pitt, and wrote to the Bishop of London that they had done so as a mark of their disapprobation of the Justice’s conduct, and knew not what more they could do. This apology satisfied the Bishop, and the next year the Governor and Council restored the Justice to his office; however, Quakers and Anabaptists only were whipped afterwards.

Formerly, when a _Sober Dissenter_ had a suit in law against a Churchman, every juryman of the latter persuasion was by the Court removed from the jury and replaced by _Sober Dissenters_. The reasons assigned for this extraordinary conduct was, “that justice and impartiality might take place.” The episcopalians, Quakers, and other sects not of the _Sober Dissenters_, were not admitted to serve as jurymen in Connecticut till 1750. Such of them whose annual worth is rated at not less than 40_l._ in the general list, have enjoyed the liberty of voting for civil officers a much longer term; but for parish concerns they are still totally excluded.

Other laws I have occasionally animadverted upon in the course of this work; and a specimen of the Blue Laws, and of various courts, is inserted.

Nothing can reflect greater disgrace upon the colony than the number of suits in all the County Courts, amounting in the whole to between 20 and 30,000 annually; the greater part of which are vexatiously commenced from expectations grounded upon the notorious instability of the judges’ opinions and decisions.

The spirit of litigation which distracts the province in general is, however, a blessing to the judges and lawyers. The court has one shilling for every action called, and twenty shillings for those that come to trial; and the fee to each lawyer is twenty shillings, whether the action be tried or not, besides various other expenses. There are as many suits of conscience before the justices of the peace, and ministers, and deacons; so that the sum annually expended in law in the whole colony is amazing. It was not without reason, therefore, that the judges, the lawyers, the ministers and deacons, the sheriffs and constables, opposed the stamp-act with all their might. They told the people that, if this act took place, their liberties would be destroyed, and they would be tried by King’s judges without jury.

The singular nature of some of the suits entitles them to particular notice. When the ice and flood prevail in the great river Connecticut, they frequently carry off large pieces of ground on one side, and carry them over to the other. By this means the river is every year changing its bed, to the advantage of some persons and the disadvantage of others. This has proved the source of perplexing lawsuits, and will most likely continue to produce the same effects so long as the demi-annual assemblies remain in the colony; for the judgment of the Assembly in May is rescinded by that in October, and so _vice versa_. Thus a lawsuit in Connecticut is endless, to the ruin of both plaintiff and defendant.

The County and Superior Courts, also, in different years give different judgments; and the reason is the popular constitution of the colony, whereby different parties prevail at different times, each of whom carefully undoes what the others have done. Thus the glorious uncertainty of the law renders the possession of property in Connecticut extremely precarious. The question, however, touching the lands being removed from place to place by the floods and ice, requires the skill of both juries and casuists. The most simple case of the kind that has been communicated to me is the following:

A piece of land belonging to A., in Springfield, with a house, &c. standing upon it, was removed by the flood to another town, and settled on land belonging to W. A. claimed his house and land, and took possession of them; whereupon W. sued A. for a trespass, and the court ejected A. But A. afterward obtained a revision of the judgment; when W. again sued A., and got a decree that A. should remove his own land off from the land of W., or pay W. for his land. Further litigation ensued, both parties pleading that the act of God injured no man according to the English law. The judges said that the act of God in this case equally fell upon A. and W. The dispute rests _in statu quo_, the jurisprudence of Connecticut not having yet taught mankind what is just and legal in this important controversy.

Supposing the flood had carried A.’s ship or raft on W.’s land, the ship or raft would still belong to A., and W. could recover damages; but then A. must take away his ship or raft in a reasonable time. Yet, in the case where an island, or point of land, is removed by the waters, or an earthquake, upon a neighbouring shore, _Q._ Ought not the islanders to keep possession of the superficies? This may be a new case in Europe.

_Manners and Customs._--Gravity and serious deportment, together with shyness and bashfulness, generally attend first communications with the inhabitants of Connecticut; but after a short acquaintance they become very familiar, and inquisitive about news. Who are you? whence come you? where going? what is your business? and what your religion? They do not consider these, and similar questions, impertinent, and consequently expect a civil answer. When the stranger has satisfied their curiosity, they will treat him with all the hospitality in their power, and great caution must be observed to get quit of them and their houses without giving offence. If the stranger has cross and difficult roads to travel, they will go with him till all danger is past, without fee or reward. The stranger has nothing to do but civilly say, “Sir, I thank you, and will call upon you when I return.” He must not say, “God bless you,” or “I shall be glad to see you at my house,” unless he is a minister; because they hold that the words “God bless you” should not be spoken by common people; and “I shall be glad to see you at my house” they look upon as an insincere compliment, paid them for what they do out of duty to the stranger. Their hospitality is highly exemplary; they are sincere in it, and reap great pleasure by reflecting that, perhaps, they have entertained angels.

The Rev. Mr. George Whitefield, in one of his sermons, gave them the following character: “I have found,” said he, “the people of Connecticut the wisest of any upon the continent; they are the best friends and the worst enemies; they are hair-brained bigots on all sides, and they may be compared to the horse and mule, without bit and bridle. In other colonies I have paid for food and lodging, but could never spend one penny in fruitful Connecticut, whose banks flow with milk and honey, and whose sons and daughters never fail to feed and refresh the weary traveller, without money and without price.”

On Saturday evenings the people look sour and sad; on the Sabbath they appear to have lost their dearest friends, and are almost speechless; they walk softly; they even observe it with more exactness than did the Jews. A Quaker preacher told them, with much truth, that they worshipped the Sabbath, and not the God of the Sabbath. These hospitable people, without charity, condemned the Quaker as a blasphemer of the holy Sabbath, fined, tarred, and feathered him, put a rope about his neck, and plunged him into the sea; but he escaped with life, though he was about seventy years of age.

In 1750 an episcopal clergyman, born and educated in England, who had been in holy orders above twenty years, once broke their sabbatical law by combing a discomposed lock of hair on the top of his wig; at another time, for making a humming noise, which they called whistling; at a third time, by walking too fast from church; at a fourth, by running into church when it rained; at a fifth, by walking in his garden and picking a bunch of grapes: for which several crimes he was complained of by the Grand Jury, had warrants granted against him, was seized, brought to trial, and paid a considerable sum of money. At last, overwhelmed with persecution and vexation, he cried out: “No Briton, nay, no Jew, should assume any public character in Connecticut till he has served an apprenticeship of ten years in it; for I have been here seven years, and strictly observed the Jewish law concerning the Sabbath, yet find myself remiss in respect to the perfect law of liberty!”

The people are extremely fond of strangers passing through the colony, but very averse to foreigners settling among them; which few have done without ruin to their characters and fortunes, by detraction and lawsuits, unless recommended as men of grace by some known and revered republican protestant in Europe. The following story may be amusing:

An English gentleman, during a short residence in a certain town, had the good luck to receive some civilities from the Deacon, Minister, and Justice. The Deacon had a daughter, without beauty, but sensible and rich. The Briton (for that was the name he went by), having received a present from the West-Indies of some pineapples and sweetmeats, sent his servant with part of it to the Deacon’s daughter, to whom, at the same time, he addressed a complimentary note, begging Miss would accept the pineapples and sweetmeats, and wishing he might be able to make her a better present. Miss, on reading the note, was greatly alarmed, and exclaimed, “Mamma, mamma! Mr. Briton has sent me a love-letter.” The mother read the note and shewed it to the Deacon, and, after due consideration, both agreed in pronouncing it a love-letter. The lawyer, justice, and parson were sent for, who in council weighed every word in the note, together with the golden temptation which the lady possessed, and were of opinion that the writer was in love, and that the note was a love-letter, but worded so carefully that the law could not punish Briton for attempting to court Miss without having obtained her parents’ consent. The parson wrung his hands, rolled up his eyes, shrugged up his shoulders, groaned out his hypocritical grief, and said, “Deacon, I hope you do not blame me for having been the innocent cause of your knowing this imprudent and haughty Briton. There is something very odd in all the Britons; but I thought this man had some prudence and modesty however, Deacon,” putting his hand on his breast, and bowing, with a pale, deceitful face, “I shall in future shun all Britons, for they are all strange creatures.” The lawyer and justice made their apologies, and were sorry that Briton did not consider the quality of the Deacon’s daughter before he wrote the letter. Miss, all apprehension and tears, at finding that no punishment could reach Briton in the course of law, cried out to her counsellors, “Who is Briton? Am I not the Deacon’s daughter? What have I done, that he should take such liberties with me? Is he not the natural son of some priest, or foundling? Ought he not to be exposed for his assurance to the Deacon’s daughter?”

Her words took effect. The council voted that they would show their contempt of Briton by neglecting him for the time to come. On his return home, the parson, after many great signs of surprise, informed his wife of the awful event which had happened by the imprudence of Briton. She soon communicated the secret to her sister-gossips, prudently cautioning them not to report it as from her. But, not content with that, the parson himself went among all his acquaintance, shaking his head, and saying, “O sirs! have you heard of the strange conduct of friend Briton--how he wrote a love-letter, and sent it, with some pineapples, to the Deacon’s daughter? My wife and I had a great friendship for Briton, but cannot see him any more.”