Part 13

Thus the affected parson told this important tale to every one except Briton, who, from his ignorance of the story, conducted himself in his usual manner towards his supposed friends, though he observed they had a show of haste and business whenever he met with any of them. Happily for Briton, he depended not on the Deacon, minister, or colony, for his support. At last a Scotchman heard of the evil tale, and generously told Briton of it, adding that the parson was supposed to be in deep decline merely from grief and fatigue he had endured in spreading it. Briton thanked the Scotchman, and called on the friendly parson to know the particulars of his offence. The parson, with sighs, bows, and solemn smirkings, answered, “Sir, the fact is, you wrote a love-letter to the Deacon’s daughter without asking her parents’ consent; which has given great offence to that lady, and to all her acquaintance, of whom I and my wife have the honour to be reckoned a part.” Briton kept his temper. “So, then,” said he, “I have offended you by my insolent note to the Deacon’s daughter! I hope my sin is venial. Pray, sir, have you seen my note?” “Yes,” replied the parson, “to my grief and sorrow. I could not have thought you so imprudent, had I not seen and found the note to be your own handwriting.” “How long have you known of this offence?” “Some months.” “Why, sir, did you not seasonably admonish me for this crime?” “I was so hurt and grieved, and my friendship so great, I could not bear to tell you.” Mr. Briton then told the parson that his friendship was so fine and subtle, it was invisible to an English eye; and the Gospel ministers in England did not prove their friendship by telling calumnious stories to everybody but the person concerned. “But I suppose,” added he, “this is genuine New-England friendship, and merits thanks more than a supple-jack.” The parson, with a leering look, sneaked away towards his wife; and Briton left the colony without any civil or ecclesiastical punishment, telling the Scotchman that the Deacon’s daughter had money, and the parson faith without eyes, or he should never have been accused of making love to one who was naturally so great an enemy to Cupid. Of such or worse sort being the reception foreign settlers may expect from the inhabitants of Connecticut, it is no wonder that few, or none, choose to venture among them.

The custom of settling and dismissing a sober dissenting minister is very singular. All the parishioners meet and vote to apply to the Association for a candidate, and one is accordingly sent. If he pleases, the people vote to give him a call; if he accepts the call, the actual communicants, and they alone, make the covenant between him and them as Christ’s Church, and thus they are married to him. After the candidate is ordained, others, by acknowledging and swearing to support the covenant, become married to him also. (N. B. Baptism is not sufficient to take them out of their natural state.) The call is an invitation from the parishioners to the candidate to take upon him the ministerial office of their Church, on condition that he be allowed 300_l._ or 400_l._ settlement, and perhaps 100_l._ salary, besides wood, &c. &c. during his residence among them in that capacity. The candidate, after looking round him and finding no better terms offered from any other parish, answers in this manner: “Brethren and friends, I have considered your call, and, after many fastings and prayers, I find it to be the call of God, and close with your offer.” The Church then appoints a day for his ordination, and the ministers who shall assist in the ceremony, which is as follows:

1. The meeting is opened with a hymn. 2. Some one makes a prayer. 3. Another hymn succeeds. 4. A sermon. 5. Another prayer. 6. The covenant is read. 7. The prayer of consecration, with imposition of hands by the minister. 8. The right hand of fellowship, which conveys that half of ministerial power which I have already spoken of as communicated by the Churches. 9. The charge--that is, to behave well in the office whereto God has called him. 10. Prayer. 11. Another hymn. 12. The young minister dismisses with his benediction. Numerous as the ceremonies are in a minister’s ordination, there are but few judged necessary in dismissing him; a majority of the Church is enough to turn the minister from bed and board, or, in their language, “to divorce him”--which happens more frequently than is decent. The minister has no remedy but in appealing to the Association, which step entitles him to his salary till dismissed by that powerful body. Incontinency, intemperance, lying, and idleness, are the common accusations brought against the minister, but seldom founded in truth, and yet always proved by knights of the post. However, the minister carries off his settlement in case he is dismissed for immoralities, but not if he turns Churchman; then his old parishioners are mean enough to sue for the settlement. A recent instance of this kind happened at New-London, where the minister, Doctor Mather Byles, desired a dismission, which was given him; but, finding the Doctor’s design was to become a Churchman, the people demanded the settlement given him twelve years before. The Doctor, with a spirit worthy of himself and his venerable ancestors, returned the money, with, “You are welcome to it, since it proves to the world that you could not accuse me of anything more agreeable to ungenerous minds.”

The manner of visiting the sick in this province is more terrible than charitable. The minister demands of the sick if he be converted, when, and where. If the answer is conformable to the system of the minister, it is very well; if not, the sick is given over as a non-elect, and no object of prayer. Another minister is then sent for, who asks if the sick be willing to die--if he hates God--if he be willing to be damned, if it please God to damn him? Should he answer No, this minister quits him, as the former. Finally, the sick man dies, and so falls out of their hands into better.

Amidst all the darkness of superstition that surrounds the State, the humanity it shows to poor strangers seized with sickness in the colony, or to such persons as are shipwrecked upon its coasts, shines with distinguished lustre. These unfortunate sufferers are immediately provided with the necessaries of every kind, by order of the selectmen, whose expenses are reimbursed out of the colony Treasury.

Thus is laudably employed a part of the money allowed for contingencies; but another part is consumed in a very different manner. It frequently happens that, whenever the episcopalians become so numerous in a parish as to gain the ascendency over the _Sober Dissenters_, and the latter cannot, by their own strength, either destroy the episcopal or support their own Church, the Governor and Council, with the advice of the Consociation, kindly relieve them with an annual grant out of the public Treasury, sometimes to the amount of the whole sum paid into it by every denomination of the parish. An act of charity of this kind lately took place at Chelsea, in Norwich, where the _Sober Dissenters_ were few and poor, and without a meeting-house or minister, so that they were obliged to walk a mile to a meeting, or go to church. The young people chose the latter, which alarmed the _Sober Dissenters_ to such a degree that they applied for and obtained from the generous Governor and his virtuous Council 300_l._ per annum out of the Treasury, besides the duties on the vessels of the Churchmen of that port. This largition enabled them to build a meeting-house and settle a minister. When the Churchmen complained of this abuse of the public money, the Governor answered, “The Assembly has the same right to support christianity as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, or the Parliament of Great Britain.”

The murmurs of the people on the collection of the revenue bespeak embezzlements of another kind. It should seem that they believed the General Assembly to be in the same predicament as the devil thought Job was, when he said, “Doth Job serve God for nought?”

Estates in Connecticut pass from generation to generation by gavelkind; so that there are few persons, except of the labouring class, who have not freeholds of their own to cultivate. A general mediocrity of station being thus constitutionally promoted, it is no wonder that the rich man is despised, and the poor man’s blessing is his poverty. In no part of the world are _les petits_ and _les grands_ so much upon a par as here, where none of the people are destitute of the conveniences of life and the spirit of independence. From infancy, their education as citizens points out no distinction between licentiousness and liberty; and their religion is so muffled with superstition, self-love, and provincial enmity, as not yet to have taught them that humanity and respect for others which from others they demand. Notwithstanding these effects of the levelling plan, there are many exceptions to be found in the province of gentlemen of large estates and generous principles.

The people commonly travel on horseback, and the ladies are capable of teaching their neighbours the art of horsemanship. There are few coaches in the colony, but many chaises and whiskeys. In winter the sleigh is used--a vehicle drawn by two horses, and carrying six persons in its box, which hangs on four posts standing on two steel slides or large skates.

Dancing, fishing, hunting, skating, and riding in sleighs on the ice, are all the amusements allowed in this colony.

Smuggling is rivetted in the constitution and practice of the inhabitants of Connecticut, as much as superstition and religion, and their province is a storehouse for the smugglers of the neighbouring colonies. They conscientiously study to cheat the King of those duties which, they say, God and Nature never intended should be paid. From the Governor down to the tithing-man, who are sworn to support the laws, they will aid smugglers, resist collectors, and mob informers. This being a popular Government, all the officers are appointed by the freeholders. There are very severe laws against bribery. The candidates are not suffered to give a dinner, or a glass of cider, on the day of the election, to a voter. Indeed, bribery is the next greatest crime to a breach of the Sabbath; yet open bribery, as established by custom immemorial in Rhode-Island, is more praiseworthy than the practice of Connecticut. I will give the reader some idea of the mode in which an election is managed in Connecticut.

All the voters in a township convene in the town meeting-house. One of the ministers, after prayers, preaches from some such text as, “Jabez was more honourable than his brethren.” The people keep their seats, while the constables take their votes in a box; and if a voter has not his vote written, the constable gives him one. So Jabez is elected; and the meeting is concluded with a prayer of thanks to the Lord God of Israel for “turning the hearts of his people against the enemies of Zion, and for uniting them in Jabez, the man after his own heart.” The manner in which the preacher treats his text will more particularly appear from the animadversion of a certain Quaker on one of these occasions. “Friend,” said he to the pedagogue, “I do thee no wrong in telling thee that thou hast prayed and preached against bribery, but forgot to keep thy tongue from speaking evil against thy neighbour. Dost thou think the Lord will regard thy preaching so much as the voters whom thou dost call freemen? If thou believest it, thou hast bribed not only the people, but the Lord also, to reject Ebenezer and Benjamin.” The preacher called upon the constable to take away this babbler and open the meeting; which was done, and Ebenezer and Benjamin were rejected by the voters.

The men in general throughout the province are tall, stout, and robust. The greatest care is taken of the limbs and bodies of infants, which are kept straight by means of a board--a practice learnt from the Indian women, who abhor all crooked people--so that deformity is here a rarity.

Another custom derived from the Indians is, to welcome a new-born infant into the world with urine and honey, the effects of which are wonderful; and hence it is that at groanings there are always a little hog and a rattle-snake’s skin, the latter of which prevents numbness and the cramp. The women are fair, handsome, genteel. They have, indeed, adopted various customs of the Indian women, but cannot learn, like them, how to support the pains of child-bearing without a groan. Naturalists and surgeons have not been able to assign the reason why a negro woman should have a hundred pains, a white woman ten, and an Indian none. Some have said that the fatigues and hardships which negroes endure are the cause; but the Indians undergo many more: others have said it was owing to the change of climate; but this is suppletory: while the enthusiastic divines attribute it to the sin of Eve, and to the curse laid on the Canaanites. The deists ask these divines if Eve was not the common mother of the white, black, and copper-coloured women, and how it appears that negroes are the descendants of Canaan? Their answer is, that all Nature is mystery.

The women of Connecticut are strictly virtuous, and to be compared to the prude rather than the European polite lady. They are not permitted to read plays; cannot converse about whist, quadrille, or operas, but will freely talk upon the subject of history, geography, and mathematics. They are great casuists and polemical divines; and I have known not a few of them so well skilled in Greek and Latin as often to put to the blush learned gentlemen.

Notwithstanding the modesty of the females is such that it would be accounted the greatest rudeness for a gentleman to speak, before a lady, of a garter, knee, or leg, yet it is thought but a piece of civility to ask her to bundle--a custom as old as the first settlement in 1634. It is certainly innocent, virtuous, and prudent, or the puritans would not have permitted it to prevail among their offspring, for whom, in general, they would suffer crucifixion. Children brought up with the chastest ideas, with so much religion as to believe that the omniscient God sees them in the dark, and that angels guard them when absent from their parents, will not--nay, cannot--act a wicked thing. People who are influenced more by lust than a serious faith in God, who is too pure to behold iniquity with approbation, ought never to bundle. If any man, thus a stranger to the love of virtue, of God, and the christian religion, should bundle with a young lady in New-England, and behave himself unseemly towards her, he must first melt her into passion, and expel heaven, death, and hell, from her mind, or he will undergo the chastisement of negroes turned mad; if he escapes with life, it will be owing to the parents flying from their beds to protect him.

The Indians, who had this method of courtship when the English arrived among them in 1634, are the most chaste set of people in the world.

Concubinage and fornication are vices none of them are addicted to, except such as forsake the laws of Hobbomockow and turn christians. The savages have taken many female prisoners, carried them back three hundred miles into their country, and kept them several years, and yet not a single instance of their violating the laws of chastity has ever been known. This cannot be said of the French, or of the English, whenever Indian or other women have fallen into their hands. I am no advocate for temptation, yet must say that bundling has prevailed 160 years in New-England, and, I verily believe, with ten times more chastity than the sitting on a sofa. About the year 1756, Boston, Salem, Newport, and New York, resolving to be more polite than their ancestors, forbade their daughters bundling on the bed with any young man whatever, and introduced a sofa, to render courtship more palatable and Turkish. Whatever it was owing to, whether to the sofa or any uncommon excess of the _feu d’esprit_, there went abroad a report that the _raffinage_ produced more natural consequences than all the bundling among the boors with their _rurales pendantes_ through every village in New-England besides.

In 1766, a clergyman from one of the polite towns went into the country and preached against the unchristian custom of young men and maidens lying together upon the same bed. He was no sooner out of the Church, than attacked by a shoal of good old women, with, “Sir, do you think we and our daughters are naughty because we allow bundling?” “You lead yourselves into temptation by it.” They all replied at once, “Sir, have you been told thus, or has experience taught you?” The Levite began to lift his eyes and to consider his situation, and, bowing, said, “I have been told so.” The ladies, _una voce_, bawled out, “Your informants, sir, we conclude, are those city ladies who prefer a sofa to a bed. We advise you to alter your sermon by substituting the word sofa for bundling, and, on your return home, preach to them: for experience has told us that city-folks send more children into the country without father and mother to own them, than are born among us; therefore, you see, a sofa is more dangerous than a bed.” The poor priest, seemingly convinced of his blunder, exclaimed, “_Nec vitia nostra, nec remedia pati possumus_,” hoping hereby to get rid of his guests; but an old matron pulled off her spectacles, and, looking the priest in the face like a Roman heroine, said, “_Noli putare me hæc auribus tuis dares_.” Others cried out to the priest to explain his Latin. “The English,” he said, “is this: Woe to me that I sojourn in Meseck, and dwell in the tents of Kedar!” One pertly replied, “_Gladii decussati sunt gemina presbytericalvis_.” The priest confessed his error, begged pardon, and promised never more to preach against bundling, or to think amiss of the custom; the ladies generously forgave him, and went away.

It may seem very strange to find this custom of bundling in bed attended with so much innocence in New-England, while in Europe it is thought not safe, or scarcely decent, to permit a young man or maid to be together in private anywhere. But, in this quarter of the Old World, the viciousness of the one and the simplicity of the other are the result merely of education and habit. It seems to be a part of heroism, among the polished nations of it, to sacrifice the virtuous fair one whenever an opportunity offers, and thence it is concluded that the same principles actuate those of the New World. It is egregiously absurd to judge of all countries by one. In Spain, Portugal, and Italy, jealousy reigns; in France, England, and Holland, suspicion; in the West and East-Indies, lust; in New-England, superstition. These four blind deities govern Jews, Turks, christians, infidels, and heathen. Superstition is the most amiable. She sees no vice with approbation, but persecution, and self-preservation is the cause of her seeing that. My insular readers will, I hope, believe me, when I tell them that I have seen in the West-Indies naked boys and girls, some fifteen or sixteen years of age, waiting at table and at tea, even when twenty or thirty virtuous English ladies were in the room; who were under no more embarrassment at such an awful sight in the eyes of English people who have not travelled abroad, than they would have been at the sight of so many servants in livery. Shall we censure the ladies of the West-Indies as vicious above their sex on account of this local custom? By no means; for long experience has taught the world that the West-Indian white ladies are virtuous prudes. Where superstition reigns, fanaticism will be minister of state; and the people, under the taxation of zeal, will shun what is commonly called vice with ten times more care than the polite and civilized christians who know what is right and what is wrong from reason and revelation. Happy would it be for the world, if reason and revelation were suffered to control the minds and passions of the great and wise men of the world, as superstition does that of the simple and less polished! When America shall elect societies for the promotion of chastity in Europe, in return for the establishment of European arts in American capitals, then Europe will discover that there is more christian philosophy in American bundling than can be found in the customs of nations more polite.

I should not have said so much about bundling had not a learned divine (Dr. Burnaby) of the English Church published his Travels through some parts of America, wherein this remarkable custom is represented in an unfavourable light, and as prevailing among the lower class of people. The truth is, the custom prevails among all classes, to the great honour of the country, its religion, and ladies. The virtuous may be tempted; but the tempter is despised. Why it should be thought incredible for a young man and young woman innocently and virtuously to lie down together in a bed with a great part of their clothes on, I cannot conceive. Human passions may be alike in every region; but religion, diversified as it is, operates differently in different countries. Upon the whole, had I daughters now, I would venture to let them bundle upon the bed, or even on the sofa, after a proper education, sooner than adopt the Spanish mode of forcing young people to prattle only before the lady’s mother the chit-chat of artless lovers. Could the four quarters of the world produce a more chaste, exemplary, and beautiful company of wives and daughters than are in Connecticut, I should not have remaining one favourable sentiment for the province. But the soil, the rivers, the ponds, the ten thousand landscapes, together with the virtuous and lovely women which now adorn the ancient kingdoms of Connecticut, Sassacus, and Quinnipiog, would tempt me into the highest wonder and admiration of them, could they once be freed of the skunk, the moping-owl, rattle-snake, and fanatic christian.

My readers will naturally be desirous of information in what manner the people of Connecticut conduct themselves in regard to the Stamp Act, which has proved the subject of so much speculation and controversy both in America and Europe. I will, therefore, give a particular account of their proceedings concerning it, which will, perhaps, appear to have been of far greater consequence than is generally supposed in England.