Part 20

But they were prevented from burning their clothes and jewels. John Lee, of Lyme, told them his idols were his wife and children, and that he could not burn them; it would be contrary to the laws of God and man; that it was impossible to destroy idolatry without a change of heart and of the affections.--ED. NOTE.

[34] Mr. Hooker died while this work was in course of publication.--ED. NOTE.

[35] The Rev. Mr. Dean went to England and took orders for the church at Hebron, but died at sea on his return, about the year 1745. The Rev. Mr. Punderson, of Groton, then preached to them, and administered the sacrament, from 1746 to 1752. The people of Hebron were very unfortunate with respect to the gentlemen who went to England for orders in their behalf. A Mr. Cotton, in 1752, received orders for them, but he died, on his passage for New-England, with the small-pox. Mr. Graves, of New-London, served them from 1752 to 1757. In 1757 one Mr. Usher went for orders in their behalf; he was taken by the French, on his passage to England, and died in captivity.

The Rev. Samuel Peters was ordained their priest in August, 1759, and the next year returned to New-England. He continued priest at Hebron until the commencement of the Revolutionary War, when he was driven from his country by the mobs of Windham, instigated by Governor Trumbull.--ED. NOTE.

[36] The following is a portion of a communication to some paper in Connecticut, part of which has been destroyed:

“MR. PRINTER: You have shewn no partiality in your paper among contending parties, but have given all rational systems, at least all popular plans, a chance in the world by your medeocritical channel. What I am desirous of communicating to the public is very popular: It is, to put the Quacks Club in the East upon a reputible footing, as the licensed Physiognomers in the West.

“At a meeting held in Connecticut, October, 1767, it was resolved:

“First: We Etiologists, viz. John Whiggot, Esq. President, Adam Kuncnow, Michel Nugnug, Shazael Bulldunce, Committee for said Club of Quackism. That we may serve each other in our Occupation, we have appointed a meeting to be upon the first Tuesday of every month, for the year ensueing, at the house of Mr. Abram Bruntick, in Green Lane, nigh the Crow Market, straight forward from the sign of the Goose, at the sign of the Looking Glass.

“Second: To lay some plan to support Dr. Leaffolds Latina Anatomy.

“Third: To choose a Proluctor, able to defend the high pretensions made by these mercurial sons in the West against your art in Pharmacy, Chemistry, and Physic, in the East.

“Fourth: To make some Laws for admission of young Quacks into this most popular Club.”

No doubt the above was a burlesque upon the law that had passed the year before, or rather upon the one the General Assembly refused to pass.--ED. NOTE.

[37] The episcopal church in Stratford is the oldest of that denomination in the State. But episcopacy made very little progress in Connecticut, until after the declaration of Rector Cutler, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Whitemore, and Mr. Brown, for episcopacy, in 1722. Numbers of Mr. Johnson’s and Mr. Whitemore’s hearers professed episcopacy with them, and set up the worship of God, according to the manner of the Church of England, in the West and North-Haven. Mr. (afterward Dr.) Johnson was a gentleman distinguished for literature, of popular talents and engaging manners. In 1724, after receiving episcopal ordination in England, he returned to Stratford, and, under his ministry to that and the neighboring churches of that denomination, they were increased.--ED. NOTE.

[38] An early provision was therefore made by law in Massachusetts and Connecticut for the support of the ministry. In Connecticut all persons were obliged by law to contribute to the support of the Church as well as of the Commonwealth.

All rates respecting the support of ministers, or any ecclesiastical affairs, were to be made and collected in the same manner as the rates of the respective towns.

Special care was taken that all persons should attend the means of public instruction. The law obliged them to be present at public worship on the Lord’s-day, and upon all days of public fasting and praying, and of thanksgivings appointed by civil authority, on penalty of a fine of five shillings for every instance of neglect. The Congregational churches were adopted and established by law; but provision was made that all sober, orthodox persons dissenting from them should, upon the manifestation of it to the General Court, be allowed peaceably to worship in their own way.

It was enacted, “That no person within this Colony shall in any wise embody themselves into Church estate without consent of the General Court and approbation of neighbouring elders.”

The law also prohibited that any ministry or Church administration should be entertained or attended by the inhabitants of any plantation in the Colony, distinct and separate from, and in opposition to, that which was openly and publicly observed and dispensed by the approved minister of the place; except it was by the approbation of the Court and neighboring churches. The penalty for every breach of this act was 5_l._--ED. NOTE.

[39] The following will show that a Connecticut mob of _Sober Dissenters_ is not inferior to a London mob of drunken Conformists, either in point of ingenuity, low humour, or religious mockery. The stamp-master was declared by the mob at Hertford to be dead. The mob at Lebanon undertook to send Ingersoll to his own place. They made their effigies, one to represent Mr. Grenville, another Ingersoll, and a third the devil. The last was dressed with a wig, hat, and black coat, given by parson Solomon Williams, of Lebanon. Mr. Grenville was honoured with a hat, wig, and coat, a present from Mr. Jonathan Trumbull, who was afterwards chosen Governor, (and who afterwards wrote the letter to General Gage, as appears in a preceding note.) Mr. Ingersoll was dressed in red, with a lawyer’s wig, a wooden sword, and his hat under his arm, by the generosity of Joseph Trumbull. Thus equipped, the effigies were put into a cart, with ropes about their necks, and drawn towards the gallows. A dialogue ensued between the criminals. Some friendship seemed to subsist between Mr. Grenville and the devil, while nothing but sneers and frowns passed the devil to Ingersoll; and the fawning reverence of the latter gave his infernal Highness such offence, that he turned up his breech and discharged fire, brimstone, and tar in Ingersoll’s face, setting him all in a blaze; which, however, Mr. Grenville generously extinguished with a squirt. This was many times repeated. As the procession advanced, the mob exclaimed, “Behold the just reward of our agent, who sold himself to Grenville, like Judas, at a price!” In this manner the farce was continued till midnight, at which time they arrived at the gallows; where a person in a long shirt, in derision of the surplice of a Church clergyman, addressed the criminals with republican Atticisms, railleries, &c., concluding thus: “May your deaths be tedious and intolerable, and may your souls sink quick down to hell, the residence of tyrants, traitors, and devils!” The effigies were then turned off, and, after hanging some time, were hoisted upon a huge pile of wood and burnt, that their bodies might share a similar fate with their souls. This pious transaction exalted the character of Mr. Trumbull, and facilitated his election to the office of Governor; and, what was of further advantage to him, his mob judged that the bones of Ingersoll’s effigy merited christian burial according to the rites of the Church of England, though he had been brought up a _Sober Dissenter_, and resolved, therefore, to bury his bones in Hebron. Accordingly, thither they repaired, and, after having made a coffin, dug a grave in a cross-street, and made every other preparation for the interment, they sent for the episcopal clergyman there to attend the funeral of the bones of Ingersoll the traitor.

The clergyman[40] told the messengers that neither his office nor his person were to be sported with, nor was it his business to bury _Sober Dissenters_ who abuse the Church while living. The mob, enraged at this answer, ordered a party to bring the clergyman by force, or send him to hell after Ingersoll. This alarmed the people of the town, who instantly loaded their muskets in defence of the clergyman. Thus checked in their mad career, the mob contented themselves with a solemn funeral procession, drums beating and horns blowing, and buried the coffin in the cross-street, one of the pantomimes bawling out, “We commit this traitor’s bones to the earth--ashes to dust and dust to ashes--in sure and certain hope that his soul is in hell with all tories and enemies in Zion.” Then, having driven a stake through the coffin, and each cast a stone upon the grave, they broke a few windows, cursed such clergymen as rode in chaises and were above the control of God’s people, and went off with a witless saying, viz. “It is better to live with the Church militant than with the Church triumphant.”

[40] The Episcopal clergyman was the Rev. Samuel Peters.--ED. NOTE.

[41] This Mr. Dyer had been in England, had petitioned for, and, through Dr. Franklin’s interest, obtained a new office at the port of New-London, viz. that of Comptroller, but afterwards had thought proper to resign that office, in order to be made a Judge of the Superior Court and one of the Council; and, forsooth, that a stranger only might serve the King of Great Britain in the character of a publican in Connecticut.

APPENDIX.

The preceding sheets bring the “History of Connecticut” to its latest period of amity with Great Britain, agreeable to the plan upon which it was begun. I propose laying before my readers, in an Appendix, a summary account of the proceedings of the people of Connecticut immediately leading to their open hostilities against the Mother Country, not only because some events are not at all, or erroneously, known here, but also because they will form a supplement necessary in several instances to what has been already related. Another reason that induces me to make the proposed addition is, the contradictions that have so frequently appeared regarding the statements made by the author of the “History,” as to acts and laws that were in force in the colony of Connecticut during its early settlement, and which had been handed down to their posterity by the _Sober Dissenters_, as they called themselves, many of which laws remained in force up to the beginning of the Revolutionary War.

Mr. James Hammond Trumbull, a descendant of Governor Trumbull, so frequently spoken of in this work and notes, in a book lately published by him, entitled “The True Blue Laws of Connecticut and Newhaven, and the False Blue Laws invented by the Rev. Samuel Peters,” has taken unnecessary pains to show that the Blue Laws represented in the “History” were never published in the colony, and consequently must be factitious. The author of the “History” himself mentions that they never were published; and had Mr. Trumbull referred to the action of the meeting of the planters in Quinnipiack, the 4th of June, 1639, he would have seen that the general resolutions then and there adopted were to be their laws, and that no laws were enacted. (See Note on pages 44-47.)

Many writers have endeavoured to point out the motive which prompted the Americans to the wish of being independent of Great Britain, who had for a century and a half nursed and protected them with parental tenderness; but they have only touched upon the reasons ostensibly held up by the Americans, but which are merely a veil to the true causes. These, therefore, I shall endeavour to set before the reader.

In the first place: England, as if afraid to venture her Constitution in America, had kept it at an awful distance, and established in many of her colonies republicanism, wherein the democratic absorbs the regal and aristocratic part of the English Constitution. The people naturally imbibed the idea that they were superior to kings and lords, because they controlled their representatives, governors, and councils. This is the infallible consequence of popular governments.

Secondly: The English had, like the Dutch, adopted the errors of ancient Rome, who judged that her colonies could be held in subjection only by natives of Rome; and therefore all emoluments were carefully withheld from all natives of the colonies.

Thirdly: The learned and opulent families in America were not honoured by their King like those born in Britain.

Fourthly: The Americans saw themselves despised by the Britons, “though bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh.” They felt and complained of, without redress, the sad effects of convicts, the curses of human society and the disgrace of England, taken from the dungeons, jails, and gibbets, and poured into America as the common sewer of England, to murder, plunder, and commit outrage upon the people “whom the King did not delight to honour.”

Hence the rebellion. Human nature is always such that men will never cease struggling for honour, wealth, and power, at the expense of gratitude, loyalty, and virtue.

Indignation and despair seized the gentlemen in America, who thought, like Haman, that their affluence and ease was nothing worth so long as they lay under the sovereign’s contempt. They declared that the insult reached the whole continent, in which were to be found only two Baronets of Great Britain, while all the other inhabitants were held beneath the yeomanry of England. They added: “Let Cæsar tremble! Let wealth and private property depart, to deliver our country from the injuries of our elder brethren!” How easily might the rebellion have been averted by the granting of titles! With what reason faction and discontent spring up in South-America, may be learned from the dear-bought wisdom of Spain, who transported to her colonies her own Constitution in Church and State, rewarded merit in whatever part of her territories it appeared, sent bishops to govern and ordain in every church in South-America, and they, together with the native _noblesse_, promoted harmony, the offspring of justice and policy; while North-America abounded with discord, hatred, and rebellion, entirely from want of policy and justice in their party-coloured charters, and of the honours and privileges of natural-born subjects of Great Britain.

It appears that the British Government, in the last century, did not expect New-England to remain under their authority; nor did the New-Englanders consider themselves as subjects, but allies, of Great Britain. It seems that England’s intent was to afford an asylum to the republicans, who had been a scourge to the British Constitution; and so, to encourage that restless party to emigrate, republican charters were granted, and privileges and promises given them far beyond what any Englishman in England was entitled to. The emigrants were empowered to make laws in Church and State, agreeable to their own will and pleasure, without the King’s approbation; they were excused from all quit-rents, all Government taxes, and promised protection without paying homage to the British King, and their children entitled to the same rights and privileges as if born in England. However hard this bargain was upon the side of England, she had performed her part, except in the last respect--indeed, the most material in policy and in the minds of the principal gentlemen of New-England. The honour of nobility had not been conferred on any of them, and therefore they had never enjoyed the full privileges and liberties of the Britons, but, in a degree, had ever been held in bondage under their chartered republican systems, wherein gentlemen of learning and property attain not to equal power with the peasants. The people of New-England were rightly styled republicans; but a distinction should be made between the learned and the unlearned, the rich and the poor. The latter formed a great majority; therefore the minority were obliged to wear the livery of the majority, in order to secure their election into office. These very republican gentlemen were ambitious, fond of the power of governing, and grudged no money or pains to obtain an annual office. What would they not have given for a dignity depending not on the fickle will of a multitude, but on the steady reason and generosity of a king? The merchants, lawyers, and clergy, to appearance were republicans, but not one of them was really so. The truth is, they found necessity on the one hand, and British neglect on the other, to be so intolerable, that they rather chose to risk their lives and fortunes to bring about a revolution, than continue in the situation they were. As to the multitude, they had no cause of complaint: they were accuser, judge, king, and subjects, only to themselves.

The rebellion sprung not from them, but from the merchants, lawyers, and clergy, who were never inimical to the aristocratic branch of the Government, provided they were admitted to share in it according to their merits. It is true, they, like Calvin, the author of their religion, maintained that no man can merit anything of the Great Eternal; nevertheless, they thought they had merited the aristocratic honours which emanate from earthly kings; while kings and nobles of the earth imagine themselves to have merited more than they yet enjoy--even heaven itself--only because they happen to enjoy the honour of being descendants of heroic ancestors.

England had also been as careful to keep to herself her religion and bishops as her civil constitutions and baronies. A million of Churchmen in America had been considered as not worthy of one bishop, while eight millions in South-Britain were scarcely honoured with enough with twenty-six: an insult on common justice, which would have extinguished every spark of affection in America for the English Church, and created an everlasting schism, like that between Constantinople and Rome, had not the majority of the American episcopal clergy been possessed of less ambition than love and zeal. They had suffered on both sides of the Atlantic in name and property, for their endeavours to keep up a union between the Mother Country and her children; but all their arguments and persuasions were insufficient to convince their brethren that England would in future be more generous towards her colonies. One of the first fruits of the grand continental meeting of dissenting divines at Newhaven was a coalition between the republican and the minor part of the episcopal clergy, who were soon joined by the merchants, lawyers, and planters, with a view of procuring titles, ordination, and government, independent of Great Britain. Such were the real sources of the rebellion in America. The invasion of this or that colonial right, the oppression of this or that act of Parliament, were merely the pretended causes of it, which the ill-humour of a misgoverned people prompted them eagerly to hold up--causes which would never have found existence, whose existence had never been necessary, if a better system of American policy had been adopted; but, being produced, the shadow of complaint was exhibited instead of the substance, pretence instead of reality. Every republican pulpit resounded with invectives against the King, Lords, and Commons, who claimed a power to tax and govern the people of America--a power which their charters and ancestors knew nothing of. “Britons,” they said, “call our property theirs; they consider us as slaves--as hewers of wood and drawers of water to the descendants of those tyrants of Church and State who in the last century expelled and persecuted our fathers into the wilds of America. We have charters sacred as Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights.”

They declared that the liberties of America ought to be defended with the blood of millions; that the Attorney-General ought to impeach the Parliament of Great Britain, and all its abettors, of high treason, for daring to tax the freemen of America; that each colony was a palatinate, and the people a palatine; that the people of Connecticut had as much authority to issue a writ of _quo warranto_ against Magna Charta, as the King had to order such a writ against the Charter of Connecticut.

By ravings of this kind did the _Sober Dissenters_ manifest their discontents, when the various measures for raising a revenue in America were adopted by the British ministry. That of sending tea to America, in 1773, subject to a duty of three pence on the pound, payable in America, particularly excited their clamour, as designed, they said, to establish a precedent of British taxation in this country; and, notwithstanding all the remonstrances of the loyalists, who strenuously exerted themselves in removing vulgar prejudices and procuring a reconciliation with circumstances rendered unavoidable by the necessity cf the times, they effectually inflamed the minds of the populace by reading, in the meetings on Sunday, letters said to have been sent by Dr. Franklin, I. Temple, and others, representing the danger of paying any tax imposed by Parliament, and the evil protestantism was threatened with by a Roman Catholic King, by Jacobites, tories, and episcopal clergy in both countries, all enemies to liberty and the American Vine; and adding that, if the Americans paid the tax on tea, there were three hundred other taxes ready to be imposed upon them, one of which was “50_l._ for every son born in wedlock, to maintain the natural children of the lords and bishops of England.”

The moderate counsel of the loyalists had formerly been attended with some effect; but it was forced to give place to the ribaldry just mentioned, and an opposition much more resolute was determined upon against the tea-act than had been made to the Stamp Act.

A provincial congress, committee of correspondence, committee of safety, in every town, &c. &c. now started up for the purpose of setting the colony in an uproar against the Parliament of Great Britain. To this end contributed not a little the falsehoods and artifices of Mr. Handcock, and other Boston merchants, who had in their storehouses nearly 40,000 half-boxes of tea, smuggled from the Dutch; which would never have been sold had the Company’s teas been once admitted into America, as the latter were not only the better in quality, but, the duty being reduced from one shilling to three pence, would be also the much cheaper commodity. Mr. Handcock and his compatriots, therefore, were by no means wanting in endeavours to procure for the first teas which arrived in New-England the reception they met with in the harbour of Boston.