liberty has generally the same meaning as the word freedom-but not the same as independence. Liberty is a personal attribute; it is a word which applies to individuals, and not to an organized community, church, state, or nation. Independence is an attribute of communities, churches, states and nations; when applied to them, it has very nearly the same meaning as liberty has, when applied to individuals.

Every nation having its own ruler or rulers, who constitute its government and make its laws, by which it is governed, is an independent nation, though it inay be governed by an absolute monarch. A nation may be independent, though the people do not enjoy the leas. degree of either political, civil, or religious liberty. Russia, Austria, Turkey, Persia, and China, are independent empires; but what is the condition of their people?

The Puritans of New England are entitled to great credit for their sturdy spirit of independence, pure morals, great energy, industry, and frugality; also for their noble efforts in establishing schools and colleges, promoting education, diffusing knowledge and christianity, asserting and defending the rights of the colonies, and laboring to establish their independence. But to assert that they established religious liberty in America, or that they contributed to do so, is setting up a false claim, which cannot be maintained.

Their forms of church government were Congregational—each congregation was nominally independent, elected its own pastor, managed its own secular affairs, disciplined its own members-but here its independence ended. The doctrines of the church and the principles of discipline were all established by synods and conventions of all the churches of a colony, in which the clergy had a controlling influence, quite as great as the hierarchy has in the church of England.

The Puritans themselves, who sincerely believed all the doctrines and were devoted to the forms and religious worship of their churches, enjoyed religious liberty; because every thing was in accordance with their wishes; consequently there was no violence to either their wills or their opinions. The devoted Catholic of the city of Rome, under the immediate and absolute government of the pope and his cardinals, enjoys the same kind and degree of

religious liberty; they do as they please, because they please to do in accordance with the orders and decrees of the holy father, as they term the pope. But there was no liberty in those colonies for persons that differed in opinion in religious matters from the established doctrines, modes of worship, or system of discipline of the Puritan churches. Baptists, Episcopalians, Quakers, and even Presbyterians, were all regarded and treated alike, as dangerous schismatics, and disturbers of the public peace. All ministers and other persons who attempted to teach doctrines and principles differing from the Puritan churches, were denounced as schismatics-as teachers of sedition-and were fined, imprisoned, banished, or otherwise punished by the civil magistrates in accordance with the laws and customs of those colonies. Many were banished on pain of death, in case of return. They banished Roger Williams, and great numbers of Baptists, Episcopalians, and Quakers; and inflicted capital punishment by hanging, on four Quakers, because they returned after they had been banished.

The Puritans acted upon the same principle as the emperors of Rome did, from the middle of the fourth century, to the fall of the empire to crush out all differences of opinion which were deemed erroneous, as heresies, dangerous alike to the church and the state; and to punish by banishment or otherwise, all schismatics—with a view to establish uniformity of opinion in matters of religion. The popish inquisitions of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and other countries, and the English acts of uniformity, and to punish heretics, were all based on the same erroneous, fanatical, and despotic principles.

The political as well as the ecclesiastical government of the colony of Massachusetts Bay was a theocracy, consisting of the clergy and church members only-of the one orthodox church. It was not a democracy, for the reason that church members only were eligible to office, and church members only were voters. A majority, and as Judge Story and Mr. Hildreth say, more than three-fourths of the adult males of the colony were disfranchised, were not allowed to vote, and had no participation in the gov

ernment.

None of the people who were not members of the orthodox church, enjoyed the slightest degree of political liberty; which consists in the enjoyment of the right and privilege of participating in the election of officers of government.

The inhabitants who denied the orthodox faith did not enjoy even civil liberty-which embraces all the rights of citizenshiptogether with freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press; but civil rights were denied to persons who did not profess the orthodox faith-and instead of civil liberty being allowed to them, they were liable to be banished, imprisoned, or otherwise punished, as disturbers of the public peace; and great. numbers were so punished.

Such was the polity, and such the action of the early Puritans of Massachusetts; and such were their ideas of religious, civil and political liberty. Their opinions were too rigid and uncompromising, and their action too earnest, energetic, and harsh to be consistent with either religious, civil, or political liberty.

If all the states had been originally settled by Puritans only, they would have established in this country a system of religious and civil despotism, as rigid and oppressive as ever existed in any country of Europe. But as it was, Puritanism constituted only one of many conflicting elements which balanced and partially neutralized each other, and finally blended together in the formation of the American people, and the American character. Puritanism may have improved, in some respects, the compound in forming the character of the people in the middle and north-western states, but there was too much of it in the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Fortunately for the country, the dominion of the Puritans of Massachusetts was eventually overturned by schisms and divisions among themselves. Many of their clergy fell into latitudinarianism, and finally into Unitarianism and Universalism; and when they and their people separated from the mother church, they left the orthodox Puritans in the minority, constituting less than onethird of the churches of the state.

SEC. 6. THE QUAKERS—THEIR ORIGIN, PECULIARITIES, AND VIRTUES.

George Fox, the founder of the sect of Friends or Quakers, commenced an itinerant course of preaching, in England, about the year 1647 or 1648. He inveighed with severity against drunkenness, dishonesty, and the vices of the times; attacked the clergy and the established modes of worship, and maintained that

the light of the gospel in the mind was the only means of salvation, and the only qualification necessary for the gospel ministry. He soon drew a great number of followers, who were formed into religious societies and churches; but being dissenters from the established church, they were subjected to persecutions in England, as well as in several of the Anglo-American colonies for about forty years, and until after the English revolution of 1688, and the passage of the toleration act under William and Mary.

Fox was a pious enthusiast and a fanatic, but had as sound an intellect as is consistent with a high degree of religious fanaticism. The leading principles of the sect are, 1st, that the reason of man, enlightened by the gospel, is sufficient to guide and save him, if he will use it rightly; and, 2d, that religious teachers should speak from an immediate internal impulse, the gift of God, and need no previous education, study or preparation. Those principles contain the germs of individuality, of freedom of thought and opinion, and of religious and civil liberty.

The morals of the Quakers were of the purest kind, and their ideas of honesty in dealing of the strictest character. Their habits of abstaining from all excesses, from extravagance, and all matters of fashion in dress, from the use of intoxicating liquors, and from all amusements, rendered their manners in some measure stiff, rigid, and ascetic. Their peculiar opinions on the subject of war and bearing arms, slavery, and the payment of tithes and and taxes for religious purposes, often brought them into conflict with the government and with the communities in which they lived, tended to promote a fanatical opposition to the government and laws, and to fix on them the stigma of turbulence and faction, and of being disturbers of the public peace. With the exception of those peculiarities, which served to separate them entirely from all other sects and people, no country had better or worthier citizens. The American people are largely indebted to the Quakers for their religious and civil liberty, for their sound principles and noble examples in temperance and in morals, for the abolition of slavery in the northern states, and for the abolition of the slavetrade in Great Britain, as well as in the United States.

Their unfortunate tenets in relation to the ministry tended to check the spread of their doctrines, to lessen their influence in

society, and to dwarf it to such a degree, that it is now dwindling into insignificance. No church can long maintain itself in this age of the world, without an educated ministry, set apart and devoted to its service.

mon.

The Quakers and Puritans have some characteristics in comBoth have ever been opposed to amusements; both are rigid in their morals; and both have agreed on the anti-slavery movement—to labor to restrict the extension of slavery, and to aid in abolishing it. But in many respects the two are diametrically opposed to each other. Quakerism is modest, gentle, and forbearing, retiring and unobtrusive; while Puritanism is bold, active, and energetic, sharp, vigilant, and enterprizing, often officious and meddling, and animated with an ambition to teach and govern the world.

I have discussed the leading characteristics of the Puritans and Quakers, for the reason that they were the only peculiar people who have had much influence upon the early history and destiny of the United States.

ernment.

SEC. 7. FANATICISM AND DEMAGOGISM.

Human selfishness, craft and cunning necessarily suggest and produce more or less scheming and intrigue in all communities, and under all forms and systems of government; and some degree of selfish scheming and management, usually called demagogism, seem to be inseparable from a popular or democratic form of govOur country has withstood the constant operations of more or less political scheming and demagogism for more than seventy years, without any great danger to our institutions, or to the stability of our Union and national government; but it may well be doubted, if it can long withstand the combined and alternate shocks of both demagogism and fanaticism.

Fanaticism is not often regular and continuous, as demagogism is. It is generally of an irregular, spasmodic, and temporary character; and hence there is ground to hope that the present fanaticism of the country may become exhausted, and that the nation may survive its attacks and all its operations.

Fanaticism is of various kinds-more commonly religious, but often political, and sometimes social and moral. Imaginary hopes