ich he had acquired as the first narrator and afterwards
Governor of the Plymouth colony, had much influence with the leading men
of the Long Parliament. He there joined himself to Cromwell, and was
appointed one of his three Commissioners to the West Indies, where he
died in 1655. Cromwell, as he said when he first obtained possession of
the King, had "the Parliament in his pocket;" he had abolished the
Prayer Book and its worship; he had expurgated the army of
Presbyterians, and filled their places with Congregationalists; he was
repeating the same process in Parliament; and through him, therefore
(who was also Commander-in-Chief of all the Parliamentary forces), Mr.
Winslow had little difficulty in stifling the appeal from Massachusetts
Bay for liberty of worship in behalf of both Presbyterians and
Episcopalians.

But was ever a petition to a local Legislature more constitutional, or
more open and manly in the manner of its getting up, more Christian in
its sentiments and objects? Yet the petitioners were arraigned and
punished as "conspirators" and "disturbers of the public peace," by
order of that Legislature, for openly petitioning to it against some of
its own acts. Was ever appeal to the Imperial Parliament by British
subjects more justifiable than that of Dr. Child, Mr. Dand, Mr. Vassal
(progenitor of British Peers), and others, from acts of a local
Government which deprived them of both religious rights of worship and
civil rights of franchise, of all things earthly most valued by
enlightened men, and without which the position of man is little better
than that of goods and chattels? Yet the respectable men who appealed to
the supreme power of the realm for the attainment of these attributes of
Christian and British citizenship were imprisoned and heavily fined,
and their private papers seized and sequestered!

In my own native country of Upper Canada, the Government for nearly half
a century was considered despotic, and held up by American writers
themselves as an unbearable tyranny. But one Church was alleged to be
established in the country, and the government was that of a Church
party; but never was the elective franchise there confined to the
members of the one Church; never were men and women denied, or hailed
before the legal tribunals and fined for exercising the privilege of
Baptism, the Lord's Supper, or public worship for themselves and
families according to the dictates of their own consciences;