France." 2. Mr. Bancroft
calls the petitioners "disturbers of the public security," and Mr.
Palfrey calls them "conspirators"--terms applied to the Armenian
remonstrants against the persecuting edicts of the Synod of Dort--terms
applied to all the complainants of the exclusive and persecuting policy
of the Tudor and Stuart kings of England--terms applied to even the
first Christians--terms now applied to pleaders of religious and civil
freedom by the advocates of a Massachusetts Government as intolerant and
persecuting as ever existed in Europe. The petition of these impugned
parties shows that all they asked for was equal religious and civil
liberty and protection with their Congregational oppressors. Opprobrious
names are not arguments; and imputations of motives and character are
not facts, and are usually resorted to for want of them. 3. Mr. Bancroft
designates as "usurpations of Parliament" the proceedings of the Long
Parliament in appointing a Governor-General and Commissioners for the
colonies, and in exercising its right to receive and decide upon appeals
from the colonies; and terms the support of the Parliament in the colony
"domestic treachery;" and the one member of the Legislature who had the
courage to maintain the supremacy of the Mother Country is called the
"faithless deputy," who was forthwith turned out of the House, which
then proceeded, "with closed doors," to discuss in secret conclave its
relations to England, and concluded by declaring "against any assertion
of paramount authority" on the part of the English Parliament. This was
substantially a "Declaration of Independence;" not, indeed, against an
arbitrary king, as was alleged sixteen years before, and a hundred and
thirty years afterwards, but against a Parliament which had dethroned
and beheaded their King, and abolished the House of Lords and the
Episcopal Church! All this Mr. Bancroft now treats as maintaining the
_Charter_, of which he himself had declared, in another place, as I have
quoted above: "The Charter on which the freemen of Massachusetts
succeeded in erecting a system of independent representative liberty did
not secure to them a single privilege of self-government, but left them
as the Virginians had been left, without any valuable franchise, at the
mercy of the Corporation within the realm." Who then were the
"usurpers," and had been for twenty years, of power which had not been
conferred on them--the new Church and the persecu