a member of the Church,
though not worth a shilling, or paying a penny to the public revenue,
was an elector, or eligible to be elected to any public office. The
non-members of the Congregational Church were subject to all military
and civil burdens and taxes of the State, without any voice in its
legislation or administration. Such was the free (?) Government of
Massachusetts Bay, eulogized by New England historians during half a
century, until abolished by judicial and royal authority. What would be
thought at this day of a Government, the eligibility to public office
and the elective franchise under which should be based on membership in
a particular Church?

II. But, secondly, this Government must be regarded as equally unjust
and odious when we consider not merely the sectarian basis of its
assumptions and acts against the Sovereign on the one hand, and the
rights of citizens of Massachusetts and of neighbouring colonies on the
other, but the small proportion of the population enfranchised in
comparison with the population which was disfranchised. Even at the
beginning it was not professed that the proportion of Congregational
Church members to the whole population was more than one to three; in
after years it was alleged, at most, not to have been more than one to
six.

This, however, is of little importance in comparison with the question,
what was the proportion of electors to non-electors in the colony? On
this point I take as my authority the latest and most able apologist
and defender of the Massachusetts Government, Dr. Palfrey. He says:
"Counting the lists of persons admitted to the franchise in
Massachusetts, and making what I judge to be reasonable allowance for
persons deceased, I come to the conclusion that the number of freemen in
Massachusetts in 1670 may have been between 1,000 and 1,200, or one
freeman to every four or five adult males."[202]

The whole population of the colony at this time is not definitely
stated, but there was one elector to every "four or five" of the adult
"_males_." This eleven hundred men, because they were Congregationalists,
influenced and controlled by their ministers, elected from themselves all
the legislators and rulers of Massachusetts Bay Colony in civil, judicial,
and military matters, who bearded the King and Parliament, persecuted all
who dissented from them in religious worship, encroached upon the property
and rights of neighbouring colonies, levied and impos