he statements and counter-pretensions on which Colonel
Barre founded that rebuke. Let us briefly examine some of his
statements.

1. He says that the oppressions of England planted the settlers in
America, who fled from English tyranny to a then uncultivated,
inhospitable country.

In reply it may be affirmed, as a notorious fact, that the southern and
middle colonies, even to Pennsylvania, were nationalized by the kings of
England from their commencement, and were frequently assisted by both
King and Parliament. The Dutch and the Swedes were the fathers of the
settlements of New York and New Jersey. The "Pilgrim Fathers," the
founders of the Plymouth colony, did, however, flee from persecution in
England in the first years of King James, but found their eleven years'
residence in Holland less agreeable than settlement under English rule,
or rather English indulgence, in America. The founders of the
Massachusetts Bay settlement were a Puritan section of the Church of
England, of which they professed to be devoted members after they
embarked for America. A wealthy company of them determined to found a
settlement in America, where they could enjoy the pure worship of the
Church of England without the ceremonies enjoined by Archbishop
Laud--where they could convert the savage Indians, and pursue the fur
and fish trade, and agriculture; but they were no more driven to America
by the "tyranny" of England, than the hundreds of thousands of Puritans
who remained in England, overthrew the monarchy, beheaded the king,
abolished the Church of England, first established Presbyterianism and
then abolished it, and determined upon the establishment of
Congregationalism at the moment of Cromwell's death. But those "Puritan
Fathers" who came to Massachusetts Bay, actually came under the auspices
of a "Royal Charter," which they cherished as the greatest boon
conferred upon any people. But among their first acts after their
arrival at Massachusetts Bay was that to abolish the Church of England
worship itself, and set up the Congregational worship in its place; to
proscribe the Common Prayer Book, and forbid its use even in private
families, and to banish those who persisted in its use. And instead of
converting and christianizing the savage heathen--the chief professed
object of their emigration, and so expressed in their Royal Charter of
incorporation--they never sent a missionary or established a school
among them for more than twel