shall be thought most mete and convenient for the general good of the
colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In
witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the
11th of November, in the 18th year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord
King James, of England, France, and Ireland the eighteenth, and of
Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620." Mr. John Carver was chosen
Governor for one year.

This simple and excellent instrument of union and government, suggested
by apprehensions of disorder and anarchy, in the absence of a patent for
common protection, has been magnified by some American writers into an
almost supernatural display of wisdom and foresight, and even the
resurrection of the rights of humanity. Bancroft says, "This was the
birth of popular constitutional liberty. The middle ages had been
familiar with charters and constitutions; but they had been merely
compacts for immunities, partial enfranchisements, patents of nobility,
concessions of municipal privileges, or the limitations of sovereign in
favour of feudal institutions. In the cabin of the _Mayflower_ humanity
recorded its rights, and instituted a government on the basis of 'equal
laws' for the 'general good.'" (History of the United States, Vol. I, p.
310.)

Now, any reader of the agreement will see that it says not a word about
"popular constitutional liberty," much less of the "rights of humanity."
It was no Declaration of Independence. Its signers call themselves
"loyal subjects of the King of England," and state one object of their
emigration to be the "honour of our King and country." The Pilgrim
Fathers did, in the course of time, establish a simple system of popular
government; but from the written compact signed in the cabin of the
_Mayflower_ any form of government might be developed. The good sense of
the following remarks by Dr. Young, in his _Chronicles of the Pilgrims
of Plymouth_, contrast favourably with the fanciful hyperboles of
Bancroft: "It seems to me that a great deal more has been discovered in
this document than the signers contemplated. It is evident that when
they left Holland they expected to become a body politic, using among
themselves civil government, and to choose their own rulers from among
themselves. Their purpose in drawing up and signing this compact was
simply, as they state, to restrain certain of their number who had
manifested an unruly and factious disposition. Thi