proceeds to give an account of the
confederation of the four New England colonies, Plymouth, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, and New Haven, in 1643, with appropriate statements of the
principles and conduct of the founders of each settlement, and of the
character and motives of the leaders of each of them.

The origin, motives, and objects of that confederation, he explains;
analyzing the distribution of power between the commissioners of the
whole confederacy and among the separate governments of the colonies,
and showing that it combined the same identical principles with those
which gathered and united the thirteen English colonies as the prelude
to the Revolution which severed them forever from their national
connection with Great Britain; and that the New England Confederacy of
1643 was the model and prototype of the North American Confederacy of
1774.

His sketch of the founder of the Colony of Rhode Island will give a
general idea of the spirit and bearing of this discourse:

"Roger Williams was a man who maybe considered the very
impersonation of a combined conscientious and contentious spirit.
Born in the land of Sir Hugh Evans and Captain Fluellen, educated at
the University of Oxford, at the very period when the monarchical
Episcopal Church of England was purging herself, as by fire, from
the corruptions of the despotic and soul-degrading Church of Rome,
he arrived at Boston in February, 1630, about half a year after the
landing of the Massachusetts Colony of Governor Winthrop. He was an
eloquent preacher, stiff and self-confident in his opinions;
ingenious, powerful, and commanding, in impressing them upon others;
inflexible in his adherence to them; and, by an inconsistency
peculiar to religious enthusiasts, combining the most amiable and
affectionate sympathies of the heart with the most repulsive and
inexorable exclusions of conciliation, compliance, or intercourse,
with his adversaries in opinion.

"On his first arrival he went to Salem, and there soon made himself
so acceptable by his preaching, that the people of Mr. Skelton's
church invited him to settle with them as his colleague. But he had
broached, and made no hesitation in maintaining, two opinions
imminently dangerous to the very existence of the Massachusetts
Colony, and certainly not remarkable for that spirit of charity or
toleration upon which he afterwar