worded protest against
any like exercise of power in future. In 1651 Parliament ordered
Massachusetts to surrender the charter obtained from Charles I. and take
out a new one from Parliament, in which the relations of the colony to
the home government should be made the subject of fresh and more precise
definition. To this request the colony for more than a year vouchsafed
no answer; and finally, when it became necessary to do something,
instead of sending back the charter, the legislature sent back a
memorial, setting forth that the people of Massachusetts were quite
contented with their form of government, and hoped that no change would
be made in it. War between England and Holland, and the difficult
political problems which beset the brief rule of Cromwell, prevented
the question from coming to an issue, and Massachusetts was enabled to
preserve her independent and somewhat haughty attitude. [Sidenote: Fall
of Charles I. brings up the question as to supremacy of Parliament over
the colonies]

During the whole period of the Confederacy, however, disputes kept
coming up which through endless crooked ramifications were apt to end
in an appeal to the home government, and thus raise again and again the
question as to the extent of its imperial supremacy. For our present
purpose, it is enough to mention three of these cases: 1, the adventures
of Samuel Gorton; 2, the Presbyterian cabal; 3, the persecution of the
Quakers. Other cases in point are those of John Clarke and the Baptists,
and the relations of Massachusetts to the northeastern settlements; but
as it is not my purpose here to make a complete outline of New England
history, the three cases enumerated will suffice.

The first case shows, in a curious and instructive way, how religious
dissensions were apt to be complicated with threats of an Indian war on
the one hand and peril from Great Britain on the other; and as we come
to realize the triple danger, we can perhaps make some allowances for
the high-handed measures with which the Puritan governments sometimes
sought to avert it. [Genesis of the persecuting spirit]

As I have elsewhere tried to show, the genesis of the persecuting spirit
is to be found in the conditions of primitive society, where "above
all things the prime social and political necessity is social cohesion
within the tribal limits, for unless such social cohesion be maintained,
the very existence of the tribe is likely to be extinguished in