The thing they ventured on was the
chance that the Royal Government, which had troubles nearer home, would
have its hands too full to execute its orders 3,000 miles away across
the sea by force. But they accepted all hazards whatsoever of refusing
always to obey those orders. They held on to their charter like grim
death, and they kept it in their time. More than once or twice it seemed
as good as gone; but delay helped them; turns of events helped them;
God's providence delivered them, they thought; anyhow, they kept it;
that intrepid handful against immeasurable odds, mainly because it lay
not in the power of mortal man to intimidate them. And I contend that,
all things considered, no more splendid exhibition of the essential
stuff of manhood stands on human record. They were no hot-heads. All
that while, rash as they appeared, their pulse was calm. The justifying
reasons of their course were ever plain before their eyes. They were of
the kind of men who understood their objects.

The representative of an English newspaper, sent some time since to
Ireland to move about and learn by personal observation the real
political mind of the people there, reported on his return that he had
been everywhere and talked with all sorts, and that as nearly as he
could make out, the attitude of the Irish might be stated about thus:
"They don't know what they want--and they are bound to have it."
[Laughter.]

But those unbending Forefathers well knew what they wanted that charter
for. It was their legal guarantee of the privilege of a spacious
freedom, civil and religious, and all that they did and risked for its
sake is witness of the price at which they held that privilege. It was
not that they had any special objection to the interference in the
province of their domestic administration of the king as a king; for you
find them presently crying "Hands Off!" to the Puritan Parliament as
strenuously as ever they said it to the agents of Charles I. It was
simply and positively the value they set on the self-governing
independence that had been pledged them at the beginning of the
enterprise.

And who that has a man's heart in him but must own that their
inspiration to such a degree, with such an idea and sentiment in the
time, place, and circumstances in which they stood, was magnificent? Was
the inexorable unrelaxing determination with which they, being so few
and so poor, maintained their point somewhat wrought into their faces?