“general court, or assemblie,” on "the last Wednesday in Easter Terme, yearely, for the yeare ensuing."

About the year 1633, the governor and assistants began to appoint one to preach on the day of election, and this was the first of our "Election Sermons." In a few years, the deputies, or representatives, jealous of the power of the magistrates, challenged the appointment as theirs; and the magistrates, unwilling "to have any fresh occasion of contestation with the deputies," yielded, though some judged it “a betraying, or, at least, weakening, the power of the magistrates, and a countenancing of an unjust usurpation. For," says Winthrop," the deputies could do no such act, as an act of court, without the concurrence of the magistrates; and out of court they had no power at all, but only for regulating their own body; and it was resolved and voted at last court, according to the elders"" — ministers' — “advice, that all occurrents" — orders— "out of court belong to the magistrates to take care of, being the standing council of the Commonwealth." Such were the trifles which involved the popular character of our institutions. The occasion was simple; the principle was momentous. So it was when Hampden refused to pay twenty shillings, and when our grandfathers resisted the Stamp Act and tea duty. Governor Winthrop's critical notice of the discourse by the Rev. Nathaniel Ward, of Ipswich, in June 1641, is, perhaps, the earliest sketch of an "Election Sermon " now to be found. It appears that "some of the freemen, without the consent of the magistrates or governor, had chosen Mr. Nathaniel Ward to preach at this court, pretending that it was a part of their liberty. The governor (whose right, indeed, it is,-for, till the court be assembled, the freemen are but private persons) would

supposes the residence of the company in England, and the transaction of all its business there." The removal was an "usurpation of authority;" but of its expediency and wisdom there can be no doubt. - Story on the Constitution, 1. § 64, 65. Winthrop was not, de jure, governor, as were Conant and Endecott. See note 1, p. xi.

not strive about it; for, though it did not belong to them, yet, if they

- since it could not be helped

would have it, there was reason "to yield it to them. Yet they - though otherwise very able, seeing he had cast off his pastor's place at Ipswich, and was now no minister by the received determination of our churches. In his sermon he delivered many useful things, but in a moral and political discourse, grounding his propositions much upon the old Roman and Grecian governments, which sure is an error; for, if religion and the word of God make men wiser than their neighbors, and these men have the advantage of all that have gone before us in experience and observation, it is probable that, by all these helps, we may better frame rules of government for ourselves than to receive others upon the bare authority of the wisdom, justice, etc., of those heathen commonwealths. Among other things, he advised the people to keep all their magistrates in an equal rank, and not give more honor or power to one than to another, which is easier to advise than to prove, seeing it is against the practice of Israel (where some were rulers of thousands, and some but of tens), and of all nations known or recorded. Another advice he gave, that magistrates should not give private advice, and take knowledge of any man's cause before it came to public hearing. This was debated after in the general court, where some of the deputies moved to have it ordered" and enacted into a law.

had no great reason to choose him,

By the charter of William and Mary, October 7th, 1691, the last Wednesday of May was established as election-day, and it remained so till the Revolution. The important part which this institution of the Election Sermon played at that period, and an account of its observance, are minutely and accurately presented by the Rev. William Gordon, of Roxbury, the contemporary historian of the Revolution, and in a manner so pertinent to our purpose that we give it entire.

He says that the "ministers of New England, being mostly Con

gregationalists, are, from that circumstance, in a professional way, more attached and habituated to the principles of liberty than if they had spiritual superiors to lord it over them, and were in hopes of possessing, in their turn, through the gift of government, the seat of power. They oppose arbitrary rule in civil concerns from the love of freedom, as well as from a desire of guarding against its introduction into religious matters. The patriots, for years back, have availed themselves greatly of their assistance. Two sermons have been preached annually for a length of time, the one on general election-day, the last Wednesday in May, when the new general court have been used to meet, according to charter, and elect counsellors for the ensuing year; the other, some little while after, on the artillery election-day, when the officers are reëlected, or new officers chosen. On these occasions political subjects are deemed very proper; but it is expected that they be treated in a decent, serious, and instructive manner. The general election preacher has been elected alternately by the council and House of Assembly. The sermon is styled the Election Sermon, and is printed. Every representative has a copy for himself, and generally one or more for the minister or ministers of his town. As the patriots have prevailed, the preachers of each sermon have been the zealous friends of liberty; and the passages most adapted to promote the spread and love of it have been selected and circulated far and wide by means of newspapers, and read with avidity and a degree of veneration on account of the preacher and his election to the service of the day. Commendations, both public and private, have not been wanting to help on the design. Thus, by their labors in the pulpit, and by furnishing the prints with occasional essays, the ministers have forwarded and strengthened, and that not a little, the opposition to the exercise of that parliamentary claim of right to bind the colonies in all cases whatever."

Protestantism exchanged the altar for the pulpit, the missal for

the Bible; the "priest" gave way to the "preacher," and the gospel was “preached." The ministers were now to instruct the people, to reason before them and with them, to appeal to them; and so, by their very position and relation, the people were constituted the judges. They were called upon to decide; they also reasoned; and in this way-as the conflicts in the church respected polity rather than doctrine- the Puritans, and especially the New Englanders, had, from the very beginning, been educated in the consideration of its elementary principles. In this we discover how it was, as Governor Hutchinson remarked, that "men took sides in New England upon mere speculative points in government, when there was nothing in practice which could give any grounds for forming parties." This was a remarkable feature in the opening of the Revolutionary war. It was recognized by Edmund Burke, in his speech of March 22d, 1775, "on conciliation with the colonies." "Permit me, sir," he said," to add another circumstance in our colonies, which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit, I mean their education. In no country in the world, perhaps, is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful, and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the congress”. at Philadelphia-"were lawyers. But all who read-and most do read endeavor to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade

many parts of your capital penal constitutions. . . Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here,”—in the colonies-" they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze."

Mr. Webster studied this phase of our history. He says our fathers "went to war against a preamble; they fought seven years against a declaration; " that " we are not to wait till great public mischiefs come, till the government is overthrown, or liberty itself put in extreme jeopardy. We should not be worthy sons of our fathers were we so to regard great questions affecting the general freedom. Those fathers accomplished the Revolution on a strict question of principle. The Parliament of Great Britain asserted a right to tax the colonies in all cases whatsoever; and it was precisely on this question that they made the Revolution turn. The amount of taxation was trifling, but the claim itself was inconsistent with liberty; and that was, in their eyes, enough. It was against the recital of an act of Parliament, rather than against any suffering under its enactments, that they took up arms. .. They poured out

their treasures and their blood like water, in a contest in opposition to an assertion, which those less sagacious, and not so well schooled in the principles of civil liberty, would have regarded as barren phraseology, or mere parade of words.

"They saw in the claim of the British Parliament a seminal principle of mischief, the germ of unjust power; they detected it, dragged it forth from underneath its plausible disguises, struck at it; nor did it elude either their steady eye or their well-directed blow till they had extirpated and destroyed it to the smallest