tunate daughter of the Stuarts was innocent of the murder of her second husband; and most manfully and earnestly did he perform the task.

The "Introduction to the History of the Revolt of the American Colonies" was meant to serve a particular end, and implicit faith, therefore, is not due to the author's statements. His general fidelity we do not dispute; but his antipathies were strong, and they sometimes led him to unfair conclusions. He disliked the principles of the people of New England, and seldom mentions them without showing his prejudices. He liked the Virginians, takes pains to extenuate their faults, and attributes their final defection to the everpresent, ever-mischievous influence of "the levellers" of the North. He lived in Maryland in the early part of his life, and he remembers that Colony in kindness, and speaks of it often in terms of affectionate interest. He sees designs to throw off the yoke of colonial vassalage in the common and every-day disputes of parties formed for temporary purposes, and in the struggles, constantly taking place among a people who were already free, to carry out special measures, or to obtain place and power. He expresses his opinions frankly and fully, and, we doubt not, with entire sincerity. His views upon the question of independence are certainly wrong, as applied to the Middle and Southern Colonies; and, as regards those of the North, in the absence of recorded proof by the New England people themselves, there will ever be a difference of belief in respect to the facts and circumstances relating to this point, that are furnished by their documentary history and by other evidence. Mr. Sparks has examined the subject with his usual care and ability, and has arrived at the conclusion, that separation from the mother country was not desired by any of the Colonies while hope of redress remained. Such is the opinion of American authorities very generally; but it is known, that some who have devoted themselves to the inquiry have arrived at opposite conclusions.

Chalmers often laments and severely rebukes the inattention, weakness, and ignorance which prevailed in the councils of England with regard to her American Colonies; and few who administered her affairs during the period of which he treats escape his censure. On many occasions, when British subjects of all classes at home were alarmed at the

origin or progress of some particular branch of Colonial industry, or appealed to the government to protect them from the effects of transatlantic skill or enterprise, he complains, that the ministers, who should have been most active, remained passive spectators of the wrong which it was their duty to correct. He complains, also, because such frequent concessions were made to the Colonists, in matters which touched their civil rights rather than their pursuits, and because there was no settled system for their general government. Indeed, the leading principle or doctrine of the work seems to be, that the Colonies were allowed far too much freedom, and that their final independence was the natural result of continued and ill-advised indulgence. In other words, he thinks that carelessness and kindness, and not extreme watchfulness and undue severity, were the causes of their "revolt." In his view, the American subjects had but few grievances to redress at any time; but having learned, at an early period of their history, that turbulence, clamor, and tumult were sure to obtain any object which they desired, they grew refractory just in proportion to their success, and to their increase in numbers and advance in wealth. To trust the wayward people of New England to their own guidance, to listen to their representations, to heed their hypocritical canting when molested, to allow their evil example to corrupt and alienate the other Colonists, was a remissness of duty, which he often mentions as having produced the most fatal consequences.

The policy, which prevailed in the time of George the Second, of appointing native governors, and that which originated in an earlier reign, of commissioning one person to be chief ruler of several Colonies, meet with his unqualified condemnation. In the collisions which occurred between the servants of the king and the popular assemblies, his sympathies are generally with the former; and of the many disputes which he notices, he certainly admits but one in which the delegates of the people were "altogether right," and the royal representative" altogether wrong." He admires the skill and vigor evinced by the statesmen of France in governing her American possessions, and attributes her greater success in ruling them to the simpler form of her colonial government, and to the greater talents and more exact obedience which she required in the officers placed at

the head of affairs. In a word, energy and uniform firmness in executing the system, adopted in Europe, for administering the affairs and retaining the dependence of distant possessions would have insured to England and her Colonies a permanent and a happy connection with each other.

The style of Chalmers is concise and vigorous, but is deficient in simplicity, clearness, and finish. He designed to inform political men about political events, rather than to please and amuse the general reader; and the meaning which he intended to convey respecting the origin and progress of Colonial disaffection is usually obvious; but the sense of other passages is not always easily ascertained. He was fond of short and pithy expressions of opinion; but what he thus meant for maxims are not always beautiful or sound.

Chalmers rests from his labors, and this fact alone would be sufficient to deter us from passing any severe criticism upon his work, devoted, as it principally is, to topics on which men may conscientiously differ, did it deserve such treatment at our hands, or were we disposed to undertake the task. But there are portions of it which we cannot suffer to pass without notice, and without expressing our earnest and pointed dissent from the opinions therein conveyed. These portions relate principally to New England, especially to Massachusetts; and from the extracts we now proceed to make, our readers will perceive, we think, that common justice is done to neither.

"New England was at length planted by accident, after several expensive efforts had failed. A few fanatics, who, tired of the European world, because it denied to them that toleration which they showed little inclination to allow to others, sailed for Virginia, but were driven by storm on the coast of New Eng land. Here they determined to end a disastrous voyage, since the approach of winter, as well as their distresses, forbade further adventure. But sagacity soon discovered, that he who appears to be animated with the fervors of religion may at the same time be actuated by the most ardent ambition." · Vol. 1., pp. 26, 27.

We shall enter upon no defence of religious intolerance; it is a stain upon the memory of all who have practised it. But history should be just, and we may therefore notice, once for all, the many unkind allusions of Chalmers to whatever of it existed among the founders of the Northern Colo

nies. It may not have been right to establish Congregationalism in Massachusetts by law; but it was quite as justifiable as the act of establishing Episcopacy by the same authority in his favorite Colony of Virginia. To refuse the exercise of civil rights to clergymen who had not received church-ordination was quite as inexcusable in the latter as to insist upon church-membership as a qualification for enjoying the same privileges was in the former. It was a great wrong for Puritans to banish Quakers and Baptists; but it was equally wrong for Churchmen to banish Puritans. Calvert laid the foundations of religious freedom in Maryland broad and deep; but of what faith were those who overturned the structure which that noble man had built, and who, alike regardless of charter and individual rights, declared that persons of his communion were beyond the pale of British protection? When so many were guilty, it is dangerous to ac

cuse one.

In this connection, we may also notice the frequent charge, that the religion and politics of these "fanatics" were inseparably connected. If they found comfort in the Bible, we rejoice at it; for men so weary and sorrowing needed all the consolation which it could impart. If they held that those who followed them to their place of exile, and who assumed to direct all their movements, were bound by its precepts, and if they quoted these precepts in order to shield themselves from oppression, who shall rebuke them? We might plead their cause after their own fashion, if custom and taste had not so changed, as to make those arguments appear puerile now, which seemed most cogent in their ears. When they read that "in all labor there is profit," and "he that laboreth laboreth for himself," they might well plead the authority of Scripture against their fellow-subjects who sought to restrain their pursuits and seize upon the rewards of their enterprise. The exclamation of Paul, "I was free-born," saved him from the scourge ; and the oft-repeated declarations of those who were "fanatically" attached to his teachings should have saved them from the infliction of the colonial system. They, like him, appealed to Cæsar; and if his ear had not been poisoned, when they had forced their way to his throne, far less would have been written against either their religion or their politics. The historian, who says, that, in a

synod of New England churches, "Vane, the younger, learned the arts of low intrigue, of mean dissimulation, which he not long after practised on a greater stage"; who speaks of" recitals of Scriptural jargon," of "pious arts," of profound hypocrisy," as applicable to these churches, pastors, or people, is unfaithful to his duty, and careless of his fame. The Puritans were stern and severe, and so were most persons of their time; but distempered separatists in the beginning, or a community of canting, ambitious hypocrites afterwards, they were not.

In speaking farther of the settlers of Plymouth, he calls them "Brownists," and avers that their "unsociable religion, which cannot easily be described, promoted altercation and excluded emigrants." Annalists favorable to New England seldom fall into the error of saying, that the Puritans who fled from England to Holland, and thence embarked for America, were followers of Robert Brown. The principles of that sectary were quite different in many particulars from those embraced by the flock of Mr. Robinson; and finally Brown himself abandoned them, and returned to the bosom of the church from which he had seceded. The class of dissenters, known in the early period of separation as "Independents," is that to which the Pilgrim fathers distinctly belonged; and we regret, that, among the writers who have not preserved the distinction that relieves them from the odium of opinions and practices highly reprehensible, is Judge Marshall.

"Meanwhile a new race of men appeared in America, whose peculiar principles will be found, when traced through all their various effects, to have entailed on the colonies numberless woes, on the parent country the most perplexing embarrassments.

"The example of the Brownists of New Plymouth, whose persevering diligence had conquered difficulties, inflamed the spirit of adventure, by teaching men to despise disease and death, when they propagated their tenets or sought for gain. And zealots associated to plant the gospel in New England, at a

* Many of our own writers are unjust to Sir Henry Vane. It is the opinion of so competent a judge as the late Sir James Mackintosh, that he was one of the most profound thinkers who ever lived, and scarcely infe rior to Bacon. His life, by the Rev. Charles W. Upham, in Sparks's Ameri can Biography, is an admirable production, and has done much towards disseminating correct views of his real character and merits.