So far as the testimony goes, everything tends to
prove that the petitioners were perfectly sincere in their effort to gain
some small measure of civil and religious liberty for themselves and for
the disfranchised majority.
Viewed from the standpoint of history and not of prejudice, the events of
these early years present themselves in a striking and unmistakable
sequence.
They are the phenomena that regularly attend a certain stage of human
development,--the absorption of power by an aristocracy. The clergy's rule
was rigid, and met with resistance, which was crushed with an iron hand.
Was it defection from their own ranks, the deserters met the fate of
Wheelwright, of Williams, of Cotton, or of Hubbert; were politicians
contumacious, they were defeated or exiled, like Vane, or Aspinwall, or
Coddington; were citizens discontented, they were coerced like Maverick
and Childe. The process had been uninterrupted alike in church and state.
The congregations, which in theory should have included all the
inhabitants of the towns, had shrunk until they contained only a third or
a quarter of the people; while the churches themselves, which were
supposed to be independent of external interference and to regulate their
affairs by the will of the majority, had become little more than the
chattels of the priests, and subject to the control of the magistrates who
were their representatives.
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