Rec._ v. 287.] because by means of a religious test the ministers
could pack the constituencies with their tools; but on the other hand they
as strenuously argued "that no appeals or other ways of interrupting our
proceedings do lie against us," [Footnote: Winthrop, ii. 283.] because
they well knew that any bench of judges before whom such questions might
come would annul the most vital of their statutes as repugnant to the
British Constitution.
Unfortunately for these churchmen, their objects, as ecclesiastical
politicians, could seldom be reconciled with their duty as English
subjects. At the outset, though made a corporation within the realm, they
felt constrained to organize in America to escape judicial supervision.
They were then obliged to incorporate towns and counties, to form a
representative assembly, and to levy general taxes and duties, none of
which things they had power to do. Still, such irregularities as these,
had they been all, most English statesmen would have overlooked as
unavoidable. But when it came to adopting a criminal code based on the
Pentateuch, and, in support of a dissenting form of worship, fining and
imprisoning, whipping, mutilating, and hanging English subjects without
the sanction of English law; when, finally, the Episcopal Church itself
was suppressed, and peaceful subjects were excluded from the corporation
for no reason but because they partook of her communion, and were
forbidden to seek redress by appealing to the courts of their king, it
seems impossible that any self-respecting government could have long been
passive.
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