When freed from the incubus of the ecclesiastical oligarchy the range of
intellectual activity expanded, and in 1780 Massachusetts may be said,
without exaggeration, to have led the liberal movement of the world; for
not only had she won almost in perfection the three chief prizes of modern
civilization, liberty of speech, toleration, and equality before the law;
but she had succeeded in formulating those constitutional doctrines by
which, during the nineteenth century, popular self-government has reached
the highest efficiency it has ever yet attained.
A single example, however, must suffice to show what the rise of the class
of lawyers had done for individual security and liberty in that
comparatively short interval of ninety years.
Theocratic justice has been described; the trials of Wheelwright, and of
Anne Hutchinson, of Childe, of Holmes, and of Christison have been
related; and also the horrors perpetrated before that ghastly tribunal of
untrained bigots, which condemned the miserable witches undefended and
unheard. [Footnote: In England, throughout the eighteenth century, counsel
were allowed to speak in criminal trials, in cases of treason and
misdemeanor only. Nor is the conduct of Massachusetts in regard to witches
peculiar. Parallel atrocities might probably be adduced from the history
of every European nation, even though the procedure of the courts were
more regular than was that of the Commission of Phips.
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