THE GOVERNMENT OF THE PILGRIM[10] FATHERS DURING SEVENTY YEARS, FROM 1620 TO 1692, AS DISTINCT FROM THAT OF THE PURITAN FATHERS.
TWO GOVERNMENTS.--_Difference between the Government of the Pilgrims and that of the Puritans_.--Most historians, both English and American, have scarcely or not at all noticed the fact that within the present State of Massachusetts two separate governments of Puritan emigrants were established and existed for seventy years--two governments as distinct as those of Upper and Lower Canada from 1791 to 1840--as distinct as those of any two States of the American Republic. It is quite natural that American historians should say nothing of the Pilgrim government, beyond the voyage and landing of its founders, as it was a standing condemnation of the Puritan government, on which they bestow all their eulogies. The two governments were separated by the Bay of Massachusetts, about forty miles distant from each other by water, but still more widely different from each other in spirit and character. The government of the Pilgrims was marked from the beginning by a full and hearty recognition of franchise rights to all settlers of the Christian faith; the government of the Puritans denied those rights to all but Congregational Church members for sixty years, and until they were compelled to do otherwise by Royal Charter in 1692. The government of the Pilgrims was just and kind to the Indians, and early made a treaty with the neighbouring tribes, which remained inviolate on both sides during half a century, from 1621 to 1675; the government of the Puritans maddened the Indians by the invasion of their rights, and destroyed them by multitudes, almost to entire extermination. The government of the Pilgrims respected the principles of religious liberty (which they had learned and imbibed in Holland), did not persecute those who differed from it in religious opinions,[11] and gave protection to many who fled from the persecutions of neighbouring Puritans' government, which was more intolerant and persecuting to those who differed from it in religious opinions than that of James, and Charles, and Laud had ever been to them. The government of the Pilgrims was frank and loyal to the Sovereign and people of England; the government of the Puritans was deceptive and disloyal to the Throne and Mother Country from the first, and sedulously sowed and cultivated the seeds of disaffection and hostility to the Royal government, until they grew and ripened into the harvest of the American revolution.