Mr. (Edward) Winslow, above mentioned by Mr. Hutchinson, had been one of the founders and Governors of the _Plymouth_ colony; but twenty-five years afterwards he imbibed the persecuting spirit of the Massachusetts Bay colony, became their agent and advocate in London, and by the prestige which he had acquired as the first narrator and afterwards Governor of the Plymouth colony, had much influence with the leading men of the Long Parliament. He there joined himself to Cromwell, and was appointed one of his three Commissioners to the West Indies, where he died in 1655. Cromwell, as he said when he first obtained possession of the King, had "the Parliament in his pocket;" he had abolished the Prayer Book and its worship; he had expurgated the army of Presbyterians, and filled their places with Congregationalists; he was repeating the same process in Parliament; and through him, therefore (who was also Commander-in-Chief of all the Parliamentary forces), Mr. Winslow had little difficulty in stifling the appeal from Massachusetts Bay for liberty of worship in behalf of both Presbyterians and Episcopalians.
But was ever a petition to a local Legislature more constitutional, or more open and manly in the manner of its getting up, more Christian in its sentiments and objects? Yet the petitioners were arraigned and punished as "conspirators" and "disturbers of the public peace," by order of that Legislature, for openly petitioning to it against some of its own acts. Was ever appeal to the Imperial Parliament by British subjects more justifiable than that of Dr. Child, Mr. Dand, Mr. Vassal (progenitor of British Peers), and others, from acts of a local Government which deprived them of both religious rights of worship and civil rights of franchise, of all things earthly most valued by enlightened men, and without which the position of man is little better than that of goods and chattels? Yet the respectable men who appealed to the supreme power of the realm for the attainment of these attributes of Christian and British citizenship were imprisoned and heavily fined, and their private papers seized and sequestered!
In my own native country of Upper Canada, the Government for nearly half a century was considered despotic, and held up by American writers themselves as an unbearable tyranny. But one Church was alleged to be established in the country, and the government was that of a Church party; but never was the elective franchise there confined to the members of the one Church; never were men and women denied, or hailed before the legal tribunals and fined for exercising the privilege of Baptism, the Lord's Supper, or public worship for themselves and families according to the dictates of their own consciences; never was the humblest inhabitant denied the right of petition to the local Legislature on any subject, or against any governmental acts, or the right of appeal to the Imperial Government or Parliament on the subject of any alleged grievance. The very suspicion and allegation that the Canadian Government did counteract, by influences and secret representations, the statements of complaining parties to England, roused public indignation as arbitrary and unconstitutional. Even the insurrection which took place in both Upper and Lower Canada in 1837 and 1838 was professedly against alleged partiality and injustice by the _local_ Government, as an obstruction to more liberal policy believed to be desired by the Imperial Government.