The Portable Edmund Burke (Portable Library)

by Edmund Burke

  However, the party was far enough from being destroyed. The merit of their sufferings, the affected plainness of their dress, the gravity of their deportment, the use of scripture phrases upon the most ordinary occasions, and even their names, which had something striking and venerable, as being borrowed from the Old Testament, or having a sort of affected relation to religious matters, gained them a general esteem amongst sober people of ordinary understandings. This party was very numerous; and their zeal made them yet more considerable than their numbers. They were commonly called Puritans.

  When King James came to the throne, he had a very fair opportunity of pacifying matters; or at worst he might have left them in the condition he found them; but it happened quite otherwise. The unkingly disputation at Hampton Court did more to encourage the Puritans to persevere in their opinions, by the notice which was taken of them, than all King James’s logic as a scholar, backed with all his power as a king, could do to suppress that party. They were persecuted, but not destroyed; they were exasperated, and yet left powerful; and a severity was exercised towards them which at once exposed the weakness and the ill intentions of the government.

  In this state things continued until the accession of Charles, when they were far from mending. This prince, endowed with many great virtues, had very few amiable qualities. As grave as the Puritans themselves, he could never engage the licentious part of the world in his favor ; and that gravity being turned against the Puritans, made him but the more odious to them. He gave himself up entirely to the church and churchmen; and he finished his ill conduct in this respect, by conferring the first ecclesiastical dignity of the kingdom, and a great sway in temporal affairs, upon Dr. Laud. Hardly fit to direct a college, he was called to govern a kingdom. He was one of those indiscreet men of good intentions, who are the people in the world that make the worst figure in politics. This man thought he did good service to religion by a scrupulous inquiry into the manner in which the ministers everywhere conformed to the regulations of the former reigns. He deprived great numbers for nonconformity. Not satisfied with this, in which perhaps he was justifiable enough if he had managed prudently, he made new regulations, and introduced on a people already abhorrent of the most necessary ceremonies, ceremonies of a new kind, of a most useless nature, and such as were even ridiculous, if the serious consequences which attended them may not entitle them to be considered as matters of importance.

  Several great men, disgusted at the proceedings of the court, and entertaining very reasonable apprehensions for the public liberty, to make themselves popular, attached themselves to the popular notions of religion, and affected to maintain them with great zeal. Others became Puritans through principle. And now their affairs put on a respectable appearance; in proportion as they became of consequence, their sufferings seemed to be more and more grievous; the severities of Laud raised not terror as formerly, but a sort of indignant hatred; and they became every day further and further from listening to the least terms of agreement with surplices, organs, commonprayer, or table at the east end of the church. As they who are serious about trifles are serious indeed, their lives began to grow miserable to several on account of these ceremonies; and, rather than be obliged to submit to them, there was no part of the world to which they would not have fled with cheerfulness.

  Early in the reign of King James a number of persons of this persuasion had sought refuge in Holland; in which, though a country of the greatest religious freedom in the world, they did not find themselves better satisfied than they had been in England. There they were tolerated indeed, but watched; their zeal began to have dangerous languors for want of opposition; and, being without power or consequence, they grew tired of the indolent security of their sanctuary; they chose to remove to a place where they should see no superior; and therefore they sent an agent to England, who agreed with the council of Plymouth, for a tract of land in America, within their jurisdiction, to settle in, after they had obtained from the king a privilege to do so. The Plymouth council was a company, who, by their charter, had not only all the coast of North America from Nova Scotia to the southern parts of Carolina (the whole country being then distinguished by the names of South and North Virginia) as a scene for their exclusive trade; but they had the entire property of the soil besides.

  This colony established itself at a place which they called New Plymouth. They were but few in number; they landed in a bad season; and they were not at all supported but from their private funds. The winter was premature and terribly cold. The country was all covered with wood, and afforded very little for the refreshment of persons sickly with such a voyage, or for sustenance of an infant people. Near half of them perished by the scurvy, by want, and the severity of the climate; but they who survived, not dispirited with their losses nor with the hardships they were still to endure, supported by the vigor which was then the character of Englishmen, and by the satisfaction of finding themselves out of the reach of the spiritual arm, reduced this savage country to yield them a tolerable livelihood, and by degrees a comfortable subsistence.

  This little establishment was made in the year 1621. Several of their brethren in England, laboring under the same difficulties, took the same methods of escaping from them. The colony of Puritans insensibly increased ; but as yet they had not extended themselves much beyond New Plymouth. It was in the year 1629, that the colony began to flourish in such a manner, that they soon became a considerable people. By the close of the ensuing year they had built four towns, Salem, Dorchester, Charlestown, and Boston, which has since become the capital of New England. That enthusiasm which was reversing every thing at home, and which is so dangerous in every settled community, proved of admirable service here. It became a principle of life and vigor, that enabled them to conquer all the difficulties of a savage country. Their exact and sober manners proved a substitute for a proper subordination and regular form of government, which they had for some time wanted, and the want of which in such a country had otherwise been felt very severely.

  And now, not only they who found themselves uneasy at home upon a religious account, but several by reason of the then profitable trade of furs and skins, and for the sake of the fishery, were invited to settle in New England. But this colony received its principal assistance from the discontent of several great men of the puritan party, who were its protectors, and who entertained a design of settling amongst them in New England, if they should fail in the measures they were pursuing for establishing the liberty, and reforming the religion of their mother country. They solicited grants in New England, and were at a great expense in settling them. Amongst these patentees, we see the Lords Brook, Say and Seal, the Pelhams, the Hampdens, and the Pyms; the names which afterwards appeared with so much eclat upon a greater stage. It was said that Sir Matthew Boynton, Sir William Constable, Sir Arthur Haslerig, and Oliver Cromwell were actually upon the point of embarking for New England, when Archbishop Laud, unwilling that so many objects of his hatred should be removed out of the reach of his power, applied for, and obtained, an order from the court to put a stop to these transportations; and thus he kept forcibly from venting itself that virulent humor which he lived to see the destruction of himself, his order, his religion, his master, and the constitution of his country. However, he was not able to prevail so far as to hinder New England from receiving vast reinforcements, as well of the clergy who were deprived of their livings, or not admitted to them for noncomformity, as of such of the laity who adhered to their opinions....

  The part of New England called Massachusetts Bay had now settlements very thick all along the sea-shore. Some slips from these were planted in the province of Maine and New Hampshire, being torn from the original stock by the religious violence, which was the chief characteristic of the first settlers in New England. The patentees we last mentioned principally settled upon the river Connecticut, and established a separate and independent government there: some persons having before that fixed themselves upon the borders of th
is river, who fled from the tyranny arising from the religious differences which were moulded into the first principles of the Plymouth and Massachusetts colonies.

  For a considerable time, the people of New England had hardly any that deserved the name of a regular form of government. The court took very little care of them. By their charter they were empowered to establish such an order, and to make such laws, as they pleased, provided they were not contrary to the laws of England. A point not easily settled, neither was there any means appointed for settling it. As they who composed the new colonies were generally persons of a contracted way of thinking and most violent enthusiasts, they imitated the Jewish polity in almost all respects; and adopted the books of Moses as the law of the land. The first laws which they made were grounded upon them, and were therefore very ill suited to the customs, genius or circumstances of that country and of those times; for which reason they have since fallen into disuse.

  As to religion, it was, as I have said, the Puritan. In England, this could hardly be considered as a formed sect at the time of their emigration, since several who had received episcopal ordination were reckoned to belong to it. But as soon as they found themselves at liberty in America, they fell into a way very little different from the independent mode. Every parish was sovereign within itself. Synods indeed were occasionally called; but they served only to prepare and digest matters, which were to receive their sanction from the approbation of the several churches. The synods could exercise no branch of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, either as to doctrine or to discipline. They had no power of excommunication. They could only refuse to hold communion with those whose principles and practices they disliked. The magistrates assisted in those synods, not only to hear, but to deliberate and determine. From such a form as this, great religious freedom might, one would have imagined, be well expected. But the truth is, they had no idea at all of such a freedom. The very doctrine of any sort of toleration was so odious to the greater part, that one of the first persecutions set up here was against a small party which arose amongst themselves, who were hardy enough to maintain, that the civil magistrate had no lawful power to use compulsory measures in affairs of religion. After harrassing these people by all the vexatious ways imaginable, they obliged them to fly out of their jurisdiction. These emigrants settled themselves to the southward, near Cape Cod, where they formed a new government upon their own principles, and built a town, which they called Providence. This has since made the fourth and smallest, but not the worst inhabited, of the New England governments, called Rhode Island, from an island of that name which forms a part of it. As a persecution gave rise to the first settlement of New England, so a subsequent persecution in this colony gave rise to new colonies, and this facilitated the spreading of the people over the country.

  If men, merely for the moderation of their sentiments, were exposed to such severe treatment, it was not to be expected that others should escape unpunished. The very first colony had hardly set its foot in America, when, discovering that some amongst them were false brethren and ventured to make use of the common prayer, they found means of making the country so uneasy to them, that they were glad to fly back to England.

  As soon as they began to think of making laws, I find no less than five about matters of religion; all contrived, and not only contrived but executed in some respects, with so much rigor, that the persecution which drove the Puritans out of England might be considered as great lenity and indulgence in the comparison. For, in the first of these laws, they deprive every one, who does not communicate with their established church, of the right to his freedom, or a vote in the election of any of their magistrates. In the second, they sentence to banishment any who should oppose the fourth commandment, or deny the validity of infant baptism or the authority of magistrates. In the third, they condemn Quakers to banishment, and make it capital for them to return; and, not stopping at the offenders, they lay heavy fines upon all who should bring them into the province, or even harbor them for an hour. In the fourth, they provide banishment, and death in case of return, for Jesuits and Popish priests of every denomination. In the fifth, they decree death to any who shall worship images. After they had provided such a complete code of persecution, they were not long without opportunities of reading bloody lectures upon it. The Quakers, warmed with that spirit which animates the beginning of most sects, had spread their doctrines all over the British dominions in Europe, and began at last to spread them with equal zeal in America. The clergy and the magistrates in New England took the alarm; they seized upon some of those people, they set them in the stocks and in the pillory without effect; they scourged, they imprisoned, they banished them; they treated all those, who seemed to commiserate their sufferings, with great rigor; but their persecution had no other effect than to inflame their own cruelty and the zeal of the sufferers. The constancy of the Quakers under their sufferings begot a pity and esteem for their persons, and an approbation of their doctrines; their proselytes increased; the Quakers returned as fast as they were banished; and the fury of the ruling party was raised to such a height, that they proceeded to the most sanguinary extremities. Upon the law they had made, they seized at different times upon five of those who had returned from banishment, condemned, and hanged them. It is unknown how far their madness had extended, if an order from the king and council in England about the year 1661 had not interposed to restrain them.

  It is a task not very agreeable to insist upon such matters; but, in reality, things of this nature form the greatest part of the history of New England, for a long time. They persecuted the Anabaptists, who were no inconsiderable body amongst them, with almost an equal severity. In short, this people, who in England could not bear being chastised with rods, had no sooner got free from their fetters than they scourged their fellow refugees with scorpions; though the absurdity, as well as the injustice of such a proceeding in them might stare them in the face!

  One may observe that men of all persuasions confine the word persecution, and all the ill ideas of injustice and violence which belong to it, solely to those severities which are exercised upon themselves, or upon the party they are inclined to favor. Whatever is inflicted upon others, is a just punishment upon obstinate impiety, and not a restraint upon conscientious differences. The persecution we have ourselves suffered is a good ground for retaliation against an old enemy; and if one of our friends and fellow-sufferers should prove so wicked as to quit our cause, and weaken it by his dissension, he deserves to be punished yet more than the old enemy himself. Besides this, the zealous never fail to draw political inferences from religious tenets, by which they interest the magistrate in the dispute; and then to the heat of a religious fervor is added the fury of a party zeal. All intercourse is cut off between the parties. They lose all knowledge of each other, though countrymen and neighbors; and are therefore easily imposed upon with the most absurd stories concerning each other’s opinions and practices. They judge of the hatred of the adverse side by their own. Then fear is added to their hatred; and preventive injuries arise from their fear. The remembrance of the past, the dread of the future, the present ill, will join together to urge them forward to the most violent courses.

  Such is the manner of proceeding of religious parties towards each other; and in this respect the New England people are not worse than the rest of mankind, nor was their severity any just matter of reflection upon that mode of religion which they profess. No religion whatsoever, true or false, can excuse its own members, or accuse those of any other, upon the score of persecution. The principles which give rise to it are common to all mankind, and they influence them as they are men, and not as they belong to this or that persuasion. In all persuasions the bigots are persecutors; the men of a cool and reasonable piety are favorers of toleration; because the former sort of men, not taking the pains to be acquainted with the grounds of their adversaries’ tenets, conceive them to be so absurd and monstrous, that no man of sense can give in to them in good earnest. For whi
ch reason they are convinced that some oblique bad motive induces them to pretend to the belief of such doctrines and to the maintaining of them with obstinacy. This is a very general principle in all religious differences, and it is the corner stone of all persecution.

  Besides the disputes with those of another denomination, the Independents were for a long time harrassed with one in the bowels of their own churches. The stale disputes about grace and works, produced dissensions, riots, and almost a civil war in the colony. The famous Sir Henry Vane the younger, an enthusiastic, giddy, turbulent man, of a no very good disposition, came hither with some of the adventurers; and rather than remain idle, played at small games in New England, where the people had chosen him governor. It is not hard to conceive, how such a man, at the head of such a people and engaged in such controversy, could throw every thing into confusion. In the very height of this hopeful dispute, they had a war upon their hands with some of the Indian nations. Their country was terribly harrassed, and numbers were every day murdered, by the incursions of the enemy. All this time they had an army in readiness for action, which they would not suffer to march even to defend their own lives and possessions, because “many of the officers and soldiers were under a covenant of works.”