in theſe notes; and a recent writer of Engliſh hiſtory has ſo clearly ſtated our own views, that his language requires very little change here.
It would be to miſread hiſtory and to forget the change of times, to ſee in the Fathers of New England mere commonplace ſlavemongers; to themſelves they appeared as the elect to whom God had given the heathen for an inheritance; they were men of ſtern intellect and fanatical faith, who, believing themſelves the favorites of Providence, imitated the example and aſſumed the privileges of the choſen people, and for their wildeſt and worſt acts they could claim the ſanction of religious conviction. In ſeizing and enſlaying Indians, and trading for negroes, they were but entering into poſſeſſion of the heritage of the ſaints; and New England had to outgrow the theology of the Elizabethan Calviniſts before it could underſtand that the Father of Heaven reſpected neither perſon nor color, and that his arbitrary favor—if more than a dream of divines—was confined to ſpiritual privileges. Compare Froude's Hiſtory of England, Vol. viii., 480.
It was not until the ſtruggle on the part of the coloniſts themſelves to throw off the faſt-cloſing ſhackles of Britiſh oppreſſion culminated in open reſiſtance to the mother-country, that the inconſiſtency of maintaining ſlavery with one hand while pleading or ſtriking for freedom with the other, compelled a reluctant and gradual change in public opinion on this ſubject.
If it be true that at no period of her colonial and provincial hiſtory was Maſſachuſetts without her
