known pages, justly praised by Tyler and other historians of
American thought, contain his speech before the General Court in
1645 on the nature of true liberty. No paragraphs written in
America previous to the Revolution would have given more pleasure
to Abraham Lincoln, but it is to be feared that Lincoln never saw
Governor Winthrop's book, though his own ancestor, Samuel Lincoln
of Hingham, lived under Winthrop's jurisdiction.

The theory of government held by the dominant party of the first
two generations of New England pioneers has often been called a
"theocracy," that is to say, a government according to the Word
of God as expounded and enforced by the clergy. The experiment
was
doomed to ultimate failure, for it ran counter to some of the
noblest instincts of human nature. But its administration was in
the hands of able men. The power of the clergy was well-nigh
absolute. The political organization of the township depended
upon the ecclesiastical organization as long as the right to vote
was confined to church members. How sacrosanct and awful was the
position of the clergyman may be perceived from Hawthorne's "The
Minister's Black Veil" and "The Scarlet Letter."

Yet it must be said that men like Hooker and Cotton, Shepard and
Norton, had every instinct and capacity for leadership. With the
notable exception of Hooker, such men were aristocrats, holding
John Winthrop's opinion that "Democracy is, among most civil
nations, accounted the meanest and worst form of government."
They were fiercely intolerant. The precise reason for the Hooker
migration from Cambridge to Hartford in 1636--the very year of
the founding of Harvard--was prudently withheld, but it is now