their numbers increased, though but slowly. They did not invite the
co-operation of persons not of their way of thinking, and the world was
never over-supplied with Separatists. On the other hand, they were active
and full of enterprise, and sent out branches in all directions, which
shared the vitality of the parent stock. Every man of them was trained to
self-government, and where he went order and equity accompanied him. A
purer democracy could not be framed; for years the elections were made by
the entire body of the assembled citizens; His Dread Majesty, King James,
never sent them his royal Charter, but the charter provided by their own
love of justice and solid good sense served them far better. Their
governors were responsible directly to the people, and were further
restrained by a council of seven members. This political basis is that
upon which our present form of government rests; but it is strange to see
what Daedalian complications, and wheels within wheels, we have contrived
to work into the superstructure. A modern ward heeler in New York could
have taken up the whole frame of government in Seventeenth Century New
England by the butt end, and cracked it like a whip--provided of course the
Pilgrim fathers had allowed him to attend the primaries.

But it is more probable that the ward heeler would have found himself
promptly in the presence of one of those terrific magistrates whose grim
decrees gave New England naughty children the nightmare a century after
the stern-browed promulgators of them were dust. The early laws against
crime in New England were severe, though death was seldom or never
inflicted save for murder. But more irksome to one used to the lax habits
of to-day would have been the punctilious rigidity with which they guarded
the personal bearing, speech, and dress of the members of their community.
Yet we may thank them for having done so; it was a wise precaution; they
knew the frailties of the flesh, and how easily license takes an ell if an
inch be given it. Nothing less iron than was their self-restraint could