could have no separate part in the new arrangement; and Maine, an
indeterminate region, sparsely inhabited by people who had come to seek
not God, but fish in the western world, was not considered. The articles
of federation of the four Calvinist colonies aimed to provide mutual
protection against the Indians, against possible encroachment from
England, against Dutch and French colonists: they declared a league not
only for defense and offense, but for the promotion of spiritual truth and
liberty. Nothing was altered in the constitutions of any of the
contracting parties; and an equitable system of apportioning expenses was
devised. Each partner sent two delegates to the common council; all
affairs proper to the federation were determined by a three-fourths vote;
a law for the delivery of fugitive slaves was agreed to; and the
commissioners of the other jurisdictions were empowered to coerce any
member of the federation which should break this contract. The title of
The United Colonies of New England was bestowed upon the alliance. The
articles were the work of a committee of the leading men in the country,
such as Winthrop, Winslow, Haynes and Eaton; and the confederacy lasted
forty years, being dissolved in 1684.

It was a great result from an experiment begun only about a dozen years
before. It was greater even, than its outward seeming, for it contained
within itself the forces which should control the future. This country is
made up of many elements, and has been molded to no small extent by
circumstances hardly to be foreseen; but it seems incontestable that it
would never have endured, and continued to be the goal of all pilgrims who
wish to escape from a restricted to a freer life, had not its corner-stone
been laid, and its outline fixed, by these first colonists of New England.
It has been calculated that in two hundred years the physical increase of
each Puritan family was one thousand persons, dispersed over the territory
of the United States; and the moral influence which this posterity exerted