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bartered on the coast of Africa for 53 , 100 negroes , a number considerably more than double that purchased by any other nation , and with them she inundatea the West Indies , and America . The constitutional history of Virginia is very analogous in its leading 1 features to that of the majority of the colonies , and
for that reason we selected it as among the best for our purpose . The New England states stand pre-eminent among them for the superior freedom of their institutions , with one exception Only— -their bigotted intolerance . Both conditions must naturally be expected from the character of their founders . When Henry VIIL established his own caprices as the " true church" with himself for its head , answering , as he once did , by proclamation to a petition of his subjects , that " they were but brutes and inexpert folk , and as unfit to advise him as
blind tn&n were to judge of colours ;*• and when he passed " an act for abolishing diversity of opinions in certain articles concerning the Christian religion / ' he laid the foundation of dissent . The reign of his successor continuing the chimera of enforcing uniformity , increased its growth . The persecutions of Mary s reiefn forcing numbers of Protestants into Germany
and Switzerland , where they saw and became used to simple forms of worship , prepared them for utter disapproval of Queen Elizabeth ' s return to her father ' s love of church government , pomp , and show . Her commission for the detection of nonconformity , her fines , imprisonments , tortures and executions bo increased the number of Puritans , as they began to be called , that one sect of them alone ( the Independents ) amounted ,
according to Sir Walter Raleigh , to 20 ^ 000 during her reign ; the law which he was unsuccessfully opposing in parliament when he made the above statement , enacted , " That any person above sixteen years of age , who obstinately refused , during the space of a month , to attend public worship in a legitimate parochial church , should be committed to prison ; that if
he persisted three months in his refusal , he must abjure the realm ; mnd , that if he either refused this condition , or returned after banishment , he should suffer death as a felon . "—Vol . I . p . 180 . This law drove many of them from the kingdom . The rest
remained , some of them the constant oppoaers of her tyranny in parliament , and all waiting , in stem impatience , with hope of Detter times . But when James I . continued the same intolerant policy , the Puritans began to retire from their country in large numbers . One body of them went to Holland , a portion of which determined to emigrate to America . They applied to the king for a charter , who , wavering between his dislike to let them get beyond his power , and his desire to
• Lord H * rbwt » s Uft of Hear * VIII ,
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• 06 North Americe .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1836, page 306, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2657/page/42/
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