Island and Pennsylvania, the prominent motive of the emigrants. They fled from debt or poverty, not from oppression, and sought to realize money, and not some ideal of religious purity. We have no evidence, that any of the first comers were dissatisfied with the prevalent notions of toleration, or rather intolerance. Virginia, certainly, resembled far more the asylum of Romulus, than the one on Plymouth rock, and must be content with the greatness which has since marked her sons, as well as, of old, those of the Roman commonwealth.

All who came over from England were considered as born in its Church, and the King's instructions required, that "The presidents, councils and ministers should provide that the true word and service of God should be preached, planted and used according to the rites and doctrines of the Church of England." In the bloody military code of 1611, every man and woman in the colony was required to give an account of his faith and religion to the minister," under pain of severe scourging, while blasphemy, and even a third absence from church on Sabbath, were to be capitally punished. We are told, indeed, that capital punishment was never, and no punishment was often, inflicted; but the enactment itself is conclusive proof, that the governors of the colony had not the first conception of religious liberty, and that dissenters,-to use a term obsolete in its application to the United States, since our Independence, had no inducement to make Virginia their home. The sneer of Whitaker, "that so few of our English ministers, that were so hot against the surplice and subscription, come hither where neither are spoken of," was surely unprovoked. It was considered King James' colony, and no suitable place for ministers who had the presumption to differ from that modern Solomon. The appeal from the council, on the subject of missions, a paper so much lauded by Dr. Hawks, seems to us a specimen of the pedantic style, which characterized that period indeed, but was most conspicuous in the contemptible monarch.

We believe, with Dr. Hawks, that the ministers had influence, and were ready to exercise it, to prevent oppression

and inhumanity in all cases not immediately affecting their own interests and passions. As an instance, they procured from the rapacious and despotic Governor Argal the pardon of Brewster, whose narrow escape contributed to the repeal of the Draconian code, under which Church and State were alike groaning.

The Episcopal Church was actually established from the first, although there seems to have been no formal enactment to that effect until 1619, and even as late as 1628 the right of the colonial government to administer the oath of allegiance and supremacy was questioned. As before mentioned, attendance on the Episcopal Church was enforced by penalties, just as any civil duty was. Yet, while there are abundant traces of religious carelessness, there are, we believe, none of religious persecution, prior to the landing of Lord Baltimore.

For this there were probably two causes. One of them was the want of material for persecution, occasioned by the homogeneous character of the immigrants, nearly all of whom were nominal Episcopalians, however little interest many of them felt in religion or morality. This identity of religious connexion, by no means proceeded from a similar identity in the mother country. Never were the minds of men in England more active on the subject of religion, as soon after proved by the history of the great rebellion; and mental activity has never yet resulted in unanimity. Those whom earnest examination, or reasons less creditable, had led into dissent, were not likely to seek Virginia. They either preferred staying at home, where their treatment was no worse, or were attracted towards New-England, or some other supposed asylum for oppressed consciences. It is easy to see how this must have led to earlier and more serious collisions in the Northern colonies. Fleeing from persecution in Europe, and naturally expecting from the Puritans the toleration which they had vainly claimed from national churches, they met with a grievous disappointment. They soon found, to their cost, that their own standard of purity, and not real freedom of conscience, was the aim of the fa-" mous New-England colonists. The latter believed the es

sential truths of Christianity so clear to every candid and earnest enquirer, as to justify the use of the civil arm against all who after due admonition and instruction, persevered in what they deemed fundamental errors. This was the theory of Cotton, the opponent of Roger Williams, as it has been of many other excellent Christians, but is equally the theory of Papists and all other persecutors. The theory was also held in Virginia; but some time elapsed before any temptation to carry it out into severe practice was presented. We believe, indeed, that Virginia can boast that no blood ever stained her soil for such a cause.

But for this abstinence we suspect another cause may be assigned, not honorable to her character, we mean religious carelessness. While earnestness betrayed the Puritans into the vices of over-righteousness and spiritual pride, and made them vigilant to detect and punish heresy, the comparative indifference of many Virginia colonists must have made them slack in enforcing their own regulations, where religious purity only, and not the government was endangered. The moment Loud Baltimore, whose newly adopted faith was considered necessarily hostile to every Protestant government, landed in the colony, all were on the alert, and prompt even to stretch their power against a man, whose known excellence, toleration, and preference of conscience to place, ought to have shielded him from every annoyance. We doubt not, that an humble individual, neither meddling with government, nor suspected, from his opinions or position, of an inclination to do so, might have persevered in most dangerous religious errors, undetected by that prying scrutiny, which would certainly have scented them out in New-England.

Thus we see, that religious earnestness, although worthy of all praise, may, from human frailty, betray into great errors, and even crimes. History shows that it has thus betrayed even persons of great excellence. Isabella of Castile, admitted to be one of the best Queens that ever reigned, established the Inquisition, the foulest and most atrocious institution that ever disgraced and tormented humanity. Her very piety made her the dupe and instrument of those, who,

instead of being the ministers of peace, were the ministers of an exterminating war against the asserters of truth and conscience.

It is true, that history also furnishes examples of monarchs, unsuspected of any faith or principle, who have yet butchered in the name of religion. Such was the second Charles, whose treatment of the Scotch Presbyterians is still cited, as the worst instance of Protestant persecution, if that name can be applied to the measures of a prince, who had sought an opiate for his foul conscience in secret reconciliation with Rome, when those measures were mainly executed by his brother, an avowed Catholic. Charles was governed by no religious principle, but solely by hatred of a party which had betrayed his father, and had been in turn deceived by him, when, in his hour of need, he pretended to adopt their covenant, and of whose undying hostility he therefore felt perfectly assured. He found a deadly instrument of his purposes in the sword of Claverhouse, and yet a temporary one, for, like that of Baillie Jarvie, it rusted in its sheath after the battle of Bothwell-brigg; but Isabella originated a system which racked the body social of Europe, until it could no longer be endured by human patience.

In using this illustration of the effects produced by zeal and indifference, when both persecute, we by no means intend to carry out the personal parallel. We can never dishonor the "The Old Dominion" by putting it on a moral level with the King, by some reputed to have given it that name. The writer of this article will yield to no one in admiration of the manly openness and whole-souled warmth, of which Charles had no conception, but which have ever marked Virginians.

On the other hand, the Puritans, with earnestness as great as Isabella's, and a far purer faith, could hardly claim her attractive qualities; neither were they guilty of enormities to be compared with those caused by the ingenious system of cruelty unfortunately associated with her name. Yet they have much to answer for to Protestant Christianity, in applying the scourge and the gallows, even once, to those guiltless of any offence but the denial of their infalli

ble orthodoxy. None know better than those living near Bunker Hill and Lexington, that the slightest encroachment on a sacred and acknowledged right, will justify resistance unto blood, and that tyranny over the soul is as much worse than unconstitutional taxation, as the soul itself is above the yellow dust, by which it is too often enslaved. We readily admit, that the men of that region have performed many and great services to mankind; yet it may be that the wild vagaries in religion, which sometimes flame like meteors in that atmosphere, may be a sort of retribution for having once trampled on the vital principle of Protestantism-the right of private judgment.

We have said that the exclusion of Lord Baltimore, by tendering him the oath of supremacy, was unnecessary and ungenerous. Charles the First considered him a harmless subject, and desired to retain him near his person; while he did not fall short of Milton and Cromwell even, in his ideas of toleration. He would have been equally excluded from Massachusetts, but probably in a different manner. This act of bigotry was soon followed by greater severities, instigated by the Governor, Sir John Harvey, who came into power in 1629, the next year. Dr. Hawks remarks, that up to that time no man had been punished for dissent, and that the supposed witch trial, even if it actually took place within that period, was only proof of a superstition universally prevalent, and not of ecclesiastical tyranny. As far back as 1624, it was enacted: "That there should be uniformity in the church, as near as might be, to the canons of the Church of England; and that all persons should yield a ready obedience to them, upon pain of censure.' The decisions of "The Court of High Commission" in England were considered binding in Virginia; but it is said that no penalties had been inflicted under any of these regulations, breathing the very spirit of Charles, then governed by the bigot Laud, while Harvey not only wished to use the laws already in existence, but demanded the enactment of others still more stringent. The despotism of his ten years' administration, produced the common effect of religious oppression which does not utterly crush its victims, by increa