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by party passions. One of this class, who after having reigned for some years as a sovereign, over some of the fairest portions of Europe; and now resides in this country with philosophic contentment, and all the simplicity of a private gentleman, remarked to me in conversation; "This is a happy nation, "and in the most fortunate circumstances: some per"sons think you have 'not government enough; "others, that you have too much; they are both "wrong; every thing is as it should be, and it is "the happiest country in the world for persons like me, who neither wish to command, nor to obey.' It is natural that the citizens of such a nation should exult in their national character. It is impossible that men born and educated in a country, governed on more elevated principles than any other; under a system which supposes a higher degree of virtue and intelligence in its inhabitants; where every man may enjoy not only civil liberty, but the highest political immunities,-where there is no titular inferiority, and no exclusive privileges; where talent and virtue are the only honourable distinctions, and open the way to the highest magistracy, it is impossible such men should not be proud, and glory in the character of republicans. The vulgar and the insolent will be apt to show this offensively to other nations; but the man of education, who knows how to reconcile the esteem of others with self respect, while careful not to offend foreigners with arrogance or vanity, and allowing them all the advantages resulting from a

high degree of polished refinement, and the establishment of many time-honoured institutions, will still secretly feel, that his national condition is the noblest in the world.

LETTER III.

RELIGION.

MY DEAR FRiend,

THOUGH I could not entirely clear your brow from that expression of reproachful anxiety, which would come over it, when the situation of Religion here was a subject of our conversation; yet you were willing to smile at the ludicrous denunciations of some of your fellow citizens, and of others farther south, against the heretical sects in this quarter, while they themselves never passed the threshold of any church. Even the orthodox among us, if they are not partisans, think their friends in other states, who hold the same opinions with themselves, a little bigoted in their judgment of our Unitarians. It is indeed difficult to feel any prejudice against the theory of people, whose practice embraces every virtue; and we perhaps

become insensible to the danger of certain tenets in their ultimate consequences, by the constant exhibition of the most benevolent virtues in their present followers. Many of these who go to places of public worship, from motives not very dissimilar to those of the lady in your city, who took a pew in the Unitarian chapel; "because it was a nice, cool place, to carry the children," are dangerous examples of strict morality and active virtue, connected with very unsound and limited notions of abstract doctrine. In attempting to give you some account of the present state of religion in Massachusetts, you must recollect that I am no theologian, and that I offer you only a superficial sketch, unbiassed by any sectarian prejudice.

The consideration of the state of religion here is attended with peculiar interest, since the first colonists, driven by persecution to seek a shelter for their principles, crossed the ocean to maintain them, and laid the foundations of this state, as a religious commonwealth. They acted in the spirit, and considered themselves as living under the sway, of a theocracy; and this was accompanied with the highest degree of zeal and intolerance in conduct, purity of manners, austerity in discipline, and the severest tenets of faith. They were rigid Calvinists in belief; puritans in regard to all the amusements of the world; obstinate dissenters from all ceremonies in worship; jealous independents of all ecclesiastical government, and most devout abhorrers of every other sect. The cruel character and

appalling ferocity of this religious creed, never were better justified and strengthened by circumstances. Men might naturally believe in a system, which transformed that Deity, who is the fountam of mercy and God of all grace, into a being of mysterious vengeance and cruelty; when they found themselves, though living in the strictest morality and devoted to religion, called upon to endure the greatest sufferings, exposed to an untried climate and howling wilderness, the coil of the rattlesnake at their heels, and the tomahawk of the savage at their heads.

It was not a sudden impulse, but a long course of preparation, that drove them to cross the Atlantic; the process was gradual that hardened their feelings to every thing but their religious attachments, and made them prefer those to every other consideration. They were as ready to suffer martyrdom as to inflict it; the time indeed had gone by when the refractory were condemned to the flames in this world. But martyrdom, according to the fashion of the day-proscription, imprisonment and exile they first suffered themselves, and then inflicted on others; they were the victims of intolerance and ecclesiastical tyranny; and the moment it was in their power exercised both. Stimulated as they believed by the love of God in both cases, they endured, and they made others endure from the closest convictions of conscience; having sacrificed fortune, friends and country, in support of their principles, any permission to differ would have been considered

a criminal levity and inconsistency. Persecution was to them a lesson, not of charity, but of perseverance, and the system they adopted was as rigid and exclusive, as that from which they had fled.

Stern and zealous as they were, they could not be wholly insensible to the reflections that were cast upon them, for thus following a system of oppression in matters of religion, against which in others they complained so justly. It was answered in excuse, that the case was materially different; that they had been driven from their home for want of conformity, and had fled to this wilderness to enjoy their freedom; that they had purchased the soil, and established a community for the express purpose of worshipping God in simplicity and truth; that they enticed no one to join them, nor wished for any but those who could unite with them in their faith and practice. That under these circumstances, when they had sought a new world to establish their own forms of worship, and to renew the faith and purity of the primitive church, it was unjust, that they should be interrupted by the intrusion of other sects, who voluntarily came among them to create jealousy and disunion; that they had a right, according to the laws they had made, to punish and drive away these intruders, and all those of their own faith who became apostates, or fell off from the ordinances of their church. They wanted none to join them, except they were of the same communion; and they felt themselves called upon by the principles they professed, and all.