“They had need be very good artists," said Mr. Hubbard on another occasion, "and go exactly to work, that lay the foundation of a building; for a little error there, may appear very great and formidable in the superstructure, if any thing be done out of square in the bottom, which at the first is not easily discerned."

Now it is remarkable that in the first great instance of capital legislation in this country, our Pilgrim Fathers went not to the laws of England for their guidance, but to those of God. On this point Dr. Bacon of New Haven has written admirably. What system of legislation should the colonists take in founding a New World? They could not instantly frame a new system; it must be the work of time and experience. Should they take the laws of England? "Those were the very laws from which they fled. Those laws would subject them at once to the king, to the parliament, and to the prelates, in their several jurisdictions. The adoption of the laws of England would have been fatal to the object of their emigration." They could not take the Roman civil law; but they had a code of laws in every man's hand in the Bible, laws given to a community emigrating, like themselves, from their native country, for the great purpose of maintaining in simplicity and purity the worship of the one true God. Like the Israelites of old, they were to be a people surrounded by the heathen, and intermingled among them, and needing the influence of laws framed with a special reference to such a corrupting neighborhood and intercourse. Like the Hebrews also they were a free republican people, and needed laws for a community where there was no absolute power, where there were no privileged classes; laws, whose aim should be that equal and exact justice which is the only freedom.

Dr. Bacon proceeds to remark upon two of the most important effects of their renouncing the laws of England and adopting the Mosaic law; first, the change of the principle on which inheritances were to be divided, rejecting the

English rule of giving all real estate to the eldest son, thus doing away with the system of English aristocracy, and promoting equality among the people; and second, the change in respect to the inflicting of capital punishment. By this bold reformation, taking the Hebrew laws instead of the laws of England, the colonists reduced the bloody catalogue of crimes punishable by English law with death, down at once from one hundred and fifty to eleven! Dr. Bacon well remarks that "the greatest and boldest improvement which has been made in criminal jurisprudence by any one act since the dark ages, was that which was made by our fathers, when they determined that the judicial laws of God as they were delivered by Moses, should be accounted of moral equity, and generally bind all offenders, and be a rule to all the courts."*

On the greatness and wisdom of their legal reforms and precedents, Prescott Hall has likewise written with great beauty and power, somewhat in detail. He says that nearly all the important alterations made in the jurisprudence of New York within the last fifty years have been borrowed, directly or indirectly, from the laws of New England, and especially from those of Connecticut. "Indeed, I may go further, and say that there is scarcely a change, or an improvement, called for or suggested by the distinguished Lord Brougham in his great speech upon law reforms in England, delivered in the House of Commons in the year 1828, but what may be found among the enactments of legislatures and the practice of courts in the Eastern States." These great improvements were begun at once. "With a bold defiance," says Mr. Hall, "of customs immemorial, and of forms rendered sacred by antiquity, they commenced the progress of legal reform from the moment their feet first pressed the sod of their new found country. With no affected disregard for the wisdom and learning of their ancestors, with no pretensions to a more perfect knowledge

* Bacon's Historical Discourses.

of man's true social condition than that which prevailed at home, they did nevertheless at once institute the inquiry as to how much of an antiquated system was suited to their wants and condition. Having the common Statute law of England open and before them, and with a steady eye upon ancient precedents, they began a system of legal change at once radical, yet conservative." Mr. Hall speaks of the subject of non-imprisonment for debt, as considered and acted on in New England two hundred years ago; and upon the law for a complete registration of lands, and upon the explosion of the complicated unnecessary forms in civil and other proceedings; simple and clear statements, and direct straightforward pleadings coming in their place.

"And then," says he, "as to that law that prefers the first born son to all others, in itself so iniquitous, what had our ancestors to say to that? They said it should be blotted out from the statute-book, once and for ever.

"How otherwise could equal rights be maintained or Republican forms of government be preserved? In the proud monarchies of Europe it became the policy of the aristocracy to preserve great estates in the same family in a direct line, that their influence might remain continuous and unbroken-thus transmitting from father to son not only the wealth of the ancestor but his political influence also.

"But in a free country how should we stand, if even without political authority, the parent might entail upon his son whole towns, and counties, and states? Would freemen contentedly ride for thirty-seven miles by the side of a great estate (as you may now in some parts of Great Britain), with the reflection in their minds that in all time to come, the influence of that proprietor and his descendants must remain unchecked and undisturbed?

"What caused the first outbreaks among the people of Rome when they left their city to take refuge on the sacred Mount? The monopoly of lands by the rich. What was the remedy there? A division of those lands among

people who had no claim upon them but hard necessity. But what agrarian law did our ancestors provide to check, if not effectually destroy, this dangerous accumulation of wealth in the same hands? They said that lands, where there was no will to direct otherwise, should descend to the heirs alike. That personal property should be equally distributed, and the power of entailment so limited that it must be renewed in every generation, in order to be kept alive. "This,' says Judge Story, is the true agrarian law which in all time to come will guard the just rights of acquirement and possession, and correct the great public evils of inordinate accumulations; and you see how instantly our ancestors seized upon and adopted this indispensable improvement.'

"Then the criminal laws of England, more bloody than the laws of Draco, were all remodelled and their severities softened down, even at that time when men's minds had not begun much to consider this important matter. In all things, I assert with confidence, in relation to the laws, both public and private, our ancestors made great and marvellous improvements upon those of the land from whence they took their origin. And these reforms became afterwards matters of the highest political concernment when they had shaken off the control of the mother country. Republican in their habits of thinking and acting-republican in their frugality-republican in their laws and forms of government, the States of New England were early prepared for that great change wrought out for them by the War of the Revolution.

"Their civil and political rights were well understood from the very beginning:-they were preserved and cherished through all their early struggles for existence-and were all prepared to be acted upon when the day of trial came.”* * W. Prescott Hall's New England Society Address.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE FIRST TOWN MEETING.-PROVIDENTIAL DISCIPLINE AND DEVELOPMENT OF FREEDOM.

FROM the Town meetings of New England, De Tocqueville deduces the whole grand fabric of civil liberty in these United States. There is much truth in the conclusion. The habit of thus meeting for consultation and decision on all common and important business, constituted a discipline of independence, freedom, and self-government, in the State, of which the pattern was first taken from the congregational independence and self-government under Christ, which had for so many years been practised in the Pilgrim Churches. This habit was the cradle of a wellordered civil, as well as religious liberty. These Town meetings were at first composed mainly of members of the Church; for the greater number of the early Colonists were such, by profession and covenant. And in the manner of this action in civil affairs, they naturally and spontaneously went on according to the habit they had formed in religious affairs. The one ran into the other as naturally as the oak grows out of the acorn, as spontaneously as from the hidden germinating power and process in the seed, or growth in the tree, spring to their development the blossom and the fruit. It was thus that the Vine