rivileges to which they were entitled, as freeborn
Englishmen, of good moral conduct. Their prayer to be admitted to the
rights, or to be relieved from the burdens, of society, was
accompanied with observations conveying a very intelligible censure on
the proceedings of the colony, and a threat of applying to Parliament,
should the prayer of their petition be rejected.

The most popular governments not being always the most inclined to
tolerate opinions differing from those of the majority, this petition
gave great offence, and its signers were required to attend the court.
Their plea, that the right to petition government was sacred, was
answered by saying that they were not accused for petitioning, but for
using contemptuous and seditious expressions. They were required to
find sureties for their good behaviour; and, on refusing to
acknowledge their offence, were fined at the discretion of the court.
An appeal from this decision having been refused, they sent deputies
to lay their case before Parliament; but the clergy exerted themselves
on the occasion; and the celebrated Cotton, in one of his sermons,
asserted "that if any should carry writings or complaints against the
people of God in that country to England, it would be as Jonas in the
ship." A storm having risen during the passage, the mariners,
impressed with the prophecy of Cotton, insisted that the obnoxious
papers should be thrown overboard; and the deputies were constrained
to consign their credentials to the waves. On their arrival in
England, they found Parliament but little disposed to listen to their
complaints. The agents of Massachusetts had received instructions to
counteract their efforts; and the governments of New England were too
high in favour, to admit of a rigid scrutiny into their conduct.[78]

[Footnote 78: Chalmer. Hutchison.]

In some of the internal dissensions which agitated Massachusetts,
Winthrop, a man of great influence, always among their first
magistrates, and often their governor, was charged while deputy
governor with some arbitrary conduct. He defended himself at the bar,
in the presence of a vast concourse of people; and, having been
honourably acquitted, addressed them from the bench, in a speech which
was highly approved.

As this speech tends to illustrate the political opinions of the day,
an extract from it may not be unworthy of regard. "The questions," he
said, "which have troubled the country of late, and from