orthyly much esteemed friends, Mr.
Cotton and Mr. Wilson, preachers to the Church which is at Boston, in
New England."[106]

It is seen that Sir R. Saltonstall's letter was addressed to the two
principal Congregational ministers of Boston. It has been shown that the
preachers were the counsellors and prompters of all violent measures
against dissenting Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and
Quakers--a fact further illustrated and confirmed by Mr. Bancroft, who,
under the date of 1650 and 1651, says: "Nor can it be denied, nor should
it be concealed, that the Elders, especially Wilson and Norton,
instigated and sustained the Government in its worst cruelties."[107]

During this first thirty years of the Massachusetts Bay Government, it
evinced, in contrast with all the other British American colonies,
constant hostility to the authorities in England, seizing upon every
possible occasion for agitation and dispute; perverting and abusing the
provisions of the Royal Charter to suppress the worship of the Church of
England, and banishing its adherents; setting up a new Church and
persecuting, by whipping, banishment and death, those who refused to
conform to it; seeking its own interests at the expense of the
neighbouring colonies; sacrificing the first principles of civil and
religious liberty in their legislation and government; basing
eligibility to office, and even the elective franchise, upon the
condition of membership in a Congregational Church--a condition without
a precedent or a parallel in any Protestant country.

I cannot better conclude this review of the first three decades of the
Massachusetts Bay Puritan Government, than in the words of the
celebrated Edmund Burke, who, in his account of the European settlements
in America, after describing the form of government established at
Massachusetts Bay, remarks that: "From such a form as this, great
religious freedom might, one would have imagined, be well expected. But
the truth is, they had no idea at all of such freedom. The very
doctrine of any sort of toleration was so odious to the greater part,
that one of the first persecutions set up here was against a small party
which arose amongst themselves, who were hardy enough to maintain that
the civil magistrate had no lawful power to use compulsory measures in
affairs of religion. After harassing these people by all the vexatious
ways imaginable, they obliged them to fly out of their jurisdiction."
"If men