tenacity and denunciation the Canadian ecclesiastic-civil
government resisted all appeals, both to the Local Legislature and to
England, for a liberal government of equal laws and equal rights for all
classes of the King's subjects in Canada. But the excluded majority of
the Canadians had little to complain of in comparison of the excluded
majority of his Majesty's subjects of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, where
the only avenue to office, or even the elective franchise, was membership
in the Congregational Church, and where no dissenter from that Church
could have his children baptized, or worship God according to his
conscience, except under pain of imprisonment, fine, banishment, or
death itself.

The "Pilgrim Fathers" crossed the Atlantic to Plymouth in 1620, and the
"Puritan Fathers" to Massachusetts Bay in 1628, professedly for the same
purpose, namely, liberty to worship God without the imposition of
ceremonies of which they disapproved. The "Pilgrim Fathers," as true and
consistent friends of liberty, exercised full liberty of worship for
themselves, and left others to enjoy the same liberty of worship which
they enjoyed; but the "Puritan Fathers" exercised their liberty not only
by abandoning the Church and worship which they professed when they left
England, and setting up a Congregational worship, but by prohibiting
every other form of worship, and its adherents with imprisonment, fine,
exile, and death. And under this pretext of liberty of worship for
themselves, they proscribed and persecuted all who differed from them in
religious worship for fifty years, until their power to do so was taken
from them by the cancelling of the Charter whose provisions they had so
persistently and so cruelly abused, in contradistinction to the tolerant
and liberal conduct of their brethren and neighbours of the Plymouth,
Rhode Island, and Connecticut colonies. In note on page 148, I have
given extracts of the Report of the Royal Commissioners relative to
these colonies and their conduct and treatment of the Commissioners;
and in the lengthened extract of the report relative to Massachusetts
Bay Colony, it is seen how different was the spirit and government of
the rulers of that colony, both in respect to their fellow-colonists and
their Sovereign, from that of the rulers of the other New England
colonies, which had, indeed, to seek royal protection against the
oppressions and aggressions of the more powerful domineering Gover