m that
premature death.

Mr. Palfrey assigns various reasons for this non-resistance to the
cancelling of their Charter; but he omits or obscurely alludes to the
real ones.

Dr. Palfrey says: "The reader asks how it could be that the decree by
which Massachusetts fell should fail to provoke resistance. He inquires
whether nothing was left of the spirit which, when the colony was much
poorer, had often defied and baffled the designs of the father of the
reigning King. He must remember how times were changed. There was no
longer a great patriot party in England, to which the colonists might
look for sympathy and help, and which it had even hoped might reinforce
them by a new emigration. There was no longer even a Presbyterian party
which, little as it had loved them, a sense of common insecurity and
common interest might enlist in their behalf.... Relatively to her
population and wealth, Massachusetts had large capacities for becoming a
naval power--capacities which might have been vigorously developed if an
alliance with the great naval powers of Continental Europe had been
possible. But Holland was now at peace with England; not to say that
such an arrangement was out of the question for Massachusetts, while
_the rest of New England was more or less inclined to the adverse
interest_. Unembarrassed by any foreign war, England was armed with that
efficient navy which the Duke of York had organized, and which had
lately distressed the rich and energetic Netherlanders; and the
dwellings of two-thirds of the inhabitants of Massachusetts stood where
they could be battered from the water. They had a commerce which might
be molested in every sea by English cruisers. Neither befriended nor
interfered with, they might have been able to defend themselves against
the corsairs of Barbary in the resorts of their most gainful trade; but
England had given them notice, that if they were stubborn that commerce
would be dismissed from her protection, and in the circumstances such a
notice threatened more than a mere abstinence from aid. The Indian war
had emptied the colonial exchequer. On the other hand, a generation
earlier the colonists might have retreated to the woods, but now they
had valuable stationary property to be kept or sacrificed. To say no
more, the ancient unanimity was broken in upon. Jealousy had risen and
grown.... Nor was even public morality altogether of its pristine tone.
The prospect of material prosperity had in