Joseph Stevens
Buckminster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Bancroft, Richard Hildreth,
James Russell Lowell, Francis Parkman, Charles Eliot Norton, were all
ministers' boys. John Lothrop Motley was the grandson of the clergyman
after whom he was named. George Ticknor was next door to such a descent,
for his father was a deacon. This is a group which it did not take a
long or a wide search to bring together.

Men such as the ministers who have been described could not fail to
exercise a good deal of authority in the communities to which they
belonged. The effect of the Revolution must have been to create a
tendency to rebel against spiritual dictation. Republicanism levels in
religion as in everything. It might have been expected, therefore, that
soon after civil liberty had been established there would be conflicts
between the traditional, authority of the minister and the claims of
the now free and independent congregation. So it was, in fact, as for
instance in the case which follows, for which the reader is indebted to
Miss Lamed's book, before cited.

The ministerial veto allowed by the Saybrook Platform gave rise, in the
year 1792, to a fierce conflict in the town of Pomfret, Connecticut.
Zephaniah Swift, a lawyer of Windham, came out in the Windham "Herald,"
in all the vehemence of partisan phraseology, with all the emphasis of
italics and small capitals. Was it not time, he said, for people to look
about them and see whether "such despotism was founded in Scripture, in
reason, in policy, or on the rights of man! A minister, by his vote,
by his single voice, may negative the unanimous vote of the church! Are
ministers composed of finer clay than the rest of mankind, that entitles
them to this preeminence? Does a license to preach transform a man into
a higher order of beings and endow him with a natural quality to govern?
Are the laity an inferior order of beings, fit only to be slaves and to
be governed? Is it good policy for mankind to subject themselves to such
degrading vassalage and abject submission? Reason, common sense, and the
Bible, with united voice, proclaim to all mankind that they are all born
free and equal; that every member of a church or Christian congregation
must be on the same footing in respect of church government, and that
the CONSTITUTION, which delegates to one the power to negative the
vote of all the rest, is SUBVERSIVE OF THE NATURAL RIGHT OF MANKIND AND
REPUGNANT TO THE WORD OF GOD."