ness were disregarded. The Judges made no concealment of
a foregone conclusion against the Prisoners at the Bar. No Counsel was
allowed them. The proceedings were summary; and execution followed close
upon conviction. While it was destroying the lives of men and women, of
respectable position in the community, of unblemished and eminent
Christian standing, heads of families, aged men and venerable matrons,
all the ordinary securities of society, outside of the tribunal, were
swept away. In the absence of Sir William Phips, the Chief-justice
absolutely absorbed into his own person the whole Government. His
rulings swayed the Court, in which he acted the part of prosecutor of
the Prisoners, and overbore the Jury. He sat in judgment upon the
sentences of his own Court; and heard and refused, applications and
supplications for pardon or reprieve. The three grand divisions of all
constitutional or well-ordered Governments were, for the time,
obliterated in Massachusetts. In the absence of Phips, the Executive
functions were exercised by Stoughton. While presiding over the Council,
he also held a seat as an elected ordinary member, thus participating
in, as well as directing, its proceedings, sharing, as a leader, in
legislation, acting on Committees, and framing laws. As Chief-justice,
he was the head of the Judicial department. He was Commander-in-chief of
the military and naval forces and forts within the Province proper. All
administrative, legislative, judicial, and military powers were
concentrated in his person and wielded by his hand. No more shameful
tyranny or shocking despotism was ever endured in America, than, in "the
dark and awful day," as it was called, while the Special Commission of
Oyer and Terminer was scattering destruction, ruin, terror, misery and
death, over the country. It is a disgrace to that generation, that it
was so long suffered; and, instead of trying to invent excuses, it
becomes all subsequent generations to feel--as was deeply felt, by
enlightened and candid men, as soon as the storm had blown over and a
prostrate people again stood erect, in possession of their senses--that
all ought, by humble and heart-felt prayer, to implore the divine
forgiveness, as one of the Judges, fully as misguided at the time as the
rest, did, to the end of his days.

As all the official dignities of the Province were combined in
Stoughton, he seems hardly to have known in what capacity he was acting,
as differen