ros, as the venerable historian of Connecticut observes, "All the
motives to great actions, to industry, economy, enterprise, wealth, and
population, were in a manner annihilated. A general inactivity and
languishment pervaded the public body. Liberty, property, and every
thing which ought to be dear to men, every day grew more and more
insecure."

With the Revolution in England, a better prospect had opened on this
country, as well as on that. The joy had been as great at that event,
and far more universal, in New than in Old England. A new charter had
been granted to Massachusetts, which, although it did not confirm to her
inhabitants all their former privileges, yet relieved them from great
evils and embarrassments, and promised future security. More than all,
perhaps, the Revolution in England had done good to the general cause of
liberty and justice. A blow had been struck in favor of the rights and
liberties, not of England alone, but of descendants and kinsmen of
England all over the world. Great political truths had been established.
The champions of liberty had been successful in a fearful and perilous
conflict. Somers, and Cavendish, and Jekyl, and Howard, had triumphed in
one of the most noble causes ever undertaken by men. A revolution had
been made upon principle. A monarch had been dethroned for violating the
original compact between king and people. The rights of the people to
partake in the government, and to limit the monarch by fundamental rules
of government, had been maintained; and however unjust the government of
England might afterwards be towards other governments or towards her
colonies, she had ceased to be governed herself by the arbitrary maxims
of the Stuarts.

New England had submitted to the violence of James the Second not longer
than Old England. Not only was it reserved to Massachusetts, that on her
soil should be acted the first scene of that great revolutionary drama,
which was to take place near a century afterwards, but the English
Revolution itself, as far as the Colonies were concerned, commenced in
Boston. The seizure and imprisonment of Andros, in April, 1689, were
acts of direct and forcible resistance to the authority of James the
Second. The pulse of liberty beat as high in the extremities as at the
heart. The vigorous feeling of the Colony burst out before it was known
how the parent country would finally conduct herself. The king's
representative, Sir Edmund Andros, was a