(1920) The Arrival of the Pilgrims: New Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts)

8/9/2019 (1920) The Arrival of the Pilgrims: New Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts)

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THEARRIVAL OF THE PILGRIMS

ByJohn Franklin Jameson, Ph.D., LL.D., Litt.D.

A LectureDelivered at Brown University, Providence, R. I,

November 21, 1920Printed by the University


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THEARRIVAL OF THE PILGRIMS

ByJohn Franklin Jameson, Ph.D., LL.D., Litt.D.

Director of the DepartmentOF Historical Research in theCarnegie Institution OF Wash-ington; Formerly Professor OFHistory in Brown University

A Lecture Delivered atBrown University, Providence, R. I.

November 21, 1920

Printed by the Universityig20


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THE ARRIVAL OF THE PILGRIMSON a Saturday afternoon in November, 1620,on a day that would now be called the twenty-first, a small ship, of one hundred and eighty tonsin the reckoning of that time, sailed into the bleakharbor at the extremity of Cape Cod. Today, threehundred years later, at the suggestion of the Presi-dent of the United States, the event is being com-memorated in thousands of American towns andvillages. Last summer the initial stages of the samevoyage were commemorated with impressive cere-monies by the Dutch at Leyden and Rotterdam andby the English at Southampton and Plymouth. Wemay well ask the question, and indeed it is the pur-pose for which we have come together this evening,to ask the question, and if we can to answer it.Why should this event be celebrated so extensivelyand with so much emphasis at the end of three hun-dred years?May I say for myself and for my own simple partin the services this evening that I respond alwayswith great pleasure to every invitation to return toProvidence, where during thirteen years it was myhappy privilege to teach, where I formed lifelongconnections with the best of friends, and whereevery kindness was constantly bestowed upon me.

I also think it proper to say, that I responded tothe invitation of President Faunce with greateralacrity because it was based upon a general sugges-


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tion made by the President of the United States,that this day should be thus commemorated. Tome the suggestion or request comes not only as anofficial call, but as one strengthened by personalfeeling and rooted in old remembrances of my firstyears in Brown University and of years at the JohnsHopkins University before that. My mind goesback to days now thirty years in the past, but whichsome of you will well remember, when the BrownUniversity Lecture Association was organized, pri-marily for the purpose of having lectures in historyand political science delivered to members andfriends of the University in Manning Hall, and whenthe most attractive of its lectures were a series onmunicipal government given by a young professor, ofbrilliant speech and engaging manners, who fromtime to time came over for the purpose from Wes-leyan University at Middletown. Many were thenimpressed with his political sagacity as well as withhis gifts of exposition, though none, I am sure, ofthose who met him on these occasions, nor I myself,had any notion of the remarkable career that laybefore him. He was my warm friend in those earlierdays, and though I have naturally made no attemptto seek intimacy with him during his years inWashington, and am well aware that these yearshave been checkered with mistakes and marredby the operation of one great defect, I can not failto regard with deep feeling whatever is said by himfrom that high office. I can not fail to regard as


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invested with special force a request to commemoratethe Pilgrims, that comes from one who has shownhimself so great a master of American history, andwho, Southern born and Southern bred, has neverfailed to show in his writings acute perception andhigh appreciation of the work of Pilgrim and Puri-tan. I can not fail to remember the exaltation anddevoted feeling with which he has conceived ofhimself as the continuator of the Pilgrims' work intothe wider sphere of political activity into which theopening vistas of the twentieth century permit usto look. Here in this university, where I alwaysthought it the main duty of a professor of history topreach fairness and openness of mind, I of coursetry to look at his career with serenity and detach-ment, to see his record as it is, with all its blemishes.But as I think of him, prematurely old, stricken,disappointed yet undismayed, ending a memorableadministration in obloquy and with the appearance,temporary or permanent, of tragic failure, I cannotbut think of the words with which Milton, in thesecond sonnet to Cyriack Skinner, speaks of the lossof his eyes: Yet I argue notAgainst Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jotOf heart or hope; but still bear up and steerRight onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?The conscience, friend, to have lost them overpliedIn liberty's defense, my noble task,Of which all Europe rings from side to side.


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But to ask again our question: Why do we cele-brate the arrival of that little ship, three hundredyears ago, in that lonely harbor? Not, surely, be-cause the event in itself was brilliant or imposing.Bearing its crowded company of one hundred or onehundred and two passengers the little ship came toan anchor on that Saturday afternoon. On the nextday they kept the Sabbath. On the Monday someof the men went ashore and did a little exploring.The eighteen wives, or such of them as were able tostand and walk, also went ashore, and did theirfamily washing. Eighteen wives, of whom by theensuing April only four were still living! Contrastall this with some of the Spanish landings to thesouthwardof Cortez, or Pizarro, or de Soto, whenformidable bodies of Spanish infantry, with cavalryand artillery, came ashore, unfurled with imposingceremony the royal standard of Castile and Leon,or the imperial flag of Charles the Fifth, and listenedto the reading of pompous proclamations of theirhigh master,

"All the whileSonorous metal blowing martial sounds."

It may be that there is something impressive, ascertainly there is something pathetic, in the spec-tacle of those eighteen brave women proceedingwith housewifely rigor to that humble Mondayduty to which tomorrow eighteen million Americanwomen will address themselves with the like faith-


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ful ardor, and carrying it through in the chilly airof late November (some of them doubtless gettingtheir death-colds in the process), but it does notmake a brilliant or picturesque scene.

Neither do we celebrate the day because thesettlement which these devoted men and womencame to found attained great physical dimensions,so that their colony became itself, as did the Massa-chusetts colony, one of the great political entities ofthis world. It had a brief career of seventy years,and when it was absorbed into its more powerfulneighbor, it had not above thirteen thousand in-habitants; nor is the area which it covered, to thisday, one of the most important or influential portionsof our great republic.

Neither do we celebrate the day because the littleband of exiles who then came for the first time intoan American harbor, or, in the case of the strongest,set foot for the first time on American soil, werethemselves great or brilliant or important person-ages. A dozen of the men were members of theEnglish middle class, men with some education andsome property, substantial yeomen or small mer-chants but nothing more, and the rest were of evenhumbler standing, in an age when standing countedfar more, far more severely limited men's careers,than it does now.

Here, however, if I may digress for a moment, Ishould like to draw attention to one aspect of theirworldly condition to which I think too little attention


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has perhaps been given by most of those who haveconsidered their story. I do not think it is customaryto give due weight to the fact that most of them hadlived for a dozen years in Holland. Those who hadmigrated to Amsterdam in 1608 and Leyden in1609, had in England been for the most part dwellersin rural villages or small towns. Not a few of thosewho hear me may have visited the ancient hamletsof Scrooby and Austerfield from which, or thevicinity of which, a considerable number of them areknown to have come. Pleasing villages they are,and must have been in the days of the migration.The little church at Austerfield, in which WilliamBradford was baptised, is a venerable and beauti-ful monument of antiquity, coming down in part fromthe eleventh or twelfth century, and so is the some-what larger church of Scrooby, almost equally old.They are well adapted to bestow on village mindssuch enlightenment as comes from old religion,hallowed associations, and long continued peace.The quiet scenery of that somewhat tame portionof the English countryside had also other value andother inspiration. But life in these villages, or thelife of humble artisans in Gainsborough or Boston orLincoln in the early part of the seventeenth century,was certainly sluggish and contracted and parochial.To migrate from that environment to the two greatcities of Holland, and to dwell in the most intellec-tual of these for a dozen years, close by a universitythat was already the most famous Protestant


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university in Europe, would surely have its effectin awakening the Pilgrim mind to wider and moreactive thought and to more tolerant as well as moreingenious habits of mind.The Pilgrims themselves were not unaware of

some of the mental effects of the transition. SaysBradford

"Being now come into the Low Countries, theysaw many goodly and fortified cities, strongly walledand garded with tropes of armed men. Also theyheard a strange and uncouth language, and beheldthe differente manners and custumes of the people,with their strange fashions and attires; all so farrediffering from that of their plaine countrie villages(wherin they were bred, and had so longe lived) asit seemed they were come into a new world. But thesewere not the things they much looked on, or longtooke up their thoughts; for they had other work inhand, and an other kind of warr to wage and main-taine. For though they saw faire and bewtifuUcities, flowing with abundance of all sorts of welthand riches, yet it was not longe before they sawthe grimme and grisly face of povertie coming uponthem like an armed man, with whom they mustbukle and incounter, and from whom they could notflye; but they were armed with faith and patienceagainst him, and all his encounters; and thoughthey were sometimes foyled, yet by Gods assistancethey prevailed and got the victorie."

I do not think that the relative positions of Eng-


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land and the Netherlands in 1609 are rightly under-stood by most of those who read about the Pil-grims. In 1609, and still more in 1620, Holland, atany rate, the chief and most advanced of the Dutchprovinces, was in several respects considerably moreadvanced intellectually and in point of generalcivilization than England, Amsterdam rather morethe center of the world's enlightenment than London,and certainly the University of Leyden superior tothose of Oxford and Cambridge. Quite apart fromthat transition from the life of small rural villagesto that of busy and enterprising cities upon theeffects of which Bradford comments, it may bemaintained with a good deal of force that migrationfrom England to Holland at just that time wasmigration from a less civilized to a more civilizedcountry. The Netherlands had a smaller populationthan England, and they were less rich in naturalresources, but during the forty years through whichthey had been conducting against Spain their warof independence, they had progressed enormously.The very fact of independence had given them widerhorizons and new energy. The conduct of theirpolitical and economic affairs had been in the handsof city-dwellers, of commercial magnates, withurban minds and that wide knowledge of the worldwhich commerce brings. Their commerce hadincreased by leaps and bounds. Their great EastIndia Company and their other trading organiza-tions had already in 1609 begun to flood the country


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with wealth. Art and letters were already beginningto take on that brilliant development that made theyears of Prince Frederick Henry the Golden Age ofDutch history. Moreover, the very years which thePilgrims spent in Leyden were the twelve years oftruce with Spain, during which the advancement ofHolland proceeded at a rate exceptionally rapid, sothat whatever advantages she had in the compari-son in 1609 were heightened in 1620, and the Pil-grims during their sojourn were witnesses of aneconomic progress and of a social advance such ashas seldom been seen in twelve years of the historyof any small nation. From all quarters of Europe,too, merchants and travellers were constantly bring-ing fresh varieties of intelligence, whose influenceeven humble English artisans in Leyden, or, at anyrate, their leaders, could not escape. Most importantof all, the province of Holland was far in advance ofother states of the world in respect to the toleranceof all varieties of religious opinion. Jewish exilesfrom Spain and Portugal, orthodox like those whofilled the richest of the world's synagogues (that ofAmsterdam), or heretical like Benedict Spinoza,Socinians from Transylvania or Poland, Greeks andRussians, Catholics and every variety of Protestant,found here a hospitable home and an undisturbedopportunity to think and to discourse. The superiortolerance which always marked the PlymouthColony in contrast to that of Massachusetts Baycannot have been due solely to the mild and gentle


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character which Brewster and Bradford impressedupon their settlement at its foundation. In largemeasure it must have been due to the beneficentoperation upon Pilgrim minds of the intelligent toler-ance which they had seen to prevail under thegovernment of the Dutch magistrates, and fromwhich they themselves had profited so largely.Amsterdam in those days was smaller indeed than

London, with a population of perhaps 100,000 incomparison with perhaps 250,000 in the Englishcapital; but it was in just those years a city ofmore enterprise and energy than London, expand-ing with extraordinary rapidity, and reaching outthrough commercial channels into all quarters ofthe globe.

Leyden, on the other hand, was the chief manu-facturing town of Holland. Its population in theseyears was about 60,000. Thus it was much smallerthan London; but very few of the Pilgrims hadever lived in London, and Leyden was perhaps threetimes as large as any other English city or town.The manufacture of cloth was its leading industry,and most of the Pilgrims, tillers of the soil hitherto,turned their hands to the work of weaving. Hand-weavers, it is known, are prone to think, and in theatmosphere of Leyden there was much to stimulatethe intellect. A stone's throw from the social centerof the Separatist congregationthe house of theirpastor, John Robinsonstood the chief hall of theUniversity of Leyden, which in the 350 years of its


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existence has probably maintained a higher averagelevel of eminence in its professors than any other ofthe old universities of Europe. Justus Lipsius andJoseph Scaliger, most learned of all men, had taughtthere just before the Pilgrims' time. Daniel Heinsiusand Jacob Arminius were teaching there in theirday. We know that Robinson attended the lecturesof Arminius, and took part, modestly but effectively,in the debates which raged around that celebratedtheologian. It is certain that not only Robinson,but Elder Brewster, who occupied himself with theprinting of books, and those who assisted in hisprinting-house, and especially William Bradford,with his well-trained and open mind, always eagerfor fuller and better knowledge, must have profitedlargely by the neighborhood of these brilliant intel-lectual influences. It is almost equally certain thatthose influences filtered among the rank and file ofthe congregation, those humble artisans of whosepleasant and close relations with the people of thecity Bradford gives us so agreeable a picture.

"So," says Bradford, "they lefte the goodly andpleasante citie, which had been ther resting placenear 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes,and looked not much on those things, but lift uptheir eyes to the heavens, their dearest cuntrie, andquieted their spirits."Some writers have made much larger claims of

Dutch influence upon the Pilgrim mind, and throughit, upon all America. There have been a few who


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have even gone so far as to declare with great empha-sis that our federal system and our habit of thewritten constitution, since the English did not havethem, must have come to us from the Dutch. It istrue that the seven Dutch provinces in 1620 were aconfederation, and that that confederation had awritten constitution. But surely there is a naturalhistory of federal governments, wherein we see theoperation of similar causes producing similar results,without the need of resorting to the hypothesis ofimitation. Public men are but little accustomed,unless in some great hurry, to adopt the institutionsof another country, but much more likely to seekfor expedients that will meet the exigencies whichimmediately confront them and satisfy the peoplewho have appointed them to legislate. Federalgovernments come into existence because states orcommunities hitherto independent feel the need ofunion, for the sake of greater security or power, butare not yet ready to merge their individuality in thatof a unitary state. Because the Australian colonieshave come together in a federal commonwealth,shall we conclude that they must have been at sometime subjected to powerful Dutch or Swiss influ-ences of which we have not heard before? And as tothe written constitution, can we imagine statescoming together to form a union and not settingdown in writing the terms of their agreement?Somewhat more of a case may be made out for

Dutch influence in the formation of the New Eng-


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land Confederation of 1643, by which the coloniesof Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, andNew Haven united for common defence against theDutch of New Netherland, the French, and theIndians. The prime fact of confederation is seento have been due to causes obvious enough and whichrequire no supposition of Dutch influence upon themovement in general; and Plymouth, which hadhad the greatest amount of contact with the Dutch,was the least influential of the four confederates.Some features of the plan, however, may easily beheld to show the influence of Dutch models, and thereare some portions of the early New England legis-lation which show that some of the excellencies ofthe Dutch legal system had not escaped the atten-tion of our early law-makers. But in the main weare to seek the traces of Dutch influence upon thePlymouth mind in a greater mildness and tolerancethan was customary among the English, and agreater degree of general intelligence than would beexpected, in that age, of peasants who had neverstrayed far from villages of the English countryside.A long digression, but it may have helped us tounderstand better the company of forty-one men andeighteen women that sailed into harbor upon theMayflower that Saturday afternoon in November,1620, and to appreciate more rightly the nature ofthe action which those men took that day andwhich makes it memorable. For, to answer ourquestion, we celebrate the day primarily because it


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is the three hundredth anniversary of the May-flower Compact. The day which has been mostcommonly celebrated in memory of the Pilgrims isthe twenty-first of December, as being the day onwhich their vanguard made its famous landing atPlymouth, but that is perhaps because the habitof observing the day began at Plymouth (in 1769),and to those who instituted the observance there itwas natural to commemorate first of all the arrivalof the Pilgrims at their ultimate home. The greatevent, however, the one most invested with sig-nificance for the future, was that which took placein Provincetown harbor. Gathering together, pre-sumably in the cabin of the Mayflower, they settheir hands to what Bradford calls "a combinationmade by them before they came ashore, being thefirst foundation of their governmente in this place."It is fitting to repeat the old and familiar text:

"In the name of God, Amen. We whose names areunderwriten, the loyall subjects of our dread sov-eraigne Lord, King James, by the grace of God, ofGreat Britaine, Franc, and Ireland king, defender ofthe faith, etc., haveing undertaken, for the glorie ofGod, and advancemente of the Christian faith, andhonour of our king and countrie, a voyage to plantthe first colonie in the Northerne parts of Virginia,doe by these presents solemnly and mutualy in thepresence of God, and one of another, covenant andcombine our selves togeather into a civill bodypolitick, for our better ordering and preservation


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and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by vertuehearof to enacte, constitute, and frame shuch justand equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions,and offices, from time to time, as shall be thoughtmost meete and convenient for the generall good ofthe Colonic, unto which we promise all due submis-sion and obedience. In witnes wherof we havehereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd the11. of November, in the year of the raigne of oursoveraigne lord, King James, of England, France,and Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland theliftie fourth. Anno Dom. 1620."The origin of this agreement is explained by their

chronicler. He says that it was occasioned partlyby the discontented and mutinous speeches thatsome of the strangers amongst them had let fall inthe ship, that when they came ashore they woulduse their own liberty, for none had power to com-mand them, because the patent they had was forVirginia and not for New England, with which theVirginia Company had nothing to do; and partlythat their act of agreement might be as firm as anypatent, and in some respects more sure.The meaning of this is, that before their departurefrom Holland the Pilgrim Company had obtained a

patent from the Virginia Company, but now, evi-dently, were about to settle outside the limits of itsjurisdiction. The organization commonly called theVirginia Company had under its charter the right toform settlements and exercise jurisdiction any-


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where on the American coast between thirty-fiveand forty-one degrees north latitude. In 1619 and1620 the company was much disposed to encouragethe formation of what they called "particularplantations," settlements which enterprising in-dividuals, or groups of individuals having a certainunity, agreed to form and maintain at their ownexpense as organisms subordinate to the chiefcolonial organization that centered in Jamestown.Several plantations in Virginia had this subordinatecharacter and maintained it for some years. Toencourage such increase of population to theirthinly settled province, the Virginia Company waswell content to recognize in such bodies a certainindependence of its regulations and a certain free-dom of action. In the Division of Manuscripts inthe Library of Congress are preserved, as one of itsmost treasured possessions, two volumes of therecords of the Virginia Company's meetings in thesevery years from 1619 to 1624. In the record of ameeting in February, 1620, we read, "It was orderedallso by generall Consent that such Captaines orleaders of Perticulerr Plantations that shall goethere to inhabite by vertue of their Grants andPlant themselves, their Tennantes and Servantes inVirginia, shall have liberty till a forme of Govern-ment be here settled for them, Associating untothem divers of the gravest and discreetes of theirCompanies, to make Orders, Ordinances and Con-stitutions, for the better orderinge and dyrectinge


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of their Servants and buisines Provided they be notRepugnant to the Lawes of England." Now thisorder was passed on the very day that the patent toJohn Pierce and his associates for Plymouth was"allowed and Sealed in viewe of the Courte with aTotal approbation."

If the Pilgrims had been able to act under such apatent as this, the patent they brought out withthem for instance, they would have been possessedof certain powers of framing rules or orders for theirown government, certain powers, that is, of locallegislation. If authority derived from the VirginiaCompany could not be recognized as valid in forty-two degrees of north latitude, it was natural to sub-stitute for it an authority as closely analogous aspossible, and one sufficient for the purposes, authorityderived from the common consent of colonists, who,if unable to consider themselves under the juris-diction of the Virginia Company as they had planned,must then consider themselves as authorized to actin a similar manner under the direct authority oftheir dread sovereign lord, the king of Great Britain.That a form of government such as they here

instituted was contemplated before they left Hol-land, is plain from a passage which we find in thefinal letter of advice which their pastor wrote tothe whole company at the time of their departure,and which was carried with them from Delfthavenand read to the assembled colonists at Southampton.Among the many advantages which the Pilgrims


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had enjoyed at Leyden, some of which have alreadybeen mentioned, not the least, perhaps the greatest,was in the possession of so wise and beautiful aspirit as that of John Robinson; for, says Bradford,"besides his singular abilities in divine things(wherein he excelled) he was also very able to givedirections in civil affairs, and to foresee dangers andinconveniences; by which means he was very help-ful to their outward estates, and was in every wayas a common father unto them." Nowhere are hisforesight and his wisdom better shown than in thatpassage of the parting letter read at Southamptonwhich relates to matters of government. It runs asfollows

"Lastly, wheras you are become a body politik,using amongst your selves civill goverments, andare not furnished with any persons of spetiall emi-nencie above the rest, to be chosen by you intooffice of goverment, let your wisdome and godlinesappeare, not only in chusing shuch persons as doeentirely love and will promote the commone good,but also in yeelding unto them all due honour andobedience in their lawfuU administrations; not be-houlding in them the ordinarinesse of their persons,but Gods ordinance for your good, not being likethe foolish multitud who more honour the gaycoate, than either the vertuous minde of the man,or glorious ordinance of the Lord. But you knowbetter things, and that the image of the Lordspower and authoritie which the magistrate beareth,


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is honourable, in how meane persons soever. Andthis dutie you both may the more willingly andought the more conscionably to performe, becauseyou are at least for the present to have only themfor your ordinarie governours, which your selvesshall make choyse of for that worke."The nature of the Mayflower Compact has often

been misjudged. It has sometimes been spoken ofas if it established in America an independentrepublic, and this in spite of the plain acknowl-edgment of subjection to the king of Great Britainwith which the document opens. In reality it was atemporary measure, adopted in order to take theplace of a patent whose usefulness was at an end,and perhaps in strictness serving only until thearrival of the Fortune a year later, bringing a patentfrom the Council for New England differing mainlyfrom the first and discarded patent in its territorialgrant. From the date of the arrival of that secondpatent, the settlers of Plymouth found in it clearauthority for the scheme of government which theyhad already adopted. It grants in terms the authority"by the consent of the greater part of them to estab-lish such laws and ordinances as are for their bettergovernment, and the same, by such officer orofficers as they shall by most voice elect and choose,to put in execution." The same provision is foundin the patent granted to Cushman and Winslow inJanuary, 1623, for the settlement at Cape Ann, andalso in the colony patent of 1629, granted by the


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Council for New England to William Bradford andhis associates.

It is true that such an agreement, made undersuch circumstances, would actually bring into exis-tence a polity different in fact from that which hadhitherto been usual in attempts, even Englishattempts, to establish colonies in America. Theusual method, in those times, in instituting govern-ment for any place outlying from England, was toentrust the control of affairs to those members ofthe body whose personal status, whose condition inlife, marked them out as beings of a superior order,to whom the right of ruling belonged by the decreeof heaven. The English world and every portion ofit was to be ruled by noblemen and gentlemen;others were called upon simply to obey their bettersand to do their duty in that station to which ithad pleased God to call them. But Robinson fore-saw and the fact was, that the actual compositionof their company, lacking the bright presence ofnoblemen and gentlemen and unprovided withrulers appointed by the gracious hand of theirmonarch, would naturally lead them into a polityin which the right to rule was not conferred byprevious status, might be lodged in persons of littleworldly eminence, but was to be exercised by ordi-nary men whom ordinary men designated for thepurpose and who were to be duly respected for thatvery reason.

In a sense, this temporary government, with its


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power to make regulations by common consent, waslike that which royal charters conferred upon Englishmunicipalities, wherein townsmen, authorized bytheir charter so to do, made by-laws for their owngovernment and elected officers who were com-missioned to enforce themall under the authorityof the British crown. Higher than any powersderived from letters patent, or even from thecharter of a colonizing company, was the right of anEnglish subject. "Go where he would, so long ashe settled on land claimed by England and acknowl-edged allegiance to the English crown, the English-man carried with him as much of the common lawof England as was applicable to his station and wasnot repugnant to his other rights and privileges."The colonist in Virginia and in New Plymouth wasguaranteed the possession and enjoyment of all theliberties, franchises, and immunities that he wouldhave had if he had been born in England itself andhad continued to dwell there, with the exception,of course, of those which his very distance forbadehim to exercise.But though the Mayflower Compact was a tem-

porary device, and government under it alone con-tinued but a year, the event of its signing is never-theless of the greatest significance and highly worthyof commemoration. To appreciate what it meant,let us take a glance at the world of 1620 in the lightof the years that have succeeded. The civilizedworld of 1620 was Europe. Through toil and


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trouble lasting through centuries, European man-kind had learned how to abide under orderly govern-ment, how to remain at peace most of the time,how to go on year after year, in city and town andvillage, maintaining the industries and intercourseof civilized life with that fair measure of law-abiding spirit and respect for the rights of othersthat enables men to prosper, to make at least aliving, to dwell in a sense of security, and to give achance to those forces that make for the improve-ment of men and communities. But that which laybefore the future was. the problem of expanding thisorderly civilization to the filling of the other greatdivisions of the world, of America especially and ofAfrica. It is not too much to say that the chiefmatter of the three centuries that have since elapsedhas been the building up of civilized life in America.I remember that I quoted six years ago in thisplace a passage from Darwin in which, with thatquiet deliberation which gave to his utterances somuch of their weight, he said of the essential processin our history, "Looking to the distant future, I donot think that the Rev. Mr. Zincke takes an exag-gerated view when he says, 'All other series of eventsas that which resulted in the culture of mind inGreece, and that which resulted in the Empire ofRomeonly appear to have purpose and value whenviewed in connection with, or rather as subsidiaryto'. . . the great stream of Anglo-Saxon emigrationto the west."


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We have here in the United States, and the lastfew years have made it plain to all mankind, thegreatest power the world has ever seen, an aggrega-tion of civilized humanity more important, destinedto fill a larger place in history, than the RomanEmpire which for more than a thousand years sodominated the minds of men. To the north of uslies a great nation, which is kin to our own and insome respects of orderly submission to self-govern-ment surpasses us. Great areas to the southward arefilled with republics which less perfectly maintainthe ideals of self-government indeed, but whichafter all, by the influence of those ideals and thepervading sense of common origin, a common religionand language, and a common relation to the civiliza-tion of the Spanish peninsula, are preserved in ageneral state of peace as impressive and almost ascomplete as the famous Pax Romana, and brightenedwith hopes of progress which the Roman Empirenever acquired.

If from the standpoint of 1620 we could look for-ward into the three centuries which since havepassed, could see that the main movement of thefuture would be the occupation of the waste placesof the earth, in North America, South America, andAfrica, should we not perceive, with tremblingapprehension, that all the hope of the future de-pended upon the question whether the Europeanman could stand the strain of so great a transition?Much of his acquiescence in settled order obviously


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depended upon the conservative inertia of one whodwells where his fathers dwelt and who has noother institutions than those which have grown uparound him in a fixed locality. Could he go forth inmasses into the new world and spread over itsnumerous unoccupied areas, and still retain most ofwhat was valuable in the civilization he hadacquired?The very intelligent counsellors who surrounded

the King of Spain foresaw this problem in no smalldegree, and attempted to solve it in a manner accord-ing to their prepossessions. To them it seemedindispensable that Spaniards coming to America,to whatever remote part of it, should not escape fromthe long arm of the law. They regulated their newworld from Madrid and from Seville with minutecare and abundant and often wise legislation. Theyprovided administrative machinery marked by muchingenuity, sent out many well-qualified officials,and devised still further machinery for bringing tobook those whom they had sent out to administerwhat they had decreed. It was not all in vain.Spanish administration was far from being a failure.Much in it was excellent, and much that we finddefective in the government and procedure ofSpanish America of today is in larger degree theeffect of predominating Indian blood than of what-ever weaknesses there were in the Spanish adminis-trative system.

Nevertheless there was a better way by which the


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great problem, as momentous as any problem thathas lain before the human mind, might be solved.No one would now doubt that the problem of thegovernment of very remote communities is bestsolved if those communities can be made able andwilling to govern themselves. To the Spaniards, thePortuguese, the French, and the Dutch of 1620 sucha proposal would have seemed unnatural. Theircolonies were to be governed by qualified personswhom they sent out to govern, and in the absence ofsuch important representatives of European authoritytheir colonial communities were usually helpless. Butthere was something in the Anglo-Saxon, howeveror whensoever acquired, that enabled him, andhas almost always enabled him, to rise to such situa-tions. The Mayflower Compact was but the first of along line of instances in which that ability to supplythe lack of external authority by the assumption ofself-government has shown itself. Everyone herepresent knows how in 1636, when Roger Williamsand his associates were establishing the town ofProvidence on territory which seemed to lie outsidethe jurisdiction of any constituted authority, theyframed and signed a similar agreement, influencedpossibly by Williams's residence in Plymouth, butnaturally evoked by the circumstances in which heand his companions found themselves. Its text maybe compared with that of the compact signed in thecabin of the Mayflower sixteen years before."We whose names are hereunder written, being


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desirous to inhabit in the town of Providence, dopromise to submit ourselves, in active or passiveobedience, to all such orders or agreements as shallbe made for public good of the body, in an orderlyway, by the major consent of the present inhabi-tants, masters of families incorporated together intoa township, and such others as they shall admit intothe sameonly in civil things."Very likely the form of such compacts is In somedegree derived from that of the church covenantsinto which Separatist congregations of that daywere accustomed to enter. Possibly there may havebeen some influence from the form of the so-called"associations," or signed agreements to persevere ina given course of political action, which, in the daysbefore the rise of political parties, had done serviceon several occasions in English and Scottish history,beginning in England with the Association of 1584,the agreement to oppose and pursue all those whoshould seek to compass the death of Queen Elizabeth.But the real cause of the framing of such docu-ments was that men of the English race found them-selves outside the jurisdiction of constituted authori-ties, yet, through long habituation to local self-government or to other incidents of settled orderin English villages, found it intolerable to be with-out definite basis for government, and improvisedone by common action to take the place of what inthose days would more normally have been suppliedby the crown, as it had been in the case of James-


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town. Several other agreements of the sort, planta-tion covenants as they were sometimes called, likethat which bound together the settlers at Hampton,New Hampshire, may be found in the early annalsof our colonies. At a later period, in the days of theRevolution and later, settlers in Vermont or Ken-tucky or the Northwest Territory, when they foundthemselves outside the range of state governments oron land so much in dispute that no state could exer-sise a recognized authority, formed similar temporarycompacts for the government of their own affairs.Later, beyond the Mississippi, claim associations ofsquatters, communities of miners in valleys inacces-sible to the arm of the law, Americans who hadgone outside the ascertained boundaries of theUnited States yet deemed themselves to be stillwithin its protection, have framed similar com-pacts, by which they have agreed to abide by thedecision of the majority and to obey the laws andthe magistrates which they themselves have made.The American does multitudes of things by volun-tary association or informal agreement which theEuropean expects to see done by governmentalregulation or on governmental initiative. By theopening years of the twentieth century we havearrived at a period when even college studentsgovern themselves, nay more, when even smallboys, ferae naturae, govern themselves admirably inorganizations of Boy Scouts, and solemnly administera justice little tempered by mercynay, most


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remarkable of all, when, without compulsion of lawor executive order, upon the mere request of agovernment bureau, nearly every American, forseveral Sundays, voluntarily deprived himself of theuse of gasolene in automobiles, repressing for thecommon good what is now apparently the chiefestpassion of mankind.Do not understand me to hold that because theMayflower Compact was the first of a long series of

voluntary agreements for self-government it is there-fore entitled to such fame and celebration as if ithad been the cause of all those that followed. Anexaggerated importance has often been attached inAmerican history to the first time that this or thatthing was done. The agreement signed in Province-town Harbor was in a sense casual, as being due tocircumstances that had unexpectedly arisen. Ifthe Pilgrims had landed where they had expected toland, there is no reason to suppose that their formof government would have been essentially different,or that they would have been governed otherwisethan by laws of their own making, administered byofficers of their own choosing. For this we haveevidence from their patent and from Robinson'sletter. It may be that in a strict legal sense govern-ment under the Compact lasted little more than ayear. Nor can we think that their agreement stoodin a causal relation to all the acts of voluntaryassociation that followed in that age and in subse-quent times. But when we reflect upon the enormous


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importance which has attached, in subsequentAmerican history and in that of the rest of the world,to the principle of self-government, of governmentbased on the consent of the governed, of "govern-ment of the people, by the people, for the people,"we shall surely think it not only warrantable butimperative that we should celebrate with gratefulremembrance the action of those who first estab-lished such government on American soil.We have met, then, to celebrate the slight begin-nings of American self-government, the first mani-festation in the New World of that spirit of volun-tary association, of self-rule, of submission to themajority, of democracy, that has since made theconquest of the continent. Where forty-one sturdyEnglishmen subscribed their adherence to theseprinciples in 1620, in 1920 they are the accepteddoctrine of a hundred and fifty millions or more inAmerica and of a still greater number in Europe.Democracy at last prevails throughout the world.

In our gratulation over its advances, we must notlose sight of the imperfection with which its prin-ciples are carried out. Much of our adherence tothose principles is lip-service. Rule by the consentof the governed, we sadly admit, is far from havingachieved perfection, either as regards legislation oras regards execution. Neither can we yet pride our-selves on that whole-hearted submission to the ruleof the majority which the theory of democracyrequires. And of course we have to admit that


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democracy at its best has faults from which some ofthe rival forms of government are more free. Buton the whole it is clear to us that the governmentof plain men by plain men, or, to put it better, thegovernment of men by their own wills, in the lightof what their own minds conceive to be for theirown joint interests, brings juster and happier resultsin the long run than any other polity. So we rejoicein the triumph of democracy and celebrate withfervent gratitude the day of its beginning in America.The President, with his habitual discernment in

historical matters, has rightly seen that, in the wholestory of the arrival of the Pilgrims, it is the signingof the Mayflower Compact rather than any landingon Plymouth Rock, that most calls for commemora-tion three hundred years after, and PresidentFaunce in asking me to come here and speak hasrightly indicated that the beginnings of Americanself-government are likely to be the main theme ofsuch a discourse. Yet, for my own part, I think Imight be quite as much disposed to emphasize andcommemorate the moral as the political quality ofthe Pilgrims' advent. The best institutions thatever were devised will work to good results onlywhen sustained by character. Now just as when welook about us upon the founders of other repub-licsMirabeau and Bolivar, let us say, and Gam-betta and Leninwe are filled with gratitude thatat the forefront of our national history there standsthe incomparable figure of Washington, as a model of


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unselfish patriotism, of balanced wisdom, and ofevery public virtue, so it has been of incalculablebenefit that we have always seen, at the threshold ofour colonial history, such examples of civic virtue, ofdevotion to ideals, of willingness to make sacrificesfor the common good, of fortitude, of gentle for-bearance, and above all, of faith in the future and inGod's providence, as are shown to us by Bradfordand Brewster and Winslow and their humbler com-panions. We were destined to be a nation of pioneers,breaking fresh ground and subduing the wilderness,first in the Atlantic coastland, then in the uplandsof the Alleghenies, then in the boundless West.Each community passing through the pioneer stage,usually to ultimate prosperity, there was alwaysdanger that it should succumb to the faults of thepioneer and of the prosperous, the rough andreckless individualism of the former, the selfishmaterialism of the latter, the conviction of both thatproperty is the main good of life, the rights of prop-erty the most sacred interests of the race. No onecan measure the extent to which our communitieshave been saved from such grossness by those oftheir number who at their founding and throughouttheir rank development have remembered the storyof the Pilgrim Fathers.

" 'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay,But the high faith that failed not by the way."

We have the clusters of Eshcol in prodigious abun-


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dance; can we not preserve also the high faith of thePilgrimstheir faith in the order of the world, theirfaith in the future, their faith in popular govern-ment even when it is administered by a party whichis not our own, or by persons whom we ourselveswould not have chosen?

Multitudes of writers have attempted to set forththe quality of the Pilgrim story and the Pilgrimcharacter, but after all none has ever set forth thatspirit so well as the one who did it first, the admirablegovernor of the colony, William Bradford. Thereis a famous passage in his History of PlymouthPlantation that we may well take as exhibiting to usbriefly the whole spirit of the Plymouth experiment."But hear [here]," he says, "I cannot but stay and

make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poorepeoples presente condition; and so I thinke will thereader too, when he well considers the same. Beingthus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troublesbefore in their preparation (as may be remembred bythat which wente before), they had now no freindsto Wellcome them, nor inns to entertaine or refreshtheir weatherbeaten bodys, no houses or much lesstownes to repaire too, to seeke for succoure. It isrecorded in scripture as a mercie to the apostle andhis shipwraked company, that the barbariansshewed them no smale kindness in refreshing them,but these savage barbarians, when they mette withthem (as after will appeare) were readier to filltheir sids full of arrows than otherwise. And for


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the season it was winter, and they that know thewinters of that cuntrie know them to be sharp andviolent, and subjecte to cruell and feirce stormes,deangerous to travill to known places, much moreto serch an unknown coast. Besids, what could theysee but a hidious and desolate wildernes, full of wildbeasts and willd men? and what multituds thermight be of them they knew not. Nether couldthey, as it were, goe up to the tope of Pisgah, tovew from this willdernes a more goodly cuntrie, tofeed their hopes; for which way soever they turnedtheir eyes (save upward to the heavens) they couldhave litle solace or content in respecte of anyonward objects. . . Let it also be considred whatweake hopes of supply and succoure they left behindethem, that might bear up their minds in this sadcondition and trialls they were under; and theycould not but be very smale. . . . What could nowsustaine them but the spirite of God and his grace?May not and ought not the children of these fathersrightly say: Our faithers were Englishmen whichcame over this great ocean, and were ready to perishin this willdernes; but they cried unto the Lord, andhe heard their voyce, and looked on their adversitie,etc. Let them therfore praise the Lord, becausehe is good, and his mercies endure forever. Yea,let them which have been redeemed of the Lord,shew how he hath delivered them from the hand ofthe oppressour. When they wandered in the desertewillderness out of the way, and found no citie to


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dwell in, both hungrie, and thirstie, their sowle wasoverwhelmed in them. Let them confess before theLord his loving kindnes, and his wonderfull worksbefore the sons of men."

I wish that students in Brown University wouldmake themselves more familiar with the pages ofBradford. I should think it a wholly sufficientresult of such an address as this if I could persuademany of them to read at least the first third ofhis book. In the first place, it is in its way a classic,with a frequent beauty of phrase that springsfrom the beauty of his spirit, and from his famil-iarity with what was to him the one great book,though he had read many others. In the secondplace, the reading of Bradford's history could notfail to correct in their minds that conception of thePilgrim and the Puritan which so easily comes to usfrom the newspapers and from still more ignorantwritings, in which what was harsh and narrow in thespirit of Puritan and Separatist is so emphasized, soexclusively brought into the foreground, that theresult is but a caricature. I do not think it wouldbe easy for any right-minded young man to risefrom the reading of Bradford without the convictionthat, whatever in seventeenth-century theology orethics is now obsolete, here is a man with whom onecould strike hands, with whom one could walk sideby side, who can typify to us a spirit which, mutatismutandis, we should be glad to apply and to seeapplied in all the communities and all the affairs of


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this great country, that we may advance into thefuture with a firm hold on what is best in the past.Men and women of Providence, the history of theHebrew nation was sacred history only because theHebrew thought it so. Are we not as truly a chosenpeople? I wish that we might impose upon ourminds the habit of thinking always of our ownwonderful history as a sacred story. I wish that,when we read in the eleventh chapter of the Epistleto the Hebrews that magnificent bede-roll of thegreat ones of Israel, we should translate it into termsof our own historyshould remind ourselves thatby faith our elders obtained a good report; that byfaith Bradford and Brewster, when they were calledto go out into a place which they should after receivefor an inheritance, obeyed; and they went out, notknowing whither they went. By faith they sojournedin the land of promise, as in a strange country,dwelling in tabernacles with those who were theheirs with them of the same promise: for they lookedfor a city which hath foundations, whose builderand maker is God. Therefore sprang there even ofthese few so many as the stars of the sky in multi-tude, and as the sand which is by the seashoreinnumerable. These all died in faith, not havingreceived the promises, but having seen them afaroff, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them,and confessed that they were strangers and pil-grims on the earth. For they that say such thingsdeclare plainly that they seek a country. And


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truly, if they had been mindful of that country fromwhence they came out, they might have had oppor-tunity to have returned: but they desired a bettercountry, that is, an heavenly; therefore God was notashamed to be called their God; for He had preparedfor them a city. And what shall I more say? Forthe time would fail me to tell of Winthrop and ofWilliams and of Washington and of Franklin and ofAdams and of Hamilton and of Lincoln and ofRoosevelt, who through faith subdued kingdoms,wrought righteousness, obtained promises, escapedthe edge of the sword, out of weakness were madestrong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight thearmies of the aliens. And these all, having obtaineda good report through faith, received not the prom-ise, God having provided some better things for us,that they without us should not be made perfect.


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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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Documents

(1920) The Arrival of the Pilgrims: New Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts)