George Bancroft, History of the Colonization of the United States, Vol. 1, 17th edition.

[442] the English parliament, are more able to prescribe

Chap. X.} 1646.

rules of government and judge causes, than such poor rustics as a wilderness can breed up; yet the vast distance between England and these parts abates the virtue of the strongest influences. Your councils and judgments can neither be so well grounded, nor so seasonably applied, as might either be useful to us, or safe for yourselves, in your discharge, in the great day of account. If any miscarriage shall befall us, when we have the government in our own hands, the state of England shall not answer for it.

Continue your favorable aspect to these infant plantations, that we may still rejoice and bless our God under your shadow, and be there still nourished with the warmth and dews of heaven. Confirm our liberties; discountenance our enemies, the disturbers of our peace under pretence of our injustice. A gracious testimony of your wonted favor will oblige us and our posterity.

In the same spirit, Edward Winslow, the agent for Massachusetts in England, publicly denied that the jurisdiction of parliament extended to America. ‘If the parliament of England should impose laws upon us, having no burgesses in the house of commons, nor capable of a summons by reason of the vast distance, we should lose the liberties and freedom of English indeed.’¹ Massachusetts was not without steadfast friends in the legislature of England; yet it marks an honest love of liberty and of justice in the Long Parliament, that the doctrines of colonial equality should have been received with favor. ‘Sir Henry Vane, though he might have taken occasion against the colony ’