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The true tendency of the principles of Anne Hutch-
inson is best established by examining the institutions which were founded by her followers.
We shall hereafter trace the career of
Henry Vane.
Wheelwright and his immediate friends removed to the banks of the
Piscataqua; and, at the head of tide waters on that stream, they founded the town of
Exeter; one more little republic in the wilderness, organized on the principles of natural justice by the voluntary combination of the inhabitants.
1
The larger number of the friends of
Anne Hutchinson, led by
John Clarke and
William Coddington, proceeded to the south, designing to make a plantation on
Long Island, or near
Delaware Bay.
But
Roger Williams welcomed them to his vicinity; and his own
influence, and the powerful name of
Henry Vane, prevailed with
Miantonomoh, the chief of the Narragansetts, to obtain for them a gift of the beautiful island of
Rhode Island.
The spirit of the institutions established by this band of voluntary exiles, on the soil which they owed to the benevolence of the natives, was derived from natural justice: a social compact, signed after the manner of the precedent at New Plymouth, so often imitated in
America, founded the government upon the basis of the universal consent of
every inhabitant: the forms of the administration were borrowed from the examples of the Jews.
Coddington was elected judge in the new
Israel; and
three elders were soon chosen as his assistants.
The colony rested on the principle of intellectual liberty: philosophy itself could not have placed the right on a broader basis.
The settlement prospered; and it be-
came necessary to establish a constitution.
It was