George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[59] not quite successful with the more reasonable Pelham,

chap. III.} 1749.

became the eulogist and principal adviser of Cumberland, of Bedford, and of Halifax. Should Massachusetts reduce his emoluments, he openly threatened to appeal to ‘an episcopal interest, and make himself independent of the Assembly for any future support.’¹

The menace to Massachusetts was unseasonable. The public mind in that province, and most of all in Boston, was earnestly inquiring into the active powers of man, to deduce from them the right to uncontrolled inquiry, as the only security against religious and civil bondage. Of that cause the champion was Jonathan Mayhew, offspring of purest ancestors, nurtured by the ocean's-side, ‘sanctified’ from childhood, a pupil of New England's Cambridge. ‘Instructed in youth,’ thus he spoke of himself, ‘in the doctrines of civil liberty, as they were taught by such men as Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero, and others among the ancients, and such as Sidney and Milton, Locke and Hoadley, among the moderns, I liked them; and having learned from the Holy Scriptures, that wise, brave, and virtuous men were always friends to liberty, that God gave the Israelites a king in his anger, because they had not sense and virtue enough to like a free common wealth, and that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, this made me conclude that freedom is a great blessing.’² From early life, Mayhew took to his heart the right of private judgment, clinging to it as to his religion. Truth and justice he revered as realities which every human being had capacity to discern. The duty of each individual to inquire and