George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 2, 17th edition.

This charter of government, constituting, as it then seemed, a pure democracy, and establishing a political system which few beside the Rhode Islanders themselves believed to be practicable, remained in existence till it became the oldest constitutional charter in the world. It outlived the principles of Clarendon and the policy of Charles II. The probable population of Rhode Island, at the time of its reception, may have been two thousand five hundred. In one hundred and seventy years, that number increased forty fold; and the government, which was hardly thought to contain checks enough on the power of the people, to endure even among shepherds and farmers, protected a dense population, and the accumulations of a widely-extended commerce. No where in the world were life, liberty, and property, safer than in Rhode Island.

The thanks of the colony were unanimously voted to a triumvirate of benefactors¹—to ‘King Charles of England, for his high and inestimable, yea, incomparable favor;’ to Clarendon, the historian, the statesman, the prime minister, who had shown ‘to the colony exceeding great care and love;’ and to the modest and virtuous Clarke,² the persevering and disinterested envoy, who, during a twelve years mission, had sustained himself by his own exertions and a mortgage on his estate; whose whole life was a continued exercise of benevolence, and who, at his death, be