Puritan Consistency.
--A historian of the Puritans, in writing some twenty-five years ago, remarks that "it is irresistibly amusing to see how the Puritans copied
England in bad things, though all the while bitterly abusing her. They ventured a revolution, because taxed without their own consent, but they had nevertheless adopted such a principle as quite right for
them." They never hesitated to tax English property, wherever they could, by any pretence, lay their hands on it.
Mr. Feit, one of their writers, admits, that as early as 1639, "they ordered persons here, (Salons, Mass.) and throughout the colony," who owned estates in
England, to be taxed for them.
These persons owning these estates, were not allowed to vote in
Puritan councils, nor be so much as freemen, unless they owned the
Puritan covenant.
Without representation, without a title to so much as the elective franchise, they might be taxed for estates situated under another Government, three thousand miles away, and taxed over again under that Government, for its legitimate support.
Who does not see that their outcry against the taxation of
England without representation was miserable pretext, especially when that taxation was looked upon by
England as but as equivalent for charter privileges?
Another example of
Puritan inconsistency in thus referred to by our author.
They thought it vast indignity for the
English to call us
rebels. But so soon us an Indian, after being wheedled into an act of which he knew nothing of the import, a declaration of allegiance to the
British Crown, dared to act contrary to loyalty,
he was a rebel of the most malignant heinousness, and if he escaped with life and servile bondage, might think himself fall fortunate.
A war against these rebels in pronounced "a war as righteous as ever was waged." Had not Puritan advocates better be more chary of the reputation of the days of 176 If a war against rebels is as righteous is any, monarchical tories would make them a low bow for such exquisite orthodoxy.
But such has been the character of this pestilent breed from the beginning.
Rebellion against a Puritan heresy they hold to be treason against God as well as man. When they were out of power, resistance to tyrants was obedience to God.
When they were in power, circumstances .
Rev. Dr, Maybew, who preached a most furious philippic against King Charles L's day, when the Puritans got the reins, that "government is , and not in . This is the upon which the of the same men are noting new. The very people who wanted to the
Union in 1812, and who
