firm footing, Massasoit, the father of the famous Philip of Pokanoket, whom these same settlers pursued to the death with all his tribe, except such as they sold for slaves to Bermudas, granted them a certain extent of lands. Subsequently purchases from the Indians began to be considered more necessary to a good title. Eight years afterwards another company of the same people, under John Endicott, formed a settlement in Massachusets Bay, and founded the town of Salem. In the following year a third company, of not less than three hundred in number, joined them. These in the course of time seeking fresh settlements, founded at different periods, Boston, Charlestown, Dorchester, Roxborough, and other towns; great numbers now, allured by the flourishing state of the colony, flocked over, and amongst them Harry Vane, the celebrated Sir Harry Vane of the revolutionary parliament, and Hugh Peters, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell. Some difference of opinion amongst them occasioned a considerable body of them to settle in Providence and Rhode Island. These were under the guidance of their venerable pastor Roger Williams, a man who deserves to be remembered while Christianity continues to shed its blessings on mankind. Mr. Williams had penetrated through the mists of his age, to the light of divine truth, and had risen superior to the selfishness of his countrymen. He maintained the freedom of conscience, the right of private judgment, the freedom of religious opinion from the touch of the magistrate. The spirit of true Christianity had imbued his own spirit with its love. Above all—for it was the most novel doctrine, and as we have seen by the practice of the whole Christian world, the hardest to adopt—he maintained the sacred right of the natives to their own soil; and refused to settle upon it without their consent. _He and his followers purchased of the Indians the whole territory which they took possession of!_ This is a fact which we cannot record without a feeling of intense delight, for it is the first instance of such a triumph of Christian knowledge and principle, over the corrupt morality of Europe. We nowhere read till now, through all this bloody and revolting history of European aggressions, of any single man treating with the savage natives as with men who had the same inalienable rights as themselves.[32] It is the first bright dawn of Christian day from the darkness of ages; the first boundary mark put down between the possessions of the unlettered savage, and the lawless desires of the schooled but uncivilized European; the first recognition of that law of property in the possessors of the soil of every country of the earth, until the complete establishment of which, blood must flow, the weak must be trodden down by the strong, and civilization and Christianity must pause in their course. Honour to Roger Williams and his flock in Narraganset Bay! The Puritan settlements still continued to spread.