making their religious fanaticism very often a cloak for secret vice or for wild plots against the government. The temporary overthrow of the comprehensive church establishment of the judicious statesmen and reformers of Elizabeth’s reign had opened the gates to a flood of irreligion and fanaticism. The ecclesiastical despotism established by the Westminster Assembly was more repugnant to Englishmen than the old church which had been suppressed, and the condition of England in religious matters during the Commonwealth forms one of the best apologies for the severe reactionary measures that were adopted when the king and the bishops were restored in 1660. It was in the middle of this period that the episode of the Quaker troubles in New England occurred, an episode which has been given an unpleasant prominence in the colonial history of New England, partly from the bitterness of the feelings which were aroused on both sides, but especially from the bearing that it had upon the question of the people of Massachusetts for the powers and responsibilities of self-government. The story is a sad one of misdirected earnestness and zeal on the one side, of mistaken consistency and fidelity to principle, however false, upon the other. We condemn while we admire; we wonder at the steadiness and constancy of both judged and judges, while we regret the tragic results that stained the new commonwealth with innocent blood. It is not surprising, however, that such a conflict took place, for as a recent writer of great learning and ability has well said of the relations of the Quakers and their opponents,--“the issue presented seemed to have a resemblance to the mechanical problem of what will be the effect if an irresistible body strikes an immovable body.”[4] The colonial governments which had been established in New England in the first half of the seventeenth century were not, as is frequently assumed, homogeneous and similar, but differed from each other in their political status and to some extent in their political institutions, and very greatly in the spirit which governed and directed them. Massachusetts had a charter obtained from the Crown for a trading company, and transferred to the colony by a daring usurpation; Rhode Island had a charter granted by the Long Parliament; Plymouth had obtained its territory by purchase from the old Plymouth Company, but its political existence was winked at rather than recognized; Connecticut and New Haven were, to all intents and purposes, independent republics, save for a somewhat doubtful acknowledgment of the supremacy of the king and of the Commonwealth that was his successor. All but Rhode Island were joined together in a federal league for mutual defence against external and internal enemies.