“The Lord hath a number of holy and humble ones here amongst us, for whose sakes He doth spare, and will spare long; but, were it not for such a remnant, we should see the Lord would make quick work amongst us. Shall I tell you what I think to be the ground of all this insolency which discovers itself in the speech of men? Truly, I cannot ascribe it so much to any outward thing, as to the putting of too much liberty and power into the hands of the multitude, which they are too weak to manage; many growing conceited, proud, arrogant, self-sufficient.... Remember the former days which you had in old Boston; yet the number of professors is far more here than there. But tell me, which place was better governed? When matters were swayed there by your wisdom and counsel, they went on with strength and power for good. But here, where the heady or headless multitude have gotten the power into their hands, there is insolency and confusion; and I know not how it can be avoided, unless we should make the doors of the church narrower.” This was the caution and reversion of age,--for the doubting Peter was then sixty-seven. But Emerson, at the age of sixty, could say, with unabated faith in Freedom: “Call the people together! The young men and the sires, The digger in the harvest field, Hireling and him that hires; Lo now, if these poor men Can govern the land and sea, And make just laws below the sun, As planets faithful be.” The experience of the ages has shown that the Puritans were right in making the doors of the church wider, not narrower; though we still hear the complaint of aged men, or young men born with a call to be old, that the former times were better than ours, and the “headless multitude” must be deprived of a voice in their own destiny. When Emerson in 1835, at the two hundredth anniversary of Concord, proposed to requite England’s gift of her printed Doomsday Book by presenting her and the other European nations with our yet unpublished town records, he said: “Tell them the Union has 24 States, and Massachusetts is one; that in Massachusetts are 300 towns, and Concord is one; that in Concord are 500 rateable polls, and _every one has an equal vote_.” To-day there are 45 States; Massachusetts has 322 towns, besides nearly 30 cities; and instead of 500 ratable polls, Concord has now 1200; but each one still has an equal vote. [Illustration: R. W. EMERSON (1858). FROM A SKETCH BY ROWSE.]