Massachusetts-Bay, he had never seen a drunken man or heard a profane oath. The limits of their territory they continually enlarged by firmly insisting upon the border lines of their Patent, and even stretching them when near some natural boundary; by purchasing the rights of New Plymouth in the Colony of Maine, for 400 pounds, they added a tract of seven hundred square miles; by the purchase of the Gorges Patent, for 1,250 pounds sterling, they acquired a jurisdiction over the rest of the Province of Maine which made it a District of Massachusetts down to the year 1820. There has been a good deal of sympathy, and many unnecessary tears have been shed over the so-called banishment of Roger Williams to Rhode Island; but it was his friend, John Winthrop, who whispered in his ear the desirability of the location of the Providence Plantations. And there was no reason why Roger Williams could not have gone out from Salem with head erect, and with his gaze fixed on the stars, as every good missionary should go, knowing that the powers of the government of Massachusetts-Bay was as much behind his settlement, without an Oath, as it was behind the colonists of Connecticut, and New Haven, who had gone out from Cambridge, Watertown and Roxbury, carrying with them the Oath of a Freeman as a principle of their governments. In the Union of the Colonies of Massachusetts-Bay, New Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, of which John Winthrop was the first President, a new idea was advanced in his system of government, which eventually attained greater results. It cannot be said that John Winthrop accomplished these things unaided. There were others who ably assisted him, whose names, also, should be held in honored remembrance. But through it all, can be seen the firm, directing mind and purpose of a man whose vision looked beyond his present to a future, and a Republic that was to be. And this is why our people should look upon The Oath of a Freeman, which was his work, not alone as the glorious first fruit of the Printing-Press in this Country; but also as a great state paper which accomplished without bloodshed, on a smaller scale it is true, all that was achieved, one hundred and thirty-seven years later, after seven years of warfare, through the Declaration of Independence. _In Connecticut and New Haven Colonies._ The colonists of Connecticut, in the main, followed closely the general system of laws of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, from which they had emigrated. Their form of government was theocratic, the Oath of a Freeman being the test of citizenship. The settlers of Windsor, who came from Dorchester with John Warham, in 1635, did not, however, make church membership a necessary qualification for holding civil office.