age of stone hatchets colony planters have been drawn from the ranks of the uneasy. An early Quaker governor of South Carolina puts the matter less elegantly but more justly than Bacon when he says: "It is stupendious to consider, how passionate and preposterous zeal, not only vails but stupefies oftentimes the Rational Powers: For cannot Dissenters kill Wolves and Bears as well as Churchmen?" VII. [Sidenote: Relations with the Virginia Company.] [Sidenote: MS. Rec. Va. Co., Feb. 2, 1620.] [Sidenote: Winslow's Briefe Narration, Young, 383.] The liberal and practical mind of Sir Edwin Sandys harbored none of the scruples of Bacon, and his more wholesome conscience knew nothing of the fine distinctions of James and the archbishops between formal toleration and a mere winking at irregularities. He embraced the cause of the Pilgrims and became their steadfast friend, passing through the Virginia Company successively two charters in their behalf, and the general order which allowed the leaders of "particular plantations"--that is, of such plantations as the Leyden people and others at that time proposed to make--to associate the sober and discreet of the plantation with them to make laws, orders, and constitutions not repugnant to the laws of England. This was a wide door opening toward democratic government. The patent given to the Pilgrims was also a liberal one, and it was even proposed to put into their hands a large sum of money contributed anonymously for the education of Indian children, but to this it was objected that the newcomers would lack the confidence of the savages. One of the Virginia Company, possibly Sandys himself, lent to the Leyden people three hundred pounds without interest for three years. When we consider that the Pilgrims had to pay in their first year of settlement thirty and even fifty per cent, interest on their debts, and that this three hundred pounds, the use of which they received without interest, would be equal in purchasing power to five or six thousand dollars of our money, we may readily believe that this loan and the semi-independence offered them under their "large patent" from the company, were the considerations that decided them in favor of emigration after the English Government had refused a guarantee of toleration, and the Dutch Government had declined to assure them of protection against England. [Sidenote: Authors of the Plymouth Government.] [Sidenote: Note 4.]