At one time, Virginia was the pet, and got several sugar-plums from royal bounty. Then Connecticut came in for some caressing. The younger Winthrop presented to Charles II., in 1662, a petition for a new toy,—a charter. He would have been refused, but that he slipped in, at the same time, a ring given to his own grandfather by the father of Charles, which so pleased the dress-loving king, that he gave to Connecticut one of the best charter hobby-horses ever seen at that time in America. This, it may be remarked, is the earliest example in our history of what “a ring” can effect. We cannot record in detail the successive struggles of the Colonies to free themselves from political and commercial restrictive rules,—for rights of representation in assemblies of their own, for the privilege of taxing themselves, and spending their own assessments, and for the many solid and large freedoms which we now enjoy without question or fear. The story of the way in which the cellar was dug, through obstructions of root and stone, the walls sunk, the beams of the lower floor, hewn out amid discouragements and opposition, laid and primed, ought not to be otherwise than pleasant, even when rehearsed to those who have long and securely revelled in all the comforts and luxuries of the completed building; in its hot and cold water baths of free discussion; the numerous call-pipes through the wall, for public servants; the cedar closets for the best clothes of liberty; the iron safe for the family silver or greenbacks; the gas-pipes of illuminating knowledge; and the varied upholstery to soothe labor-aching limbs, or to gratify luxurious and even extravagant tastes. But space, like nobility, obliges; and although, like those experts who write the Lord’s Prayer on a sixpence, we can condense Genesis on the smallest historic disk, we cannot crowd all creation on the rim of the same piece. Speaking in a general way, however, we may affirm that for forty years preceding the accession of James II. in 1685, the Colonies, on the whole, steadily gained from jealous political privilege and chartered monopoly some of the rights enjoyed at home. As these rights fell, one after another, upon colonial soil, they were carefully secured by strong hands. Sometimes they were jarred suddenly from the parent tree by the iron hand of war. Sometimes they fell carelessly, like great, golden pippins, over the royal enclosure into the king’s highway, ripe and well flavored. Sometimes they matured naturally under the very eyes of those keepers of the royal Transatlantic preserves,—the colonial governors,—and when mellow, were seized and hurried out of reach until it was safe to give them to the hungry people. Thus, in various ways, by different hands and from different parts of the colonial orchard, the precious fruit was gathered for present or future use. In some of the plantations the proprietors, those “Gentlemen of England, who sat at home in ease,”