It is needless to say that the seventeenth century cannot be judged by the standards of the nineteenth, but the second half of the earlier one was by no means as intolerant as many would have us believe. Opinion in England and in all of the colonies, although naturally bigoted as yet, on the part of many, was, beyond question, becoming far more liberal. We have already noted the frequent remonstrances addressed to Massachusetts by her friends at home. We have seen the consistent stand of Rhode Island from the start, and noted the tolerant tendencies in Plymouth and Connecticut. In England, Vane was raising his voice in Parliament for religious liberty in its most extreme form.[707] In the same body, Cromwell was asking, “Is it ingenuous to ask liberty and not to give it? What greater hypocrisy than for those who were opposed by the Bishops to become the greatest oppressors themselves, as soon as their yoke was removed.”[708] Maryland had possessed religious freedom for all professing Christ, since 1649, and in 1665 the New Jersey Concession provided for complete liberty of conscience, as did the charter of South Carolina four years later.[709] In Jamaica, toleration, with full civil liberties to all Christians, including Quakers, was proclaimed in 1662.[710] Public opinion notoriously outruns legislation, yet in addition to the above examples and others, Pennsylvania, in 1682, provided in its laws for equal liberty for all who believed in God; while the Toleration Act, a landmark in the struggle in England, was passed seven years later.[711] Footnote 707: Burton's Diary, cited by Hosmer, _Young Sir Harry Vane_, p. 501. Footnote 708: Carlyle, _Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell_ (London, n.d.), p. 94. Footnote 709: Macdonald, _Select Charters_ (New York, 1906), pp. 142, 165. Footnote 710: _Cal. State Pap., Col., 1661-1668_, p. 111. Footnote 711: H. F. Russell Smith, _Theory of Religious Liberty in the Reigns of Charles II and James II_ (Cambridge University Press, 1911), pp. 53, 1 _ff._ The progress made in the generation since Bradford and his little band had tried to flee secretly from England had been great. A large section of the people, however, both at home and in the colonies, was undoubtedly as bigoted and intolerant as ever; and, unfortunately, the leaders in charge of the destinies of the largest of the New England colonies at the critical period we have been describing were numbered among them. They had made a desperate stand, and hesitated at nothing,—not even inflicting torture and taking human life,—in order to maintain their position; and, happily for America, they had been defeated, though not until they had set an indelible stain on the pages of American history.