Religious dissensions would combine to make frontier society as it formed early in the eighteenth century more and more democratic, dissatisfied with the existing order, and less respectful of authority. We shall not understand the relative radicalism of parts of the Berkshires, Vermont and interior New Hampshire without enquiry into the degree in which the control over the lands by a proprietary monopoly affected the men who settled on the frontier. The final aspect of this frontier to be examined, is the attitude of the conservatives of the older sections towards this movement of westward advance. President Dwight in the era of the War of 1812 was very critical of the "foresters," but saw in such a movement a safety valve to the institutions of New England by allowing the escape of the explosive advocates of "Innovation."[63:3] Cotton Mather is perhaps not a typical representative of the conservative sentiment at the close of the seventeenth century, but his writings may partly reflect the attitude of Boston Bay toward New England's first Western frontier. Writing in 1694 of "Wonderful Passages which have Occurred, First in the Protections and then in the Afflictions of New England," he says: One while the Enclosing of _Commons_ hath made Neighbours, that should have been like Sheep, to _Bite and devour one another_. . . . Again, Do our _Old_ People, any of them _Go Out_ from the Institutions of God, Swarming into New Settlements, where they and their Untaught Families are like to _Perish for Lack of Vision_? They that have done so, heretofore, have to their Cost found, that they were got unto the _Wrong side of the Hedge_, in their doing so. Think, here _Should this be done any more?_ We read of Balaam, in Num. 22, 23. He was to his Damage, _driven to the_ Wall, when he would needs make an unlawful Salley forth after the _Gain_ of this World. . . . Why, when men, for the Sake of Earthly Gain, would be _going out_ into the _Warm_ Sun, they drive _Through the Wall_, and the _Angel of the Lord_ becomes their Enemy.