Men--men--quiet--hark to me! We've no right under our charter to settle here! PETER Then tear up the charter. [_mob agrees_] CARVER Tear up the charter? Have no government? Nay, we can't do that! PETER We be freemen, Master Carver; we have a right to a voice in what we'll do, and what we won't do--and we all want to land here, don't we, men? [_all agree_] CARVER But if we make our home here, we are outside the King's rule. PETER We'll rule ourselves--we be free-born Englishmen! [_all agree_] CARVER Mayhap--if that is your wish-- ALL It is! Aye, aye! [_etc._] CARVER It may be for the best interest of the company and for the glory of Jehovah. I consent to your wishes. [_cheers_] But it behooves us to enter into a compact, one with the other--that no man may say, once we have landed in New England, that we have no law and cannot punish the disobedient. PETER May it please ye, sir, we be more than willing for the masters to write a compact that all can sign to be governed like any free-born Englishmen by the will o' the majority--[_all agree_] CARVER So be it--let the masters of the company join me in my cabin, and we shall make a compact joining all the company of freemen into a body politic. [_cheers_] ANNOUNCER And so in the cabin of the _Mayflower_ the masters of the company, twelve in number, met in the first American legislative assembly and drew up one of the most famous documents in American history--the Mayflower Compact--which organized the first self-governing community in the New World. End of Project Gutenberg's The Landing of the Pilgrims, by Henry Fisk Carlton