“We will renew the times of truth and justice, Condensing into a fair free commonwealth, Not rash equality, but equal rights, Proportioned like the columns of the temple, Giving and taking strength reciprocal, And making firm the whole with grace and beauty, So that no part could be removed without Infringement of the general harmony.” BYRON’S _Doge of Venice_. The success of Endicott and the supplementary success of the detachments despatched to reinforce him—success which at the very outset had left the older settlement at Plymouth, plodding on under a heavy load of debt and odium, far behind—stirred English Puritanism as with the blast of a trumpet. So intense was the interest in the new colony, throughout the realm, that a tract descriptive of New England, written by Higginson, and sent over to England, in manuscript, was printed, and ran through three editions in as many months.[653] In every hamlet, on every street-corner, eager groups met and discussed the right and the policy of emigration; and the most scrupulous consciences met the query, “Is it permitted that men fly from persecution?” by responding, “Yes; for persecution may lead our posterity to abjure the truth.” Soon this stir had an effect. Some of the purest, wealthiest, and best-educated men in England agreed to embark for America. One thing only had made them hesitate; the colonial government resided in England, and was only sifted into New England by delegation. The charter empowered the company, and not the colonists, to transport persons, establish ordinances, and settle government.[654] It was a chrysalis; it had the face of a commercial corporation, but was pregnant with the essence of an independent provincial government. Like the mermaid, it had a human head, but its body was the body of a fish. This puissant possibility—who should evoke it? Who should utter the talismanic words fit to set free the hidden spirit of self-government? Matthew Cradock, the governor of the company, pronounced the “open sesame.” He saw, as did other sagacious men, that the residence of the corporate authority in England embarrassed emigration, barred prosperity, and opened the door to discord. The colonists sighed for a real governor, not one in masquerade; and all began to realize that a government three thousand miles away could not successfully legislate for a settlement whose growing necessities came as quickly and changed as rapidly as the combinations of a kaleidoscope.