Thus the principles of Anne Hutchinson, thrown out of Massachusetts, sprouted in Rhode Island, and grew a well-ordered, sober state. A happy result flowed from an unhappy cause. And now for a season internecine strife was hushed. All eyes were directed across the water. “The angels of the trans-Atlantic churches, sounding forth their silver trumpets, heard the sound of rattling drums” on every European breeze.[1011] Democracy was about to assert itself in England. The Pilgrim Fathers grasped hands, and silently marked the lesson; which was, that “courtiers, bishops, and kings, too, have a joint in their necks.” CHAPTER XXXI. THE CHART AND THE PILOTS. “And sovereign law, the state’s collected will, O’er thrones and globes elate, Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.” SIR WILLIAM JONES. “To do the genteel deeds—that makes the gentleman.” CHAUCER. ’Tis a trite saying, that legislation reflects character. The penal code of a state mirrors the culture, the thought, and the habits of its citizens; because laws grow from men’s exigencies. Of course, the Pilgrims had a legal chart, and they wrote its quaint characters in the ink of their peculiarities. Unlike our statute-book, it made no fine distinctions and it used no legal fictions, but was very simple and very plain; results due to the primitive social customs of the colonies, to the lack of lawyers, and to the constant effort to avoid litigation; for in those days they did not mean ——“With subtle cobweb cheats, To catch in knotted law, like nets; In which, when men are once imbrangled, The more they stir, the more they’re tangled.” The founders of New England had little sympathy with, and made no provision for, legal legerdemain. They were much too earnest and honest to admire that kind of justice which Pope has satirized: “Once—says an author, where I need not say— Two travellers found an oyster in their way: Both fierce, both hungry, the dispute grew strong, When, scale in hand, dame Justice passed along. Before her each with clamor pleads the laws, Explains the matter, and would win the cause. Dame Justice, weighing long the doubtful right, Takes, opens, swallows it, before their sight. The cause of strife removed so rarely well, ‘There take’—says Justice—‘take you each a shell. We thrive at Westminster on fools like you: ’Twas a fat oyster—live in peace—adieu.’”