Among the many peculiarities of the Pilgrim Fathers, perhaps the oddest trait was either their lack of ambition or their sober sense of the responsibilities of office, whose honors and emoluments so little tempted them, that even the position of governor went begging. Indeed, they had to be pricked up to their duty by statute; for in 1632 it was provided that if any one should refuse to sit in the gubernatorial chair, after election, he should be fined twenty pounds.[1026] Winthrop, under the year 1633, makes this record: “This year, Mr. Edward Winslow was elected governor of Plymouth, and Mr. Bradford, having been governor about ten years, _now got off by importunity_.”[1027] How much happier we are in our age, for now-a-days thousands of devoted patriots are perfectly willing to lay their privacy upon the altar of their country by accepting any office, from a snuggery in the custom-house to the presidency of the Republic. They only beg to be used. Men no longer cite that speech of the father of Themistocles, who, in attempting to dissuade his son from government, showed him the old, discarded oars which the Grecian mariners had thrown away upon the sea-shore, and said: “See; the people will certainly treat their old rulers with the same contempt.” But if the Pilgrims did not accept office readily, they did not hold it lightly. No; they were real rulers, not cockades masquerading in the garb of authority. They took high views of their duties, and believed with Agapetus, that “the loftier the station one reaches in the government, the truer should be his devotion to the service of God;”[1028] and they were sensible of what Cotton Mather styles that “great stroke” of Cicero: “_Nullâ re propiùs hominas ad Deum accedunt, quam salutem hominibus dando_”—men approach nearest to the character of God in doing good to mankind. “The word _government_ properly signifies the _guidance of a ship_. Tully uses it in that sense; and in Plutarch the art of steering a vessel is called _government_.[1029] New England is a little ship that has weathered many storms, and it is but fair that those who have stood at the helm of the ship should be remembered in its story.” Let us mention one or two of these honored pilots. With William Bradford, the eldest of the New England governors, we are already acquainted. Born in 1588, he had come to America in the prime of his life, and devoted himself to God and the common weal. He was “looked on as a common blessing and father to all,” and he lived long enough to see those high hopes with which he had embarked in the “Mayflower” more than realized; for the wilderness refuge was thronged and prosperous beyond his wildest dreams.[1030] He was fully appreciated at Plymouth; and with the exception of five years’ respite, when he “got off” by his “importunity,” he was reëlected governor with annual regularity until death promoted him to a higher station.[1031]