that shall so lean to their own understanding and will that they shall refuse such easy methods for the obtaining of them. And, if peace and agreement amongst you be once comfortably obtained, we advise you with all convenient speed to go on with your intended ordination; and so we shall follow our advice with our prayers. But, if our advice be rejected, we wish you better, and hearts to follow it; and only add, if you will unreasonably trouble yourselves, we pray you not any further to trouble us. We leave all to the blessing of God, the wonderful Counsellor, and your own serious consideration: praying you to read and consider the whole, and then act as God shall direct you. Farewell."

[Salem, Feb. 14, 1687. Signed by the five referees, John Higginson and Nicholas Noyes (the elders of the old church), and the three gentlemen before named.]

At a meeting of the inhabitants of the Village on the 18th of February, it was voted that "we do accept of and embrace the advice of the honored and reverend gentlemen of Salem, sent to us under their hands, and order that it shall be entered on our book of records." But they took care further to vote, that they accepted it "in general, and not in parts." In accordance with the advice of the referees, they brought up, considered anew, and put to question, every entry in their past records about the genuineness and validity of which any division of opinion existed. Some entries that had been complained of and given offence as incorrect were voted out, and others were confirmed by being adopted on a new vote. A new book of records was

prepared, to conform to these decisions, which, having been submitted for examination to leading persons, appointed for the purpose at a legal meeting representing both parties, and approved by them, was adopted and sanctioned at a subsequent meeting also called for the purpose.

In accordance with the same advice "that the old book of records be kept in being," it was ordered by the meeting to leave the votes that had, by the foregoing proceedings, been rendered null and void, to "lie in the old book of records as they are." From the new book of records we learn that "some votes are left out that passed in Mr. Bayley's days, and some that passed in Mr. Burroughs's days," particularly all the votes but one that passed at a meeting held on the fifth day of June, 1683, the very time that Mr. Burroughs was under bonds in the action of debt brought by John Putnam. The new record specifies some few, but not all, of the votes that were rescinded because it was adjudged that they had not rightfully passed, or been correctly stated. Unfortunately, the old book, after all, has not been "kept in being;" and much that would have exhibited more fully and clearly the unhappy early history of the parish is for ever lost. If the records that have been suffered to remain present the picture I have endeavored faithfully to draw, how much darker might have been its shades had we been permitted to behold what the parties concerned concurred in thinking too bad to be left to view!

The attempt to expunge records is always indefensi

ble, besides being in itself irrational and absurd. It may cover up the details of wrong and folly; but it leaves an unlimited range to the most unfriendly conjecture. We are compelled to imagine what we ought to be allowed to know; and, in many particulars, our fancies may be worse than the facts. But later times, and public bodies of greater pretensions than "the inhabitants of Salem Village," have attempted, and succeeded in perpetrating, this outrage upon history. In trying to conceal their errors, men have sometimes destroyed the means of their vindication. This may be the case with the story that is to be told of "Salem Witchcraft." It has been the case in reference to wider fields of history. The Parliamentary journals and other public records of the period of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate were suppressed by the infatuated stupidity of the Government of the Restoration. They foolishly imagined that they were hiding the shame, while they were obscuring the glory, of their country. Every Englishman, every intelligent man, now knows, that, during that very period, all that has made England great was done. The seeds of her naval and maritime prosperity were planted: and she was pushed at once by wise measures of policy, internal and external; by legislation developing her resources and invigorating the power of her people; by a decisive and comprehensive diplomacy that commanded the respect of foreign courts, and secured to her a controlling influence upon the traffic of the world; by developments of her military genius under

the greatest of all the great generals of modern times; and by naval achievements that snatched into her hands the balancing trident of the seas, to the place she still holds (how much longer she may hold it remains to be seen) as the leading power of the world. If she has to relinquish that position, it will only be to a power that is true to the spirit, and is not ashamed of the name, of a republic. The nation that fully develops the policy which pervaded the records of the English Commonwealth will be the leader of the world. The suppression of those records has not suppressed the spirit of popular liberty, or the progress of mankind in the path of reform, freedom, equal rights, and a true civilization. It has only cast a shadow, which can never wholly be dispelled, over what otherwise would have been the brightest page in the annals of a great people. We depend for our knowledge of the steps by which England then made a most wonderful stride to prosperity and power, not upon official and authoritative records, but upon the desultory and sometimes merely gossiping memoirs of particular persons, and such other miscellaneous materials as can be picked up. The only consequence of an attempt to extinguish the memory of republicans, radicals, reformers, and regicides has been, that the history of England's true glory can never be adequately written.

The referees used the following language touching the point of the ordination of Mr. Lawson: "If more than a mere major part should not consent to it, we

should be loath to advise our brethren to proceed." This, in connection with the other sentence I have quoted from their communication recommending them "to desist at present" from urging it, was fatal to the immediate movement in his favor; and, not seeing any prospect of their "spirits becoming better quieted and composed," and weary of the attempt to bring them to any comfortable degree of unanimity, Mr. Lawson threw up his connection with them, and removed back to Boston. We shall meet him again; but it is well to despatch at this point what is to be said of his character and history.

It is evident that Deodat Lawson had received the best education of his day. It is not easy to account for his not having left a more distinguished mark in Old or New England. He had much learning and great talents. Of his power in getting up pulpit performances in the highest style of eloquence, of which that period afforded remarkable specimens, I shall have occasion to speak. Among his other attainments, he was, what cannot be said of learned and professional men generally now any more than then, an admirable penman. The village parish adopted the practice at the beginning, when paying the salaries of its ministers from time to time, instead of taking receipts on detached and loose pieces of paper, of having them write them out in their own hand on the pages of the record-book, with their signatures. It is a luxury, in looking over the old volume, to come upon the receipts of Deodat Lawson, in his plain, round hand.