Among these early inconsistencies and disagreements Roger Williams stood out as the sole fearless and logical figure. Consistency and bravery were far from being his only good qualities; in drawing his portrait, the difficulty is to find shadows with which to set off the lights of his character. The Puritans feared the world, and even their own constancy; Williams feared nothing; but he would reverence and obey his conscience as the voice of God in his breast, before which all other voices must be hushed. He was not only in advance of his time: he was abreast of any times; nothing has ever been added to or detracted from his argument. When John Adams wrote to his son, John Quincy Adams, "Your conscience is the Minister Plenipotentiary of God Almighty placed in your breast: see to it that this minister never negotiates in vain," he did but attire in the diplomatic phraseology which came naturally to him the thought which Williams had avouched and lived more than a century before. Though absolutely radical, Williams was never an extremist; he simply went to the fountain-head of reason and truth, and let the living waters flow whither they might. The toleration which he demanded he always gave; of those who had most evilly entreated him he said, "I did ever from my soul honor and love them, even when their judgment led them to afflict me." His long life was one of the most unalloyed triumphs of unaided truth and charity that our history records; and the State which he founded presented, during his lifetime, the nearest approach to the true Utopia which has thus far been produced.
Roger Williams was a Welshman, born in 1600, and dying, in the community which he had created, eighty-five years later. His school was the famous Charterhouse; his University, Cambridge; and he took orders in the Church of England. But the protests of the Puritans came to his ears before he was well installed; and he examined and meditated upon them with all the quiet power of his serene and penetrating mind. It was not long before he saw that truth lay with the dissenting party; and, like Emerson long afterward, he at once left the communion in which he had thought to spend his life. He came to Massachusetts in 1631, and, as we have seen, was not long in discovering that he was more Puritan than the Puritans. When differences arose, he departed to the Plymouth Colony, and there abode for several useful years.
But though the men of Boston and Salem feared him, they loved him and recognized his ability; indeed, they never could rid themselves of an uneasy sense that in all their quarrels it was he who had the best of the argument; they were often reduced to pleading necessity or expediency, when he replied with plain truth. He responded to an invitation to return to Salem, in 1633, by a willing acceptance; but no sooner had he arrived than a discussion began which continued until he was for the second and final time banished in 1636. The main bone of contention was the right of the church to interfere in state matters. He opposed theocracy as profaning the holy peace of the temple with the warring of civil parties. The Massachusetts magistrates were all church members, which Williams declared to be as unreasonable as to make the selection of a pilot or a physician depend upon his proficiency in theology. He would not admit the warrant of magistrates to compel attendance at public worship; it was a violation of natural right, and an incitement to hypocrisy. "But the ship must have a pilot," objected the magistrates, "And he holds her to her course without bringing his crew to prayer in irons," was Williams's rejoinder. "We must protect our people from corruption and punish heresy," said they. "Conscience in the individual can never become public property; and you, as public trustees, can own no spiritual powers," answered he. "May we not restrain the church from apostasy?" they asked. He replied, "No: the common peace and liberty depend upon the removal of the yoke of soul-oppression."
The magistrates were perplexed, and doubtful what to do. Laud in England was menacing them with episcopacy, and they, as a preparation for resistance, decreed that all freemen must take an oath of allegiance to Massachusetts instead of to the King. Williams, of course, abhorred episcopacy as much as they did; but he would not concede the right to impose a compulsory oath. A deputation of ministers was sent to Salem to argue with him: he responded by counseling them to admonish the magistrates of their injustice. He was cited to appear before the state representatives to recant; he appeared, but only to affirm that he was ready to accept banishment or death sooner than be false to his convictions. Sentence of banishment was thereupon passed against him, but he was allowed till the ensuing spring to depart; meanwhile, however, the infection of his opinions spreading in Salem, a warrant was sent to summon him to embark for England; but he, anticipating this step, was already on his way through the winter woods southward.
The pure wine of his doctrine was too potent for the iron-headed Puritans. But it was their fears rather than their hearts that dismissed him; those who best knew him praised him most unreservedly; and even Cotton Mather admitted that he seemed "to have the root of the matter in him."
Williams's journey through the pathless snows and frosts of an exceptionally severe winter is one of the picturesque and impressive episodes of the times. During more than three months he pursued his lonely and perilous way; hollow trees were a welcome shelter; he lacked fire, food and guides. But he had always pleaded in behalf of the Indians; he had on one occasion denied the validity of a royal grant unless it were countersigned by native proprietors; and during his residence in Plymouth he had learned the Indian language. All this now stood him in good stead. The man who was outcast from the society of his white brethren, because his soul was purer and stronger than theirs, was received and ministered unto by the savages; he knew their ways, was familiar in their wigwams, championed their rights, wrestled lovingly with their errors, mediated in their quarrels, and was idolized by them as was no other of his race. Pokanoket, Massasoit and Canonicus were his hosts and guardians during the winter and spring; and in summer he descended the river in a birch-bark canoe to the site of the present city of Providence, so named by him in recognition of the Divine mercies; and there he pitched his tent beside the spring, hoping to make the place "a shelter for persons distressed for conscience."
His desire was amply fulfilled. The chiefs of the Narragansetts deeded him a large tract of land; oppressed persons locked to him for comfort and succor, and never in vain; a republic grew up based on liberty of conscience, and the civil rule of the majority: the first in the world. Orthodoxy and heresy were on the same footing before him; he trusted truth to conquer error without aid of force. Though he ultimately withdrew from all churches, he founded the first Baptist church in the new world; he twice visited England, and obtained a charter for his colony in 1644. Williams from first to last sat on the Opposition Bench of life; and we say of him that he was hardly used by those who should most have honored him. Yet it is probable that he would have found less opportunity to do good at either an earlier or a later time. Critics so keen and unrelenting as he never find favor with the ruling powers; he would have been at least as "impossible" in the Nineteenth Century as he was in the Seventeenth; and we would have had no Rhode Island to give him. We can derive more benefit from his arraignment of society two hundred and fifty years ago than we should were he to call us to account to-day, because no resentment mingles with our intellectual appreciation: our withers seem to be unwrung. The crucifixions of a former age are always denounced by those who, if the martyr fell into their hands, would be the first to nail him to the cross.
But the Puritanism of Williams, and that of those who banished him, were as two branches proceeding from a single stem; their differences, which were the type of those that created two parties in the community, were the inevitable result of the opposition between the practical and the theoretic temperaments. This opposition is organic; it is irreconcilable, but nevertheless wholesome; both sides possess versions of the same truth, and the perfect state arises from the contribution made by both to the common good—not from their amalgamation, or from a compromise between them, Williams's community was successful, but it was successful, on the lines he laid down, only during its minority; as its population increased, civil order was assured by a tacit abatement of the right of individual independence, and by the insensible subordination of particular to general interests. In Massachusetts, on the other hand, which from the first inclined to the practical view—which recognized the dangers surrounding an organization weak in physical resources, but strong in spiritual conviction, and which, by reason of the radical nature of those convictions, was specially liable to interference from the settled power of orthodoxy:—in Massachusetts there was a diplomatic tendency in the work of building up the commonwealth. The integrity of Williams's logic was conceded, but to follow it out to its legitimate conclusions was deemed inconsistent with the welfare and continuance of the popular institutions. The condemnation of dissenters from dissent sounded unjust; but it was the alternative to the more far-reaching injustice of suffering the structure which had been erected with such pains and sacrifice to fall to pieces just when it was attaining form and character. The time for universal toleration might come later, when the vigor and solidity of the nucleus could no longer be vitiated by fanciful and transient vagaries. The right of private judgment carried no guarantee comparable with that which attached to the sober and tested convictions of the harmonious body of responsible citizens.
When, therefore, the young Henry Vane, coming to Boston with the prestige of aristocratic birth and the reputation of liberal opinions, was elected Governor in 1635, and presently laid down the principle that "Ishmael shall dwell in the presence of his brethren," he at once met with opposition; and he and Anne Hutchinson, and other visionaries and enthusiasts, were made to feel that Boston was no place for them. Yet at the same time there was a conflict between the body of the freemen and the magistrates as to the limits and embodiments of the governing power; the magistrates contended that there were manifest practical advantages in life appointments to office, and in the undisturbed domination of men of approved good life and intellectual ability; the people replied that all that might be true, but they would still insist upon electing and dismissing whom they pleased. Thus was inadvertently demonstrated the invincible security of democratic principles; the masses are always willing to agree that the best shall rule, but insist that they, the multitude, and not any Star Chamber, no matter how impeccable, shall decide who the best are. Herein alone is safety. The masses, of course, are not actuated by motives higher than those of the select few; but their impartiality cannot but be greater, because, assuming that each voter has in view his personal welfare, their ballots must insure the welfare of the majority. And if the welfare of the majority be God's will, then the truth of the old Latin maxim, Vox Populi vox Dei, is vindicated without any recourse to mysticism. The only genuine Aristocracy, or Rule of the Best, must in other words be the creation not of their own will and judgment, but of those of the subjects of their administration.
The political experiments and vicissitudes of these early times are of vastly greater historical importance than are such external episodes, as, for example, the Pequot war in 1637. A whole tribe was exterminated, and thereby, and still more by the heroic action of Williams in preventing, by his personal intercession, an alliance between the Pequots and the Narragansetts, the white colonies were preserved. But beyond this, the affair has no bearing upon the development of the American idea. During these first decades, the most profound questions of national statesmanship were discussed in the assemblies of the Massachusetts Puritans, with an acumen and wisdom which have never been surpassed. The equity and solidity of most of their conclusions are extraordinary; the intellectual ability of the councilors being purged and exalted by their ardent religious faith. The "Body of Liberties," written out in 1641 by Nathaniel Ward, handles the entire subject of popular government in a masterly manner. It was a Counsel of Perfection molded, by understanding of the prevailing conditions, into practical form. The basis of its provisions was the primitive one which is traced back to the time when the Anglo-Saxon tribes met to choose their chiefs or to decide on war or other matters of general concern. It was the basis suggested by nature; for, as the chief historian of these times has remarked, freedom is spontaneous, but the artificial distinctions of rank are the growth of centuries. Lands, according to this instrument, were free and alienable; the freemen of a corporation held them, but claimed no right of distribution. There should be no monopolies: no wife-beating: no slavery "Except voluntary": ministers as well as magistrates should be chosen by popular vote. Authority was given to approved customs; the various towns or settlements constituting the commonwealth were each a living political organism. No combination of churches should control any one church:—such were some of the provisions. The colonies were availing themselves of the unique opportunity afforded by their emancipation, in the wilderness, from the tyranny and obstruction of old-world traditions and licensed abuses.