[Footnote 45:  In allusion to the Rebellion.]

* * * * *

=_John Gorham Palfrey, 1796-._= (Manual, pp. 504, 532.)

From the “History of New England.”

=_149._= HAPPINESS OF WINTHROP’S CLOSING YEARS.

He was greatly privileged in living so long.  Just before he died, that ecclesiastical arrangement had been made, which he might naturally hope would preserve the churches of New England in purity, peace, and strength, to remote times.  Religious and political dissensions, which had disturbed and threatened the infant Church and the forming State, appeared to be effectually composed.  The tribunals, carefully constituted for the administration of impartial and speedy justice, understood and did their duty, and commanded respect.  The education of the generations which were to succeed had been provided for with an enlightened care.  The College had bountifully contributed its ripe first-fruits to the public service; and the novel system of a universal provision of the elements of knowledge at the public cost, had been inaugurated with all circumstances of encouragement.

A generation was coming forward which remembered nothing of what Englishmen had suffered in New England for want of the necessaries and comforts of life.  The occupations of industry were various and remunerative.  Land was cheap, and the culture of it yielded no penurious reward to the husbandman; while he who chose to sell his labor was at least at liberty to place his own estimate upon it, and found it always in demand.  The woods and waters were lavish of gifts which were to be had simply for the taking.  The white wings of commerce, in their long flight to and from the settler’s home, wafted the commodities which afford enjoyment and wealth to both sender and receiver.  The numerous handicrafts, which in its constantly increasing division of labor, a thriving society employs, found liberal recompense; and manufactures on a larger scale were beginning to invite accumulations of capital and associated labor.

The Confederacy of the Four Colonies was an humble, but a substantial, power in the world.  It was known to be such by its French, Dutch, and savage neighbors; by the alienated communities on Narragansett Bay; and by the rulers of the mother country.

During Winthrop’s last ten years, nowhere else in the world had Englishmen been so happy as under the generous government which his mind inspired and regulated.  What one mind could do for a community’s well-being, his had done.  The prosecution of the issues he had wrought for was now to be committed to the wisdom and courage of a younger generation, and to the course of events, under the continued guidance of a propitious Providence.

CHAPTER II.

ESSAYISTS, MORALISTS, AND REFORMERS.

=_Joseph Dennie, 1768-1812._= (Manual, p. 497.)