prophesy without let or hindrance.  But the immediate practical result of so much discordance in opinion was the impossibility of founding a strong and well-ordered government.  The early history of Rhode Island was marked by enough of turbulence to suggest the question whether, after all, at the bottom of the Puritan’s refusal to recognize the doctrine of private inspiration, or to tolerate indiscriminately all sorts of opinions, there may not have been a grain of shrewd political sense not ill adapted to the social condition of the seventeenth century.  In 1644 and again in 1648 the Narragansett settlers asked leave to join the Confederacy; but the request was refused on the ground that they had no stable government of their own.  They were offered the alternative of voluntary annexation either to Massachusetts or to Plymouth, or of staying out in the cold; and they chose the latter course.  Early in 1643 they had sent Roger Williams over to England to obtain a charter for Rhode Island.  In that year Parliament created a Board of Commissioners, with the Earl of Warwick at its head, for the superintendence of colonial affairs; and nothing could better illustrate the loose and reckless manner in which American questions were treated in England than the first proceedings of this board.  It gave an early instance of British carelessness in matters of American geography.  In December, 1643, it granted to Massachusetts all the territory on the mainland of Narragansett bay; and in the following March it incorporated the townships of Newport and Portsmouth, which stood on the island, together with Providence, which stood on the mainland, into an independent colony empowered to frame a government and make laws for itself.  With this second document Williams returned to Providence in the autumn of 1644.  Just how far it was intended to cancel the first one, nobody could tell, but it plainly afforded an occasion for a conflict of claims. [Sidenote:  Turbulence of dissent in Rhode Island] [Sidenote:  The Earl of Warwick and his Board of Commissioners]

The league of the four colonies is interesting as the first American experiment in federation.  By the articles it was agreed that each colony should retain full independence so far as concerned the management of its internal affairs, but that the confederate government should have entire control over all dealings with the Indians or with foreign powers.  The administration of the league was put into the hands of a board of eight Federal Commissioners, two from each colony.  The commissioners were required to be church-members in good standing.  They could choose for themselves a president or chairman out of their own number, but such a president was to have no more power than the other members of the Board.  If any measure were to come up concerning which the commissioners could not agree, it was to be referred for consideration to the legislatures or general courts of the four colonies.  Expenses for war were to be charged to each colony in proportion to the number of males in each between sixteen years of age and sixty.  A meeting of the Board might be summoned by any two magistrates whenever the public safety might seem to require it; but a regular meeting was to be held once every year.