The Emancipation of Massachusetts. By BROOKS ADAMS. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1887.

MR. BROOKS ADAMS has written a book. This book will, I fear, cause unmixed delight to that very considerable and increasing class of persons who are a little weary of hearing the praises of the commonwealth of Massachusetts sounded by her sons. Every one is willing to acknowledge that Massachusetts is a very remarkable state, whose contributions to the world's welfare have been considerable. The world is correspondingly grateful, but it is a trifle tired of being informed, in season and out of season, that salvation has come out of Massachusetts only. It is therefore somewhat refreshing to have a son of the most distinguished family of the state rise up and tell us that the foundations of the commonwealth were laid in iniquity, and that her career of shame was only relieved by occasional honorable deeds on the part of individuals down to the latter part of the last century. If Mr. Adams

or some other son of Massachusetts would only publish a supplement to the book, which should contain an account of her career during the subsequent time, constructed on the same principles as the present volume, the people who are tired of hearing of the glories of the state would be completely rested. And while the weary public will thus be refreshed by Mr. Adams' book, the more judicious will be grieved by the spectacle of a bird fouling its own nest. But even the judicious, if they have any knowledge of history, or of the methods of history, cannot but be greatly entertained and diverted by the antics of Mr. Adams. To see an Adams indulging in antics is alone worth the price of the book, and no instructed reader can close the volume without reflecting that Mr. Adams has inherited the somewhat crooked temper of his distinguished grandfather, if he has not inherited all of his more admirable qualities.

The book is difficult to classify. It hardly professes to be historical, and no one who is in the least acquainted with the methods of historical writing would think for an instant of calling it a history. I may say, without fear of contradiction, that it is not a poem. It is not a work of fiction, for the events which are here recorded, are, for the most part, real events, about which there is no serious dispute. It is not an essay in science, nor a philosophical treatise. Mr. Adams has gotten together some isolated notions of current science and philosophy and has worked them for all they are worth; and is evidently of the opinion that he has a theory of things, but few will be persuaded to share his opinion on this point, and certainly the cultivation of his philosophy is only a secondary aim of this work. As nearly as can be determined, the book is a volume belonging to that very interesting sort of literature known as "confessions." But it differs from such works in being not the record of a life, but the confession of sin such as the devout Catholic pours into the ear of the priest. And it differs again from this, in the fact that it is not his own sins. that he undertakes to confess, but those of Massachusetts. cannot fail to convince the reader that he has assumed the office which once belonged to the Hebrew high-priest, and has come up, not indeed into the Holy of Holies, but into the office of a

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publishing house, to confess the sins of the whole people. He seems indeed to have constituted himself a sort of conscience for the state, and lays down its burden of guilt at the feet of the public. We trust that Massachusetts will now feel better, and will be able to sleep nights.

Unless it was the purpose of Mr. Adams to make a vicarious confession of this sort, it is certainly difficult to guess what may have been his aim. Why he should cherish a violent. animosity to the Puritan founders of New England does not appear, but he pursues them very much in the spirit of a man who has an hereditary feud, and proposes to finish it up by annihilating all his enemies at one fell swoop. It is somewhat grievous to see so much energy expended without effect, for there can be no doubt that the Puritan fathers will come up smiling for another round, if we may be permitted to use such language concerning such very grave persons. I am not the first, who, in speaking of Mr. Adams' book has found that his language tended to light and somewhat flippant forms, for the reading of the book is in itself a blow to seriousness, from which it must take any reader some time to recover.

The contents of the book may be described in a very few words. The facts which Mr. Adams has collected are not unfamiliar. Every student of the history of New England is acquainted with them. The originality of the book consists in the fact that these things are thus collected and put in a certain order, without regard to other and very closely related things. Mr. Adams has chosen to pick out all the examples of misgovernment in the early history of Massachusetts, and all the mistakes in policy which the enlightened eye of the modern student sees to have been mistakes, and he has arranged these and put them into a book. It must strike any reader of ordinary intelligence with surprise to find the book so small. And these things are presented as affording a true picture of the Puritan commonwealth. Furthermore, wherever he comes upon a disputed incident, he always seems to choose the most discreditable version of it, and sets it forth without a hint that his account is open to reasonable doubt. He also chooses for his own ends, to ascribe to the leaders of the colony the worst motives for their conduct that can be conceived. According

to his view, only the opponents of the Puritan rule could possibly have been influenced by respectable motives. Greed of power, selfishness, "refined malice," hatred of mankind, hypocrisy, untruth, and kindred qualities were the prevailing characteristics of that stock from which the Adamses and other great men have sprung, and which the blind-eyed children of Massachusetts have been wont to regard with so much reverence. Mr. Adams has undertaken to show that the verdict of history concerning the New England Puritans is a mistaken one, and he has attempted to do this, not by producing facts which have been hitherto overlooked, but by re-arranging facts which are perfectly well known. A reader who knew nothing of history except what was contained in Mr. Adams' book, and who was so stupid as not to ask why the book is so fragmentary in its character, must necessarily form from its perusal a very unfavorable opinion of Massachusetts. But the general public. will not be affected by it at all, except as regards Mr. Adams himself. The verdict of history on this point has been made up with uncommon care. The cool judgment of the world has been reached in the face of the strongest prejudices, and in spite of a real dislike for the Puritans themselves. So careful has been the process that the result cannot be overthrown, except by testimony which has not as yet been produced. Even those who dislike the Puritans most are accustomed to acknowledge that they were very excellent men, and that their very faults contributed to the success of their work. And the strongest admirers of the Puritans are ready to admit all that Mr. Adams has proved against them in this volume. No one at this date thinks of denying that they were narrow, bigoted, and overbearing, that their political ideal was an impracticable one, that their narrowness often led them into cruelty and wrong, or that they were "bumptious" and disagreeable. And one may admit all this, and yet not have a particle of sympathy with the view of Mr. Adams concerning them. For admitting all this, one may yet retain the conviction that they were men of uncommon sincerity and honesty of purpose, and of very sturdy moral fibre, who, for the sake of their convictions, and for the assertion of their rights, were willing to suffer exile and loss. Such men are the ones who make epochs

of progress in human history, and who often bring about other results and far better ones than they were themselves able to conceive or understand, by simply acting up to such light as they have. Persons of finer grain and less rugged moral force, might have been more to Mr. Adams' taste, but such persons would never have laid the foundations of the commonwealths of New England. The Puritans questionably "builded better than they knew," but it was because of their intention to build just as well as they knew. Mr. Adams can never persuade the public that the commonwealth of Massachusetts was hatched out of a cockatrice's egg. The notion is what Mr. Adams himself would call "unscientific."

It is singular that any man could give so much attention to the early history of New England as Mr. Adams has done without seeming to catch so much as a glimpse of the purposes of the early Puritan settlers. He is evidently somewhat at a loss to understand why these persons came hither, and altogether at a loss to understand why they behaved as they did after they got here, unless indeed it can all be accounted for on the theory of "pure cussedness." Mr. Adams does indeed say that the Puritans came to Massachusetts in "the hope, with the aid of their divines, of founding a religious commonwealth in the wilderness which should harmonize with their interpretation of the Scriptures;" but he seems to regard this hope as in itself an offense, and the means which they used to make their hope a reality, he regards as unrighteous, because it was illegal. He makes a historic and legal survey of the nature of charter grants by the crown, and finds that the use which the Massachusetts Puritans made of their charter was illegal. He might have saved himself the trouble. No one pretends that they used their charter in a strictly legal manner. They were, by the very character of the undertaking, revolutionists. came to this country for the express purpose of escaping from the sort of government which oppressed them in England. They wanted to get rid of the law as they knew it, and when they got three thousand miles away from the seat of British government, they proceeded to establish a government of their own, on such principles as seemed good to themselves. The Massachusetts Puritans had a charter as a trading corporation.

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