USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Malden > Memorial of the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Malden, Massachusetts, May, 1899 > Part 21
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now the unchallenged rights of every citizen of Massachusetts and of the country as well.
Not many years after the departure of Mr. Matthews, another clergyman of a very different mould came to Malden, - the Rev. Michael Wigglesworth. He was a learned and devout man, as well as a faithful minister. He had, however, no sympathy with the unsound views of Mr. Matthews, and little charity for those who had befriended him. He was a friend of Cotton Mather, the aristocratic Boston divine, an upholder of the magistrates rather than of the deputies ; a Puritan of the Puritans. He was the great poet of the colony, defending and expounding in rhyme the popular theology of the day. His masterpiece, under the poetical and soothing title, The Day of Doom, passed through ten editions, and winning marvel- lous popularity, took its place beside the Bible and the Bay Psalm Book, in nearly every house in the colony.
This man determined to blot out the last remnant of the evil effects of the teachings of Marmaduke Matthews ; and so had Joseph Hills indicted by the grand jury for false beliefs. If the present pop- ulation of Malden should be tried upon the same charges which were made against Joseph Hills, it is to be feared that there is not one who would escape condemnation.
It seems impossible at first blush that principles of liberty should grow under the influence of such a man, but they clearly did.
These Puritans of New England were not men to be held up as rounded and perfected specimens of humanity, to be the models of the ages. They lacked many things. There was in them little of the artistic sense. They saw God in the whirlwind and the storm, but the iridescent beauties of a flashing opal or the marvel of the land- scape mirrored in a tiny dew-drop did not suggest to them that the mind of Him who had crowded the world with loveliness, most of it to fade unseen by human eye, must be scintillating with delicate, un- earthly fancies of divine splendor. They cared not for the fine frivolities of life, - those kindly joys and pleasures which give so much of charm and flavor to human society. They saw truth, but not the whole truth, and what they beheld they clung to with a tenacity and intensity almost terrible. It is not wonderful that they were unsym- pathetic with those they did not understand, and unjust to those who opposed them. But in spite of their failings, which they were too honest ever to hide from the world, we have no right to forget that they had qualities which pushed toward light and liberty, and that they moved the world onward.
Calvinism, however much we may criticise it, taught the Puritans a high ideal of righteousness, gave strength and vigor to their char- acter ; it filled them with an overmastering love of truth, and made
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them hate even the semblance of a lie with all the fierce intensity of their nature. "One who is afraid of lying is usually afraid of nothing else ; " and so it came about that the Puritan, whether he was fighting the battles of freedom under Cromwell, was languishing in the foul dungeons of Laud, or wrestling with privation and want in the wilds of the Western wilderness, was ever lion-hearted.
You remember the story of Abraham Davenport. He was a mem- ber of the governor's Council in Connecticut, on the dark day, May 19, 1780. At noon it was as dark as night, so that men ate dinner by candle-light. The superstition of the time was such that men believed the Day of Judgment had come. The House of Representatives adjourned, and it was proposed to adjourn the Council. Colonel Davenport said : " The Day of Judgment is at hand or it is not. If not, there is no occasion for adjournment. If it is, I desire to be found doing my duty. Bring in the candles." There spoke a Puritan, brave and logical.
Calvinism, however much we may differ from its tenets, was always an appeal to the reason. The sermon was the chief form of literature which touched the people, and there was no hesitation in those days in preaching politics ; but whatever the subject, the dis- course was always an argument. However strange the teaching may seem to us, there was ever the recognition that every position taken must be supported by reason.' Even the poetry of Wigglesworth is an attempt in rude rhyme to justify the ways of God with man. This unusual and extraordinary training of the reasoning faculty had its effect. These men, thus developed, went into the town meeting, or the House of Deputies, prepared to maintain what seemed to them to be right against all comers. Every law or proposition which affected public interest received the closest scrutiny. Under such a system public education developed as naturally and surely as the fruit follows the blossom. These men may have been narrow, but they were not shallow. They had high and noble ideals towards which they sought to move. Their task was a hard one, but they nerved themselves to duty by the thought that they were working in harmony with a divine, far-reaching plan.
After the death of Wigglesworth, no minister seems to have made any marked impression on Malden people until the Rev. Joseph Emerson came to spend here forty-six years. It seems a little strange that during the ministry of so wise and kindly a man there should have been so much of trouble and dissension. A most bitter contest arose over the location of a new meeting-house. The people in the south part of the town wanted it placed near Bell Rock, where the old church had stood, and the people of the north part of the town wanted it erected where the First Parish Church now stands. It does
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not seem like a great question, but for five years the fight raged with a fury which seems incredible. Town meeting after town meeting was held. Parliamentary tactics were exhausted without effect. Arbitra- tors were appointed and decided in favor of the more northerly loca- tion, and the award was confirmed by the Great and General Court. But the southern party got the award, refused to record it, and actu- ally got a vote taken in town meeting not to record the award which they were bound by honor as well as law to carry out. This brought the affair again before the Great and General Court. The Council took one course, the House another, though both bodies appear to have had the wisdom to see that the award should have been recorded. At this stage of affairs the southern party actually got the materials together and were proceeding to erect the building on the spot they favored, when the Superior Court of Judicature was appealed to, and promptly issued a mandamus ordering the southern party to stop erecting the building anywhere except on the location selected by the arbitrators. The Great and General Court was again appealed to, and the House set aside the mandamus, but with this the Council would not concur ; the mandamus was thus left in force, and the meeting- house was built on the more northerly location.
A debate on paper followed between the Council and Deputies, and in it there was raised the great question as to how men under govern- ment should be secured as to property and person. Here were being worked out the fundamental propositions that liberty can exist only under law, and that " it is essential to the preservation of the rights of every individual, his life, liberty, property, and character, that there be an impartial interpretation of the laws and administration of justice," and that the judiciary shall be free from interference on the part of either the executive or legislative departments. Here was an apparently frivolous contest, - whether a meeting-house should be erected a few rods one way or the other. "What matters it?" we should say ; but not so our fathers. They spared no pains till the best minds in the colony had applied themselves to the solution of the question, and the controversy had risen to a debate upon great con- stitutional questions. It is worthy of note that the justices of the Superior Court seem never to have swerved from the correct view of the case. Here we see being developed the independent judiciary of Massachusetts which has been such an essential safeguard of our liberties. May it remain untainted by corruption, and lifted above every selfish and ignoble influence.
It was somewhat more than a century after Malden became a town before trouble with the mother country began to assume serious importance. Prior to this, while England in theory claimed control on this side of the Atlantic, practically the laws had never been
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severely enforced. Soon after George III. ascended the throne, in 1760, however, the British government undertook to impose taxes on the colonies. We can imagine the feelings of the people of New England - who for more than a century had been wont to gather in town meeting to debate and sift every item of public expenditure, who had opposed any colony tax levied without the consent of the deputies, because "it was not safe to pay moneys after that sort for fear of bringing themselves and posterity into bondage" - at being confronted by an impost placed upon them by the royal government, in which they had no voice. It was not a question of high taxes or of low taxes. The tea in the ships in Boston harbor would have been sold for less than the same article could have been bought for elsewhere. It was rather the idea that orders had been given by those who assumed to be masters to men who for long years had believed them- selves to be free and had no mind to be slaves.
When, in 1765, the obnoxious Stamp Act was passed, Malden, after waiting seven months, passed a vote of moderate and dignified remonstrance and instructed her representatives " by all lawfull means consistent with our Allegieancy to the King and relation to Great Britain to oppose the Execution of it til we can hear the success of the crys and petitions of America for reliefe."
This was not the attitude of men carried away by a wave of passion. They had not even enough patriotism to cause them to forget frugality. The town appears to have been reluctant to instruct its representative to vote to pay citizens of Boston for injuries to their property suffered in the tax riots, and a motion to pay for powder used by some of the citizens in celebrating the repeal of the Stamp Act failed to pass. It is quite likely that these men, were they alive to-day, would oppose appropriations for fireworks for the Fourth of July, or even for the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anni- versary. It should be remembered, however, in mitigation of their attitude, that the valuation of Malden in 1767 was less than two thousand pounds.
At this time there was no determination to break with England ; only the feeling that any proposition which affected the interests of the colonists should be brought to the same test of public discussion, and a freeman's vote, to which they had so long been accustomed. They did not realize how far this simple plan was from the thoughts of the king, or that it was leading them straight on to the cry, " Liberty or Death ! "
As one question after another more or less intimately related to the trouble with the mother-land arose, the Malden town meeting dealt with them as they had done with all other matters of public in- terest. They considered, they discussed, they voted.
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In 1769, the deputy was instructed : "You are to use your best Endeavors, that our invaluable Charter Liberties, Priviledges & Im- munities, dearly purchased by our Ancestors, and all the Rights derived to us from ye invariable Law of God and Nature, be trans- mitted inviolable to the latest Posterity."
March 5, 1770, the meeting voted with a directness which showed a rising spirit of resistance, " That we will not use any foreign Tea, nor countenance ye use of it in our Families, (unless for Sickness) till ye Revenue Acts are repealed."
Before this time, in 1768, the Massachusetts Legislature had sent a letter to the legislative bodies in the other colonies, setting forth the importance of the issue raised by the acts of Parliament, that Massa- chusetts had petitioned the royal ministers for relief, and asking all the colonies to join in defending their rights. The governor of Mas- sachusetts, acting under orders from beyond the sea, demanded that this vote should be rescinded. The legislature refused, and was dis- solved. Malden sent a representative to the body which took the place of the legislature, which body, however, could do little save to protest against the unconstitutional acts of the governor and his ad- herents. It became clear that if the rights of the colonists were to be preserved, something must be done to supply the place of the leg- islature which had ceased to act. Governor Hutchinson had also clearly shown his desire to suppress debate in town meetings. Then it was that Samuel Adams moved in Boston town meeting his famous committee of correspondence. The plan was for each town in Massa- chusetts to choose a committee to correspond and confer with com- mittees from other towns. It was but another step to correspondence between the colonies, and another to a continental congress. Malden chose a committee of correspondence, sent a letter of thanks to the city of Boston, and passed resolutions pledging the town to join " in ye defence and support of our invaluable rights, Civil and Religious purchased by our ancestors at ye expense of their treasure and their blood." Captain Ebenezer Harnden, their representative, was in- structed to be loyal to the sovereign, but to exert himself "to the utmost in order to obtain . . . a confirmation of those rights and privileges, which to enjoy without molestation induced our forefathers to emigrate from their native land."
When the tea ships arrived in Boston harbor, Malden resolved, in language often since repeated, " That the inhabitants of this Town are ready at all times and upon all occasions to shed their best blood and treasure in defence of their just rights and privileges ; " and it was also voted to support Boston in making a stand "against the illegal oppressions and exactions laid upon us by that which we once esteemed, our mother country, but which now seems at least to have
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lost the tenderness of a parent and to have become our great oppressors."
The British government seemed bereft of wisdom. One oppres- sive measure followed another. The assembling of town meetings, except for choice of officers, was forbidden without the consent of the governor. The people, provoked beyond endurance, only gathered the more frequently, and resolutions grew stronger and more deter- mined. In August, 1774, it was voted " That it is the opinion of this Town that the late acts of the British Parliament . .. are very un- just, unreasonable and cruel, and by no means to be submitted to." A little later it was voted, in giving instructions to a delegate to a provincial congress : " We need not inform you of our firm, our deliberate resolution, rather to risque our lives and fortunes than to submit to these unrighteous acts of the British parliament, which pretend to regulate the government of this province."
In October it was recommended that all inhabitants, save the aged and infirm, acquaint themselves with military discipline. The time for resolutions was drawing to an end ; the hour for action was at hand. All was now preparation for war. The meeting of April 17, 1775, adjourned to April 20, but before that date events had occurred which so absorbed public attention that few were present, and another adjournment was necessary.
With the battle of Lexington war had now begun ; and the same town meetings where abstract questions of right had been discussed furnished a ready means whereby an army was gathered, supplies were furnished, and protection provided.
All reverence for the old country was now rapidly disappearing. Independence soon became the great thought in the minds of the people. In May, 1776, one hundred and twenty-three years ago this month, in reply to a request of the legislature, Malden was the first town in the colony to speak in favor of complete independence. The vote reviews the relation of the colonies to England, tells how reluctantly they have been drawn to turn against her, and finally says, addressing their representative, Ezra Sargeant: " We have un- bounded Confidence in the wisdom & uprightness of the Continantall Congress with Pleasure we recolect that this Affair is under their Direction and we now Instruct you Sir, to give them the Strongest Assurance that if that they Should Declare america to be a free & Jndependant Republick your Constituance will Support and Defend the measure to the last Drop of their Blood & the last farthing of their Treasure."
What would history have said to the people who talked thus if they had allowed themselves to be conquered? Eloquence is of little value unless it be sincere. These townsmen of ours, who moved so
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slowly along the path of liberty, meant every word they uttered ; and they lived and died as they talked.
Mr. Corey says that in 1776 the white inhabitants of the town amounted to but ten hundred and thirty individuals, and that two hundred and thirty-one, more than one in five of the entire population, represented the little town and upheld her honor in the army of the colonies. The graves of forty of these heroes are marked to-day in the old cemetery near Bell Rock.
We cannot stop to recite the honorable record of Malden in the Revolution, or even to recall the names of her sons who fought for freedom on land and sea.
In September, 1779, assembled the convention which adopted the constitution of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Malden's dele- gate, chosen in a town meeting held in Charles Hill's west room, was very properly the Rev. Peter Thacher. He had been a foremost leader in all the stirring events prior to the Revolution, since 1770, and had probably written most of the ringing declarations adopted in the Malden town meetings; and now, when a new state was to be created, he was chosen to the great task of helping to frame its funda- mental law ; and he appears to have filled a large place in the conven- tion. He did not get all he wislied. His idea of democratic simplicity was offended by a governor addressed as " his Excellency ; " but he was a man of sense, and Malden, undoubtedly with his ap- proval, instructed him, if he could not secure amendments, to consent to that constitution which is now regarded as one of the most admi- rable documents of its kind ever devised by man.
Massachusetts thus, by the consent of her people in town meetings assembled, became a free commonwealth. A few years later, a con- stitution on similar lines was adopted by a convention representing the different colonies, and a new nation, the product of the develop- ment of the spirit of liberty among the common people, came into being, -" a government of the people, for the people, and by the people ; " the grandest of human institutions.
Since the forming of the nation, the story of Malden has been for the most part that of quiet and gradual growth. Once a great ques- tion of human rights arose ; and Malden, remembering how our fathers had adopted a constitution which made Massachusetts a land. of freedom for all men, black and white, promptly resolved to furnish to her full proportion " the men and the means " to crush the rebel- lion. Some of the heroes who " fought to make men free " are with us yet, but of more it must be sadly said, -
"On Fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread, And Glory guards with solemn round The bivouac of the dead."
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FIRST CORPS CADETS, M. V. M. (2)
THE ESCORT
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The changes of two hundred and fifty years have been colossal. Malden has grown from a straggling plantation of a few hundred souls to a city of thirty-three thousand, and in the territory which was once within the limits of the town there are now more than seventy thou- sand inhabitants. Then a scanty population fringed bits of the Atlantic coast ; to-day a nation, rapidly increasing beyond seventy millions in number, stretches from sea to sea, and, still further on, we possess Alaska, the Sandwich Islands, Porto Rico, and have responsibilities in Cuba and the Philippines, - an empire vast beyond the wildest dream of the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, luxury was unknown among us, and magnificence was beyond thought. The wealthiest were barely able to procure the necessities of life. To-day, we are by far the richest nation on earth.
But expansion in territory and increase in wealth are far outshone by the extension of human knowledge and the enlarged reach of the power of man. What would have been the reception in the first town meeting in Malden of a statement that the time would come when man would talk with man two thousand miles away ; when ships would cross the wide Atlantic in five days, and. carriages without horses roll along a mile in a minute ; when at breakfast-table people in Malden would read the doings of all the world up to within a few hours be- fore? I fear the speaker, according to the old New England custom, would have been warned out of town, and quite likely assisted in his departure.
In the midst of all this advance, what has become of the spirit of liberty? Men sometimes speak as if we have now nothing to do but to enjoy what has been won for us by the bitterness of the past ; as if the final struggle for liberty had been made. It is true that the deeds of those who first settled our land will never be repeated. There is no other such country on earth to be opened to civilization, and such events as those which gave our ancestors a peculiar prepara- tion for their work will not again occur. But while scandals attach to elections to our highest legislative body ; while offices are filled by machinations of those seeking their private gains rather than the public welfare ; while great combinations of wealth close the avenues of trade to the common people ; while corruption dominates the great cities, leading to boundless extravagance ; and while men are hunted and exterminated like wild beasts, -it would seem as if our freedom was not yet perfect.
If we turn to the world at large, in how little of it do we find even a moderate liberty ! Does it exist in France, where a Dreyfus is exiled to a lonely island, without even being allowed to hear the testimony or see the evidence presented against him? Does it exist
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in Germany, where a thoughtless jest, supposed to reflect on the War- Lord who rules the land, sends one to prison ? Or in Russia, where the Jews are persecuted, the Stundists are banished, and the worthiest citizen is liable at any moment, without a trial or a hearing, to be hurried to the frozen wilds of Siberia? The agonizing cries of the martyrs in Cuba and Armenia, not yet wholly stifled by the hurly- burly of the world, still ring in our ears. There is no proof as yet that the struggle against despotism has been ended on earth.
In battles for freedom yet to come have we no part? Is it wise, is it safe, even for ourselves, shutting the door of our palace of de- light, to devote ourselves to pleasure or to lie down to rest? Freedom is a jewel which, if it be shut in a casket and locked never so care- fully, will grow dim, but worn flashing on the sword in the midst of conflict grows brighter and brighter.
Some are devising plans that we may keep out of the world's strifes that are coming. Vain thought ! to hope to live, and to escape the trials of life. Let us rather seek to honorably and faithfully do our part toward lifting the world to those heights whence can be seen the glory of that perfect truth which makes men free.
We have chosen the king of birds as the emblem of liberty, and it is significant that the life of the eagle from the time the parent bird " stirreth up her nest," and pushes out the young from the dizzy heights, is one not of inglorious ease, but of struggle and of conquest.
" Oh, not yet
Mayst thou unbrace thy corselet, nor lay by Thy sword : nor yet, O Freedom, close thy lids In slumber : for thine enemy never sleeps ; And thou must watch and combat till the day Of the new earth and heaven."
We cannot plan the march of the spirit of liberty as generals map out campaigns. Nations are guided by rules of destiny the human mind has never fathomed. When the Puritans came to Massachusetts Bay, they certainly had no intention of founding a new state, free from England's control. When they came together on the plantations to look after their common interests, they did not dream what the town meeting would do for the land. When the contention against taxation without representation began, how little of the great conflict before them did the colonists see ! Up to the very dawn of the Revo- lution, Washington, Adams, and other leaders protested that they " abhorred the idea of independence." And when independence was won, at that critical time when the birth of the nation hung in the balance, how the wisest of men failed to discern the coming glory. And in our own time, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president,
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