Rhetoric was not
precisely the medicine for such a case as he had to deal with. Such were
the glimpses which the New England had of the Old. Ishmael must ere-long
learn to shift for himself.
The temperance question agitated the fathers very much as it still does
the children. We have never seen the anti-prohibition argument stated
more cogently than in a letter of Thomas Shepard, minister of Cambridge,
to Winthrop, in 1639: "This also I doe humbly intreat, that there may be
no sin made of _drinking in any case one to another_, for I am confident
he that stands here will fall & be beat from his grounds by his own
arguments; as also that the consequences will be very sad, and the thing
provoking to God & man to make more sins than (as yet is seene) God
himself hath made." A principle as wise now as it was then. Our ancestors
were also harassed as much as we by the difficulties of domestic service.
In a country where land might be had for the asking, it was not easy to
keep hold of servants brought over from England. Emanuel Downing, always
the hard, practical man, would find a remedy in negro slavery. "A warr
with the Narraganset," he writes to Winthrop in 1645, "is verie
considerable to this plantation, ffor I doubt whither it be not synne in
us, having power in our hands, to suffer them to maynteyne the worship of
the devill which their pawwawes often doe; 2lie, If upon a just warre the
Lord should deliver them into our hands, wee might easily have men,
woemen, & children enough to exchange for Moores, which wilbe more
gaynefull pilladge for us than wee conceive, for I doe not see how wee
can thrive untill wee gett into a stock of slaves sufficient to doe all
our buisenes, for our childrens children will hardly see this great
Continent filled with people, soe that our servants will still desire
freedome to plant for them selves, & not stay but for verie great wages.
Pages:
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377