The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1859-08-06

which will be found TWO ORIGINAL LETTERS
FROM GEN. WASHINGTON, and full account
ofTHE MASSACRE OF BAYLoR'S REGIMENT,
commonly called "Mrs. Washington's Guard"
a..F-.l.
1t is not for us to cast single doubt upon the
motives which drew together, on the I'd of this
month"; so large an assemblage of the people of
New England 10 commemorate the anniversary of
the departure of the ''Pilgrim Fathers" from Delft
Haven, and to witness at Plymouth the laying of
the corner-stones of two monuments in honor of
their memory. One of those monuments is to be
in the form Of canopy, and is to be placed over
that suggestive historical relic, ''the Plymouth
Crock" The other, and more imposing struc-
ture, is to consist of an ocagon pedestal, eighty
feet in height, surmounted by statue of Faith,
and decorated on its several faces with emblematc
figures and ''ato reefs," descriptive of the prin-
cipal events connected with the earlier annals OF
the settlement For these evidences of filial vene-
ration for the unquestionabe virtues of the New
England Colonists let us do their descendants
we'll fitting honor. But whilst we cheerfully ac-
cord to them all due praise for the efforts they
are now making to perpetuate, in everlasting
granite, in porphyry, serpentine, and white mar
bic, the memory of the founders of a Puritan Com
monwealth on the bleak shores of Massachusetts,
Bay, we must be permitted to enter our protest
against the assumptions which are commonly put
forth by New England orators. Whenever they
have occasion to allude to the earlier or later his
tory of these Colonies, they almost invariably
strive to impress upon their hearers the conviction
that not only does the rise and set nowhere
else but in New England, but that of all the
Fathers 10y whom the world has been peopled
the "Pilgrim Fathers" who came in the May
Floecer, the goodlest and the best There
is, at all times and under all circumstances spice
of egotism in praising ones ancestors but the re-
fected honor which is thus derived is a species of
selfpraise and is, herefore-as the old copy books
used 10 inform us-no commentator. We are
by no means insensible to the manly virtues and
the heroic spirit of selfreliance exhibited by the
New England Puritans, but we cannot consent to
acknowledge, with Governor BANKs-who was
the Orator of the Day the occasion to which we
refer that they exhibited, in their system of
government, "a clear, calm, comprehensive wis
''dom, or tolerated "a perfectreligious freedom"
for the government thus eulogized was nothing
more nor less than theocracy, and what they
meant by elderly of conscience" was freedom to
worship COP according to the Puritan creed. Re
ligious they were undoubtedly; hut they were also
narrow-minded and bigoted. Such Common
wealth as they originally founded could
never have attained any permanency, for
the laws that were established under it
were often of the most arbitrary character and
were not unfrequenty cruel. But if the Pilgrim
ont ~ CTR tleir al
authority beyond what might properly be called
its legitimate bounds, they were, for the most part
men of noble mould, though warped by their
peculiar views, and governing by ordinances
against which, if enacted by others, they would
have been amongst the first to rebel The very
depth of their religious convictions and the sacri-
fees they had made in behalf of them, rendered
them tenacious in upholding their peculiar
dogmas and intolerant to those who professed
more liberal creed. They were not, therefore, the
''perfect beings nobly planned" which their
euloglsts, at the present day, assert them
TO have been; were they more resolute
in defending the political privileges they
had acquired than the less professedly de-
vout colonists of Maryland and Virginia.
The passion for political liberty was by no means
pSCulldl ~ INC pSOple vi NGW EuRltlu. IL
was the legitimate outgrowth of the soil and
of the situation. Established in new land,
remote from the mother country, and cast upon
their own resources, knowledge of the elementary
principles of selfgovernment was difused at an
early day throughout all the colonies. As popu-
lation increased, and as other bodies of adventu-
rerS founded new commonwealth in the wilder
ness the spirit of independence took wider range
and more enduring form. It's therefore, a vio-
aton of the truth of history, to claim for the New
England colonies the origin of principle that was
common to, and was fostered by ALL Yet, in the
great majority of speeches that have been made in
Faneuil Hall, on Bunbers Hill, at Concord or at
Lexington, we find the leadership claimed for Mas
sachusetts, and through Massachusetts for the New
England States generally. The same claim was
set up at the Plymouth celebration the other day
Mr. WARREN, the President of the Pilgrim Society,
prefaced the ceremonial of laying the corner stone
Of the building that is to guard for eyermore the
feet of profane men from Decorating Plymouth
Rock by assuring 'New England men and wo-
linen" that ''the day had dawned" when they
were about to lay a structure 1.-THE grandest the
''world has SEEM" in commemoration ''of that
ueSlSlNe tNtuL WHICH, reality, Uegtlu tuS our
''great and happy country" Now it may be all
very well for Mr. WARREN to talk TO the educated
men and women of New England after this strain
We, IN our Ignorance, have always been under the
impression that the first permanent English settle
ment upon this continent, was made at Jamestown
in Virginia, some thirteen years before the New
England Pilgrims landed on the shores of Massa
chusetts Bay. Nay, we have been taught to bes
lieve that before Plymouth Rock was pressed by a
white foot those very coloniss, after severe con-
test with the crown, were in the enjoyment of a
liberal constitution, and exercised control over
their own affairs, by electing Burgesses to repre-
sent them in the General Assembly Yet, Mr.
WARREN tells us that "the history of the nation
commenced with the departure of the Pilgrims
'1from Delft Haven" He bots out the existence of
the Virginia colony of three thousand souls alto
gether He goes further. He assures his auditors
with an enthusiasm, which may be pardoned if
the profanity of the comparison be overlooked,
that 'no event in human story, save that which
occurred at Bethlehem has produced so vast a
revolution in the destinies of the human race as
''the emigration of the Pilgrims of the May Flow-
Ger" Evidently, Mr.. WARREN believes that the
American colonies would never have achieved
their independence of the mother country, had it
not been for the safe arrival of Mr.. JOHN ROBIN
SONS congregation, and although we are perfectly
aware that this has been for many years the preva
lent opinion among large class of New England
orators, we must still beg leave to question its
correctness. We demur, also, to that feature, in
Fourth of July orations to the eastward, which
places the descendants of the Puritans, in the
'front.' ranks OF the war of Independence, and which
conveys the idea to the popular mind that the only
oa..les 'na' were fought were those of Lexington
ana Dunkers Hih-in brief, that Massachusetts, as
tne representative Puritan Commonwealth, has al
ways been the central sun of political system.
and that the rest of the members Of the r,orsaa.-