Footnotes

1.

It is to be remembered that the support of public worship was compulsory in Massachusetts—the inhabitants of certain cities excepted—down to the year 1833. An attempt to free the people from this burden, led by Dr. Childs, of Berkshire County, was defeated at the Constitutional Convention of 1820.

2.

The father of Miss Catherine Sedgwick was a leading Federalist, and his daughter records that, though a most kind-hearted man, he habitually spoke of the people as “Jacobins” and “miscreants.”

3.

Abraham Lincoln said in his first inaugural address:—“But if the policy of the government upon a vital question affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by the decisions of the Supreme Court, the moment they are made, the people will cease to be their own masters; having to that extent resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”