of houses and lands; the abrogation of existing laws; taxes exacted
without consent or legislation; the enforced support of a religion not
of the people's choice; and navigation laws ruinous to their foreign
commerce, then beginning to assume importance; and from these
consequences they were saved only by the revolution, which two years
later drove James II from his throne. It is difficult to credit these
sober facts of history, and still more to fully realize their
destructive import; but they should always be borne in mind; for if any
one reflecting on the causes assigned by the leaders of the great
Revolution, as justifying the violent partition of an empire, is led for
a moment to question their sufficiency, let him then consider that they
were assigned by a people full of the traditions of the long struggle
against kingly injustice, in the days of the second Charles and the
second James.

A few words--the result of later investigation--as to the actors in the
events of this ride to Cambridge. When Bowden and Clarke had attested
their loyalty by horsewhipping young Wiswell, they took him in charge to
Cambridge, and vainly tried to persuade Nathaniel Hancock, the
constable, to carry him before a magistrate. This refusal brought
_him_ into difficulty with Council; but his humble submission was
finally accepted and he was discharged on payment of costs, on the plea
that upon the change of the government there was no magistrate
authorized to commit him to prison. Not quite so fortunate was John
Wiswell, Jr., for on the third of August the grand jury found a true
bill against him for uttering "these devilish, unnatural, and wicked
words following, namely, _God curse King James_." That he was
brought to trial on this complaint I cannot find. And so the actors in
these scenes pass away. Of Bowden and Clarke I know nothing more; and
the little which appears of John Wiswell's subsequent life is not wholly