Historical Letters on the First Charter of Massachusetts Government.

204 pp. 18mo, bound in sixes. Brown cloth. An account of religious persecutions perpetrated by the Puritan founders of the earliest American colonies. From the preface: "History had long shown that no sovereignty, christian or pagan, could ever establish religion by law without persecution; yet our sovereign ancestors attempted it, and were guilty of persecution as these letters will show. It cost them more than a century's teaching, and much blood and treasure, to learn, that, to every individual, belongs the culture of his own religion; and that the office of government is to protect him merely in that labor." Appears quite scarce - only 5 copies found in institutional holdings, two in trade, no records of sale at auction in the last 75 years. Sabin 18079.