The experiment
was
doomed to ultimate failure, for it ran counter to some of the
noblest instincts of human nature. But its administration was in
the hands of able men. The power of the clergy was well-nigh
absolute. The political organization of the township depended
upon the ecclesiastical organization as long as the right to vote
was confined to church members. How sacrosanct and awful was the
position of the clergyman may be perceived from Hawthorne's "The
Minister's Black Veil" and "The Scarlet Letter."
Yet it must be said that men like Hooker and Cotton, Shepard and
Norton, had every instinct and capacity for leadership. With the
notable exception of Hooker, such men were aristocrats, holding
John Winthrop's opinion that "Democracy is, among most civil
nations, accounted the meanest and worst form of government."
They were fiercely intolerant. The precise reason for the Hooker
migration from Cambridge to Hartford in 1636--the very year of
the founding of Harvard--was prudently withheld, but it is now
thought to be the instinct of escape from the clerical architects
of the Cambridge Platform.
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