It seems to me that some great decrease in the numbers of the State legislators should be a first step toward such a consummation.  There are not many men in each State who can afford to give up two or three months of the year to the State service for nothing; but it may be presumed that in each State there are a few.  Those who are induced to devote their time by the payment of 60l. can hardly be the men most fitted for the purpose of legislation.  It certainly has seemed to me that the members of the State legislatures and of the State governments are not held in that respect and treated with that confidence to which, in the eyes of an Englishman, such functionaries should be held as entitled.

CHAPTER XVI.

BOSTON.

From New York we returned to Boston by Hartford, the capital or one of the capitals of Connecticut.  This proud little State is composed of two old provinces, of which Hartford and New Haven were the two metropolitan towns.  Indeed, there was a third colony, called Saybrook, which was joined to Hartford.  As neither of the two could, of course, give way, when Hartford and New Haven were made into one, the houses of legislature and the seat of government are changed about year by year.  Connecticut is a very proud little State, and has a pleasant legend of its own stanchness in the old colonial days.  In 1662 the colonies were united, and a charter was given to them by Charles II.  But some years later, in 1686, when the bad days of James II. had come, this charter was considered to be too liberal, and order was given that it should be suspended.  One Sir Edmund Andross had been appointed governor of all New England, and sent word from Boston to Connecticut that the charter itself should be given up to him.  This the men of Connecticut refused to do.  Whereupon Sir Edmund with a military following presented himself at their Assembly, declared their governing powers to be dissolved, and, after much palaver, caused the charter itself to be laid upon the table before him.  The discussion had been long, having lasted through the day into the night, and the room had been lighted with candles.  On a sudden each light disappeared, and Sir Edmund with his followers were in the dark.  As a matter of course, when the light was restored the charter was gone; and Sir Edmund, the governor-general, was baffled, as all governors-general and all Sir Edmunds always are in such cases.  The charter was gone, a gallant Captain Wadsworth having carried it off and hidden it in an oak-tree.  The charter was renewed when William III. came to the throne, and now hangs triumphantly in the State House at Hartford.  The charter oak has, alas! succumbed to the weather, but was standing a few years since.  The men of Hartford are very proud of their charter, and regard it as the parent of their existing liberties quite as much as though no national revolution of their own had intervened.