not common to everybody else was, to the last degree, “tolerable and not to be endured.”  To such a height did the fever of liberty rise, that men assumed a right to quarrel with the private habits of the governor and his family, some pronouncing him proud because he did not neglect his teeth, as the majority did, eat when they ate, and otherwise presumed to be of different habits from those around him.  Some even objected to him because he spat in his pocket-handkerchief, and did not blow his nose with his fingers.

All this time, religion was running riot, as well as politics.  The next-door neighbours hated each other most sincerely, because they took different views of regeneration, justification, predestination and all the other subtleties of doctrine.  What was remarkable, they who had the most clouded notions of such subjects were the loudest in their denunciations.  Unhappily, the Rev. Mr. Hornblower, who had possession of the ground, took a course which had a tendency to aggravate instead of lessening this strife among the sects.  Had he been prudent, he would have proclaimed louder than ever “Christ, and him crucified;” but, he made the capital mistake of going up and down, crying with the mob, “the church, the church!” This kept constantly before the eyes and ears of the dissenting part of the population—­dissenting from his opinions if not from an establishment—­the very features that were the most offensive to them.  By “the church” they did not understand the same divine institution as that recognised by Mr. Hornblower himself, but surplices, and standing up and sitting down, and gowns, and reading prayers out of a book, and a great many other similar observances, which were deemed by most of the people relics of the “scarlet woman.”  It is wonderful, about what insignificant matters men can quarrel, when they wish to fall out.  Perhaps religion, under these influences, had quite as much to do with the downfall of the governor, which shortly after occurred, as politics, and the newspaper, and the new lawyer, all of which and whom did everything that was in their power to destroy him.

At length, the demagogues thought they had made sufficient progress to spring their mine.  The journal came out with a proposal to call a convention, to alter and improve the fundamental law.  That law contained a clause already pointing out the mode by which amendments were to be made in the constitution; but this mode required the consent of the governor, of the council, and finally, of the people.  It was a slow, deliberative process, too, one by which men had time to reflect on what they were doing, and so far protected vested rights as to render it certain that no very great revolution could be effected under its shadow.  Now, the disaffected aimed at revolution—­at carrying out, completely the game of “puss in the corner,” and it became necessary to set up some new principle by which they could circumvent the old fundamental law.