The enemies of Samuell Gorton charged that he was a practical anarchist—a denier of all governmental authority. As the indictment of the Massachusetts magistrates reads: “Upon much examination & serious consideration of yor writings, & with yor answers about them, wee doe charge you to bee a blasphemous enemy of the true religion of or Lord Jesus Christ and his holy ordinances, & also of all civil authority among the people of God, perticulerly in this iurisdiction.”[63] To the impartial 75student of this history, his entire career offers a sufficient answer to this accusation. Even Gov. Arnold, his lineal descendant and strenuous defender in many things, who regarded him as “one of the most remarkable men who ever lived,”[64] falls into the error of stating that “he denied the right of a people to self-government.”[65] What Samuell Gorton really denied was the dogma of “squatter sovereignty,” that false conception of popular government which holds that a majority of the actual settlers in any given locality have a right to legislate and govern as they please, without regard for the claims of the minority, the law of civilized communities, or the principles of equity and 76justice. Had he lived a generation ago he would have stood with Lincoln and Sumner and Garrison in denouncing this mischievous dogma. His doctrine was identical with that of the defenders of the union against the alleged right of secession. In his own day he held, simply, that no Englishman expatriated himself by becoming a colonist in the possessions of the Mother Country; that he did not by emigration to America forfeit the rights of an Englishman, or the protection guaranteed by the long line of statutes, decisions and precedents, beginning with Magna Charta, which had become the heritage of Englishmen everywhere.

Samuell Gorton held that as subjects of Great Britain the Colonial governments should conform in their legislation and judicial action to the principles of 77English common and statute law.[66] If chartered, they were bound to do this by the terms of their charters. If not chartered, each individual had the right to claim the protection of English law, and any denial thereof was a usurpation of authority. This was the head and front of his alleged anarchism. It was not anarchism, but the conviction that liberty is a chimera save under the protection of the sacred majesty of law. This is good English and American doctrine to-day. It is distinctively Rhode Island doctrine. No one two hundred and fifty years ago saw it more clearly than Samuell Gorton. His political vision was more lucid and prescient than that of Roger Williams, though the latter soon saw the force of Gorton’s 78position, and adhered to it the rest of his life. Had Gorton lived until the time of Andros and James the Second he wo............