Abstract

As to Roger Williams, and his "Banishment" from the Massachusetts Plantation

The article focuses on the book "As to Roger Williams, and His "Banishment" From the Massachusetts Plantation," by Henry Martyn Dexter. The occasion of Dexter's monograph is a petition presented last winter to the Massachusetts General Court to revoke the sentence of banishment pronounced against Roger Williams in 1635. him in this manner. Dexter's aim is, however, not to point out the absurdity of repeal, but to justify the original act of banishment and in this his success may be pronounced complete. His argument consists in two heads: first, that the governor and company of Massachusetts Bay did not at this time compose a state with a settled government, nor even a colony, but a plantation with a strong religious idea behind it, on its way to be a colony and a state, a private corporation chartered by the government for purposes of fishing, real-estate improvement, and general commerce.