Among
those who promoted the design, Governor Bellingham was said to
be one of the most busy. It may appear singular, and, indeed,
not a little ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which in
later days would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction
than that of the select men of the town, should then have been a
question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence
took sides. At that epoch of pristine simplicity, however,
matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less
intrinsic weight than the welfare of Hester and her child, were
strangely mixed up with the deliberations of legislators and
acts of state. The period was hardly, if at all, earlier than
that of our story, when a dispute concerning the right of
property in a pig not only caused a fierce and bitter contest in
the legislative body of the colony, but resulted in an important
modification of the framework itself of the legislature.
Full of concern, therefore--but so conscious of her own right
that it seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public on
the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of
nature, on the other--Hester Prynne set forth from her solitary
cottage.
Pages:
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161