The founding of New England

by James Truslow Adams

We may again emphasize the fact that the colonies were dependencies of England, and not independent nations. It was as much the right and duty of England to assert and maintain some sort of imperial control over them as it has been of the United States to do the same over her own territorial possessions. The colonists were Englishmen, settled upon English lands, subject to English laws, entitled to the rights of Englishmen at home, protected by English power. The control exercised over them was not that of a foreign nation, or imposed by conquest; and the mere fact that some control should be exercised could not in itself be construed as an act of oppression or tyranny. Had the waste lands on which these emigrating Englishmen settled been contiguous to the borders of any English county, none of the questions that arose as to their relations to English sovereignty would have arisen. They were all due to the distance, translated into time, that separated these English subjects from the seat of authority, and to the new conditions of their strange environment. From those two elements, “arose all that was peculiar and exceptional in their relations with the British government.”[^[739]]

At the time when the New England colonies were planted, the doctrine of Parliamentary sovereignty, of the supreme authority in the state of that body which had hitherto been regarded rather as a judicial than a legislative one, was beginning to take hold of men's minds. It required, however, the ordeal by battle of a civil war to decide the question; and it was not until the Restoration that Parliament took its permanent place among English institutions.[^[740]] The close connection of the colonies with the Crown arose from the fact that, during the period of their founding, their relations to the government of England were mainly with the Executive and as occupiers of the soil, the executive power being then lodged in the King in Council, and the title to the land being vested in the Crown.[^[741]] As the constitutional situation gradually altered, the colonies remained, of course, subject to the sovereign power, wherever located, as did Englishmen at home, although so complex, and difficult of both legal and equitable settlement, were the questions of sovereignty in the Empire raised by the phenomena of overseas dominions, that it is highly questionable whether their solution has ever been found. Only a few years ago, a brilliant Englishman could speak of the bonds then uniting England and her colonies as “a confusion of legal formulas and brittle sympathies”; and although, as tested in the world-crisis of the Great War, those sympathies have proved anything but brittle, his conclusion that imperial sovereignty is, in reality, non-existent, seems irrefutable.[^[742]] The ship of state to-day, compared to that of the seventeenth century, is as a dreadnought to the Mayflower; but if, after three centuries, the problem of imperial organization is yet awaiting solution, with the best of will on the part of both England and the dominions, there need be little surprise, and certainly no bitterness, over the slow and blundering beginnings. Unfortunately, owing to the uncertainty, in the course of England's political evolution, as to where sovereignty really lay, and also to the inherent difficulties involved in the question of the realm and the dominions, alluded to in an earlier chapter, the way was all too open for controversial misunderstandings on purely technical grounds between the colonies and the mother-country. And this quite apart from the difficulties raised by distance, and the attempted course of Stuart usurpation, against which latter, it must be remembered, the forces of freedom were to struggle in old England as well as in her colonies.

During the period covered by this volume, control over the colonies was asserted in various ways and at various times by both Parliament and the Crown. Patentees of the royal charters not infrequently asked Parliament to confirm their privileges; while that body often inquired into the use which was being made of those monopolistic documents; for it is sometimes forgotten that such a charter as that obtained by Massachusetts, for example, while regarded by the company as the basis of its liberties, could also, quite as legitimately, be regarded by the nation as creating a monopoly in one of its worst forms—that of the exclusive use of the Crown, or public, lands. For the most part, however, Parliament confined itself to passing legislation regarding trade only, its control over the customs being continuous from 1641.[^[743]]

Those who intended to found plantations necessarily had to apply to the king for a charter, in order to obtain possession of the soil and exemption from certain laws covering emigration and export. Technically, the charters of the corporate colonies ranked merely with those of English municipal corporations. According to a strict interpretation of the law, therefore, so long as the private rights of individuals were not infringed, the English government would be technically justified in altering colonial institutions, or in dividing and combining colonies, without the consent of the inhabitants.[^[744]] As is always the case, old laws and institutions were slightly altered by the use of legal fictions and by modifications in practice, to meet the needs of a new situation. It is unthinkable that an entirely new body of law, and a wholly new set of institutions, should have been created, to serve political contingencies that could by no means have been foreseen.

The element of distance again came into play, to alter profoundly the practical effect of legal technicalities. In England the sovereign power, in exercising its jurisdiction over municipalities, had local knowledge of conditions, and could take immediate and effective action. Moreover, even when the citizens of the municipality were not represented in Parliament, they were yet largely protected from acts of oppression by the fact that such acts were prevented by the self-defensive foresight of other municipalities, which were represented. The situation in regard to the colonies was entirely different. Owing to the distance which separated them from home, it was impossible that either the king or Parliament could have accurate knowledge of local conditions, or take prompt measures. The difficulties as to both these points, in the unsettled state of England in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, were responsible for the extraordinary freedom which the colonists enjoyed from interference in their domestic political affairs. In addition, as their local conditions were little understood, and of but slight moment to the bulk of Englishmen at home, and as the interests of one colony frequently conflicted with those of another differently situated, their rights, in the absence of parliamentary representation, did not possess even that vicarious protection enjoyed by their legal equivalents, the unrepresented municipal corporations in England. Of necessity, therefore, colonial interests, from the standpoint of the colonists, were bound to be in part neglected by England, and in part misunderstood, while they served, to a far greater extent than was possible with those of any class or body at home, as the hunting-ground of rival cliques of self-interested individuals or groups.

Down to 1643, when Parliament, as a result of the Civil War, assumed the position of executive head of the government, colonial affairs had been in the hands of the King in Council, and had been managed by a succession of committees, sub-committees, and commissions, one of which we have already encountered on the other side of the water at the time of the troubles over the Massachusetts charter.[^[745]] During the period of the Interregnum, these were replaced by a tangle of committees of Parliament and the Protector's Council, none of which were continuous, or able to formulate and carry through a consistent policy. We have already seen the results of the administrative confusion, in the opportunity which it gave the New England colonies, and of which they made full use, to develop their local institutions and policy in almost entire disregard of their position in the Empire.

This almost complete absence of any steady policy or consistent control over the component parts of the imperial structure not only was unacceptable to the merchants at home, but would probably have been destructive of the Empire had it continued without change. Certain measures of far-reaching importance, however, had already been enacted under Cromwell; and the Restoration, which strengthened the government and united the people, enabled England to undertake a more comprehensive scheme for imperial organization, although in New England, owing to the incorrigible tendencies of the Stuarts, it blundered into criminal folly.

At first, two councils were created, one for Trade, and the other for Plantations, their instructions largely following drafts prepared by the London merchants Povey and Noell, who had for some years been actively engaged in the study of colonial questions, and the formulation of a colonial policy.[^[746]] However these instructions might strike colonists who refused to acknowledge any right of control whatever by the mother-country, they could not but appear wise and just to the statesmen and citizens at home. The councillors were ordered, in the first place, to make a complete survey—by means of correspondence with the colonial governors—of the laws and institutions, population and means of defense of each colony. They were to study “means for the rendering those dominions usefull to England, and England helpful to them, and for the bringing the several Colonies and Plantations, within themselves, into a more certain civill and uniforme waie of government and for the better ordering and distributing of publique justice among them.” They were, further, to maintain a correspondence with the local authorities in the several colonies, so that they might have constant knowledge of “their complaints, their wants, their abundance,” and their shipping, the latter for revision of the Navigation Laws. Finally, they were to study the methods employed by other states in their colonial government, and to call experts to their assistance in any particular when needed.[^[747]] The Council was made up of able men, almost all of them authorities on colonial questions, and in close touch with the colonies, while the business, in the first instance, was frequently entrusted to experts.[^[748]] Of the work of the Council, Professor Andrews writes, that “there was not an important phase of colonial life and government, not a colonial claim or dispute, that was not considered carefully, thoroughly, and in the main, impartially.”[^[749]] In fact, an unbiased study of the actions taken by the Privy Council and its committees during nearly the whole of the seventeenth century leads one to agree with the editor of the Acts, that, as a governing body, it was “anxious to help, willing to take advice, free from preconception.”[^[750]]

The only individual connecting link between New England and the government in England was the unofficial “agent” whom one or another of the colonies appointed at times of crisis, such as the Hocking murder or the Dr. Child petition, to present their case to the authorities. Although unofficial, the office was recognized by the English government, and such agents were employed by most of the colonies, island as well as continental, the office becoming an integral part of the administrative machinery of the following century.[^[751]]

Such, in bare outline, were the organs employed by England in the administration of the colonies. Of the legislative enactments designed to build up the Empire, the most important were precursors of the more famous Navigation Acts of the following century. In 1650, 1651, 1660, and 1663, ordinances were passed for the control of trade and shipping, which, in the period now under review, were more important in their political than in their economic influence upon New England. Holland had been the first of the European nations to understand the effect upon economic prosperity at home of the building up of colonial trade, and in the middle of the seventeenth century threatened to absorb the entire carrying trade of the world, the value of goods shipped annually in Dutch bottoms having been estimated at a billion francs.[^[752]] The English Navigation Acts of Cromwell and Charles II, like the policy initiated by Colbert in France, were aimed mainly at breaking the monopoly of Holland, and building up the national merchant-marines of England and France. Even the fisheries off the coasts of England and Scotland had passed into Dutch hands, and Englishmen had long been clamoring for some means of fighting commercially the growing menace of Dutch sea power.[^[753]]