Trouble also arose for the colony from another direction. It was impossible, in ordinary justice, that England should ignore the complaints of the heirs of the original Gorges and Mason regarding the illegal encroachments of Massachusetts upon the lands claimed by them. Mason's petition was referred to a committee of seven. Of these Mason was one, although obviously the English government should not have permitted him to be at once plaintiff and judge. But, aside from irrelevant strictures upon the policy of Massachusetts, the committee made a reasonable report, finding that Mason had inherited a good title from his grandfather, and that for many years Massachusetts had publicly recognized the line three miles north of the Merrimac as her true boundary.[[804]]
Meanwhile, Gorges, who had petitioned the King in April, 1661, for possession of his province, did not wait for the process of law, but appointed commissioners to go to Maine, proclaim the King, collect the quit-rents, and establish a government, notifying Massachusetts of their actions.[[805]] That colony promptly ordered that all the inhabitants should yield obedience only to herself and sent commissioners into the province with instructions to suppress any disobedience by the use of force, as they should see fit.[[806]] Under this conflict of authorities, the affairs of Maine, the inhabitants of which province were scattered and somewhat unruly, were bound to drift into anarchy. Daniel Gookin, of Boston, wrote a conciliatory letter to Gorges, explaining the conditions from the standpoint of the good of the people; but, a year later, the King, upon a report of the technical legal aspects of the case, and apparently taking into consideration the losses of Gorges's royalist grandfather, ordered the inhabitants to submit to Gorges, or to give reasons to the contrary without delay.[[807]]
The conditions in New England, in 1663, thus clearly necessitated the sending out of a Royal Commission. The legal disputes between Massachusetts and the English heirs of Gorges and Mason could not fairly be left to the decision of Massachusetts courts. Nor was the question one of technical legal title alone; for, as the committee reporting on the Mason claims had themselves pointed out, “publique interest and goverment” were “much intermixt and concerned with the private interest of the peticioners.”[[808]] Moreover, for nearly thirty years, not only had boundary disputes between all the New England colonies been growing steadily more complicated and serious, but the colonies had proved themselves incapable, in practically every case, of settling them permanently and amicably. The contests could evidently be determined, in the absence of any superior power, only by the use of force by the claimants; and with the consistent attitude of Massachusetts and the now rapidly increasing aggressiveness of Connecticut, peace was seriously imperiled, and the fate of the smaller colonies practically sealed. Rhode Island, at once the most loyal and the most devoted to liberty of thought and action, was already in imminent danger of annihilation. In the disputed Narragansett country, the Atherton Company claimed rights which could not be justly adjudicated by any of the three colonies pretending jurisdiction, and prayed the King for intervention.[[809]]
The accounts of practically every observer agreed as to the disloyalty of Massachusetts and her assumption of sovereignty, which were obviously confirmed by her official acts. In addition, the attitude of all the colonies to the English leaders during the Revolution, the neglect of all, except Rhode Island, promptly to proclaim the King, their protection of the regicide judges, and the refusal to observe the Navigation Acts, raised suspicions against them all. There was, besides, the religious discrimination by Massachusetts, depriving her citizens of rights which they would otherwise have enjoyed as Englishmen, and the cases of alleged injustice in colonial courts affecting English citizens with property rights in the colonies. In the absence of a royal governor, or any other means by which the home government could secure first-hand information, there was no course to follow except to appoint a Commission to go out and secure it, if the exceedingly complicated situation was to be handled intelligently. The government had shown itself more than willing to treat with the colonies through their agents; but Massachusetts purposely denied to them any authority, so as to obstruct and delay any action—an outworn policy which had now become transparently clear to the home government.
The attitude of Massachusetts was, in fact, the crux of the whole problem. The theocratical party there had developed a theory,—based apparently upon an extension of the church-covenant idea through the plantation covenant,—that the charter itself was a covenant which reserved no rights to the king and imperial government save those specifically mentioned. From this she deduced that her obligation to the Empire was so tenuous as to be virtually non-existent.[[810]] However satisfactorily to themselves the leaders and their followers might spin such theories, they did not agree with either the economic, political, or legal facts. At this stage, the economic welfare of the New England colonies was, of necessity, bound up with that of the Empire, from the trade of which they would be excluded if they ceased to be parts of it. Politically, they had to be considered as either in it or out of it, and, obviously, from the standpoint of abstract justice as well as of practical administration, they could not consider themselves as now one and now the other, according to their local interests at a given moment.
Nor could it be conceded that, by the granting of the charters, England had relinquished all rights of control, or the power to determine whether or not their terms were being complied with. That would have opened the way to the grossest misuse of power by any of the local administrations thus created, and would have been against public policy. Moreover, in practically every charter, including that of Massachusetts, the clause had appeared that no laws should be passed repugnant to those of England. Massachusetts had already passed many such, carrying with them, in some cases, the penalty of capital punishment. The clause obviously implied that there must be an authority somewhere, which could decide whether the colonial laws were repugnant or not; and it could hardly be claimed that the colonial courts which passed them were intended to be the sole judges of their conformity.[[811]] This would have meant that not only the inhabitants of any chartered colony, but the citizens of all the rest of the Empire having relations with it, directly or as potential emigrants, would be absolutely at the mercy of the local government, no matter what that government might do, or however criminally it might disregard the rights that the charters had specifically safeguarded. It must not be lost to sight that the contemporary merchant in England or the West Indies had as legitimate a right to require that England should protect his legal interests in Massachusetts or Connecticut as any citizen of the United States to-day has to expect that his rights will be assured to him in New Mexico or Alaska. It must also be recalled that America was the heritage of the English people, much as our West was the heritage of our citizens; and the Englishman, both for himself and for his children, had as legitimate an interest in the nature of the government erected in any part of the Empire as we have in that set up in any part of our territorial domains. There was little more reason why a group of settlers should preëmpt Massachusetts, pass laws repugnant to those of England, and hang any Englishman whose political or religious views were obnoxious to them, than there would be for the stockholders and officers of a business corporation in Alaska, who might have been granted land and some minor police powers, to do the same thing to-day.
If the contentions of Massachusetts were to be allowed,—that she might pass any laws she chose and be sole judge of them; that she might trample upon the colonial rights of Englishmen at home, quarrel with her neighbors, determine her own bounds, be the sole interpreter of the terms of her charter, and sole judge of whether they had been complied with; deny that the king's writ passed beyond England, or that the home country had any right to pass laws affecting the colonies even in their intercolonial and imperial relations,—then, it must be confessed, there was no empire. There was merely an imperial anarchy of conflicting local interests and warring elements, whose only common bond was their claim that England should protect them against the aggression of foreign and land-hungry powers.
If the rule of England in the seventeenth century had become tyrannical and oppressive to the extent that revolution had become justifiable, and if the colonies had become strong enough, in the state of the world as it then was, to stand alone, nothing could be said against their openly throwing off the imperial yoke. The full development of the forces already at work was, a century later, to bring about that very consummation, the discussion of which belongs to a later period. That, however, was not the case as yet, and the position which Massachusetts assumed was untenable and could eventually lead only to the loss of her charter, and not to independence. Nor could she profess loyalty in the most obsequious terms, claim all the military and commercial advantages of being a part of the Empire, and, at the same time, act as an independent state. It was a policy which, however unjustifiable, might be successful, perhaps, when essayed by her as the most powerful member in a New England confederacy. It could be neither, when the part was attempted to be played by that same colony in its rôle of an unimportant dependency in a great empire.
Nor had individual liberty anything to gain in the contest. The only possible outcome would be the loss of the charter, with all the possibilities involved in the then immediate dependence upon a Stuart monarch. At this stage, the real struggle for freedom, intellectual and political, was against the theocracy. If its leaders lost the game they were playing, as was practically inevitable, then the liberties of the colony, as embodied in the charter and related to England, would also be lost. If, on the other hand, they should by any chance win against the Crown, then their own power would be greatly strengthened and the struggle against them increased in difficulty. In either event, therefore, the liberal element in the colony had everything to fear from the policy pursued by the leaders. That policy, however, from the standpoint of the latter, found its justification in the fact that the suggested alterations in the franchise, and other religious matters, would end the power of the theocracy, which would surely go down before liberty of opinion. As the leaders had already hesitated at nothing, not even the blood of their victims, to maintain their theory of the church-state, so now they preferred to risk the practically certain loss of the charter and all its civil privileges, rather than yield to the claim of individual freedom. Fortunately, in spite of an apparent temporary success, they were to lose, and England win; and, owing to the people of England itself, the real cause of liberty was eventually to gain.
The chaotic state of New England had engaged the attention of the Council for Plantations and the Privy Council almost from the moment of the Restoration; while the sending of Commissioners to adjust differences, and to report on conditions, had been under consideration since early in 1662.[[812]] Two years later, action regarding the matters which had been considered as of prime importance was taken at last, and a commission was actually sent to New England; and New Netherland, with little trouble, was wrested from the Dutch. The two objects—of which the latter was considered the more important—were closely connected, and the most influential member of the Commission, Colonel Richard Nicolls, was appointed Governor of the new province of New York. Of the other three Commissioners, Samuel Maverick was undoubtedly useful, from his great knowledge of Massachusetts affairs, although otherwise unfitted, from his strong partisanship; but neither Sir Robert Carr nor George Cartwright possessed the qualifications to ensure successful results, although the latter was able and conscientious in his work.[[813]]