As in old England the main question of the day was the location of sovereignty, so it was in the New, and in the relations between the two. The theory of the state as based upon original contract, which, although implicit in feudalism, was, as we have seen, probably derived in New England from the church covenant, had even less historical or philosophical basis than that of divine right. However, the advances made by mankind are not less real because they have nearly always been contemporaneously justified by false assumptions. In such cases “conclusions are more permanent than premises,” as Mr. Balfour points out in speaking of “the incongruity between the causes by which beliefs are sustained, and the official reasons by which they are from time to time justified.”[[921]] It is in this very failure of man to reason rightly as to the grounds of his own efforts that we perceive most clearly the operations of forces in human history independent of man's own will and thought, precisely where, for himself, the illusion of a reasoned freedom is strongest. Although the theories of divine right and of original compact have now both been discarded among the philosophical lumber of the past, the latter theory was of enormous influence in shaping American political thought. Before, however, that thought could legitimately give expression to the dictum, “No taxation without representation,” it was necessary that the community as a whole, and not a religious sect, should be considered to be the “people”; and before Massachusetts could join in declaring that “All men are created equal,” she had to abandon her earlier politico-religious distinction between a minority born to be everlasting saints and a majority doomed to eternal damnation. We must now turn to consider, more in detail, the story of how that result was achieved.
The heirs of Mason and Gorges had never abandoned their claims to the territory in New Hampshire and Maine which had been illegally absorbed by Massachusetts, and, of late, they had been pressing their respective cases with more and more insistence. In May, 1675, the law officers of the Crown reported to the Committee for Foreign Plantations that, in their opinion, both claims were based upon valid titles.[[922]] It was not mainly, however, the complaints of these individual claimants, or Mason's detailed recommendations to send commissioners to New England,[[923]] which decided the government to take a more active part in the administration of the colonies. Peace had been signed with the Dutch in the preceding year, and the ending of the war provided leisure for undertaking more seriously the reorganization of colonial administration. The reform began at home with the abolition of the old Council Committee, and the placing of colonial affairs in the hands of a new committee known as the Lords of Trade and Plantations. Its members were able men, well qualified for their work, and displayed considerable energy, holding eighty-nine meetings in the first year after their organization.[[924]]
The New England question promptly came in for a share of their attention. We have already noted the many and constant complaints in regard to Massachusetts, and the attitude of that colony toward the Royal Commissioners in 1664. While all these old matters, as well as the newly delivered legal opinions regarding the Mason and Gorges claims, were before the Lords of Trade, they probably found their chief ground for dissatisfaction with Massachusetts in her disregard of the Navigation Acts, and the assumption of virtual independence. Captain Wyborne of H. M. S. Garland, after a visit to Boston, reported that New England's trade to Europe and the West Indies had become very great, and that the magistrates refused to act regarding violations of the law, the people looking upon themselves as “a free state.”[[925]] About six weeks later, twenty-eight English merchants complained that New England was illegally trading on a great scale between Europe and the various parts of the British Empire, and so underselling the English in both markets, and ruining business.[[926]] New England herself produced none of the “enumerated commodities,” and, had she confined herself to legitimate trade, would not have been placed at any appreciable disadvantage by the Navigation Acts of this period. By evading the law, however, she gained not only the advantage of an unrestricted commerce, when such was not allowed in any of the over-seas empires of the time, but also an extra, illegitimate profit, over and above her law-abiding competitors, exactly as a smuggler of dutiable articles makes a larger profit than the legitimate merchant, solely by virtue of the existence of the very laws that the former evades. The amount lost by England on New England's domestic illegal trade was not great; but, if the rapidly increasing business of those colonies between Europe and the rest of the Empire were allowed to go on unchecked, the integrity of the whole imperial structure would be seriously threatened.[[927]]
Mason had advised that a new commissioner, or a governor general, be sent to New England; but the English government refused, on the ground that it would give needless affront, and “would look like awarding execution on those people before they were heard.”[[928]] It was, therefore, decided that Massachusetts should be asked to send over agents; and, probably in view of the colony's now well-known policy of delay, it was determined to transmit the demand by a special messenger, who should bring back personally the answer of the General Court. The individual selected for this task was Edward Randolph, who was instructed, not only to deliver the King's letter, and receive the reply, but also to make a report on trade and other conditions in the colony, in order that the government might have a better basis for intelligent action.[[929]]
Randolph was of the narrow-minded, official type, a stickler for technicalities, a thorough believer in centralized imperial control, and easily influenced by prejudice, but possessed of enormous energy, and of very considerable ability. He had the not uncommon fault of forcing facts to fit his theories rather than building theories from the facts; but in his long connection with the colonies, in offices in which it would have been peculiarly easy to live by bribes, he was incorruptibly honest, a rare quality in that day. Moreover, although always poor, and in his later life embittered, he could yet be generous toward the distress of others; and when Mason's motherless children were suffering from poverty in England, he allowed them £20 a year from his own scanty income.[[930]] While he was violently opposed to the decentralization of authority involved in the charter governments, he was not anxious to play the tyrant, and seems to have believed that the changes he had at heart would benefit not only the Empire, but the colonists as well. On more than one occasion, indeed, this “blasted wretch,” as Mather called him, defended their interests against the Crown. No English official in our colonial history, however, was more thoroughly hated, and he returned the feeling in so far as the ruling powers of Massachusetts were concerned. In this he was hardly to be blamed, for their attitude and policy toward him, from the first, consisted in covert obstruction and open insult.
He arrived in Boston early in June, and at once showed his credentials, and stated his errand, to Governor Leverett. At the meeting of the Council, at which the King's letter was presented, the Governor and all but three magistrates kept their hats on while the missive was being read, refusing to uncover according to the usual custom. When the reading was concluded, Leverett curtly stated that “the matters therein contained were very inconsiderable things and easily answered,” although, in reality, it was the most important communication that the local government had ever received. When Randolph called their attention to the demand of the King that an answer be returned, he was simply told that the matter would be considered.[[931]]
Although his instructions were that he should remain a month, in order to gather the data required before returning, the Council announced, within two days, that they had an answer prepared to the royal letter, which they were going to send immediately, but which they would not entrust to Randolph, offering him only a copy, despite the King's express command. When Randolph asked if they could have well considered so weighty a matter in forty-eight hours, he was curtly requested to withdraw, unless he had further orders from the King, as the Councillors looked upon him as Mason's agent.
Meanwhile, several ships had arrived direct from various European ports, contrary to the Navigation Acts, of which Randolph spoke to the Governor in the course of an interview on the following day. Leverett thereupon declared that the laws made by King and Parliament did not apply to Massachusetts, and that any dispute between England and the colony was to be decided by the colony and not by England.[[932]]
Randolph next proceeded into New Hampshire, where he showed letters from Mason, and naturally received many complaints from disaffected inhabitants in regard to Massachusetts. For his actions there, he was sharply rebuked by Leverett, who accused him of trying to “make a mutiny and disturbance.” Randolph had also suggested, just before going to New Hampshire, that the General Court be summoned, in order to consider the King's dispatch; but this was not done, and he finally sailed for England with only a copy of the letter written by the Council.[[933]] In that letter, Leverett wrote, with considerable effrontery, that the complaints of Mason and Gorges were “impertinencies, mistakes and falsehoods,” but said nothing about complying with the demand to send agents, except that the General Court, which, he claimed, could not then be summoned on account of sickness and the Indian War, would be convened later.[[934]]
Owing to the unwise course of the rulers, Randolph could hardly fail to have been biased by the information received from their opponents; and the result is evident in the long report which he submitted to the Lords of Trade on his return. Although, owing to his preconceived ideas, and the circumstances of his stay, he misjudged the strength of the opposing parties in the colony, and although certain of his statistics were greatly exaggerated, the report, on the whole, gave a detailed and truthful presentation of the general situation, and confirmed other information possessed in England.[[935]] For, while Randolph was on his way west, the Lords of Trade had pursued their investigations, and summoned before them merchants trading with New England. Of these, “some were shy to unfold the mystery, others pretended ignorance, but most declared plainly” that New England traders were regularly breaking the law, and that, by their direct trade in European goods with the other colonies they were able to undersell, by twenty per cent, those doing a legitimate business.[[936]] This was confirmed, a few weeks later, by an official returned from a trip to the West Indies, who reported seventeen New England ships engaged there in a clandestine trade with Europe in log-wood for dyeing, which not only threatened to involve the whole Empire in a war with Spain, but provided England's rivals with cheaper dyes than she herself obtained.[[937]] It was becoming more and more evident, the deeper the matter was probed, that the question was not a domestic one for Massachusetts, whatever she might choose to assume, but one that involved the interests of England and the Empire.