At the end of March, 1683, the General Court sent them additional instructions, but did not enlarge their powers, except that they were authorized to “tender” Maine or anything else which “our charter will not warrant our keeping.” They were to reiterate their statements as to the franchise, and to consent to nothing which would alter their “liberties and privileges in matters of religion.”[[985]] In the last analysis, it became evident that the one thing the controlling element in Massachusetts would not yield was its ecclesiastical power.
The King hesitated no longer. Randolph, however, who carried the notice of the beginning of Quo Warranto proceedings to Boston, was authorized, at his own suggestion, to offer to Massachusetts the promise of a full protection of private interests and property rights, and a liberal regulation of the charter, if she would voluntarily submit, in which case the proceedings would be abandoned.[[986]] The wholesale “regulation” of charters, as then being conducted by the Stuarts in England, held out little hope of the colony's securing any such liberties in a new charter as she possessed in the old; but, on the other hand, not to yield was to lose all, and, in view of her past record, she could expect little sympathy from any quarter.
The magistrates were in favor of accepting the offer, but the deputies refused, and the Court continued deadlocked.[[987]] It is impossible to determine what the public opinion was as to the situation. In the annual election, in spite of a determined effort to defeat him, Bradstreet, who was a moderate, secured 690 votes, against 631 for Danforth, who belonged to the radicals.[[988]] Dudley, indeed, failed of reëlection, but so, also, did Richards; and the general result seems to represent only a slight preponderance for the party of no compromise. It must be remembered also that, owing to the fact that only one fifth of the men of the colony possessed the franchise, and that they were all church members, the vote cannot be taken to represent the sentiment of the colony as a whole, much of the discontented element necessarily not showing in the returns. Under the circumstances, it is significant that over one half of the church members seem to have voted for Bradstreet and compromise, for it is fair to presume that they would include a much larger proportion of irreconcilables than the unenfranchised body of non-church members, who would have nothing to gain by fighting England to a finish, in order to preserve a church of which they were not members, and a theocratical government which excluded them from power. Their very legitimate grievance may well have been, indeed, that that same government, in its effort to preserve privileges for itself which meant nothing, or worse than nothing, to four fifths of the inhabitants of the colony, had sacrificed those other privileges which did mean something to them.
We need not enter into the legal details of the course by which the charter was canceled. The Quo Warranto proceedings having proved abortive, a writ of Scire Facias was entered, and, on October 13, 1684, Massachusetts ceased to be a chartered colony, and found herself without a single one of the rights to which she had clung so tenaciously.[[989]]
There seems to be no question of the technical legality of the proceedings; but, passing beyond those, there is nothing to regret in the course pursued by the Crown. The interpretation of the charter by the church party not only was inconsistent with the terms of that instrument itself, so that any government built upon it was illegal and constantly open to attack, but was inconsistent, also, with the development of liberty itself in its widest sense. If it were, indeed, true that the charter formed an unalterable constitution, under which company members alone were able to become enfranchised citizens, then the power to govern the state could legally have been confined forever to the two or three dozen “freemen” who alone were called for by the charter. The pressure had been so great that the number of freemen had been greatly enlarged, it is true; but, according to the leaders' interpretation, this had been merely a boon granted out of good-will, and no additional freemen need ever be admitted. Their number might again be allowed to shrink, by death or disfranchisement, to the few required to fill the offices, who would, according to this theory, have the sole power of all government, including life and death, over the rest of the thirty-five thousand inhabitants. Although this, of course, was unlikely, nevertheless, those in control had shown definitely, when in order to maintain the theocracy they had sacrificed the whole political structure, rather than abandon their position with reference to extending the franchise, that nothing but a power so overwhelming as to be unopposable would have forced them peaceably to do so.
When we speak of liberty in connection with this early struggle with the home country, we should realize clearly that the party opposed to England fought to the end to perpetuate religious intolerance, and the intrenched privilege of a minority to tax an unenfranchised majority four times as numerous, and for the right to concentrate all political power in the hands of one religious sect. The clergy, who had wielded an extraordinary influence in the counsels of this governing minority, had, in many instances, been men of marked ability and fanatically devoted to the truth as they saw it. But as leaders, in the highest sense, they had very largely failed. From the beginning, they had striven to banish from the colony all ideas not in harmony with their own, and had thus lowered and impoverished the intellectual life of the community. On nearly every occasion, they had led in fanning the flames of intolerance and persecution. Over and over, they had helped to brutalize the natures of the citizens by calling for the blood of victims to whom the community would otherwise have shown mercy. One such example was yet to come, before the colony, disillusioned, was to reject their leadership finally in civil affairs.
But the present situation must have been of marked effect, when the people as a whole, non-church members as well as church members, found that, in the effort to perpetuate the theocracy, every civil right and safeguard, which they had considered they possessed under the charter, had been allowed to be taken from them. It is impossible, as we have said, accurately to gauge the public sentiment of the time from any data now available.[[990]] The people, unquestionably, could be trusted to resist any real efforts from across the water to restrict such liberties as they were prepared to enjoy. We seem too often to take it for granted, not only that liberty is something which all men are entitled to, but that they are at all times ready for it. The story of their gradually being moulded, so that they are, in an ever-increasing degree, fit for it, would seem quite as important as that of their struggle to obtain it.
It would have been a great misfortune had the Massachusetts of 1684 been allowed to go her own way, and to strengthen and perpetuate the combined ecclesiastical and political system for which her leaders had fought. As it is, the influence remains too strong of her fundamental doctrine that, in matters in any degree tinged with an ethical value, a minority has the “divine right” to force its will upon the majority, and to use the arm of the civil power to enforce its moral views upon the nation. In the town-meeting and the public school, the founders of Massachusetts, lay and clerical, had made two contributions of untold influence to American political life; but it was well for personal liberty and intellectual freedom, when the real struggle came and independence was achieved, that it was for a people who had had some training in religious toleration and political equality, regardless of class or creed. And, curiously enough, so tangled is the skein of history, the laws which voiced and fostered those beliefs were due to one of the most shameless of English kings, and not to the fathers of the New England commonwealth.
[903]. J. N. Figgis, “Political Thought in the 16th Century,” in Cambridge Modern History, vol. III, pp. 751, 763. Cf. the same author's Divine Right of Kings (Cambridge University Press, 1914), pp. 44 f., 54, 100.