Mather's anonymous but scarcely veiled threats that the colony would revolt, if the old theocracy and its charter privileges were not restored,[[1136]] failed to impress the government, which, however, had been seriously endeavoring to meet all the legitimate aspirations of the colonists. Mather, who had had several interviews with King William, and had enlisted the sympathy of the Queen,[[1137]] had little difficulty in getting a number of proposals altered, when the reasons were pointed out; but the King and government were both firm in favor of a governor appointed by England, and a property, not a religious, qualification for the franchise. Mather bitterly opposed both these suggestions, particularly that relating to the suffrage, saying he would sooner part with his life than consent. The ministers of state, however, were growing somewhat tired of the clergyman's representations and misrepresentations, and curtly told him that his consent was neither “expected nor desired”; that he was not a plenipotentiary from a sovereign state; and that, if it was true, as he claimed, that Massachusetts would not accept the new charter, then she could “take what would follow,” for “his Majesty was resolved to settle the Countrey.”[[1138]]
The obvious fact that the colonists were not by any means unanimous in their desire for the old charter, the genuine wish of the English government to provide toleration, the long record of delays and bickerings in the colony's relations with England, and the necessity for a different organization if the Navigation Acts were to be enforced, probably all had their influence in shaping the government's policy. Of still greater immediate import, perhaps, was the military situation. With the prospect of a life-and-death struggle with France, the Franco-British frontier in America became a sphere of the highest military interest and importance; and, aside from previous records or any preconceived ideas on the part of English statesmen, the colonists had, within the past year, shown that, if left to themselves, they were unable properly to safeguard either their own homes or the interests of the Empire.
As a matter of fact, the new charter, as finally granted, was a far better document than the one desired by Mather. What he had tried to get was a constitution for a virtually independent theocratic state, the fundamental law of which should provide for the perpetual retention of political power in the hands of a religious sect. What the English government granted was a charter by which the colony took her natural place, indeed, in an empire without whose protection she was defenseless, but which, at the same time, gave to her citizens a degree of self-government and political freedom which the theocratic group would never have been willing to concede. The substitution of a moderate property qualification for the franchise, in place of any other whatsoever, at once placed the colony abreast of the most liberal political thought of the day; while local self-government was restored in the form of a popular assembly. Regardless of the whims or religious prejudices of any clique in power, and irrespective of his class or creed, any resident of the colony who had been sufficiently industrious or fortunate to acquire a freehold estate worth forty shillings per annum, or real or personal property to the value of forty pounds, could now claim, as a right, a voice in the government of his commonwealth.[[1139]] Thanks to England, the final deathblow had legally been dealt to the theocracy, and the foundation laid for genuine self-government and religious toleration in the colony. Those elements in its future development which we are apt to consider as typically American had, in fact, in the case of Massachusetts, been forced upon her leaders, fighting against them to the last ditch, by an English King who could hardly speak the language of his subjects.
One important aspect of this change in the franchise must not be overlooked. Under the old religious test, there had been, within the body of enfranchised voters, no social question. All had possessed the vote, without distinction between rich and poor. The struggle for the franchise, therefore, would always have remained a purely religious one between those within and those without the pale of a particular church. With the abandonment of the religious test, and the substitution of a property qualification, the question became a social one, and the way was opened for that struggle for the democratization of the state and society which became the dominant motive in the Revolution of a century later. The colonies could never have united on a question of religion, or even of trade. The basis had to be so wide as to appeal to the most numerous class in every colony; and that appeal could only be social, and was found to lie in the demand for the abolition of privilege and the extension of democracy.
The new charter of 1691 must be regarded as an honest effort to devise such a governmental system as should allow to the colonists the greatest degree of local liberty consistent with the welfare and administrative necessities of the Empire as a whole, in the light of existing political theory. It cannot too often be pointed out that the colonial period was a colonial period, and that the relations subsisting between England and the colonies were necessarily those subsisting between a sovereign state and its dependencies. There was no more reason for the colonist of Massachusetts or Barbadoes to consider himself entirely independent of English control, than there is for the settler in Alaska to consider himself wholly independent of the United States to-day. It is inconsistent to claim that the authority of Congress, in the twentieth century, should reach to Guam or Nome, but that the authority of Parliament, in the seventeenth, should have stopped at Land's End. To find fault with administrative arrangements proper under the above conditions, merely because they would have been unsuitable had the subsequently revolting colonies then been the independent states they later developed into, is to look through the wrong end of the historian's telescope. If we are to judge the governments provided for the colonies in comparison with models in later American history, they should not be compared with the constitutions of our sovereign states, but with those provided for our own dependent colonies and territories; and in their broader features, the constitutions granted by Congress to organized territories reproduce very closely the old royal governments of the earlier period.
In the first place, we may note that the governor of a territory is not elected by the people, but is appointed by the president, and is removable by him, as the Massachusetts charter of 1691 provided that her governor should be removable by the king. In territories, as in the colonies, laws passed by the bicameral legislature are subject, not only to veto by the governor, but also to disallowance by the higher sovereign power. The review of colonial legislation, to which our forefathers objected so strongly when colonists, we adopted ourselves when we, in turn became a “mother-country”; and in some cases, at least, the laws passed by territorial legislatures were specifically made subject to review by Congress. It is needless to remind the reader that the citizens of our territories are no more directly represented in that body than the colonists were in Parliament, and that taxation without direct representation is as much a factor in our present state as it was in the British Empire. In one respect, the Massachusetts charter of 1691, indeed, was more liberal than our territorial governments; for in Massachusetts the judges were appointed by the governor with the consent of the council, or upper house of the legislature, while in American territories they are appointed by the president without the consent of the inhabitants.[[1140]]
To many in the colony, however, the change from the old charter form to the new seemed a loss of independence. The former governing element felt that their control had been vastly weakened. The church party anticipated that the end of all things might be due when the Congregational church no longer legally controlled the elections. The presence of a governor and other officials appointed by the Crown, the review of legislation, the right of appeal, and other evidences of the colony having become part of a great organization instead of a practically independent, even if insignificant, little collection of towns, was unwelcome to those who had had a false idea of the rôle which, in that time and place, it was possible for them and the colony to play in the world.
On the other hand, there were very substantial advantages under the new régime. Although, owing to an obscure and probably not very reputable intrigue, New Hampshire was given a separate government, the bounds of the new Massachusetts were extended to include Plymouth, Maine, and the eastern country as far as Nova Scotia.[[1141]] Moreover, the colonists had never really possessed anything like the rights which they had claimed and exercised under the old charter. The whole system of town government, for example, had been extra-legal. The infliction of the death-penalty was illegal, and there was no question that the colonists had exceeded their rights in taxing the non-freemen. Now all the false reasoning and sophistries that the settlers had indulged in, in their efforts to prove the old charter adequate as the basis of a government, were no longer necessary. Massachusetts at last had, what she had never possessed before, a written constitution, which clearly set forth her form of government, and validated, to a very great extent, those institutions which she had cherished.[[1142]] The royal officials, disliked as their presence might be by the irreconcilables, actually and symbolically brought the colony into relations with the larger life of the empire. In her thought, her commerce, and her political relations, New England's largest colony was at last forced out of that position of defiant isolation which her former leaders had chosen for her, and made to participate, so far as her provincial position allowed, in the main currents of the world's activities. The new charter definitely marked the end of one era and the beginning of another.
This change was more than political and economic. It has been evident from the foregoing narrative that the power of the clergy had been felt in every sphere of the colony's life. In the pulpits, in the schools, in the colleges, in the censorship of the press, in the legislature, even in the councils of war and the courts of justice, their influence had been incalculable. The story of the struggle against it, and of its gradual yielding to defeat, as the people more and more made good their right to believe as they would and live their lives as they chose, has occupied many of our pages. The course of development, however, which was to make Massachusetts the leader of liberal thought among the states, was a long one, and, in part, it was but a reaction and a protest against the theological repression of this earlier period.
Although the charter of 1691 had definitely ended the legalized control of the Congregational church, which was still to maintain a privileged position until 1812, the organization desperately struggled to retain its power. The members of the new government, thanks to the efforts of Mather in England, were nearly all of the clerical party. He had, indeed, succeeded in having the more important offices filled with the most fanatical, or the most subservient, of the men in the colony's public life. His son, the Reverend Cotton Mather, when he heard of the list of officials, wrote ecstatically in his diary: “The time for Favour was now come; the sett Time was come! ... all the Councellors of the Province are of my own Father's Nomination; and my Father-in-law, with several related unto me, and several Brethren of my own church, are among them. The Governour of the Province is not my Enemy but one whom I baptized, namely Sir William Phips, and one of my own Flock, and one of my dearest Friends.”[[1143]] He might have added that the savagely bigoted Stoughton was made Deputy Governor.