The course of justice, if no worse than in contemporary England, was evidently but little improved by its passage overseas, or by being administered by those who had been so loud in their denunciations of the summary methods of Laud and the High Commission. It seemed to many, as to the “old planter” Blackstone, that the tyranny of the “Lord-Bishops” had merely been exchanged for that of the “Lord-Brethren”; and it was evident also that the fixed policy of the leaders was to allow no appeals from their decisions to the home courts of England. All the colonists, therefore, who would not, on the one hand, wholly refrain from criticizing the policy and acts of the leaders, and, on the other, prove themselves acceptable to the clergy, and so secure the franchise by being elected freemen, were wholly without representation, without voice in the making of their laws, and without recourse to the courts and king at home.
As the charter was that of a trading corporation, the levying of taxes was a mere development of the right to assess shareholders, and, therefore, extended only to freemen. But no such legal restriction was observed, and from the beginning, the authorities taxed the non-freemen equally with themselves, though denying them the political rights which they themselves possessed.[[361]] Indeed, not only their property was thus subject to enactments in which they had no voice, but their time and the work of their hands as well; for the General Court passed a law that all except members of the court, and officers of the church and commonwealth, were liable to be impressed for manual labor on all public works.[[362]] The town meeting, indeed, seems to have been the only place in which the great majority of the colonists could legally make their voice heard at all, and there only upon questions concerning the most trivial local matters.
The New England town, already noted as one of the three typical institutions in the development and influence of that section, may be considered in its origin as “the politically active congregation,” bound together, in addition to its church ties, by a peculiar agrarian policy.[[363]] Originating at Plymouth, it became universal throughout the Puritan colonies on the mainland, and was reproduced with extraordinary fidelity of detail wherever New Englanders migrated. The New England colonies, for the most part, neither sold nor rented their land, but granted it freely in fee to actual settlers, in rough proportion to their present ability to use it.[[364]] In general most of it was granted primarily to towns, which owned it in their corporate capacity; and by them it was allotted to individuals in the form of home-lots or arable land and meadow. The remainder formed the “common,” for the use of all, under certain restrictions. The whole land-system, as well as the methods of cultivation, exhibited many striking resemblances to those of our early Teutonic ancestors; and, some years ago, these coincidences were largely insisted upon as cases of genuine survival.[[365]] It is more probable that a return to favorable wilderness conditions merely strengthened those primitive elements still remaining in the manorial system, with which the settlers were familiar in England. As we have already pointed out, the geographical environment in New England, as contrasted with that of the other colonies, tended strongly to develop the type of compact settlement. This was further reinforced by the form of emigration, which was distinctly of neighborhood groups, and by the type of church government.
The exigencies of the situation, when the settlers first landed, had necessitated their dispersal in various communities, whose members at once found it needful to manage their local affairs to some extent by meeting together among themselves. The charter made no provision for any but a general government; nor, under it, did the company have any legal right to incorporate other bodies. These more or less informal local governments were, therefore, extra-legal both before and after the passage of a township act by which it was attempted specifically to give them certain rights of local administration. At the town meetings, which at first were spontaneous, and afterward regulated, all the inhabitants had the right to be present and to take part in the discussion of public affairs, although only the freemen were entitled to vote, except upon a few questions of minor importance. The distinction was somewhat similar to that in the churches, which all could attend, but in the management of which only church members had a voice. The town meeting, therefore, was a completely democratic institution in only one of its aspects, although it came to have great influence upon both political theory and practice.
A further development brought these local communities into working relations with the General Court. Owing to the distance of the scattered settlements from Boston, and the danger of all the freemen being absent at once from their homes, it was enacted, in 1634, that every town should elect two or three deputies, who should have the power of the whole, and who should act as their representatives in the General Court.[[366]] As the charter provided that seven of the eighteen Assistants must be present in the Court in order to constitute a quorum, that body was now composed of a small number of Assistants and a steadily growing number of Deputies. As the Virginia House of Burgesses had been established in 1619, and the Bermuda Assembly in 1620, the representative government provided for in Massachusetts was the third in the colonies.[[367]]
Owing to the close alliance maintained between the clergy and the Magistrates, as the Assistants soon came to be called, the body of deputies grew to be considered the more popular element in the Court. It was clear that real grievances and the democratic influences at work in the town meeting were likely to develop into attacks upon the arbitrary power of the very limited body of freemen. The form that the struggle assumed was that of a contest, lasting twenty years, between the deputies and the magistrates, with the influence of the clergy constantly on the side of the latter. The freemen themselves were, indeed, not all in favor of the arbitrary exercise of power by the small oligarchical group which for so long remained in control. As early as 1631, the people of Watertown, when taxed for fortifying Newtown, declared that “it was not safe to pay moneys after that sort, for fear of bringing themselves and posterity into bondage.”[[368]] Although legally in the right, they accepted Winthrop's interpretation of the charter, which is interesting as showing how completely the unjustified transformation from a company into a commonwealth had already been effected in the minds of the leaders.
Although the people, until well into the eighteenth century, probably had little thought of becoming independent of England, it seems clear from all the acts of the leaders, especially the transfer of the charter itself, that it was their intention, even before leaving England, to govern in as complete independence of that country as future circumstances might permit. They wished, it is true, to found a state for the glory of God and the establishment of true religion, but in which, nevertheless, they themselves should constitute the supreme power. Every encroachment upon it, from any direction, was grudgingly yielded to; and it is not unlikely that, even then, some of them dreamed of an actual political independence. “We are not a free state,” wrote Pyncheon to Winthrop, in 1646, evidently with this in mind; “neither do I think it our wisdom to be a free state; though we had our liberty, we cannot as yet subsist without England.”[[369]]
The political history of Massachusetts under the charter was thus made up of two separate elements. The first was the resistance of the governing group to any effort of England, legal or illegal, to assert her rights, even justly, over her colony; and the second was the struggle of a part of the colonists themselves, for toleration and liberty, against the governing class. Even had the colony never separated from England, we should, in all probability, have come to possess the same measure of civil liberty and religious toleration that the English have to-day; but that separation having taken place, had the Puritan oligarchy retained and extended their power, we should have but little of either. It is, therefore, the second conflict which, although less dramatic, is the more vital in the history of human freedom. We must now turn to consider the earliest important attacks from both of the quarters indicated.
Of those from across the water, the first was launched, as could well have been foreseen, by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and was brought upon the colony directly through the policy pursued by its leaders. The untiring interest of Gorges in the affairs of New England, and his hope of yet creating a profitable settlement there for himself, were both well known to the Puritans. The old knight had spent vastly greater sums in the effort to plant the wilderness than had been contributed by any individual among themselves. He had attempted the colonization of Maine at a time when the men who were now engaged in banishing his agents were hardly more than children.[[370]] He had made no effort to disturb the Pilgrims during their ten-years' stay at Plymouth, and would probably have left the Massachusetts settlers also in peace, had it not been for their denial of the rights he claimed in a part of the soil they had preëmpted, and for their treatment of his emissaries. The Massachusetts authorities, by throwing down the gauntlet, had created a powerful enemy who was not slow in picking it up.
In 1632, Gorges and Mason, with the assistance of Gardiner, Morton, and Ratcliffe, prepared a petition, which was presented to the Privy Council in December.[[371]] Winthrop stated that among many false accusations and “some truths misrepeated,” it accused the colony of separating from the Church of England, and of threatening to cast off its political allegiance.[[372]] Supporters of the company in England hastily put into motion those unseen agencies that were most efficacious in doing business at the court of Charles; and, in spite of what seemed overwhelming odds against them, in courtly influence, won an unexpected victory, even gaining a word of commendation from the King.[[373]] Their success is involved in a mystery, which, however, we suspect might be unlocked by that same “golden key” which the Pilgrims were using contemporaneously at another of the royal doors. Meanwhile, the Council for New England had requested that the Company's charter be presented for examination, and Humphrey had been forced to confess that it was in New England, stating that, though he had often written for it, he had been unable to obtain it.[[374]]