The town was in New England the political unit. The town-meeting was a primary assembly, at which were transacted all local affairs,—those which came nearest to the individual. The colonial government dealt with general interests; the colonial machinery of administration might break down, and yet the immediate needs of the people would have been for a time subserved by the town governments. This was the case at the beginning of the Revolution. But the indispensable function of legislation upon property and contracts, the definition of crimes, and all the judicial affairs of the people, were from the first carried out by the colony. In the town-meetings—and in church congregations, which were for a long period scarcely distinguishable from them—the people were trained in self-government; their intellects were sharpened, and there was bred a stout spirit of political self-sufficiency. By the beginning of the eighteenth century a freehold test for suffrage was common in New England, as in most of the American colonies. Taxes raised on land, polls, and personal property were not onerous, as public expenditures were carefully watched and criticised by a frugal people. The introduction of royal governors opened the door to bickerings between the executive and the legislature,—so prominent a feature in eighteenth-century colonial history prior to the Revolution. Up to 1700, with a few exceptions, the political machinery had run quite smoothly, when not subjected to outside interference. The several colonial governments in New England varied in detail, but they were alike in being largely independent of England, in being administered in a spirit of simplicity and economy, and in the extent to which the body of the people were enabled to influence the conduct of affairs.
Summary.
New England men were brave and liberty-loving, stoutly withstanding any attempt on the part of the home government to curtail their rights as Englishmen or hamper their progress. They were not always successful in their resistance, but were vastly more independent than their French and Spanish neighbors; and the principles of popular government were nowhere else, even in the English colonies, so successfully put in practice. They were hard-working, frugal, God-fearing, educated, and virtuous men. They sprang from a high quality of pure English stock, and they had raised indeed "choice grain." They founded an enduring empire amid obstacles that two and a half centuries ago might well have seemed appalling. The creed of the Puritans was harsh, their view of life gloomy, and their church intolerant; but their mission, as they conceived it, was a serious one, and the stormy experience of Rhode Island was not calculated elsewhere to encourage looseness in religious thinking. They were enterprising and thrifty to a high degree. In commerce, domestic trade, manufactures, and political sagacity, for nearly two centuries New England easily led all the American colonies. The nation owes much to the wisdom, the energy, and the fortitude of New England colonial statesmen; and New England institutions are to-day in large measure characteristics of the American commonwealth.
CHAPTER IX.
THE COLONIZATION OF THE MIDDLE COLONIES (1609-1700).
Bibliographies.—Larned, Literature of American History, 92-100; Andrews, Colonial Self-Government, ch. xx.; Avery, II. 417-421, 438-444, III. 413-418, 430-432, 443-445; Winsor, III. 411-420, 449-456, 495-516, IV. 409-442, 488-502; Channing and Hart, Guide, §§ 104-108.
Historical Maps.—Nos. 1, 2, and 3, this volume (Epoch Maps, Nos. [1], [2], [3]); Winsor, as above.
General Accounts.—Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies; Doyle, Colonies, IV.; Lodge, Colonies, chs. ix.-xvi.; Channing, United States, I. chs. xvi., xvii., II. chs. ii., iv., v., vii.; Avery, II. chs. iv., xi., xii., III. chs. iv.-vi., xv., xvii., xviii., xxvi.; Andrews, as above, chs. v.-viii., xi., xii.; Winsor, III. chs. x.-xii., IV. chs. viii., ix.