PHILADELPHIA.

But encouraged by the growth of this colony, feeble as it was, the Council of New England proceeded to make lavish grants of their remaining lands, and to send out other bands of emigrants, taking little care to define the boundaries of the new grants, or to avoid ceding to one company or individual the very tract already bestowed upon another. This negligence was the cause of much subsequent dispute and difficulty. A few persons also established themselves at various points along the coast, who had no formal title to any land, but who were afterwards generally admitted to have an imperfect right, founded on occupancy and prescription. Some few fishing settlements were thus established; but their inhabitants had not the disposition to toil, the habits of order and self-denial, or the indomitable perseverance which characterized the Puritans. All their establishments were subsequently absorbed by the Massachusetts colony, which became the chief agent in the settlement of New England.

The persecution of all who would not conform to the Established Church still continuing in England, and king Charles having avowed his purpose to govern without a Parliament, many of the wealthier class of Puritans now determined to emigrate to America. A company was formed at the instigation of Mr. White, a clergyman of Dorchester; among its members were John Humphrey and Isaac Johnson, two brothers-in-law of the Earl of Lincoln, John Winthrop, a gentleman of landed property in Suffolk, Sir Richard Saltonstall, John Endicott, Thomas Dudley, William Coddington, Richard Bellingham, Matthew Cradock, and other merchants and lawyers of wealth and influence in London and some of the northern and midland counties. They obtained from the Council for New England a grant of a tract of land, bounded by two parallel lines running westward to the Pacific Ocean, one drawn three miles north of any part of the Merrimac river, and the other, three miles south of any portion of the Charles. Soon afterwards, their organization was completed by a charter from the Crown, which incorporated them under the title of the ‘Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England,’ with power to admit what new members or freemen they might choose. They were supposed to be a private trading corporation, resident in England, where they were to make laws and regulations for the government of their colony in America. A governor, deputy-governor, and eighteen assistants were to have the management of their affairs; and these officers were to be chosen, and all important laws enacted, at a ‘Great and General Court’ of all the freemen, to be held quarterly. A company of sixty or seventy persons, under John Endicott, were sent out in 1628, who commenced a settlement at Salem; and these were followed, the next year, by six ships, bringing about two hundred colonists, of whom many were indented servants, together with a stock of cattle and other necessaries. It was soon manifest, however, that a colony, to be prosperous, must have the management of its own affairs, without being obliged to wait for orders from a distance. John Winthrop and many other leading stockholders offered to emigrate, if they were allowed to carry the charter and the government along with them. The legality of such a measure was at least doubtful; but the urgency of the case removed all scruple, and the colonists probably hoped that the remoteness of their new home would screen their procedings from public notice. New officers were therefore chosen from those who were disposed to emigrate; and in 1630, a fleet of fifteen ships, equipped at an expense of £20,000, sailed from the Isle of Wight, having on board Winthrop and Dudley as governor and deputy-governor, together with most of the assistants, and a company of about one thousand persons. They began a settlement at Charlestown, but soon removed to the neighboring peninsula of Trimountain, which they named Boston, after the English town whence some of the chief emigrants came. The hardships of the first winter, which was a severe one, caused disease to break out among them, and over two hundred died, among whom were Isaac Johnson, and his wife, Arabella. But after this period, the order and industry which prevailed in the colony, the commencement of trade with Virginia and the Dutch at Manhattan (New York), and the rapid influx of settlers, driven away from England by the religious and political persecution which still raged there, laid the foundations of steady growth and permanent prosperity. During the first ten years after the settlement of Massachusetts, about twenty-five thousand persons left their native land to find a home in New England.

The government of the colony was theocratic in many of its features, modified at first by an aristocratic or patriarchal element, which was soon eliminated, however, by the force of circumstances, that set strongly towards republican institutions. The few men of wealth and consideration, who were the leaders of the emigration, naturally strove to retain the chief power and influence in their own hands, and to govern according to their notions of what religion and the word of God required; and in this attempt they were strongly seconded by the ministers of the churches. At first, the people, with the instinctive respect of Englishmen for rank and station, gave way to them, and conferred the whole power of legislation on the governor and the assistants, who were familiarly known as ‘the magistrates.’

Even a council for life at one time was instituted, but it continued only for a few years, and the freemen also resumed the power of enacting laws. Still, they were moderate in the exercise of their functions; and persons once chosen to the board of magistrates were usually reäppointed, no one being left out but for some extraordinary cause. Purity of faith and worship was the chief motive for establishing the colony. The people wished to be free, not only from persecution, but from the presence of other sects and from theological controversies. Only such persons were to be admitted to be freemen, or voters, as those who were already freemen should designate; and this privilege was soon confined by law to those who were members of the churches. But as there was little difference among them in point of religious opinion, and as most of the adult males, or at least, nearly all the heads of families, were church members, this exclusive privilege created no general discontent. The magistrates exercised their large powers resolutely to keep out heretics and schismatics, and to maintain religious worship and practice in all their purity. Those who did not agree with them were required to go elsewhere, and establish a colony for themselves. Roger Williams, and some followers of Mrs. Hutchinson, did so, and founded a new settlement in Rhode Island. Others took refuge in New Hampshire; but Massachusetts claimed the land there as a part of her own territory, and from 1640 to 1680, the claim was made good. A few Quakers gave great annoyance by their fanatical and outrageous conduct; they were once and again dismissed, with threats in case they returned. They did come again, and then three of them were hanged. The magistrates, on this occasion, published a defense of their conduct, dwelling especially on the case of Mary Dyre, who was a third comer, and had been once reprieved when already on the gallows, as a proof they desired, not the death, but the absence, of the Quakers. Some adherents of the Church of England, who had come out without invitation to join them, were summarily sent back to the mother country. Two hundred years ago, the principles of religious toleration were but little understood; yet as the Company owned the territory, and had emigrated for the avowed purpose of forming a religious community by themselves, it is perhaps harsh in us to charge them with intolerance. They had a right to expel intruders.

Of course, great severity of manners and punctiliousness of religious observances were enjoined. Various sumptuary laws were enacted; the Sabbath was observed with Jewish strictness; blasphemy, witchcraft, and adultery, were punished with death; slanderers were whipt, cropped, and banished. But except in these particulars, and a few others of no great importance, the Mosaic law was not established in the colony. The people had good sense enough to see that it was not adapted to the circumstances and the times. No restriction was imposed upon them except that contained in the Charter, that no laws should be made repugnant to the laws of England; and this was construed, very liberally, to mean that no part of the English law was in force there till it was expressly reenacted. At first the magistrates governed without any other rule than their own sense of right and their interpretation of the law of God. But the people becoming jealous of so large a discretion, a code, or ‘Body of Liberties,’ was established in 1641, consisting of one hundred articles, drawn up with singular brevity and clearness, embracing many of the best and most liberal provisions of the English Common Law, and, in some respects, in advance both of English and American law of the present day. This code became the basis of legislation, not only in Massachusetts, but throughout New England, the other colonies adopting many of its most important provisions. In one important respect, the Mosaic rule was followed in preference to the English law; the estates of persons dying without a will were divided equally among the children, except that the eldest son received a double share. This law, favoring the distribution rather than the aggregation of property, made the establishment of a territorial aristocracy impossible, kept up the idea of equality among the people, and tended strongly to the development of republican sentiments.

Another circumstance, which silently fostered the democratic spirit of the people, was the great extent of their territory in comparison with their numbers, and the disposition that has characterized them from that day to this, to spread themselves over the face of the country, instead of remaining together on one spot. When as yet they were only a few hundred in number, instead of seeking protection against the savages and other perils of the wilderness by union and concentration, they colonized a dozen or twenty distinct townships, the extremes of which were some thirty miles apart. Eight townships were represented in a General Court held only two years after Winthrop landed; and before the colony was ten years old, or contained in all more than 15,000 settlers, at least twenty distinct settlements were formed. But the most remarkable instance of this tendency to segregation took place as early as 1634, when Mr. Hooker and his whole church at Newtown petitioned for leave to remove to Connecticut, the avowed reason for this step being the want of pasturage for their cattle; and ‘it was alleged by Mr. Hooker as a fundamental error, that the towns were set so near to each other.’ The settlements being thus scattered, and the colony as a whole being imperfectly organized, each town was obliged from the first to direct its own expenditures and manage its own affairs. The inhabitants held town-meetings, levied taxes to provide for their common wants, chose executive officers, afterwards termed ‘selectmen,’ and in fact created a little republic nearly complete in organization. It is now generally admitted, that the tone of American politics and the general character of American institutions have been more controlled by the influences of the township-system of New England than by all other causes united.

In the main, also, there was great equality among the colonists in point of fortune and social position. Many English gentlemen and wealthy merchants, as we have seen, favored the emigration, and some embarked in it. But the happy and the powerful do not often go into exile, and the perils and hardships of a home in the wilderness prevented many persons of wealth from joining in the enterprise, and caused others to leave it after a brief sojourn in New England. Humphrey, Saltonstall, Vane and Vassal returned to their native land after a short stay, and the Johnsons died. The great bulk of the colonists were middling and lower classes of English society; very few were wealthy, nearly all were dependent on the labor of their hands. Equality of social claims was the natural basis of equality of political rights. There was a germ of republicanism in the colony from the outset,—​a natural tendency towards universal eligibility and universal suffrage.

The first care of the settlers of Massachusetts was to provide for universal education and worship. The several townships that were organized were so many distinct churches, which admitted their own members, chose their own pastors, and managed their own affairs. Each town, either by levying a tax or by voluntary contributions, provided buildings for public worship and salaries for their ministers. When Boston was but six years old, the General Court passed an order, appropriating a sum, equal to the amount raised by a year’s taxation to defray all the public expenditures of the colony, for the establishment of a college at Newtown; and two years afterwards, John Harvard, a clergyman of Charlestown, bequeathing half of his estate for the same object, Harvard College was founded. Free schools were established in several of the towns; and in 1649, a general system of popular education was established throughout the colony, each township being required to maintain a free school for reading and writing, and every town of a hundred householders a grammar school, ‘to fit youths for the university.’ The preamble of this law declares that the motive for passing it was to provide ‘that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers,’—​‘it being one chief project of that old deluder, Sathan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures; as in former times keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading men from the use of tongues.’ The grim Puritan of those days believed his child’s soul would be in danger if he were not enabled to read the Bible for himself; and thus care for general education naturally grew out of care for the interests of religion. As the democratic spirit spread among the people, they reclaimed the legislative authority for themselves; and a body of representatives, consisting of two or three delegates from each town, were united with ‘the magistrate’ for the purpose of enacting laws. At first, the representatives sat and voted in the same chamber with the assistants; but in 1644, a division was made, and the two classes afterwards formed separate houses of legislation.