The constant challenge of the political necessities of the times, it may be urged, was altogether too compelling to admit of any such looseness. Still, one cannot scan the newspapers of the period, or read the story of the social commerce of the times as it pieces itself together out of the private records and correspondence of the day, or listen even to the pulpit’s copious flood of denunciations,[44] without a feeling of mingled admiration and astonishment that in an age everywhere characterized by upheaval and ferment there was really as little of shameless and wanton conduct in New England as the records of the period reveal. It cannot but be viewed as a notable tribute to the essential soundness and nobility of that type of moral and religious culture which Puritanism had supplied from the first that the New England character should be able to pass through a period of profound social readjustment, of the discarding of old value judgments and the adoption of new, such as came near the close of the eighteenth century, and this without serious loss of moral power and prestige. Manifestly, whatever hollowness and insincerity Puritanism may have developed in other lands and times, it did not so cramp and fetter the human spirit in New England as to render it incapable of self-guidance when the old restraints and limitations were no more.[45]
Now that its controlling spirit of gravity and provincialism was being replaced by a general temper of comparative light-heartedness and open-mindedness, of unaffected enjoyment of the good things of life, of the acceptance of standards far more natural than those of the earlier day, the transition was accomplished with a relative absence of accompanying instances of moral lapse and disaster nothing less than remarkable. A considerable amount of the boisterousness and heat of the day over which clerical Jeremiahs and others of like conservative leanings ceased not to pour out their complaints,[46] is explicable on the ground of the growing habit of the mass of the people to exercise the rights of citizenship through direct participation in the affairs of the day. For far more significant than any evidence of moral blindness and perversity on the part of the people in general is the fact that a great, crowding, hungry democracy was knocking at the gates of the old aristocratic régime and insistently urging the consideration of its rights.
2. OMINOUS DISCONTENT WITH THE STANDING ORDER
The general impression of a revolt against morality and religion in New England near the close of the eighteenth century was deepened by the bitterness of spirit which marked the last stages of the long struggle waged by dissenters to cut the bond between church and state.[47] The Congregational Church was one of the fundamental institutions of New England, and from the first the sword of the magistrate had been invoked to enforce conformity to its worship and polity. Strange enough seem the terms “Establishment” and “Standing Order”[48] in the history of a people whose forefathers came to America in quest of religious freedom. The freedom sought, however, was to be construed as loyalty to a new order rather than as the embodiment of tolerance. Thus it happened that for two whole centuries the battle on behalf of the rights of dissent had to be waged in New England.[49] To have this struggle construed by the aggrieved representatives of the Establishment as the crowning expression of what they had come to regard as the deep-seated and widespread irreligion of the age, was not the least of the bitter taunts which dissenters had to bear.
(a) Massachusetts
In Massachusetts the eighteenth century dawned with some faint promise of a kindlier day. The Charter of 1691 granted full liberty of conscience to all Christians except Roman Catholics.[50] The practical effects of this apparently sweeping reform were largely nullified, however, when in the following year the General Court made it obligatory for each town to have a minister for whose support all its inhabitants should be taxed.[51] With the removal of all bonds upon conscience and of all religious restrictions upon the right of suffrage on the one hand, but with the principle of enforced support of the institutions of religion on the other, the hallowed union of church and state in Massachusetts obviously stood in no immediate danger. The slight modifications speedily made in the law of 1692 did not touch the principle of taxation in the interests of religious worship.[52]
A measure of relief came to the Episcopalians in 1727,[53] and to the Quakers and Baptists in 1728,[54] in the form of exemption laws. In the case of the Baptists the exemption granted was not absolute, but only for a limited period of years. With the expiration of this period the struggle for relief of necessity had to be renewed.[55] The rights of dissent had begun to receive some recognition, but the limitations embodied in the foregoing legislation bore convincing testimony of a grudging temper of mind which would yield no ground without strong pressure.
The spirit of excitement and controversy which characterized the revival of religion of the third and fourth decades of the eighteenth century (i. e., the Great Awakening) led to new complications and difficulties. Stirred by the revival, itinerant preachers, some of them of little learning and of less tact, invaded parishes of their clerical brethren without their consent, and presumed to censure the ministers and congregations that had not yielded to the emotional impulses of the revival.[56] A clash of parties followed, producing new antipathies and cleavages. Many who were in sympathy with the revival withdrew from orthodox congregations to organize new churches, nominally Baptist, with a view to obtaining exemption from the obligation to support the state church. To meet this evasion in 1752 the General Court of Massachusetts passed an act which provided
That no person for the future shall be so esteemed an A(n)nabaptist as to have his poll or polls and estate exempted from paying a proportionable part of the taxes that shall be raised in the town or place where he or they belong, but such whose names shall be contained in the lists taken by the assessors, as in said act provided, or such as shall produce a certificate, under the hands of the minister and of two principal members of such church, setting forth that they conscientiously believe such person or persons to be of their perswasion, and that he or they usually and frequently attend the publick worship in such church on Lord’s days.[57]