“And then we’ll raise, on these wild shores,
A structure of wise government, and show
In our New World a glorious spectacle
Of social order.”
Mrs. Hale’s Ormond Grosvenor.
The fundamental law of the colonies of Massachusetts Bay was the charter, which bore the crown seal. The old parchment contained a permit and a fiat. It gave the corporation the right to enlarge or decrease its numbers at its option, and to establish the terms on which new members should be admitted to its franchises. It decreed that the governor and his assistants should be elected by the suffrages of the Company at large. Every freeman, as the members of the corporation were called, was entitled to vote.[713]
On the 3d of August, 1630, at Charlestown, Winthrop convened his assistants, and held the first court under the transferred charter.[714] It was the earliest baby-cry of the provincial government. Administrative functions were at once assumed. Measures were initiated which looked to the support of ministers; the question of wages was adjusted; and an order was issued for the arrest of Thomas Morton,[715] who, through the carelessness of Allerton, the Plymouth agent, had returned to New England, and once more “hied to his old nest” at Merry-mount, only to renew his godless pranks.[716]
“Such was the first colonial legislation, and such the first legislative body. No heralds, no wigs, no cannon, no gilding, were necessary to impose upon the senses or give majesty and authority to law.”
Two months later,[717] a general assembly of the freemen of the colony was convened at Boston.[718] In the Assembly the charter vested the fundamental legislative authority.[719] It was the colonial Parliament. At this session more than a hundred planters were admitted to the franchises of the corporation;[720] and since this accession increased the preëxisting inconvenience of gathering the whole Company for purposes of legislation, the freemen ceded to the governor and his assistants the whole political power, reserving only the right to supply vacancies.[721] The tenure of office was unlimited;[722] perhaps it was tacitly understood to be, as in the old English law, “during good behavior”—quamdiu se bene gesserint. For a season the government was an elective aristocracy. It was oligarchical, like that of Venice.
This endured but little more than a twelvemonth. In May, 1631, the freemen met again, “after corn was set,” and revoked a part of the authority of which they had been too lavish. The government was curbed by a reservation to the commons of the right to make such annual changes as the majority should desire.[723]