ORIGIN OF DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS

IN NEW ENGLAND.

BY EDWARD H. ELWELL.

Read before the Maine Historical Society, May 4, 1893.

ALL history proves that governmental institutions among men are not made but grow out of the conditions and necessities of their surroundings. As the patriarchal form of government grew out of the family relations, so monarchial institutions sprung from the necessity of leadership, and the feudal system of the middle ages met the need of the times. Systems fall and rise as conditions change and can never be made to order.

Nowhere has this fact been more clearly demonstrated than in the growth of democratic institutions in New England. They were not purposely planted here. The Pilgrim forefathers did not knowingly bring them, nor did the colonists of Massachusetts Bay purposely establish them. They sprung out of the soil in the favoring conditions under which it was comprised. They became a necessity of the times, not always willingly recognized.

Neither the Pilgrims nor the Puritans came here with cut-and-dried political institutions. The governmental systems of the old world could not be transplanted to the new. The field was too large and uncontrolled. All such systems, when attempted

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here, failed to establish themselves. The plans of John Locke in North Carolina, and of Ferdinando Gorges in Maine, with their church establishments, their orders of nobility, their feudal tenure of land, gained no foothold here.

The great object of the Plymouth and Massachusetts colonists was to establish their own form of church government and discipline in a place where they could live under them unmolested. In the articles of confederation of all the New England colonies, in 1643, they declared that they came to this country "to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to enjoy the liberties of the gospel in purity with peace." Forms of civil government were a secondary consideration with them.

It is true that both the Pilgrims and the Puritans brought with them certain principles out of which democratic institutions naturally sprung. The conditions were favorable, for there were here no rigid customs to be overcome, no foregone conclusions to impede a progress to future freedom, sure if slow. We shall see how the better men of Plymouth, on board the Mayflower, were constrained, unwillingly, to grant civil rights to their servants; we shall see how the people (the church-members) in Massachusetts came to take and keep powers which even Winthrop, one of the most liberal of the magistrates, believed to be most dangerous; and how the people who were not church-members took the power which had been usurped by the members alone, and exercised it in common with them; how

in short, Massachusetts became a democracy, a thing of which the Rev. John Cotton, the leading mind at one time in the Bay, said: "I do not conceive that ever God did ordain it as a fit government, either for church or commonwealth, for if the people be governors, who shall be governed?" It did not occur to him that the people might govern themselves. We shall see how this democracy, in spite of the opposition of the leaders, grew up gradually, under the force of circumstances, the pressure of necessity expressed by popular demand, questions being met as they arose, and decided by the conditions which brought them about.

Though more liberal in their views than the Puritans of Massachussets Bay, the Pilgrims of Plymouth did not intend a democracy. They had no faith in it. They came hither without a charter, and no one or more of the party possessed hereditary or delegated authority to govern the rest. They thought little of government until, as they neared their destination, they heard the mutterings of some of the smaller grains of this "choice seed." Some of the more ignorant sort said, "It is all very well; but when we get ashore, there is plenty of room and one will be as good as another; and if we have no voice in ordering matters, we can step out into the woods and order things to suit ourselves." The leaders said this will never do, and being men of sense as well as justice, they said that to deny these men- though they were "servants"— a voice in directing their own common affairs would not only be unjust, but unwise. They

foresaw the evils and dangers of division, hence they drew up the compact which bound them all together into "a civil body politic, for their better ordering and preservation," and "by virtue thereof to enact, constitute and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought meet and convenient for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience." Each man was asked to sign this instrument, and by that act he bound himself to submit to orderly government, while on the other hand he was admitted to an

equal share in it. This was beginning de novo. They were all at sea in more senses than one. They had separated themselves from civil as well as ecclesiastical authority; they of necessity fell back on the primitive rights of the individual. "This," says an historian, "was the birth of popular constitutional liberty. Thus were organized the rights of man. Each man master and servant thenceforward was recognized as a man; felt the responsibility of a man, and voted as a man; his voice counted as one." But the Pilgrims did not take this long look ahead. They were providing only for their own safety in the establishment of order among themselves. They had no power to control the inferior class without their consent. Necessity forced the superior class to concede what may have well seemed then an unwise admission. But men build better than they know. The men of birth and education among the Pilgrims, while forced to concede civil

equality, strictly maintained the social distinctions to which they had been accustomed. "Mr." and "Goodman" were titles rigidly adhered to.

Plymouth was originally intended as a trading-post. The purpose was to establish a factory rather than a colony. The form which government took under the compact was at first paternal rather than representative. The governor was chosen annually by general suffrage and ruled as the father of his people. It was not until 1624 that he was given a council of five to assist in the government. The towns which sprang up had no act of incorporation, no selectmen until 1662, nearly half a century after the settlement at Plymouth. All business, local as well as general, was transacted at the general court at which all citizens were expected to attend. But in process of time the people complained of the hardship of personal attendance upon every session without pay, and in 1638 it “was enacted that Plymouth should make choice of four, and every other town of two, of their freemen, to join with the court, to enact all such laws and ordinances as should be adjudged to be good and wholesome for the whole, provided, that the laws they do enact shall be propounded at one court, to be considered and confirmed at the next court." This latter was a cautious provision, characteristic of the legislation of both colonies. It was instigated by the fear of the leaders that the populace might go too fast and too far. The magistrates of Massachusetts, in particular, hadthe gift of procrastination in an

traordinary degree. What they could not assent