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Haven attracted from Massachusetts some of her most honored men. To the new-comers who presently proceeded to establish the youngest Colony, Massachusetts stood in no relations which authorized her to do more than endeavor to prevail upon them to cast their lot with her.1 With the emigrants to Connecticut Riverassociates whom it was grievous to her to lose she felt justified in being more importunate. In having assumed her citizenship they seemed even to have conferred on her an indefeasible title to their allegiance. In the state of mind which the circumstances of the time had brought about, she was inclined to maintain that a virtual engagement had been entered into by her freemen to stand together for the common cause, so that none of them could, at pleasure, by withdrawing himself, withdraw a portion of the power which was the safeguard of all. Her churches also sought to be cheered and guided by that mutual illumination which would be dimmed by distance; and "the removal of a candlestick" was regarded as "a great judgment." 2

But the desire for another residence was too earnest to be overcome, and Connecticut and New Haven took their independent positions. Upon her precursors at Plymouth, Massachusetts had no claim for a political union; and the cordial good understanding which, from the first, existed between the two oldest Colonies, was found to yield all, or most, of the benefits which would have resulted from an arrangement of that nature. The isolation of the settlements at Providence and on Rhode Island was not without its advantages to the other Colonies. In the road to Narragansett Bay a permanent safety-valve was opened for the escape of uneasy spirits, whose presence would have troubled their order and thwarted their aims.

1 See Vol. I. 529.

* Ibid., 447.

For a time, in the new flush of freedom, there appeared a growing propensity to scatter the strength which needed concentration in order to its greatest ef fectiveness. Not only were separate settlements formed to the north and east of Massachusetts by persons not in sympathy with the sentiments of her people, but independent communities of Puritans were founded in the neighborhood of New Haven and of the associated towns on the Connecticut.1 The latter part, however, of the period which has been surveyed, had witnessed a reversal of this tendency. The young communities were becoming consolidated. What there was of New Hampshire was merged in Massachusetts.2 Though the little settlements further east- chiefly of West-of-England fishermen were mostly inclined at the same time to a wild state of society and to the cause of Church and King, one of them had yielded itself to the government of the leading Puritan colony, and others had solicited her patronage. And the "Jurisdiction" of New Haven had been formed by a junction of distinct plantations, which, through a sufficient experiment of isolation, had become satisfied that the objects of all essentially the same, as they were could be best attained by joint counsels and united strength. Finally, the four principal Colonies, each previously compacted in its own way, had combined together, for mutual protection, in a league which, in important respects, constituted them a single body politic.

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The Confederacy entered upon its career with favorable prospects. It embraced a population which had probably grown to about twenty-four thousand Population

souls; of which number fifteen thousand may and pros5 be assigned to Massachusetts, three thousand

1 Ibid., 534, 604.

2 Ibid., 593.

* Ibid., 593, 595.

* Ibid., 602.

perity.

That is, the 21,200 reckoned by Johnson as the total immigration (see

each to Connecticut and Plymouth, and twenty-five hundred to New Haven.1 The recent course of political events abroad made it probable that the colonists would not soon be annoyed by a repetition of those plots of enemies in the parent country which hitherto had been foiled; and the savages in their neighborhood they had partly intimidated, and partly won to friendship. Severally they had established governments and tribunals, which were, on the whole, in successful operation. They had organized and trained a military force proportioned to their means. They had founded an ample number of churches after the order which they approved, and had supplied the pulpits with pious and learned ministers. They had taken measures "to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity." They had attached themselves to the soil by acquiring freeholds and making homes. And they had fallen into methods of industry, which promised to themselves and their descendants a sufficiency of the means of living.2

Vol. I. 584, note 4), with their increase down to 1643, minus those who had returned to England, or gone to Narragansett Bay.

1 The number of males in Plymouth of the military age, in August, 1643, was 627. (Plym. Rec., VIII. 187197.) According to the usual reckoning, this represents a population of 3,135. But, considering how recent was the immigration, I think the number of men in middle life may have somewhat exceeded the common proportion, and I therefore rate the population of Plymouth at 3,000. Now, by the fourth Article of Confederation, the quota of troops to be furnished by each Colony was to be in proportion to the number of its males of military age. The fifth Article made a provisional arrangement, to be in force only till a census should be taken. It was taken without delay. (Mass. Rec., II. 37,

38, 41.) Its results (unfortunately unknown to us, except in the case of Plymouth) were in the hands of the Commissioners when they met in September, 1643; and, thus instructed, they apportioned to Massachusetts a levy of 150 men; to Plymouth, of 30; to Connecticut, of 30; and to New Haven, of 25. (Hazard, II. 10; comp. 109.) From these elements, by very simple arithmetic, I derive the statement in the text.

"Having planted fifty towns and villages, built thirty or forty churches, and more ministers' houses, a castle, a college, prisons, forts, cartways, causeys many, and all these upon our own charges, no public hand reaching out any help, having comfortable houses, gardens, orchards, grounds fenced, corn-fields, &c." (New England's First Fruits, &c., London, 1643.)

The governments of the several Colonies were framed on the same general model. No one of them had definite reference to any superior authority in England. Self-govern

In all of them the freemen were the fountain of ment. power. This popular feature of their constitutions, if it had not been their choice, would have been a necessity of their circumstances. When forty men, in their solitude at Plymouth, saw occasion for engaging the power of the whole to take care of the well-being of each, that end was obviously to be attained only by a concert of the whole or of the larger number, in other words, by the rule of a majority; for no one or more of the party that had come over possessed hereditary or delegated authority to govern the rest. The organization of the second Colony was made under its charter, which gave to the freemen power to elect their officers and establish rules for their government, and placed them under no other control. When Connecticut and New Haven came to be founded, it was on principles of administration unlike in some considerable particulars. They diverged somewhat from Massachusetts in directions opposite to each other. But neither of those communities possessed materials for the erection of any other than a popular polity; nor, in their position, or in their ways of thought, did their people find any motive for a wide deviation from the pattern of those societies of their friends which they saw so auspiciously established.

1 To this remark it may be thought that an exception should be made for Plymouth. (See Vol. I. 546.) But it was of no practical account.

* But in Massachusetts others might make and debate motions in the public meetings. "Every man, whether inhabitant or foreigner, free or not free, shall have liberty to come to any court, council, or town-meeting, and either by speech or writing to move any law

ful, seasonable, and material question, or to present any necessary motion, complaint, petition, bill, or information," &c. (Body of Liberties, in Mass. Hist. Coll., XXVIII. 218.) And in Connecticut, non-freemen were admitted to vote in the choice of Deputies from towns, and in nominating candidates for the franchise to the General Court. (Conn. Rec., I. 23, 96.)

Conditions of

In no one of the Colonies was suffrage universal; such an extension of political power would not have been in accordance with existing opinions respecting the franchise. conditions of public safety. In all alike, from the time when a beginning had been made, admission to the franchise was obtained through a vote of those who were already in possession of it. In Massachusetts and in New Haven, the discretion of the freemen as to the admission of new associates was limited by a standing rule of exclusion for all but such as had been received into full communion with some church. This provision gave the government to a minority of the male inhabitants,1 placing the larger number of men of ripe age in the position of mere wards of the commonwealth, as truly as women and minors occupy that position at the present day. There was no such restriction in Plymouth or in Connecticut. In those Colonies, the franchise was conferred on inhabitants of the respective towns by the votes, or on the recommendation, of such as were already freemen or residents therein.2 But it may reasonably be believed that church-membership, or, to speak more precisely, a religious character in the candidate, such as naturally led to church-membership, and was commonly found in union with it, was also in Plymouth and Connecticut much regarded by the electors as a qualification of candidates for citizenship. In these

1 "Three parts of the people of the country remain out of the church." This was Lechford's estimate in 1640. (Plaine Dealing, 73; comp. 17.) In 1643, in Plymouth, only about 230 persons had acquired the franchise. (Plym. Rec., VIII. 173-177.) Down to the month of the confederation only 1,708 had been invested with citizenship in Massachusetts. (Mass. Rec., I. 366-379, II. 291, 293.) · Cotton wrote to Lord Say and Sele that no

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church-members were "excluded from the liberty of freemen." (Hutch. Hist., I. 435.) But some church-members did not claim that liberty. (Mass. Rec., II. 38.) They shrank from the vexations of office, which the possession of the franchise might inflict. (Ibid., 208.)

2 Brigham, Compact, with the Charter and Laws, of the Colony of New Plymouth, 100, 170.- Conn. Rec., L 21, 23, 96.

In the "General Laws" of Ply

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