§ 68] EARLY HARDSHIPS 61 indifferent good, but our pease not worth the gathering.' [Winslow explains this failure of the European seed by the colonists' ignorance of the seasons in America.] In the first year, then, the settlers had built only eleven rude cabins and had brought only 26 acres of land into cultivation. Winslow was writing to a friend in England who expected soon to join the colony. The following advice in the same letter suggests forcefully some features of life in the new settlement: "Bring every man a musket. Let it be long in the barrel, and fear not the weight of it; for most of our shooting is from stands [rests]. If you bring anything for comfort [that is, anything more than bare necessaries], butter or sallet oil [is] very good. . . . Bring paper and linseed oile for your windows, and cotton yarn for your lamps [for wicks]." 68. For long the governor's most important duty was to direct the work in the fields-where he toiled, too, with his own hands, along with all the men and the larger boys. But even among these "sober and godly men "the system of industry in common proved a hindrance: "For this communitie was found to breed much confusion and discontente, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte. For the yung-men, that were most able and fitte, . . . did repine that they should spend their time and strength to worke for other mens wives and children. . . . The aged and graver men, to be ranked and equalised in labours and victuals, cloaths, etc., with the younger and meaner sorte, thought it some indignitie and disrespect unto them. And for mens wives to be commanded to doe service for other' men, as dressing their meate, washing their cloaths, etc., they deemed it a kind of slaverie; neither could many husbands well brooke it." In the third year, famine seemed imminent. Then Governor Bradford, with the approval of the chief men of the colony, set aside the agreement with the London partners in this matter of common industry, and assigned to each family a parcel of land ("for the time only"). "This," says Bradford, "had very good success," 1 This arrangement for individual labor and property applied only to the agricultural produce. Such trade and fishery as were carried on remained "for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corne was planted then other waise would have been, by any means the Governour or any other could use. . . . The women now wente willingly into the field, and tooke their litle-ons with them to set corne, which before would aledge weakness . . . whom to have compelled would have bene thought great tiranie." For other reasons, too, the danger of failure passed away. The Pilgrims were learning to use the opportunities about them. In 1627, when the partnership was to have expired, little had been done, it is true, toward repaying the London merchants. But the beginning of a promising fur trade had been secured; and Bradford, with seven other leading men, offered to assume the English debt if they might have control of this trade to raise the money. This arrangement was accepted by all parties. It took Bradford fourteen years more to pay the merchants. But meantime the merchants at once surrendered their claim upon the colony; and the lands, houses, and cattle were promptly divided among the settlers for private property. 69. The political development of Plymouth may be summed up under four heads: (The executive.) Governor Carver died during the first spring. The next governor, William Bradford, was reëlected year after year until his death, in 1657, except for five years when he absolutely refused to serve. Governor and several "Assistants," to advise and aid him, were chosen anew each spring. Much was left to the discretion of the governor; but the Assembly could check him at any time. The Assembly was the essential part of the government. For many years it was, in form, merely a town meeting,a mass meeting of the voters of one small village. Soon after 1630, other settlements grew up in the colony, but even then the Assembly continued for a time to be a meeting of all male citizens, held in the oldest town. However, this clumsy and un under common management; and even these parcels of land did not at this time become private property. Only their temporary use was given. §70] DEMOCRACY 63 fair system could not last among Englishmen. In 1636 the three chief towns sent representatives to sit with the governor and assistants to revise and codify the laws. The same device was used the next year in assessing taxes among the towns.. And in 1639 it was decided that thereafter the Assembly should be made up of such representatives, with the governor and assistants. There was never a division into two "Houses." (Local government.) As other villages grew up about the original settlement at Plymouth town, their constables and other necessary officers were at first appointed by the central Assembly. But, soon after the central government became representative, the various settlements became "towns" in a political sense, with town meetings, and their own elected officers, after a method introduced just before in Massachusetts Bay (§ 92). (Franchise.) The first voters were the forty-one1 signers of the Mayflower Compact. They made up the original Assembly. Thereafter, the Assembly admitted to citizenship as it saw fit. For a time it gave the franchise to nearly all men who came to the colony. But in 1660 a law required that new voters must have a specified amount of property; and after 1671, the franchise was restricted further to those who could present "satisfactory" proof that they were "sober and peaceable" in conduct and " orthodox in the fundamentals of religion." In practice, this limited the franchise to church members. 70. Political democracy at Plymouth was an outgrowth of economic and social democracy. There were no materials for anything else but democracy. No one was rich, even by colo 1 Out of sixty-six adult males. Of the twenty-five who did not sign (over a third of all), some were regarded as represented by fathers who did sign, and eleven were servants or temporary employees; but the absence of other names can be explained only on the ground that certain men did not wish to sign or that they were not asked to do so. 2 Robinson, in a farewell letter (Pastor Robinson remained with the main congregation at Leyden) regards it a misfortune that the Pilgrims "are not furnished with any persons of spetiall eminencie above the rest, to be chosen into offices of governmente." Had such persons been present, public feeling, nial standards; and, more than in any other important colony, all the settlers came from the "plain people." Hardly any of them would have ranked as "gentlemen" in England. Brad ford, there, would have remained a poor yeoman, and John Alden a cooper. But, in even greater degree, democracy in politics. at Plymouth resulted from democracy in the church,and this ecclesiastical democracy was essential to the Pilgrim ideal. Plymouth was, first, a religious society; then, an economic enterprise; and, last, and incidentally, a political commonwealth. 71. Plymouth never secured a royal charter, and its government remained upon the basis of the Mayflower Compact until King William III annexed the colony to Massachusetts in This was one of four such missions to Nor did the early settlers have legal title to their land. In 1630, however, the proprietary New England Council granted the territory to Bradford as trustee for the colony. Bradford kept the grant until he and his seven associates had paid off the huge debt they had assumed even in Plymouth, would probably have made them an aristocracy of office. Democracy at that time rarely went farther than to suggest that common men ought to have a voice in selecting their rulers. The actual ruling was to be left in the hands of those selected from the upper classes. § 721 PLACE IN HISTORY 65 for the colony (§ 68). Then, in 1641, with solemn ceremony, he surrendered his rights to the whole body of settlers. The colony then gave legal titles to the assignments of land it had made. 72. The colony grew slowly, counting less than three hundred people in 1630,1 when the great Puritan migration to Massachusetts Bay began. The Puritan colonies, then established, grew much faster and taught more important lessons in politics and economics. Plymouth had little direct influence, in either of these ways, upon later American history. It did have a large part in directing the later Puritan colonies toward church independency; but its supreme service, after all, lay in pointing the way for that later and greater migration. This the Pilgrims did; and with right their friends wrote them later, when the little colony was already overshadowed by its neighbors,"Let it not be grievous to you that you have been but instruments to break the ice for others: the honor shall be yours till the world's end." FOR FURTHER Reading. -Bradford's Plymouth Plantation will be enjoyed by many high school students as far as to page 200. (The latter part of the work is taken up largely with details of financial arrangements with the London partners, and is difficult reading.) Excellent secondary accounts are given by Tyler (England in America, 149–182) and by Channing (I, 293-321). Perhaps the most dramatic portraiture of the leaders is found in Eggleston's Beginners of a Nation. Jane G. Austin's stories, especially Standish of Standish, are worthy of mention. EXERCISE.-1. Trace the title of a piece of property purchased in 1642 from John Alden and never held previously by any other private owner. 2. Distinguish between Plymouth town, Plymouth colony, and the Plymouth Council. 3. Examine the Source Book on Plymouth for information not given in this volume, and report. 4. Explain two meanings of "New England." 5. Compare the maps on pages 29 and 51, and note that on page 56 "Virginia" is used in its original meaning as in the map on page 25. 1 EXERCISE. Find authority for these figures in one of the Plymouth documents in the Source Book. Study No. 50 in the Source Book for illustrations of democratic progress. |