Men") with vague authority to manage town affairs between the town meetings.

105. These governments by town meeting and selectmen grew up out of the needs of the people, and out of their desire to manage their own affairs. Soon the General Court gave legal sanction to the system. After that, in theory, the towns possessed only such authority as the central government of the commonwealth delegated to them. The central legislature gave the town its territory and its name, and required it to maintain trainband, school, roads, and certain police arrangements, and it sometimes imposed fines when a town failed in any of these things to come up to the standard set by law.

106. In actual practice, however, great independence was left the town. The town meeting appointed all local officers, -not merely selectmen and clerk, but school trustees, hog reeve, fence viewer, constable, treasurer, pound keeper, sealer of weights and measures, measurer of corn and lumber, overseer of chimneys, overseer of the village almshouse; and for most of these officers it alone defined all the powers and duties. It divided the town lands among the inhabitants, — such a part as it chose to divide, and it fixed the size of building lots, a quarter-acre, an acre, two acres, or five. It passed ordinances regarding the remaining town fields and pastures, the keeping up of fences, the running of cattle and hogs, the term of the school and its support, the support of the church, and of the town poor.

This town democracy had its disadvantages. Action was slow, and was often hindered by ignorance and petty neighborhood jealousies. But the best thing about the town meeting was the constant training in politics it gave to the mass of the

1 This term came to be written Selectmen, but the New Englander still pronounces it "Select Men."

2 In Rhode Island and Connecticut, the towns came into existence before there was any central government. In these States, the towns have always felt a peculiar independence.

8 A local militia with regular periods of training.

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people. Thomas Jefferson called it "the best school of political liberty the world ever saw."

1

107. All the people in a town could come to town meeting and could speak there; but not all could vote. At the base of society in every town was a class of "cottagers," or squatters, who were permitted to live in the place at the town's pleasure only, and who could not acquire land there, nor claim any legal right to the use of the town "commons," for pasture. Servants whose term of service was up, and strangers who drifted into the town as day laborers, usually passed at first into this class.

The people in a town who held full town citizenship were known as "inhabitants." A "cottager," however worthy, or a new settler of even the gentry class, could be "admitted inhabitant" only by vote of the town. In practice, the "inhabitants" of a town included all its gentlemen and industrious artisans and freeholders. That is, they included all "freemen," and many others, who never secured the colonial franchise.

108. Thus the town government in Massachusetts was more democratic than the central government. The body of citizens was more extensive, and the citizens acted directly, not through representatives. And this town democracy touched the life of the people at more points, and at more vital ones, than did the central government.

EXERCISE. Study the New England town in the Source Book, No. 83.

1 Body of Liberties (12), in Source Book, No. 78.

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2 For instance, the Hartford Records contain a grant of "lotts" to certain 'cottagers," to have onely at the Townes courtesie, with libertie to fetch wood and keepe swine or cowes on the common."

CHAPTER XIII

THE MASSACHUSETTS IDEAL: ARISTOCRATIC THEOCRACY

109. In England the High-churchmen had reproached the Low-churchmen with being secretly Separatists. The Lowchurch Puritans repelled the charge indignantly, and, to prove their good faith, joined vehemently in denouncing the Separatists. Thomas Hooker was one of the greatest of the Puritan clergy. Before he came to America, while a fugitive in Holland, he was called a Separatist. But he claimed to have "an extreme aversion" to that sect, and he wrote, "To separate from the faithful assemblies and churches in England, as no churches, is an error in judgment and a sin in practice." So, too, Francis Higginson exclaimed, as the shores of England receded from view (§ 75),

"We will not say, as the Separatists are wont to say, Farewell, Rome! Farewell, Babylon! But we will say, Farewell, dear England; Farewell, the Church of God in England, and all Christian friends there."1

110. But when the Massachusetts Puritans reached the New World they found themselves more in accord with the despised Separatists than they had thought. Much of the change seems to have come on the Atlantic, where the eight or ten weeks' voyage, and the daily preaching, invited men to find out just where they did stand. At all events, very soon they did separate wholly from the English Church, refusing even to recognize its ordination of clergymen.

111. On the other hand, they did not separate the church from the state, as Plymouth did, nor did they make one congregation wholly independent of another in matters of church govern

1 See also Source Book, No. 60, and close of Nos. 52 and 62 c.

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ment. They wished to use the state1 to preserve their religion and church discipline.

112. To keep this union of state and church they adopted three distinct devices: (1) they gave the franchise only to church members; (2) they allowed no churches except those approved by the government; (3) they referred many political questions to the clergy assembled in synods.

113. The Massachusetts ideal was an aristocratic theocracy, a government by the best, in accordance with the law of God. The ministers were supposed to have special ability to interpret that law. Nor were the clergy backward in claiming political power. Winthrop tells, with approval, how Cotton "proved" from many texts of Scripture "that the rulers of the people should consult with the ministers of the churches upon occasion of any weighty matter, though the case should seem never so clear, as David in the case of Ziklag."

In practice, the ministers in politics proved a bulwark of class rule. In every controversy between aristocracy and democ racy, they found some Biblical passage which would support the aristocracy (§§ 89, 92, 102). More than once democratic progress depended upon the appearance of a rare democratic champion among the ministers, like Ward of Ipswich (§ 101) or Hooker of Connecticut (§ 125). By 1639 the democracy had learned the lesson, and managed sometimes to put forward democratic ministers to preach "election sermons" (Source Book, No. 77).

114. The purpose of the early Massachusetts Puritans (in their own words) was "to build a City of God on earth." They came to the wilderness not so much to escape persecution as to find a freer chance to build as they saw fit, where there should be none with right to hinder them; and they did not mean that intruders should mar their work.

This plan forbade toleration. Religious freedom was no part of the Puritan's program. He never claimed that it was. It

1 Winthrop declared that their purpose in coming to America was "to seek out a place of cohabitation under a due form of government both civil and ecclesiastical."

was fundamentally inconsistent with his program. The Puri tan was trying a lofty experiment, for which he sacrificed home and ease; but he could not try it at all without driving out from his "City of the Lord" those who differed with him (Source Book, No. 84). And so the Massachusetts government assumed power to regulate immigration.

In the first fall after Winthrop's arrival, two "gentlemen" from England came to Massachusetts by way of Plymouth. They were introduced by Miles Standish; "but," says Winthrop, "having no testimony,' we would not receive them." 2 In the following March, the Assistants shipped back to England six men at one time, without trial, merely upon the ground that they were "unmeete to inhabit here"; while for years there were occasional entries in the records like the following: "Mr. Thomas Makepeace, because of his novile disposition, is informed that we are weary of him, unless he reform"; and "John Smith is ordered to remove himself from this jurisdiction for divers dangerous opinions which he holdeth."

Such cases help us to understand the famous expulsions of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson.

115. Roger Williams was one of the most powerful and scholarly of the great Puritan clergy. He had rare sweetness of temper; but, along with it, a genius for getting into bitter controversy. He was broad-minded on great questions; but he could quarrel vehemently over fantastic quibbles. The kindly Bradford describes him as possessing "many precious parts, but very unsettled in judgment."

1 The Puritans used this word for "evidence" of religious character.

2 The government was especially cautious because these two were "gentlemen," and so sure to be influential, if taken into the colony. Probably they were thought to be Separatists.

3 Bradford didn't like Williams: "I desire the Lord to show him his errors and reduce him into the way of truth, and give him a settled judgment and constancy in the same; for I hope he belongs to the Lord." Eggleston hits off Williams' weakness well in saying that he lacked humor and sense of proportion, and "could put the questions of grace after meat and of religious freedom into the same category."