CHAPTER X

MASSACHUSETTS BAY: ARISTOCRACY VS. DEMOCRACY

87. Early Massachusetts was predominantly aristocratic in politics. The charter provided that all important matters of

THE CRADOCK HOUSE (1636) AT MEDFORD, MASS. This is the oldest brick house in the United States. With the exception of the porch it is in the same condition as in colonial times. Though Governor Cradock (§ 84) never came to America, he did try for a time to till some large grants of land there by bands of indentured servants. One such grant was at Medford. These grants were made to him by the colony in recognition of his services in England.

government should be settled by the stockholders ("freemen") in four "General Courts" each year. But only some twelve freemen of the corporation had come to America. These were all of the gentry class, men of strong character and, most of

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them, of prudent judgment. Before leaving England, they had all been made magistrates (governor, deputy governor, and "Assistants"). Even without such office, and merely as freemen, the twelve had sole authority to rule the two thousand settlers and to make laws for them; and the little oligarchy began at once to use this tremendous power. The first meeting of Assistants in America fixed the wage of laborers, forbidding a carpenter or mason to take more than two shillings a day.

88. From the first a democratic movement challenged this oligarchic government. The first General Court was held in October, 1630. By death and removal, the twelve possessors of power had shrunk to eight. These eight gentlemen found themselves confronted by a gathering of one hundred and nine sturdy settlers asking to be admitted freemen. This was a

united demand for citizenship, by nearly all the heads of families above the station of unskilled laborers. To refuse the request was to risk the wholesale removal of dissatisfied colonists either to Maine, where Gorges would welcome them, or to Plymouth; to grant it was to endanger the peculiar Puritan commonwealth at which the leaders aimed, and to introduce more democracy than they believed safe.

89. In this dilemma, the shrewd leaders tried to give the shadow and keep the substance. They postponed action on the application until the next spring. Meantime they passed two laws-in violation of the charter : first (October, 1630), that the Assistants, instead of the whole body of freemen, should make laws and choose the governor; and second (May, 1631), that the Assistants should hold office during good behavior, instead of all going out of office at the end of a year as the charter ordered. Then they admitted 116 new freemen, having left them no power except that of electing new Assistants "when these are to be chosen."

The applicants, in their anxiety to get into the body politic, agreed for a time to these usurpations. Indeed they did not know what their rights should be. The charter was locked in Winthrop's chest, and only the magistrates had read it or heard it. For a year more, that little body, now shrunken to

seven or eight, continued to rule the colony, admitting a few new freemen, now and then, to a shadowy citizenship.

90. The chief founders of New England had a very real dread of democracy. John Cotton, the greatest of the clerical leaders, wrote:

"Democracy I do not conceive that God did ever ordain as a fit government for either church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed? As for monarchy and aristocracy, they are both clearly approved and directed in the Scriptures . . . ."

And the great Winthrop always refers to democracy with aversion. He asserts that it has "no warrant in Scripture," and that "among nations

JOHN COTTON. From the engraving, after a portrait, in Drake's History and Antiquities of Boston.

it has always been accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government." At best, Winthrop and his friends believed in what they called "a mixt aristocracy": The people (above the condition of day laborers) might choose their rulers - provided they chose from still more select classes; but the rulers so chosen were to possess practically absolute power, owning their offices as an ordinary man owned his farm.1

Calvin, the master of Puritan political thought, teaches that to resist even a bad magistrate is "to resist God" (Source Book, No. 61). His language is followed closely by Winthrop. In 1639, after the people in Massachusetts had secured a little power, the magistrates tricked them out of most of it for a while by a law decreasing the number of deputies, so that they should not outvote the aristocratic magistrates in the Court. Some of the people petitioned modestly for the repeal of this law. Winthrop looked upon the petition as "tending to sedition." Said he, "When the people have chosen men, to be their rulers, now to combine together. . . in a pub. lic petition to have an order repealed . . . savors of resisting an ordinance of God. For the people, having deputed others, have no power

J. Cf. Cotton's sermon, § 92.

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THE WATERTOWN PROTEST

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to make or alter laws themselves, but are to be subject. " 1 The great founders of America were far from believing in government "of the people and by the people."

91. The first effective protest against oligarchic usurpation came, after good English precedent, upon a matter of taxation. This event is called the Watertown Protest.

In February, 1632, the Assistants voted a tax for fortifications. Watertown was called upon to pay eight pounds. The Watertown minister then called the people together and secured a resolution "that it was not safe to pay moneys after that sort, for fear of bringing themselves and posterity into bondage." Governor Winthrop at once summoned the men of Watertown before him at Boston as culprits, rebuked them for their "error," and so overawed them that they "made a retraction and submission . . . and so their offence was pardoned." Probably, however, on the walk back to Watertown through the winter night, the "error" revived. Certainly, during the next months, there was secret democratic plotting and sending to and fro among the towns of which we have no record.2 At all events, a week before the next General Court met in May, Winthrop warned the Assistants "that he had heard the people intended

. . to desire [vote] that the Assistants might be chosen anew every year, and that the governor might be chosen by the whole court, and not by the Assistants only." (These were charter provisions, of which the freemen must have heard some rumor.) "Upon this," adds Winthrop's "Journal," "Mr. Ludlow [an Assistant] grew into a passion and said that then we should have no government, but there would be an interim wherein every man might do what he pleased." In spite of such silly passion, when the General Court met, the freemen calmly took back into their

1 The quotations from Winthrop come from his History of New England. This has been printed only with modernized spelling. When a Winthrop quotation is given with antique spelling, it comes from his Letters.

2 Our information comes almost wholly from the brief "Colonial Records" and from Winthrop. The democrats never wrote their story, and many important steps have no history.

own hands the annual election of governor and of Assistants. Then they went further, and sanctioned the Watertown protest by decreeing that each town should choose two representatives to act with the magistrates in matters of taxation.

92. This was not yet representative government. The new deputies acted in taxation only: the magistrates kept their usurped power to make laws.

True, the magistrates now had to come up for reëlection each year, but this was little more than a polite form. No chance was given, for some years, to nominate two or three candidates for a position, and then to choose between them. The Secretary of the Assistants made nominations—in some such form as, "Mr. Ludlow's term as Assistant has expired; will you have him to be an Assistant again?” On this sort of nomination the people had to vote Yes or No, by erection of hands. Unless they first rejected an old officer, there was no chance to elect a new one.

93. In spite of such drawbacks, the reform of 1632 was a democratic advance. Two years later, came the second step, the peaceful revolution of 1634.

This movement began as a protest against "special privilege." The Assistants had made laws to favor their own class — trying repeatedly to keep wages down to the old level of England, and ordering that swine found in grain fields might be killed.

Winthrop speaks often of the high cost of food and other necessities, as compared with English prices; but he was honestly dismayed that carpenters should ask more than the old English wage. Indeed he puts the cart before the horse, and blames the higher cost of living upon the rise in wages. As to the swine law, the poor man wanted his pig to find part of its living in the woods, but the rich men were not willing to fence their large fields. This matter caused harder feeling even than the wage laws.

The common freemen determined to stop some of this "class legislation." In April, 1634, Governor Winthrop sent out the usual notice calling all freemen to a General Court in May. Soon after, on a given day, two men from each of the eight