and easier planters of the south. But they were not of colonial creation. They came from the old world, transplanted from its ancient lands to the virgin soil of America. If they did not die, it was inevitable that they would take root and grow up with renewed luxuriance. Institu the free men. The sketch that goes before shows us that the tions be colonial institutions were not the institutions of all. long to They belonged to the freemen, so styled, "the better sort," with but a portion of "the poorer sort thrown in. Indented servants and slaves, of course, had no part in the political or the social privileges of their superiors. But besides the bondmen proper, there was a large number not bondmen, and yet not freemen by the laws of the colonies. "The people,” says an early writer on the Massachusetts system, "begin to complain they are ruled like slaves." Actual restlessness was showing itself. is feared," says the same writer, "that elections cannot be safe there long, either in church or commonwealth, so that some melancholy men think it a great deal safer to be in the midst of troubles in a settled commonwealth, or in hope easily to be settled,* than in mutinies there, so far off from succors," (1641.) English law. "It The institutions of the freemen sprang from the nies was a vexed question. One class of jurists or of statesmen in England maintained that America was a conquered country, a country wrested from the native or the European races whom the English found in possession of it. The deduction from this view was, that the institutions of the country were at the pleasure of the crown or of the Parliament of England. But another class held opposite ground, asserting that the colonists were entitled, without * Referring to the disturbances in England. any consent or dissent on the part of England, to all the rights of Englishmen, inasmuch as the country was a discovered, not a conquered one. Some persons held an intermediate opinion, denying the notion of conquest, and yet denying the inherent claim of the colonists to English privileges, making their rights depend on actual grants from the sovereign power. So when the habeas corpus act, providing for the issue of a writ to produce the body of a prisoner, was passed, (1679,) it was said not to extend to the colonies, because they were not specially mentioned in the bill. A similar act, adopted by the Massachusetts General Court, was annulled by the crown, (1692.) But the privilege was afterwards tacitly, if not explicitly, allowed. The liberal system of interpretation slowly prevailing, the English law was almost universally recognized to be the birthright of the colonies as truly as of the mother-land. Colonial The governments of the colonies were variously govern- organized. Those under charters were altogether ments. in the hands of the colonists. The charter of Massachusetts, indeed, was so far altered in 1691 as to transfer the appointment of the governor, lieutenant governor, and secretary to the crown, and even to prescribe the conditions on which the inhabitants should be admitted as freemen. The charters of Connecticut (1662) and Rhode Island (1644-63) left the entire administration to the colonists. The seven colonies originally under proprietary government— Maryland, the Carolinas, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware - were of course subject to the authority of their proprietors, but with many restrictions upon it in favor of the colonists. The Carolinas, under the model of John Locke,* and New York, under * John Locke, the great philosopher, was employed by the Carolinian proprietors to embody their ideas -one cannot but think rather than his own, in what was called "the grand model," or "the fundamental con the arbitrary rule of its ducal proprietor, who allowed no Assembly till 1683, were not so favorably situated. Pennsylvania was subjected to claims asserted nowhere else, as well as deprived of rights denied nowhere else, by two peculiarities in the charter to William Penn; one, the assertion of the power of Parliament to tax the colony, the other, the omission of the title of the colonists to the rights of Englishmen. The record that four of the proprietary governments were changed to royal governments, — the Carolinas, New York, and New Jersey, and all at the desire of the colonists, bears witness against the institutions of which proprietors were the chiefs. The royal provinces, however, were organized on the same terms as the proprietary colonies, except that, the king being at the head of affairs, the institutions of the provinces were more uniform. The number of provinces was seven: the four just mentioned, with the older Virginia and New Hampshire and the younger Georgia. Towns. In some of the colonies, especially those in the north, the towns were at the centre of their organization. These were the primary bodies in which the colonists stitutions." Of the system thus concocted, the primary element was property, the scale of colonial dignities being graduated according to the possessions of the colonist. Seigniories for the proprietors, baronies for landgraves and caciques, colonies for lords of manors, or freeholders, were the divisions of the soil. Authority was parcelled out amongst palatine and other courts for the proprietors, a grand council for them and their nobility, and a Parliament for the proprietors, the nobility, and the lords of manors. As for those not wealthy enough for either of these classes, they were hereditary tenants, or else slaves. The church of the colony was to be the church of England, with a certain amount of toleration for other creeds. This extraordinary mass of titles and of powers held together for just twenty-three years, (1669–1693,) but without ever getting into actual operation. It was relinquished by the proprietors at the universal desire of the colonists, who naturally preferred the simpler and the Freer institutions originally reared under the charter. were grouped and trained as freemen. Their workings, where they existed, are written on every page of the colonial and the national annals. Where they did not exist, their places were but poorly supplied by plantations or vestries. An instinct, as it may be called, after the establishment of towns, led the early legislators of Virginia into curious expedients. At one time, the resources of the colony were to be brought to bear on making Jamestown a city worthy of the name, (1662;) at another, each county was directed to lay out a town of its own, (1680.) At length a new capital was founded at Williamsburg, (1698.) Assemblies. Next to the town or its substitute, under every form of government as ultimately established, there was one and the same body. This was the assembly, the same cherished institution to the colony that Parliament was to the mother land. At first, in some places, composed of all the freemen, then placed upon a representative basis, and then divided into two houses, one of councillors or assistants, the other of representatives or burgesses, the assembly exercised all the functions of a legislature, subject, of course, to the law and the sovereign of England. The House of Representatives, or of Burgesses, as the case might be in the different colonies, constituted the popular branch, so entirely in some instances as to go by the name of the assembly, leaving the councillors or assistants to appear, what they generally were, the officers of the crown. But the assembly was by no means popular, according to modern notions. A large amount of property, real or personal, was usually essential as a qualification of membership, the very voters being under some conditions of the same nature. The sessions were often few and far between; in some colonies, and at some periods, not more frequent than once in three years, or even more than three. An assembly, moreover, would sometimes hold over beyond its lawful term, becoming as much of a burden to the colony as it was intended to be an assistance. But when once convened, at the proper season and in the proper spirit, the assembly was a tower of strength to its people. Churches. That which was most variable, not to say most ineffective, in the colonies, was the very thing that should have been most stable and most powerful. The church of Christ was rent with factions. The blessings that might have issued from a common church, had it been pure and true, have no place in our history. The church of England was established in Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The Quakers and the Presbyterians prevailed in the central colonies; in the northern, the Puritans carried all before them. Such divisions would not merely prevent unity; they would break up liberty. Persecu Massa Amongst the harshest provisions of the Massation in chusetts system was that excluding all but church chusetts. members from the rights of freemen. Against this, Child. chiefly, was directed the petition of Dr. Robert Child, and six others, some of them of the highest station, church membership excepted, in the colony, (1646.) Child was a young man, recently arrived in the country with the purpose of making some scientific inquiry into its mineral resources. At the time of his petition, he was on the point of returning to England, but with the idea, apparently, of coming back to Massachusetts, could he be received on equal terms with the freemen of the colony. Be this as it may, he and his fellow-petitioners asked for admission to the privileges of Massachusetts, instead of which they found themselves charged with "contemptuous and seditious expressions," for which they were arraigned and heavily fined. Thus treated, they set about preparing a memorial, which Child was to convey to Parliament, and in support of which, another document, praying "for liberty |