CONNECTICUT
254
CONNECTICUT
and judicial powers. This General Court consisted of
deputies who were to be Freemen elected from the
several towns. The towns named above were each to
send four deputies, and other towns thereafter added
to the jurisdiction were to send such numbers as the
court should judge meet, to be reasonably propor-
tioned to the number of Freemen in each town. In
1661 Governor Winthrop was sent to England to peti-
tion the king for a charter confirming such privileges
and liberties as were necessary for the permanent wel-
fare of the colony. He secured from the reigning
sovereign, Charles II, a most liberal charter which re-
mained the organic law of the commonwealth until
the adoption of the present State Constitution in ISIS,
almost half a century after the State had severed its
allegiance to the English Crown. This charter con-
ferred upon the people of the colony the right to elect
their own governor and other officers, and the largest
measure of self-government. It is of interest to note
the territorial boundaries of the colony set forth in the
charter. It was bounded on the east by Narragansett
Bay, on the north by the line of the Massachusetts
Plantation, and on the south by the sea. It was to
extend to the west in longitude with the line of the
Massachusetts Colony to the South Sea "on the west
part with the islands there adjoining".
In 1786 Connecticut ceded to the United States aU its public land, reserving, however, about three and a half million acres in what is now the .State of Ohio. This was known for many years as the "Connecticut Reserv'e or "Western Reserve. The legislature granted some five hundred thousand acres of the res- ervation to the citizens of the towns of Danburj', Fair- field, Norwalk, New London, and Groton to indem- nify them for special losses during the War of the Revo- lution when these towns were burned by the British troops. The grant was afterwards known as the "Fire Lands. In 1795 a committee was appointed to dispose of the reservation. It was sold to a syndi- cate organized to effect the purchase for 81,200,000. The income from this fund is devoted to the support of common schools, and the State Constitution declares it shall never be directed to any other purpose.
The present Constitution was adopted in 1818. Under its provisions the town is the basis of represen- tation in the lower house of the legislature rather than population. This has brought about, by the growth of the larger cities and towns, a most undemocratic form of government. The cities of New Haven, Hart- ford and Bridgeport, each having a population of more than 100,000, have only two representatives in the lower house, while a large number of towns with a population of less than 1000 have the same number of representatives. In 1902 a constitutional conven- tion was held in the hope that this inequitable system of representation would be corrected. The conven- tion was so constituted, however, as to make any hope of a radical change of the system of representation impossible. The convention numbered 167 delegates, one from each town. The constitution finally pro- posed by this convention made but a slight change in the basis of representation, and was rejected by the people when submitted for their ratification.
The early settlers of Connecticut were for the most part English of the upper middle class. Their minis- ters, many of them, had been clergjTnen of the Estab- lished Church who had been deprived of their EngUsh livings for non-confonn'ty. Their devoted congrega- tions followed them across the Atlantic and foimded the settlement at Ma.ssaclnisetts Bay. From thence came chiefly the first emigrants, attracted by the fer- tile soil of the Connecticut valley and the sequestered harbours along the Sound. Before the War of the Revolution, however, Ireland had contributed quite a noticeable percentage to the population of the various settlements. This seems to be established from the considerable number of Irish names disclosed in the
official military documents of that period. The vast
majority of the popvdation, however, remained dis-
tinctively English of Puritan origin until the great
emigration set in from Ireland, prompted by the dis-
astrous famine in 1846. There is also a considerable
German element distributed pretty evenly through-
out the State. Since the close of the Civil War French
Canadians have come down from the Province of
Quebec, and have settled more numerously in the
eastern part of the State where they have found em-
ployment in the manufacturing towns. More recently
the Italians, in large numbers, have located in the
cities and larger towns. New Haven, alone, it is esti-
mated, has an Italian population of upwards of 20,000.
Russian Jews have also become very numerous, prin-
cipally in the cities, while Scandinavians. Lithaanians,
and Greeks are becoming an increasingly prominent
element of the urban population. In common with
all the other States of the Atlantic seaboard, while the
language and customs of the Anglo-Saxon are still
overwhelmingly dominant, the strain of English blood
is becoming more and more attenuated with the pa.ss-
ing of each decade. In colonial times and during the
earlier days of the Republic, Connecticut occupied a
place of distinction and commanding influence among
her sister commonwealths. At the close of the War
of the Revolution she was the eighth in respect to
population among the thirteen States that formed the
Union, having by the census of 1790, 238,141 souls.
She furnished, however, 31,959 soldiers to armies of
the Revolution, thus exceeding by 5281 the number
furnished by Virginia, then the most populous of all
the States, and having at that time more than three
times the population of Connecticut. In this respect
Connecticut was surpassed only by Massachusetts,
which furnished 67,097 soldiers, from a population of
475,257 souls.
Religious Polity. — The planters of the Connecti- cut River towns, in formulating their first constitu- tion in 1639, were all of them Puritans of the sect sub- sequently known throughout all of the New England States as Congregationalists. The distinctive theory of their ecclesiastical polity regarded each congrega- tion as a self-governing body, with power to formu- late its own creed and prescribe its own conditions of membership. They repudiated all allegiance to any central ecclesiastical authority, and the various con- gregations or churches, as they were then called, were independent and self-governing, bound to each other by ties of fellowship and community of interest, rather than by canons prescribed by any superior ecclesias- tical authority. (See CoNGREGAXioN-iLisM.) There was from the very first, however, the most intimate relation between the churches and the civil authority. Church membership was an indispensable qualifica- tion for civil office, and for the exercise of the rights of Freemen. In the preamble of their first constitution they declared that they were entering into a combinii- tion or confederation "to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, as also the discipline of the churches which according to the truth of the said Gospel is now practiced among us ". Freedom of religious worship, as now understood and demanded everywhere in .\merica, was a principle to which they accorded but scant and reluctant acceptance. For a centurj' and a half Congregationalism was the estab- lished religion supported by public taxation. Other Christian sects were merely tolerated. Not until the adoption of the Constitution of ISIS did the principle of true religious freedom receive governmental recog- nition. It was then declared that it being the duty of all men to worship the Supreme Being, and to ren- der their worship in the mode most consistent with the dictates of their consciences, that no person should by law be compelled to join or support, be classed with, or associated to any congregation,
