13. THE INFLUENCE OF COLONIAL CONDITIONS AS ILLUSTRATED IN THE CONNECTICUT INTESTACY LAW ^ By Charles McLean Andrews ^ THE colonial era of our history has generally been treated with an insufficient appreciation of its economic forces, and, in consequence, there has been a tendency to minimize the importance of certain periods of that history which show little political activity and are to the world at large dull and uninteresting. Such a period is the first forty years of the eighteenth century, and in the following paper I hope to show why I think that, from the point of view of the English policy toward the colonies and their economic development, this period will in the future stand much higher in the esti- mate of historians than it does now. The discussion that follows involves a number of points of law, and carries us through a controversy which, although of immediate impor- tance to Connecticut only, was of exceeding interest to all New England, and indirectly touches the general subject of colonial history. ^ ' These passag'es are extracted from an essay on " The Connecticut Intestacy Law," Yale Review, 1894, volume ITT., pp. 261-294.
- Professor of History at Bryn Mawr College, since 1889, and at
Johns Hopkins University. A. B. Trinity College (Connecticut) 1884, A.M., 1890; Ph.D. Johns Hopkins 1889; L. H. D. Trinity 1905. Other Publications: The River Towns of Connecticut, 1889; The Old English Manor, 1892; The Historical Development of Modern Europe, 1896, 1898; Contemporary Europe, Asia, and Africa, 1891-1902; Guide to the Materials in British Archives for American Colonial History (Carnegie Institution), 1907-1908.
- My attention was originally directed to this subject by the publi-
cation of the first volume of the Talcott Papers by the Connecticut Historical Society and the remarks of Judge Mellen Chamberlain upon them as printed in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, March, 1893. The second volume of the Talcott Pipers is now in press, but I am indebted to the editor. Miss Mary K. Talcott, a descendant of the old Connecticut governor, for advance sheets as far as completed. 431
