and the colony as a whole being imperfectly organized, each town was obliged from the first to direct its own expenditures and manage its own affairs. The inhabitants held town-meetings, levied taxes to provide for their common wants, chose executive officers, afterwards termed 'select-*men,' and in fact created a little republic nearly complete in organization. It is now generally admitted, that the tone of American politics and the general character of American institutions have been more controlled by the influences of the township-system of New England than by all other causes united.
In the main, also, there was great equality among the colonists in point of fortune and social position. Many English gentlemen and wealthy merchants, as we have seen, favored the emigration, and some embarked in it. But the happy and the powerful do not often go into exile, and the perils and hardships of a home in the wilderness prevented many persons of wealth from joining in the enterprise, and caused others to leave it after a brief sojourn in New England. Humphrey, Saltonstall, Vane and Vassal returned to their native land after a short stay, and the Johnsons died. The great bulk of the colonists were middling and lower classes of English society; very few were wealthy, nearly all were dependent on the labor of their hands. Equality of social claims was the natural basis of equality of political rights. There was a germ of republicanism in the colony from the outset,—a natural tendency towards universal eligibility and universal suffrage.
The first care of the settlers of Massachusetts was to provide for universal education and worship. The several townships that were organized were so many distinct churches, which admitted their own members, chose their own pastors, and managed their own affairs. Each town, either by levying a tax or by voluntary contributions, provided buildings for public worship and salaries for their ministers. When Boston was but six years old, the General Court passed an order, appropriating a sum, equal to the amount raised by a year's taxation to defray all the public expenditures of the colony, for the establishment of a college at Newtown; and two years afterwards, John Harvard, a clergyman of Charlestown, bequeathing half of his estate for the same object, Harvard College was founded. Free schools were established in several of the towns; and in 1649, a general system of popular education was established throughout the colony, each township being required to maintain a free school for reading and writing, and every town of a hundred householders a grammar school, 'to fit youths for the university.' The preamble of this law declares that the motive for passing it was to provide 'that learning may not be buried in the grave of our fathers,'—'it being one chief project of that old deluder, Sathan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures; as in former times keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading men from the use of tongues.' The grim Puritan of those days believed his child's soul would be in danger if he were not enabled to read the Bible for himself; and thus care for general education naturally grew out of care for the interests of religion. As the democratic spirit spread among the people, they reclaimed the legislative authority for themselves; and a body of representatives, consisting of two or three delegates from each town, were united with 'the magistrate' for the purpose of enacting laws. At first, the representatives sat and voted in the same
