208 History of Hingham. 



connection with a fine for bad roads, or leave to make hay in 

 Conihasset meadows, or permission to use its meeting-house for a 

 watch-house, or the appointment of a committee to settle its 

 difficulties with Nantasket, or something of equally homely import. 

 There is in these records no cant nor sniffling, none of that pre- 

 tentious sanctimoniousness which is so flippantly charged upon 

 the Puritans. There is less reference to theology than to wavs 

 and means ; and the practical question, for instance, of restraining 

 the liquor-traffic and evil, seems to have taxed the ingenuity and 

 attention of their law-makers and magistrates very much as it 

 does in the case of their descendants. There is no waste of words 

 in the grim sentences, but a plain, wholesome dealing with the 

 material needs of the colony. One cannot read them and not feel 

 the sense of justice and righteousness that inspired the leaders of 

 the settlement, and that sought, rigorously indeed but honestly, 

 to institute and maintain a commonwealth which should be ani- 

 mated by virtue, thrift, education, the sanctity and sweetness of 

 home, fear of God, and fair dealing among men. They were de- 

 veloping that sturdy, educating, self-reliant New England town 

 life which till forty or fifty years ago was so unique, but which 

 since then has gradually been disintegrated and changed by the 

 tremendous influence of the transportations of the railroad, the 

 wide scattering of the New England seed, the influx of foreign 

 elements, the rapid growth of large cities, the drain on rural 

 sources, and the general change from diffusion to consolidation, 

 and from the simplest and most meagre to the most profuse and 

 complex material resources. 



