2 2 CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 



condition was visited upon our ancestors. Anxiety respecting the Indian 

 led to treaties with Connecticut, and an alHance for military aid that bor- 

 dered upon i^ubordination. but never centered in it 



Here, if ever, was witnessed for a 2:eneration and a half a system of 

 petty governments resting fir their existence and power solely upon the 

 consent of the governed. Townships erected upon the area of a grant from 

 Indian Sachems found their inhabitants compacted in a small locality as well 

 for protection and assistance as for the gratification of social tastes. Great 

 distances intervened between these settlements, and these distances forbade 

 general communication. Thus the laws of townships, framed by no com- 

 mon body of representative legislators, lacked harmony, and presented 

 differences in penalties and observances. 



The common law is sustained by the foundations of prudence, wisdom, 

 and precedent. Its wholesome principles were imbedded in the tastes, 

 habits and personal rights of the colonists, but they had faith in a better 

 law. The abuses suffered in England were under the administration of the 

 common law, and their recollection brought along with no agreeable taste 

 the system of jurisprudence that allowed their perpetration. Our fore- 

 lathers therefore set to the task of framing laws upon principles that should 

 prevent sharp definitions, and dispose by adequate punishment of all 

 offences toward individual or commiinitv. Thev modified the laws of 

 property as well as of person. The feudal characteristics of the common 

 law disappeared from a field where everv State was acquired upon one basis 

 of purchase and without pure entailments. If the ordinances reeulating 

 personal rights and obligations were harsh, they pointed to the Pentateuch, 

 and silenced their opponents by the provisions of Jewish Statutes, having 

 Moses for their founder. True to the Decalogue, they imposed death for 

 violation of manv of its decrees. In enforcing obedience to parents thev 

 visited with capital punisiiment anv child who after sixteen years of life 

 should curse or strike its father or mother. They ended the complaints of 

 nervous women by sharp bodily inflictions. " You have brought me," said 

 a weary, homesick wife, " to a land witTiout Chu''ch or Magistrate." The 

 moaning utterance was true, the penalty inevitable. " For this unseemly 

 speech," say the magistrates, " you shall pav £t,, or stand in public with a 

 split stick upon your tcmgue. " And thp latter barbarism was applied, for 

 the j[t, cannot be raised. 



But these laws have come from the people, thev are all enacted at gen- 

 eral assemblies of the freeholders of the diflferent colonies or towns. His- 

 tory presents no purer democracy than that g-overning the English settle- 

 ments here from 1640 to the Convention at Hempstead, in 1665, and the 

 institution of the Duke's Laws. If its enactments move us, in more liberal 

 times, with indignation, if we view with sentiments akin to honor an order 

 of civilization that strangely combined learning and religious enthusiasm 

 with vindictive and barbarous dispensations in matters of personal obliga- 

 tion, we are to reflect that our fathers framed their systems as best for their 

 times, and their vindication is asserted in the blessings that crown their 

 posterity. The organization of the town meeting, that simple, effective 

 political power that ensure.-> civil liberty, was an institution peculiar to the 

 colonial period. Necessity was its source, but its virtues soon embedded 

 it in the structure of government. From it sprang the determination to 

 representative power in the State. Had the colonists been controlled by 

 Ihe direct flow of power from the Throne or Protectorate of Great Britain, 



