CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 



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the town meeting would- never have been inaugurated. With a free and 

 more kindly government in Holland, the Dutch of New Netherlands \vere 

 denied any personal participatic)n in the administration of their public 

 affairs. The W.-st India Company vested the Dutch directors with abso- 

 lute power. Appeals from their decisions lay to the States General, but 

 who dared make them. " If I was persuaded," thundered truculent old 

 Stuyvesant to the accusers of Krift, his mercenary predecessor, "that you 

 would complain of my sentences or divulge them, I would have you 

 hanged on the highest tree^ in New Netherlands. " The colonial annals of 

 Suffolk County reveal no such assumption of tyrannical authority. If our 

 magistrates dealt severely with their subjects, they dealt openly and in con- 

 formity with the law to which the subject had assented, and in framing 

 which he had his free voice. He had discussed the merits of the rule in 

 the town meeting, and if it fell harshly upon him later because of his in- 

 fraction he could assert neither ignorance nor inability to protest against 

 its adoption, as reasons in mitigation of its effect upon himself 



To the town meetings of these times we clearly trace and owe the firm 

 establishment in our organic law of the principle of civil liberty in the 

 people, and the inauguration of their right to participate in legislation 

 through representation. From these local assemblies sprang the great Re- 

 publican principle of government, and upon them it still reposes in confi- 

 dence and honor. Increase of wealth and power begets respect, and Con- 

 necticut from its attitude of friendly ally, began to measure the advantage 

 of permanent absorption of the Long Island settlements into its body pol- 

 itic. The advantages of political consolidation were reciprocal. The 

 habits, tastes, religious belief and laws of the two establishmrnts were in 

 common. As our ancestors encountered the Dutch at Ovster Bay and ex- 

 perienced the antagonisms of characterist.es, they sought for strength in 

 closer attachment to a powerful colony with which the\- were in sympathv. 

 Had Charles II. deferred his R'jyal Grant of 1664 to his brother fames for 

 a few years, there is probability that this good County of Suffolk would 

 have formed part of the State of Connecticut, to-day. 



In 1664 the elements of liberal government were fully developed in 

 Eastern Long Island. The people had become accustomed to the exer- 

 cise of power. Their magistrates and officers were .selected at their general 

 town meetings. At these assemblies new laws were enacted. The Church 

 received its support from their ilecisions, and such taxes as were necessary 

 were here levied. Here, too, applications for admission as citizens into 

 the little community, were heard. The simple, but effective tnachinerv of 

 government was thus in full operation. A pure democracy is fitted only to 

 small societies. It can never satisfy the needs of a large population or 

 scattered collections of individuals. (The experiment that failed centuries 

 agv) on the banks of the Vistula had taught this lesson to the political 

 thinker). Reprtsentative forms of government approximate nearest to 

 pure democracy and alone answer the demands of popular government. 

 rwent\-four years after thj sjttlement ,of Southampton and Southold the 

 necessity for a inor^i central power than the town meeting, had become 

 fully ap,)aront. Tlv:: diversil\ of interest among the towns swelled with 

 their growing population. A central and regulating administration had 

 forced itself upon the thoughts ol" the wise and patriotic as a necessity no 

 longer to be deferred, and uni jn With Connecticut seemed the only solu- 

 tion of an embarrassment from which popular interests were sadly suffer-- 



mjr. 



