THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 203 



The men who settled New England were men whose 

 grip was hard to loosen. They were determined to 

 govern themselves, and that made it difficult for any 

 minority to break away. But the determination of these 

 men of our rock-ribbed town was dauntless. Their indus- 

 try within a few generations of their settlement had given 

 them a wealth far beyond their proportion of numbers in 

 the town, and their progress was linked with an inevitable 

 destiny. 



The following words from George P. Fisher's book, The Colonial Era, p. 169, 

 are appropriate to this chapter : — 



" The intellectual activity of the New England people was a prime characteristic. 

 Most of them were English yeomen. With them came over substantial country 

 gentlemen and some merchants of large means. 



" But it was true of all, that their minds had been deeply stirred by the theological 

 controversies of the age. If it was true of the bulk of them that they read few 

 books, the Bible, in the whole range of its literature, was an ever-present stimulating 

 companion. Morning and night and on the Lord's Day they hung over its pages 

 with eager and absorbed, as well as reverent attention. 



" Whatever has to do with man as a spiritual being had in their eyes a transcendent 

 importance. Hence a marked distinction of the principal New England com- 

 munities is the interest that was felt from the beginning in the education of the 

 people, and the heavy burdens that were cheerfully assumed to effect the object. 



" Schools were soon set up in all considerable towns, save in Plymouth Colony, 

 where the poverty of the people explains the exception. 



" In 1647 the law of Massachusetts required that a school should be supported in 

 every town having fifty householders, and that a grammar school should be es- 

 tablished, where boys could be fitted for college, in every place where the house- 

 holders num'oered a hundred." 



