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and only two of its members ever fulfilled the 

 agreement to build their houses in the New Town. 

 The building of the New Town, however, fur- 

 nished the occasion for determining at the outset 

 what kind of government the Puritan common- 

 wealth should have. It was to be a walled town, 

 for defence against frontier barbarism of the New 

 World type ; not the formidable destructive power 

 of an Attila or a Bayazet, but the feeble barbarism 

 of the red men and the Stone Age, so that a wall 

 of masonry was not required, but a wooden palisade 

 would do. In 1632 the Court of Assistants im- 

 posed a tax of 60 for the purpose of building this 

 palisade; but the men of Watertown refused to 

 pay their share, on the ground that they were not 

 represented in the taxing body. The ensuing dis- 

 cussion resulted in the establishment of a House of 

 Deputies, in which every town was represented. 

 Henceforth the Court of Assistants together with 

 the House of Deputies formed the General Court. 

 There was no authority for such a representative 

 body in the charter, which vested the government 

 in the Court of Assistants ; but, as Hutchinson 

 tells us, the people assumed that the right to such 

 representation was implied in that clause of the 

 charter which reserved to them the natural rights 

 of Englishmen. Thus the building of a wooden 



