ifiuutiu^ iJEMOCRACf CHARLES BORGEAOD. QforttcU Mntueraitg BItbtarg Jtljara, Nfw fork BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1691 ^miiilnS^L'SHil!?'" democracy in old and ,. 3 1924 031 323 284 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031323284 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY IN OLD AND NEW ENGLAND THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY IN OLD AND NEW ENGLAND CHARLES BORGEAUD Member of the Faculty of Law Geneva TRANSLATED BY MRS. BIRKBECK HILL WITH A PREFACE BY C. H. FIRTH M.A. BalJiol College Oxford Eontfon SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing WoRkS- Feome, and London. PREFACE. If it be true that " good wine needs no bush," a translation of Dr. Borgeaud's constitutional studies should not need preliminary apologies. The extent of his researches, the accuracy of his knowledge, and the sobriety of his judgment, those who read his pages can hardly fail to observe. These are the qualities which justify the attempt of Mrs. Birkbeck Hill to present in an English dress this sketch of the development of democratic ideas in England and America. At the same time, however, it may be for the convenience of her readers to show the relation of these two essays to the rest of Dr. Borgeaud's works, and to give a brief summary of his conclu- sions. After obt'aining his degree of Doctor in Philosophy at Jena, in 1883, by a thesis on the religious philo- sophy of Rousseau, Dr. Borgeaud devoted himself to the history of democratic ideas, and democratic government. In 1887, he gained the additional title of Doctor in Law, at Geneva, by his Histoire du Plebiscite dans V Antiquity} But this investiga- tion^f the working of the popular vote in Greece and Rome did not throw much light on the origins of modern democracy. Our modern conception of • E. Thorin, Paris, 1887. PREFACE. a democracy differs very widely from that of the ancients. Ancient democracies had no idea of universal suffrage, and instead of the rights of man recognised only the privileges of the citizen. For them the state was a city, and its political centre the spot where the sovereign assembly of citizens met to vote. Those who were not there were not represented, and the further the city state extended its borders, the fewer those citizens who could actually exercise their right of voting. Hence the results of the author's enquiry were rather negative than positive. They may be summed up by the statement, that the most permanent effect of ancient democracy was a new conception of Law. Primi- tive Law possessed a religious character. It was a revelation — an expression of the will of Heaven made known to men, and as perfect and unchange- able as Heaven itself. But the operation of the system of popular suffrage — so to speak — secu- larised Law. It became the expression of the will of the people, at once the result of the development of political society, and the instrument by which that result was effected. In the East, Law retained its original character, and remained what it was in the beginning, something divine and unchangeable. In the West it altered its original character, and became human and progressive. The formula of Gains sums up the result of this process of evolu- tion. " Lex est quod populus jubet atque consti- tuit." But this conception of Law, which was one of PREFACE. the conquests of Greek and Roman civilisation, was more or less lost to the world in the night of the Middle Age^, to be won back, however, for Western nations by the Renaissance and the Refor- mation. The religious revolution of the sixteenth century, and the political revolutions of the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries which sprung from it, were destined to make this conception of Law the basis of the modern State. In the contemporary constitutional systems which form the subject of Dr. Borgeaud's latest work,^ the sovereignty of the people is the basis of the political organization of the state, and the law is really, in the phrase of Gains, " What the people ordains and determines." In other respects, however, the debt of modern to ancient democracies is singularly small. The chief characteristic of the modern democratic state is the existence of a written con- stitution, consisting of a body of fundamental laws, intended to ensure the permanence of its political life, to define the limits of the authority of the government, and to guarantee the rights of the individual citizen. In all such constitutions, how- ever, there are certain provisions for the modifica- tion and the revision of the Constitution itself by the suffrages of the nation, as the necessities of the national life may from time to time demand. The manner in which these constitutions originally ' Etdblissement et Revision des Constitutions en Amerique et en Europe. Paris, Thorin et Fils, 1893. PREFACE. came into being, and the nature of the process by which they have been, or may be altered, is the special point to which Dr. Borgeaud directs his investigations. His book is, in short, a study on the making of constitutions. With what conscientious thoroughness Dr. Bor- geaud prepared himself for this survey of contem- porary constitutional systems the two studies now translated show.^ The great merit of his method of treating these questions is that he combines the examination of written constitutional texts with the investigation of the general ideas from which they proceeded, and the historical conditions under which they arose. These essays form a connecting link between his two larger works. He endeavours to trace the conception of a written constitution to its source, to show under what circumstances it origin- ally developed, and of what nature the first written constitutions were. It is, as he points out, to the Reformation, and to the democratic ideas engen- dered by the Reformation, that the written constitu- tions of modern popular states owe their existence. It was in England and in New England that the conception first took a positive form. And it was also in England, during the struggle between Cavaliers and Puritans, that the fundamental prin- ciples of modern democracy first found expression. A recent American author. Professor H. L. ' Published in the Annales de V^cole libre des Sciences Politiques, April, 1890, and January, 1891. PREFACE. Osgood, writing on the kindred subject of the " Political Ideas of the Puritans," comes, indepen- dently to conclusions substantially identical with those of Dr. Borgeaud.^ "The modern revolu- tionary movement," says Professor Osgood, " began not in the eighteenth but in the sixteenth century. Protestantism, especially in the form which Calvin gave it, was hostile to absolutism both in Church and in State, and carried with it a moral vigour without which the mere revival of classical learn- ing would have been powerless to effect deep social changes. Calvinism, in spite of the aristocratic character which it temporarily assumed, meant democracy in Church government. It meant more than that, for its aim was to make society in_ all its parts conform to a religious ideal." . . . Cal- vinists " did not need to search the records of anti- quity to find communities where the theory of human equality was approximately realized. The local Church furnished a much better model than any Greek state. The theory upon which it was based was easily transferred to the domain of politics." The influence which the ecclesiastical organiza- tion of the Independent Churches exercised upon the development of democratic ideas in the state is very clearly and convincingly shown by Dr. Borgeaud. It was from these congregations, with their " Church- covenant," that the idea of a political society, founded on a mutual compact between its members, found its ' The Political Science Quarterly, March and June, 1891. PREFACE. way into English political thought. Before Hobbes and Locke had worked out the speculative conse- quences of the "social contract," that conception was already bearing fruit on English soil. A proof of this is the proposed constitution for the republic which the leaders of the Puritan army presented to Parliament about a week before the execution of Charles I. Its very title is full of significance. Just as the members of a newly gathered Independent congregation solemnly en- gaged themselves " to walk together according to the holy rules of God's Word," and attested their covenant by their signatures, so this constitution ;was to be tendered to the nation, that those who ' were willing that the political life of the nation should be governed by its principles might signify their adhesion by subscribing it. Thus not in name only but in fact the fabric of the new state was to rest on the Agreement of the People. Dr. Borgeaud narrates at length the history ot this scheme, and admirably brings out its signifi- cance. English constitutional historians have generally neglected it. The judicious Hallam never mentions it at all. Mr. Gardiner, it is true, in the third volume of his great History of the Civil War — which ap- peared too late for Dr. Borgeaud to consult it — both traces the history of the scheme, and criticises its suggestions. "The Agreement of the People was the first example of that system which now universally pre- PREFACE. vails in the State Governments of the American Republic. In both countries the idea of restrain- ing the authority of the legislative body by reserv- ing certain matters to be dealt with by the people themselves, arose from the same cause — jealousy of the representative body. Yet the difference between the Agreement of the People and an American State constitution is enormous. In America, at the present day, the intervention of the people is an active, living force. The people make and unmake constitutions with decisive rapidity. The Agreement of the People was but the dream of a few visionaries." And yet this criticism, just though it is, is only a part of the truth. The scheme exercised no per- manent influence on the development of English institutions. It had too little popular support to be, as it was intended to be, a successful expedient for the peace and settlement of a divided nation. But if its importance to the historian of English insti- tutions is comparatively small, its value to the historian of political ideas is exceedingly great, and it is for that reason that it fills so large a place in Dr. Borgeaud's pages. Nor was the scheme itself altogether a dream. In the political controversies of the period no less than three of these drafts of constitutions appear, all bearing the name of Agreement of the People. There is first of all the original sketch proposed by John Lilburne and a section of the army in the autumn of 1647 ; there is, secondly, the better known and more detailed PREFACE. scheme drawn up by the leaders of the army in the winter of 1648, and presented by them to Parliament in January, 1649 ; and, lastly, there is a third put forward in the spring of 1649 by Lilburne and the Levellers as the manifesto of those extremists for whom the second scheme was too moderate. No attempt was made to put into execution any of these three, but the discussion which they aroused famili- arised people with the idea of a written constitution. In December, 1653, such a constitution was actually drawn up by the officers of the army, and established as the constitution of England, not, indeed, by the suffrages of the people, but by the swords of the army. The Instrument of Government and the constitutional schemes embodied in these Agree- ments of the People, all had this characteristic in common, that they all attempted to restrict the authority of the legislative body by defining certain fundamental laws, which it was not to be within its competence to alter. Strikingly modern in their sound are the arguments by which it was defended. " Though it be not of necessity," wrote the official apologist of the Instrument, " yet it were a thing to be wished that popular consent might always, and all times, have the sole influence in the institu- tion of governments ; but when an establishment is once procured, after the many shakings and rents of civil divisions, and contestings for liberty, as here now in England . . . we conceive it highly concerns us, to put in some sure proviso, to prevent a razing of those foundations of liberty PREFACE. that have been but newly laid.' Passing to the details of this constitution, one of its special recom- mendations in his eyes, was its separation of the legislative and executive powers. " The placing the legislative and executive powers in the same per- sons is a marvellous inlet to corruption and tyranny, whereas the keeping of these two apart, flowing in distinct channels, so that they may never meet in one (save upon some transitory extraordinary occa- sion), there lies a grand secret of liberty and good government." I have dwelt so long on the Instrument of Govern- ment., not only because of its intrinsic interest, as the only paper constitution under Avhich England ever lived, but also because of its close relation to the Agreement of the People. It was the only reali- zation of any part of the programme which Dr. Borgeaud sets forth. While it lasted, its history is the record of a continual struggle between a legis- lative body refusing to recognise the validity of the restrictions imposed on its authority, and an army determined to maintain them. It never had any hold on the nation at large, and what one military revolution had made another could unmake. Six years later Lambert's and Monk's soldiers put an end to the " insubstantial fabric" which Cromwell's officers had erected. But the ideas which were defeated in the old England had struck deeper root in the new, and the written constitutions which here were the dream of a few visionaries became there the foundation- PREFACE. Stones of great states. The story of the constitu- tions which succeeded is the natural sequel of the story of the programmes which failed. Dr. Borgeaud's essay on " The First American Constitutions" has also this additional value. The connection between Independency and popular government was far plainer and more obvious in America than in England, and his American in- stances demonstrate still more conclusively the importance of the Reformation in the evolution of democracy. C. H. Firth. NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR. Whatever value there may be in the following translation I feel it to be due to Mr. C. H. Firth, who has most kindly revised the whole with great care, and to Dr. Borgeaud, who has read all the proof-sheets. A. B. H. TABLE OF CONTENTS. THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND. INTRODUCTION. page Modern Democracy the Result of the Reformation . i CHAPTER I. Puritanism and the English Revolution. The early Puritans — Thomas Cartwright — The Admonitions to Parliament — Political Life stirred by Puritanism — Spread of Puritan Doctrines — James I.- — ^Conference at Hampton Court — Charles I. — The Presbyterians and the Covenant — The Independents — Origin of their Doctrines — The Writings of Robert Brown — Brownist Congregationalism —The Dissen- ters and the Army of Cromwell — The Coup cCEtat of the Independents — The Petition of the Army — Proposals for a Constitution to be submitted to the Vote of the People . 1 1 CHAPTER II. History of the Agreement of the People. The Army and the Democrats of Southwark — John Lilburne — The Remonstrance of 1646 — Disbanding of the Troops — The Agitators — The Rendezvous of Newmarket and of Triploe Heath — Declaration to Parliament — The Policy ot Cromwell — The Grandees and the Democrats — "The Case of the Army Truly Stated " — Sketch of the Agreement — Debates in the Council of Officers — Resistance of Cromwell — The Rendezvous at Ware — Military Execution — Finnness of the Democrats — Their Victory over Cromwell — The Agreement presented to Parliament by the General-in-Chief 45 CHAPTER III. The Idea of a Constitution Established by the People. A Social Contract — Origin of the Theory — First Form : A Con- tract between Prince and People — Second Form : A Con- tract between Individuals — Hooker, Hobbes, Milton, Locke, Rousseau — Brownism as it affected the Theory of a'Contract between Individuals — Church Covenants — The Law affecting ancient Gilds— Need of Definition of the Powers of Par- liament . . ....... 77 TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. The Fall of the Democratic Party. page The Agreement abandoned by Cromwell — Military Insurrection — New Proposals of Lilburne — The Plot suppressed — Cromwell Dictator ........ 91 THE EARLY DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTIONS OF NEW ENGLAND. INTRODUCTION. The Contract of the Mayflower — The Brownist Church of Robinson — Church Covenants the Origin of Political Agreements .... 105 CHAPTER I. Connecticut. Differences of Opinion among the early Congregatlonalists — Democracy and Theocracy— The Settlements in Connecticut the Result of Democratic Secessions — The " Fundamental Orders" of Connecticut — Statutes of Ancient Gilds — Organi- zation of the Brotherhoods of the Middle Ages — Exercise of Constituent Power by the Brethren — Amendment of the " Fundamental Orders " — The Constitution of New Haven ■ — Theory of Mr. Brooks Adams — Mistaken Theory of the German Origin of these Constitutions . . . . .117 CHAPTER II. Massachusetts. Its :5^irst Charter — Religious Ideas of the Emigrants — Growth of ^ the Idea of Aristocracy — Theocracy — Democratic Opposition — The two Republics of Massachusetts and of Calvin . . 142 CHAPTER III. Rhode Island. Providence founded by Roger Williams — Fii-st Covenant and Fundamental Articles of 1640 — Colonization of Aquidneck (Rhode Island) — Democracy — The Charter of the Providence Plantations— Organization of a Democratic Government — Valuable Help rendered by Roger Williams— The Second' Charter of 1663 — The Cradle of American Democracy . ■ iSS THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY IN ENGLAND. INTRODUCTION. Modern Democracy the Result of the Reformation. When Mary Stuart, Queen of France and of Scot- land, returned to the kingdom of her forefathers, after the sudden death of Francis the Second, John Knox was the most popular man in the country. She summoned the disciple of Calvin to Holyrood, and during their first interview asked him this ques- tion : " Think you that subjects, having power, may resist their princes ? " " If princes do exceed their bounds," quoth he, "Madam, and do against that wherefore they should be obeyed, then I do not doubt but they may be resisted, even by power." ^ ' John Knox, Hist, of the Reformation of the Church of Scotland, book iv., ii. 14. Edinburgh, i8i5. 2 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. That modern democracy is the result of the Re- formation is now-a-days occasionally called in ques- tion. Luther, the friend and adviser of German princes, Calvin, the founder of the aristocratic government of Geneva during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are quoted in proof of this. But we are too prone to forget that the man is not the doctrine, that the influence of the latter extends to a far wider circle than can ever be reached by the former, that, above all, the doctrine lives after the man has passed away. j Modern democracy is the child of the Reformation, I not of the reformers. This looks like a paradox, but on consideration it will be found that this distinction alone supplies an explanation of the facts of the case. It is owing to the neglect of it that criticism has been so often in the wrong, and that so many contra- dictory opinions have been successively maintained about the spirit of the revolution of the sixteenth century. Two principles, two levers were used to break the authority of the Holy See ; free enquiry, and the THE RESULT OF THE REFORMATION. 3 priesthood of all believers. To make the religious revolution lawful, it was necessary to proclaim these two principles, which contained in them the germs of the political revolution. This does not mean that the reformers foresaw this, or that they thought in any way of shaking the authority of the civil power such as they believed it to be. On the contrary, everywhere they sought its support. They affirmed its Divine Right. All crowns were sacred to them except the tiara. To free themselves from the yoke of Rome, and to re- store the Christian Church of the first centuries, they appealed to the word of God, contained in the Bible. But their appeal had results far wider than they ex- pected. The authority of Rome meant monarchical authority. If the Divine Right of the pontiff might be disputed, why not that of kings } The primitive Church was democratic in its organization ; to return to it meant to break with received ideas, to make the community the visible centre of the Church, and the people the principal factor of social life. Such a path leads a long way. The men who entered on it in 4 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. the sixteenth century either did not see where it must lead them, or they believed themselves capable of stopping short before they should have reached the end. When the reformers were called upon to put their theories into practice, when they had to build up after having thrown down, each one of them had his own season of distinctly conservative re-action, in which he seemed to deny by his deeds what he had taught in his writings. Free enquiry had given birth to the doctrines of the Anabaptists. Luther invoked the sword of the princes against the Anabaptists ; at Zurich, where the Council was inspired by Zwinglius, they were drowned ; Calvin had Servetus burned, and Melancthon, " the gentle Melancthon," wrote to con- gratulate him on the act. The leaders of the Reformation meant by free en- quiry the right of every one to open the Bible and read there what they themselves had read in it. They meant nothing more by free enquiry ; but it was free enquiry none the less, and all their authority could not prevent the doctrine from bearing its true fruit. THE RESULT OF THE REFORMATION. 5 from setting free the conscience and creating the in- dividual. Universal priesthood carries with it the equality of all within the Church, the sovereign power of the community in the matter of ecclesiastical govern- ment. The faithful are to choose their ministers. This is formally declared by Calvin in his Institution ChrHienne. Here the jurist inspired the theologian, and the logician guided his pen. But when the political question arose in Geneva in connection with the religious question, the man took the upper hand, and his work became aristocratic. When he organized his Church, the author of the Institu- tion Chr^tienne made the authority of the com- munity of the faithful illusory, by the forms which he imposed upon its exercise. The congregation was to elect its pastors, but only those who were presented to it by the Venerable Company of eccle- siastics in charge. It had only to confirm a choice already made. But the principle which had been laid down remained, and it had its proper conse- quences. In the other reformed Churches, the election 10 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. civil war. If other possibly premature conquests of democracy had been lost in the reaction which followed, this, at any rate, was lasting, and this was the foundation of liberty. Those principles also which had not been able in the seventeenth century to take root in the land which, of all European countries, was the most con- servative and most attached to tradition, when planted in the soil of the new world, by men who for- sook their country for the sake of their-religion, grew and prospered in the colonies wliich were one day to be known as the United States. If we trace the origin of American democracy among the charters and constitutions of the New England States, we find a startling proof of the close connection which we must recognise between the two great movements of modern thought. Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page CHAPTER I. PURITANISM AND THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. The early Puritans.^ Thomas Cartwright. — The Admonitions to Parhament. — Political Life stirred by Puritanism. — Spread of Puritan Doctrines. — James I. — Conference at Hampton Court. — Charles L — The Presbyterians and the Covenant. — The Independents. — Origin of their Doctrines. — The Writings of Robert Brown.— Brownist Congrega- tionalism. — The Dissenters and the Army of Cromwell. — The Coup d'itat of the Independents. — The Petition of the Army. — Proposals for a Constitution to be submitted to the Vote of the People. Henry VHI. having quarrelled with Rome about a question of discipline, not of doctrine, left England legally separated from the Holy See, but not reformed. A Protestant confession of Faith was given to her by Edward VI., but taken away again by Mary Tudor, who restored the Roman Catholic religion by force. Elizabeth, who found 12 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. herself between the rural districts which were Catholic, and the towns which were Protestant, took refuge in a compromise, Anglicanism, which was a reformed Catholicism without a Pope, based on episcopacy and on the royal supremacy. Her Church was a broad one as regarded individual belief, but narrow as regarded the form of worship. This compromise was not accepted by rigid Protes- tants, who were, for the most part, Calvinists, and who soon obtained the significant name of Puritans. Thus began that obstinate opposition which was one day to shatter the monarchy. The early Puritans had no political views ; they were completely absorbed by religious feeling. Elected from the multitude, to be the blessed of the life to come, possessors of the very word of God, that book, every page, every word of which was in their eyes a revelation of the Supreme Will, they had no room for other ideas. They were in constant communication with the Eternal, by means of their daily reading and meditation ; they lived in the contemplation of a higher world. Hence PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 13 their contempt for the great things of this world. Rich and noble, priests and kings — by the grace of God, they were all that, and more than that. One thing only mattered here below, that they should make ready for Heaven, and the Bible alone could teach them the way thither. In her worship the Anglican Church had retained the traditional forms. The first effort of the Puritans was directed to the complete abolition of the Catholic ritual. They found neither surplices nor chasubles, nor signs of the cross, nor crucifixes in their Bibles. To them it was a grave sin to retain in Divine service those forms which belonged, they said, to Popish idolatry. But on these out- ward ceremonies Elizabeth had no intention of yielding, and their observance was only the more rigidly insisted upon. It was impossible for the Puritans to obey. God had spoken. Between His 'will and the will of the Queen their conscience would not allow them to hesitate. They were bound to resist and to fight. By word of mouth and by their pen, with 14 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. vigour and with violence, they defended purity of worship. It was not long before even the organiza- tion of the Anglican Church became the subject of attack, and episcopacy was called in' question. Thomas Cartwright, Professor of Divinity at Cam- bridge, declared all forms of Church government, other than those instituted by the Apostles, unlawful. We gather from his writings that he meant by that a discipline such as John Knox had just established in Scotland, from which the Presby- terian Church was to spring ; a Church governed by a series of assemblies, raised one above another, directly or indirectly elected by the faithful them- selves. Cartwright was deprived of his doctor's degree and professorship, and banished from the University (1570). He left the country and went first to Geneva, thence to Antwerp, — where, accord- ing to Neal,^ he was pastor to the congregation of English merchants, — and subsequently to Middle- burg. • History of the Puritans (first edition, 1732), new edition. London, 1822, i. 214. PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 15 Two years later he was recalled to England by the entreaties of his friends, who were resolved to bring the Puritan cause before Parliament. In 1572 they presented to the House of Commons their Admonition to the Parliament. This treatise was at once published, and, although prohibited, immediately ran through three or four editions. It contained a list of their grievances, and set forth their views on the need of organizing Church government and Church worship, according to the precepts of the Gospel, and the example of the Primitive Church alone. The abolition of episco- pacy as a source of authority superior to that of the ministers, the election of ministers so that none should be placed at the head of a congregation without the consent of its members, and the reform of ritual, were the objects aimed at. The two chief authors of this manifesto were immediately thrown into prison. It was at this moment that Cartwright returned. He at once took up and developed the arguments, which were indeed his own, and published a second Admonition i6 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. to the Parliatnent. In this he asserted that instead of being governed by the bishops and the king, the Church ought only to obey assemblies of ministers and elders, freely chosen in each parish by the faithful ; and that to the congregation itself, directly consulted, ought to belong the final decision of any grave measure, such as the excom- munication of one of its members, or the dismissal of a minister or elder.^ ' " Yet ever so must they (the members of the Consistory) excommunicate and receive the excommunicants in again, that they require the assent of the whole congregation, showing the grievousness of the fact, and how they have proceeded with him by admonition, and his contempt. Which they shall do both because their upright dealing may appeare to the Whole Church, and because they may not usurp Authority over the Whole Church. Whereby we might caste out the tyrannie of the Bishops, and bring in a new tyrannie of theirs, who are appointed by good order to have the examination of matters, and the rest of dealing in the name of the Whole Congregation. Nevertheless, what they doe well, the congregation cannot alter, neither shall the Congregation put them, nor any of them out, but upon just cause proved either in the Consistory or in some one of the Councils, and the cause accepted for sufficient. Neither may they, or any ol them, leave to deale in their turne, PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 17 Whitgift, who was Vice-Chancellor of the Univer- sity of Cambridge, was commissioned by the bishops to reply to Cartwright. Cartwright answered Whitgift, other champions entered the lists, and the war of pens became general. The pamphlets of the Puritans were secretly printed, and were soon in the hands of everybody. It was at this moment that the dispute left the religious ground to which it had hitherto kept, for the field of politics. It only touched the con- stitutional question, however, in so far as that had some connection with the religious question. Yet as the ecclesiastical hierarchy, as is observed by Hallam, is "interwoven" with the temporal consti- tution in England, when the Puritans discussed episcopacy and supremacy they discussed also monarchy. And as their controversy started from an article of faith, they were, on principle, unable except they can show good cause to that consistory, and it be approved by them, with the consent of the Whole Congregation and good liking." Thomas Cartwright, Admo7iitions to t\e Parliament, 2nd ed., 1617, p. 59. C 1 8 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. to accept any compromise. They did not ask for liberty of conscience. They demanded that the justice of their claims should be recognised, and the Church of Christ re-organized. The triumph of their system, like the triumph of the Gospel, must be complete. Puritan doctrine spread rapidly. The citizens of the towns, and the greater part of the rural gentry, were its first adherents, followed, naturally and inevitably, though gradually, by the people. The Roman Catholics, reduced to silence by the law, and unpopular because their leaders sought sup- port from foreign powers, had lost all influence in the greater part of the kingdom. The Anglican party, though strong at court, scarcely touched the masses ; most of the clergy who belonged to it were non-resident the greater part of the year, and preached but seldom, most of them because of their ignorance, some to please Elizabeth, who hated sermons. The Puritan clergy alone were really active. Puritan ministers were always in the pulpit, or PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 19 travelling throughout the land addressing vast audiences. Not content with the ordinary services, they arranged religious meetings, called " prophesy- ings," which they could summon at will, and at which several pastors and sometimes even laymen held forth in turns. The profession of faith which was signed by those taking part in these meetings began as follows : — " We believe the word of God, contained in the Old and New Testament, to be a perfect rule of faith and manners ; that it ought to be read and known by all people, and that the authority of it exceeds all authority, not of the Pope only, but of the Church also ; and of councils, fathers, men, and angels. "We condemn, as a tyrannous yoke, whatsoever men have set up of their own invention, to make articles of faith, and the binding of men's con- sciences by their laws and institutions." ^ ^ Neal, History of the Puritans, vol. i. p. 223, s. 20 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. Political discussions often turned these meetings into regular revolutionary conventicles. They were forbidden by government ; whereupon secret assem- blies were held, and Puritanism, or as it was also called. Non-conformity, continued to take root in the land. On the death of Elizabeth, James of Scotland, a king who had been brought up a Calvinist, succeeded her. It seemed as if the accession of such a prince must put an end to the religious disputes, by securing the triumph of those who desired a more thorough reformation. But this was by no means the case. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the feeling of common peril and the joy of a common deliverance had united all parties round the throne that had been saved. A truce to party strife had followed ; but the death of the Queen precipitated the crisis, and put an end to this truce. James I. had been the pupil of Buchanan, but an unwilling pupil. From his very birth he had been under the yoke of those Scotch Presbyterians, who PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 21 had constituted themselves the accusers and the judges of Mary Stuart ; he had been instructed in the tenets of the religion, which had become that of his kingdom, and he remained faithful to it. But from the beginning, he detested his masters, whose conduct to his mother he never forgave. He only pretended to share' their views in political matters, just so long as he was in their power. The moment he became of age, he declared that " Knox, Buchanan, and the Regent Murray," who had been chosen head of the government on the imprisonment of Mary, "could only be defended by traitors, and seditious theologians." ^ His tutor had dedicated to him the De Jure Regni apud Scotos, the gospel, as it were, of democratic government and popular liberty; in 1598, he replied to it by The True Law of Free Monarchies, which is nothing more nor less than a treatise on absolute power. What he means by a free monarchy, is a government in which the monarch is free. The monarch is responsible to ' McCrie, Life of John Knox, p. 315. 22 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. God alone, whose representative he is in his king- dom ; he possesses power to make laws, and to suspend those which have been made, without having an account to give to any human authority. And when the law is passed, he is subject to it only so long as he choses.^ The little King of Scotland might be educated in the reformed religion, he might have for his tutor the most liberal publicist of the age, but it wa.s impossible to temper in his veins the blood he had inherited from his mother, the blood of Stuarts and of Guises. When the death of Elizabeth made James King of England, he had just finished a long struggle with the Scotch. By it he had painfully succeeded in restricting liberty of speech and the right of free assembly in the Church, obtained the privilege of being consulted on the election of ministers, and restored, in a fashion, the episcopate. ' James I. Works (published by the Bishop of Winchester), London, 1616, p. 203. When the pamphlet appeared in 1598, it was anonymous. The first signed edition bears date 1603. PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 23 The son of the Catholic queen ascended the throne of the Tudors, with his mind entirely made up to use all his new power against the detested followers of John Knox. He had scarcely entered his new kingdom, when some of the English clergy presented to him a petition in favour of a reform of the ritual. On the 14th January, 1604-5, four ministers were summoned to Hampton Court to confer with the leading bishops, the King acting as president. The only result of this conference was to reveal to England, that she had a learned theologian for her King, and what was a far more serious matter, to make known his personal ideas and intentions as regarded Non-conformity. " Then the king broke out into a flame, and instead of hearing the doctors reasons, or commanding the bishops to answer them, told the ministers, that he found they were aiming at a Scotch presbytery, ' which ' (says he) ' agrees with monarchy as well as God with the devil ; then Jack and Tom, Will and Dick, shall meet, and at their pleasure censure both me and my council. Then Will will get up 24 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. and say, " Thus it ought to be," and Dick will answer, " Nay, verily, we will have it otherwise " ; and as for me, I shall repeat what I said to you just now, and say, " Le roi s'avisera.'" Ther>, as it is said, he went on to recall what had happened in Scotland in the regency of his grand-mother, in the reign of his mother, and during his own minority ; he then turned to the bishops, and raising his hand to his hat, he added, ' My lords the Bishops, I may thank you that these men plead thus for my Supremacy. They think they cannot make their Party good against you, but by appealing unto it ; but if once you were out, and they in, I know -what would become of my Supre- macie, for No bishop, no King. I have learned of what cut they have been, who preaching before me, since my coming into England, passed over in silence my being Supreme Governor in causes Ecclesiasticall. Well, Doctor, have you anything to say?' On the reply of Dr. Reynolds, 'No more, if it please your Majesty,' the king went on, ' If this be all your Party hath to say, I will PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 25 make them conform themselves, or else I will harrie them out of the Land, or else do worse.' — Thus ended the second dale's Conference." ^ The religious struggle began again, and this time it was complicated by questions of taxation, and intensified by the -disagreement, which became more evident day by day, between a king who understood liberty in the way already described, and a Parliament jealous of its rights, and leaning more and more towards Puritanism. It led to the rupture between the Commons and the Crown. After reigning for twenty-two years James died, leaving to his son the precedent of three successive parliaments dissolved. Charles I. religiously followed in his father's steps. He even did more than the author of The True Law of Free Monarchies had ventured to ' Semper Eademj or, a Reference of the Debate at the Savoy (i65i), to the Conference at Hampton Court, 1603-4 (London, 1662), pp. 19, 20. Neal, History of the Puritans, ii. 16, 17. GdiXdSxitr, History of England, from the Accession of fames I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War (London, 1883), i. 156. 25 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. do ; he carried out in practice the principle that the king is above the law. Taxes were levied without the consent of Parliament, judges who protested were dismissed, parliaments were dissolved, and then, for the space of ten whole years, were never convoked at all. The bishops, led by Laud, approved, and the doctrine of passive obedience was preached. The Archbishop of Canterbury, not content with persecuting the Non-conformists, undertook to bring back ritual and doctrine to the ways of Roman tradition. Geneva Bibles were prohibited, forms of worship were modified in such a fashion as to be, in effect, a return to Roman- Catholicism, and recalcitrant clergymen were deprived of their benefices. This was more than the country was able to bear. Scotland, where attempts had been made to suppress the national Presbyterian Church, and to introduce Anglicanism, was the first to resist. In the time of Knox, when the Lords of the Congregation took up arms to establish the Reformation, they bound themselves together, for PURITANIUM AND THE REVOLUTION. il the defence of their faith, by Covenants or treaties of alliance, for which they believed they found example in Holy Writ. The men w^ho now rose up to defend their work, thought right to follow the same course as their ancestors. But by this time a whole century of Protestantism had passed over Scotland, and it was no longer merely the barons who associated themselves with the heads of the cities and a few ministers — a whole people now gathered together to swear a mutual compact. On the eve of their armed struggle, on the I4tli of February, 1639,^ the Covenanters published a manifesto "to all good Christians in the kingdom of England," in which they appeal from the King to the English nation and the Parliament at Westminster.^ ' New Style. Scotland adopted the reformed calendar in 1599. In England, where it did not come into use until 1752, this date corresponds to 3rd February, 1638. The year did not begin till the 25th March. ^ This document is to be found in the Rush-worth Collection of State Papers, 1680, pp. 798-802. . 28 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. When this appeal reached her, England was quite ready to listen to it. She herself had a quarrel to settle with the King's advisers. King and bishops had separated themselves from the people ; Hampden had already refused the payment of ship-money ; the revolution was ready to break out. We all know how it was accomplished. At first the Parliament, led by a moderate party, the Presbyterians, contented itself with religious reformation and some political guarantees ; but as the war progressed, an extreme party, the Independents, got control of it, supported by Cromwell's soldiers, and it was forced to execute the King and establish a republic. Episcopacy was abolished by the Presbyterians ; monarchy by the Independents. An assembly, consisting of ministers and laymen, was summoned by the Presbyterians to meet at Westminster, in order to re-organize the Anglican Church. Presbyteries elected by the parishes,/ synods representing the county or province, and. PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 29 above them all, a national ecclesiastical assembly formed by delegation from all the inferior bodies, received the authority of which the bishops had been stripped. In 1643, England adopted the system of Covenants which had originated in Scotland. A compact was drawn up by which England, Scotland and Ireland, solemnly bound themselves in a league, " for the reformation and defence of religion, the honour and welfare of the King, the peace and safety of the three kingdoms." There is scarcely any need to add that Charles was no party to it. He replied from Oxford by forbidding his faithful subjects to have anything to do with it. This compact, which was named, " A Solemn League and Covenant," was sworn to and signed, first by the two ecclesiastical assemblies and the two Parliaments in London and Edinburgh, and then by all the inhabitants of England and Scotland who had attained the age of eighteen. This was no act of approval ; adhesion to it was compulsory, refusal entailing distinct penalties, which in 30 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. Scotland went so far as to include confiscation of property. But the mere fact that the formal adhesion of the people was considered necessary showed that the people were about to gain new rights. The day on which the Presbyterians were able to make the nation sign the Solemn League and Covenant marks the highest limit of their power. In the same year the rival party was formed, and began to make head against them ; in 1648 it snatched the power from their grasp by main force. Although the Independents bore the sword, and were only too ready to fling it as an argument into the balance, they were none the less a religious body. They were Puritans, but Puritans of an essentially English type. They accepted Calvinism as a system of doctrine, but rejected it as a system of Church organization. Those who adopted the system which Knox and Melville had brought back from Geneva and established in Scotland placed authority in the council of elders or presbyteries, and in the General Assemblies of their delegates — such authority not PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 31 being conferred upon them by the fact of their election, but, as they believed, by the formal warrant of Scripture. Thus, while the Presbyterians recog- nised and organized a National Church by the re- presentation of the presbyteries, the Independents, on the other hand, admitted no other ecclesiastical organism than the congregations of the faithful, each forming a complete and autonomous Church of itself, and, save God, no supreme authority but the congregation of the faithful directly appealed to. The logical consequences of their system were, in ecclesiastical matters, the separation of State and Church, religious tolerance, and, in political matters, a new and decisive step in the path of democracy. Presbyterianism is Calvinism tempered by the aristocratic tendencies of Calvin. Independency or, as it was at first called, Congregationalism, is Cal- vinism without Calvin. As early as the time of Elizabeth, one sect had arisen which had established local independent con- gregations. Its adherents were called Brownists, from the name of Robert Brown, their founder. 32 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. Robert Brown had once been a pupil of Cartwright, at Cambridge ; he had developed and carried to their extreme limit the opinions of his teacher. At first he settled at Norwich, and organized there a Church according to his views, but the interference of the Bishop soon forced him to leave the country. He took refuge in Holland, followed by part of his congregation, and settled himself at Middleburg. There he published, in 1582, the first systematic statement of the congregational theory, A Booke which sheweth the Life and Manners of all true Christians. ^ " True Christians are united, into a companie or number of believers who by a willing covenant made with their God, place themselves under the government of God and of Christ, keep- ing the Divine law in a holy Communion." ^ ' A Booke which sheweth the Life and Manners of all true Christians. Middleburg, 1582. [Brit. Mus. c. 37, E. 57.] 2 Loc. cit. Definitions, i. Cf. Def. 35. "The Church planted or gathered is a community or number of Christians or beleevers which by a willing covenant made with their God, are under the government of God and Christ, and kepe his lawes in one holie communion." PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 33 It is this particular definition of Brown's which is new, for the other principles which he maintains, the election of ministers solely by the congregations, and the actual sovereignty of the assembly of the faithful, were already to be found in the writings of Cart- wright. But the one new thing was of grave impor- tance, not only because it destroyed the notion of the system of National Churches, but because it necessarily involved a complete separation between the domains of religion and politics. Robert Brown declared that the State had no right to interfere with the internal affairs of the Church ; only such things as affected public order, and the outward manifestations of religion, were within its province. It has no power whatsoever " to compel religion, to plant Churches by power, and to force a submission to ecclesiastical government." ^ The founder of Congregationalism has gained a definite place among the first defenders of religious liberty. And yet it is quite clear that he did not ^ A Treatise of Reformation without tarrying for A?2ie. Middleburg, s. d. 12-13. [Brit. Mus. c. 37, E. 57.] D 34 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. himself see the full significance of his arguments. Though he denies the right of a civil magistrate to interfere in purely religious questions, by a curious inconsistency frequent in the writers of the age, he cannot get rid of the prevalent notion which confused religious society with political society. He believed that the truths which he proclaimed concerning reli- gious matters ought to be equally applied to civil affairs. " We give these definitions so generall," says the author of A Booke concerning True Christians in so many words, " that they may be applied also to the civill State." ^ He ends by declaring that civil magistrates, like religious functionaries, ought to be chosen with the consent of the people.^ ' Definition ii8. 2 Definition 117. In both cases the office and authority con- ferred by the election of the people are said to be " received of God." For Brown, as before for Cartwright, the voice of the people was literally the voice of God. Christ was the King. As His will was i-evealed equally to all, all had an equal right to interpret it. He reigns, the community governs in His name. Thus the Puritans by means of their idea of monarchy itself arrived practically at democracy. They proclaimed a kind of PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 35 The harsh measures taken to put down Congrega- tionalism by Elizabeth's government sufiSciently attest the importance which was attached to the movement. Ministers were even hanged for the sole crime of having spread the writings of Brown. The author of the incriminated writings had by this time made his submission and returned to his country. He owed his pardon to the protection of persons in authority. But his disciples did not Divine Right Democracy. " Church governors are persons re- ceyving their authoritie and office of God, for the guiding of his people the Church, receyved and called thereto, by due consent and agreement of the Church. " Civill Magistrates are persons authorized of God, and re- ceyved by the consent and choyse of the people, whether officers or subjectes. . . . " Cf. Dexter, The Congregational- ism of the Last Three Hundred Years (New York, 1880), p. 106. Persecutions account for the rarity of the pamphlets which were so widely circulated at the time. Dexter, in his Collections towards a Bibliography of Congregationalism, I. c, Appendix 8, 9, mentions five copies of The Book of True Christians, of which one was in his own collection, and the four others respec- tively in the Bodleian Library, Oxford ; in the Archbishop's Library, at Lambeth ; in the Trinity College Library, Cam- bridge ; and in the Library of Yale College, U.S.A. To these 36 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. follow him in his return to the State Church. Though imprisoned, banished, and even executed as felons, they persisted in their schism, and new congregations under other leaders were founded in Holland. One of these, that of which John Robin- son was the minister, set sail in 1620 for America. These were the first colonists of New England, the famous Pilgrim Fathers. About the middle of the reign of James I. the exiles began to return to their own country. They must be added a second copy in the possession of the Bodleian, and another which is in the British Museum Library. In the edition possessed by the British Museum there are bound up with it the Treatise on the Reformation aXrsady qaottd, and a Treatise on the Twenty-third Chapter of St. Matthew. If we add to these three copies of An answer to Master Cart- wright, his letter for joyning with the English Churches, which are to be found in the Bodleian, the Minster Library of York, and Dr. WilHams's Library in Gordon Square, London ; and also one single copy of a short autobiographical account, en- titled, A Trice and Short Declaration, both of the gathering and joyning together of certaine persons, and also of the lamen- table breach and division which fell amongst them, we shall have a complete hst of all that remains to us of Robert Brown. PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 37 met secretly in London, where they established a congregation. Under Charles, in November, 1640, at the time of the Long Parliament, a large number returned, not only from Holland, but also from America. They began to publish their writings, and the sermons and treatises of Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and of Mather, ministers of Massachusetts and of Connecticut, the Fathers of the new doctrine, were openly printed in London. Thus began the Congregational system. Founded on the doctrine of the independence of each Church, it was sure to become, and did become, under the name of " Independency," the rallying cry of the numerous sects which came into being after the abolition of episcopacy. It was called The New England Way, but there is no doubt it expressed the individualistic tendencies which Old England had inherited from her German ancestors, and al- though brought back to her from beyond the seas, it owed its birth to her alone. Cromwell, seeking for men whom he could trust to face the Cavaliers, appealed to the religious enthu- 38 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. siasm of the sectaries. His Ironsides did not dis- appoint him. They were victorious at Marston Moor ; they were victorious at Naseby. But if they were ready enough to fight for their religion, they expected to be allowed full liberty, when the battle was over, to " seek God," as they called it, after their own fashion. Now the fashion of some was by no means the fashion of others. The major- ity were dissenters, who were grouped into separate congregations. Their courage and their successes had placed them in the foremost rank, and when the re-modelling of the army had placed it in the power of their leader, it was the army which became the stronghold of Independency. Backed by the troops, the Independent party was able to get control both of the parliament and of the kingdom. The programme of the Independents is set forth in a manifesto, which was presented to the House of Commons in the name of the army, a few weeks after the Presbyterian leaders had been driven from the Parliament. This manifesto contains the outline of a complete constitution. Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page Missing Page PURITANISM AND THE REVOLUTION. 43 Such was the manner in which the English Puritans intended to establish their " Agreement of the People." It was a real constitutional Charter, founded on the direct acceptance of the people, and placed above the reach of the representative Assembly — a constitution in the sense in which the word is understood by the democracies of the United States and Switzerland to-day. For the first time in modern Europe, such principles had formed the basis of- a scheme of government. How and by whom was this scheme elaborated .' What was its fate before it was brought to the bar of the House of Commons, as the manifesto of the all-powerful party which came there to signify its triumph ? Why, after so fortunate a beginning, was it never once put into execution ? These questions surely merit a reply, but it is not easy to answer them. It is a page of history which assembled ; The Humble Petition of His Excellency, Thomas Lord Fairfax, and the General Council of Officers of the Army under his command [Brit. Mus. E. 539 (2)]. Cf. Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England, iii., col. 1263, ss. 44 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. historians have neglected to write. This neglect has been a mistake, for it would have thrown light on the still little known part played by democratic ideas in the English Revolution, and would have rendered more intelligible the obscure policy of Cromwell at a decisive moment in his career. So far as still existing documents will allow the follow- ing narrative fills up the blank.^ ' I have made use in my work of the collection which the British Museum owes to the munificence of George III., and which are sometimes called, in memory of the donor, King's Tracts. This voluminous collection includes all the journals and pamphlets — and they are innumerable — of the period of the Great Rebellion. I owe to the kindness of Mr. Gardiner, the eminent historian of the Great Civil War, an introduction to Mr. C. H. Firth of Oxford, who allowed me to see some most important manu- scripts, which he has since published. They consist of reports which have recently been discovered by him, of the sittings of the famous Council of Officers, which was the governing power in England during the second phase of the Revolution. Volume I. was published in 1891, under the title of The Clarke Papers, from the name of the author, William Clarke, who was Secretary to the Council, and, later on, private Secretary to General Monk. CHAPTER II. HISTORY OF THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. The Army and the Democrats of Southwark. — John Lilburne. — The Remonstrance of 1646. — Disbanding of the Troops. — ■ The Agitators. — The Rendezvous of Newmarket and of Triploe Heath. — Declaration to Pariiament. — The Policy of Cromwell. — The Grandees and the Democrats. — "The Case of the Army truly Stated." — Sketch of the Agreement. — Debates in the Council of Officers. — Resistance of Crom- well. — The Rendezvous at Ware. — Military Execution. — Firmness of the Democrats. — Their Victory over Crom- well. — The Agreement presented to Parliament by the General-in-Chief. The defeat of Presbyterianism meant in politics the defeat of parliamentary monarchy, and in religion the end of a national Church, and consequently of compulsion in matters of conscience. The triumph of Independency was the triumph of republicanism and toleration. Such, roughly summed up in a general formula, is the idea we may make to our- 46 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. selves of the two great parties which had contended for supremacy about the time of the execution of Charles the First. Of the two principles represented by the victors, the second only had originally appeared at the head of their demands. Cromwell had used it as a standard, round which to gather all sects and all sections. In the Biblical language in use at the time, in the pamphlets of the Presbyterian party, tolerance was called the " great Diana " of the Independents. A republic was the point last admitted into their scheme, a solution which had forced itself upon them, after the failure of every attempt which had been made to come to an under- standing with the King. It was not an object aimed at from the beginning. At the same time, it is necessary to add that this was only true of the leaders of the party. Outside the directing body, the Council of officers, presided over by Fairfax, but actually led by Cromwell and Ireton, the complete abolition of the royal power had, from a very early date, been discussed in the THE AGREEME^fT OF THE PEOPLE. 47 army. Among the soldiers entirely under the dominion of their religious enthusiasm, and with no concern but the logical application of their theories, the doctrine of Congregationalism had developed its consequences. Democracy in the Church inevitably led to Democracy in the State. Immediately after the Battle of Naseby, the Presbyterian Baxter, who joined the army as chaplain, noted with terror an unprecedented out- burst of seditious ideas. Pamphlets against the King, the Lords, and even the House of Commons itself, were circulated in the camp, greedily read, and hotly debated. At night, round the camp fires, this extraordinary army spent its time in political dis- cussions, the singing of hymns, and the preaching of sermons. The seditious pamphlets read by the soldiers came from London. They emanated from a group of sectaries, whose headquarters were in Southwark, the home of one of the first Independent congrega- tions in the capital, and were written by those indefatigable pamphleteers, their leaders, during their 48 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. captivity in the Tower, Newgate and the Gatehouse, to which State prisons they had been committed by order of Parliament. The chief among them was John Lilburne. One of the first to raise the standard of Brownist dissent in London, Lilburne became popular when still very young, for the courage with which he bore the stripes of the Star Chamber, and the energy with which he defended the cause of the sectaries. Later on he entered the service of the Parliamentary army, and rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. When the officers were all called upon to sign the Covenant he refused, was obliged to change his regiment, and finally to quit the army. From that time he gave himself up entirely to the war of the pen, made himself the champion of English liberty, and flooded the country with his pamphlets. The people called him " Free-born John," because he was always talking about the rights of a free-born English- man, and the phrase met with much the same fortunes as the word " citizen '' did in France at the time of the French Revolution. THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 49 In politics his authorities are the following, in the order in which he himself places them : Holy- Scripture, sound reason, the laws of the land, especi- ally Magna Charta, and precedents drawn from history. With the exception of Buchanan he quotes scarcely any of the publicists of the Reformation, and seems hardly to have known them, except from the frequent use made of them by Presbyterian writers. When the Star Chamber ceased to exist, Lilburne got into difficulties with the House of Lords. At this time he insisted more especially on the sover- eignty of the House of Commons as representing the people. Later on, when he was imprisoned by the House of Commons itself, he appealed from them to the nation. In 1645, he wrote as follows, from his cell in Newgate : " Now, for any man to imagine that the shadow or representative is more worthy than the substance, or, that the House of Commons is more valuable and considerable, than the Body for whom they serve, is all one as if they should affirme, that an Agent or Ambassador from E 50 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. a Prince, hath the same or more authority than the Prince himselfe. . . " But to return to Lieutenant CoUonel Lilburne, I am informed by some members that this Vote was obtained by Bastwicke surreptitiously, when the House was thin and emptie, and, therefore, I conceive he may appeale from the House thin and emptie to the House full and compleate ; if this will not be accepted of, why should he not appeale to the people. — For Buchanan, an author without reproach, in his Booke De Jure Regni apud Scotos, doth boldly and positively affirme, Supremam po- testatem esse in Populo, the Supreme power to be in the people. — And before Buchanan, the Common- wealth of Rome (which remaineth a patterne and example to all ages both for civill and Military government), I say this Commonwealth, in its best perfection, did allow of this last refuge or appeale to the People." ^ When the Presbyterian minister Edwards, in 1646, • England's Miserie and Remedie, 1645, PP- 1-4' [Brit.Mus., E. 302 (5).] THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 51 published several tracts denouncing the errors of sectarians under the significant title of Gangraena^ he pointed to 1645 as the year in which the mon- strous notion became prevalent, that the people, as sovereign, had the right to demand an account not only of the King and the Lords, but also of the Commons, as representatives receiving not full powers, but only a limited mandate. We may look upon the peculiar position of the prisoner in Newgate, who found himself forced to appeal to an authority higher than that of Parliament, as the immediate cause of the diffusion of a theory, which is neither more nor less than the attribution, to the nation as a whole, in matters political, of the part played by the congregation in matters religious. In 1646, — the dates are here of peculiar import, — we come across an address to the Commons, whose title is in itself a manifesto. It runs thus : ^ " A Re- monstrance of Many Thousands Citizens and other Free-born People of England to their owne House of Commons, occasioned through the Illegall and Bar- ' Brit. Mus., E. 323 (2). ^ grit. Mus., 1 104, a. 7. 52 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. barous Imprisonment of that Famous and Worthy- Sufferer for his Countries Freedoms Lieutenant-Col. John Lilburne, — Wherein their just Demands in behalfe of themselves and the whole Kingdome con- cerning their Publick Safety, Peace and Freedome is expressed ; calling those their Commissioners in Parliament to an Account, how they (since the begin- ning of their Session to this present) have discharged their Duties to the Universality of the People, their Sovereign Lord, from whom their Power and Strength is derived, and by whom {ad bene placitum) it is continued." This remonstrance demanded the abolition of monarchy, and the peers, and the convocation of a new Parliament. A quotation from the speech of Samuel to the Hebrews, when they asked of him a King, serves as epilogue : " As for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you : but I will teach you the good and the right way : Only fear the Lord, and serve Him in truth with all your heart ; for consider how great things He hath done for you. But if ye shall still THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 53 do wickedly, ye shall be consumed, both ye and your king" (i Sam. xii. 23-25). We know that the democrats of Southwark had a working committee, and that they sent agents all over the country to spread their ideas and collect signatures to their addresses ; but it is exceedingly difficult to say how far they succeeded in the provinces. The Parliament burned their petitions, prosecuted their agents, and dissolved their meet- ings. We may, however, presume that their doc- trines were not generally understood, and that they were most likely looked upon as abominable heresies by a population which was still three-quarters royalist. As we have seen, the ground in which the seed took root and grew was the army. There everything was in its favour ; the religious ideas which prevailed there ; the fact that the troops were militia, and that the citizen-soldiers looked upon themselves as the representatives of a nation in arms and the instru- ment of the designs of God ; and, added to all this, the more or less avowed complicity of their officers. Cromwell and his party certainly favoured this 54 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. outburst of democratic independency in the xi of the army, without perhaps suspecting that si day they would have to struggle against it. It a new power which was ready to oppose that He of Commons whose authority they found it so t to bear, and it was a force which they thought t would always be able to guide. It was soon seen of what use it could be m: In the beginning of 1647, the Parliament voted disbanding of the greater part of the army wl had finished the war against the King, and the mation, under a new leader, of an expedition force intended to reduce Ireland. Only a sr body of cavalry and some regiments of infar for garrison service were to be maintained England, and these were to be under the cc mand of Fairfax, and " have no officer above rank of a colonel." ^ Cromwell, it should be ' Decrees of February 19th and March 8th, 1646-7T "T no member of that House should have any command in garrison or forces under Sir Th. Fairfax ; that there be officer above a colonel." Cobbett's /"ar/. Hist, iii. 558. THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 55 membered, was Lieutenant-General. This immedi- ately gave rise to addresses of remonstrance which, at first humble in tone and signed by officers only, afterwards became more peremptory in the name of the regiments themselves. The soldiers refused either to take service in Ireland or to disband until their arrears of pay were settled; until "the rights and liberties of the nation had been vindi- cated and secured." The disbanding of the army, they said, was the result of a plot formed by a few men who " having lately tasted of sovereignty, and being lifted beyond their ordinary sphere of ser- vants, seek to become masters and degenerate into tyrants." ^ These things were signified to Parliament by means of a letter sent for this purpose to the general officers. Summoned to the Bar of the House, the messengers declared that they had been sent as the delegates of eight regiments, and could give no further explanation without permission from tliem. ' Cobbett's /"ar/. Hist., iii. 571. 56 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. The army, in fact, had elected regular representa- tives. This was the consequence of a blunder made by the Parliament. Instead of endeavouring to come to an understanding with the oiScers, they allowed their annoyance to be seen. A petition which the officers circulated provoked a vote of the House, declaring those who persisted in its circula- tion enemies of the State. The leaders who were especially aimed at thereupon drew back, but they favoured the election of political agents from among the non-commissioned officers and soldiers, who became the ostensible heads of the movement. These "agitators,"^ as they were soon called, these mandatories of troops and companies, met as a representative council, but on all important occa- sions they consulted their constituents themselves. Staggered by these measures, the Parliament began to enquire into the wishes of the army, ' The word agitator does not appear to have had at first the signification attached to it subsequently. An agitator, in the army of Cromwell, meant one who acts in the name of his com- rades, that is, an agent. THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 57 sent commissioners, tried the mediation of the superior officers, and then, finally, after some months of negotiation, determined to risk an energetic blow. Orders were given fixing the date and place for the disbanding of the several regiments. As a con- cession, eight weeks' pay in ready money, out of the arrears due, was granted. A cry of indignation arose from one end of the army to the other. The agitators called on Fair- fax, as General, to concentrate the troops immediately, in order that they might solemnly make known their wishes, and the officers joined in the demand, declaring that if it was not acceded to they could not answer for the consequences. Fairfax yielded, and on the 4th June, 1647, the whole army met on the plain near Newmarket. It was in truth a champ de Mai. A declaration was unanimously voted, and a mutual engagement entered into and signed by every man, officers as well as privates. The army refused to obey the Parliament. Its leaders made common cause with the men. They accepted the institution of a political Council, composed of the 5 8 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. general officers and of representatives of each corps, in the proportion of two subalterns and two privates from each regiment. All, officers and men, protested in the words of their Solemn Engagement that they did not act in the interest of any particular party, but in order to establish equal rights and common freedom for all.^ Addresses approving of the action of the army were signed in the counties of Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, and perhaps elsewhere. This was open rebellion, and inasmuch as the rebels were materially the stronger party, it must very shortly bring about the defeat of the Parliament. The House knew this, and as they could no longer control the army, they endeavoured to regain its confidence. The famous vote against the petitioners, which had been the occasion of all the trouble, was struck off the journals of the House, all arrears of pay were to be settled before the disbanding, and ' A Solemn Engagement of the Army . . . read, assented unto, and subscribed ... at the generall Randez- vous (sic) neare Newmarket. London, 1647. [Brit. Mus., E. 392 (9)-] THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 59 promises of future advantages were made to the officers. All was useless. This was evident at a second rendez-voiis which was convoked, at the request of Parliament itself, on loth June, at Triploe Heath, not far from Cam- bridge. Here the recent votes were made known to the troops ; whereupon the Agitators demanded that the men should be interrogated on the spot, as to whether they were satisfied with them. Twenty thousand men were assembled ; the formidable No which would be the result of such a proceeding was so evident to all, that one of the officers pro- posed that the agents of each regiment should be left to count up the votes at his leisure, and should report them afterwards. The leaders, who were them- selves members of Parliament, accepted this proposal gladly, as a means of preserving its dignity at least to some extent. But the blow had none the less been struck, the rupture was none the less flagrant. The feeling of the soldiers was evident from repeated shouts of "Justice! Justice!" the forerunner of the cry which was to resound during the trial of the King. 6o THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. Carlyle, whose account of this event is taken from Whitlocke, comments on it thus : " One of the remark- ablest scenes our History ever had : an Armed Parlia- ment, extra official, yet not without a kind of sacred- ness, and an Oliver Cromwell at the head of it ; demanding with one voice, as deep as ever spake in England, 'Justice, justice!' under the vault of Heaven." ^ This was not a Parliament in the English sense of the word, but a champ de Mai, such as their ancestors used to hold in the forests of Germany, a kind of comitia of soldier-citizens like the ancient assemblies of Rome. And in the history of our time the year of the revolutionary gatherings of Newmarket and Trip- loe Heath opens a new epoch ; that in which the spirit of the Reformation terminates one great phase of its evolution, and restores and endows with new life the traditions of a barbarous past and a classic antiquity, and inaugurates in Europe modern democracy. On June 14th the first political manifesto was ■ Carlyle, Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, Part III. THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 6i addressed to Parliament, "concerning the just and fundamental Rights and Liberties of the army and Kingdom." In it the General and his troops justified the engagement entered into at Newmarket by the precedent of the Scotch Covenant. They demanded liberty of conscience, the free right of petition, the termination at a fixed date of the Long Parliament, and the suspension of the eleven members who were mainly responsible for its policy. ^ To support these requests by an irresistible argument the army began to march with the intention of encamping at the gates of London. It must have seemed as if there was then nothing left for the majority at Westminster to do but to go home ; but their hour was not yet come. Just as the King from his prison passed from one side to another, counting on the divisions of his conquerors as a ' A Declaration of the Engagements, Remonstrances, Repre- sentations, Proposals, Desires and Resolutions from his Excel- lency Sir Tho. Fairfax and the Generall Council of the Army. London (1647), p. 36, ss. [Brit. Mus. E. 409 (25)].— cf. Pari. Hist. iii. 615, ss. 62 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. means of recovering what the revolution had taken from him, so the majority in the House soon saw that the power which had risen against it, was not acting from one sole impulse, and that this gave it a chance, at the cost of some sacrifices and much skill, of recovering a portion of its lost authority. The fact is, that the position of the revolutionary Parliament, at this critical moment of its long exist- ence, was less desperate than might at first sight be imagined. In order to understand this, we must take into account the position of the man on whom the eyes of all England were then fixed. The leader of the Independent party, finding his military command threatened by the Commons, had broken with them, and had promptly thrown himself on the support of the army. Before long that support showed signs of giving way under him. Fairfax, the nominal general, was in fact but the first of Cromwell's lieutenants ; the staff, which owed everything to him, was at his command, but so much could not be said of the army itself Truly the troops whom Cromwell had led to victory THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 63 were full of confidence in their chief, but the military devotion on which he could count, was not akin to that which Napoleon was one day to inspire, to that blind, unreasoning feeling which has been so well described by Alfred de Vigny. The devotion of Cromwell's soldiers had its rise in religious convic- tions ; they were devoted less to the man himself than to the ideas which he was supposed to represent. Cromwell could carry his soldiers with him only so long as he followed their thoughts, only so long as he appeared at their head as the instrument of what they deemed God's purpose. Hence the varying and complicated part that he found himself obliged to play. When Independency had developed into Demo- cracy Noll had made his famous declaration which was repeated in the meetings throughout the camps, " Every single man is judge of just and right, as to the good and ill of a Kingdom." ^ ' Sundry Reasons inducing Major Robert Huntingdon to lay down his Commission (London, 1648), p. 13. "Lieutenant- General Cromwell . . . hath most frequently in publike 64 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. But the future Lord Protector of England was far from being a democrat. He had favoured the propa- ganda of Lilburne and his friends, solely because they served to detach the army from the Parliament, and because he had not the choice of means. He could not sincerely adopt their principles ; and this the re- publicans found out for themselves, when they saw him ardently promoting a personal treaty with the King. In June, during the first weeks which followed the declaration of independence of the army, Cromwell and his son-in-law, Ireton, behaved as undisputed masters of the position. They got rid of the political council which, under the name of general council, had been established by the engagements entered into at Newmarket, partly by introducing into it a large majority of officers, and partly by neglecting to sum- mon it and acting through the Council of War. The Agitators themselves, elected at the time of the and private delivered these ensuing heads ... I. That every single man is judge of just and right, as to the good and ill of a Kingdome. . . ." THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 65 harmony caused by the attempted disbanding, and probably chosen amongst those in favour with the officers, were most of them the willing tools of their leaders. Such was the position of things when, in July, negotiations with Charles began. At once murmurs arose. In August the draft of a treaty with the King was published in the name of the army, and this draft, which had been prepared by I"eton, and which was more favourable to the crown than had been the proposals of the Presbyterians themselves, at once led to quarrels. The pamphlets of the Democrats were full of accusations against the Lieutenant- General. He was said to have betrayed the cause. In October, the regiments, dissatisfied with the part played by their first representatives, chose a set of new agents, and new manifestoes appeared, which had neither passed the Council of War nor the General Council. Two distinct parties now became visible in the very heart of the army ; one was that of the leaders, the "grandees" as they were called, which was Crom- F 66 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. well's party ; the other was that of the Democrats, closely connected with Southwark, containing but few superior officers, and drawing its strength from the rank and file. The whole secret of Cromwell's policy during this year of 1647, the year in which his fortunes were decided, is to be found in the attitude he took in this new conflict. Master of the party of the grandees, we see him first attempt to break the opposition of the soldiers by an act of authority, and then, when he finds his power fail before the stubbornness which he himself had helped to develop among the sectaries, when he finds himself beaten by his own troops, he yields once more in order to remain their leader. The demands of the democratic party were pub- lished on 19th October. Under the title of The Case of the Armie Truly Stated,'^ a paper, which had been drawn up perhaps in London, perhaps at the camp at Putney, in the conference of the " civilian agitators " and the new agents _ of five cavalry regiments, set ' The Case of the Armie Truly ^/a/^rf (London, 1647). [Brit. Mus. E. 411 (9).] THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 67 forth the grievances of the soldiers and the pe^ the dangers which threatened the nation, anc methods by which safety might be secured for the future. It at once made its way among the different bodies of troops, and met with their approval. From it a scheme of reform was drawn up, and presented to the nation for its assent, in the name of sixteen regiments which had been the first to agree to it. This was called An Agreement of the People.^ The following is the tenour of this document. This curious document has never yet been printed in the original text, nor has it ever been translated. Our readers will pardon the length of the quotation in consideration of its importance. Agreement of the People for a firm and present Peace, upon grounds of common right and freedome ; As it was proposed by the agents of ' An Agreement of the People for a firm and ;preseni Peace, ztpon grounds of Common Right and Freedome, s.l., 1647. [Brit. Mus. E. 1948 (17).] 68 THE RTSE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. the five Regiments of Horse and since by the general approbation of the Army, offered to the joynt concurrence of all the free Commons of England. " Having by our late labours and hazards made it appeare to the world at how high a rate wee value our just freedome, and God having so far owned our cause, as to deliver the Enemies thereof into our hands : We do now hold ourselves bound in mutual duty to each other, to take the best care we can for the future, to avoid both the danger of returning into a slavish condition, and the chargable remedy of another war : for as it cannot be imagined that so many of our Country-men would have opposed us in this quarrel, if they had understood their owne good ; so may we safely promise to ourselves, that when our Common Rights and Liberties shall be cleared, their endeavours will be disappointed, that seek to make themselves our Masters : since therefore our former oppresions, and scarce yet ended troubles have been occasioned, either by want of frequent Nationall meetings in Council, or by rendering those meetings ineffectual! ; THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 69 We are fully agreed and resolved, to provide that hereafter our Representatives be neither left to an uncertainty for the time^ nor made uselesse to the ends for w^hich they are intended : In order where- unto we declare, I. That the People of England being at this day very unequally distributed by Counties, Cities, and Borroughs, for the election of their Deputies in Parliament, ought to be more indifferently propor- tioned, according to the number of the Inhabitants : ^ the circumstances whereof, for number, place, and manner, are to be set down before the end of this present Parliament. II. That to prevent the many inconveniences ap- parently arising, from the long continuance of the same persons in authority, this present Parliament ' The idea of the authors of the Agreement as regards the electoral franchise is expressed in their first manifesto, The Case of the Armie, in the following terms : . . . "all the freeborn at the age of 21 yeares and upwards, be the electors, %o THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. be dissolved upon the last day of September, which shall be in the year of our Lord, 1648. III. That the People do of course chuse themselves a Parliament once in two yeares, viz. : upon the first Thursday in every 2nd March, after the manner as shall be prescribed before the end of this Parlia- ment, to begin to sit upon the first Thursday in April following at Westminster, or such other place as shall bee appointed from time to time by the preceding Representatives ; and to continue till the last day of September, then next ensuing and no longer. IV. That the power of this, and all future Representa- tives of this Nation, is inferior only to theirs wh» chuse them, and doth extend, without the consent or concurrence of any other person or persons, to excepting that have or shall have deprived themselves of that their freedome, either for some yeares, or wholly, by delin- quency.'' THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 71 the enacting, altering, and repealing of Lawes ; to the erecting and abolishing of Offices and Courts ; to the appointing, removing, and calling to account Magistrates, and Officers of all degrees ; to the making War and Peace, to the treating with forraigne States : And generally, to whatsoever is not expressly, or implyedly reserved by the repre- sented themselves. Which are as foUoweth, I. That matters of Religion, and the wayes of God's worship, are not at all intrusted by us to any humane power, because therein wee cannot remit or exceed a tittle of what our Consciences dictate to be the mind of God, without wilful! sinne : neverthelesse the publike way of instructing the Nation (so it be not compulsive) is referred to their discretion. / 2. That the matter of impressing and constraining any of us to serve in the warres, is against our freedome ; and therefore we do not allow it in our Representatives ; the rather, because money (the sinews of war) being alwayes at their disposal], they 72 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. can never want numbers of men, apt enough to engage in any just cause. 3. That after the dissolution of this present Parliament, no person be at any time questioned for anything said or done, in reference to the late publike differences, otherwise than in execution of the Judgments of the present Representatives or House of Commons. 4. That in all Laws made, or to be made, every person may be bound alike, and that no Tenure, Estate, Charter, Degree, Birth or place do confer any exemption from the ordinary Course of Legall proceedings, whereunto others are subjected. 5. That as the Laws ought to be equall, so they must be good, and not evidently destructive to the safety and well-being of the people. These things we declare to be our native Rights, and therefore are agreed and resolved to maintain them with our utmost possibilities, against all opposition whatsoever, being compelled thereunto' not only by the examples of our Ancestors, whose blood was often spent in vain for the recovery of THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 7i their Freedomes, suffering themselves, through frau- dulent accommodations, to be still deluded of the fruit of their Victories, but also by our own wofuU experience, who having long expected, and dearly earned the establishment of these certain rules of Government are yet made to depend for the settle- ment of our Peace and Freedome, upon him that intended our bondage, and brought a cruell Warre upon us."^ This Agreement of the People was presented to the House of Commons, and declared by it to be seditious and destructive of the authority of Parlia- ment and of the very foundations of government. The same opinion of it prevailed at the head- quarters at Putney, but the movement which produced it gave cause for reflection, and obliged the leaders to hesitate and consider, instead of condemning it off-hand, as the Parliament had done. When the political agents of the regiments asked ' An allusion to the negotiations which had been entered into with Charles. 74 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. for conferences they were granted, and the Agree- ment was discussed at the General Council. The debate, however, came to nothing : the Democrats then demanded that the army should once more be summoned to a rendez-vous, and again their request was granted. They expected to be called upon to declare their opinion, and that the matter would be decided by acclamation, as at Triploe Heath and Newmarket. But the Council of War decided otherwise, and making the requirements of the service his plea, Fairfax, instead of one general rendez-vous, ordered several separate ones, and took measures to change these into ordinary reviews, where the troops had nothing to do but to hear read the order of the day, which severely blamed their conduct. The first of these meetings took place at Ware, in the county of Hertford. It is the one of which so dramatic an account is to be found in the pages of Guizot.^ Two regiments which had mutinied ^ Histoire de la Revolution cPAngleterre, ii., p. 392. THE AGREEMENT OF THE PEOPLE. 75 arrived at Ware without orders, wearing on their hats copies of the Agreement of the People, with the motto, "England's Freedom and Soldiers' Rights," in capital letters on the outside. Cromwell rode up : "Remove me that paper," he said. The soldiers refused, and began to complain, whereupon he roughly rode his horse among the ranks, and commanded that the leaders should be arrested. Then, convoking a Council of War upon the spot, he had three condemned to die, and one of the three, chosen by lot, immediately shot at the head of his regiment. This execution restored discipline, but the army, as its leaders themselves avowed, had become a political body, and unity was not restored to it. If Cromwell supposed that it was restored, he was soon undeceived by the remonstrances which reached him from all sides. Two-thirds of the regiments declared that they were ready to die, with their weapons in their hands, rather than give up the Agreement. Cromwell submitted. Peace with the leaders of 76 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. the democratic party was signed at Windsor. On two occasions — the first in December, 1647, the second in the April of the year following — solemn meetings for prayer were held at headquarters. " Those cursed carnal conferences " with the King were publicly repented of, a public fast was held, and then the officers dined together. The war with Scotland for a time suspended the political agitation, but at the end of 1648 Ireton received from the hands of Lilburne the draft of a new Agreement of the People. This draft gave rise to ample discussion ; it was altered, modified, and developed, but its main lines remained the same, and became, as we have seen, a plan for a Constitu- tion. So it came to pass that the Agreement of the People which the soldiers had worn on their hats at the meeting at Ware, was presented to Parlia- ment on the 20th January, 1648-9, in the name of the Army by the General-in-Chief and his council of officers. CHAPTER III. THE IDEA OF A CONSTITUTION ESTABLISHED BY THE PEOPLE. A Social Contract. — Origin of the Theory. — First Form : A Contract between Prince and People. — Second Form : A Contract between Individuals. — Hooker, Hobbes, Milton, Locke, Rousseau. — Brownism as it affected the Theory of a Contract between Individuals. — Church Covenants. — The Law affecting Ancient Gilds. — Need of Definition of the Powers of Parliament. The political conceptions of the democrats of the Independent party were in close relation to their religious conceptions. The history of the two proves this clearly. It may be asked by what path it was that the authors of the Agreement of the People, in the course of their political specula- tions, arrived at the system which they were the first to formulate in modern Europe, the system of 77 78 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. a written constitution established on the will of the people directly consulted. No one now-a-days attributes the theory of the Social Contract to Jean Jacques Rousseau. He made it popular, but we have learned to trace it back to his English predecessors, of whom Locke and Hobbes are the best known. Even they, how- ever, are not the inventors of it ; even before their time the famous hypothesis had seen the light. Its real source is the Bible. The publicists of the Reformation, and before them certain theologians of the Middle Ages, had drawn from Sacred history, from the example of a treaty of alliance between Jehovah and His people, the idea of a contract which had taken place at the beginning between the sovereign and his subjects. Junius Brutus, the author of the VindicicB contra tyrannos in France, and Buchanan, the friend of Knox, in Scotland, made this the basis of their systems. This was the first form of the theory. After them came Richard Hooker, another Protestant, and the defender of the ecclesiastical CONSTITUTION BY THE PEOPLE. • 79 establishment of Elizabeth. In his Treatise on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity} he admits in his turn a social contract as the origin of the State. But this time the contract is represented as existing between individuals themselves, who by trusting themselves to the rule of one or several constitute the nation. This was the idea which was re- produced by Hobbes, and moulded to suit the necessities of his case. The contract, according to him, is concluded by the people, but the King, or the Council which replaces him, is one party to it, if not as one of the contracting parties to it, at least as beneficiary. The Scottish Covenant which the Presbyterians imposed on the two kingdoms in 1643 may be said to belong to this kind. The Agreement of 1648 proceeds on the same principle, but it is offered to the people for their voluntary adhesion, and entirely ignores the person of the King. It is a contract between the members of the nation which constitutes itself the sovereign. ' Treatise on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 1594, liv. i., ch. X., 4. 8o THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. Thus this celebrated theory gradually loses its Jewish and Huguenot form, now-a-days quite for- gotten, and assumes the philosophic guise in which it is known at the present time. Immediately after the execution of Charles I. it was formi\lated , by Milton in the following terms, in which, though not yet completely freed from its theological swaddling- clothes, its puritan garb allows its modern form to be seen> " No man, who knows aught, can be so stupid to deny, that all men naturally were born free, being the image and resemblance of God Himself, and were, by privilege above all the creatures, born to command, and not to obey : and that they lived so, till from the root of Adam's transgression, falling among themselves to do wrong and violence, and foreseeing that such courses must tend to the de- struction of them all, they agreed by common league to bind each other from mutual injury, and jointly to defend themselves against any that gave disturbance ^ The Prose Works of John Milton. Ed. Charles Symmonds, D.D. Vol. ii., p.\76. (London, 1806.) a. CONSTITUTION BY THE PEOPLE. 8i and opposition to such agreement. Hence came cities, towns, and commonwealths." Here we have the theory of Locke, and afterwards of Rousseau, with this difference : that both these writers approach it completely free from all thought of religion, and that the latter presents it to us, not as in some sort an historical explanation of the origin of society and the State, but as an hypothesis of abstract jurisprudence. The idea of a social contract in its new form belongs particularly to Brownism. Whilst in Eng- land it developed those political opinions which we have just described, on the other side of the ocean it produced the Plantation Covenants of the American colonists, and even in the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut an actual Constitution (1639).^ Whenever the Congregationalists wished to found a Church, they first of all bound themselves together by a covenant, in which they entered into a distinct ' Prof. Johnston's Connecticut (Scudder's American Com- monwealths), Preston and New York, 1887, pp. 389, ss. G 82 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. and solemn engagement to walk together in the fear of God. " An expresse vocal covenanting by oath, to walk in that faith and to submit themselves to God and one another in His feare ; and to walke in a professed subjection to all His holy ordinances, cleaving to one another, as fellow-members of the same body in brotherly love and holy watchfulness unto mutual edification in Christ Jesus." ^ ■ '■ The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England, by- Mr. J. Cotton, Teacher of the Church at Boston in New Eng- land (London, 1645), p. 2, Proposition 3 : " For the joyning of faithfull Christians into the fellowship and estate of a Church, we find not in Scripture that God hath done it any other way than by entering all of them together (as one man) into an holy Covenant with himselfe. To take the Lord (as the head of his Church) for their God, and to give up themselves to him, to be his Church and people ; which implyeth their submitting of themselves to him, and one another in His feare ; and their walking in professed subjection to all His holy Ordinances ; their cleaving one to another, as fellow-members of the same body, in brotherly love and holy watchfulnesse unto mutual edification in Christ Jesus. . . . Page 3. " Sometimes the people declare their consent and restipulation by expresse words. . . . Sometimes by writing and sealing. . . . In all which covenants, sometimes they CONSTITUTION BY THE PEOPLE. 83 This passage, which is borrowed from one of the polemical writings of the period, summarises in a striking manner that theory of Church organization which was so ardently combatted by the Presby- terians, and no less ardeatly maintained by the Independents. The latter quoted in their favour the very texts in the Old Testament from which their adversaries had drawn their national covenant, more make no express termes of cleaving to their brethren, but only in generall termes submitting themselves to every Ordinance and Covenant of God (as in the places alledged), sometimes they expressly declare their steadfast cleaving to their Brethren also, and to their Officers.'' The Due Right of Presbyteries, or a Peaceable Plea for the Government of the Church of Scotland. Samuel Rutherford, Prof, of Divinity at St. Andrew's (London, 1644). At p. 84 Rutherford quotes from an Apology of the Church of New England: "This Church- Covenant is the essentiall or formal cause of a visible Church, as a flocke of Saints is the material cause, and so necessarily of the being of a Church that without it none can claim Church-communion ; and therefore it is that whereby a Church is constituted in its integrity, that whereby a fallen Church is again restored ; and that which being taken away, the Church is dissolved and ceaseth to be a Church : and it is that whereby Ministers have power over the people, 84 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. especially that text from Jeremiah : " Come and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual cove- nant." 1 To this the Presbyterians replied that when a league of alliance is mentioned in the Bible, it does not mean a contract between individuals such as and people interest in their Ministers ; and one member hath interest and power over another fellow-member." A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline, by Tho. Hooker, late Pastor at the Church at Hartford, upon Con- necticut in New England (London, 1648). On p. 69 Hooker says : "Among such who by no impression of nature, no rule of providence, or appointment from God or reason have power each over other ; there must of necessity be a mutual engage- ment each of the other, by their free content, before by any rule of God they have any right or power, or can exercise either, each towards the other. This appears in all covenants betwixt Prince and People, Husband and Wife, Master and Servant, and most palpable is the expression of this in all confederations and corporations. . . . they should first freely ingage themselves in such covenants, and then be careful to fulfil such duties.'' An Apologie of the Churches in New England, quoted by Rutherford. Cf John Cotton, I.e. Richard Mather, Church Government and Church Covenant discussed. (London, 1643.) [Brit. Mus. E. 1369, c. 31.] ' Jer. 1. 5. Cf. Isaiah Ivi. 3-7 ; Ezekiel xx. 37. CONSTITUTION BY THE PEOPLE. 85 their Church Covenant, but a league between God and His people, or between Israel and its Kings. The Independents answered that the one pre- supposed the other. Individuals who composed His people or His Church must unite together in a common obedience to His laws, before they could enter into a covenant with the Lord.^ The Inde- pendents interpreted Scripture with the help of the law of nature. " It is evident," says Cotton,^ " by the light of nature, that all civill Relations are founded in Covenant. For to pass by natural Relations be- tween Parents and Children, and violent Relations between Conquerors and Captives ; there is no other way given whereby a people sui Juris free from naturall and compulsory engagements, can be united or combined together into one visible body to stand by mutuall Relation, fellow-members of the same body, but only by mutuall Covenant ; as appeareth ' John Cotton, I.e., p. 61. '^ lb., p. 4. Cf. Thomas Hooker, A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline, p. 69. 86 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. between husband and wife in the family, Magistrates and subjects in the Commonwealth, fellow-citizens in the same cities." The example of the boroughs or municipal cor- porations, and of the corporations of merchants and artisans, is often quoted in the pamphlets of the early- period of Congregationalism. It is well known that both these were the outcome of the Guilds of the Middle Ages, whose internal organization they had borrowed. It is extremely probable that though the Bible supplied the Separatists with the original idea of their Church covenant, the form which that cove- nant actually took in their first congregations was not uninfluenced by their knowledge of the sta- tutes established by the founders of these Guilds, and by the custom which then prevailed of requir- ing new members to give their adhesion to these statutes by an individual vote. So striking are the analogies, that it even seems probable that Brown, when he was organizing his Church at Norwich, had before him, side by side with his Bible, the statutes of one of these pious corporations, once CONSTITUTION BY THE PEOPLE. b; SO numerous and influential in the county of Nor- folk.i The larger number had been suppressed little more than thirty years before, in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. ; but a few had survived, and the most important of those survivors, the famous Guild of St. George,^ had its headquarters in Norwich. The very name of Company, which was borne by this corporation after the Reformation, was that under which his Church of " true Christians " presented itself to Brown. It was the only one which the law would at that time sanction. When the Covenant had been sworn to by the community which was in process of formation, it ' V. Wilda. Das Gildentuesen im Mittelalter (Halle, 1831), p. 115, ss. Toulmin Smith, English Gilds (London, 1870). Among a hundred statutes of the ancient Gilds of England, which have been collected and published by Toulmin Smith, forty-six are the statutes of pious foundations in the county of Norfolk, and twelve of these belong to the single town of Norwich, the cradle of Congregationalism. * In Blomfield's History of Norfolk (Norwich, I74S), "•> P- 734, may be found the text of the oath taken by the brothers of St. George. 88 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. was inscribed on the registry of the Church founded on it, and each new member, before he was accepted by the vote of the congregation as a " brother," was required to subscribe to it. It is easy to understand how the Independents, accustomed to this course of action when they were forming a Church, were led to do the same when they attempted to form a Republic. The idea that the necessary starting-point was a league between the members of the sovereign people forced itself upon them with the strength of a religious convic- tion. From this point to that adoption of the constitution by a popular vote, which they imagined, there is only one step, and that is to abandon the principle of requiring unanimous adhesion, and require instead the adhesion of a majority, a necessary fiction and the inevitable condition of all attempts to organize a democratic government in a pre-existing society. Finally, — and this accounts for the exact form of the Agreement of the People, and completes the desired explanation of it, — during their struggle CONSTITUTION BY THE PEOPLE. 89 with the ParHament, the democracy had keenly felt the need of a written constitution, which should limit the powers of the Parliament and guarantee the rights of the people. John Wildman, one of the leaders of the more extreme Democrats, writes as follows in a pamphlet published at this time : ^ "I believe that the freedomes of this Nation will never be secure, untill the extent of the power and trust of the people's representatives, and the people's reservations to themselves be clearly declared. This I speak in reference to their legislative power." And the following passage may be found in the appeal to the English nation which serves as an introduc- tion to the scheme of the sixteen regiments: "If any shall enquire why we should desire to joyne in an agreement with the people, to declare these to be our native Rights, and not rather to petition ' Truth's Triumph (London, February, 1647-8), p. 11. [Brit. Mus. E. 520, (33)]. Lilburne repeats this declaration in another pamphlet, which bears the same date, The Peoples Prerogative (London, Feb., 1647-8). Prosme [Brit. Mus. E. 427. (4)]. 90 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. to the Parliament for them ; the reason is evident : No act of ParHament is or can be unalterable, and so cannot be sufficient security to save you or us harmlesse, from what another Parliament may determine, if it should be corrupted ; and besides Parliaments are to receive the extent of their power and trust from those that betrust them ; and there- fore the People are to declare what their power and trust is, which is the intent of this Agreement." ^ ' An Agreement of the People. 1647. [Brit. Mus. E. 1948 (17) P- 9-] CHAPTER IV. THE FALL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. The Agreement Abandoned by Cromwell.— Military Insurrec- tion. — New Proposals of Lilburne. — The Plot Suppressed. — Cromwell Dictator. When the roll containing the Agreement of the People was presented to the House of Commons, the address was listened to with all the respect due to the rank of those who bore it, and a vote of thanks was passed with great solemnity. The reading of the Agreement itself, however, was put off to a more convenient season. Business of the gravest import- ance was then occupying the minds of some of its members. On that very day began the trial of the King. It is not very likely that this circumstance was unknown at the headquarters at Whitehall, and it is obvious that the laying aside of the democratic con- 92 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. stitution was both foreseen and discounted. This is proved by the care that was taken not to let it appear again. It had done its work as a standard ; round it all the forces of the Independents had rallied for the final effort which had placed the Parliament in the power of their leaders ; when the victory was gained it was thrust aside. Henceforth Cromwell could do without the Democrats. The breach between them did not, however, take place without bloodshed. The Agreement had been the work of the army. When the army saw the date which had been fixed for the presentation of the scheme to the people pass without a single step to effect that object being taken ; when they saw petitions in its favour first badly received, and then forbidden altogether to soldiers ; when finally the Commons issued a manifesto ^ concerning the establishment of a republic, in which no mention ' A Declaration of the Parliament of England expressing the grounds of their late Proceedings, and of settling the present Government in the Way of a Free State. ii March, 1648-9. Pari. Hist, ill., 1292, ss. THE FALL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. 93 was made of the constitution, discontent became general. The army, like the Parliament, had been purged, though not in the same fashion. Under the plea of economy, the most ardent of the enthusiasts had been dismissed to their homes ; the councils of the Agitators had been suppressed ; the campaign against Scotland had helped to restore strict military dis- cipline. But enough of the old leaven remained to give rise to some fermentation. When certain regi- ments, which had been chosen by lot for service in Ireland, were required to march, they broke out in mutiny, and convoked meetings in defiance of their leaders' orders. Agents were chosen to enable the various regiments to communicate with each other, and soon bands of insurgents took the field, whose numbers grew from day to day. The whole army was stirred by their summons. If these rebels had possessed any officers, or if Lilburne had had any aptitude for practical politics, the position of government would have been most serious. But only two or three subalterns dared to 94 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. take the lead, and Lilburne, together with his friends, Walwyn, Prince, and Richard Overton, thought it their duty to draw up a new scheme for a consti- tution, instead of leaving to the " grandees " the task of explaining why they had not fulfilled their engagements respecting the first one. They were the " irreconcilables," impossible to convert, protest- ing as long as they could against those modifications of the original plan of the Agreement which had been introduced in the Council of Officers. When, after having undergone alteration at Whitehall, they saw it finally disappear from sight at Westminster, they could not refrain from drawing up another scheme, and submitting it directly to the distressed nation for its approval.'- Their proposal, which was the fruit of their late ^ An Agreement of the Free People of England, ie?idered as a Peace-Offering to this distressed Nation (London, May i, 1649J. [Brit. Mus. E. 553 (23)]. Cf. A Manifestation from Lieutenant-Colonel fohn Lilburne, Mr. William Walwyn, Mr. Thomas Prince, and Mr. Richard Overton {now Prisoners in the Tower of London), and others, commonly {though unjustly) styled Levellers. 1649. [Brit. Mus. E. 550 (25).] THE FALL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. 95 bitter experience, was accepted by the insurgents, and presented as their ultimatum in their most im- portant manifesto.^ In it the list of restrictions on the power of the governing bodies is considerably- increased. The scheme in itself testifies to laudable intentions and ideas far in advance of the age, but it was none the less open to the grave objection that it furnished an additional proof to those who accused the Democrats of a dislike to all fixed government. The fact that some of the sectaries had proclaimed community of property had already been used against them, and, in spite of their reiterated pro- testations, they themselves were called by the name of Levellers. Under this name they were attacked. Prompt and decisive action was taken at headquarters ; the ^ England s Standard advanced in Oxfordshire, or a Declara- tion from Mr. William Thompson and the oppressed People of this Nation, now under his conduct in the said County. Dated at their Randes-vous, May 6, 1649. Whereunto is added An Agreement of the Free People of England,. as the grounds of their Resolutions. [Brit. Mus. E. 555 (7).] 96 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. mutineers allowed themselves to be surprised, and the rebellion was crushed before it had been able to organize itself. The result of this was that the title of Saviour of Society was added to the others which Cromwell could claim for himself, while the demo- cratic party was broken up, and the army placed entirely in the power of the " grandees." From this time forth the superior officers spoke in its name, and their power was soon merged in that of their leader. From the day when the military sedition was suppressed a new phase began in the career of the Puritan dictator. Up to this time the acclamations of the soldiers, and the power which they had placed in his hands, had maintained him in the position to which his victories had raised him. He was in one sense the leader of a national army. It was to the will of a nation in arms that he had appealed to check the Parliament ; he had sought support in the rights of the people. But from this hour he openly broke with the democracy. The right of the people was, as it were, the Com- mon Law of Brownism ; but the saints admitted one THE FALL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. 97 exception. Though the authority of the faithful was the rule in their Churches, the greater number of them admitted that the Divine Will also manifested itself extraordinarily by a word or an inspired action ; the gift of prophecy was to them a reality of their present day. It was from this source that Cromwell now sought the authority which he would not, and indeed could not, any longer demand of the people. To his Staff he was the General, and that was enough, but to those to whom might by itself was not right, he declared that he had been called of God, and it was on this ground that he justified his actions when he drove the Parliament from Westminster, and had himself proclaimed Protector of the Republic. Read his speeches, his declarations, his conversations. All remind us of this aspect of his mission ; he marches before the people of England as Gideon did before Israel. In this manner Cromwell was able to make the whole of his own party accept his dictatorship ; and, as the mass of the nation was monarchical, it may be said that he faithfully represented the England of H 98 .x\ THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. the Revolution. The genius of this extraordinary- man seems to have imposed upon the Puritan de- mocracy, for a time, a new Divine Right by favour of those very beliefs out of which that democracy had arisen, and which had taught it to resist Divine Right. During the whole of the Protectorate a handful of Republicans formed an irreconcilable opposition, but by themselves they could exercise no influence. It is remarkable, however, that certain reforms which had formerly been demanded by the democratic party, or brought forward in the Agreement of the People, were carried out during the Protectorate ; for example, the judicial reforms and the reform in the system of parliamentary representation. The Instrument of Government, which was elabo- rated in 1653 by the Council of Officers, was a written Constitution, the first, and down to the present time the only one ever possessed by modern England. The necessity for such an instrument, which would be out of reach of the attacks of the legislature, was recognised by Cromwell in one of THE FALL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY, gg his speeches. It is interesting to compare the fol- lowing passage with the language formerly held by his soldiers : " In every Government there must be somewhat Fundamental, somewhat like a Magna Charta, which should be standing, be unalterable. . . . That Parliaments should not make them- selves perpetual is a Fundamental. Of what assur- ance is a Law to prevent so great an evil, if it lie in the same Legislature to unlaw it again ? Is such a law likely to be lasting } It will be a rope of sand ; it will give no security ; for the same men may un- build what they have built." ^ As a result of the mutiny in the army, Lilburne had been accused of high treason, but he was ac- quitted by the jury ; again prosecuted for fresh libels, he was banished and went to live in Holland. Not- withstanding the prodigious fecundity of his pen he was certainly an unlettered man, still more certainly he was not a constitutional lawyer. He tells us somewhere that he was " not exactly able to English ' Carlyle, Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. Part viii. Speech iii. (12 Sept., 1654). [Works xvii. 70.] loo THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. the Latine, but only to understand the sense of it." ^ But he only the more faithfully reflects the political theory which had sprung from the religious ideas he shared. His qualities, his personal defects, his position as a prisoner of State, had all helped to make him a prominent character in the struggle. But the principles he defended were not initiated by him ; even when he pleads his own cause he is but the mouthpiece of his party. Other men, infinitely his superiors, showed themselves among the ranks of the extreme Democrats to whom Cromwell had for a time to yield, but none of them enjoyed such popularity as the prisoner of Newgate and the Tower. This was due to the fact that no other man was so closely in touch with the masses both in London and the camps, no man so completely represented the Puri- tan Radicalism of the time — enthusiastic, obstinate, courageous, and impolitic. ' The Tryall of Lieict.-Col. John Lilburne by an extraordinary or special Commission of Oyer and Terminer at the Guildhall of London, the 24, 25, and 26 of October, 1649. (Southwark, 1649.) [Brit. Mus. E. 584 (9).] THE FALL OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. loi The principles which Freeborn John made his own with such uncompromising faith were not suited to the England of his day. His pamphlets were rapidly- forgotten. They have slept undisturbed amidst the dust of libraries, amongst the countless mass of news- papers, tracts, and religious and political treatises of the Puritan Revolution. And yet they do not belong only to the past ; the pamphlets of that age are the first manifestoes of a revolution which is still in progress. THE RISE OF MODERN CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY IN NEW ENGLAND. THE EARLY DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTIONS OF NEW ENGLAND. INTRODUCTION. The Contract signed in the Mayflower. — The Brownist Church of Robinson. — Church Covenants the models of PoHtical Agreements. In my last Essay I endeavoured to prove from contemporary evidence that the first political mani- festoes of modern democracy were formulated in England in the seventeenth century, and that they were the fruit of the religious revolution caused by the Reformation. In order to complete them, our inquiry and our proof ought to be carried further. We have already seen Puritan Congregationalism declare war against the traditions of the old world, and seen it beaten in the strife. It remains to show io6 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. how it took root in the new world, and how it there prepared the way for the advent and final triumph of popular government. People are too much inclined in France to believe that French democratic government was born ready armed from the brains of the philosophers. But this was no more the case than that American self- government was the sudden birth of the Declaration of Independence. When the republic of the United States was founded, the idea and political habits from which its strength was drawn had been de- veloped during a century and a half among the people of New England, with fortunes which varied according to time and place, but which had always been progressive. They were the same ideas, the same conceptions of the duty of the State and the rights of the individual, which we have seen arise with prodigious though ephemeral strength during the Puritan revolution. The colonists of New England who, according to the happy expression of Laboulaye, were "the leaven of the New World," were the descendants INTRODUCTION. 107 of the Puritan exiles of the first half of the seven- teenth century. Their fathers had left their homes, before the fall of episcopacy and monarchy, to seek beyond the ocean that liberty which they despaired of finding in the mother country. They had been in some fashion, the initiators of Independency. The first ships which reached the port of refuge carried with them from Europe the seed of demo- cracy. Sown in virgin soil, it grew vigorously. The plant grew tall and spread its roots freely. In the days of the American revolution, when the breath of the storm blew on it, men saw that it had grown into a tree of vast size, rooted in the very bowels of the earth, under whose branches a whole nation might take shelter. We are easily convinced of the truth of this when we examine closely some of the documents which have been preserved, and which deal with the poli- tical organization of these Puritan colonies ; and it is this which I purpose to do in the following pages It will be seen that the subject is intimately con- nected with my study of the ideas of the English io8 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. revolutionists, and that the two Essays are the necessary commentaries one on the other. "/« tlie name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, etc. Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends afore- said : and by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute and frame such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the generall good of the Colony, unto which We promise all due submission and obedience. " In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed INTRODUCTION. 109 our names at Cape Cod, the II of Novr. in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord King James of England, etc. the 1 8th and of Scotland the 54th. Anno Domini 1620."^ Such are the terms of the celebrated Agreement which was signed by the first colonists of New England, the Pilgrim Fathers, on board the very- vessel which had brought them from Europe, and which they were about to quit in order to found New Plymouth. Bancroft says, "This was the birth of popular constitutional liberty. The Middle Age had been familiar with charters and constitutions ; but they had been merely compacts for immunities, partial enfranchisements, patents of nobility, concessions of municipal privileges, or limitations of the sovereign power in favour of feudal institutions. In the cabin of the Mayflower humanity recovered its rights, and ^ See Poore, The Federal and State Constitutions oj the United States, i., p. 931. (Official Edition published by order of the Senate.) Washington, 1877. no THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. instituted government on the basis of 'equal laws' for the 'general good.'"^ Critics have pointed out that the enthusiasm of the venerable historian of the United States has led him into exaggeration. That "humanity recovering its rights " was after all composed of not more than a hundred persons ; that the Pilgrim Fathers, whose contract begins with a profession of loyalty in due form, had no idea of founding a new nation ; that exiles on account of religion, their sole idea was to find, were it at the ends of the world, a refuge, a home which should be their own, where they could exercise their form of worship in peace, with- out being exposed, as in Europe, to persecution, or exile into the midst of strange peoples. All this is quite true. But it is not the less true that, in spite of all that has been said to lessen its importance, the Agreement of the Mayflower remains one of the most remarkable documents of modern history. I have shown what Brownism was. The contract ' Bancroft, Hist, of the United States (London, 1876. Cen- tenary Edition), i., p. 244. INTRODUCTION. which I have just quoted is the first evidence of the influence which the Church disciphne of the Brownists was capable of exercising in political matters. The Pilgrim Fathers had formed part of the dissenting congregation of Scrooby, in Nottingham- shire, which had afterwards, in 1608, taken refuge at Leyden, under the leadership of their pastor, John Robinson. They had quitted Holland as an ad- vanced guard ; the rest of the congregation was to follow if they were successful in the settlement they planned. At Southampton, where the expedition cast anchor before facing the long voyage across the ocean, it was joined by some emigrants who did not belong to the congregation. The Agreement seems to have been resolved upon in consequence of certain violent remarks made by these new comers.^ Driven by stress of weather, the Mayflower found ' " They were, in a sort, reduced to a state of nature ; and some of the strangers received in London dropping some mutinous speeches, as if there were now no authority over them, this people, before they landed, wisely formed them- 112 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. itself on a part of the coast which was not included in the territory of the Company of Southern Vir- ginia ; the grant from this Company with which the emigrants had furnished themselves was there- fore valueless. Those of them who had embarked at Southampton took advantage of this, and de- clared that, when once they had landed, they should act as seemed good in their own eyes, as they were bound by no legal tie to the expedition.^ What reply could be made to them ? The members of the congregation were bound to one another by their Church covenant, the agreement they had signed selves into a body politic." Princess Annals, by Rev. Thos. Prince, M.A. (1736), p. 84. "The day before we came to harbour, observing some not •well affected to unitie and concord, but gave some appear- ance of faction, it was thought good there should be an asso- ciation, and agreement that we should combine together in one body, and to submit to such government and governours as we should by common consent agree to make and chose, and set our hands to this that foUowes word for word. . . ." — Mourt's Relation, ed. Dr. Dexter (1865), p. 5. ' Governor Bradford, History of Plimouth Plantation, ed. Ch. Deane (Boston, 1856), p. 89. INTRO D UCTION. 1 1 3 on entering the congregation of John Robinson. "^ The idea would naturally occur to them to offer the strangers a similar contract as the basis of a civil association. Such a measure was not only dictated to them by their religious principles, but if we only examine the matter a little further we shall find it was justified by the custom and Com- mon Law of England. The old Gilds, to which the company of the Pilgrim Fathers may be compared from a legal point of view, were constituted in such a way. They were purely voluntary associations, founded, until they had received the sanction of a royal charter, on contract alone. In due form the act was drawn up, apparently by Elder Brewster, and was signed under his direc- ' In their request to the Virginia Company, in 161 7, John Robinson and Brewster make the following statement: "We are knite together as a body in a most stricte and sacred bonde and covenante of the Lord, of the violation Whereof We make great conscience, and by Virtue Whereof We hold ourselves straitly tied to all care of each other's Good, and of the Whole by every one and so mutually." See Gov. Bradford, I.e., p. 32, s. Cf Bradford, I.e., i., 238. I 114 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. tion by the heads of families. It had to be signed by all without distinction, just as the Agreement which united the Companie of True Christians'^ had been signed by all. We find among the sig- natures, which have been preserved, the names of common sailors and of servants.^ Thus we see how the colonists added a Plantation Covenant or civil contract to the Church Covenant or ecclesiastical contract, which contract, if not the model, was at any rate the first of a series of similar acts which have exercised a decisive and incontest- able influence on the Constitutional Law of America. Assuredly it has well deserved the position assigned it in the official collection of the Constitutions of the United States, for it may well be' said that during the earliest period of the Puritan colonisa- tion a Plantation Covenant was usually the first step taken in the founding of every new settlement. ' See First Essay, p. 32. ^ Charles W. Upliam, Records of Massachusetts under its First Charter. Lectures before the Lowell Institute in Boston, by Members of the Mass. Hist. Soc. (Boston, 1869), p. 239. INTRO D UCTION. 1 1 5 The organization given by the Pilgrim Fathers to their colonial government was that of a democracy. They had a governor chosen by the votes of all, assisted by a council of five members, also elective ; and above them, sole depositary of supreme author- ity, a popular assembly, composed of all the male colonists of full age. When the population of the colony was scattered over too wide a tract of coun- try, this assembly was replaced, for the ordinary work of legislation, by a meeting of delegates. Undeniably the first settlement of this kind founded on the shores of New England exercised, by the force of example, influence over the rest. The second and most important — that of Massachu- setts Bay — which ended by drawing almost all the others into its orbit, imitated the ecclesiastical organization of the Pilgrim Fathers, and at first there was little difference between its government and that of New Plymouth.^ Thus at the very outset of American colonisation we find that " New England ' New Plymouth was incorporated with Massachusetts in 1690. u6 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. Way" which we have seen playing a part in the English revolution. At the same time, we must not imagine that the ideas of religious and civil liberty which this general term suggests prevailed throughout New England, without a struggle and without defeat. The sketch I undertake here will prove the reverse. The history of the Puritan settlements is made up of struggles, of reactionary movements, of secessions. But all were more or less directly caused by this same principle of liberty. This was the problem which agitated the country ; this the Gordian knot of its destiny. I shall confine my researches to the three principal colonies of New England — Massachusetts, Connecti- cut, and Rhode Island ; and I will begin with Con- necticut, where democratic ideas first took form in a written constitution voted by the people themselves. CHAPTER 1. CONNECTICUT. Differences of Opinion among the Early Congregationalists. — Democracy and Tlieocracy. — The Settlements in Connec- ticut the Result of Democratic Secessions. — The " Funda- mental Orders " of Connecticut. — Statutes of Ancient Gilds. — Organization of the Brotherhoods of the Middle Ages. — Exercise of Constituent Power by the Brothers. — Amendment of the Fundamental Orders. — The Constitu- tion of New Haven. — Theory of Mr. Brooks Adams — Mistaken Theory of the Teutonic Origin of American Democracy. Brownism, looked at as a form of Church govern- ment, rests on a double basis ; the absolute indepen- dence of each congregation, and the sovereign power of the faithful, of which they are composed, as the representatives of Christ. Of these two principles, the last leads to democracy. The first, on the con- trary, might give rise to a feeling of exclusiveness among the small number of the elect who form part 117 ii8 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. of the congregation, thus justifying exclusiveness ; and if the leaders push it far enough, might lead to the establishment of an aristocratic government. Both systems find their representatives in the history of Congregationalism. It would be pos- sible, indeed, to prove that the struggle between these two tendencies has been one of the most characteristic features of the first century of dissent. Robert Brown was a democrat : unconsciously, no doubt, but a pure democrat. His first successor, Barrow, while he accepted Brown's doctrine, strove with all his might against the democratic principles which it involved, and endeavoured to place actual authority in the hands of the pastors and the council of elders. Among the refugee congregations of Holland, Ainsworth and Johnson adopted this point of view, the latter moderating this authority, the former exaggerating it until he made the Council of Elders the Church itself. Smith, on the contrary, and still more John Robinson, restored to the con- gregation of the faithful the power of which it had been deprived by Johnson, without, however, return- CONNECTICUT. iig ing to the pure theory of Brown. Hence arose conflicts between the various Churches — divisions, reciprocal excommunications, and endless separa- tions.^ It may be said that as a general rule Congre- gationalism produced democracy wherever it was interpreted by laymen, or by pastors who had broken away completely and radically from the ideas of the Anglican clergy, and who followed out the logical consequences of the premises laid down. I have already shown how the English Separatist congrega- tions of the time of the Revolution, congregations in which the lay element preponderated, were the schools of popular government. Where, on the contrary, the community was under the influence of theologians who had been educated in the Anglican Church, and who had not completely got rid of its influence, they yielded to a desire to concentrate authority, and were landed by their leaders in a sort of theocratic aristocracy. This was what happened in the colony ' Cf. Dexter, The Congregationalism of the last Three Hun- dred Years (New York, 1880), Lectures lY.-VII. 120 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. of Massachusetts Bay. This was the cause of those political struggles which I have already mentioned, and to which I must again return. These struggles had as their result a kind of secession in very early times from the newly- created colony of which Boston was the centre, and the establishment of new settlements on the banks of the Connecticut. Everything seems to prove that these emigrants were the irreconcilable party of the democratic opposition.^ In 1638 they agreed to form the three towns which they had founded into a kind of federal republic. The Act of Union could be nothing else than a Plantation Covenant, and was such, in fact, though this time the ' See Prof. Alex. Johnston's Connecticut (Scudder's American Commonwealths), Boston and New York, 1887, p. 64, ss. John Winthrop the younger, the first Governor of Connecticut, was the son-in-law of Hugh Peters, the famous Independent preacher who became Cromwell's chaplain ; he was the friend of Roger Williams, and according to the correspondence of the latter, his political ally. Cf. Letters of Roger Williams, ed. J. R. Bartlett. Publications of the Narragansett Club, ist series, vol. vi. Providence, 1874. CONNECTICUT. contract had all the extent and significance of a regular constitution. In the official collection of Poore it bears the name of the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. The following is the preamble : — " Forasmuch as it has pleased the Almighty God by the wise disposition of his divine providence so to order and dispose of things that We, the Inhabitants of Windsor, Harteford, and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the river of Conecticotte and the Lands thereunto adjoyneing ; and well knowing where a people are gathered together the Word of God requires that to main- tayne the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Government estab- lished according to God, to order and dispose of the affayres of the people at all Seasons as occasion shall require ; doe therefore associate and conjoyne ourselves to be as one Publicke State or Common- wealth, and doe, for ourselves and our successors and such as shall be adjoyned to us hereafter, enter into Combination and Confederation together, to mayn- tayne and preserve the liberty and purity of the 122 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ which we now professe, as also the discipline of the Churches ; which according to the truth of the said Gospell is now practised amongst us ; as also in our civill affairs to be guided and governed according to such Lawes and Rules, Orders and Decrees as shall be made, ordered, and decreed, as foUoweth. . . . " ^ This preamble is followed by eleven constitutional articles, which organize the civil government of a democracy. Among the chief of them are the sovereign power of the general assembly of the citizens ; the election of magistrates by the people ; their annual election, and local self-government. Neither property qualification nor religious test were imposed upon those who desired to become active members of the community and enjoy the right of voting. Admission to the franchise was to be granted only by the General Assembly. This soon came to be acknowledged as a right belonging to the townships themselves. ' Poore, Federal and State Constitutions, I.e., i. 249. CONNECTICUT. 123 The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut were adopted by the General Assembly at Hartford, on 14th January, 1638-9. They formed the first American constitution accepted by the people, and also the first written constitution of modern demo- cracy. If we had not known the religious opinions of the authors of this document, we might have inferred them from the care with which the preamble insists on the teaching of the Gospel as regards the disci- pline of the churches. The political tendencies peculiar to Congregationalism, as they held it, stand out clearly, not only in this enactment, but also in another important document belonging to the agita- tion which preceded the establishment of the new government. In the book already referred to of the late Professor Johnston on Connecticut, we find some passages of a sermon preached at Hartford by Hooker, one of the pastors, and the principal leader of the emigration, in which we read : " The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance. 124 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. " They who have the power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power also to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them. And this, in the first place, because the principle of authority resides in the free consent of the people." ^ We find here for the first time the idea of a limitation of the mandate by a constitutional text, added to the ideas of a contract and the delegation of authority, and we have already seen how these statements of Hooker were repeated over and over again in the years 1646-1648 in the pamphlets of the English democrats.^ '■ Johnston, I.e., 72. The passage from this sermon was discovered by Dr. Trumbull, President of the Historical Society of Connecticut, in the notes of one of Hooker's hearers, Henry Wolcott, of Windsor. It was published for the first time in i860, in the papers of the Society (i. 19, ss.). In the same volume may be found a curious letter from Hooker to the elder Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts Bay, which clearly shows how the two men differed on pohtical matters. {Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society (Hartford, i860), i. p. 3, ss.J ^ On Thomas Hooker and his ideas, and the disputes which CONNECTICUT. 125 When I traced the part played by the Agreement of the People in the English revolution, I insisted on the points it had in common with the fundamental covenants of the dissenting congregations. There is no need to do this with the Connecticut Orders ; the analogy is sufficiently obvious. But another point of resemblance would seem to call for attention. I mentioned it when speaking of the agreement of the Independents, because the character of their congregations seemed even then to indicate it. It is all the more needful to mention it here, both for the same reasons and for one which was due to the state of things which was the necessary consequence of the juridical status of the colonies of New England. I refer to the comparison which may be made between led to the emigration of the democrats, of whom he was one of the leaders, the reader may consult with advantage a report of the lecture given in 1889, at Hartford, by the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the found- ing of the constitution of Connecticut. It is the most recent and best study of the subject. [See Connecticut Historical Society, Celebration of ttie 2^otk Anniversary of the Adoption of the first Constitution of the State of Connecticut (Hartford, Conn., 1889), p. 26, ss.] 126 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. the Plantation Covenants and the Statutes of the Merchant Companies and municipal corporations, and above all of the older Gilds, of which both cor- porations and companies were the issue. The earliest Puritan colonies, at one and the same time, shared the character of a company of planters, a community of citizens, and a religious congre- gation. In the beginning Massachusetts Bay had a royal charter as the foundation of its government ; but almost all the others did without the royal sanction, and established their laws solely on their own authority. Such a thing was not usual at the time, but, putting the question of its political signifi- cance on one side, it would be a mistake to think it quite unprecedented in English custom. The custom of the mediaeval GildS would, to a certain extent, justify it. Originally, Gilds were voluntary associations for mutual assistance, formed with some pious aim, or in the interests of trade.^ They called themselves ' Wilda, Das Gildenwesen im Mittelalter (Halle, 1834), p. 228, et passim. CONNECTICUT. 127 Brotherhoods. According to the Common Law of England, they, as well as the old corporations, had full power to organize themselves, and lay down their own peculiar statutes, so long as these were within the Common Law of the land. This right was exercised directly by the general assembly of the Brethren. If we glance through the remarkable collection of statutes and ordinances of English Gilds, published by the English Text Society, and edited by Toulmin Smith, we find that the usual preamble of the laws regulating their internal organization runs : " It is ordained by common assent . . ." -"^ The community had an elected chief, " provost," " constable," " bailiff," or " reeve." This was the functionary who became the mayor in the corpor- ations, the governor in the Merchant Companies. Other officers, and sometimes a whole committee elected in the same manner, were associated with this chief for purposes of administration. As a rule, ' Toulmin Smith, English Guilds. (London, 1870.) 128 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. no important decision was arrived at without con- sultation with the general assembly. Needless to add that the power of the officers and committees varied. It gradually increased at the expense of that of the assembly. Teutonic Gilds did not escape those influences which drew the Middle Ages towards aristocracy and monopoly. Their officers went so far as to issue new laws, and modify old ones on their own responsibility. Never- theless, the general principle of direct legislation by the members of the corporation was firmly estab- lished, and remained the law. We find it expressly formulated in the following passage : " Also, that ther schal non of the Wardeyns make none newe statutes ne newe ordinances withoute assent of alle the bretherhede, and that it be don on the day of here assemble."^ This article, which may be read at the end of the fundamental statute of the Gild of St. Catherine, in London, has especial attention called to it on the ' Toulmin Smith, English Guilds., I.e., 8. CONNECTICUT. 129 original parchment by a well-marked cross. A precisely similar ordinance is to be found at the end of the statutes of the Gild of St. Fabian and St. Sebastian.^ A Royal Charter was usually obtained, which confirmed the statute passed by the Gild, and trans- formed the latter into a Chartered Corporation. Such a warrant was desirable ; but by no means indispensable, since some Gilds never possessed it. The habit of quoting it at the head of the ordinances of the corporation has given birth to the idea that it was the foundation of those ordinances, and the origin of the Gild. Toulmin Smith shows by docu- mentary proof that it was nothing of the sort.^ ' Toulmin Smith, English Guilds, I.e., 11. ''■ '■ The Communitas has, at Common Law, and without any Statute, full power to regulate its own affairs, and to make Bye Laws for its own governance, by the assent of its own members. ^ This power is inherent, and necessary to enable it to fulfil its obligations to the State. " Charters of Incorporation do not, and cannot create Corpo- rations. They have always depended, and still depend, for even their validity upon the pre-existence of the Communitas, as above stated, and upon the assent and acceptance of the K I30 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. The Gild existed both in law and, in fact, before a Charter had authenticated its incorporation. Its statute emanated from itself alone. It is true that, as time went on, the Crown monopolised the right of "authorizing the practice of industry and commerce, so that the various bodies of merchants and artisans were unable to realize the very end of their existence without a protecting Charter ; but this is a fact of only secondary importance. The purely contractual character of the primitive Gild is none the less established. The communities of New England emigrants, who organized themselves without Charters, may so far, therefore, be compared to those pious, or, as they are Charter by the Communitas. In this respect, the Corporation Reform Act (ofWilUam IV.) made no difference. This matter became tested in the case of the Manchester Charter, which was issued under that Act, and that Charter was held by the Courts of Law to be only sustainable upon proof of assent and acceptance. " Charters, therefore, do not t?icorporate, they merely record." L.c, Pref., p. xxii. ; Cf. p. 128, note 2 ; p. 130, note 2 ; and p. 226, note 3. CONNECTICUT. 131 called by Toulmin Smith, social Gilds of olden time which had not received letters patent. Within those limits in which, mutatis mutandis, the comparison is admissible, the Fundamental Orders which were voted by the inhabitants of Connecticut in 1638-9, — putting, as I have said, all question of politics on one side, — were not opposed to the Common Law of the Mother Country. The Act which gave birth to them also recalls to our minds those decrees of the people of Rome, by which, as an autonomous corporation, they passed laws affecting their own interests ; what we may call the plibiscites of the first epoch. In Rome, after many revolutions, the statute of the plebeian corporation, owing to the victories of their tribunes, became the constitution of the State.^ The result was the same in America, but there the change came about more simply ; the Corporation became the State. On the day of the Declaration of Inde- ' Cf. Charles Borgeaud, Histoire du Plebiscite, Le Plebiscite dans I' A ntiguite (Paris, Ernest Thorin, 1887), partie ii., ch. 3., 132 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. pendence, there happened what would have happened in the new republic, which would have been founded by the plebeians of Rome, had they carried out the plan of secession with which they so often threatened the Roman senate. Some amendments were made in the Orders of Connecticut. One of these passed on November loth, 1643, relating to the method of admitting new residents to the electoral franchise, took the form of a declaratierr interpreting the law. It emanated from the General Court of magistrates and deputies.* Two others, concerning the holding of magistrates' courts, were adopted in 1646 and 1647, by the same representative body. Strictly speaking, they may, all three of them, be looked upon as simple organic laws. Two others, of quite a different character, were submitted to the popular vote, as all constitutional changes are now submitted in the States of the Union, and were promulgated in virtue of the pUbisciie. One of them (1646) changed the Ltaii . . , ' Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut (Hartford, 1850), i., p. 96. CONNECTICUT. I33 date of the general election, the other (1660) abolished a law prohibiting the immediate re-election of an out-going Governor.^ Shortly after Connecticut had adopted its consti- tution, one was decreed in their turn by the colonists of New Haven, which, though very different in its principles, was adopted in precisely the same fashion. They had quitted Boston under the guidance of their ministers, Eaton and Davenport, and had landed in the Bay of Quinnipiack. In a covenant which they immediately drew up, they agreed that the Bible, which was the standard of their Church discipline, should be so also in all that concerned civil and political matters. " The choice of magis- trates, legislation, the rights of inheritance, and all matters of that kind, were to be decided according to the rules of Holy Scripture." * A year later this covenant was developed into a ' Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut (yi^xXioxA, 1-850), i., pp. 140, 347. ^ Records of the Colony and Plantatio7i of New Haven, ed. Ch.J. Hoadly (Hartford, 1857), p. 12. 134 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. series of Fundamental Orders which were adopted, on the proposal of Davenport, at the end of Divine Service on the 4th June, 1639. W'e learn from the minutes of the meeting that the votes were taken, clause by clause, by the showing of hands for and against.^ The first resolution agreed to by the constituent assembly declares that Holy Scripture is a perfect rule for the guidance of men in their dealings with God and their fellow-men, in the State as well as in the Church. The second repeats and con- firms the Plantation Covenant, those who had not been present at the passing of the act giving in their adhesion to it. It was then voted that no one should be admitted as an elector who did not belong to some one of the recognised Churches. After this, measures were taken for the organization of a singular form of government, both civil and ecclesi- astical, drawn from the text of the Old Testament. The first leaders of the colony of New Haven re- ' Records of the Colony and Plantation of Neiu Haven, pp. 10-18. CONNECTICUT. 135 present the clerical tendencies of Congregationalism. The government organized by them was an absolute theocracy, but it is none the less true that they could not have founded this theocracy without the express consent of the interested parties.^ ' One of the resolutions voted by the Assembly on the 4th June, 1639, decrees that a Committee of Church members shall be elected which shall have power to recruit itself by co- optation, shall choose all the magistrates out of its members, and shall pass laws in conformity with the word of God. This article seems to have given rise to some opposition in the Assembly. I quote what follows from the summary report of the discussion : " Then one man stood up after the vote was passed and expressing his dissension from the rest, in part yett grantinge I. That magistrates should be men fearing God. 2. That the Church is the Company whence ordinarily such men may be expected. 3. Thatt they that chuse them ought to be men fearing God : only att this he struck, That free planters ought not to give their power out of their hands. Another stood up and answered that in this case nothing was done but with their consent. The former answered that all the free planters ought to resume their power into their own hands again if things were not orderly carried. Mr. Theophilus Eaton answered that in all places they chuse committees in like manner, the companies of London chuse their liveries by whom the publick magistrates are chosen. In this the rest 136 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. The autonomy of New Haven was, however, of short duration. At the end of twenty-five years the colony was united to that of Connecticut, and its institutions have no importance in this Essay beyond that given to them by the circumstances of their estabh"shment, and the fact that the minutes of the proceedings of their first General Assembly of citizens have come down to us. In the year 1662 Connecticut received a Charter from Charles II. It was obtained by the younger Winthrop, thanks to the good offices of Lord Say and Sele, and also, according to the American his- torians, to the sums of money placed by the colony at the service of their Governor. It confirmed the democratic government which had been inaugurated by the Fundamental Orders of 1639, at the same time that it impressed upon it a more pronounced representative character. It so completely responded to the wishes of the people that, even when the were not wronged, because they expect in time to be of the livery themselves, and to have the same power." — New Haven Records, p. 14. CONNECTICUT. 137 republic became independent, no need for a new constitution was felt down to the year 18 18. In an article published a few years ago, Mr. Brooks Adams endeavoured to prove that the origin of the written constitutions on which the American Republic is founded, was to be found in the Royal Charters, granted during the Middle Ages to the Companies of Merchants, and, later on, to the great Colonial Companies.^ I have called attention to the influence which it seems to me the principles which guided the organization of Gilds had upon the genesis of the constitutional laws of modern democracy. At the same time, if my views are accepted, we shall go beyond the Charters granted to the Corporations, and find the origin of the present constitution rather in the Statutes which received the free assent of these Corporations. By the side of these Statutes we shall also place the Ecclesiastical Covenants which, according to the expression of the ' The Embryo of a Comjnomi'ealth. Atlantic Monthly (Boston, November, 1S84), vol. liv., p. 610, ss. 138 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. first writers of New England, were "the essential cause of the Independent congregations."^ The share of influence which Congregationalism can claim in the formation of the national institu- tions of the United States has been insisted upon by its literary representatives. Their zeal, which was occasionally excessive, and not always free from the feeling, so provocative of criticism, which certain interpreters of Holy Scripture call self-righteousness, caused a reaction. A whole school, in which may be counted some distinguished historians, make American democracy descend in a direct line from Teutonic institutions. r The township, they say, is with us the foundation of the State. Our local democracy has given birth to our national democracy. The township comes to us from the German races. Our town- meeting or primary assembly of citizens, which is the organ and, in some sort, the living incarnation of the town, is nothing else than the Scandinavian Thing or the Saxon Tnngemot. ' See First Essay, p. 32. CONNECTICUT. 139 We must, however, recognise the fact that without Congregationalism the line of descent, — which, though by no means direct, was still in a sense real, — would have been broken. At the moment when the Colonists of New England quitted the mother-country, whatever was left of that old self- government which had been exercised by their fore- fathers, was under the influence of the general move- ment, and undergoing an aristocratic transformation. The vestries, or meetngs of the inhabitants of the parish, were being replaced by committees known as select vestries, which were originally elected, and then, before long, recruited by co-optation. ^ Had the American colonists purely and simply imitated in their new country the system which they had seen at work in England, they would certainly not have founded the democratic government of the town- meeting. In order to explain their political activity, we must take into account, and that largely, their religious ideas. And we shall be naturally led to ' See Gneist, Communalverfassung ujid Verwaltungsgerichte in JSngiand (Bsdin, 1871), p. 672 (cap. ix., § 115). 140 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. do this if we remember that, in the beginning, each settlement or town was, before all things, a congre- gation, and that the town-meeting was in most cases the same thing as the Assembly of the congregation. In Virginia, where the colonists remained members of the Anglican Church, there was no town-meeting, but only select vestries, as in England, and these had certainly lost all family likeness, if they really were related to the Thing and the Tungemot} ' One of the most recent contributions in support of the Teutonic theory is that of Mr. G. E. Howard. As a contributor to the excellent work undertaken by the Johns Hopkins Univer- sity, he devotes to it a general introduction to the history of local institutions in the United States {An Introduction to the Local Constitutional History of the United States. Baltimore, 1889 [Johns Hopkins University Studies, extr. vol. iv.] ). Mr. Howard is forced to admit that the colonists did not copy the local institutions of the mother-country as they existed at the time of their leaving it, and thus explains the apparition of the town-meeting : " The colonists go back a thousahd years and begin again ; or to speak with greater accuracy, new life is infused into customs which, though passing into decay, are yet not wholly extinct in the old English home ; all this is perfectly natural : it is a case of revival of organs and functions on the recurrence of the primitive environment" {^Howard, i. 51]. CONNECTICUT. 141 The minds of men at this time were completely dominated by their religious ideas ; it would have been most extraordinary if those ideas had not left their impress on their political actions. This explanation, which is borrowed from the Darwinian theory, is ingenious ; but we may ask how it was that the " revival of organs and functions " only took place in New England, while " the recurrence of the primitive environment" equally prevailed in the other colonies ? CHAPTER II. MASSACHUSETTS. Its First Charter. — Religious Ideas of the Emigrants. — Growth of the Idea of Aristocracy. — Theocracy. — Democratic Opposition. — The Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Republic of Calvin. The colony of Massachusetts Bay was founded in 1629. The emigrants who founded it were Puritans, but not Separatists. Their undertaking was based on a Royal Charter. A Corporation of twenty-six persons, possessing the character both of a trading Company and of a religious Gild, — it announced that beyond its commercial object it had a religious aim, the propagation of the Gospel, — had obtained from Charles I. a promise that he would confirm those rights of property, which it had obtained by contract from the Plymouth Company, on a portion of the New England territory.^ ' 1606. First Charter of Virginia granted by James I. con- 142 MASSACHUSETTS. 143 The Letters Patent recognised the right of the rporation to recruit itself, to nominate its own icers, and to draw up its own laws, provided that sy were not contrary to the laws of the Kingdom, le supreme authority lay in the General Assembly the members of the Corporation. In all this at the beginning there was no innova- m. But in course of time the original Company, lich had its headquarters in the city of London, derwent a transformation. Exercising its right to mit new members, it suddenly doubled its number ■ a numerous and powerful body of Puritans, mong these the old members gradually but inevit- ly disappeared, while the new ones, giving them- Ives up to a work of colonisation, carried over th them to America both the Charter and the ling to the two Companies of London and of Plymouth llectively the Proprietary Rights of the Crown. 1620. larter of New England, granted by James I. to the Plymouth mpany. 1628. Charter of Cession from the Plymouth mpany to the six first Members of the Corporation of issachusetts Bay. 1629. Letters Patent of Charles L con- ning this session. 144 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. headquarters of the Society. The colony was to become a city of refuge. The Charter of this trading and missionary Company was to grow into a con- stitution. As the Charter was founded on the common law of corporations, that is to say of Gilds, this constitution had a democratic basis. We must admit that the terms of it were drawn up by the first members before it was presented to the King.^ When it had received the royal seal, they completed it by a statute regulating the details of the govern- ment of the plantation, which was agreed to in London on the 30th April, 1629, " by the vote and consent of a full and ample court now assembled." ^ Together with these written laws the Company transmitted to the colonists the traditional customs of English corporations ; the form of swearing in new members, the mode of procedure in the General Assemblies, where decisions were arrived at by ' John Parker, The First Charter aftd the Early Religious Legislation 0/ Massachusetts. Lowell Institute Lectures, p. 362. ^ Records of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Biiy in New England {^oiion, 1853), i., 361, ss. MASSACHUSETTS. 145 means of a vote, usually by show of hands, etc., all which practices prevailed also in the Separatist congregations. Had the Puritans who founded a political com- munity on these bases been originally Brownists, it is probable that the motive power of Massachusetts from its very beginning would have been that democratic spirit which later on placed it at the head of the American revolution. But the colonists, whose emigration began in 1629, though they were non-conformists, had no thought of separating them- selves from the Church of England. The leading expedition took leave of it in an address full of a spirit of fidelity.^ And their subsequent history ' The humble Request of his Majesties loyal! subjects, the Governour and the Company late gone for New England, to the rest of their Brethren, in and of the Church of England, for the obtaining of their Prayers, and the removal of sus- picions and misccntstructions of their Intentions. See Dexter, I.e., 416, ss. A remarkable pamphlet, attributed to John White, of Dor- chester, which was published in London in 1630, strongly protests against any suspicion of separatism. " I think that we make and that we ought to make a great difference between L m6 the rise of modern democracy. proved that they carried away with them from the old world more than one deeply-rooted prejudice for which the new world long had to suffer. It is a well-established fact that it was not until after they had landed on American soil that the colonists of Massachusetts Bay formed themselves into congregations founded on Church covenants similar to those adopted by their fore-runners, the Pilgrim Fathers of New Plymouth. In doing so, they yielded to the necessities of the case, and also, there is no doubt, to a sincere conviction developed by example, that such an organization was what was sanctioned by Holy Scripture. We know what the Bible was to the Puritans — a book dictated word for word and letter by letter by the Spirit of God ; a book which contained all things needful, beyond which there was nothing. It appeared to them that to live, both in the Church and in the State, in conformity to its teaching, was a duty from which no consideration of expediency — __ — f separation and non-conformity." — The Planter^ Plea (London, 1630), p. 62. [Br. M. c. 33, c. 10.J MASSACHUSETTS. 147 ioiight to lead them astray. Only, the teaching of Holy Scripture needed interpretation, and the theologians of Massachusetts Bay set themselves to work to interpret it. And in their particular case, the lesson they learned, though similar in principle, wias less .liberal than that of John Robinson. The result was that their Churches did not adopt the advanced democratic form which the pastor of Scrooby and Leyden had granted to his. They were led by a numerous body of able ministers, who, however, had not been emancipated from the ideas of their class, and who consequently realized once more the Congregationalism of Johnson, work- ing out their scheme of Church government in an aristocratic sense. The Charter was also interpreted in the same way, and the civil community started on the same path as the religious. At the first General Assembly, held at Boston on the 19th October, 1630, the colonists were induced to vote that in future only the Council of Assistants to the Governor should be chosen by direct election, and that both the 148 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. Governor and his deputy should be appointed by the Council from among its own members. Council, Governor, and Deputy, were to have the power of making laws, and nominating the magistrates en- trusted with their execution.' The following year they were made to vote that no person should be allowed to exercise the franchise of the colony who was not a member of some Church recognised by it.2 By law the civil government was distinct from the ecclesiastical, but in fact it was strictly subordinate to' it. Owing to their moral influence, the pastors and elders formed a sort of Council of Ephors ; no important decision was arrived at without their consent. They spoke in the name of the Divine Will revealed in the Bible, and their sentence could only be appealed against by calling in question their interpretation.^ " When a commonwealth hath liberty to mould its ' Mass. Records, i. 79. " General Court, May 18, 1631. lb.,\. p. 87. ^ The methods prescribed for ascertaining the " mind of God," deal with all manner of questions. On the 20th May, MASSACHUSETTS. i49 own frame {Scripturm plenitudinem adord), I con- ceive," writes Cotton, " the Scripture hath given full direction for the right ordering of the same. It is better that the commonwealth be fashioned to the setting forth of God's house, which is His Church, than to accommodate the Church's frame to the civil State." 1 Thus was founded the theocratic Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with none like it to be found in history, except the Republic of Calvin ; like it, brave, austere, but intolerant of inquiry, persecuting heresy without pity, and without mercy. Geneva, which dur- ing the Middle Ages had enjoyed a system of com- munal government almost democratic, became in the sixteenth century, in the hands of the Reformer, a 1644, the following resolution was passed : " It is ordered that it shall and may be lawful for the Deputies of the Court t-o advise with their elders and freemen, and take into serious consideration, whether God do not expect that all the inhabi- tants of this plantation allowe to their magistrates, and all other that are called to country service, a proportionable allowance, answerable to their places and instruments. Mass. Records, ii. p. 67. ' Letter to Lord Say and Sele, Governor Hutchinson. Hist, of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, vol. i., appendix. I50 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. middle-class aristocracy. It was governed by this aristocracy during the glorious period when the Huguenot city was looked upon as the metropolis of the Protestant world. It was not until two cen- turies had passed away that the spirit of Calvin was vanquished by the spirit of the Reformation. In the end the man had to make way for the idea, and democracy was established in the little republic, after a series of revolutions, which began in the first years of the eighteenth century, and were like a prologue on a miniature theatre to the great drama of its close. In America a similar fate awaited Puritan Cal- vinism. The theocratic aristocracy of Massachusetts had to face the principles of the Charter which the colony had received as the base of its political organization, and the principles of Congregationalism which it had adopted as the foundation of its re- ligious organization. This was quite enough to create from the first a democratic opposition which was able to hold its own in the community. We soon find traces of its action. In 1632 the right to elect the Governor and his deputy is restored to the body MASSACHUSETTS. 151 of the electors by the General Assembly,' and in 1634 the same body deprives the Governor and the Council of the legislative power of which they had possessed themselves, and votes the following resolu- tion, which recalls the Statutes of the Gilds : " That none but the General Court hath power to make and establishe lawes."^ The same year the pastor. Cotton, preached on the day of election : " A Magis- trate ought not to be turned into the condition of a private man without just cause, and to be publicly convict, no more than the Magistrates may not turn a private man out of his freehold without like public trial." 3 The faithful dared not contradict Cotton, but they showed what they thought of his theory by refusing, for four consecutive years, to re-elect the out-going governors. The struggle between the two tendencies led to secessions, secessions of extremists on both sides. •■ General Assembly, May 9th. Mass. Records, i. p. 95. ^ Assembly of May 14th, 1634. Mass. Records, i p. 117. ^ Palfrey, A Compendious History of New England {fiosion, 1884), i., p. 140. IS2 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. The colony of New Haven was founded by men who considered that Massachusetts did not suffi- ciently realize the ideal of a republic whose only law is the Bible. Theirs was an ultra-theocratic colony ; that of Connecticut was the work of the opposite party. About the year 1640, during the first years of the English Revolution, we notice a return movement to the mother country. The democrats of the New World go to swell the army of the Independents. From this moment we find that the opposition, deprived of its most active members, becomes less active, while the aristocratic party of the magistrates, assisted and inspired by the ministers, — they had just celebrated a common triumph over a schismatic faction, the Antinomians, — rules without opposition over the destinies of the Republic, whose' depend- ence on the mother country is rather nominal than real. / " Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God : and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation " (Rom. xiii. 2). MA SSA CHUSE TTS. 1 5 3 Such is the motto placed at the head of the code of the Laws mtd Liberties of the colony.^ The government, like that of Geneva, was an actual aristocracy tempered by the legal sovereignty of the community.^ In the city of Calvin, the Small Council, the Council of Sixty, and the Council of Two Hundred ruled and made the laws ; the General Council of citizens elected the magistrates pro forma, and approved the laws when made. In Massachusetts the fact that the electors were scattered over a wide tract of country led to the adoption of the representative system. After 1634 the General Assembly of Boston became practically ' The General Laws and Liberties of the Massachusetts Colony, Official edition, 1672 (Cambridge, Mass.), fol. [Br. M. 1246 g.] ^ In 1646 a demand was made to the Elders for a consulta- tion on the nature of the government of the colony. In their reply we find this declaration : " Our government is not a pure , aristocracy, but mixt of an aristocracy and democracy, in respect of the generall Court." Mass. Records, ii. p. 95. If ever the Registers of the Council of Geneva should be published, the amount of knowledge to be gained from a com- parison between them and the Records of Massachusetts would be most striking. 154 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. an Assembly of Delegates.' The union between the clergy and the magistrates had helped to form a governing class in whom actual power was deposited ; but the whole body of citizens remained all the same the supreme local authority of the colony. Besides, the people directly exercised their rights in the town-meetings, which a statute of 1635-6 recognised as possessing the fullest powers in matters of muni- cipal administration.^ In the town-meeting the humblest citizen of Massachusetts could learn all about the management of public affairs. In it de- mocracy found a refuge, one may almost say a tower of defence. From it democracy issued, to take once more her place in the State, the moment the Church returned to its own sphere, and when this happened in the second half of the eighteenth century, the signal was at once given in America for revolution and independence. ' Mass. Records, i. p. 11 8. " De Tocqueville, De la Ddmocratie en AmMgue, i., ch. v., and Laboulaye, Histoire Politique des Etats- Unis, i., xi"^ legon, have studied the communal system closely in Massachusetts, and generally in the New England colonies. The reader may consult their well-known works with advantage. CHAPTER III. RHODE ISLAND. evidence founded by Roger Williams. — First Covenant and Fundamental Articles of 1640.— Colonisation of Aquidneck (Rhode Island).— Democracy.— The Charter of Providence Plantations. — Organization of a Democratic Government. —Valuable help rendered by Roger Williams. — The Second Charter of 1663.— The Cradle of American Democracy. HE first to rise up against the growing theocracy- Massachusetts was Roger Williams, a preacher Salem. He arrived from England in 1631, and imediately found himself at war with Congrega- Dnalism as it was understood in Boston. After ime years of struggle he was banished the colony, r having taught and spread divers strange and )vel theories, destructive of the authority of magis- ates.i He took refuge on Indian territory and, ' " Whereas Mr. Roger Williams, one of the elders of the 155 IS6 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. with the help of some of the members of his church at Salem, founded, in 1636, the town of Providence on Narragansett Bay. Roger Williams possessed a mind at once en- thusiastic and systematic ; he was a theologian who had been brought up by a lawyer.^ He pushed Brownism to its logical conclusions, the complete separation of civil and religious matters, and absolute democracy.*^ The community which was formed by him, and which afterwards became the kernel of a State, had for its base a double Covenant. The first colonists undertook to obey all laws made by a majority of Church of Salem, hath broached and dyvulged dyvers newe and dangerous opinions against the authoritie of Magistrates." Mass. Records, i. p. 160. ' Sir Edward Coke. ^ It is possible and even probable, as Dexter maintains {As to Roger Williams, Boston, 1876), that at the time of his banishment the mind of the Salem preacher was not yet fully made up, that his system was not yet fixed. But we must admit, for facts prove it, that the principles themselves were already more or less adopted by him. RHODE ISLAND. 157 their body ; new-comers, simply dwelling amongst them and not yet received as citizens, promised obedience to these same statutes which, it is said, must concern matters exclusively civil. ^ In 1640, twelve constitutional articles which had been adopted by a coinmission of Arbiters, who had been elected for the purpose, were presented to the popular vote, and received the individual signatures of the colonists. This Act appoints an executive Committee of five members, who are to manage current affairs ; it stipulates that all matters in dis- pute shall be settled by arbitration ; it declares that legislative power and final decisions belong to the General Assembly of the community, the town- meeting. The principle of liberty of conscience is confirmed and proclaimed in express terms.^ ' See Staples' Annals of the Town of Providence (Provi- dence, 1843), p. 39. Letters of Roger Williams, I.e., p. 5. "^ " We agree, as formerly hath been the liberties of the town, so still to hold forth liberty of conscience." Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England (Providence, R.I., 1856), i. p. 27-31. 158 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. There were still but few houses built in Providence when a second party of refugees arrived in Narra- gansett Bay. Their chief leader, John Clark, was the friend of Roger Williams, and shared his views. By his advice and with his help, Clark settled on the island of Aquidneck, which soon came to be called Rhode Island. This colony, founded like that of Providence on a civil covenant,^ presents the same characteristics of an advanced and liberal democracy. The following remarkable resolution, bearing date 1641, is to be found in its archives, having been voted by the General Assembly of Portsmouth. " It is ordered, and unanimously agreed upon, that the Government which this Body Politick doth attend unto in this Island, and the Jurisdiction thereof, in favour of our Prince, is a Democratic, or Popular Government ; that is to say. It is in the Power of the Body of Freemen orderly assembled, or the major part of them, to make or constitute Just ' See S. G. Arnold, Hist, of the State of Rhode Island (New York, 1859), p. 70. RHODE ISLAND. 159 Lawes, by which they will be regulated, and to depute from among themselves such Ministers as shall see them faithfully executed between Man and Man." 1 In 1643, Roger Williams went to England to try to obtain a Charter which would protect the new plantations from the territorial claims of the earlier settlements. He found the kingdom in the midst of the civil war. The Presbyterians were still masters in the Parliament, but the Independent party was in process of formation. Thanks to the influence of Sir Henry Vane, whose acquaintance he had made at Boston, Williams was able to obtain what he wanted from the Colonial Committee, that is a Charter which incorporated, under the name of the Providence Plantations, the various establish- ments on Narragansett Bay, guaranteed their terri- tory, and gave them full liberty to adopt whatever form of government they wished. " The voluntary consent of all the inhabitants, or of the majority ' Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, i., p. 112 i6o THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. of them," was to be the foundation of the constitu- tion.i When this Charter was brought from England the colonists entered into a new covenant in which they accepted it. The government they organized by virtue of the permissive clause which it contained was thus defined : — " And now sith our Charter gives us powre to governe ourselves and such others as come among us, and by such a forme of civill government as by the voluntary consent, etc., shall be found most suitable to our Estate and condition, " It is agreed, by this present Assembly thus incorporate, and by this present act declared, that the forme of. Government established in Providence Plantations is Democraticall ; that is to say, a ' " Such a form of civil government, as by voluntary con- sent of all, or the greater part of them, they shall find most suitable to their estate and condition. . . . The laws, constitutions and punishments, for the civil government of the said Plantation, be conformable to the laws of England, so far as the nature and constitution of the place will admit." Records of Rhode Island, i., p. 145. Poore, ii., p. 1594, s. RHODE ISLAND. . i6i Government held by the free and Voluntary consent of all, or the greater parte of the free inhabitants." ^ After passing this fundamental article, a code of laws was adopted. This was introduced by a kind of declaration of rights, which begins thus : — " No person in this colonie shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his Lands or Liberties, or be Exiled, or any otherwise molested or de- stroyed, but by the LawfuU judgement of his Peeres, or by some known Law, and according to the Letter of it, Ratified and confirmed by the major part of the Generall Assembly lawfully met and orderly managed." ^ These texts bear date 1647. If we compare them with what was taking place in Europe during this memorable year, we shall be ready to allow that this is the first great date in the history of modern democracy. During his stay in England, which lasted more ' Records of Rhode Island, i., p. 156. - Records, i., p. 157. These rights are extracted from Magna Charta. M 1 62 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. than a year, and during which he was the guest of Vane, Roger Williams renewed his old acquaintance with Hugh Peters, whom he had before met at Salem. He made the personal acquaintance of Cromwell, with whom he always afterwards main- tained friendly relations. It was during this time that he published his famous treatise against in- tolerance, The Bloody Tenant, which was the first trumpet blast of the liberal insurrection. This pamphlet contains one passage which sums up almost the whole essay, and which, in its theological crudeness, characterizes both the man and his mode of thought. " A Soule or spiritual Rape is more abominable in God's eye than to force and ravish the Bodies of all the Women in the World." '^ In the colony of Roger Williams, the townships not only preserved the most complete power of self-government as in Massachusetts, but also took a most important part in the work of legislation, ' The Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, Discussed in a Conference between Truth and Peace (London, 1644), p. 94. [Brit. Mus. E. i. (2).] RHODE ISLAND. 163 enjoying not only the right of initiative, but also that of expressing a deliberate vote. The laws, and usually also all matters of interest common to the whole colony, were generally discussed for the first time in the several local town-meetings. When a resolution was adopted by the majority, it came into force, as an experiment, until the next General Assembly of the whole people. On the proposal of the General Court, it was then submitted to a new discussion, and its fate definitely decided. The deputies to the General Court had the power of introducing a proposition to that assembly, but its decision was referred to the townships, who then deliberated on it as in the previous case. The votes given by the town-meetings were sealed and sent to the Chancellor of the colony ; he opened them in the presence of the President. If the majority had voted in an affirmative sense, the law or decree was promulgated and put upon its trial till the meeting of the ruling Assembly.^ Those who were prevented ' S. G. Arnold, I.e., 203-205. Cf. Records of Rhode Island, i., p. 148. i64 THE 'RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. from attending the annual Assembly could send their votes to it under sealed covers.^ This was the mode of procedure followed by the people of the colony in 1652, when they voted the famous law which abolished slavery within their territory.^ A democracy which was so jealous of its rights could not be established without some troubles and some quarrels, but Roger Williams knew how to get the better of them, and, thanks to the support of Vane, triumphed over all hindrances in England. He had the glory, which but few shared with him, of remaining, in spite of everything, true to the prin- ciples which he had laid down, and of being able to restore concord to the republic without withdrawing from its citizens, as he had been urged to do, those powers which he had maintained they had the right to exercise. ' Records of Rhode Island, i., pp. 149-150. ^ lb., i., p. 243. The General Court of Massachusetts had set the good example in 1646, when it severely condemned the traffic in slaves in a legislative decree. See Mass. Records, ii., p. 168, RHODE ISLAND. 165 " Possibly," he writes to Sir Henry Vane, " a sweet cup hatli rendered a many of us Wanton and too active, for We have long drunk of the cup of as great liberties as any people that we can hear of under the Whole Heaven." ^ But in his opinion, though such a beverage might at times intoxicate, it would also strengthen, if only men knew how to use it. The founder of Providence believed in liberty, and even, for he says so in his letters, believed in equality, as he believed in the Gospel. ^ He had the robust faith — a faith without scruples and without reservations — of the men of old time. In 1663, after the restoration of Charles H., John Clark obtained a second Charter for the colony. Up ' Letters of Roger Williatns, I.e., p. 258. Records of Rhode Island, i., p. 288. ^ " I have been charged with folly for that freedom and liberty which I have always stood for ; I say liberty and equality, both in land and government. I have been blamed for parting with Moshassuck, and afterwards Pawtuxet (which were mine own as truly as any man's coat upon his back), without reserving to myself a foot of land, or an inch of voice in any matter, more than to my servants and strangers." Letters, I.e., p. 263. 1 66 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. to that time it had been nothing more than a con- federation of towns ; Clark now made it a kind of federal republic under the name of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The new Charter did not interfere with the municipal rights of local self- government. It respected in its essence the demo- cratic forms, but it established an elective Governor who was to have a Council to assist him, and trans- formed the General Assembly into a congress of magistrates and deputies of the towns. The demo- cracy which had been organized by Roger Williams became representative.^ This Charter remained the Constitutional Charter of the State of Rhode Island after the Declaration of Independence, and was not replaced till the year 1843, when it had lasted two centuries. The town of Providence raised a statue to the memory of its founder. Roger Williams is repre- ' Records of Rhode Island, ii., 3, ss. Poors, ii., 1595, ss. In order to carry out the Charter, a resolution of the General Assembly of March ist, 1663-4, deprived the people of their right of voting for general laws, after their deputies had approved them. Rec, ii., 27. RHODE ISLAND. 167 sented standing as if about to speak in an assembly of the people ; in his left arm he holds a book, which he presses against his breast, and on which may be read two words and a date : — Soul liberty — 1636. In these words and this date we may sum up the glory of Providence and of that republic of which it was the first centre. Its citizens might have been tempted to add the word Democracy, but they did well to refrain. Democracy is not the heritage of the single State of Rhode Island. Lieutenant-Governor Arnold in eloquent terms claims for his country the honour of having been the cradle of American democracy. But the historians of the other States of New England assert their claims also to this honour each for his own, with no less talent and no less convincing proofs. If we follow the development of the principles of the Reformation in Europe, first on the Continent, then in England and Scotland, and finally in America, we for our part shall have no difficulty in admitting that there was a process of evolution in which the whole Western world took part. Anglo- i68 THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY. Saxon democracy failed in the seventeenth century in Europe in its struggle against ancient laws and institutions. It began afresh beyond the ocean, in a new society, which had been born again. It was there that the movement of the eighteenth century began ; New England was the country in which it burst its bonds, and every one of the colonies of the refugees has had its share, large or small, but none the less real, in giving birth to what has become the mighty American democracy. A thousand difficulties await the writer who approaches the history of a nation, not his own, in order to form his own judgment upon it. The road is sown with obstacles, covered with false tracks, crossed by tempting paths which lead the rash traveller astray; but at times there are compen- sations, and among them may perhaps be counted as a help to a right judgment in a case where so many equally authoritative voices differ, that of being a citizen neither of Connecticut, nor of Massa- chusetts, nor of Rhode Island. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES. "' ' Tho Pi-inoiples of State Interference ' is another of Messrs. Swan Sonnen- schein's Series of Handbooks on Soientifio Social Subjects. It woald be fitting to close onr remarks on this little work with a word of com- mondatlon of the publishers of so many useful volumes by eminent writers on questions of pressing interest to a large number of the com- munity. We have now received and read a good number of the handbook: which Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein have published in this series, and can apeak in the highest terms of them. Ttiey a;: mitten \!~ me& s* con- siderable imowledge of the subjects they have undertaken to discuss; they are concise ; they give a fair estimate of the progress which recent dis- cussion has added towards the solution of the pressing social questions of to-day, are well up to date, and are published at a price within the resources of the public to which they are likely to be of the most use." — Westminster Review, July, 1891. ■" The excellent ' Social Science Series,' which is published at as low a piiop as to place it within everybody's reach." — Beview of Reviews. " A most useful series. . This impartial series welcomes both just writers and unjust." — Manchester Guardian. " Concise in treatment, lucid in style and moderate in price, these books can hardly fail to do much towards spreading sound views on economic and social questions." — Review of the Churches, "Convenient, well-printed, and moderately-priced volumes." — Reynold's News paper. DOUBLE VOLUMES, Each 3s. 60. 1. Life of Robert Owen. Lloct Jones. " A worthy record of a life of noble activities."— Afani.*est€j- Sxammer. 2. The ImpossibiUty of Social Democracy : a Second Part of " The Quintessence of Socialism ". »r- A- Schaffle. " Extremely yaluable as a criticism of Social Democracy by the ablest livmg representative of State Socialism in Germany."— /iiler. Journal or Ethics. 3. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1S«. Feedebiok Bngbls. " A translation of a work written in 1845, with a prefare written m 1892. 4. The Principles of Social Economy. ^^*iL*;"™v "An interesting and suggestive work. It is a profound u cause on social economy, and an invaluable collection of facts."— Spectator. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO., LONDON. SOCIAL SCIENCE SERIES. SCARLET CLOTH, EACH 2s. 6d. 1. Work and Wages. Prof. J. E. Thohole Rogers, " Nothing that Professor Rogers writes can fail to be of interest to thougbtfol people." — Atkenmum. 2. Civilisation : Us Cause and Cure. Edwabd Oabpbntek. " No passing piece of polemics, but a permanent possession." — ScoitUh Review. 8. Quintessence of Socialism. Dr. Schafflb. " Precisely the manual needed. Brief, lucid, fair and wise."— JWtwft Weekly. 4. Darwinism and Politics. D. G. Eitchie, M.A. (Oxen.). New Edition, with two additional Essays on Humam Evolution. " One of the most suggestive books we have met with." — Uterary World. 5. Religion of Socialism. E. Bblfobt Bax. 6. Ethics of Socialism. E. Belpobt Bax. " Mr. Bax is by far the ablest of the English exponents of Socialism."— TFM^miTwter Riview. 7. The Drink Question. Dr. Kate Mitchell. " Plenty of interesting matter for reflection. ' — Graphic. 8. Promotion of General Happiness. Prof. M. Macmtllan. " A reasoned account of the most advanced and most enlightened utilitarian doc- trine in a clear and readable iovm."— Scotsman. 9. England's Ideal, &c. Bdwabd Gabpenteb. 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