1643 THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 6 313 they were beset, encompassed by people of several nations and strange languages.' This being so, it is necessary that the colonies should enter into a consociation for mutual help and strength.' The objects of the league are then more fully stated. It is to exist. 'for offence and defence, for mutual advice and succour,' and for preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the gospel.' The parties to the league are henceforth to be called the United Colonies of New England. The territorial jurisdiction of each colony is to be preserved intact. No two colonies are to unite under the same jurisdiction without the leave of their confederates, and no new confederates are to be admitted but by unanimous consent. All public charges are to be paid by contributions levied on the colonies, proportioned to the number of inhabitants in each colony between sixteen and sixty. Each colony is to raise its own contribution in any manner and on any principle which seems good to it, and to make such exemptions as it may please, provided they do not affect the amount of the contribution. In case of any sudden invasion, if there should be no time for the Commissioners to meet, the colonies are to send help, Massachusetts a hundred men, each of the other colonies fiftyfive. The affairs of the Confederation are to be managed by Commissioners, two from each colony. They are to elect a President from among themselves, whose powers shall be only those of a chairman. The vote of six Commissioners shall be binding; if six do not agree on any disputed point it is to be referred back to the different colonial governments. The annual meetings are to be held in each of the colonies in rotation, Massachusetts having two turns in succession. The only matter specially mentioned as coming within the province of the Commissioners over and above measures of common defence was the extradition of runaway servants. Character of the constitu tion. Two weak points in this constitution are at once apparent. It failed to provide any machinery whereby the advantages which a colony derived from the league should be proportioned to the amount which it contributed. That difficulty can indeed only be overcome where there is a somewhat elaborate federal constitution. But though it might be an unavoidable defect, it was none the less a defect. If Massachusetts was often arrogant and overbearing to her confederates, and unjust in the pursuit of her own advantages, we must remember that she was perpetually galled by a sense of unfairness. It was perhaps a more serious defect that the machinery of the Confederation provided no means by which the federal government could act directly on the individual citizen. The Confederation was in fact rather a league of independent powers for certain special and limited purposes than a federal state. More than this was scarcely possible among states constituted as were those of New England. There was little in common between the Puritan colonist and the Greek of antiquity, but they were alike in the intensity of their local patriotism and in their vivid sense of a citizenship, which, if not limited to a single town, was at least bounded by rigid conditions of space. Thus in the New England Confederation as in the Achæan League the newer and wider claims never overrode the older allegiance. The New Englander remained a citizen of Massachusetts or Connecticut, as did the other of Sikyon or Megalopolis. For, in truth, an artificial construction such as a federal league can excite feelings of loyalty only when it comes into being under circumstances of peculiar interest and excitement. The Swiss Federation is but an apparent exception. That can hardly be looked on as a political construction at all, but rather as a growtl., 1643 THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 315 in some measure coeval with its individual members, and therefore vying with them in its claim on national sentiment. The Confederation of the United Provinces and the American Republic were each the first fruits of the nation's freedom and needful conditions of maintaining that freedom. The latter was peculiarly endeared to its subjects as the symbol of a national existence slowly and laboriously achieved. And thus it has enlisted in its behalf feelings whose strength and loftiness have been too often lost upon Englishmen, because those feelings have little in common with the familiar aspect of loyalty. The Confederation of the four New England colonies called out no such sentiments. It was looked on as a convenient piece of political machinery and no more. Yet even in this there were compensating advantages. It was well that the federal constitution was framed deliberately and, so to speak, in cold blood, not under the pressure of any special excitement. It was an advantage too that it should have come into being while the individual colonies still kept the plasticity of youth. A confederation is a frame to which organized and articulated communities have to adapt themselves. The experiment is more likely to succeed if they have not yet acquired the fixity and rigidity of mature life. framed ference to One aspect of the matter, all the more striking from the first that it seems to have been almost unnoticed, The Con- was the absence of any reference to the home federation government. There is nothing to show that without re- the framers of the Confederation ever enterEngland. tained a thought as to the manner in which their policy would be regarded in England. Yet this was undoubtedly the most important political step that any of the colonies had yet taken. The feeling of local independence, the spirit which made men look on them selves as citizens of Massachusetts and not as citizens of England, ebbed and flowed. Beyond a doubt it was stronger in 1640 than it was in 1700. But it never wholly perished, and the formation of the Confederacy was perhaps the most striking manifestation of it. The indifference of the English government is easily explained. Six years earlier, under the watchful eye of Laud, we may be sure that the Confederation would never have come into existence unnoticed and unresisted. But when the Federal Union was ratified, Laud was in prison and the gates of London were closed against the King. At that crisis neither of the parties in the state had leisure to watch the external politics of a distant dependency. ing of the Federal Commissioners. In the September of the same year in which the Federal Constitution was drawn up the Commissioners First meet- met at Boston. Their proceedings augured ill for the purposes to which the newly-framed league would be applied. At this time Massachusetts was striving to extend its jurisdiction over the Narragansett territory, and to that end was seeking to extirpate a harmless band of fanatics who had settled. there. To understand the state of affairs we must go back a few years. Samuel It will be remembered that among those who brought about the temporary severance of Portsmouth and Newport was one Samuel Gorton. By Gorton. 1640 he might almost be said to have graduated as a disturber of the peace in every colony of New England. His career began in 1638 at Plymouth.2 There he hired a house from Smith, the minister, and soon turned it into a rival conventicle. Then he took 1 Acts of Commissioners, vol. i. p. 14. 2 The only explicit account of Gorton's conduct at Plymouth is in Hypocrisy Unmasked (p. 67). The date of it is given by various entries in the Records, mentioning his offence and the punishment inflicted (vol. i. pp. 105, 106, 110). 1638-40 SAMUEL GORTON. 317 up the cause of a woman who was punished, in all likelihood with unjust severity, for levity during worship. The violence with which he supported her involved him in a charge of sedition, and to escape trial he fled the colony and took refuge at Aquednek. One episode in his career there has already come before us. After the reunion of the two settlements on the island he embroiled himself with the government. In a civil case, in which one of his own servants was concerned, he used scurrilous language to the Court of Magistrates, and apparently tried for a second time to raise up a faction against Coddington. He indeed took up that attitude towards the civil power which the Massachusetts settlers falsely attributed to all the Antinomians. In his own words, he thought himself as fit and able to govern himself and family as any that were there upon Rhode Island.' Happily for the settlement the government was at least able to flog and banish Gorton.2 6 We next hear of him, in the words of Williams, 'having abused high and low at Aquednek, bewitching and madding poor Providence.' 3 His presence had consequences that reached further than mere temporary disorder. It gave Massachusetts a pretext for claiming jurisdiction over the territory of Narragansett Bay. We might almost go further, and say that it forced Massachusetts to interfere in the general interests of peace and good order. The proceedings mentioned by Williams happened in the autumn of 1640. About twelve months later we find Gorton and his friends refusing to submit to a distress ordered by the magistrates. Thereupon thirteen of the settlers presented a memorial 1 Winslow says (p. 67) that she was punished for unworthy and offensive speeches and carriages.' 2 Winslow gives very full details of these proceedings. 3 The letter is in Hypocrisy Unmasked (p. 55). It is dated 8, 1st, 1640. It is given among Williams' letters in the Narragansett Club Publications (vol. vi. p. 141). It is there dated 1646, probably by a misprint. |