American Institutions And Their Influence

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It must not be imagined that the piety of the puritans was of a
merely speculative kind, or that it took no cognizance of the
course of worldly affairs. Puritanism, as I have already
remarked, was scarcely less a political than a religious
doctrine. No sooner had the emigrants landed on the barren
coast, described by Nathaniel Morton, than their first care was
to constitute a society, by passing the following act:[Footnote:

"New England Memorial," p. 37.

]--

"IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN! We, whose names are underwritten, the
loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord King James, &c., &c.,
having undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the
Christian faith, and the honor 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 politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and
furtherance of the ends aforesaid: 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 general good of the
colony: unto which we promise all due submission and obedience,"
&c.[Footnote:

The emigrants who founded the state of Rhode Island in 1638,
those who landed at New Haven in 1637, the first settlers in
Connecticut in 1639, and the founders of Providence in 1640,
began in like manner by drawing up a social contract, which was
submitted to the approval of all the interested parties. See
"Pitkin's History," pp. 42, 47.

]

This happened in 1620, and from that time forward the emigration
went on. The religious and political passions which ravished the
British empire during the whole reign of Charles I., drove fresh
crowds of sectarians every year to the shores of America. In
England the stronghold of puritanism was in the middle classes,
and it was from the middle classes that the majority of the
emigrants came. The population of New England increased rapidly;
and while the hierarchy of rank despotically classed the
inhabitants of the mother-country, the colony continued to
present the novel spectacle of a community homogeneous in all its
parts. A democracy, more perfect than any which antiquity had
dreamed of, started in full size and panoply from the midst of an
ancient feudal society.

The English government was not dissatisfied with an emigration
which removed the elements of fresh discord and of future
revolutions. On the contrary, everything was done to encourage
it, and little attention was paid to the destiny of those who
sought a shelter from the rigor of their country's laws on the
soil of America. It seemed as if New England was a region given
up to the dreams of fancy, and the unrestrained experiments of
innovators.

The English colonies (and this is one of the main causes of their
prosperity) have always enjoyed more internal freedom and more
political independence than the colonies of other nations; but
this principle of liberty was nowhere more extensively applied
than in the states of New England.

It was generally allowed at that period that the territories of
the New World belonged to that European nation which had been the
first to discover them. Nearly the whole coast of North America
thus became a British possession toward the end of the sixteenth
century. The means used by the English government to people
these new domains were of several kinds: the king sometimes
appointed a governor of his own choice, who ruled a portion of
the New World in the name and under the immediate orders of the
crown;[Footnote:

This was the case in the state of New York.

] this is the colonial system adopted by the other countries of
Europe. Sometimes grants of certain tracts were made by the
crown to an individual or to a company,[Footnote:

Maryland, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, were in
this situation. See Pitkin's History, vol. i., pp. 11-31.

] in which case all the civil and political power fell into the
hands of one or more persons, who, under the inspection and
control of the crown, sold the lands and governed the
inhabitants. Lastly, a third system consisted in allowing a
certain number of emigrants to constitute a political society
under the protection of the mother-country, and to govern
themselves in whatever was not contrary to her laws. This mode
of colonization, so remarkably favorable to liberty, was adopted
only in New England.[Footnote:

See the work entitled, "_Historical Collection of State Papers
and other Authentic Documents intended as Materials for a History
of the United States of America,_" by Ebenezer Hazard,
Philadelphia, 1792, for a great number of documents relating to
the commencement of the colonies, which are valuable from their
contents and their authenticity; among them are the various
charters granted by the king of England, and the first acts of
the local governments.

See also the analysis of all these charters given by Mr. Story,
judge of the supreme court of the United States, in the
introduction to his Commentary on the Constitution of the United
States. It results from these documents that the principles of
representative government and the external forms of political
liberty were introduced into all the colonies at their origin.
These principles were more fully acted upon in the North than in
the South, but they existed everywhere.

]

In 1628,[Footnote:

See Pitkin's History, p. 35. See the History of the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay, by Hutchinson, vol. i., p. 9.

] a charter of this kind was granted by Charles I. to the
emigrants who went to form the colony of Massachusetts. But, in
general, charters were not given to the colonies of New England
till they had acquired a certain existence. Plymouth,
Providence, New Haven, the state of Connecticut, and that of
Rhode Island,[Footnote:

See Pitkin's History, pp. 42, 47.

] were founded without the co-operation, and almost without the
knowledge of the mother-country. The new settlers did not derive
their incorporation from the head of the empire, although they
did not deny its supremacy; they constituted a society of their
own accord, and it was not till thirty or forty years afterward,
under Charles II., that their existence was legally recognised by
a royal charter.

This frequently renders it difficult to detect the link which
connected the emigrants with the land of their forefathers, in
studying the earliest historical and legislative records of New
England. They perpetually exercised the rights of sovereignty;
they named their magistrates, concluded peace or declared war,
made police regulations, and enacted laws, as if their allegiance
was due only to God.[Footnote:

The inhabitants of Massachusetts had deviated from the forms
which are preserved in the criminal and civil procedure of
England: in 1650 the decrees of justice were not yet headed by
the royal style. See Hutchinson, vol. i., p. 452.

] Nothing can be more curious, and at the same time more
instructive than the legislation of that period; it is there that
the solution of the great social problem which the United States
now present to the world is to be found.

Among these documents we shall notice as especially
characteristic, the code of laws promulgated by the little state
of Connecticut in 1650.[Footnote:

Code of 1650, p. 28. Hartford, 1830.

]

The legislators of Connecticut[Footnote:

See also in Hutchinson's History, vol. i., pp. 435, 456, the
analysis of the penal code adopted in 1648, by the colony of
Massachusetts: this code is drawn up on the same principles as
that of Connecticut.

] begin with the penal laws, and, strange to say, they borrow
their provisions from the text of holy writ.

"Whoever shall worship any other God than the Lord," says the
preamble of the code, "shall surely be put to death." This is
followed by ten or twelve enactments of the same kind, copied
verbatim from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.
Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery,[Footnote:

Adultery was also punished with death by the law of
Massachusetts; and Hutchinson, vol. i., p. 441, says that several
persons actually suffered for this crime. He quotes a curious
anecdote on this subject, which occurred in the year 1663. A
married woman had had criminal intercourse with a young man; her
husband died, and she married the lover. Several years had
elapsed, when the public began to suspect the previous
intercourse of this couple; they were thrown into prison, put
upon trial, and very narrowly escaped capital punishment.

] and rape were punished with death; an outrage offered by a son
to his parents, was to be expiated by the same penalty. The
legislation of a rude and half-civilized people was thus
transferred to an enlightened and moral community. The
consequence was, that the punishment of death was never more
frequently prescribed by the statute, and never more rarely
enforced toward the guilty.

The chief care of the legislators, in this body of penal laws,
was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the
community: they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and
there was scarcely a sin which they did not subject to
magisterial censure. The reader is aware of the rigor with which
these laws punished rape and adultery; intercourse between
unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge was
empowered to inflict a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or
marriage,[Footnote:

Code of 1650, p. 48. It seems sometimes to have happened that
the judge superadded these punishments to each other, as is seen
in a sentence pronounced in 1643 (New Haven Antiquities, p. 114),
by which Margaret Bedford, convicted of loose conduct, was
condemned to be whipped, and afterward to marry Nicolas Jemmings
her accomplice.

] on the misdemeanants; and if the records of the old courts of
New Haven may be believed, prosecutions of this kind were not
infrequent. We find a sentence bearing date the first of May,
1660, inflicting a fine and a reprimand on a young woman who was
accused of using improper language, and of allowing herself to be
kissed.[Footnote:

New Haven Antiquities, p. 104. See also Hutchinson's History for
several causes equally extraordinary.

] The code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. It punishes
idleness and drunken[ness] with severity.[Footnote:

Code of 1650, pp. 50, 57.

] Innkeepers are forbidden to furnish more than a certain
quantity of liquor to each customer; and simple lying, whenever
it may be injurious,[Footnote:

Ibid, p. 64.

] is checked by a fine or a flogging. In other places, the
legislator, entirely forgetting the great principles of religious
toleration which he had himself upheld in Europe, renders
attendance on divine service compulsory,[Footnote:

Ibid, p. 44.

] and goes so far as to visit with severe punishment,[Footnote:

This was not peculiar to Connecticut. See for instance the law
which, on the 13th of September, 1644, banished the ana-baptists
from the state of Massachusetts. (Historical Collection of State
Papers, vol. i., p. 538.) See also the law against the quakers,
passed on the 14th of October, 1656. "Whereas," says the
preamble, "an accursed race of heretics called quakers has sprung
up," &c. The clauses of the statute inflict a heavy fine on all
captains of ships who should import quakers into the country.
The quakers who may be found there shall be whipped and
imprisoned with hard labor. Those members of the sect who should
defend their opinions shall be first fined, then imprisoned, and
finally driven out of the province. (Historical Collection of
State Papers, vol. i., p. 630.)

] and even with death, the Christians who chose to worship God
according to a ritual differing from his own.[Footnote:

By the penal law of Massachusetts, any catholic priest who should
set foot in the colony after having been once driven out of it,
was liable to capital punishment.

] Sometimes indeed, the zeal of his enactments induces him to
descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be
found in the same code which prohibits the use of
tobacco.[Footnote:

Code of 1650, p. 96.

] It must not be forgotten that these fantastical and vexatious
laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely
voted by all the persons interested, and that the manners of the
community were even more austere and more puritanical than the
laws. In 1649 a solemn association was formed in Boston to check
the worldly luxury of long hair.[Footnote:

New England's Memorial, p. 316. See Appendix E.

]

These errors are no doubt discreditable to the human reason; they
attest the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of
laying firm hold upon what is true and just, and is often reduced
to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with
this penal legislation, which bears such striking marks of a
narrow sectarian spirit, and of those religious passions which
had been warmed by persecution, and were still fermenting among
the people, a body of political laws is to be found, which,
though written two hundred years ago, is still ahead of the
liberties of our age.

The general principles which are the groundwork of modern
constitutions--principles which were imperfectly known in Europe,
and not completely triumphant even in Great Britain, in the
seventeenth century--were all recognised and determined by the
laws of New England: the intervention of the people in public
affairs, the free voting of taxes, the responsibility of
authorities, personal liberty, and trial by jury, were all
positively established without discussion.

From these fruitful principles, consequences have been derived
and applications have been made such as no nation in Europe has
yet ventured to attempt.

In Connecticut the electoral body consisted, from its origin, of
the whole number of citizens; and this is readily to be
understood,[Footnote:

Constitution of 1638, p. 17.

] when we recollect that this people enjoyed an almost perfect
equality of fortune, and a still greater uniformity of
capacity.[Footnote:

In 1641 the general assembly of Rhode Island unanimously declared
that the government of the state was a democracy, and that the
power was vested in the body of free citizens, who alone had the
right to make the laws and to watch their execution. Code of
1650, p. 70.

] In Connecticut, at this period, all the executive functionaries
were elected, including the governor of the state.[Footnote:

Pitkin's History, p. 47.

] The citizens above the age of sixteen were obliged to bear
arms; they formed a national militia, which appointed its own
officers, and was to hold itself at all times in readiness to
march for the defence of the country.[Footnote:

Constitution of 1638, p. 12.

]

In the laws of Connecticut, as well as in those of New England,
we find the germe and gradual development of that township
independence, which is the life and mainspring of American
liberty at the present day. The political existence of the
majority of the nations of Europe commenced in the superior ranks
of society, and was gradually and always imperfectly communicated
to the different members of the social body. In America, on the
other hand, it may be said that the township was organized before
the county, the county before the state, the state before the
Union.

In New England, townships were completely and definitively
constituted as early as 1650. The independence of the township
was the nucleus around which the local interests, passions,
rights, and duties, collected and clung. It gave scope to the
activity of a real political life, most thoroughly democratic and
republican. The colonies still recognised the supremacy of the
mother-country; monarchy was still the law of the state; but the
republic was already established in every township.

The towns named their own magistrates of every kind, rated
themselves, and levied their own taxes.[Footnote:

Code of 1650, p. 80.

] In the townships of New England the law of representation was
not adopted, but the affairs of the community were discussed, as
at Athens, in the market-place, by a general assembly of the
citizens.

In studying the laws which were promulgated at this first era of
the American republics, it is impossible not to be struck by the
remarkable acquaintance with the science of government, and the
advanced theory of legislation, which they display. The ideas
there formed of the duties of society toward its members, are
evidently much loftier and more comprehensive than those of the
European legislators at that time: obligations were there imposed
which were elsewhere slighted. In the states of New England,
from the first, the condition of the poor was provided
for;[Footnote:

Code of 1650, p. 78.

] strict measures were taken for the maintenance of roads, and
surveyors were appointed to attend to them;[Footnote:

Code of 1750, p. 94.

] registers were established in every parish, in which the
results of public deliberations, and the births, deaths, and
marriages of the citizens were entered;[Footnote:

Ibid, p. 86.

] clerks were directed to keep these registers;[Footnote:

See Hutchinson's History, vol. i., p. 455

] officers were charged with the administration of vacant
inheritances, and with the arbitration of litigated landmarks;
and many others were created whose chief functions were the
maintenance of public order in the community.[Footnote:

Ibid, p. 40.

] The law enters into a thousand useful provisions for a number
of social wants which are at present very inadequately felt in
France.

But it is by the attention it pays to public education that the
original character of American civilisation is at once placed in
the clearest light. "It being," says the law, "one chief project
of Satan to keep men from the knowledge of the Scripture by
persuading from the use of tongues, to the end that learning may
not be buried in the graves of our forefathers, in church and
commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors, ..."[Footnote:

Code of 1650, p. 90.

] Here follow clauses establishing schools in every township,
and obliging the inhabitants, under pain of heavy fines, to
support them. Schools of a superior kind were founded in the
same manner in the more populous districts. The municipal
authorities were bound to enforce the sending of children to
school by their parents; they were empowered to inflict fines
upon all who refused compliance; and in cases of continued
resistance, society assumed the place of the parent, took
possession of the child, and deprived the father of those natural
rights which he used to so bad a purpose. The reader will
undoubtedly have remarked the preamble of these enactments: in
America, religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of
the divine laws leads men to civil freedom.

If, after having cast a rapid glance over the state of American
society in 1650, we turn to the condition of Europe, and more
especially to that of the continent, at the same period, we
cannot fail to be struck with astonishment. On the continent of
Europe, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, absolute
monarchy had everywhere triumphed over the ruins of the
oligarchical and feudal liberties of the middle ages. Never were
the notions of right more completely confounded than in the midst
of the splendor and literature of Europe; never was there less
political activity among the people; never were the principles of
true freedom less widely circulated, and at that very time, those
principles, which were scorned or unknown by the nations of
Europe, were proclaimed in the deserts of the New World, and were
accepted as the future creed of a great people. The boldest
theories of the human reason were put into practice by a
community so humble, that not a statesman condescended to attend
to it; and a legislation without precedent was produced off-hand
by the imagination of the citizens. In the bosom of this obscure
democracy, which had as yet brought forth neither generals, nor
philosophers, nor authors, a man might stand up in the face of a
free people, and pronounce amid general acclamations the
following fine definition of liberty:[Footnote:

Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana, vol. ii., p. 13. This
speech was made by Winthrop; he was accused of having committed
arbitrary actions during his magistracy, but after having made
the speech of which the above is a fragment, he was acquitted by
acclamation, and from that time forward he was always re-elected
governor of the state. See Marshall, vol. i., p. 166.

]--

"Nor would I have you to mistake in the point of your own
liberty. There is a liberty of corrupt nature, which is affected
both by men and beasts to do what they list; and this liberty is
inconsistent with authority, impatient of all restraint; by this
liberty '_sumus omnes deteriores;_' 't is the grand enemy of
truth and peace, and all the ordinances of God are bent against
it. But there is a civil, a moral, a federal liberty, which is
the proper end and object of authority; is a liberty for that
only which is just and good: for this liberty you are to stand
with the hazard of your very lives, and whatsoever crosses it is
not authority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is
maintained in a way of subjection to authority; and the authority
set over you will, in all administrations for your good, be
quietly submitted unto by all but such as have a disposition to
shake off the yoke and lose their true liberty, by their
murmuring at the honor and power of authority."

The remarks I have made will suffice to display the character of
Anglo-American civilisation in its true light. It is the result
(and this should be constantly present to the mind) of two
distinct elements, which in other places have been in frequent
hostility, but which in America have admirably incorporated and
combined with one another. I allude to the spirit of religion
and the spirit of liberty.

The settlers of New England were at the same time ardent
sectarians and daring innovators. Narrow as the limits of some
of their religious opinions were, they were entirely free from
political prejudices.

Hence arose two tendencies, distinct but not opposite, which are
constantly discernible in the manners as well as in the laws of
the country.

It might be imagined that men who sacrificed their friends.
their family, and their native land, to a religious conviction,
were absorbed in the pursuit of the intellectual advantages which
they purchased at so dear a rate. The energy, however, with
which they strove for the acquirements of wealth, moral
enjoyment, and the comforts as well as the liberties of the
world, was scarcely inferior to that with which they devoted
themselves to Heaven.

Political principles, and all human laws and institutions were
moulded and altered at their pleasure; the barriers of the
society in which they were born were broken down before them; the
old principles which had governed the world for ages were no
more; a path without a turn, and a field without a horizon, were
opened to the exploring and ardent curiosity of man; but at the
limits of the political world he checks his researches, he
discreetly lays aside the use of his most formidable faculties,
he no longer consents to doubt or to innovate, but carefully
abstaining from raising the curtain of the sanctuary, he yields
with submissive respect to truths which he will not discuss.

Thus in the moral world, everything is classed, adapted, decided,
and foreseen; in the political world everything is agitated,
uncertain, and disputed: in the one is a passive, though a
voluntary obedience; in the other an independence, scornful of
experience and jealous of authority.

These two tendencies, apparently so discrepant, are far from
conflicting; they advance together, and mutually support each
other.

Religion perceives that civil liberty affords a noble exercise to
the faculties of man, and that the political world is a field
prepared by the Creator for the efforts of the intelligence.
Contented with the freedom and the power which it enjoys in its
own sphere, and with the place which it occupies, the empire of
religion is never more surely established than when it reigns in
the hearts of men unsupported by aught besides its native
strength.

Religion is no less the companion of liberty in all its battles
and its triumphs; the cradle of its infancy, and the divine
source of its claims. The safeguard of morality is religion, and
morality is the best security of law as well as the surest pledge
of freedom.[Footnote:

See Appendix F.

]

* * * * *

REASONS OF CERTAIN ANOMALIES WHICH THE LAWS AND
CUSTOMS OF THE ANGLO-AMERICANS PRESENT.

Remains of aristocratic Institutions in the midst of a complete
Democracy.--Why.--Distinction carefully to be drawn between
what is of Puritanical and what is of English Origin.