III

 

Citizenship and Church Membership:

Aristocracy vs. Democracy?

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If the Charters, and especially that of the Massachusetts Bay Colony of 1629, did set forth basic and predictable reasons for colonizing North America, but also broad directions for the establishment of the backbone of a colonial government, it was in the very first covenants - Salem's and Boston's, and in Winthrop's Modell of Christian Charity - that were made plain the profound desires and motivations of the first settlers of the Great Migration: to enforce God's Special Commission by establishing the laws of God, revealed in the Bible as the fundamental law of the colony, and to see to it that they be strictly obeyed.

This oversimplified sketch implies that Massachusetts Bay was a theocracy, a commonwealth whose supreme ruler was God Himself, with the magistrates as His earthly representatives. And indeed, many historians, like Miller or Morison, take for granted that Massachusetts was a theocracy,[1] while "most writers today"[2] argue that Church and State were more clearly separated in New England than anywhere else in the Western World, and that therefore it was not a theocracy, for the single but recurring reason that clergymen were barred from civil office by law.[3] But theocracy is one of the most thorny, complex and multifaceted concepts in political theory. In this and the next chapter, we shall therefore try to collect and interpret evidence from constitutional, legal and judicial texts and practical features of the period, and discuss the interpretations of several historians on the subject.

However the issue of theocracy is not the only one on which historians disagree. There is not one clearly and universally accepted interpretation and designation of the system of government, or rather successive systems, established and modified during the first four decades of the existence of New England. Diverging labels have been used corresponding to the ideology of the time. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, progressive historians like Palfrey, Adams, Morison, and Miller decried Massachusetts as oligarchic, whereas the later consensus historians, like Morgan, the Browns and the other writers of the fifties and sixties saw New England as more democratic.[4] Yet none seems to justify and explain in details their choice of political label which are often used according to contemporary standards of American politics.[5]

We shall therefore ask ourselves a few simple questions and try to find answers through the developments of early Massachusetts, always with an eye on the other neighboring colonies with which Massachusetts united under the banner of the Confederacy of New England in 1643, as well as Rhode Island. The answers to these questions will then convey a clearer picture of the existing political system and of the type of government there, in terms of the proportional number of voters but also in terms of the social and political mentality of the rulers, the electorate and those deprived of the vote. The questions are the following: Who was eligible to vote? Who was excluded? Who could be elected, and who could not, or in other words, who ruled? In whose interests? In whose hands did legislative power, policy making, which George Langdon calls the "actual exercise of power"[6], lie? What were the criteria of admission to citizenship, and what did citizenship mean in the seventeenth century? Who did "the people" refer to? What were the implications of the constitutional changes? How many people, or what proportion of the population, was concerned?

 

1. The opening of Freemanship to non-stockholders - 1630

 

When John Winthrop and his fleet landed on New England's shores, they had brought the Charter with them, so the official meetings would actually take place in the New World instead of in London, where they most probably should have. Of the twelve signatories of the Cambridge Agreement in August 1629[7], nine were present in August 1630 for the first assembly across the Ocean. There were also four or five other members of the Company in New England at the time,[8] and in the first year, all but one of the present members were assistants (one of the highest-ranking offices established by the 1629 Charter). The transfer of the Charter had blurred the distinction between the board of directors (the General Court composed of the stockholders, supposed to remain in London) and the colonial assembly (the Court of Assistants, that was to manage the colony on site) which means that in fact, the colony was directly ruled by the stockholders of the Company, who were assistants at the same time, whereas the two groups were traditionally distinct. As in Plymouth, political power was in the hands of men who were risking their money in a dangerous financial venture, in exactly the same manner as in today's corporate world. However, it cannot be said that political power was in the hands of the wealthy and that Massachusetts was a plutocracy. The restriction was not financial, it was based on participation in the financial scheme. There exists no label for the government of a political entity by a board of directors, for it was a fairly unique experience. The least unsatisfactory term would be a "merxocracy", based on "merx", the Greek for "merchant" and "merchandise". Yet this neologism can understandably be found far-fetched, so we should rather prefer "corporate state". The stockholders were called freemen, and by assimilation they had become the citizens of the colony, but it was not absolutely clear in the earliest days.

Samuel Eliot Morison has claimed that the transfer of the Charter marked the death of the Company and the birth of the Commonwealth.[9] Yet, that transition between company and commonwealth could be displaced to a much more significant event, one that took place at the first General Court on October 19, 1630. Indeed, on that day a group of inhabitants demanded to be admitted as freemen of the Colony (and not of the Company). They asked for political power and civil rights whereas they were not shareholders of the Company, which was absolutely contrary to the terms of the Charter, and to the purpose of a commercial venture. The situation was comparable to simple employees of a company demanding a seat on the board of directors.

Actually the reasons why Governor Winthrop and the assistants accepted are not known. It is legitimate to wonder why this small group of stockholders, with absolute and unchallenged political powers - legislative, executive and judicial - would accept to share these powers with the "people at large", which at the time referred to free adult men, as we shall discuss later. Throughout the period herein studied, which has been called the "Puritan period"[10] of American history, the rulers of New England strongly and sincerely believed that their authority came from God, and to Him only were they accountable. It was Him whom they represented, and the Charter did nothing more than acknowledge it. Their ideal and supreme aim was not only that expected from a corporate commercial venture: it was not so much to make a profit, as to enforce the Special Commission. That was the only truth, and the only conceivable aim. If indeed such was their aim, in whose interest did they rule?[11] Did they rule in their own, personal interests? They would have done so if they had come to make a profit, but that would have been an earthly reason, unacceptable in the eyes of God. As God's elect, as they believed they were, they did not rule to ensure their own salvation: they were predestined to be saved, and could not do anything about it, just like the masses whose fate was damnation. Calvinism and its puritanical reinterpretations deprived men of any possibility to change their fate, through good works for example, as was the case in the Catholic Church and in the Arminian doctrine dear to Archbishop Laud.[12] Therefore they definitely did not rule in their own selfish interest, but reciprocally this does not automatically mean that they ruled for the welfare of the people. Their efforts rather pointed to the good of the Commonwealth they thought they had been sent to found according to the Word of God. They did not rule in anybody's interest. Consequently, it proves that, though only a small group was in power, it was not an oligarchy. Indeed, oligarchs rule selfishly, in their own interests, without caring for the rest, be it the good of the people or the good of the country; they usually base their supremacy on tradition, and hardly feel the need for justification.[13]

On the contrary, the first assistants, who saw themselves more as God's assistants[14] than as mere stockholders, justified their authority on metaphysical arguments. They could not share their power with the people at large because the latter would not be qualified enough to enforce the Special Commission. Only God's elect were fit, and worthy enough of God's confidence. The dividing barrier was qualification to rule: only the most virtuous, wise and godly could be trusted to complete the mission, the "errand into the wilderness", as Miller said, quoting Pastor Samuel Danforth.[15] This type of rule by a small group, for metaphysical reasons and through metaphysical requirements, simplified as "the rule of the best"[16] is called an aristocracy, and as we shall develop later, it was the type of government Winthrop and John Cotton explicitly called for,[17] and it makes the famous restriction of the suffrage to the Visible Saints a perfectly understandable and natural move.[18]

These so-called oligarchs, however, agreed to open the General Court to a large share of the adult male population, on that particular day of October 1630, to men who would not have to buy stocks, and would not yet have to be visible saints. All they had to do was to swear an oath of loyalty to the Colony. Additionally, the new freemen would have power of choosing the assistants, who would then choose the governor and the deputy governor from among themselves. The magistrates[19] would make laws and appoint the officers who would enforce them. Yet in exchange for the right to vote and to hold office, these freemen relinquished their legislative and judicial direct powers, a loss which is at the basis of the principle of representation: they entrusted their elected representatives with these powers. The problem was that the assistants did not consider themselves representatives of the people[20], but rather representatives of the will of God. Once elected, they had a free hand to do "that which is good" as John Winthrop said in his famous Little Speech On Liberty delivered in 1645, quoting the Epistle to the Romans (13:3). A similar conception of representation was later famously expressed by Edmund Burke in the end of the eighteenth century.[21] If Morgan has argued that "most if not all the men excluding servants"[22] were then admitted to freemanship, Marcia Stewart[23] claims that, even though swearing the oath was open to all men, many refused to take it because it was too demanding, and they thereby declined citizenship.[24] She adds that most of those who refused the 1631 oath did swear the less compelling oath of 1634. Indeed, more than a voluntary pledge to mere submission to the laws and governors, loyalty went as far as voluntarily denouncing - there was no police force at the time - "any sedition, violence, treachery or other hurt or evil which I shall know, hear, or vehemently suspect[25] to be plotted or intended against the said commonwealth, or the said government established."[26] The consequences of this oath were twofold. On the one hand, freemanship was officially open to all, so one might think that indiscriminate right to vote and hold office means democracy, at least in the original Greek meaning.[27] But there was one restrictive element - the oath - and one might wonder whether it was or not the intention of the magistrates to produce an oath that would be acceptable only to the men deeply committed to the welfare of the commonwealth, those who would genuinely endeavor to protect the Commonwealth and the Commission. This practice of hidden metaphysical screening was typically Puritan, since it also relied on a strong sense of voluntary commitment, even though taking the oath was technically open to all. The second consequence is that since many did actually refuse to take the oath, it was de facto not a democracy; they refused to be a part of the government. Because they found the oath unacceptable, it was more a gesture of political opposition than an individual assessment of one's unworthiness to join the chosen few at the head of the intended New Jerusalem.

Be that as it may, at the following General Court of May 1631, one hundred and sixteen inhabitants, not necessarily church members, were sworn in and admitted freemen of the Colony, thereby receiving the right to vote every year for the assistants to whom they gave the power to legislate, and through them to vote indirectly for the governor.

 

2. The Restriction of Freemanship to Church members - 1631.

 

Even though that session was marked by a movement toward broad participation, it is more significantly remembered for another decision that was to give the government of Massachusetts its particular flavor, and definitely brand the system of government as at least partly aristocratic for a few decades. It was indeed enacted that "for the time to come noe man shall be admitted to the freedome of the body polliticke, but such as are members of some of the churches within the lymitts of the same."[28] Freemanship had come to mean citizenship a few months before, now both notions were restricted to church membership.

However, in the group admitted on that day, presumably not every man in the one-hundred and sixteen could have been a church member. A church-goer undoubtedly, but not a church member as it was understood in those days by the Puritans who had emigrated in New England. Indeed, as Morgan has developed in Visible Saints: the History of a Puritan Idea,[29] there was a very clear distinction between a church-goer and a church member. The latter group was made up of those to be admitted to communion and to have their children baptized. These sacraments, the only two accepted by Protestants since Luther, had to be protected from the unregenerate mass. This concept of visible saints in the middle of sinners, the idea of the regenerate few amidst unregenerate and damned mankind, was derived from the Calvinist concept of predestination. Man was utterly evil because of the Fall and would therefore, as a chastisement, be eternally damned. However, in His mercy, God had decided to save and redeem a few by giving them "saving faith". Hence the Protestant doctrine of "justification by faith alone" derived from Pauline theology and first popularized by Luther. Since it was God's decision, there was nothing mankind could do about it, which accounts for the rejection by the Puritans of the Covenant of Works preached by the Catholic and Anglican Churches, the latter under Arminian influence. The belief was that good works could not redeem Man, that only God could, and if you were damned, there was nothing to do about that. The selected few, who would be saved, were to gather - "found" in the Puritan terminology - churches as was prescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline Epistles. Any Congregationalist Puritan could - and then was legally compelled to - attend the preaching of the Word, but the sacraments were restricted to those who managed to prove, to demonstrate, to persuade the current members that they had been converted, that they had felt deep inside that they were amongst the elect.[30] If they managed to convince the jury, they were allowed to subscribe to the church covenant - as we saw in the previous chapter, the church's birth certificate - and to receive the sacraments as any other member. Membership was restricted to the godly, to the visible saints, lest the church be defiled. The argument at the time was that the Church of England, and also the Presbyterian Church, both of them fairly comprehensive, were corrupt, for they were composed both of saints and sinners, and that membership was based on coercion and not voluntary association and free consent.[31]

It was the same reasoning that legitimated the restriction of the electorate to the religiously elect. For fear that the State should be defiled and corrupt, thereby jeopardizing the fulfillment of the Special Commission, the political scene had to be limited to those men who could demonstrate that they were fit for the task that would be theirs, both as voters and as magistrates. Democracy (in the modern sense of the political ideal it has become) was therefore not acceptable. John Winthrop argued that it was nowhere to be found in the Bible, and accordingly it could not be applied in Massachusetts. To enforce an unscriptural precept would be an act of defiance toward God, quite contrary to their aim. In a letter written to Lord Say and Sele on behalf of the Colony in 1636, John Cotton claimed that "Democracie I do not conceyve that ever God did ordayne as a fitt Government either for Church and Commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed?"[32]

            More than the oath of loyalty, the restriction of freemanship to church members was the confirmation that the Commonwealth had to be administered only by men qualified for the task, in terms of wisdom, understanding of the Word and purity of soul, thus reinforcing the idea of a metaphysical aristocracy. This type of government was explicitly defended by Cotton in the letter to Lord Say and Sele, and by John Winthrop, as being "warranted in Scripture", just like monarchy.

            The fact that among the hundred and sixteen newly admitted men many were not church members and that not all of them would have proved godly enough men to pass the test, and yet were admitted, was an interesting concession on the part of the magistrates, and especially John Winthrop, the governor at the time, so praised by both Morison and Morgan for his political and diplomatic instincts.[33] If they had been excluded, the government could easily have been overthrown (no widespread repression would have been possible without a police force, and militias were probably not developed enough in 1631 to suppress a "popular" uprising) or at least strongly pressured into reforms. To maintain the unity of the Commonwealth, a concession, a compromise, had to be made, as would be the case several times in the following decades. There would be ungodly elements in the electorate as well as, possibly, in the government. Winthrop's pure ideal was endangered, but less so if unity remained, and was kept under close scrutiny by both the magistrates and the ministers, whose advisory power must not be underestimated. However, the concession would be of temporary effect, since the process of democratization had supposedly been checked. This way, the future immigrants, if not godly enough, would be left out and would not corrupt the experiment, and if acceptable, would outnumber the accepted unregenerate, or so the rulers hoped. As new immigrants, they would be expected to conform without question to the law of the land, otherwise they would be free to leave, as we shall develop later. Moreover, not only would this decision attract the "right sort" of settlers,[34] but it would likewise discourage those who would come for the wrong reason, namely to improve their lot.[35] The ensuing problem was that, since such a measure as this restriction was absolutely contrary to the terms of the Charter, what would be the reaction in England if such a practice came to be known there? Virginia had already had her Charter confiscated and had been put under the yoke of a Royal Governor. The same incident in Massachusetts would strongly, if not fatally, undermine the enforcement of the Special Commission.

            Concerning this decision, Morgan has first argued that for English men it was not a restriction but rather an extension, in terms of the proportion of the population who could "enjoy"[36] civil rights. In England the franchise system was archaic and incoherent, and was to remain so until the electoral reforms of the Victorian era. Only at county level was the franchise requirement uniform, and yet dated back to 1430. To be allowed to vote, a man had to be the owner of free land or tenement to the value of forty shillings a year. At borough level, the requirements depended on local custom, being either based on property-holding, heredity, or on charters that confined the franchise to corrupt and oligarchic municipal corporations. But at the time of the Great Migration, that is between 1630 and the outbreak of the Civil War in the early 1640s, England had been undergoing repeated economic crises, outbreaks of plague, rampant unemployment, the enclosures had spurred a period of land hunger and, for those who did possess land, there had been a series of disastrous harvests. That is why the forty-shilling freehold requirement was - temporarily - difficult to achieve and it has been estimated that the vote was limited to 3% of the population. However, the source does not specify what kind of population, but we can infer that it refers to the adult male population.[37] Consequently, this would tend to prove that, proportionally, and compared to the situation in England, the 1631 restriction of freemanship to church members in full communion was an extension rather than a restriction. Thanks to their faith, men who would not have qualified economically for freemanship in England did in Massachusetts. Moreover, K. Lockridge has argued that this law notwithstanding, every man was allowed to speak in town meeting. He has furthermore estimated that "more than three quarters of all households had a husband or a wife or both among the Saints." In Dedham, he has estimated that about seventy per cent of men were church members in 1648, at a time when the so-called declension was beginning to be felt. These figures tend to confirm that, overall, a greater proportion of the population could vote in Massachusetts than in Old England. [38]

            However, in an article published in 1969, British historian J.H. Plumb drew a quite different picture of the English electorate in the early seventeenth century. He therein described the "freeholders of England" as a "large and constantly growing body of men",[39] especially between 1614 and 1628, the very period preceding the Great Immigration.[40] This growth was said to be caused partly by inflation, [41] since one of the requirements was economic, partly under the influence of the Puritans in and out of Parliament.[42] The movement toward a larger electorate actually started in the 1580s, when the Puritans thought that a more numerous body of voters would facilitate a reform of the Church of England from within.[43] Thus, the voter was already seen as a source of power. Then, at borough level, the appeal to a wider franchise was aimed at defeating "the entrenched corporation oligarchies",[44] which, schematically, can be seen as the struggle between oligarchy and democracy. Overall, wider representation in Parliament would be useful to counter Stuart absolutism. Plumb argued that this growth of the electorate can be discerned at county, borough and city levels and that it was quite significant. Surprisingly enough, he presented Sir Simon D'Ewes as the "vigourous champion of large electorates" in the Long Parliament whereas he was a long-time friend of John Winthrop's, as is reflected by their correspondence.[45] Yet, in spite of his emphasis on the size of the electorate, Plumb strongly denied that England had become a democracy.[46] If he agreed that it was no longer so oligarchic, it was at best a "qualified democracy",[47] unique in Europe at that time. As far as concrete figures are concerned, he estimated that the proportion of potential voters amounted to at least fifteen percent of the adult male population, a lot more than the preceding three per cent estimate.[48] Accordingly, the law of 1630 might not have extended the electorate as much as Morgan claimed, since the English electorate was not as narrow and oligarchic as it was assumed. George Lee Haskins has also claimed that what we may now rightfully call the religious restriction - since even regardless of the figures it was a qualitative restriction - "imposed a drastic limitation on the franchise."[49]

Morgan has also claimed that voters in Massachusetts were "better qualified ... than the mere possessors of a forty-shilling freehold"[50], an argument which must be dismissed as being absolutely inappropriate since the stakes and the interests to be defended by the two groups were very different if not antithetical. Massachusetts was trying to achieve an ideal "city upon a Hill", according to the Scriptures, while their English counterparts defended their own interests, namely their property rights, and that since long before the Magna Carta. Property has always been one of the most, if not the most, cherished value for English people along with the individual's rights and liberties. So who was better qualified to defend property rights than land holders themselves? Voters in both Old and New England were aptly qualified to defend their own interests, or achieve their aim.

Interestingly enough, "Church suffrage" was also considered by Samuel Eliot Morison as "the rock on which the Bible Commonwealth was built."[51] If it was indeed the most conspicuous feature of the constitution of Massachusetts, practically as well as metaphysically, it was only a means to secure an aim. However revolutionary - the New England Puritans, though not the first Christians to restrict church membership, were the first to restrict it to "visible saints" - it was only a conservative feature engrafted on the general principles expressed in the covenants, and especially the Special Commission, which must be considered as the rock upon which Massachusetts was built, more so than "church suffrage" as Morison contended. Morison has also added that "in a sense this sort of franchise was democratic, for it made no account of social standing and estate" and that it "cut through the community vertically, not horizontally", claiming that some poor people were admitted whereas other more affluent, of whom we can say that Robert Child is the most famous example, were left out.[52] Such a claim amounts to seeing society as stratified only in terms of pecuniary possession, seeing the different possible classes only in terms of purchasing power, which is anachronistic since it did not directly apply to that pre-industrial society. If we divide society vertically according to gender, and horizontally by layers of rank and social belonging, we will obtain a table like Figure 1. Now if we refer to figure 1, it is obvious that society in Massachusetts was an horizontally stratified pyramid. The only vertical division was that between men and women. The bottom layer - not necessarily the larger in terms of number by the way - was composed of those who were automatically barred from freemanship - servants and children. The upper layers were composed of the free adult men and women, as opposed to the servile population. Then there was another horizontal distinction between church-goers and church members. Within the group of freemen - the male church members - there was another distinction between rulers and mere electors. Though the groups were technically not hermetic, people widely believed in the existence of a natural aristocracy in which the more affluent were the more godly, and therefore deserved to be elected because they were fitter to rule.[53] Figure 2 is another representation of society in Massachusetts as a series of concentric circles, the most central of which encompassing the magistracy and thus power. Because of the gender bias of the times, power was restricted to half circles. Moreover, differences between the rich and the poor were never as marked as in Old England since Massachusetts' society was economically more homogenous, especially in its earlier days.[54] Almost all the immigrants were from middle-class English society.[55] The "stratifying" factor in Massachusetts was church membership and also the notion of "rank", which was not necessarily linked to wealth, as materialized in the both feudal and Calvinist innate belief in the superiority of some. It came to be linked to possession and then indirectly to relative affluence.

The demand of the settlers to be admitted to freemanship, in October 1630, was the first manifestation of a long series of demands on the part of the freemen for more participation in the rudimentary politics of the Colony over the next few decades. An undeniable struggle opposed the magistrates and the freemen over participation. Whereas the aristocratic elite wanted a free hand and discretionary powers, the freemen pushed to get more control over the affairs of the Commonwealth to prevent an uncontrollable elite to replicate the absolutist rule of the Stuarts, which had been so traumatic to them. They would fight against what they saw as arbitrary rather than discretionary powers.

 

3. The Introduction of Representation - 1632-1634

 

The next manifestation of that struggle took place in 1632, and set a precedent that was to be of tremendous importance. That year saw the first meeting of the General Court composed of the body of visible saints, in addition to the group admitted the year before. Its first demand consisted in having the power to elect two representatives in every settlement in order to take part in the discussions on taxation, a field on which the Colonial Government decided "arbitrarily", which had caused the Watertowners to oppose taxation altogether in 1632.[56] It was the first occurrence in the history of British North America of the issue of taxation and representation. This first try was a success. John Winthrop argued that the decision had been made "so that what they should agree upon should bind all"[57], an argument which summarizes the issue fairly well, and announced what would become the claims of the Revolutionaries one century and a half later. In both cases, the freemen would only consent to taxes approved by their representatives, to prevent all sorts of tyrannical demands, as they had witnessed too often back in England - raising money was one of the main bones of contention between the Crown and Parliament, and the only reason why monarchs felt the need to call a Parliament. This measure gave the freemen, through their representatives, an important voice in an issue crucial to the Englishmen they still were. Furthermore it would be the first occasion for local interests to be represented, since the previous elections had concerned the freemen at large.[58] At the same General Court the freemen also regained the right to elect the governor and the deputy governor -a right they had lost in October 1630 and that the Charter had originally granted them.

These representatives were to become of great importance two years later. Subsequently to a brawl with Assistant Thomas Dudley, who had challenged John Winthrop's authority, or at least, who had asked him where his authority was derived from, the Governor admitted that his authority as governor came from the Charter, and not from the decision made at the General Court of October 1630. Basically, Dudley wanted Winthrop to say "from the King" or "from the people", which amounted to a kind of test on his loyalty to the Crown, or the exposition of some sort of nascent New Englander "nationalism",[59] even though Massachusetts could not be held to be a sovereign country. Winthrop's confession teased the freemen's curiosity, and their "fiscal representatives" asked to have a look at the said Charter. They found that they legally had a direct voice in all legislation and asked the Governor why they had not been informed of that right. His argument was that the body of freemen was now too numerous to legislate effectively, and that representation had been necessary, so that power should be restricted to a few hands. More generally, this is the leading argument against direct democracy as it had been practiced in ancient Greece, with every citizen taking a direct part in the legislative life of the polis. For efficiency's sake, the freemen had accepted to bequeath their direct legislative power in favor of the assistants. Now they wanted to claim it back, mostly because they were worried with the use of discretionary powers by the ruling elite. Since the theory of separation of powers did not exist at the time - it is traditionally associated with Harrington, Locke and Montesquieu - the assistants had not only legislative, but also executive and supreme judicial powers. Good Englishmen as they were, the freemen wanted written laws, a fixed body of legislation that would bind judges to known laws, and in order to achieve that and effectively defend what they believed to be their rights, they needed deputies, or delegates, who would represent their interests. This way, local interests would no longer be represented only in fiscal matters, and deputies would be a safe check against any attempt at arbitrary rule. Even without a separation of powers, the freemen had managed to secure the first checks in the constitutional history of British North America. The freemen finally obtained to be represented by three deputies per "plantation" on the three General Courts of the year when there was no election, and to attend the Court themselves for the yearly election in late spring. In a letter written in September 1633, John Eliot already listed eight "towns", which implied even more plantations.[60] With only eight towns, there would be twenty-four deputies, and the Charter provided for no more than eighteen assistants, but for want of worthy men there were only nine in 1634.[61] In this minimal configuration, the deputies would make up at least seventy-five per cent of the General Court. According to R. Middleton, there were twenty-one towns in 1641 and thirty-three in 1647.[62] Consequently, there would then have been sixty-three deputies in 1641 and ninety-nine six years later, eleven times the number of assistants.

Winthrop's aristocratic view of the state was thus seriously endangered by "popular" demand. But the people wanted more power not for its own sake or not because their interests were different from those of the magistrates, but because their interpretation of the way to establish the Bible Commonwealth diverged from Winthrop's "benevolent despotism", to use Mr. Morgan's words.[63] Breen has likewise claimed that "the colonists had no use for democracy."[64] Democracy, once again, must not be seen as their political and philosophical ideal, as it was in England for the Levellers during the Civil War.[65] Participation gave the freemen a responsibility to the community. As Puritans, they rejected the idea of universal equality, and as Englishmen who had hardly left the Middle Ages, they believed in the innate superiority of a class of society, a class they wanted to rule over them. In England, these men were landed aristocrats (in the usual English sense this time). The division of society into classes of the lower and higher sort was not questioned[66] and had been adequately rephrased by John Winthrop in his Modell of Christian Charity. He and his fellow magistrates believed they were the natural aristocracy fit to rule over Massachusetts, and it was no arrogance on their part to claim this. A proof is the practice we have already alluded to of "creating aristocrats" in Dedham, which applied to the choice of selectmen, even though Lockridge has noted that it was not to be found in neighboring Watertown. The freemen usually picked the more affluent men and returned them to office time and again, thereby making them a ruling class. But the fundamental point is that these local rulers were elected and not self-perpetuating.[67] Such a practice was normal to the Puritan freemen, since "in the Puritan lexicon, those who had deserved", therefore "those who had, got."[68]

If the freemen had temporarily managed to grasp more power from the hands of the Magistrates, the system of government was still unchanged: democracy as such was still unwanted by the magistrates and by the freemen, even though Cotton and Winthrop feared it was looming. The franchise may still have been limited to church members and the regime may still have been aristocratic in outlook, yet there had undeniably been a democratic move within the body of freemen, even though unrestricted manhood suffrage was still many years away. So long as the franchise, and thereby freemanship were limited to only a portion of the free adult male population - without even contemplating the enfranchisement of women and servants - there would not be a genuine democracy.

 

4. The Negative Voice Controversy - 1634-1636

 

To Cotton and Winthrop, the main mouthpieces of the Puritan doctrine in New England, the new development was absolutely unacceptable. The line between the governors and the governed had to be firmly drawn for the good of the Commonwealth, and it was being blurred by the "democratic" impulses of the freemen. It had been accepted, since St. Augustine, that government was a "necessary evil"[69] because of men's sinfulness, so it had to be kept away from their impure and corrupting influence, and protected in a few safe and pure pairs of hands. As a counter-attack for being newly outnumbered by men who they thought were not worthy enough, the magistrates wanted to have a "negative voice" on all legislation. The freemen were hungry for written legislation, and their newly acquired majority would sooner or later help them to get a written legal codification. The magistrates therefore wanted that no law be passed without their assent. Such a measure would establish a virtual upper house to moderate the law-making urges of the deputies, who had already managed to obtain that only the General Court, as opposed to the Court of Assistants, could admit (and therefore refuse) freemen, which would enable them to keep control of their majority, make laws and choose officers, raise taxes and dispose of lands.[70] It was then impossible for the Magistrates not to try at all costs to protect their influence, lest they be drowned amidst the deputies, and virtually deprived of any power by the very men to whom they had grudged some.

The most immediate arguments in favor of the negative voice were twofold. First, and quite simply, the magistrates, though elected by the freemen, believed they did not represent them but God's will. It was then very convenient to claim that frustrating the will of the magistrates amounted to frustrating the will of God, which the freemen, and actually no sensible soul, would dare to do. The second argument relied upon what Morison has justly called a "rather doubtful interpretation" of the quorum clause of the Charter[71], stipulating that no law could be passed unless at least seven assistants be present, including either the governor or his deputy. Instead of that, Winthrop saw a provision for a veto. This reading reveals the interpretative capability of Winthrop, but try as we may, it is difficult to see anything other than the necessity of a quorum in the said clause. What seems like a desperate argument on Winthrop's part was probably caused by his fear that the General Court - if the magistrates did not secure a veto for themselves - should become a unicameral assembly, which in its turn would, he thought, lead to democracy.[72] It would only seriously endanger his personal conception of the way in which to enforce God's mission and it would bring majority rule, which later came to be labeled as the "tyranny of the majority" by Toqueville and John Stuart Mill. However, it must be recalled that democracy as such was unpopular at the time, and had been so since Aristotle, who saw it only as the least unsatisfactory existing system of government.[73] Indeed, as we have already seen in a comparable quotation by John Cotton, Winthrop thought that "if we should change from a mixt aristocratie to a mere democratie, first we should have no warrant in Scripture for it; there was no such government in Israel ... A democratie is, amongst most civil nations, accounted the meanest and worst of all government."[74] Winthrop could not be clearer in his double argument against democracy, and also confirmed that the system of government of Massachusetts of the time was indeed an aristocracy, "mixed" with democratic elements (since there were regular elections and representatives), and monarchic, for one must not forget that the inhabitants, whether they be under the Special Commission or not, were still subject to the King of England. Similarly, John Winthrop wanted a system "warranted in Scripture" in which the magistrates could freely search the Bible to find the appropriate solution to a particular issue therein - what he called the discretionary powers - whereas he was willing to let the freemen participate in the political life of the Commonwealth in order not to lose the contact with "the governed" who would return them to office, and to give them a responsibility in the Commonwealth.

To Morison, it was a "typically English political compromise, satisfying nobody, expressing no logical system or consistent theory, yet working because it was composed of politically minded Englishmen, ready to compromise their dearest convictions if only government might go on."[75] Actually, both sides should have been satisfied, since the magistrates obtained the upper hand in the General Court, protecting the aristocratic outlook of the government and their way of enforcing the Special Commission, and on the other hand, the freemen, though the veto would prevent them from making their superiority felt, had the magistrates agree to draft a legal codification, even though we shall see it took years before anything was achieved. Lastly, it is doubtful whether they "compromised their dearest convictions" in this settlement, since the supreme aim of both "parties" was indeed the survival and flourishing of the Commonwealth, as a means to make it the Bible Commonwealth which they thought the Scriptures demanded. This implied that the unity of the government must be kept - divisions and factionalism would lead to failure and chaos, and since, as a City upon a Hill, "the eies of all people are uppon us"[76], they could not afford to fail.

This compromise, confirmed by statute law in 1636, had other far-reaching implications. First, because the General Court gathered not only the legislative, but also judicial powers, no judicial decision could be made without the consent of the majority of the magistrates, a consequence that the magistrates believed was natural since they saw themselves as the only men qualified enough to interpret the Bible case by case. The actual, concrete consequences on the legislation would depend on how conservative and harsh the magistrates would be.

Secondly, the negative voice as understood by Winthrop meant that no law - or judicial decision - could be passed without the consent of the majority of the magistrates, even if every single deputy was in favor of it. Seven magistrates could have done without the opposition of several dozens of deputies to pass a law or judge someone. This was why the deputies demanded and obtained, as a guarantee on the part of the magistrates, that no law be passed without the consent of both sides. A virtual bicameral system was being created, since the majority of the two groups was required for a law to be passed. And indeed the General Court worked informally as a bicameral mini-parliament between 1636 and 1644, when the system was made official, making it the first occurrence of bicameralism in the history of New England.

 

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