Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/277

 THE THEORY OF COLONIZATION 261

confirmation of its independence on the ground that " what was their privilege now might be the privilege of their posterity."

If conservative and English Virginia proved so democratic and progressive, we need not be surprised that the New England colonies were revolutionary. Massachusetts founded a kind of theocracy, with the important variant that the clergy, while exerting no small political influence, were absolutely denied the possession of political power. The ecclesiastical leaders remained clergymen of the Church of England, as the two Wesleys did; but it was a new ecclesiastical polity they founded, as did John Wesley. The church was separated from the state; the congre- gational system was established; ministers were elected; the ceremonies were simple, and liturgies were abolished. While the Church of England drifted into the Arminianism natural to easy-going people, the church in New England became sternly Calvinist. The Puritans expelled the Anglicans, as the Angli- cans had expelled the Puritans. Tolerance was still repudiated.

The advance was as great in constitutional law. While the Massachusetts charter, strictly interpreted, granted limited pow- ers, circumstances gave it a wider significance. All the freemen were electors ; possessing absolute power, they elected the gover- nor; and the principle of electing all officers was established. Hereditary dignities were refused. The ballot-box was intro- duced. Arbitrary taxation was made unconstitutional. A written constitution was drafted. Almost unconsciously, a colonizing company was transformed into a representative democracy.

The dynamic was spiritual. Not less than early Virginia far more than later Virginia the Puritans lived under the shadow of the invisible. " Their thoughts," says Bancroft, " were always fixed on posterity," and a solicitude for future generations was manifest in all their legislation. It was a prime motive for fleeing from persecution, since persecution "might lead their posterity to abjure the truth." Like the leader of the migration to Connecticut, they were true to the " cause of advancing civil- ization .... even while it remained a mystery " to them. More than any other living people, they and their successors have acted on the injunction of the real founder of the Plymouth settle-