Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 38.djvu/289

Rh three leading principles: (1) Freehold land regulated by the best usage of many centuries. (2) A meeting, the local and social expression of religious life and family culture. (3) A representative democratic gathering, corresponding to the old folk-mote of the Germanic races." We find town regulations affecting all the affairs of daily life, even some of the most minute and personal. Many of them had to be repealed almost as soon as made; yet the fact that others were allowed to stand and were tolerably observed shows in the colonists a great reverence for the wisdom of the majority. The approved method for dividing the land in a town was that each grantee should have a home lot near the "place for Sabbath assembly," and a field for cultivation farther away. There were also tracts for pasturing the cattle in common herds. The holding and transfer of real estate were among the matters closely regulated. Dorchester, in 1634, enacts that "no man within the Plantation shall sell his house or lott to any man without the Plantation, whome they shall dislike off." In Nahant, colonized by Lynn in 1657, the householders are to have lots of equal size, "noe man more than another." The co-occupation of the country with the Indians had its influence on the customs of the colonists, and the trespasses which the latter committed upon their red-skinned brethren reveal some weaknesses of the Puritans' character that their religion did not save them from. Church and civil government were closely interwoven. In Massachusetts and Connecticut the franchise depended on connection with the church; on the other hand, ministers were commonly chosen in open town meeting, and marriages were performed only by magistrates. The trade in beaver-fur and that in cured fish were of much importance. Permission to keep taverns was voted as early as 1630, but inn-keepers must not force meals at 12d. and above on "pore people." The sale of wines and liquors was wholly prohibited in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637, but the very next year licenses began to be granted. Ship-building and commerce had a rapid growth, and the colonial merchants were soon able to build "fair and stately houses." Many industries were early established; the first saw-mill was set up at Piscataqua (Portsmouth, N. H.) in 1631. Gristmills were already in use. Nicholas Easton established a tannery at Ipswich in 1634. Goodman Fitt, a tailor, is empowered by Charlestown "to set up a salt pan, if he can live upon it, and upon his trade." In 1639 John Hull notes in his diary, "We began to print at Cambridge." Iron-works were established at Lynn in 1643, and at Braintree soon after. Among the colonial laws none seem now so quaint and preposterous as those regulating manners and morals. The "blue laws" of Connecticut are proverbial. In that colony no food or lodging could be given to a Quaker, Adamite, or other heretic. Whoever brought cards into the dominion paid a fine of five pounds. No one could read common prayer, keep Christmas or saints' days, make mince pies, dance, play cards, or play on any instrument of music except the drum, trumpet, and jew's-harp. Tobacco must not be taken "publiquely in the street, highwayes, or any barne-yards, or uppon traineing days in any open places." Massachusetts made rules no less meddlesome. Sunday observance and economical dress were strictly enforced. Class distinctions were strong, and often caused much bitterness. They ruled the seating of the people in church; thus Stamford, Conn., in 1673 votes to seat its people according to "dignity, agge, and estate in this present list of estate." At Saco, in 1669, two men were voted into the first seat, and their wives into the third. Tithing-men with long staffs, having a knob at cne end and a fox-tail at the other, rapped or tickled the sleepers in meeting. The above is a sample of the material that fills Mr. Weeden's nine hundred pages. Among the other topics upon which he gives information are means of travel and communication, agriculture, forced service of Indians which was followed by negro slavery, currency of wampum, coin, and paper, privateers and pirates, whaling, the East India trade, the lives of notable men of the time—such as Hull, the Pepperells, Sewall, Amory, the Faneuils, Edwards, Franklin, and Derby—and the effects of England's regulations upon colonial life and commerce. The sources from which Mr. Weeden has drawn his material include the archives and probate records of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, manuscripts and newspapers