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 decades, when Plymouth was absorbed into Massachusetts under the charter of 1691, it had only seven thousand inhabitants.

In reality, therefore, the record at Plymouth filled no great page in the history of commonwealths. Like the annals of the poor, it was short and simple. Farming was supplemented by fur trading, fishing, and lumbering, which furnished cargoes for the return voyages. On the lapse of the third year, the system of common tillage which rewarded idleness and penalized industry was given up; and each family was allotted a certain amount of land for cultivation. After chafing three years more under bondage to the London merchants, the old contract was set aside and the colonists bought outright all the claims of the original investors.

Although they thus adopted the idea of individual property in land, the Plymouth settlers maintained a high degree of collective control in the name of the common good. The most minute affairs of private life were subject to the searching scrutiny of the elders; prying, spying, and informing were raised to the height of prime diversions; swift and stern punishment was visited upon all who were guilty of blasphemy, drunkenness, sloth, or irregular conduct. Still the regimen was not without relief. Smoking was permitted; good beer was brewed; "strong waters" were consumed in liberal quantities; and after a while excellent wines were imported from abroad. Within a few years all the Pilgrims had better houses and a more liberal stock of worldly goods than they had been accustomed to in their native land. Beautiful villages rose amid spreading elms and prosperous merchants plumed themselves on lucky voyages. In fact, some of the more fortunate put on airs and set themselves down in the records as "gentlemen," over against the simplemen who had no titles or honors. This was, of course, without prescriptive warrant for few, if any, of them belonged to the gentry in the technical sense, but it gratified an innate passion for "qualitie," and gave