CITY DOCUiMENT.
NEW  ENGLAND'S GIFT TO THE NATION            THE TOWNSHIP.
AN O RATION
BY
ARI OLD GREEN,
WITH A
POEM
lIENRY C. WHITAKER,
DELIVERED JULY 5, 1875.
P It 0 V I I) E N C 1':
ANGELLI,  IURI,INGAME &  CO)., I'RINTE'lt.
18 75.
187.5.]
[No. 32.
BY 
THE CITY OF P IlOVIDENCE.
1'ESOL U7IONS OF THE CITY COUNCIL.
APPROVED JULY 6, x875.
RESOLVED, That the city council hereby tender their thanks to Arnold Green, Esq., for
the scholarly and eloquent o(ration delivered by him at the late municipal celebration of the
anniversary of American independence, and also to I/enry C. Whitaker, Esq., for the
I
graceful poem recited by himn on that occasion.
RESOLVED, That the comnmittee of arrangements for said celebration are hereby instructed to request a copy of said oration and of said poem, and to cause the same to be
printed in such manner as they may deem expedient for the use of the city council.
A true copy, Witness,
SAMUEL  W. BROWN, CITY CLEIIK. 
ORATION.
GENTLEFTEN OF THE CITY GOVERNMENT: —
WE have again assembled at your invitation to do
honor to the past.  The saluting gun reminds us of the
struggle by which our fathers realized their wish: the
pealing bell chimes as we trust, an atigury that the
political inheritance which we received from our sires
will be the possession of our sons: and yet it is nieither
the beginning of a war nor its end that is coummemorated by this annual rejoicing. For more than a year
before the Declaration of Independence was made, the
Amei'ican colonists and the English government had
been in avowed hostility; Boston had called to
Charleston, and the rifles of Bunker's Hill had been
answered by the guns of Fort Moultrie, while seven
years more passed by before the treaty signed at Versailles, ratified the declaration made in Philadelphia.
Political development, therefore, and not martial
prowess, is the theme which our gathering naturally
suggests both to the speaker and to the hearer, foi on
this day which the custom of three generations has
i-made a civil festival, we celebrate the publication of a
State paper.
..-y
'X 
CITY DOCUMENT.
The act by which the American c(olonies declared
their independence wa-s done on the second day  of
July, 1776, when the representatives of twelve colonies
resolved, " That these UTnited Colonies are, and of right
ought to be, fiee and independent States; that they
are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown,
and that all political connection between them and the
State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dis.
solved."
Calm in its utterance and concise in its langua,,ge
this resolution like all the great gains in state-craft
which have been secured by our race was a solution
of the problem of the hour in the briefest terms, and
by the safest process. Twice the assembled delegates
of the different American communities had made their
protests and had defended them by the traditions of
the English law before they ventured on the act which
ninety-nine years ago last Friday abrogated their allegiance.
On the 19th of October, 1765, the commissioners of
the several colonies, assembled in New York, asserted 
"that the colonists are entitled to all the inherent
rights and liberties of His Majesty's natural born sub.
jects in the kingdom of Great Britain; and that it is
inseparably essential to the fireedom of a people, and
the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be
imposed on them but with their own consent, given
personally ol by their representatives; that the colo  1.  Pitkin's U.S. Vol. I, p. 181.
4
No. 3 2. 
ORATION.
nists are not, and from their local circumstances cannot
be represented in the House of Commons in Great
Britain."
On the 14th of October, 1774, in the second General
Congress, after the close of the "Seven Years War,"
the delegates assembled at Philadelphia resolved, 1
"that the inhabitants of the English colonies of North
Ameriica, by the immutable laws of nature, the piinciples of the English Constitutioii and the several char
ters or compacts have the following rights
"1. That they are entitled to life, liberty ana property; and they have never ceded, to any foreign power
whatever a right to dispose of either without their
consent.
"4. That the foundation of English liberty, and of
all free governments, -is a right in the people to partici
pate in their legislative council; an,d as the English
colonists are not represented, and from their local and 
other circumstances cannot properly be represented in
the British Parliament, they are entitled to a free and
exclusive power of legislation, in their several provincial legislatures, where their right of representation
can alone he preserved in all cases of taxation and internal policy, subject only to the negative of their
sovereign, in such manner as has been heretofore used
and accustome."
Thus far the colonists rested( their claims on the
secure basis of historical precedent and positive law.
1. Pitkin's U. S. Vol. 1, p. 285.
5 
CITY DOCUMENT.
Twenty months later the convention of Virginia issued
its address, and we distinctly heai- an echo of the doce
trines taught by the author of the "Social contract."
"All men,"  it declares " are by  nature equally free
and have inherent rights; of which, when they enter
into a state of society, they cannot by any compact
deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring
and possessing property and pursuing and obtaining
happiness and safety."
Twenty-two days after the Virginian Assembly had
spoken, the Congress at Philadelphia, on the 4th day
of July, 1776, adopted the Declaration of In(lependence.  It was drafted by Jeffeison to explain and to
justify the act of July 2nd, andl was used by himn to
promulgate specu,ations, both philosophical and political, of the boldest character, and involving coiisequences the most farreaching and the most startling.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men
are created equal; that they are endowed by  their
Creator with certain unalienable rights, that amongo
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
He proclaims the law of Natnie as the actual basis of
positive institutions, and does not shrink from  deducing from it personal privileges, which if well founded
are violated by the repressive agencies of every gov
erinment. Yet all this is intelligible. The cool political genius of the Atng,lo-Norman had already acted,
1.  Jne 12, 1776, Bancroft's U. S. Vol. 8, p. 381.
No. 32.
6 
and its conduct  was to be defended  before other
peoples, who had been trained to other modes of action
and in other schools of thought than those character —
istic of the island Teutons.  from whomn  our fathers
descended.  Into a society which had been instructed
by the political novelties of Montesquieu, stung by
the philosophical sarcasms of Voltaire, and inflamed
by the eloquent romances of Rousseau, which had but
two years before buried the most worthless of kings
in the person of the fifteenth Louis, and was already
throbbing with the premonitory heavings of an almost
volcanic revolution, the message of Jefferson, penetrated with  a po\ver for goo(l and evil which had
rarely before, and has never since, been exercised by a
single man.  The  doctrine of' unalienable rights,"
was received as a new evangel brought by the man of
thought to the man of action. Condorcet, who was
soon to carry the idea of human perfectibility in mat.
ters political far beyond the limits in which historic,l
criticism had confine(d his predecessor Turgot, hailed
the new dogma and its originator in language that
suggests an apostle speaking of his master.  And in
all this there was, except in its happy application and
in the confident statement that a philosophical aspilation was a political facet, little that was novel.  The
idlea of a law of nature as a guide, both for individual
and for national life had been developel by the Stoic
philosophers', hald passe(l fir()on tle sch,)ols of LAtticI
~_.  io.Lts    l.'..18
1.  l)iog. Ltart VI[. 89. 128.
7
OR A I'l ON. 
8                CiTY DOCUME.NT.              No. 32.
to those of Romne, had been in its political relations
viewed with disapproving eyes by the lawyers of the
Pepublic~  and had been heartily embraced byn the
gleat jurists of the Empire.  Yet it always remained
the ideal which was unattained and unattainable, a
speculative standard of perfection by which the institution which existed, and was not good, could  be
contrasted with the dream which was good, and which
existed not.  It is remarkable thlat those legal writers
who have formulated most distinctly the deductions
fiom the law of nature have done so in just the mode
which most clearly presents this opposition of the
actual and the unieal.  Ulpianus2 tells us that manumission arose from the law of nations, for by the law
of nature, since all would be born fiee, manumission
would not have been known, as slavery would have
been unknown.  And again3, so far as the civil law is
concerned slaves are held to be no persons, not how
everi by natural law, for so far as natural law is
concel ned, all men are equal; and Florentinus4 says
slavery is an institution of the law of nations by
which one against the law of nature is subjected to
another's power. What was written by the imperial
jurists became the c(ommon property of mankind, and
we need not be startled at hearing the Chancell(or
L'Hospital5 (leclar-e in the sixteenth century "that just
1. Cicero De Finibuts IV. 9, De Repub. III. 8.
2. L.   4 D. De TJust. et Jur. (1.1.)
3. L. 32. D. De div. Reg. Jur. (50.17.)
4.  L. 4 ~ 1. 1). De s!atu lomn. (1.5.)
5.  II. Baudrillart, Thcories p)olitiques an I me  siecle, p. 49. 
ORATION. 1  0 
as the same su!I which shines in Paris gives out his
light and heat at Rome and Constautinople, so the
divine justice and the natural law are the samuc  among
the savages of America, which they are among the
Christians of Europe."
Once established as a positive institution, the lawv
of nature necessarily implies the existence of the
privileges claimed by the great Virginian.  The iimp(ortance of the doctrine and its celebrity justify our'
following for a few yeltrs the history of Jefferson's
declaration, both on this side of the Atlantic and on
the other.  The  Constitution  of the United States
which was friamed by the Convention of 1787, went
into operation in 1789 without having a Bill of Rights
attached to it, although this omission was protested
against by the remonstrance of several of the States
and by that of Jefferson himself.  At the first session
of the  first Congress  organized  under  it, twelve
amendments were submitted to the state legislatures,
of which ten were in due time approved, and together
contain what would naturally have been placed in a
Bill of Rights.  In Article V. we riead "No person
shall be deprived of life, liberty or pioperty qvitho?,t
due p-)rocess of lctv."  And since then the " unalienable
rights" of man have been quietly forgotten, save when
they  have been  iecalled to our memory  by  some
patriotic orator to adorn a stirring sentence on this,
our national festival.  Indeedi, Samuel Livermnore, of
2
9
"''. "... 
10                  11 TY DOC'UME.N T.            No. 32.
New  Hanmpshire,  puingently  assertedI  that the  ten
amendmtents were "of no more value than a pinch of
snuff, since  they  went to  secure  rights never  in
dangel."
It was not so in France. At the c(utbreak of the
revolution of 1789, Jefferson was our' Minister to the
Frenchl Court.  He believed that the pio;-osals made
by Louis XVI., on the 23')d of Junre were a sufficient
guaranty of liberty, and advised2 their acceptance by
the National Assembly.   He distrusted the capability
of the Fiench either to institute or to conduct a dem.
ocratical Government.  But his advice wvas unheeded,
foi his political pupils had outgrown theiI' instructorI
The  parts were  stl'alg,ely distiib)uted.  The  philo.
sophical  theorist inr Philadelphia  had become  the
plactieal politician in Palris, and the mell wvho met to
remove the abuses of medimval feudalism  became the
preachers of the new doctrine of State, the leg,islators
foir humanity and eteirnity.  The Constituenlt Assemibly
in August,, 1789, declared that3
"The representatives of the French people organized
in its National Assembly, consideleing that ignoiance,
forgetfulness or dislegard of the iights of manl are the
o)ly causes of public misfortunes a(nd of the corruptioI of governments, have detel mined to express in a
solemn declaration, the natural, unalienable and sacred
rig(hts of man, in ol(rder that this declaration, constantly
1. Hildreth's U.S. vol. 41 p. 124.
2. Fr. v. Raumer, Geschichte E'iropas vol. 8 p. 287, 288.
3.  F. Laurent, Droit des Gens vol. 13 p. 35-44.
..  
ORATION.
before all the members of the social body, may ever
remnind them of their rights and their duties.  There.
fore the National Assembly recognizes and declares, in
the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme
Being,, the following rights of the man and of the
citizen:
"Art. 1. Men are born and remain free and equal
in righlts   *     *      *'
"9. The object of all political association is the
perservation of the natural and imprescriptable rights
of man.  These rights are liberty, property, security
and resistance to oppression.
"10. No one should be troubled on account of his
opinions, even religious opinions, unless their utteratce disturbs the public order established by law.
"11. The free communieation of thought and of
opinion is one of the most precious rights of man.
Every citizen can therefore speak, write and print
freely, subl)ject to answer for the abuse of this freedom
in the cases fixed by law."
Such was the preamble of principles affixed to the
Constitution of 1791.  If we wish to learn what it all
meant, what good came of it, and how it resulted, we
have only to comnpare it with the preamble of the
Constitution of 1852.   The irony of history seems
sometimes tiragic.
"Constitution', of the 14th of January, 1852, niade
by  virtue of the p)oweis deleg,ated by the French
1. Tripier, Codes Frangais p. 5. ed. of 1872.
11 
12            cir DOCUMENT.          No.32.
people to Louis Nal,oleon Bonaparte, by the vote of
the 20th and 21st of December, 1851. The President
of the Republic, whereas   *  X   promulgates the
Constitution as follows.
"Art 1. The Constitution recognizes, confirms and
guarantees the great principles proclaimed in 1789,
which are the foundation of the public law of the
French."
It is neither from the law of nature nor from the
doctrine of unalienable rights that our civil liberty
derives its existence and its strength.  From Chrysip
pus to Ulpianius, firom Ulpianus, to L'Hospital, from
L'Hospital to Napoleon, these political theories have
expressed what the honest citizen yearns for and
aspires to, what the crafty demagogue deceives with
and misleads by.  As year after year the celebrated
declaration which made this day famous is read in
our hearing we may well a(lmire the beauty and
the grandeur of its fundamental idea: we may
treasure it in our hearts and blazon it on our festive
flags, but we must remember that it is not found
graven on the mile-stones of our political progress.
It is neither in Magna Charta nor in the petition of
right addressed to Charles the first, nor in the Parliamentary acts which conditioned the accession of
William of Orange, pol- in the Constitution of the
American Republic.  When  the father1, of political
literature tells us that the State is one of those things
1. Aristot. Pol. I. 1.
No. 32.
12
C17Y DOCUME.NT. 
ORATION.
which are by nature, and that man is by his nature
a political animal, he defines nature as that wvhich
characterizes each being in its perfected condition so
that the life of the political animal becomes his civil
growth.  It is in the history of this growth that we
must look beth for the political causes which made
us what we are and for the origin of the institutions
by which we hope to maintain, ell]arge and perpetuate
our civil freedom.
The peculiarity of our system of government is a
delegation to the legislatures of the states and of
the nation of power to regulate w'ithin fixed limits
matters of general interest combined with  a direct
control and mianagement of matters affecting local
administration by the communities immediately interested. This local administration is conducted by
the political  unit which  we  call the township, a
thing which organized in New England, has been
planted in every part of the American territory
where New  England's emigrants or influence have
controle(d the growth of society. This is equivalent
to saying that the twenty-one' thousand Englishmen,
who settled the Northeastern colonies between  the
arrival of the pilgrims in November, 1620, and the
meeting of the long parliament in Novembei, 1640,
have directed the political destinies of all firee
America.  The  source of this political fertility, and
the motive power of this social enelgy are the ele  1.  Palfrey's, N. E. vol.1. p. VIII.
13 
14                CITY DOC UMEA'7'.             No. 32.
mentary  problems of our history.   Tile traditions
of  self-government,  which  belong  to  the  whole
Teutonic race; the strong individuality developed in
the Anglo Norman by the character of his history and
of his domestic polity, and the impulse given to his
self reliant firmness by the events of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, may be assumed as facts
by the student who attempts the solution of these
problems.   I therefore venture to formulate the his.
torical development of New England's polity as the
individuality of the Englishman of the reform:;tion
\ working on the traditions of the old Germanic mark.
When the tribes of the gieat Teutonic family had
so far modified their nomadic habits as to cultivate
the ground in settled communities, we find them all
over Central Europe using much the same  system
both of government and of land tenure. A body of
men equal in rights, forming what we may call a
close corporation, into which strangers could be admitted only l)y the consent of the associates given to
those who married into the body, or grew up in it, or
settled in it by permission, or acquired its rights by
purchase, occupied an extended territory, in which each
member had a certain portion given him for his habitation while the lrest of the land remained the common
property of all. Of this residue apart was set off for
cultivation while the remainder was used for pasture
and woodland. In the cultivated portion lots were
again distributed at varying intervals of time to each
I 
ORA TION.
member of the con()nmuL)ity and weie held by him as
his separate property between seed time and harvest.
After the reaping was over these lots were, until the
next Spiing, part of the common land.  The a'abl)e
land was from time to time changed by bringing into
cultivation new parts of the common and by abandoning the portion previously planted.  This system colI.
stitutes whlat is known as the Mark.  In size, power
local management and duration there are of course
infinite differences. Tile holding of each proprietor in
the common land varied fi'om one year to twenty, and
after the wandering peoples had taken permanent
homes, the yearly partition generally ceased, without
however,' affecting rights in what remained common,
or changing what we may term the political privileges
of the ind(lividual.  In the course of time in most of
the imairks the p)artition became obsolete  and the
arable land was turned into private property. With
this modification the mLuark forms to-day the l)asis of
government and of society in the more primitive cantons of Switzerland, as Uii and Schwytz and Unterwalden', an,i even with the partitionl of the arable
field it survived into the last century in same districts
of Nassau and of the Ithenish Palatinate2.   Each
member of the community had an equal voice in the
election of the magistrates, an equal right to the enjoyment of the coiImmon land and an exclusive right to
1. G. L. v. Maurer ]inleitung, p. 302 sq. vid. Freeman English Constitution, Cap. 1.
2. G. L. v. Maurer Einleitung, 1)p.. 6.7.
15 
CITY DOCUMENT.
his house lot and, aftel pai!titions ceased, to his farm
lot.  He coul(l buy or sell realty at pleasure within
the mark body', but a sale to one not a member of tihe
body required the assent of his associates, or was subject to a pre-emption by  any meeinber2.  Pasturie,
wood, peat, game, fishing, and the use of running
water', were parts of the common possession.  When
convenience required the division of a mark into two
communities the common was sometimes divided and
sometimes was held by the new bodies as a joint prop.
erty; so when marks coalesced to form a single communuity their respective commons were in some cases
held as before the union, and in others were combined
into one larger common.
This system, however adapted to a primitive agriculture, and however fitted to preserve a political
equality and even to foiwaid within certain limits the
gcrowth of individuality, is clearly an instrument of no
little delicacy.  If the division of the common is carried beyond a certain point, or the establishment of
new villages is not accoml)anied by an increase in the
communal area, if the power of a military chief attracts
to his lhamlet or to his personal service a body of followers who are not members of his commune, if purchase or inheritance or conquest aggregates into a few
hands any large number of communal shares, it is ob.
vious that the mark must sooner or later be broken up
1. G. L. v. Maurer Markenverfassung, p. 57.
2,  Ditto Einlciting, p. 157.  Markenverfassung p. 179. 184.
3. DI)itto Malrkcnverl'assLlung p. 1.3. 162.
16
No. 3 2. 
because unfitted for its political work.  When  the
equality which distinguishes the mark is destioyed,
we      find some other arrangement of government adopted. And this destructive process began before the
Gelrmanic  tribes attacked the Roman Etnpire and was
practically completed by their conquests in the Roman
provinces.   The mark broke  up into villages, the
village  was often transformed into the manor where a
landed proprietor owned the soil, held as his own
property the rights of wood, water acnd pasture, and
cultivated the earth by his dependents free or slave,
serfs, villeins, paid laborers, peasants or liti or else for
a fixed price in money or kind leased it to his tenants.
The  a        manor by a process not yet clearly explained, was
in m    any parts of Europe turned into the fief of medioeval  eeu dalism, whose  elaborate  iruin of  privilege,
immunity, technical obligation and legal fiction, legislators, h ave for two hundred years been shovelling oftf
firom their statute books. But if the mark has disappeared  its influence has lno.  It has left institutions
which are still in vigoir, such as the Allmends of the
Alps,      the Forest Courts of the Schwarzwald, the Odal
tenures     of the Scotlch Islands and possibly the custom
of    Gavel  kind, which  the Jutes  may lhave broight
into      Kent fiom their Danish home.  Its traditions too
everywhere  speak of its foimer existence, "Toft and
Croft," "  boc" land and "fole" land, were puzzling
enigmas,       but ale skeleton fragments which  the anatomist of        histoi'y has fitted into thleir proi)er articula
3,
17
ORA TION. 
-~                CITY  DOCUME-'T.                No. 82.
tions.  Let us compare portions of this ancient syste(m with  that in vogue when New  Eng]and's annals
be,an.
The  Alayflower compact,  made in the harbor of
Piovincetown, Novemnber  11th,  16'20, was an agree.
nment by  which the Pilgrimis bound  themselves to
fianme and to obey such rules as should  be thought
meet for the general good of the colony. When they
landed at Plymouth,  toward  the end of the next
month, their working strength  was reduced by exposure and sickness, and their action was  hampered
bv their debt to the English Company which furnished
their tr'anspolrtation.  Tlheir I-)ropeity had  been put
into a eoinuinon fund to pi'ocui'e the needed outfit, and
foi th'ee yeals they were obliged  to continue their
settlement as a joint stock comupany.   Iimmediately
after thleir anding, a commnon storelhouse was built; the
unmarried men wele distributed among the families,
to reduce the niumber of houses needed, and lald wNas
apportioned to the families by lot, at the rate of a
tract 8 1-2 feet front and 49 1-2 feet deep to each person.  To ensure rapid wol'k, evel-y man was to build
his owvn lihouse.1  In l(t;623, this " common coIurse of ]abor" was discontinued, and individual allotments for
p'ivate cultivation made, to continue one year,  In
1624 and ea(ch followintig year, until the ariangement
witli thie I(n(ldon Cor-np,any  was tel'minated( in 16'27,
1.  Bradford & Winslow in Young's Chronicles of Pilgrims, p. 171,173.
2.  \WiislowN in Ijitto, p.  47. 
ORA'ION.                       19
this  lan wvas followved, one acre being allotte(I to each
househol(der. In (1)27, the colonists b)eing firee to act
as they please, we find them agreeing in full Court, on
January'd:1
"That the first division of the acres should stand
and continue firm  according  to the former division
made, unto the possessors thereof and to their heirs
forever, free liberty being reserved for all to get fire.
wood thereon, but the timber trees being reserved for
the owners of the grourd.
"That the second division should consist of twenty
acres to every person, and to  X   X   X   be divided
bee lot to every one which was to have share therein.
"The ground to be ju(dged sufficient before the lots
were dirawn, and the rest to be lcft to comm)non use.
"This being (lone, that for our better subsistence
and convenience, those ground(s whichl are nearest the
town in whose lot soever thly fall, shall be used by
the whole for the space of four yeals.
"That fowlingc, fishing and hltunting be fiee."
The colony not only made allotments of the atable,
reserving the glazing and meadow  lands as common,
but they reserved a control over the allotted portions,
to wlhich it is difficult to give a legal name.  On the
28th of October, 1633, we finud themn enacting2:
"Thlit wvheieas formelily  a small  moiety of land
was allotted to each family              *        *
1. Plymouth Records ed. Shurtleff XI. p. 4.
2. Ditto l. p. 17, X[. p. 14. 
20                CITY DOCUMENT.                No. 32.
viz.: to each person an acre, and now the said acres lie
void, the ancient inhabitants being for the most part
removed from thence, and now the property of per.
sons in them hinders others from coming into the town
by which means the said town is likely to be dispeopled, it was therefore agreed upon by mutual consent
of all, (two persons excepted) that all and every such
person and persons should surrender and cast up their
right in said acres, that they may be disposed of to
such as do or shall inhabit the said town of Plymouth
as also other the waste ground about our said town,"
and this provision is also found in the code, if it may
be so called, of November 15th, 1636, there extended
in its application to all lands whose owners had
moved away1.
September 3d, 1639 it was "ordered2   *'
in regard that many do want lands which were he,re
when the division of land and goods was made about
twelve years since, they shall have liberty to go and
seek out a convenient. place or two, or three, for their
accommodation, that upon  report thereof unto the
Court, the said land may be confirmed unto them."
June 17th, 16413, ordered "that the several portions
of land allotted shall be presently layed forth by the
committee."
October 4th, 1(;444, we read that in a suit charging
appropriations without allotment, it was ordered that
1. Plymouth Records ed. ShnrtleffXI. p. 18.
2. Ditto T. p. 131.
3. Ditto II. p. 21.
4. Ditto IV. p. 75, 
O R A TION.
the fence be thrown up and "the highway and common lands be not unjustly impropriated."
The colonists controlled the admission of new
members to their community, by requiring the presen
tation of their names, and their admission took place
"by publick consent of the freemen of the society of
New Plymouth."  The power of expulsion seems also
to have been exercised, as we find, March 7, 1636,
against the name of John Combe, the entryv: "disfrian
chised for being drunk1"'.
The charter of the "Governor and Company of the
Massachusetts Bay in New England," dated March 4,
1629, gave to its twenty-six incorporated patentees
the power to admit new associates on such conditions
as they chose, and to constitute and elect such officers
as they pleased. In May,-the managers of the Company resolved2 that two hundred acres of land should
be allotted for each ~50 adventure in the common
stock. If the allotment was not made within ten
days after it was demanded, the claimant could locate
one half of the land due him in any convenient and
unoccupied  place.   Those  persons  who  paid  the
expenses of their emigration were to receive fifty acies.
Those who sent over indented servants were to have
fifty acres for each seirvant.  If a town was located,
building tmust be done in the town.  In the summer
of the same vear settlements were made at Salem and
1.  Plymouth Records ed. Shurtleff I. p.52.
2. Young's Chronicles of MAass. p. 197-200. Mass. Records, ed. Shurtlefi, I. p. 43, 363.
2 1 
22               CITY DOCU3IE.Il.                No. 32.
Chailestown, antd in the recoilds of the latter place we
read': "It is jointly agreed( and concluded that eachl
inhabitant have a two-acre lot to plant upon, and all
to lence in common, which was accordirgly by Mr.
Graves, measured out to them."  And in 1630 the inhabitants of the same settlement " agreed and concluded2" that "the great cornfield shall be on the east
side of the town hill," and that "to every inhabitant
dwelling within the Neck, be given two acres of land
foi a house plot and two acres for every male that is
able to pl)ant."  In 1630, the government of the Company, under the direction of Winthtlroj), was removed
to New Erigland.  Its officers, a Governor, Deputy
Governor and eighteen assistants, had been elected )by
the whole body of freemeii, but an attempt was now
made to confine the election by the whole company to
the assistants.  This plan was given up the following
year and the freemen resumed their former powers,
except that the Governor and Deputy Governor were
to be chosen from among the assistants.  It is needless
to say that the colonists exercised the fullest power of
adinitting desirable, and of expelling disagreeable
associates.  In May, 1631, the memorable order was
made3 "that no man shall be admitted to the fireedom
of this body politick but such as are members of
some of the churches within the limits of the same"
The expulsion of the twvo  Brownes from  Salemt the
1. Young's Cihron. Mass. p. 376.
2. Ditto p. 384.
3. Mass: Rec. I. p. 87. 
ORA TION.                      23
year before, because they set up a separate worship according to the book of common  prayer, and the reshipment to Eing]ai,d of six persons  because they
were  "unmeet to inhabit" in  Massachusetts, were
suggestive of the ecclesiastical and civil policy of the
settlements.  In 1634, we find the admission of fieemen
lesting' with the General Court, as the colonial assemblies were termed.  In 1635, the fieemen of certain
towns who were detained for defence were allowed to
send their proxies to the General Court, and in the
next year this provision was made genera], while ten
men from each of the nearer towns were ordered to
attend fully armed.  No pul'chase of lands could be
nlade of an Indian without the consent of the colony.
If land granted to a mlan in any large quantity was
not impiroved  within three years, the General Court
was to dispose of it at pleasure. In 1637 a committee
was chosen to distliibute land to men that "want it
and have deserved it," and a few months afterwards
one was appointed to consider demands for allotment
and to report on the disposition of claims and on the
ability of claimants to cultivate, its nmembeis being
directed to remember that though the first planters
received fifty acres for each person, yet this benefit
was not to be allowed to all others.
In Boston, on the llth2 of December, 1634, "the inhabitants met to choose seven men who should divide
1. Mass. Rec. I. p, 117.
2.  Wiiithrop's N. E. vol. 1. p. 151. 
CITY DOUUME-NT.
the town lands among them."  It seems that Governor
Winthrop and others had urged the reservation of a
large area as comlmton land, while the poorer people
wished as tmuch as possible distributed into individual
possession.  After not a little trouble the Governor
carried his point and a part of the reservation then
made still remains as the distribution left it, the" cornm
mon" of the inhabitants.
In Connecticut, fireemen were admitted if approved
by the major part of the settlement receiving them,
and were disfialchised if fined or whllipped for any
scandalous offence1.  No lands could be purchased of
Indians, nor sold to themn, and no sales whatever,
either of "house accolmmodation," or of lands, could
be ma(le unless the property was first offered to the
town where it was situated, and the town Iefused( to
purchase2.
On the 14th of Fcbrualy, 1643, the following order
of the general court was made.  It was subsequently
incorporated into the body  of laws of May, 16503.
"\\hereas, the condition of these several plantations
in these be inllnings wherein we are is such that nleces.
sity colstrains to improve much of the grounds  )elonging to the several towns in a common way, and it
is observed that the public and general good which
ought  to  be attended in  all such  improvements
receives mluch pli'judice through want of a p'udent
1.  Trumbull's Conn. Ilcc. vol. I. p. 96, 351, 13w.
2. Ditto p. 351.
3. )itto p. 100, 517.
24 —
No. 32. 
ORA TION..
ordering and disposing of those several common lands
to such ways of improvement as are most proper to
them, and may be t advance the public good: It is,
therefore, ordered that each town shall before the
sitting of the next court, choose from among them.
selves seven able and discreet men, who by this order
have power given them, and are required to take the
common lands belonging to each of the several towns
respectively, into serious and sad consideration, and,
aftei a thorough digesting of their own thoughts, set
down under their hands in what way the said lands
may in their judgment be best improved for the common good."
When Roger Williams came to the plantations of
Providence, one of his first acts was to convey the
lands he had obtained from the native chieftains to
his "loving friends and neighbors," twelve in number,
"and such others as the major part of us shall admit
into the same fellowship of vote with us'."  Among
the earliest "orders" made by the infant community
were those2 imposing a penaltyr for omission to improve their allotments, requiring future comers to pay
a certain sum "upon the grant of a like portion of
ground,"  and prohibiting  the sale of "field or lot
granted in our liberties to any person but to an inhab.
itant, without consent of the town." The lands were
divided' by giving to each settler a house-lot for his
1.  Staples' Annals of Providence, p.33.
2. Ditto p. 23.
3. Ditto I,. 35, 36.
4
25 
CITY DOCUMENT.
dwelling on the east side  of "the town  street," and
]yiing between the highways now  called Main street
and Hope street, and in addition to this a tract of six
acres for cultivation, either on the Seekonk river or on
the Woonasquatucket. The rest of the land was reserved as common, fori we find in the agr eement of
July 27, 164(), an arirangenment of' paiting those par.
ticular proprieties, which  some  of oul  fi'iends and
neighbors have in Pawtuxet fi'omr the general commoi
of our town of Providencet."
Two months after the al'ticles of union "weie signed
by which the settlers of Poltstm()outh bound themiselves together, a series of allotments appeals onl the
public records, and an order that "the neck of land
by  Mi'. Esson's house  shall be sufficiently fenced in
with five rails * * * * * * for to lie as a common
field belonging to the town."  Four weeks later-, on
the 23d of August, 1635, other allotments wele tmade
subject to forfeiture if they were not built on b)efoie
the next spiinig.  And on the 2gd of DI)ecel)mbei, 1644y
it was " further ordered )y a imutuli  consent that no
more lands shlall be laid out within the hounds of the
commons  ~     and all the common  about the
town  undisposed of at this day, so to remain to the
town forever.~"
In the Ne\vporit settletii'lts each house lot contained(
four acres, aud at year was allowed for the erection of
1.  Staples' Ainnals of Provideice, p, 40.
2.  R. I. Col Itcc. ed. Bartlett, vol. I, p. 54, 59, 83.
(5
i o - 9 9', 
ORA TION.
a hlouse, afte' whicht tinie unilprovedl land was subject to forfeiture 1.
So ia the settlement of Washington county articles
of a:greement, dated March 2, 1660-61, provide 2
1.  That we wAllose names are above written  do
give, grant, ratify and  confirm the same  privileges
with ourselves unto all those whose names are underwritten according t,, their proportion of land in the
aforesaid purchase.
" S.  That if any of tus transact anything about the
afo)resaid land without the consent of the whole or the
major part, it shall be disowned and of none effect.
" 10. Whosoever that we shall agree with that
shall have a proportion of the land aforesaid, shall
have the sanie pi'ivileges as ourselves; provided, that
according to his propoltio(n, he set his hand to these
or the like articles."
Subsequently it was ordered "that those which do
now go to Misquamacock (the neck of land in Westerly on the East side of the Pawcatuck river) or the
major part of them, shall have full power and authority to niake choice of a place for a township, and also
to survey and lay out the town lots according to pro.
portion and theii discretion, by lot, * *  * and that
those which do nown go and stay to build, and keep
possession of the land, shall have choice of their town
lots."
I. R. 1. Col. Rec. ed. Bartlett, vol. 1. p). 89,103.
2. Potter's Narragansett, p. 250-252.
27 
28             CITY DOCUMENT.           No.32.
And afterwards, on the 1t5th of September, 1661,
"itwas agreed that the town should begin on the
north side of the brook by the great neck, and so
extend up along the river on the east side of the
highway, the neck and        being left for common."
These common lands were for a long time left un  appropriated; since in the lay out of a highway,
made probably in 1703, a road is described as running
" to the westward of the land now in the possession
of  Christopher  Allen  in  the  undivided  lands'."
Indeed most of the "vacant lands in the Narragansett
country" were laid out and sold by the General As  sembly of the colony pursuant to the report of a
committee made October 27, 17082.
It is unnecessary to carry this examination any ful  ther. Wherever in New England a successful colony
has been planted, the same general arrangement is
found. The settlers divided their land into arable
and common, retaining absolute control over the latter
and abandoning the former to individual ownership
on proper assurance of cultivation and residence.
The fi'eemen formed a close corporation and adminis  tered their local matters at pleasure, until after a
variable length of time they imposed on themselves
the restrictions of a union with other bodies. To the
limitations of their charters they paid no attention,
and these instruments were chiefly valuable as the
and these instruments weie chiefly valuable as the
1. Potter's Narragansett, p. 224.
2. Ditto p. 213 sq.
28
CITY DOCUMXENT.
No. 32. 
ORATION.
basis of claims upon the territory of their neighbors,
or as defensive titles against the royal governors. The
effect of this was to constitute a vast number of small
farms, each the absolute property of its holder, who
by virtue of his ownership was a member of the political body. The proprietary governments of the
Northeast were weak and their settlements sickly; indeed the historian of New Hampshire states as a principal cause of the failure of the early colonies on the
lower Piscataqua that Mason and Gorges granted
leases on quit rent instead of giving fieeholds1; and
when the English judges decided against the claim of
Massachusetts to the New Hampshire and Maine set.
tlements, and the King was in treaty with Gorges for
the purchase of his rights, the Governor and company
of Massachusetts Bay quietly anticipated their royal
competitor and bought the "lordship paramount" of
Maine, quite as much, it would seem, to be rid of ani
annoying anomaly in their vicinity, as to conclude
their dispute with the Crown.
The analogies between the earliest governments of
the New England communities and the ancient system
I have described are too many and too patent to be
the result of mere chance. Still the colonists could
not have consciously imitated it. They were not familiar with the details of its scheme, for its history
was not written till our own day. Yet its ideas were
wholly theirs, though the origin of these ideas wvas to
1. Belknap's N.H. vol. I p. 31.
29 
C'I'Y DOCUMIENT.
them lost in an unstudied anti(quity for no gleat fruitful plan of social admninistration when  once adopted
ever becomes entirely obsolete. The spirit outlives
the form and survives so long as it finds sympathy to
sustain it.   They  wrought  these ideas  into  their
young societies and used them in colonial organization as naturally and as unconsciously as they used
their language to write their books in. They adopted
them as the easiest means to secure a wished for
result, and what that result was William Hilton tells
us in his letter firom New Plymouth, of November,
16911, "We are all freeholders, the lent day doth not
trouble us, anc all those good blessings we  have of
which and what we list, in their seasons for taking."
Contrasted with the "mark"  character of the New
England  villages, the settlements of the South  very
early ili their history show the characteristics of the
manor.   Although the first land  laws of Virginia
offered to each settler a premium  of one hundred
acres, afterwards reduced to fifty, the number of free
proprietors was never great. Indentured apprentices
were there much the same as conditional slaves, and
the labor of the white man and the black, the former
under indenture and the latter in slavery, was a reg.
ular article of traffic. The population was sparse,
and the area under cultivation large. The great farm
or plantation was tilled by  compulsory  work, the
smaller holdings were neatrly all of them subject to
1  Young's Chron. Pilg,ims, p. 250.
30
No, i32. 
ORA Tio Ny.
rent due to the proprietor, the company or the king,
and the resulting social inequality soon  became vely
apparent. The inevitable agitation of the poorer
people usually ended by strengthening the rihe,r, and
the liberties secured by the colony benefited the ruling
classes, instead of permeating the whole political body.
The soil was fertile, the crops were abundant, and
very profitable, and the culture of tobl)acco secured a
large and certain income, which by rendering the colonial enterprise a most lucrative adventure fixed the
institution development of the colonists, and thus
secured their commnercial fortune and became their
political curse.  In vain did the settlers of Maryland,
of Virginia and of the Carolinas "abhor the payment
of their quit rents."  The interests of the inmmigrant,
and with him of the coimmunuity, were sacrifice(l to
the revenue of the owner. Said Jaines Blair, in 1691,
pleading for a larger endowment for his coliege of
William and Mary, "Consider, Sir, that the people of
Virginia have souls to save," and the attorney General
of England to whom the sum already granted seemed
amnple, gave him the cuit, almost prophetic reply,
"Damn your souls-make tobaccoS."
In the Southern colonies the equality of the maik
found no place, and the township, as we understand
it, never existed.  The county, ol district, or pairish,
was controlled by a few wealthy landhol(ders, and it
these be removed, we may look in vain for the agen,  _... ~~~_
1. Franklin's Works, by Sparks, vol. 10, p. 111.
31 
CITY DOCUMENT.
cies of self-government.  The traditions of the ancient commune were gone; its fundamental ideas were
wholly forgotten, and when at the close of the great
struggle which ended ten years ago, the controlling
proprietors lost their ownership in slaves and their
leadership in politics, the whole organization of
society was  destroyed.  The contest in arms  that
began in 1861, and ended in 1865, was the final
struggle between the township system, which represented the free spirit of the mark, and the degenelrate
feudalism M hich was evolved from the southern
manor.
The limits of my time and of your patience prevent
an investigation of the early settlements of the
Middle States. Suffice it to say that the manorial
grants of Pennsylvania, and the patroon tenures of
New York disappeared, after being the cause of much
trouble, and were succeeded by the communal scheme,
already known in New England. It is not, however,
a fruitless task to trace the origin of our freedom back
to its German home, and to follow the course of our
liberties through mark, commune, village, shire and
town', from the fourth century to the nineteenth, if it
leads us now to offer the men of the South our coun
sel and aid, and to cease our wonderings that the system introduced here after thirteen hundred years of
1. I say this notwithstanding the sweeping assertion of Gneist Engl-isches YVerwal
tungsrecht, vol. 1,p. 61 ed. of 1867. His statement seems irreconcilable with
the conclusions of Nassein his "Agricultural Communities and enclosures in
England,"
32
No. 32. 
ORATION.
growth, and established here by two hundred years of
experience, has not been perfected by them within the
limits of a single decade.
The peculiarities of the men who used this ancient
plan for their settlements, are not less striking than
are those of the arrangement they adopted. The
English character is singularly composite, combining
the tough individuality of the Saxon and the Angle
with the elastic energy of tile Dane and the Northman.
Successive invasions and repeated immigration have
incorporated into its German substance the wild
daring with which Regner Lodbrok captured] and
sacked Carlovingian Paris, and the instinct of reckless
adventure, which led Harold Hardrada into the Varangian guard at Constantinople, and which, after he
had written the story of his victories on the marible
lion of the Piraeus that now flanks the gate of the Ve.
netian arsenal, hurried him back to the North to dis.
pute the sovereignty of Britain with the son of Earl
Godwin. The yearning wish for change, the fierice
desire for blood, the tireless power of endurance, the
contemptuous disregard of danger, the selfishness
which characterizes the individual, and the discipline
which attends combination, are united in it as the
result of an unceasing warfare which commenced
before history began and ended with the strife of the
roses.
To the wars of the Roses succeeded the era of the
Reformation. English individuality was tempered to
5~
33 
CITY DOCU1MENT.
a greater hardniess and was welded to a new foice.  If
the doctrine, half Roman law and half gospel exegesis,
which Calvin received from Augustine and perfected
until the beauty of its logical directness is only surpassed by the awfulness of its necessary conclusion,
weighed with crushing power on the soul, it also by
its very pressure intensified the whole conduct of the
believer. The rebound of his action was stronger as
the compression of his thought had been greater.
Hlis  work  was  vigorous,  for  his  conviction  was
thorough. As he, the accepted individual, saw the
material and moral worlds swing around himself as
their centre; as for his labor the daylight dawned foi-r;
his rest the evening fell; as for his warning hell was
created and for his comfort heaven was made, so all
the powers of politics were ordered for him  only.
For his protection was government firamed, for his
convenience  was administration  organized.  If his
conscience wvas rufflecd, revolution was justified, and
rebellion was a duty if his will was crossed. Had he
not subjected his will to the guidance of his conscience, and was not the command of his conscience
the audible voice of God?
The Englishman of the Refolimation, with his splen
didly developed individuality, cool, resolute, daring and
patient, presents the strongest and toughest character
to be found in Europe during the seventeenth century
The New  England settlers were picked men, chosen
l)y their naturial antag,onism, independence and faith,
34
No. 32. 
ORA TION.
from among the toughest and the strongest of the
English type.  Fortunate it is for us that their character, their training and their impulse were not less
manly, since they attempted a task which, before their
time, and in more favorable circumstances, the sturdy
crusaders failed to accomplish, which, after them, and
with better auspices, the Darien colonists were forced
to abandon. Their task was to found an enduring
colony, and they laid the foundations of a State on
the granite and ice of the New England sea coast.
Nor did this individuality lose any of its vigor in
the new world.   The settlers professed to be a part of
the English empire; they acted as independent sovereigns. They used the old familiar words, and talked
of king and allegiance and fees, simple and base and
tail but in their early governments and systems of
land tenure, not a vestige of the feudal relation is apparent. They said they were subjects of the English
crown, and they cut the red cross of Saint George
out of the English standard, coined their own money,
stripped the royal firigate which supported Andros at
Boston, and arrested the governor himself.  They
tried to control the conduct of private life, forgetting
that the celebrated Chancellor of Henry the Sixth'
had counted among the benefits of the government of
England, that his countrymen drank no water unless
through zeal of penitence or devotion, they abstained
for a season firom other drinks, restricted the sale of
1. Fortescue De laudibus legum Anglie XXXyI;
35 
C1ITY DOCUMENT.
strong waters, forbade any one to drink more than a
half a pint of wine at one time, or to continue tip pling more than half all hour, prohibited the use of
tobacco, and made it penal offence to court the servant
girl of a neighbor without his.permission.  Of course
they failed; the individuality of the man overpowered
that of the government. They regulated religion and
Williams left Salem for Providence, and the Antinomians  went  fiom Massachusetts  to Portsmouth.
They added to the regulation the sanction of death
and  only roused  the nobler  personality and  the
grander volition of the Quaker.  Hardly had  the
settlement at Portsmouth obtained the size of a respectable hamlet before its inhabitants found con.
tinned union impracticable, and a portion of them
went to Newport at the other end oP Aquidneck.
The founder of Warwick denied the validity of any
of the governments around him and attempted to
organize an anarchy. New Haven rejected the institution of the jury because it was not found in the
law of Moses; and Providence by the greatest legal
invention of modern times, elimiinated religion fromr
politics. More than three yeaIrs elapsed after the par.
liamentary charter was signed before the Narragansett
colonies consented to unite under it, and even then
Coddington set up a government of his own.  When
the charter was adopted, we find the General Assembly exercising in its name all kinds of strange powers
-jurisdiction in law, jurisdiction in chancerv, juiis
36
No. 32. 
ORATION.
diction in admiralty-not that its members were  empowered or fitted for this work, but because they
could be kept under the strict and constant supervision  of  their  electors.   Domestic  turmoil  was
matched by  inter. colonial turbulence.   There was
Connecticut contending with Rhode Island, Rhode
Island disputing with Plymouth, New Haven warring
with New Amsterdam, and Massachusetts Bay quarrelling  with everybody.   There  were  witches  in
Salem; there were pirates at Newport; Gorton was at
Warwick; and before long perhaps the most ominous
danger of all there was paper money everywhere.
The condition of the colonies might  well seem
hopeless to the theorist of statecraft, did he not remember the apparent paradox of a brilliant jurist,
that only from such an aggregate of all sorts of character and all kinds of men can a system of abstract
law ever developed, and the outcome justifies the
thought, for a distinguished counsellor of the last
generation did not hesitate to assert that all the de
fects of the English law considered in the celebrated
speech on legal reform which was made by Bioughai
in 1828, had been discovered by the American colonists and removed from their statute books before
they sep)arated from  the parent government2.   The
colonial disordei was the despair of the politician.
Vane  wrote to the Rhode Island coloiy in 1654:
1. Lenz quoted in H. Ahrens' Juristische Encyclopadie, p. 156 note.
2.  Mr. J. Prescott Hall.  See note onspage 77 of John Wingate Thornton's "Historical
relations of New England to the English Commonwealth," Boston, 1874.
37 
CITY DOCUMENT.
"How is it that there are such divisions amongst you?
The noise echoes into the ears of all, as well friends
as  enemies, by  every return of ships from those
parts.    *     *     *    Are  there  no wise  men
amongst   you-no   public,  self-denying  spiritsthat  at least upon  the grounds  of public safety,
equity and prudence, can find out some way or
means of union and reconciliation for you among
yourselves, before you become a prey to common
enemies? "   And  yet to the student of Teutonic
history, New England was a garden blooming  with
the bri-ightest promise; for in this striking individuality there was no evidence of collective weakness.
The action of each political atom striving to accomplish its own destiny, and the clash of individual
with individual, when all are unconsciously influenced
by a common impulse, characterize the normal condition of our politics. The progress of society is the
result of numberless efforts of many persons, each
working alone, just as each grain of sand moves independent  of   evelry  other,  when  obeying  the
communicated vibration, the mass forms itself into
those regular figures upon the resonant drumhead
just as by the separate movement of each metallic
particle those exquisite curves are built up beneath
the nmagnet's pole.
The discipline by which the colonists were schooled
to union was harsh  and long.   King  Philip's war
1. R. I. Col. Rec. vol. 1, p. 285
38
No. 32. 
-~~~~OAiN                  8 9
lasted but little more than a  ear, and was begun
without the consent of the Rhode Island settlers. At
its close in August, 1676, one-half of your town  was
in ashes, and between Providence and Stonington,
only a single house was left standing, and every cultivated field had been ravaged.  For the first time the
men of Narragansett Bay were compelled to act in
unison with the New England confederacy.  Then
came the century of battles. With the accession of
William the Third, colonial prosperity seemed certain,
but the war which Louis the Fourteenth began by
laying waste the Palatinate, involved the colonies and
lasted till the peace of Ryswick, in 1697.  Then  fol
lowed the war of the Spanish succession, fromn 1701
till the treaty of Utrecht in 1713. In 1739 another
war began, which lasted through the European struggle for the Austrian succession, and the first and second
Silesian wars of the Great Frederick, until the peace
of Aix la Chapelle in 1748. It was during this war
that Pepperell captured Louisburg. In 1754, the disputes regarding the French and English boundaries,
caused yet another war, which, after becoming memorable to us by Washington's skirmish at Great Meadows and Braddock's advance at Fort DuQuesne, ended
with the peace of Paris in 176;4.  In 1775, our Revolution opened: so that between 1688 and 1782 forty.
six years were spent in war and forty- eight in what
was called peace, often madle bloody by Indian attacks.
1. Arnold's R. I., vol. 1, p. 415. 409.
O-RA TIO N.
39 
CITY DOCUMENVT.
To the combining influence of military brotherhood
was added a common subjection to arbitrarylaws. At
different periods of their history, at least eight of the
thirteen colonies were compelled to submit to that
writ of quo warranto which was employed so effect.
ively against their governments. Sir Ednmund Andros
reduced New  England to the union of dependence,
and was only prevented by the fall of his master,
King James the Second, firom continuing his work in
the Southern colonies.  With the quo tarranto came
other formns of legal process, quite as efficient in their
operation, an(l even more irritating.  Writs of intrusion by which, at the King('s suit, the freeholder was
compelled to exhibit the title he held under, and if a
flaw could be found in it to surrender his land to the
crown or to beconme a rent paying tenant: writs of assistance, by which the revenue officials were empowered at any time and in any place to search for smug.
gled goods, and to compel any person to assist them,
and the complicated machinery for executing those
laws of which you have heard so much —navigation
acts, tax acts, stamp acts and port bills. These influences produced their natural result, and when the
musketry of Lexington gave the signal, the colonies
all down the Atlantic coast were ready to act to,gether.
Fourteen years later, the first Congress assembled under oul Constitution, and then the disciplined individuality of the New England yeoman had filamed the
representative democracy of America.
No. 32.
40
I
-F 
Yet how  easily the whole  courtse of this history
might have been varied by a change in any one of
those events whose results are manifest after the lapse
of centuries, when the generations that saw them have
been succeeded by others, and these toot have gone.
So the young Arletta, bathing her white feet in the
brook which flows beneath the rock fortress of Falaise,
won the heart of her lord suzerain, Robert, surnamed
the Devil, and gave to England its Norman King and
to us our Norman blood.  Can we construct the history
of England as it would have been had William and
his fellow adventurers whose names were written on
the roll of Battle Abbey not conquered at Senlac?
The English Reformation became a political tool in
the hands of the English King.  Had it matured a
century and a half earlier; had it been directed by
Edward Plantagenet and impelled by Wickliff and
the Lollards, instead of being governed by the selfishness of Henry Tudor and the timidity of Cranmeir,
what would have been the consequences?  Would the
Pilgrims have been driven to Leyden, and would Puritan have fought with Puritan at Dunbar and Wor.
cester 
A single sentence' in the history of New England
tells us how Andros, when royal governor, ordered the
enclosure of the town commons and the grant of them
to his adherents. It seems an unimportant measure of
local administration, but this act introdl,ced into our
1.  Palfrey's N. E., vol. 3. 1). 530.
6'
41
ORA TIO N. 
CITY DOCUMENT.
colonies, that change which a century b)efore hbd been
so piegnant and so mischievous in the land system of
rural England.  If successful, it was to turn the allo dial rights of our freeholders into the tenures  of a
royal manor, and must have effected a revolution in
the domestic polity of the land. What would have
been our fate had the townships been broken up, or
had they given place to the system, partly feudal and
partly manorial, of the Carolinas and of Virginia.
If such speculation upon historical possibility seems
useless; if the infinitude of agencies and the complexity of causes which conspire to produce the
results that we know bewilder us, so that we are able
but in part to explain what has been, an(I unab!e to
foretell what will be at all, it is, neverthelss, impossi.
ble for us to turn away froIn the lessons of the past or
to escape the ceaseless lUnre of
' What will be forever-what was from of old."
You may call these events accidental phenomena,
but there are no accidents in history, as there are no
miracles. They are each of them a link in the endless
chain of cause and effect, in the vast series of prece-'
dence and sequence by which the God of history works
out his will.
Shall I remind you, officers of the chief place in that
settlement, where  the Anglo-Norman  individuality
enjoyed its rankest American growth; where the local
self.government of the old Teutons was reproduced as
as accnrately as  in Plymouth colony, although  the
42
No. 32. 
ORA TION.                     43
destruction of record evidence prevents so nminute a
demonstration; where Williams, and Clarke, and Coddington, and Gorton, and  Harris stamped on their
generation the imprint of their manhood, how the men
of your State did their revolutionary work; how in
1765 the Governor of Rhode Island stood alone in
his refusal to swear obedience to the stamnp act; how,
firstof the thiuteen colonies, Rhode Island asserted
her independence by passing, on the 4th of May,
1 796,  an act repealing an act entitled'an act for the
more effectually securing to His Majesty the allegiance
of his sul)jects in this his colony and  domuinion of
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,' and altering the forms of commissions, of all writs and processes in the courts, and of the oaths prescribed by
law," and what, if the circumstances of the time are
considered, is, I think, one of your proudest boasts;
how you may search your history in vain'  for one
tittle of evidence that a writ of assistance ever issued
from a Rhode Island court? Of military performance
I may not speak. My theme confines me to the civil
growth of what Aristotle calls the political animal.
And it in your annals admonition is found, as well
as encouragement; if, like oulr fathers at the close of
the Revolution, we meet in an hour wl en men's hearts
alre heavy and their business is depressed; whenwe are
strugglilng under a system of impost duties which seems
designed ~o violate every known law of economy and
1. Quincy Mass. Rep. p. 505. 506. 
CITY DOCUMENT.
under anr arrangement of currency which stil;]l stands a
morumenlt of financiall incapacity and a memnorial of
judicial teigivelsation, let us not foiget that no sounder
and stronger protest against the impolicy and iniquity
of legal tendler paper has ever been nm]ade than that
which the representatives of your town laid before the
General Assembly of Rhode Island at its February
session in 1786.1  The financial history of the Ameri can colonies in the eighteenth century is a story of
legislative madness.  Let us treasure the recollection
of those acts which shine brightly through the darkness.
/  And now, gentlemen, standing as we do on the verge
f time, just as the first century of our existence as a
nation is closing, and before the hour of jubilation
which is to usher in the new one has yet arrived, it is
good for us to bring to mind the common brotherhood,
of our nation and of our stock; it is good for us to
recall our obligations to the ideas and to the actions
of the past; it is good for us as citizens of the great
republic, to remember our indebtedness to that free
communal spirit which is as old as the race we belong
to, as vigorous as its blood(l, and as striong as its energy, whose aspect may change from age to age, whose
apostles may be clad in the mail of the soldier, the
gown of the scholari, the robe of the bishop; whose
warning now  thunders from the battery and  now
whispers in the still simall voice of the printed page,
1. Staples Annals p. 297,
44
No. 32. 
ORAT'ION.
which spake through Arnold of Beri-scia, and Jolhn
Huss, through  Gustavus of  Sweeden,  and  Philip
Melancthon, which has often acted where men least
thought of it, and has often conquered where they
heeded l)ot its presence.   Henry, prostrate before
Hildebrand at Canossa; John, kneeling before Pandulf at Dover, are not so much evidences of victory
gained by an infallible Pope over a King, as of triumph won by the unconcious representative of that
spirit over the unwitting, champion of its antagonist.
Ambrose  staying at the door of his parish churchthe imperial lorid by whose command or connivance
the massacres of Salonica had been perpetrated, wielded a greater power than belonged to the merely mi.
ti-ed priest. He was the mouth-piece of the whole
populace of Lombardy and uttered the protest of the
great commune of Milan.
That spirit was nursed in the swamps of the
Weser, in the woods of Bohemia, on the hills of
Thuringia, and on the glaciers of the Alps.  It has
survived domestic dissensions and fiaternal feud, and
to-day inftluences the policy of every civilized govern
ment on eaitth.   Where  geographical position  has
protected a people from foreign conquest, it has di
rected the development of society, administration,
and State:  in Britain, surrounded by the sea; in
Switzerland, walled about by the mountain; in co.
lonial New England, insulated by the ocean on one
side an(l the wilderness on the other.
And that spirit is ours, modified certainly, but
45 
46                CITY DOCUMLENT.               No. 32.
made mole strong, and more subtle by the teaching of
religion and of law.  In the foundation of our human
life, called our morals, which be they social or polit
ical, are the expression in act of the silent consent of
a people confirmed by long habitS; we have built all
that has the elements both of development and per
manence, all that is growing and lasting of the ethics
which Christ preached in Judea. of the legal philos.
ophv which Tribonian's associates collected in their
Di,ests, of the local self government which Hermann
defended in the Teutonuliger Wald,  and  Theodoric
rescued on the plains of Chalons. Our mark has developedl into the township, our townships have been
aggregated into the State, our State has become an
integral part of the nation. If we are willing to perform our duties as men and as citizens, if we are ready
to regard the nation as realizing our highest civic-aspirations) and as the moral embodiment of our loftiest
earthly desires, if we are prepared to labor for it, to
die for it, if need be, and what is yet more difficult,
to live for it, our political future is as certain and as
happy as ouri political past. Confidently may we
await the long procession of events to come. Cheerily
may we adopt the exhortation which two centuries ago
Mr. John Cotton addressed to the General Court of
Massachusetts2: "Be strong saith the Lord * *
Be strong all ye people of the land      *    * 
anid wok] for I am with you saith the Lord of hosts3".
1. Ulpian Frag. I. proem. ~ 4.
2. WinVl;h rop N. E. vol. 1 p.'141.
3. Iaggai II. 4. 
0 
-L 
POEM.
And now the poem,-shall my lips refuse
To-day the offering of a grateful muse?
Humble the gift, and it may be in vain,
The older voice essays the younger strain;
Yet the glad hour will prompt the honest flow
Of verse, the same glad hour breathed long ago;
Not now as then,-when boyhood's burning lyre
Glowed with the kindlings of impassioned fire;
Not now as then,-on Youth's remembered brow,
I see the silver lock hang lightly now;
Not now as then, for many a face and form
Whose smile once cheered, and once the heart could warm,
The wandering eye can only faintly trace
In shadowy outlines in the vacant place.
Blest spirits of the dead! deem not that he
Who still survives, outlives your memory:
Forms of the past, that now with me return
To lay the wreath upon the marble urn,
Sons of immortal sires, whose voices raise
To-day the orisons of joy and praise,Bear with the song, whose measures faithful yet
To names and virtues you cannot forget,
Brings its fresh tribute to the hallowed dead,
And decks again each sleeping hero's bed.
An old, old story, of the times a hundred years ago,
A glorious story of the past, and yet a tale of woe;
7
I
i 
50                     CI17Y DOCUME.NT.                        No. 32.
Undimmed its record lives, nor feels the fading touch of age,
No moth frets out its glowing lines, no mildews stain its page,
'Tis written on the air we breathe, and in each day's fair light,
And in the stars that blaze across the arches of the night,The hills repeat it to the hills, the shores that belt the sea
Tell to the answering waves the tale of ancient memory;
And in a thousand, thousand homes,'tis written on the heart,
And aged lips to childhood's ear the chronicle impart,
The old tradition of the war,-outlasting all decay,
Fresh as the beam that lit the past and shines o'er us to-day.
Ring out ye bells, blaze bonfires blaze, let drum and gun proclaim
The times that tried men's souls,-the deeds immortal in their fame.
Perhaps you little thought last night, when you sat down to tea,
What battles years ago grew out of Hyson and Bohea:
You little thought that China ware of strange device and hue,
And those queer-looking Chinamen dressed out in red and blue,
Were monuments of vanished days-of days when brave men died,
And blood ran down the meadow-brook, and stained the green
hillside,Yet when to-day the shadows broke, and mist-crowned spire and
height
Rolled out their welcome to the dawn's first beam of golden light,
And streaming from a hundred peaks, like meteors on the eye,
Old Glory's stars and stripes flashed out across the morning sky,Like wild-fire leaped the startled blood, through every slumbering
vein,
And the spirit of the ancient fight warmed up each heart again.
Oh! say not that the olden fire is dead, its glorious flame
Still warms the ashes of the past, still burns in us the same:
Oh! say not that the sons of those whose blood like rain was shed,
Forget where Freedom led the van, where Freedom's martyrs bled;
Why then the drum-beat in the street that echoes far and near,
I 
POLM.
And why these shouts of joy that fall like music on the ear,
And why the tramp of armed men that stirs the peaceful air,
And why these congregated walls within the house of prayer.
Deem not because your neighbor,-who in careful trust may hold
More greenbacks than his father's share of Continental go ld,
No longer wears the warlike port that graced his stalwart sire,
Nor boasts of stratagems and spoils and ambuscadoes dire,Deem not because.he cultivates the gentler arts of peace,
And cares not for the Pope of Rome, if only trade increase,
That he forgets the crimson field, the stained and dripping sod,
And the men that flung their banners out for Freedom and for God.
What though the honest citizen may run a cotton millThe pulses of the patriot's heart will beat within him still:What though he deal in merchandise, and sundries that combine
Those staple goods that fall within a general grocer's line,Let but the martial trumpet sound, his breast swells full and high,
And Yorktown heights and Monmouth's plains come back before
his eye;
Fired at the sight he grasps his cane as'twere Damascus steel,
And fancies that he hears again the Hessian's iron heel,
Barrels and bags, and chests of tea, are changed to mustering hosts,
He sees the candle boxes dodge like red coats round the posts,
Kegs turn to corporals, and brooms to British grenadiers,
And the stove-drum like a kettle-drum is rattling in his ears,
And rallying at the cry that swells in thunders on the breeze,
He charges a Westphalia ham and stabs a Stilton cheese.
Oh! say not that the olden fire is dead,-speak Sumter, speak,
The deed of shame, whose burning blush still reddens on the cheek,
Lend me your lips, ye nmonuments, whose lettered tablets stand,
T'he Scriptures of the Lord of hosts, the gospels of the land;When, like a tocsin sounding o'er the Sabbath morning's calm,
Rang in a startled country's ear tihe war cry of alarm,
51 
CiTY DOC UMENT.
Wavered one heart in that dark hour, let each dead soldier's name
That sleeps in marble, yet still lives on Memory's roll of fame,
Let him whose laurelled sword, unsheathed a bleeding flag to save,
Led out Rhode-Island's marshalled ranks to glory or a grave,
Speak of that olden blood of Peace, whose charitable flow,
Pours through its younger channels still its warm and generous glow,
Speak of that olden blood of War, that, kindled in the sire,
Rolls through the beating vein to-day its crimsoned flood of fire.
You may remember some day when for exercise anddrill,
Your "Infantry" marched up the slope of Smith's historic hill.And in the squadron's proud array, on cartridge box and gun,
The brave Marines in glittering mail outshone the morning sun;
Helmets and plumes, as rank on rank filed through the crowded
street,
How trailed the motley throng behind with never-wearying feet;
But when the drum and fife strike up the Continental strain,
And Yankee Doodle's reveille wakes earth and sky again,
Over the Bridge, and down Main street, like mad the echo flies,
And Christian Hill sends back the note and Olney's Lane replies,
From sill to roof the windows gape, the tradesmen leave their stores,
Or stand with eager eye and ear like statues at the doors;
Old age grows young, the blood of youth in swifter currents flows,
And on the cheek of maidenhood blooms out a fresher rose,The judge with grave and solemn air, the brawny sons of toil,
Dealers in cotton, wool, supplies, print cloths, and drugs and oil,
The boy with boisterous lip, the girl with charmed and laughing eye,
Whose life is now a beaming smile and now a breathing sigh,
Burn with the fire whose flame was like a beacon in the fight,
At Germantown, and Valley Forge, and on old Bunker's height,
And rousing at the bugle's call once more like heroes feel
Each breast became a rampart wall, each arm an arm of steel.
So when this day comes back again with each returning year,
This day in every freeman's heart most hallowed and most dear,
52
No. 32.
I 
POEM. 
The memories of the olden time awakening from their rest,
Beat like fierce eagles at the walls of every quivering breast;
Toil pauses in his weary strokes, the patriotic boy
Forgets his tasks and sports to join the loud halloo of joy,
The church throws wide its opening doors and hymns of prayer
and praise
Sound through the ancient meeting-house as in the earlier days
We bless God that our fathers lived and bless them that they died,
And bless our country's stars and stripes and bless ourselves beside;
"Adams and Liberty," again the cannon's lips of flame
Roll out in thunders on the air the glorious cry of fame,
And every steeple's iron tongue proclaims with echoing voice
Hosanna to the morn that bids a nation's heart rejoice.
Freedom,-its spirit lingers yet on plain, and shore, and hill,
And at each corner of the street a patriot meets you still,Not with cockade upon his hat or spur upon his heel,
Not with a shouldered flint-lock or a blade of glittering steel,
He wears no knapsack on his back, no weapon at his thigh,
There is no thunder in his voice, no lightning in his eye;
HIe aims at bargains, not at hearts, and plants his ambuscade
Not for his royal brother's blood, but only for his trade;
And dashing not at foes, but at his Day Book and his bills,
His Ledgers are his t nted fields, his guns,-steel pens and quills.
If there are patriarchs in the sea as on this solid earth,
Who date a century back or more their baptism and their birth,
What mirth there must be down among those saurians and whales,
When England sends us earthen-ware, and we send cotton bales;
How it must seem to them to see the mother and the child,
Whose tempers in the years ago were any thing but mild,
Smooth down their wrinkled fronts, and knit beneath the Atlantic's
roar
By iron nerves like living nerves that stretch from shore to shore,
Forget their jars and quarrels, and like streams in summer glide,
Without a ruffling,vave to break the calm and peaceful tide.
53
:1 1: 
C1 T'Y DOCUMENT.
Yet changes like a dream have come across the sea and shore,
And these our modern days, are not the fighting days of yore;
The sun shines o'er us now as then, yet underneath our feet
The soil was once the soldier's couch, the soldier's winding sheet;
Rampart and fort on Fox Point Hill have crumbled to decay,
And not a ripple marks where once the burning Gaspee lay,
And on old Bunker's trampled crest where glorious Warren bled,
The fresh grass springs in summner o'er each mouldering hero's bed.
How pleasant does it seem, to think those fighting days are o'er,
When the recruiting sergeant's drum was heard at every door;
How pleasant does it seem as you are going out some day,
To meet, it may be, some old friend, who lives across the way,
To think you need not hurry home the moment it grows dark
Lest some ambitious fusilier should take you for a mark;
How pleasant too to think that you can seek your quiet bed,
Nor fear lest you may wake with some stray bullet in your head,
Or see some Indian, fierce and tall, and arabesqued and scarred,
Stand by you with his tomahawk as if he stood on guard.
Those fighting days, thank God, have gone, and in the olive's shade,
The bayonet rusts upon the gun, the scabbard on the blade,
And George the Third whose furious ire was like a windy gust,
Sleeps gently as a sleeping child in Windsor's royal dust.
On Seekonk's sands the corn-fields bloom, on Neutaconkanut's crag
The eagle flaps his wings and hails the rebel's starry flag:
No longer does the Parliament send out its hemp and flax
To hang John Hancock up who dared to grumble at the tax,The skipper as he lights his pipe no longer dreads at sea
A broadside on his weather board, a chaser on his lee,
And if you ask a British ship what cargo she has got,
She sends you back a sample card and not a booming shot.
T'o-night at six o'clock when you sit down again to tea,
Or it may be at seven or eight,-for hours like men are free,
These things will come back fresh to mind and you will not forget,
. ",.
54
No. 32. 
POEM.
That for each blessing in your lot you owe a grateful debt.
You'll think how once your father's drank refreshment from a gourd,
And spread their rations on a log because they had no board;
You'll think too, as you hear, perhaps, some loud halloo or call,
That once your fathers' cries for help were answered by a ball;
You'll think what wrongs they once endured, and how they fought
and bled,
And how the frozen earth was once their only dying bed
And when the beaded sweat of death was settling on each cheek,
When each strong heart grew faint and chill, and each strong arm
grew weak,
They kissed with pale and trembling lips the drenched and bleed       ing sod,
Still trusting in the patriot's hope,-the undying truth of God.
We need no monument to rear to Heaven its sculptured head,
We need no blazoned shields above the ashes of the dead;
Still will the memory of the past outlive the lapse of years,
And still the old man's story win the listening maiden's tears,And though the battle field is green and sounds of martial strife
No longer break the quiet dreams that crown our peaceful life,
Yet will some relic of the war, some scorched and blistered gun,
Or some rude pile that crumbles where a blood-stained height was
won,
Bring back those brave and dauntless hearts that quailed not at
the foe,
Those Saxon arms that wavered not before a Saxon's blow.
Talk not of recreant sons whose sires stood fast by Washington,
Shoulder to shoulder in the fight till the red field was won;
Sound the war trumpet's rousing note and each dead hero's blood
Rolls through a thousand living veins its hot and reeking flood;
"To arms" John Adams cries, "To arms" a thousand tongues
repeat,
And John Brown's drum-beat wakes again the echoes of the street;
55 
CITY DOCUM-VNT.
Not on the hills but in each breast the constant watch-fire glows,
And Yankee Doodle's pipe lights up the match against his foes;
Let but Columbia's shore be grazed by one invading keel,
And every rampart's storied crest shall gleam with bristling steel;
That old Queen's-armn whose barrel glowed in Trenton's wintry sun,
Whose battered breech still wears the blood and scars of Lexington,
Shall scent the battle yet afar, and burning for the fray,
Leap like a tiger from its sleep as in the olden day.
No. 32.
56
I
.T
!