of the word traversed a waste of wilderness and left three of the then eight towns of Massachusetts Bay in 1635, pushing to the west - with the permission, be it said, of that commonwealth, or rather, acting under a commission of its General Court for a twelvemonth. Establishing three towns on the western bank of the Connecticut River, they laid the foundation of the State of that name; furnishing in its constitution of 1639, known as the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, what has been called the first written constitution in the modern sense of the term as a permanent limitation on governmental powers known in history, and suggesting, it has been claimed, by the confederation of its towns, which, however, retained the power not delegated to the State, the idea of that more perfect Union composed of the American States. The spirit which pervaded these newer Pilgrims, and which today pervades the western world, was stated by Thomas Hooker, one of the chief settlers, from his pulpit in Hartford some seven months before the Fundamental Orders were drafted and went into effect. He chose for his text the 13th verse of the first chapter of Deuteronomy: "Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you.' Captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds over fiftiesover tens, &c." In the course of his sermon he is reported to have said, under the caption of Doctrine, in the brief extract of it made by one of the congrega

tion:

I. That the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people, by God's own allowance.

II. The privilege of election, which belongs to the people, therefore, must not be exercised according to their humours, but according to the blessed I will and law of God.

III. They who have power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power, also, to set the bounds and limitations of the power and place unto which they call them.

And the American Hooker is reported as giving for his American polity the following Reasons:

1. Because the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people.

2. Because, by a free choice, the hearts of the people will be more inclined to the love of the persons [chosen] and more ready to yield [obediencel.

3. Because, of that duty and engagement of the people.1

In the preamble to the Fundamental Orders, the American theory of government is thus stated, omitting provisions concerning churches, in which membership, however, was not essential to the exercise of civil rights:

1 Abstracts of Two Sermons by Rev. Thomas Hooker, from the short-hand notes of Mr. Henry Wolcott, Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, 1860, Vol. i, p. 20.

66

Forasmuch as it hath pleased the Allmighty God by the wise disposition of his diuyne p'uidence so to Order and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and Residents of Windsor, Harteford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and vppon the River of Conectecotte and the Lands thereunto adioyneing; And well knowing where a people are gathered togather the word of God requires that to mayntayne the peace and vnion of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Gouernment established according to God, to order and dispose of the affayres of the people at all seasons as occation shall require; doe therefore assotiate and conioyne our selues to be as one Publike State or Comonwelth; and doe, for our selues and our Successors and such as shall be adioyned to vs att any tyme hereafter, enter into Combination and Confederation togather, to mayntayne and p'searue the liberty and purity of the gospell of our Lord Jesus wch we now p'fesse . . . ; As also in or Ciuell Affaires to be guided and gouerned according to such Lawes, Rules, Orders and decrees as shall be made, ordered & decreed . . .1

As in the case of Plymouth, so in the settlements in the Connecticut valley, there was apparently no grant of title to land and there was no charter from the Crown. In the Mayflower Compact, the signers profess loyalty and obedience to their "dread soveraigne Lord," but find in themselves authority to enacte, constitute, and frame such just & equall laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, & offices, from time to time," which they themselves shall consider to be in the general interest and good of the colony. In the Fundamental Orders there is no reference to their "dread soveraigne Lord," and the confederating towns, recognizing that in their case government derives its just consent from their inhabitants and residents, proceed without further ado to provide for the election of a governor, magistrates and deputies to the general assemblies or courts " for makeing of lawes, and any other publike occation, we conserns the good of the Comonwelth." 2

The views of the Pilgrim fathers and of the Connecticut settlers in the matter of compact and the action of the Connecticut settlers in framing a system of government for their self-created body politic have been selected, not for the purpose of establishing priority in behalf of one or the other but as showing how, freed from the environment of the Old, the settlers of the New World stated and put into practice the doctrines held by them as individuals when unrestrained by the provisions of a charter or instructions from the Crown, and as indicating the conceptions of government likely to take visible form and effect in this western world when the inhabitants of the colonies were free to devise constitutions for their States and a union of those States.

1 F. N. Thorpe, The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the United States of America, 1909, Vol. I, p. 519; B. P. Poore, The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and Other Organic Laws of the United States, 1877, p. 249.

2 Thorpe, ibid., p. 520; Poore, ibid., p. 250.

Early Plans of Union

New England
Confederation

The possibility of union was present to the minds of the American colonists even in the 17th century, shown by the New England Confederation, organized in 1643 and surviving the restoration of the Stuarts in 1660. William Penn, a great and a good man, held in grateful remembrance not only by the Commonwealth which bears his name but by the American people, and indeed the world at large, proposed a union of the colonists as far back as 1697. A plan proposed by Dr. Franklin in 1754 was, as its author aptly said, rejected in America because it had too much of the prerogative, and in England because it was too democratic, and was therefore not in accord with the plans of the home government.

These plans are of interest as showing how propinquity leads to union, and in our case to a union recognizing the greater interest of the whole without degrading the colonies or the states into provinces.

The aim or purpose of the New England Confederation, as it is generally called, is admirably and quaintly set forth in what may be called the preamble, or inducement to it, and the first article runs as follows:

Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and ayme, namely, to advance the Kingdome of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel, in purity with peace; and whereas in our settling (by a wise providence of God) we are further dispersed upon the Sea-Coasts and Rivers, then was at first intended, so that we cannot (according to our desire) with convenience communicate in one Government and Jurisdiction; and whereas we live encompassed with people of severall Nations, and strange languages which hereafter may prove injurious to us and our posterity: And forasmuch as the Natives have formerly committed. sundry insolencies and outrages upon severall Plantations of the English, and have of late combined themselves against us. And seeing by reason of the sad Distractions in England, which they have heard of, and by which they know we are hindered both from that humble way of seeking advice or reaping those comfortable fruits of protection which, at other times, we might well expect; we therefore doe conceive it our bounden duty, without delay, to enter into a present Consotiation amongst our selves, for mutuall help and strength in all our future concernments, that, as in Nation, and Religion, so, in other respects, we be, and continue, One, according to the tenour and true meaning of the ensuing Articles.

I. Wherefore it is fully Agreed and Concluded by and between the parties, or Jurisdictions above named, and they doe joyntly and severally by these presents agree and conclude, That they all be, and henceforth be called by the name of The United Colonies of New-England.1

The second article states that the United Colonies entered into this "firm and perpetuall league of friendship and amity, for offence and defence, mutuall advice and succour . . . and for their own mutuall safety, and wellfare."

The third article limits the Union to the colonies of Massachusetts, Ply

1 Records of the Colony or Jurisdiction of New Haven from May, 1653, to the Union, Charles J. Hoadly, ed., 1858, p. 562. .

mouth, Connecticut and New Haven, leaving out Rhode Island unless it would acknowledge the jurisdiction either of Massachusetts or of Plymouth. This the Rhode Island settlement refused to do and its application for admission was rejected. This little community has had a mind of its own. It was not a member of the first Union; it failed to send delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and it left itself out of that greater Union which we call the United States until it, the smallest, decided to throw in its lot with the other and larger States.

The fourth article provided that the expenses of warfare, wars were to be just,― offensive or defensive," both in men, provisions, and all other disbursements," should be borne according to the males within each of the colonies "from sixteen yeares old, to threescore, being inhabitants there," and the spoils of war, if any there should be, were to be "proportionably divided among the said Confederates."

The fifth article declared that Massachusetts, as the larger colony, should furnish against the enemy one hundred armed men, and that each of the others should furnish forty-five, and in this proportion if more or less were needed. This was, however, only to apply to just wars. A method was needed and provided for determining whether the wars were just, for if they were not the "Confederates" were not to be saddled with the expense of the member causing an unjust war. The commissioners of the Confederation were to determine this, “and if it appear, that the fault lay in the party so invaded, that then, that Jurisdiction, or Plantation, make just satisfaction, both to the invaders, whom they have injuried, and bear all the charges of the war themselves, without requiring any allowance from the rest of the Confederates toward the same." 1

After having stated the general aims and purposes of the Confederation to be for mutual protection, and the part which each should play in case of war, which the Union evidently contemplated as a defensive measure, the articles pass to a question no less important and more germane to the present purpose. In the sixth article the Confederation is looked upon as having interests of its own, superior to and different from the interests of the contracting parties, and a careful line of demarcation is drawn between the league on the one hand and the members thereof on the other. Equality, however, was the life and breath of the agreement. Each of the four jurisdictions was to appoint two commissioners, fully empowered by each of the colonies "to hear, examine, weigh, and determine all affaires of war, or peace, leagues, ayds, charges, and numbers of men for war, division of spoyles, or whatsoever is gotten by conquest, receiveing of more Confederates, or Plantations into Combination with any of these Confederates," but "not intermedling with the Government of 1 Ibid., p. 564.

any of the Jurisdictions which by the third Article is to be "preserued intirely to themselves." Six of the eight commissioners were empowered "to settle, and determine the businesse in question," but if this number should fail to agree then the matter was to be referred to the colonies, and if "the businesse so referred, be concluded, then to be prosecuted by the Confederates, and all their Members." A meeting was to be held the first Thursday in each September of the year and in regular rotation at each capital of the contracting colonies.

By the seventh article, a president of the commissioners was to be elected by them, or any six of them, but he was to be a presiding officer, not an executive.

The eighth article has some prophetic provisions. Thus, the commissioners were to "endeavoure to frame and establish Agreements and Orders in generall cases of a civil nature, wherein all the Plantations are interested, for preserving peace amongst themselves, and preventing (as much as may be) all occasions of war, or differences with others, as about the free and speedy passage of Justice in each Jurisdiction, to all the Confederates equally, as to their own, receiving those that remove from one Plantation to another, without due Certificates." And in the last of these prophetic provisions are the surrender upon request of "any Servant run away from his Master, into any other of these Confederated Jurisdictions," and the surrender of escaped prisoners or fugitives from justice upon request of the magistrates of the colony from which the escape was made.

The ninth article is also reminiscent, as it were, of the future, stipulating that, as "the justest Wars may be of dangerous consequence, especially to the smaller Plantations in these United Colonies," it was agreed that none of them should" at any time hereafter begin, undertake or engage themselves, or this Confederation, or any part thereof in any War whatsoever (sudden exigents with the necessary consequences thereof excepted . . .) without the consent and agreement of the forenamed eight Commissioners, or at least six of them, as in the sixt Article is provided."

The tenth article permitted, in default of the attendance of all the commissioners duly notified to attend, four to act, but six were nevertheless required to determine the justice of the war, and in the eleventh article it was agreed:

That if any of the Confederates shall hereafter break any of these present Articles, or be any other way injurious to any one of the other Jurisdictions such breach of Agreement, or injury shalbe duly considered, and ordered by the Commissioners for the other Jurisdictions, that both peace, and this present Confederation, may be intirely preserved without violation.1

The commissioners of the contracting parties, other than Plymouth, were 1 Records of the Colony of New Haven, p. 566.