Part 14 (1/2)
Finally, the church-wardens were ex-officio overseers of the poor. By the great poor law of 1597 the church-wardens, along with four overseers of the poor appointed each year at Easter by the justices, had the whole charge of the relief of the poor. [Footnote: 8 Leonard, The Poor Law, 76, etc.]
They were to estimate the annual costs and to tax their fellow-townsmen for this purpose. From this time forward taxation for the poor under the control of parish officers became the most important, as it was the heaviest, of local charges. The constant efforts of the Privy Council, through the justices of the peace, to enforce the poor law, kept church-wardens and other overseers of the poor up to their duties and engaged them in constant conferences with the justices and in making reports, as well as in the actual work of poor relief.
A vestry clerk existed in some parishes, and later such an office became quite general and influential, but at this period the records were generally preserved by one of the church-wardens or by the minister. The vestry-clerk is of special interest as being apparently the prototype of the town-clerk in the American colonies. [Footnote: Howard, Local Const.i.tutional History of the U. S., 39.]
Various other petty officers existed, but their duties were either identical with those already described, or insignificant, or so exceptional as not to reward inquiry and description here. Such were the beadle, s.e.xton, haywards, ale-conners, waymen, way-wardens, sidesmen, synodsmen, swornmen, questmen, and perhaps some others.
[Footnote: Discussed in Charming, Town and County Government in the English Colonies (Johns Hopkins University Studies, II.), No. 10, p.
18, etc.]
Such being the officers whose sphere of activity was the parish, it remains to describe the general a.s.sembly of the people of the parish, the vestry. This name arose apparently from the practice of meeting in the part of the church in which the vestments were kept. Ordinarily, all who held house or land in a parish, no matter on what tenure, were members of the vestry of the parish. All inhabitants, therefore--land- owners, free tenants, copy-holders, laborers occupying cottages, even those who held land in the parish but lived somewhere else--were by law at liberty to attend the meetings of the paris.h.i.+oners and to join in the exercise of their functions.
Such a body is of great interest. [Footnote: c.o.ke, 5 Report, 66, 67.]
Those officials whose positions and functions have been discussed in the two preceding chapters drew all their powers from the crown, and the duties that they performed were imposed upon them by statute law or by royal instruction. The same is true of a considerable part of the activity of constables and church-wardens. But the vestry of the parish existed as a body which within certain limits had powers of government of its own, and could impose duties upon parish officials, appoint committees and require services from them, adopt by-laws which bound all the inhabitants, and impose taxes upon the landholders of the parish which they were bound to pay.
Yet evidences of anything like regular meetings of the paris.h.i.+oners are, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, so scanty as to leave considerable doubt as to whether they occurred at all generally. They are not mentioned in the legal text-books of the time, which were, of course, written by men who looked from above downward and were not interested in local inst.i.tutions as such. A few accounts of such vestry meetings remain, [Footnote: E.g., those of Steeple Ashton, quoted in Toulmin Smith, The Parish, chap, vii, SS 12.] but the action taken at them was apparently restricted to the choice of parish officers, the adoption of by-laws for the carrying out of necessary taxation and other distribution of burdens, and for matters connected with the building or repair of the church. The attendance probably consisted only of the more substantial members of the parish and of those who held office and must present reports. The parish life resided more in the activity of its officials than of its a.s.sembly. Vigorous local self-government could not have existed without leaving more distinct traces than it has done, and our study of the political system of the time will have made it clear that much local independence was not suited to the period of the Tudors and Stuarts. [Footnote: See Toulmin Smith, The Parish, chaps, ii., iv., vii.; and Gneist, Self-Government, book III., chap, ix., S 115.] Such was the provision for the carrying out of those matters of local concern in the county, the hundred, and rural parish which were not performed by immediate officials or commissioners of the central government. It is evident that in the early seventeenth century the motive power for almost all government, local as well as general, emanated from the national government--from the king, Privy Council, and Parliament. It was a vigorous, a.s.sertive, centralized administration, eager to carry out its will and enforce order, uniformity, and its own ideas upon all persons and bodies in England. No shade of doubt of their own wisdom or reluctance to override local or individual liberty of action troubled the thought or weakened the resolution of the Tudor and Stuart sovereigns and their ministers. Nor were their Parliaments antagonistic to the principle of centralized government, even when they wished to curb unrestrained royal control of it. Strong government was in entire consonance with the spirit of the time.
Yet this ambitious central government was working with very inadequate and unsuitable instruments. Instead of a body of efficient and responsible officials, directly and immediately dependent upon their superiors, receiving wages and hoping for promotion, such as successful centralized governments have usually possessed, the king and council made use of the old and c.u.mbrous machinery of local self-government as they found it. It was quite unsuited to their purposes. Sheriffs, coroners, high and petty constables, church-wardens, even justices of the peace, had come down from a period when government was of quite another and more primitive character, in which the central power counted for far less, local powers for far more. Most of the local officials were unpaid, and the others were dependent on insignificant fees for such money reward as they obtained. The labors imposed upon them were performed only from a sense of duty, loyalty, or necessity, not as a fair return for remuneration received.
There was little provision for a wise selection of office-holders, so far as regarded their suitability to the objects of the central administration. The county and hundred officials were taken from one restricted cla.s.s, the rural gentry; the towns.h.i.+p and parish officials were chosen by their neighbors from their own number. In a word, the government of Elizabeth, James, and Charles was trying to carry on an ambitious, centralized administration by means of an unpaid, untrained, and carelessly selected group of local officials, whose offices had been established and whose characters had been formed for a system of much more limited powers and of more independent local life.
At certain times, as in the period of personal government of Charles I., something like a hierarchy seemed about to develop itself, in which the Privy Council, speaking in the name of the king, gave instructions to the justices of a.s.size, the justices of a.s.size to the sheriffs and justices of the peace, the justices of the peace to the high-constable of the hundred, and the high-constable to the petty constable, church- wardens, and other towns.h.i.+p or parish officials. But no such regularity was attained; the council frequently communicated directly with the justices of the peace, the sheriff with the parish officers; and the administration became no more systematic as time went on.
The primary governmental division of the country, the s.h.i.+re, was the sphere of much activity; but it was not automatic, and acted wholly or almost wholly in response to pressure from above. The ultimate unit of local government, the parish, towns.h.i.+p, or manor, had many and interesting functions, but they were for the most part either declining survivals of earlier powers, or new forms of activity imposed upon it from above. It had the necessary officials and the political rights to enable it to do a great deal, but it showed few signs of vigorous life.
Thus government in England in the early seventeenth century was so organized that at the top was an energetic national government, midway an active but dependent county organization, and at the bottom the parish with a residuum of ancient but unutilized powers of self- government.
No greater contrast could be noted in the position of men than that between the Englishman at home, in the early seventeenth century, and the Englishman who emigrated to America. Almost all the conditions that surrounded the former were reversed in the case of the latter. The pressure of central government was immediately and almost completely withdrawn. Many of the most urgent activities of government in England, such as the administration of the poor law and the restriction of vagabondage, almost ceased in the colonies. The cla.s.s of settled rural gentry from which most local officials were drawn in England did not exist in America. On the other hand, the wilderness, the Indians, the freedom from restraint, the religious liberty, the opportunity for economic and social rise in the New World made a set of conditions which had been quite unknown in the mother-country.
As a result, the colonists had to make a choice from among the inst.i.tutions with which they were familiar at home, of those which were applicable to their new needs. Of such inst.i.tutions of local government in England there were, as has been seen, a considerable number and variety. Naturally, some functions which had been prominent at home were reduced to insignificance in the colonies; some which had been almost forgotten or had remained quite undeveloped in England gained unwonted importance in America. Almost every local official or body which existed in England reappeared in some part or other of the English colonies, although often with much altered powers and duties.
All the familiar names are to be found, though sometimes with new meanings and always more or less considerably adapted to new conditions. Moreover, the choice was in the main restricted to familiar English inst.i.tutions, for in the great variety of system in different parts of the colonies there was scarcely an official or body which did not have its prototype in England. [Footnote: Howard, Local Const.i.tutional History of the U. S.; Channing, Town and County Government in the English Colonies; Adams, Germanic Origin of New England Towns. Cf. also Tyler, England in America; Andrews, Colonial Self-Government; Greene, Colonial Commonwealth (American Nation Series), IV., V., VI.]
In this as in other matters, the foundations of America were laid in European conditions and occurrences. European needs sent explorers on their voyages of discovery, and European ambitions equipped adventurers for their expeditions of conquest; the commercial projects of England, France, Holland, and Sweden led to the establishment of the princ.i.p.al New-World colonies; the economic exigencies and the political and religious struggles of Europe sent a flood of settlers to people them; the inst.i.tutions of Spain, France, Holland, and England all found a lodgment in the western continent; and those of England became the basis of the great nation which has reached so distinct a primacy in America.
CHAPTER XVII
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
No general bibliography of the whole field of this volume exists, although two comprehensive publications (both described below) have special bibliographic sections: The Cambridge Modern History has full lists of books, less well a.n.a.lyzed than the systematic and useful bibliographies in Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Generale.
GENERAL SECONDARY WORKS
Several general histories of Europe covering the field of this volume have been published in recent years or are now appearing. The most important are: Lavisse et Rambaud, Histoire Generale (12 vols., 1893- 1901), of which vols. III. and VI. apply most nearly to the subjects included in this book; The Cambridge Modern History (to be in 12 vols., 1902-), especially vols. I.-IV.; H. H. Helmolt, History of the World, translated from the German (to be in 8 vols., 1902-), especially vols.
I. and VII. Helmolt differs from all other general histories by its arrangement in accordance with ethnographical and geographical divisions rather than historical epochs; he pays also especial attention to economic phenomena. The following three volumes in the series ent.i.tled Periods of European History, give an account of this period in somewhat shorter form: Richard Lodge, The Close of the Middle Ages, 1272-1494 (1901); A. H. Johnson, Europe in the Sixteenth Century, 1494-1598 (1897); H. O. Wakeman, Europe, 1598-1715 (1904).
Two excellent histories of the period of discovery are O. F. Peschel, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen (1858), and Sophus Ruge, Geschichte des Zeitalters der Entdeckungen (1881). More recent works are S. Gunther, Das Zeitalter der Entdeckungen (1901), and Carlo Errera, L'Epoca delle Grandi Scoperti Geografiche (1902).
SPECIAL QUESTION ON COLUMBUS
The seemingly well-established view that Columbus when he discovered America was in search of a direct western route to the East Indies and Cathay, and that he had been led to form this plan by correspondence with the Florentine scholar Toscanelli, was attacked by Henry Vignaud, La Lettre et la Carte de Toscanelli sur la Route des Indes par L'Orient (1901), and in a translation and extension of the same work under the t.i.tle Toscanelli and Columbus (1902). Vignaud considers the letter of Toscanelli a forgery, and the object of Columbus in making the voyage the discovery of a certain island of which he had been informed by a dying pilot. His work elicited many replies in the form of book reviews or more extended works. Of the former may be mentioned those of E. G.
Bourne (American Historical Review, January, 1903) and Sophus Ruge (Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft fur Erdkunde zu Berlin, 1902); among the latter, the monumental work, Christopher Columbus, His Life, His Work, His Remains, by John Boyd Thacher (I., 1903). Few scholars seem to have been convinced by the arguments of Vignaud, but the whole question must be considered as still undetermined. The last word is E. G. Bourne, Spain in America (The American Nation, III., 1904).