Part 1 (1/2)

The Beginnings of New England.

by John Fiske.

PREFACE.

This book contains the substance of the lectures originally given at the Was.h.i.+ngton University, St. Louis, in May, 1887, in the course of my annual visit to that inst.i.tution as University Professor of American History. The lectures were repeated in the following month of June at Portland, Oregon, and since then either the whole course, or one or more of the lectures, have been given in Boston, Newton, Milton, Chelsea, New Bedford, Lowell, Worcester, Springfield, and Pittsfield, Ma.s.s.; Farmington, Middletown, and Stamford, Conn.; New York, Brooklyn, and Tarrytown, N.Y.; Philadelphia and Ogontz, Pa.; Wilmington, Del.; Chicago, 111.; San Francisco and Oakland, Cal.

In this sketch of the circ.u.mstances which attended the settlement of New England, I have purposely omitted many details which in a formal history of that period would need to be included. It has been my aim to give the outline of such a narrative as to indicate the principles at work in the history of New England down to the Revolution of 1689. When I was writing the lectures I had just been reading, with much interest, the work of my former pupil, Mr. Brooks Adams, ent.i.tled ”The Emanc.i.p.ation of Ma.s.sachusetts.”

With the specific conclusions set forth in that book I found myself often agreeing, but it seemed to me that the general aspect of the case would be considerably modified and perhaps somewhat more adequately presented by enlarging the field of view. In forming historical judgments a great deal depends upon our perspective. Out of the very imperfect human nature which is so slowly and painfully casting off the original sin of its inheritance from primeval savagery, it is scarcely possible in any age to get a result which will look quite satisfactory to the men of a riper and more enlightened age. Fortunately we can learn something from the stumblings of our forefathers, and a good many things seem quite clear to us to-day which two centuries ago were only beginning to be dimly discerned by a few of the keenest and boldest spirits. The faults of the Puritan theocracy, which found its most complete development in Ma.s.sachusetts, are so glaring that it is idle to seek to palliate them or to explain them away. But if we would really understand what was going on in the Puritan world of the seventeenth century, and how a better state of things has grown out of it, we must endeavour to distinguish and define the elements of wholesome strength in that theocracy no less than its elements of crudity and weakness.

The first chapter, on ”The Roman Idea and the English Idea,” contains a somewhat more developed statement of the points briefly indicated in the thirteenth section (pp. 85-95) of ”The Destiny of Man.” As all of the present book, except the first chapter, was written here under the shadow of the Was.h.i.+ngton University, I take pleasure in dating it from this charming and hospitable city where I have pa.s.sed some of the most delightful hours of my life.

St. Louis, April 15, 1889.

THE BEGINNINGS OF NEW ENGLAND.

CHAPTER I.

THE ROMAN IDEA AND THE ENGLISH IDEA.

It used to be the fas.h.i.+on of historians, looking superficially at the facts presented in chronicles and tables of dates, without a.n.a.lyzing and comparing vast groups of facts distributed through centuries, or even suspecting the need for such a.n.a.lysis and comparison, to a.s.sign the date 476 A.D. as the moment at which the Roman Empire came to an end. It was in that year that the soldier of fortune, Odovakar, commander of the Herulian mercenaries in Italy, sent the handsome boy Romulus, son of Orestes, better known as ”little Augustus,” from his imperial throne to the splendid villa of Lucullus near Naples, and gave him a yearly pension of $35,000 [6,000 solidi] to console him for the loss of a world. As 324 years elapsed before another emperor was crowned at Rome, and as the political heads.h.i.+p of Europe after that happy restoration remained upon the German soil to which the events of the eighth century had s.h.i.+fted it, nothing could seem more natural than the habit which historians once had, of saying that the mighty career of Rome had ended, as it had begun, with a Romulus. Sometimes the date 476 was even set up as a great landmark dividing modern from ancient history. For those, however, who took such a view, it was impossible to see the events of the Middle Ages in their true relations to what went before and what came after. It was impossible to understand what went on in Italy in the sixth century, or to explain the position of that great Roman power which had its centre on the Bosphorus, which in the code of Justinian left us our grandest monument of Roman law, and which for a thousand years was the staunch bulwark of Europe against the successive aggressions of Persian, Saracen, and Turk. It was equally impossible to understand the rise of the Papal power, the all-important politics of the great Saxon and Swabian emperors, the relations of mediaeval England to the Continental powers, or the marvellously interesting growth of the modern European system of nationalities. [Sidenote: When did the Roman Empire come to an end?]

Since the middle of the nineteenth century the study of history has undergone changes no less sweeping than those which have in the same time affected the study of the physical sciences. Vast groups of facts distributed through various ages and countries have been subjected to comparison and a.n.a.lysis, with the result that they have not only thrown fresh light upon one another, but have in many cases enabled us to recover historic points of view that had long been buried in oblivion.

Such an instance was furnished about twenty-five years ago by Dr.

Bryce's epoch-making work on the Holy Roman Empire. Since then historians still recognize the importance of the date 476 as that which left the Bishop of Rome the dominant personage in Italy, and marked the s.h.i.+fting of the political centre of gravity from the Palatine to the Lateran. This was one of those subtle changes which escape notice until after some of their effects have attracted attention. The most important effect, in this instance, realized after three centuries, was not the overthrow of Roman power in the West, but its indefinite extension and expansion. The men of 476 not only had no idea that they were entering upon a new era, but least of all did they dream that the Roman Empire had come to an end, or was ever likely to. Its cities might be pillaged, its provinces overrun, but the supreme imperial power itself was something without which the men of those days could not imagine the world as existing. It must have its divinely ordained representative in one place if not in another. If the throne in Italy was vacant, it was no more than had happened before; there was still a throne at Constantinople, and to its occupant Zeno the Roman Senate sent a message, saying that one emperor was enough for both ends of the earth, and begging him to confer upon the gallant Odovakar the t.i.tle of patrician, and entrust the affairs of Italy to his care. So when Sicambrian Chlodwig set up his Merovingian kingdom in northern Gaul, he was glad to array himself in the robe of a Roman consul, and obtain from the eastern emperor a formal ratification of his rule.

[Transcriber's note: page missing in original.] still survives in political methods and habits of thought that will yet be long in dying out. With great political systems, as with typical forms of organic life, the processes of development and of extinction are exceedingly slow, and it is seldom that the stages can be sharply marked by dates.

The processes which have gradually s.h.i.+fted the seat of empire until the prominent part played nineteen centuries ago by Rome and Alexandria, on opposite sides of the Mediterranean, has been at length a.s.sumed by London and New York, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, form a most interesting subject of study. But to understand them, one must do much more than merely catalogue the facts of political history; one must acquire a knowledge of the drifts and tendencies of human thought and feeling and action from the earliest ages to the times in which we live. In covering so wide a field we cannot of course expect to obtain anything like complete results. In order to make a statement simple enough to be generally intelligible, it is necessary to pa.s.s over many circ.u.mstances and many considerations that might in one way and another qualify what we have to say. Nevertheless it is quite possible for us to discern, in their bold general outlines, some historic truths of supreme importance. In contemplating the salient features of the change which has now for a long time been making the world more English and less Roman, we shall find not only intellectual pleasure and profit but practical guidance. For in order to understand this slow but mighty change, we must look a little into that process of nation-making which has been going on since prehistoric ages and is going on here among us to-day, and from the recorded experience of men in times long past we may gather lessons of infinite value for ourselves and for our children's children. As in all the achievements of mankind it is only after much weary experiment and many a heart-sickening failure that success is attained, so has it been especially with nation-making. Skill in the political art is the fruit of ages of intellectual and moral discipline; and just as picture-writing had to come before printing and canoes before steamboats, so the cruder political methods had to be tried and found wanting, amid the tears and groans of unnumbered generations, before methods less crude could be put into operation. In the historic survey upon which we are now to enter, we shall see that the Roman Empire represented a crude method of nation-making which began with a masterful career of triumph over earlier and cruder methods, but has now for several centuries been giving way before a more potent and satisfactory method. And just as the merest glance at the history of Europe shows us Germanic peoples wresting the supremacy from Rome, so in this deeper study we shall discover a grand and far-reaching Teutonic Idea of political life overthrowing and supplanting the Roman Idea. Our attention will be drawn toward England as the battle-ground and the seventeenth century as the critical moment of the struggle; we shall see in Puritanism the tremendous militant force that determined the issue; and when our perspective has thus become properly adjusted, we shall begin to realize for the first time how truly wonderful was the age that witnessed the Beginnings of New England. We have long had before our minds the colossal figure of Roman Julius as ”the foremost man of all this world,” but as the seventeenth century recedes into the past the figure of English Oliver begins to loom up as perhaps even more colossal. In order to see these world-events in their true perspective, and to make perfectly clear the manner in which we are to estimate them, we must go a long distance away from them. We must even go back, as nearly as may be, to the beginning of things. [Sidenote: Gradual s.h.i.+fting of primacy from the men who spoke Latin, and their descendants, to the men who speak English]

If we look back for a moment to the primitive stages of society, we may picture to ourselves the surface of the earth spa.r.s.ely and scantily covered with wandering tribes of savages, rude in morals and manners, narrow and monotonous in experience, sustaining life very much as lower animals sustain it, by gathering wild fruits or slaying wild game, and waging chronic warfare alike with powerful beasts and with rival tribes of men. [Sidenote: Political history is the history of nation-making]

In the widest sense the subject of political history is the description of the processes by which, under favourable circ.u.mstances, innumerable such primitive tribes have become welded together into mighty nations, with elevated standards of morals and manners, with wide and varied experience, sustaining life and ministering to human happiness by elaborate arts and sciences, and putting a curb upon warfare by limiting its scope, diminis.h.i.+ng its cruelty, and interrupting it by intervals of peace. The story, as laid before us in the records of three thousand years, is fascinating and absorbing in its human interest for those who content themselves with the study of its countless personal incidents, and neglect its profound philosophical lessons. But for those who study it in the scientific spirit, the human interest of its details becomes still more intensely fascinating and absorbing. Battles and coronations, poems and inventions, migrations and martyrdoms, acquire new meanings and awaken new emotions as we begin to discern their bearings upon the solemn work of ages that is slowly winning for humanity a richer and more perfect life. By such meditation upon men's thoughts and deeds is the understanding purified, till we become better able to comprehend our relations to the world and the duty that lies upon each of us to shape his conduct rightly.

In the welding together of primitive s.h.i.+fting tribes into stable and powerful nations, we can seem to discern three different methods that have been followed at different times and places, with widely different results. In all cases the fusion has been effected by war, but it has gone on in three broadly contrasted ways. The first of these methods, which has been followed from time immemorial in the Oriental world, may be roughly described as _conquest without incorporation._ A tribe grows to national dimensions by conquering and annexing its neighbours, without admitting them to a share in its political life. Probably there is always at first some incorporation, or even perhaps some crude germ of federative alliance; but this goes very little way,--only far enough to fuse together a few closely related tribes, agreeing in speech and habits, into a single great tribe that can overwhelm its neighbours. In early society this sort of incorporation cannot go far without being stopped by some impa.s.sable barrier of language or religion. After reaching that point, the conquering tribe simply annexes its neighbours and makes them its slaves. It becomes a superior caste, ruling over vanquished peoples, whom it oppresses with frightful cruelty, while living on the fruits of their toil in what has been aptly termed Oriental luxury. Such has been the origin of many eastern despotisms, in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates, and elsewhere. Such a political structure admits of a very considerable development of material civilization, in which gorgeous palaces and artistic temples may be built, and perhaps even literature and scholars.h.i.+p rewarded, with money wrung from millions of toiling wretches. There is that sort of brutal strength in it, that it may endure for many long ages, until it comes into collision with some higher civilization. Then it is likely to end in sudden collapse, because the fighting quality of the people has been destroyed. Populations that have lived for centuries in fear of impalement or crucifixion, and have known no other destination for the products of their labour than the clutches of the omnipresent tax-gatherer, are not likely to furnish good soldiers. A handful of freemen will scatter them like sheep, as the Greeks did twenty-three centuries ago at Kynaxa, as the English did the other day at Tel el-Kebir. On the other hand, where the manliness of the vanquished people is not crushed, the sway of the conquerors who cannot enter into political union with them is likely to be cast off, as in the case of the Moors in Spain. There was a civilization in many respects admirable.

It was eminent for industry, science, art, and poetry; its annals are full of romantic interest; it was in some respects superior to the Christian system which supplanted it; in many ways it contributed largely to the progress of the human race; and it was free from some of the worst vices of Oriental civilizations. Yet because of the fundamental defect that between the Christian Spaniard and his Mussulman conqueror there could be no political fusion, this brilliant civilization was doomed. During eight centuries of more or less extensive rule in the Spanish peninsula, the Moor was from first to last an alien, just as after four centuries the Turk is still an alien in the Balkan peninsula. The natural result was a struggle that lasted age after age till it ended in the utter extermination of one of the parties, and left behind it a legacy of hatred and persecution that has made the history of modern Spain a dismal record of shame and disaster.

[Sidenote: The Oriental method of nation-making]

In this first method of nation-making, then, which we may call the Oriental method, one now sees but little to commend. It was better than savagery, and for a long time no more efficient method was possible, but the leading peoples of the world have long since outgrown it; and although the resulting form of political government is the oldest we know and is not yet extinct, it nevertheless has not the elements of permanence. Sooner or later it will disappear, as savagery is disappearing, as the rudest types of inchoate human society have disappeared.

The second method by which nations have been made may be called the Roman method; and we may briefly describe it as _conquest with incorporation, but without representation_. The secret of Rome's wonderful strength lay in the fact that she incorporated the vanquished peoples into her own body politic. In the early time there was a fusion of tribes going on in Latium, which, if it had gone no further, would have been similar to the early fusion of Ionic tribes in Attika or of Iranian tribes in Media. But whereas everywhere else this political fusion soon stopped, in the Roman world it went on. One after another Italian tribes and Italian towns were not merely overcome but admitted to a share in the political rights and privileges of the victors. By the time this had gone on until the whole Italian peninsula was consolidated under the heads.h.i.+p of Rome, the result was a power incomparably greater than any other that the world had yet seen. Never before had so many people been brought under one government without making slaves of most of them. Liberty had existed before, whether in barbaric tribes or in Greek cities. Union had existed before, in a.s.syrian or Persian despotisms. Now liberty and union were for the first time joined together, with consequences enduring and stupendous. The whole Mediterranean world was brought under one government; ancient barriers of religion, speech, and custom were overthrown in every direction; and innumerable barbarian tribes, from the Alps to the wilds of northern Britain, from the Bay of Biscay to the Carpathian mountains, were more or less completely transformed into Roman citizens, protected by Roman law, and sharing in the material and spiritual benefits of Roman civilization. Gradually the whole vast structure became permeated by h.e.l.lenic and Jewish thought, and thus were laid the lasting foundations of modern society, of a common Christendom, furnished with a common stock of ideas concerning man's relation to G.o.d and the world, and acknowledging a common standard of right and wrong. This was a prodigious work, which raised human life to a much higher plane than that which it had formerly occupied, and endless grat.i.tude is due to the thousands of steadfast men who in one way or another devoted their lives to its accomplishment. [Sidenote: The Roman method of nation-making]

This Roman method of nation-making had nevertheless its fatal shortcomings, and it was only very slowly, moreover, that it wrought out its own best results. It was but gradually that the rights and privileges of Roman citizens.h.i.+p were extended over the whole Roman world, and in the mean time there were numerous instances where conquered provinces seemed destined to no better fate than had awaited the victims of Egyptian or a.s.syrian conquest. The rapacity and cruelty of Caius Verres could hardly have been outdone by the worst of Persian satraps; but there was a difference. A moral sense and political sense had been awakened which could see both the wickedness and the folly of such conduct. The voice of a Cicero sounded with trumpet tones against the oppressor, who was brought to trial and exiled for deeds which under the Oriental system, from the days of Artaxerxes to those of the Grand Turk, would scarcely have called forth a reproving word. It was by slow degrees that the Roman came to understand the virtues of his own method, and learned to apply it consistently until the people of all parts of the empire were, in theory at least, equal before the law. In theory, I say, for in point of fact there was enough of viciousness in the Roman system to prevent it from achieving permanent success. Historians have been fond of showing how the vitality of the whole system was impaired by wholesale slave-labour, by the false political economy which taxes all for the benefit of a few, by the debauching view of civil office which regards it as private perquisite and not as public trust, and--worst of all, perhaps--by the communistic practice of feeding an idle proletariat out of the imperial treasury. The names of these deadly social evils are not unfamiliar to American ears. Even of the last we have heard ominous whispers in the shape of bills to promote mendicancy under the specious guise of fostering education or rewarding military services. And is it not a striking ill.u.s.tration of the slowness with which mankind learns the plainest rudiments of wisdom and of justice, that only in the full light of the nineteenth century, and at the cost of a terrible war, should the most intelligent people on earth have got rid of a system of labour devised in the crudest ages of antiquity and fraught with misery to the employed, degradation to the employers, and loss to everybody? [Sidenote: Its slow development]

These evils, we see, in one shape or another, have existed almost everywhere; and the vice of the Roman system did not consist in the fact that under it they were fully developed, but in the fact that it had no adequate means of overcoming them. Unless helped by something supplied from outside the Roman world, civilization must have succ.u.mbed to these evils, the progress of mankind must have been stopped. What was needed was the introduction of a fierce spirit of personal liberty and local self-government. The essential vice of the Roman system was that it had been unable to avoid weakening the spirit of personal independence and crus.h.i.+ng out local self-government among the peoples to whom it had been applied. It owed its wonderful success to joining Liberty with Union, but as it went on it found itself compelled gradually to sacrifice Liberty to Union, strengthening the hands of the central government and enlarging its functions more and more, until by and by the political life of the several parts had so far died away that, under the pressure of attack from without, the Union fell to pieces and the whole political system had to be slowly and painfully reconstructed.

Now if we ask why the Roman government found itself thus obliged to sacrifice personal liberty and local independence to the paramount necessity of holding the empire together, the answer will point us to the essential and fundamental vice of the Roman method of nation-making.

It lacked the principle of representation. The old Roman world knew nothing of representative a.s.semblies. [Sidenote: It knew nothing of representation]

Its senates were a.s.semblies of notables, const.i.tuting in the main an aristocracy of men who had held high office; its popular a.s.semblies were primary a.s.semblies,--town-meetings. There was no notion of such a thing as political power delegated by the people to representatives who were to wield it away from home and out of sight of their const.i.tuents. The Roman's only notion of delegated power was that of authority delegated by the government to its generals and prefects who discharged at a distance its military and civil functions. When, therefore, the Roman popular government, originally adapted to a single city, had come to extend itself over a large part of the world, it lacked the one inst.i.tution by means of which government could be carried on over so vast an area without degenerating into despotism. [Sidenote: And therefore ended in despotism]