The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the PeopleEggleston, Edward
History
The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the People
Eggleston, Edward
United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
death, and the Pierce Charter, which the Pilgrims took with them.
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 174.]
The charge against Sandys is in the Duke of Manchester's papers, Royal
Historical MS. Commission viii, II, 45. It is remarkable that the
dominant liberal faction in the Virginia Company is here accused of
seeking to do what the Massachusetts Company afterward did--to wit, to
found a popular American government by virtue of powers conferred in a
charter. That liberal government in New England had its rise in the
arrangements made with the London or Virginia Company before sailing,
and not, as poets, painters, and orators have it, in the cabin of the
Mayflower, is sufficiently attested in a bit of evidence, conspicuous
enough, but usually overlooked. Robinson's farewell letter to the
whole company, which reached them in England, is in Bradford, 64-67,
and in Mourt's Relation. It has several significant allusions to the
form of government already planned. "And lastly, your intended course
of civill communitie will minister continuall occasion of offence."
The allusion here seems to be to the joint-stock and communistic
system of labor and living proposed. In another paragraph the allusion
is to the system of government: "Whereas, you are become a body
politik, using amongst your selves civill governmente, and are not
furnished with any persons of spetiall emencie above the rest, to be
chosen by you into office of governmente," etc., "you are at present
to have only them for your ordinarie governours, which your selves
shall make choyse of for that worke." That the government under the
Virginia Company was to be democratic is manifest. The compact was a
means of giving it the sanction of consent where the patent and the
general order did not avail for that purpose.
[Sidenote: Note 6, page 176.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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