As Massachusetts grew to be the most prosperous of the northern colonies, she “echoed the voice of Virginia like deep calling unto deep. The State was filled with the hum of village politicians; the freemen of every town on the Bay were busily inquiring into their liberties and privileges.” [Bancroft.] The American spirit, which was to leaven the world with a new ideal of liberty, found its philosophers and statesmen in the farms and hamlets of the young and simple community. It found, of course, its critics and its doubters. Lechford, a Boston lawyer, prophesied that “elections cannot be safe long here,” where manhood suffrage was the rule. John Cotton spoke against the accepted principle of rotation in office; but neither could stem the current of democratic doctrine, because the early settlers of America still retained the scars of their recent conflict with the aristocrats of Europe. Their arrival in the then wilderness of America had been too recent to obliterate the impression made on their minds by “caste” in Europe. In 1635, there was a short-lived possibility that the aristocratic system of Britain might be transplanted to Massachusetts. Henry Vane, younger son of a titled English family, emigrated to the colony, where he was kindly received, and elected governor a few years after; and two noblemen, Lord Brooke and Lord Say-and-Seal, expressed their intention to follow him if the colonists would agree to establish a second chamber of their legislature and constitute them hereditary members of it. But the burgesses, easily perceiving the trend of such a proposal, declined it, courteously but decidedly. Aristocracy never found a foothold in any of the colonies. The only approach to it was the privileges accorded in some of them to the “proprietors,” and these were, while they lasted, regarded with some jealousy. For instance, when Pennsylvania, after Braddock’s defeat at Fort Duquesne, decided to raise £50,000 for self-defence by an estate tax, the proprietors--heirs of William Penn--claimed exemption from the levy; but, though Governor Morris approved the claim, the Assembly refused it. Bancroft thus characterizes the elemental beginnings of the American nation: “Nothing came from Europe but a free people. The people, separating itself from all other elements of previous civilization; the people, self-confident and industrious; the people, wise by all traditions that favored its culture and happiness--alone broke away from European influence, and in the New World laid the foundations of our Republic.” And periodically, as we see from the records of our nation, the might of the majority has been exercised to suppress anything like the attempted institution of “caste” in our country. This often-recurring crime begins to upraise its head, slowly at first, after each defeat, but eventually its growth becomes sufficiently great to attract the attention of the “Common People,” and, as a result, receives its punishment, so justly due.