Main currents in American thought

Great changes, whether liberal or otherwise as the future might determine, were to come to Massachusetts from the new order with its Charter provision establishing a property qualification for suffrage. The venture in idealism was over and economic determinism reasserted its sway. New England was to swing back into the broad current of English political development. Following the Revolution of 1688 a new theory of the political state was rising in England—the theory that the state originated in private property and exists primarily for the protection of property; and this conception, thrust upon New England, was to cut sharply across the cleavages of the old order and create new ones. It substituted the dominance of wealth for the stewardship of righteousness; the stake-in-society principle for the Mosaic code. It set a premium upon acquisitiveness and subordinated the Puritan to the Yankee. It prepared the way for class alignments which must grow sharper with the increase of wealth, and would eventually produce a Tory group with natural longings for titles and a colonial aristocracy. How powerful this mercantile-Tory element was to become would depend upon the counter strength of the rising democratic group, with its freehold tenure of land, its town meeting, its Congregational church, and its distrust of aristocratic orders.

For the present, the world of John Wise was the real New England, thrifty, parsimonious, intensely local, driving straight towards a homespun democracy. The older fashioned New Englander, whatever his social position, did not take kindly to Toryism; and when it made its appearance in the train of the royal officials, swaggering somewhat and a bit insolent, it seemed to the colonial both alien and wicked. English Tory and Puritan Yankee frankly disliked each other; their ideals were incompatible, their manners unlike. A cloud of suspicion surrounded the English official as he walked the streets of Boston: suspicion of the hated church which he promptly set up, though not much given to worship; suspicion of his political motives and the overseas authority which he represented. In a vague way the New Englanders were convinced that he constituted a menace to their most cherished rights and privileges; that he was secretly bent on undermining the traditional liberties. And the English gentleman, with his casual old-world arrogance, unwittingly aggravated the common suspicion.

How great was the chasm that separated the two worlds is sharply revealed by an episode in the career of Joseph Dudley, son of the emigrant, who was made royal governor in 1702. Dudley had lived much in England, had sat in Parliament, and had imbibed prerogative notions of government. He little relished the homely ways of New England and he bore himself somewhat haughtily. One December day in 1705, as he was driving along a country road with high snowdrifts on each side, he met with two loads of wood. The chariot coming to a stop, Dudley thrust his head out of the window and bade the carters turn aside and make way for him; but they were inclined to argue the matter in view of the drifts. Words were multiplied, and one of the carters cried—to quote Sewall—“I am as good flesh and blood as you ... you may goe out of the way.” In a rage the governor drew his sword and struck at the fellow, who snatched the sword away and broke it. “You lie, you dog; you lie, you devill!” cried Dudley, beside himself. “Such words don’t become a Christian,” retorted the carter. “A Christian, you dog!” cried Dudley; “a Christian, you devill! I was a Christian before you were born!” and he snatched the carter’s whip and lashed him roundly. “Being in a great passion: threatn’d to send those that affronted him to England.” He arrested both carters and threw them into jail, whence they were released by the help of Sewall, who took their side though connected with Dudley through marriage.

Village New England was becoming surprisingly independent in spirit when plain countrymen stood upon their rights against the Governor—“nor did they once in the Govrs ... sight pull of their hatts,” as Dudley took pains to inform the Queen’s justices. Three generations in America were having their effect in the creation of a homespun democracy. “Mr. Dudley’s principles, in government, were too high for the Massachusetts people,” commented a later Tory, whose own principles were high:

It was during these troubled years that a new force made its appearance in Massachusetts which Sewall noted: “Sept. 25 [1690]. A printed sheet entituled publick Occurrences comes out, which gives much distaste because not Licensed....” A week later he added: “Print of the Governour and Council comes out shewing their disallowance of the Public Occurrences”; and the next day, “Mr. Mather writes a very sharp letter about it.” This was Increase Mather, who would tolerate no such lawlessness of the press, which must be kept as a private preserve for the orthodox party. Against the Mather conservatism it was impossible to make headway, and the little sheet did not come to a second issue. Not till fourteen years later did Sewall set down a similar note: “April 24 [1704]. I went to Cambridge.... I gave Mr. Willard the first News-Letter that ever was carried over the River. He shew’d it to the Fellows.” So began in America, at first unlawfully, and then with due propriety, the work of making and publishing newspapers. For seventy-two years thereafter, the News-Letter was published continuously, justifying in all its utterances the confidence of Boston conservatism, espousing naturally the Tory side in the pre-Revolutionary quarrels, and coming to a sudden end on the evacuation of Boston by General Gage.

On December 14, 1719, the Boston Gazette entered the field as a competitor for conservative readers, and two years later, August 17, 1721, the New England Courant appeared, the first organ of the opposition. It was edited by James Franklin, who possessed much of the Franklin independence, untempered by the prudence of Benjamin; and he set himself incautiously to the business of assailing the strait-laced authorities of Boston. He got together a group of brisk young men, known as the Hell-fire Club, who flung their vivacious satires at the Mathers with such effect as to lead Cotton Mather to undertake the following “Good Device”:

Although his prayers could not convert the wicked journalists, his warnings availed with the magistrates, who took means to put a stop to such disrespect. Twice Franklin was arraigned for contempt, and once he spent four weeks in the common jail. By way of counterblast to so disreputable a sheet, the New England Weekly Journal appeared on March 20, 1727, an eminently respectable sheet, edited by Mather Byles and with such notable contributors as the Reverend Thomas Prince. But with the coming of the Journal with its staff of writers who modeled their style upon the Augustan wits, we are in the mid-current of the eighteenth century, that was to enlarge the influence of the public press far beyond what could have been foreseen from its small beginnings. It was to penetrate the inland villages and slowly wear away their insularity of temper and outlook, bringing fresh ideas to minds that had long stagnated. On the whole it was not a liberal press, but its final effect was profoundly liberalizing.