until the period of experimentation had passed, and a definite government in town and state decided upon. Probably such government was that of temporarily appointed committees, as at Springfield for ten years. Beyond this there is no evidence of official organization, but a constable, a collector and a commissioner for each town were selected by the central authority.

There seems, therefore, no evidence warranting the view of migrating towns. These settlements, like other colonial centres, grew naturally during a period of six years before they attained their full dignity as towns.

In examining the question as to what is meant by the use of such terms as independent sovereignties, pre-existent and theoretically independent bodies, etc.,1 we reach a problem of considerable complexity, perhaps too difficult for satisfactory discussion. It is evident that in such discussion we must accept the spirit as of equal value with the letter. The terms as used are too large; they mislead the casual reader. Understood in the loosest sense they may be applied to a body of planters in a primeval wilderness or on an isolated island. But union without organization or systematic corporate life cannot exemplify any principle of sovereignty. In the Austinian sense sovereignty must be determinate, must be habitually obeyed, must be free from the control of every other human superior. Here were three settlements united in the circle of colonial authority and included under one government. Each was, originally, potentially sovereign. Apart from their religious unity and close neighborhood, had there been no provisional government of 1636-7, no independent government of 1637-9, and no constitution of 1639, each of these settlements might have gone forward developing organized independence, crystalizing each into a sovereign town, one of which in a more monarchical and centralizing atmosphere, might, under favorable conditions,

1 Johnston, Connecticut, p. 76; Fiske, op. cit., p. 128; Bronson, Early Governinent in Connecticut, p. 299; New Haven Hist. Soc. Publ., III.

have extended the power of its own government and absorbed the others; or, having reached a stage of definite independence, all might have federated together and have fulfilled the conditions claimed for the Connecticut towns. But in fact such a course would have been manifestly impossible. The three settlements looked upon themselves as one colony, as one people; only as such did they possess sovereignty in the sense of the word apparently intended by its advocates. There were not three sovereignties, but one sovereignty. The towns were hardly recognized as independent political entities; they had not come as organized towns; they had not in any time in their development established any town constitution (as at Springfield), or organized any form of local government other than the meeting together by tacit consent to take common action in the management of their agricultural and military affairs. Such common action is the purest form of democracy, but we cannot turn a body of planters loose in the wilderness, even though in their clearing and building, sowing and fighting, they act together, and call them a completely organized town. These separate settlements were more than bodies of squatters, but less than organized communities. No one can doubt that in each there was seen a prospective town. For this reason each would have resisted any interference or coercion which would have destroyed its existence as a separate community, or have been jealous of any disproportionate arrangement which would have lessened its share in the general government. Each settlement desired and received a just recognition in all matters which concerned the whole. Beyond this, which is certainly not an exercise of anything like sovereignty, I do not conceive it possible that they could have gone or ever thought of going. Sovereignty is a fact, not a law or a right, and in their simple management of local affairs, I conceive them to have been subor dinated to the opinions and principles, tacitly understood, until more definitely formulated, which governed the

whole. This show of independence in the management of local affairs was due to the fact that in such management they never came into conflict with the whole body. It was a somewhat chaotic, experimental stage, when questions of settlement, defense and internal religious harmony were meeting with more attention than matters of civil government. The colonial records begin with 1636, and there is every reason to believe that no town acts were recorded before 1639.

But with the arrival of Mr. Hooker, plans of permanent government probably began to be formed for both town and colony. There was too much regard for the civil necessities of the new settlement for a matter of so much importance to be delayed longer. Yet two years and a half elapsed before such plans were carried out. With the opening of the year 1639 the people of Hartford came together and elected townsmen. The entry of this is the first formal town record. in the colony. Of course, this does not prove a first election, yet there is much reason to suppose that it was so. Accompanying the record of election, there is a kind of town constitution in seven sections, in which the town reserves certain definite rights to itself. The exactness of these reservations shows previous thought and experimentation, probably by previously appointed committees. It is doubtful whether the other towns did the same at once; if so, their official growth was slower, for when their records begin, some years later, townsmen are the only officials, while Hartford by that time had a fairly complete organization. Two weeks after the establishment of organized town government appeared the famous constitution, which Dr. Bacon and all after him have recognized as "the first example in history of a written constitution—a distinct organic law, constituting a government and defining its powers." Hooker, Ludlow and the others thus carried their plans concerning a permanent form of government in town and State to completion at about the same time. As the people of Hartford

had come together and elected their townsmen, giving them all authority, with certain reservations, so on January 14th, 1639, all the people of the colony, or as many as could be present, met at Hartford and adopted the constitution which their leaders had framed.

This reference to the fundamental articles brings me to the second question proposed for examination, Whether the source of the constitution was the towns or the people, and how far the theory of reserved rights can be deduced from that document. On the first point we have seen that the constitution was adopted in a mass meeting of all the people; upon this all writers agree. We are to suppose that they left their towns behind them and came together as the people of a single colony to organize a common government; that they did not come as representing their towns. But if there were no town lines dividing this assembly outwardly, we may well suppose that they carried their towns in their hearts, as the document itself shows, for Trumbull says it was adopted after mature deliberation. The following are the clauses of the preamble, which refer to the source and objects of the constitution. "We the Inhabitants and Residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the river of Connecticut and the lands thereunto adjoining, and well knowing where a people are gathered together, the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people, there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of the people at all seasons as occasion shall require; do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves to be one Public State or Commonwealth, and do for ourselves and our successors and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter in combination and confederation together to preserve the purity. of the Gospel, the discipline of the churches, and to be guided in civil affairs according to the orders laid down in the succeeding eleven articles."

I cannot find in these words any underlying conception of the towns as the sources of sovereignty. The constitution was the work of the people and for the people, and this natural interpretation is accepted by the majority of historical writers.1 After a careful study of the constitution, there seems no reason for the inference that the framers or the mass meeting which adopted it had any thought of a distinction between town sovereignty and popular sovereignty, but that the equality of the river towns was a necessary consequence both of the conditions of settlement and of the harmony and support between neighbors and kinsmen, and that so far as the Connecticut founders thought about the matter at all, they sought, in view of the contempt shown by the Massachusetts Court of Assistants for popular rights, to preserve these rights to the people. There is a distinct feeling in interpreting both the spirit and letter of the constitution that there was a power over and above the towns, "unto which the said towns are to be bound," as the eighth section says. This power was not created for the first time when the constitution was adopted-this concentrated and legalized it—but it had existed, and was understood to have existed, during the whole period. This was the power of a sovereign people, and I do not believe that the people of each town felt themselves at any time free from this superior authority. But these towns were recognized not only as organic parts of the colony, but as the peculiar form, indestructible and unchangeable, in which the colonial structure had been cast. Therefore there is throughout the constitution a clear declaration of town autonomy.

Before the adoption of the constitution the towns had a certain amount of original right, an independence in local matters, which was operative so long as they did not come

1 Except Doyle, Puritan Colonies, I, p. 159, and Fiske, Beginnings of New England, pp. 127-8. On the other hand see Trumbull, Hist. of Conn., I, p. 95; Sanford, Hist. of Conn., p. 32; Palfrey, Hist. of New England, I, p. 232; Deane, Narrative and Critical Hist. of America, III, p. 330; Tarbox, Memorial Hist. of Hartford County, I, p. 40; Johnston, Connecticut, p. 63.