Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1883 — Communal Sovereignty in the Colonies. [ARTICLE]

Communal Sovereignty in the Colonies.

It is a matter of profound interest to observe that whatever may be the variations among these early settlements, we find everywhere the distinct traces of the old English village communities, which again are traced by Freeman and others to a Swiss or German origin. The founders of the first New England towns did not simply settle themselves upon the principle of “squatter sovereignty,” each for himself; but they founded municipal organizations, based on a common control of the land. So systematically was this carried out that in an old town like Cambridge, Mass., for instance, it would be easy at this day, were all the early tax lists missing, to determine the comparative worldly condition of the different settlers simply by comparing the proportion which each had to maintain of the great “pallysadoe” or paling which surrounded the little settlement. These amounts varied from seventy rods, in case of the richest, to two rods, in case of the poorest; and so well was the work done that the traces of the “fosse” about the paling still remain in the willow-trees on the play-ground of the Harvard students. These early settlers simply reproduced, with a few necessary modifications, those local institutions which had come to them from remote ancestors. The town paling the town meeting, the town common, the town pound, the fehce-viewers, the .field drivers, the militia fhuster, even the tip-staves of the constables, are of institutions .older than the Norman/ con quest: iiiof , -England. Even the most matter-m-faci transao- . tions of their daily life, is the transfer of land by giving a pi&e of.’ tuff, an instance of which occured at Salem, Mass., in 1696, sometimes carty-us back to .usages absolutely mediaeval-—in this case to the transfer “by turf and twig” so familiar to historians. All that the New England settlers added to their traditional institutions —and it was a great addition—was the system of com7mon schools. Beyond New England the analogies with inherited custon are, according to Prof. Freeman, less clean and unmistakable; but Prof. Herbert B. Adams has lately shown that the Southern “parish” and “county,” the South Carolina “court-green” and “common pastures,” as well as the Maryland “manors” and “oourt-leets,” all represent the same inherited principle of communal sovereignty. All these traditional institutions are now being carefully studied, with promise of the most interesting results, by a rising school of historical students in the United States. — T. W. Higginson, in Harper’s Magazine.