their brethren in Geneva.  The Bible was to them the ultimate standard of authority—­civil and religious.  The only restriction on suffrage was its being conditioned on church-membership.  They aspired, probably from Calvinistic influence, but aspired in vain, to establish a theocracy, borrowed somewhat from that of the Jews.  I do not agree with Mr. John Fiske, in his able and interesting history of the “Beginnings of New England,” that “the Puritan appealed to reason;” I think that the Bible was their ultimate authority in all matters pertaining to religion.  As to civil government, the reason may have had a great place in their institutions; but these grew up from their surroundings rather than from study or the experience of the past.  There was more originality in them than it is customary to suppose.  They were the development of Old England life in New England, but grew in many respects away from the parent stock.

The next thing of mark among the Colonists was their love of learning; all children were taught to read and write.  They had been settled at Plymouth, Salem, and Boston less than twenty years when they established Harvard College, chiefly for the education of ministers, who took the highest social rank in the Colonies, and were the most influential people.  Lawyers and physicians were not so well educated.  As for lawyers, there was but little need of them, since disputes were mostly settled either by the ministers or the selectmen of the towns, who were the most able and respectable men of the community.  What the theocratic Puritans desired the most was educated ministers and schoolmasters.  In 1641 a school was established in Hartford, Connecticut, which was free to the poor.  By 1642 every township in Massachusetts had a schoolmaster, and in 1665 every one embracing fifty families a common school.  If the town had over one hundred families it had a grammar school, in which Latin was taught.  It is probable, however, that the idea of popular education originated with the Dutch.  Elizabeth and her ministers did not believe in the education of the masses, of which we read but little until the 19th century.  As early as 1582 the Estates of Friesland decreed that the inhabitants of towns and villages should provide good and able Reformed schoolmasters, so that when the English nonconformists dwelt in Leyden in 1609 the school, according to Motley, had become the common property of the people.

The next thing we note among the Colonists of New England is the confederation of towns and their representation in the Legislature, or the General Court.  This was formed to settle questions of common interest, to facilitate commerce, to establish a judicial system, to devise means for protection against hostile Indians, to raise taxes to support the common government.  The Legislature, composed of delegates chosen by the towns, exercised most of the rights of sovereignty, especially in the direction of military affairs and the collection of revenue.