but the number of freemen increased so fast that this was almost at once (in October, 1630) found to be impracticable.  The right of choosing the governor and making the laws was then left to the Board of Assistants; and in May, 1631, it was further decided that the assistants need not be chosen afresh every year, but might keep their seats during good behaviour or until ousted by special vote of the freemen.  If the settlers of Massachusetts had been ancient Greeks or Romans, this would have been about as far as they could go in the matter; the choice would have been between a primary assembly and an assembly of notables.  It is curious to see Englishmen passing from one of these alternatives to the other.  But it was only for a moment.  The protest of the Watertown men came in time to check these proceedings, which began to have a decidedly oligarchical look.  To settle the immediate question of the tax, two deputies were sent from each settlement to advise with the Board of Assistants; while the power of choosing each year the governor and assistants was resumed by the freemen.  Two years later, in order to reserve to the freemen the power of making laws without interfering too much with the ordinary business of life, the colonists fell back upon the old English rural plan of electing deputies or representatives to a general court. [Sidenote:  The question as to self-government raised at Watertown]

At first the deputies sat in the same chamber with the assistants, but at length in 1644 they were formed into a second chamber with increased powers, and the way in which this important constitutional change came about is worth remembering, as an illustration of the smallness of the state which so soon was to play a great part in history.  As Winthrop puts it, “there fell out a great business upon a very small occasion.”  To a certain Captain Keayne, of Boston, a rich man deemed to be hard and overbearing toward the poor, there was brought a stray pig, whereof he gave due public notice through the town-crier, yet none came to claim it till after he had killed a pig of his own which he kept in the same stye with the stray.  A year having passed by, a poor woman named Sherman came to see the stray and to decide if it were one that she had lost.  Not recognizing it as hers, she forthwith laid claim to the slaughtered pig.  The case was brought before the elders of the church of Boston, who decided that the woman was mistaken.  Mrs. Sherman then accused the captain of theft, and brought the case before a jury, which exonerated the defendant with L3 costs.  The captain then sued Mrs. Sherman for defamation of character and got a verdict for L40 damages, a round sum indeed to assess upon the poor woman.  But long before this it had appeared that she had many partisans and supporters; it had become a political question, in which the popular protest against aristocracy was implicated.  Not yet browbeaten, the warlike Mrs. Sherman appealed to the General Court.  The length of the hearing