USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 2 > Part 21
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None of these acts brought revenue into the treasury of the province. The rates imposed were not as high as the colonists had already accepted in acts which their own legislature had passed. For example, the English tax on tea was only 3 pence as compared with 6 pence per pound in the Province Act of 1756.
The quarrel as to who should have the right to initiate taxation, England or the Province, overshadowed all other issues. Under these conditions it was impossible to develop a well-rounded tax system including property, excise, and import duties, which could be relied upon to meet the needs of government, particularly in times of emergency such as the Province was soon to face.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
BELCHER, JONATHAN .- The Belcher Papers (2 vols., Mass Historical Society, Collections, Sixth Series, Vols. VI-VII, Boston, 1893-1894)- Reprint of Governor Belcher's letterbooks for 1731-1743.
BULLOCK, CHARLES JESSE .- Essays on the Monetary History of the United States (N. Y., Macmillan, 1900)-Especially chap. IV, valuable for its notes and references to primary sources.
DAVIS, ANDREW MCFARLAND .- Currency and Banking in the Province of Massachusetts Bay (2 vols., Macmillan, 1901)-First issued as Am. Economic Assoc., Publications, Third Series, Vol. I, No. 4, and Vol. II, No. 2. Volume I deals with currency, Vol. II with banking.
DAVIS, ANDREW MCFARLAND, editor .- Tracts Relating to the Currency of the Massachusetts Bay, 1682-1720 (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1902)- A reprint of eighteen pamphlets, with notes.
DEWEY, DAVIS RICH .- Financial History of the United States (N. Y., Longmans, Green, 1903)-Chapter I deals with colonial finance.
DOUGLAS, CHARLES HENRY JAMES .- The Financial History of Massachu- setts from the Organisation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to the American Revolution. (Columbia Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, Vol. I, No. 4, N. Y.)-Deals particularly with the administrative phases of taxation, and has a chapter on lotteries. See especially pp. 56-146.
DOUGLAS, WILLIAM .- A Discourse Concerning the Currencies of the British Plantations in America. Particularly In Relation to the Prov- ince of the Massachusetts-Bay, in New England (London, T. Cooper, 1739: reprinted in Am. Economic Assoc., Economic Studies, Vol. 2, No. 5, pp. 265-375, 1897)-Edited by Charles J. Bullock.
FELT, JOSEPH B .- An Historical Account of Massachusetts Currency (Bos- ton, Perkins & Marvin, 1839)-For the provincial period see pp. 49-161. FELT, JOSEPH B .- "Statistics of Taxation in Massachusetts" (Am. Statisti- cal Assoc., Collections, Vol. I, pp. 263-416, Boston, 1847).
HUTCHINSON, THOMAS .- History of the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay from 1628. Until 1691 (Boston, Thomas and John Fleet, 1764).
HUTCHINSON, THOMAS .- History of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay from 1691, Until 1750 (Boston, Thomas and John Fleet, 1767).
HUTCHINSON, THOMAS .- History of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, from 1749 to 1774 (London, John Murray, 1828)-Published post- humously.
KIMBALL, EVERETT .- The Public Life of Joseph Dudley; A Study of the Colonial Policy of the Stuarts in New England, 1660-1715 (Harvard Historical Studies, Vol. XV, N. Y., Longmans, Green, 1911)-See chap. VIII on currency and banking problems during Dudley's adminis- tration.
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
MASSACHUSETTS (Commonwealth) .- Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay (21 vols., Boston, 1869- 1922)-Particularly valuable are the notes at the end of each year's legislation.
PALFREY, JOHN GORHAM .- History of New England (5 vols., Boston, Little, Brown, 1858-1890)-See Vol. V for accounts of the administration of the several governments.
TRUMBULL, JAMES HAMMOND, AND GREEN, SAMUEL S.,-"Remarks on the First Essays at Banking in New England" (Am. Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, New Series, Vol. III, pp. 266-299, Worcester, 1885).
WEEDEN, WILLIAM B .- Economic and Social History of New England, 1620- 1789 (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1891)-See particularly Vol. I, pp. 379-387, and Vol. II, pp. 473-491, for the monetary history of the period.
CHAPTER VIII
BOSTON : THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TOWN
BY SHERWIN LAWRENCE COOK Former President Bay State Historical League
THE SITE
If in 1750 or thereabouts an observer had been on a trading ship beating into the harbor of the chief colonial town in America, his ship, even as today, would have passed Point Allerton and made its way westward through the channel among the islands that (except for George's, which was then Pemberton) have the same names today : Long, Deer, Rayns- ford, Governors, Castle and the like. The visitor would have noticed that they comprised green, well tilled, pleasant acres, seemly sentinels of the mainland. Nearing the end of his journey up the harbor he would have discovered, off the port side of his vessel, the forbidding brick castle which had re- placed the old mud fort, and which for its day was a fine fortification. Long since it gave way to the granite Fort Independence, now of no strategic or military value. "An honorable outwork but much too near the citadel." A leg or two more would bring him to the town, standing serene on and between its three famous hills, its many church spires testify- ing to the piety of the majority of its citizens.
The stranger would have found Boston a town which might be practically mapped between the lines of a diamond-shaped quadrilateral. The distance approximately north and south, to speak by local markings, from Capt. Greenough's Ship Yard to the fortification across Roxbury Neck, was about two miles, if we are to trust Prince's map of 1769. From east to west, from the south battery to Barton's Point was about a mile and a half. Except for the narrow neck on the road to Roxbury, not quite an eighth of a mile in width, Boston was
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PUBLIC BUILDINGS
surrounded by water and flats : on the east, the South Bay and the Harbor proper; the Charles River on the northwest; and the Roxbury Flats on the southwest.
If the visitor landed at Long Wharf, he went up King Street to Cornhill where, dividing King Street into two narrow lanes at its head, stood the Town House, the brick structure which replaced the wooden edifice in which the flock of Rev. Mr. Ratcliffe shared possession with the Colonial authorities in the days of Dudley and Andros. This so-called "old State House," survivor of several fires, is stand- ing today. Cornhill was the name of but one section of Boston's main street, which now under the generic name of Washington Street spans the city from north to south and extends to Providence, Rhode Island. Starting from Green- ough's Ship Yard at the north of the town, one could walk along North Street, then to Middle, and turning in a slight angle pass into Union Street (not the Union Street of today), traverse Dock Square, and then go directly along Cornhill, Marlboro, Newbury and Orange Streets to the southern ex- tremity of the town.
Or one might follow Middle Street till it merged into Hannover, then from Hannover turn south and walk straight on parallel with Cornhill and its continuances for about a half mile on Tremount and Common Streets, where a turn to the left brought you through Frog Lane to Orange Street again and then over the neck to Roxbury. There were streets between these thoroughfares, streets leading up from the water front, streets down to the River in the north end, some bearing the names they bear today : School, Summer, Winter, West, Milk, Water, Sudbury, Prince, and the like. Here in build- ings of wood and brick with yards large or small about them, with shops and mills and the copper works and ship yards on the waterfront, lived about 18,000 Bostonians.
PUBLIC BUILDINGS
Except for churches the public buildings were not many. At the head of Milk Street on Marlborough Street was the governor's mansion, the famous Province House. Court was held in the Town House, and culprits confined in the bridewell
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on Beacon Street near the Common. The Alms-house faced the Common and the town Granary was just adjacent. The North and South Grammar Schools and the North and South Writing Schools were on School and Common Streets re- spectively. Not far from Dock Square was perhaps the first colonial experiment in a municipal auditorium, the Hall and Market which Boston owed to the munificence of Peter Faneuil.
But what in 1750 Boston lacked in mundane edifices it made up in churches, seventeen in all. Though the old Puritan church as a political control had gone by the board, the Puritan Congregational faith survived. And although this doctrine was here and there ameliorated in practice and although some of these churches had come out of others because of this tendency, the great majority of these edifices housed congrega- tions which traced back their ancestry to the Old Brick Church on Cornhill diagonally across the street from the Town House, the first church in Boston. Among them were the Old South, the Old North (not the present Christ Church), the New North, the New Brick, the New South, the Brattle Street, the West Church, and the Hollis Street.
Three Episcopalian places of worship existed-the King's Chapel, Christ Church which we call the Old North Church to-day, and Trinity on Summer Street at the corner of Bishop's Alley, now Hawley Street. Tho oldest non-Puritan orthodox body was the Anabaptist, whose meeting house was at the edge of the Mill Pond, reached by Back Street. Some North of Ireland Presbyterians had a modest edifice near the rope- walk; and on School Street was the little church of the French Huguenots. Even the despised and once persecuted Quakers now occupied their meeting place on Everett's Lane between King Street and Water Street.
Here the Boston ministers inspired, awed, antagonized as the case might be; Chauncy, Sewall, Jonathan Mayhew, Mather Byles, and the rest. "Besides the regular services in the churches," says Dr. Alexander McKenzie in The Memorial History of Boston, "there were lectures and private meetings and catechisings by which the Word was divided to the people according to their condition." Certainly the service of Christ, genuine or counterfeit, played a great part in Boston life.
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HARBORS AND WHARVES
MARKET HOUSES
Three market houses had been built in Boston in the early days and were later torn down. No market house existed in 1740 when Peter Faneuil, the greatest of Boston's early bene- factors, offered to erect such a building and present it to the town. Why this offer was not eagerly accepted is hard to say ; but it took two sessions of a town meeting (which was so large that it adjourned from the town house, as was often its wont, to one of the churches, Brattle Street on this occasion) before a vote could be got accepting the offer. Even then it was passed by a narrow margin, the tally showing 367 in favor and 360 against.
It is a fine commentary on Faneuil's faith in his adopted city that he was not discouraged by this unenthusiastic accept- ance of his gift; but he enlarged his plans and finally put up the market house and public auditorium which, with the later enlargement, bears his name. In its original state Faneuil Hall accommodated a thousand people, but the time was com- ing when that apparently ample assembly room would be too small for the throngs of deeply moved citizens assembled in town meeting to consider the wrongs they conceived them- selves to be suffering at the hands of the mother country.
The first annual town meeting held in Faneuil Hall listened to a eulogy on Faneuil given by Master Lovell of the Latin School; for Faneuil had died soon after the completion of the building.
HARBOR AND WHARVES
Ringed around the town was its circle of wharves and ship- yards. New England was not to know for many years the quickening touch of manufacturing, and her prosperity was mainly agricultural. Therefore, the chief city would naturally be commercial. A glance at any map of New England of sufficient detail will show at the most casual glance that Boston was destined to be the metropolis of this section. Alongside an almost landlocked harbor stretched the Trimount peninsula, which by reason of its conformation had an un- usually long waterfront. In the mouths of the Charles and Mystic Rivers lay anchorages deep and safe-a predestined seafaring town. To add to its obligation to the sea, Boston
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developed thriving fisheries which brought in daily large catches.
Back and forth up and down the harbor went an endless procession of craft, ships, brigs, and now obsolete "snows" which only seafarers could tell from brigs, sloops and schooners. Some traded with the mother country, some were bound to and from the West Indies, some in the nearer coast- wise trade. All were carrying away the agricultural products of New England, hard wrung from a reluctant soil, and bringing in the textile and metal manufactures she most needed in exchange.
THE SUBURBS
As one mounted Beacon Hill and looked southward, subur- ban Boston unfolded itself. Beyond Mr. Hancock's fine new mansion opposite the Common, stretched what was in effect a country estate. The Common with the powder house and watch house upon its little hilltop, reached down to the Roxbury flats. Frog Lane (now Boylston Street) was bordered with orchards; and from the Beacon could be seen Orange Street with its houses far apart, stretching out to the fortification across the neck. Among the notable estates was the Frank- land House on Garden Court Street; the Gardner Green estate on Pemberton Hill; the Hutchinson House, destined to de- struction at the hands of a Boston mob. In all, this compact peninsula had in the middle of the eighteenth century over six- teen hundred houses and about thirty warehouses. Just be- yond the water boundaries of the town was a ring of gently rising hills; and nestled among these green walls were the suburban towns, Charles Town between the Charles and the Mystic, reached from the North End by a busy ferry. To the east was the end of Noddle's Island and up the Mystic was Chelsea, the Rumney Marsh which had once been Winnisemett. On the southwest came Cambridge, Brighton, Brookline, Rox- bury, and that part of Dorchester now called South Boston. These were all thriving towns, which had much in common with the larger community, some furnishing country homes to Boston citizens and others being the domicile of the business men of Boston.
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COLOR LINE
RACE ELEMENTS AND INFLUENCE
In fact what Lodge says in his Boston with regard to that town toward the end of the seventeenth century, was nearly as true during the eighteenth: "It was distinctly an English town. The migration had been an unmixed one; and although the people had left their native country on account of religious differences, they had brought with them all their habits, customs and modes of thought, which they had inherited from their ancestors, and to which they were profoundly attached. The names which they gave to their coun- ties and towns and even to the streets were English names, taken from well-beloved places which they had left .. They planted English fruits and English flowers in their gardens, they filled their houses with English furniture and built them in the style of English domestic architecture. But, although in these ways they manifested their attachment to the homes which they had left, in matters more essential than houses and clothes and furniture, they showed that the spirit of a new country was upon them, and that they were seeking to lay the foundation of a new nation among the people of the earth."
By the time the eighteenth century was well under way, the English predominance had been somewhat diluted by accre- tions from the North of Ireland and the Huguenots, both of which elements were numerous enough to maintain churches of their own. Whether the architectural and personal appearance of the town was due to the attachment of the people or to their turning naturally to the building up of conditions to which they were accustomed, Boston, in 1750, still had the look of all English towns, and the acts of the settlers, however much they disagreed with the acts and thoughts of their brothers at home, had an English tinge.
COLOR LINE
The city which was to become an abolition center in the nineteenth century, though not without disorderly protest, had its "color problem" two centuries ago. In 1723 the Town Meeting voted to recommend to the General Court an act for the restraint of "Indians, Negroes and mulattoes." Such persons were to receive no visits from slaves; and fining, im-
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prisonment and whipping were the penalties. They might possess no firearms or ammunition, nor were they allowed to sell "Strong drink, Cake or any other Provision" on training days. It was further provided that these people should bind out their children at four years of age to some English master ; and upon failure to do this, the selectmen or overseers of the poor should be empowered so to bind them out. If they were found in possession of any stolen property or property of a slave, they should not only be whipped and make restitution, but be expelled from the Province, and liable to life imprison- ment if they returned. If they committed theft they were to be shipped over seas. They were forbidden to gather together on the streets and were punished for loitering. They could not work as porters except by permission of the selectmen. As- sault was punishable by transportation. When fires broke out, they must stay indoors. These offences could not be proved by Negro and Indian' evidence unsupported; but the whites were encouraged to interest themselves in the enforcement of these provisions, inasmuch as it was provided that half the fines and forfeitures under the regulations should go to the informer.
Slavery forces itself on the attention of the readers of Bos- ton newspapers. In 1746 the Boston Evening Post tells us that there are "To be sold near Oliver's Bake-House, just by the South Battery in Boston, a number of very likely NEGRO BOYS and GIRLS, just imported from Guinea," and a few months later a "fine female negro child, of a good breed" is advertised "to be given away."
DISEASE AND MEDICINE
That smallpox was a much feared menace is amply attested. Dr. Boylston, in the New England Weekly Journal, gives a list of those inoculated by him in March, 1730-this com- prising fifty-seven whites and fifteen blacks: "Upon one of these, namely Mr. John Salter, the Inoculation had no effect; 'tis suppos'd he had the distemper before. Two of them died, viz. Capt. Deering's Son, and Mr. Thomas Boylston's Negro. The rest pass'd thro' the Distemper without the subse- quent Ails, which sometimes happen from their Incisions."
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EDUCATION
Still the good doctor acknowledged that the effect was not so "kind and easy" as he had found it when he last visited the town nine years previously. At best it was a hard experience for the patient, who was inoculated in those days with genuine smallpox virus, went through what was generally a light at- tack of the malignant disease. You can read in these papers frequent warnings inserted by the town clerk of the existence of the disease in certain families "where Flags are hung out, according to law."
The death rate must have been high, inasmuch as it is recorded that in Boston, about the middle of the eighteenth century, there were 1,200 widows, 200 of whom were con- sidered "poor." Negroes, slave and free, counted 1,500.
EDUCATION
A distinction of Boston was the school system. The Boston school system was based, at first, on the theory that a school should be maintained under town auspices for pupils whose families would assist in its support,-a theory which broadened out into the principle of universal education as a necessity to the state. It began almost as early as the town itself. The system was fairly well established in the eighteenth century with schools at convenient points. There were grammar schools and writing schools at both the North and South Ends of the town. The general system of free public schools was not established as a system till long after the foundation of the Boston Latin School. It came through a vote of the town passed in December of 1682. Neither the extent of the educa- tion nor the number of pupils in these schools, in comparison with the total population, were impressive, judged from the modern point of view. Nevertheless they were exceedingly impressive when compared with the mother country or the towns of other colonies, or even with certain small Massa- chusetts towns which took their cue from Boston, and did their best, while unable to carry the system so successfully. Free education did not mean, in those days, education without cost. Families that could afford to pay fees were expected to do so. Nor did it mean freedom of education for the female sex. If a girl grew up an educated and brilliant woman,-as many
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did,-it was due to family instruction, to attendance at a pri- vate school, to private preceptors or to her own insatiable curiosity and indefatigable industry. Not until 1789 were girls admitted to the free schools of Boston; and then not on an equality with the boys, but only during the period from April to October when the warm weather made the lads neces- sary in their parents' labor.
Masters were appointed by town meeting and the necessary details of school support were enacted there as well. The curriculum was simple. No school committee established it; the masters took care of that. They were under no super- intendent or staff of assistants. They charted their course themselves and dealt only with the town itself. The writing schools were the more elementary; and the grammar school graduates were supposed to be ready for college, if their parents could afford it.
JOURNALISM
The eighteenth century was a time of enlargement of the newspapers. The influence of daily journalism at the end of the century, as compared with its early beginning, was tre- mendous. Even toward the end of the period, however, there was nothing remotely approaching sensationalism or even journalistic exuberance. On the critical morning when Joseph Warren delivered his famous Boston Massacre oration in 1775, he climbed, it is said, to the pulpit through the window. He dropped his lace handkerchief quietly over the handful of bullets held up to him by a British officer. This exciting and picturesque hour would satisfy even the "human interest" reporter of the present; but the published account is brief and formal. Nothing is quoted from the speech.
A view of the life of the times may be had from the adver- tisements in the Boston papers of the period: The Boston News-Letter, The Boston Gazette, New England Courant, New England Weekly Journal and the rest.
An episode which no doubt made some stir in town comes to light through an advertisement in the News-Letter in 1722. The Court of Admiralty, under the date of September 1, gives notice as follows: "Whereas a Whale, much Decayed and Wasted, was found floating near the Brewster, and towed
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SCALE OF LIVING
on shoar last Month, in which was found by the Cutters up, a Ball. If any Person can lay Claim to said Whale, so as to make out a Properity; These are to Notefy such person to appear at the Court of Admiralty, to be Holden in Boston, on the last Wednesday in this Month, at three o'clock in the Afternoon, to make out his Claim, otherwise the said Whale (or the neat Produce thereof) will be deem'd as a Perquisite of Admiralty."
"John Boydell, Register."
The advertisements of new books are typical of the century : among them accounts of the history of criminals executed "with some of their Dying Speeches, Collected and Published, for the warning of such as live in Destructive Courses of Ungodliness." The reader might buy John Cotton's Spiritual Milk for Boston Babies, or A Sure Way to Wealth by the Reverend Daniel Burgess. Barbers, wine merchants, horse dealers, tradesmen all offer their wares and give us a picture of the lively traffic of the New England seaport.
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