USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 36
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The separation of the General Assembly into two houses in 1696 did not establish for each chamber the complete independence and control of its membership that prevails in most modern bicameral organizations. In 1703 the Assembly met in grand committee to discuss the right of Christopher Allen of Westerly, to a seat as Deputy, and decided in his favor. When, in 1711, four freemen from Westerly presented credentials as Deputies signed by the town clerk, the Assembly in grand committee voted not to seat any because Westerly, under the Charter, was entitled to only two Deputies. Again, in 1719, the Assembly voted that two returned as Deputies from Providence were not "qualified to sit as members of this General Court of Assembly." Until 1713 the Deputies had chosen a Speaker and Clerk; in that year it was enacted that the clerk should "be chosen by the major vote of the house of rep- resentatives, with the approbation of the Governor and the house of magistrates." Later in the same year, the clerk act was repealed, and the Deputies in 1714 resumed their right to choose their own officers. The act of 1713 is of particular interest because of the use of the term "house of representatives," years in anticipation of the time in which this title was assumed by the more numerous branch of the General Assembly.
ELECTION MACHINERY; PROPERTY QUALIFICATION-"Taking into their consideration the great abuse and clandestine proceedings and irregular practice, as they are credibly informed, hath been acted by sundry loose and fractious freemen of the said colony, in put- ting or delivering into the hat sometimes two, three or more votes for one officer at the gen- eral elections and other town elections," the General Assembly ordered in 1714 that all ballots be signed with "his name at length on the back side of his vote" by the freeman. In the following year the law was repealed because it "hath given great dissatisfaction and uneasi- ness to many of the good people of this colony, who deem it a very great hardship to have their names exposed upon such occasions, to the creating of animosity and heart-burning of their particular friends." The secrecy of the ballot was thus preserved, but the Assembly directed that election officers shall "make preparations for the election, shall order and appoint
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the way and manner of voting for general officers in the best and most regular method they shall judge most proper to prevent frauds." Proxy votes must still be signed, delivered to the town clerk in public town meeting, and sealed up in a packet to be forwarded to the Gen- eral Assembly. Penalties were prescribed for casting more than one vote in elections, and for voting or trying to vote by persons not freemen. The remarkable increase in population during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, including as it did large numbers of per- sons drawn from other colonies, many of whom were transients, attracted by the apparent prosperity of the paper money period, suggested other measures than those dealing with fraud to protect the colony from control at the "hat," which was the ballot box of the time, by those who were not attached to the soil on the basis of reasonable permanency. As early as 1665 freemanship had been granted to persons of competent estates; in February, 1723- 1724, the qualification for town freemen, who became colony freemen by formal presentation and election, was established as freehold ownership of land valued at £100, or an annual income derived from land amounting to forty shillings. The eldest son of a freeholder qualified on the same land that qualified the father. The qualification was not retroactive in the sense of disfranchising anybody; those who were freemen before continued as freemen. In colony elections colony freemen voted for general officers and Assistants; an attempt to restrict voting for Deputies in town meetings to colony freemen, excluding town freemen who had not been made free of the colony, was abandoned as impracticable. The distinction suggests the provision in the Constitution of the United States, which gives to the states such control of suffrage qualifications that persons who are citizens of a state and who are quali- fied to vote in the state for members of the most numerous branch of the state legislature, may vote in congressional elections, though not citizens of the United States. Withal the control of communities was no longer so completely with the towns as it had been in 1682, when the General Assembly declared that a person wishing to settle in a Rhode Island town might be rejected and warned by the town council to depart unless a sufficient bond was offered. The declaration was confirmed by statute in 1709, but modified nine years later by a statute which declared "that whosoever hath, or shall have, £50 real estate within any town of this government, such person shall not be refused as an inhabitant therein, at any time when he shall remove thither to dwell." Inhabitants wishing to depart from the colony were required by an act passed in 1712 to give public notice thereof ten days before going, lest creditors be defrauded. At the expiration of ten days, if no objection were made, the town magistrate might issue a certificate. In the event of departure by water the certificate must be filed with the Governor or Deputy Governor at Newport, who was authorized to issue a permit to embark. At the naval office in Newport registers of the names of persons sailing, the vessels transporting them and their destination were kept.
PUBLIC PROPERTY-The colony house built in Newport in 1690 was repaired and reno- vated in 1709. Three years later the house was further improved to make it "commodious and convenient . ... both in summer and winter," and a room sixteen feet square and eight to nine feet stud was built on the side for "His Honor and Council to sit in." The purpose was to provide an additional chamber to accommodate the Assembly in its bicameral organi- zation. The General Treasurer was ordered, in 1724, to "get a balcony built at the colony's house; the whole front of the house ten or twelve feet wide, supported with good pillars, at the colony's charge." Next year the building of the balcony was stopped and the timber was ordered sold. The General Treasurer was directed to "build and make such tables, seats and other necessaries as shall be convenient for the Deputies." Three years later, seats and conveniences were ordered for the chamber "for the accommodation of the Deputies, where they commonly sit." Weston Clarke, Recorder, and Francis Pope, Sheriff, at their own expense, built a small room in the colony house for the keeping of court rolls and other records; in 1715 the colony repaid Weston Clarke and the heirs of Francis Pope for making
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this improvement. The approaches to the colony house were unsatisfactory. Hence, in 1715, part of the proceeds of the impost on negroes in the hands of the collector at Newport was appropriated for the purpose of paving the streets of Newport leading from the ferry landing to the colony house; thereafter for seven years one-third of the impost was appropriated for paving other streets in Newport as the capital or metropolitan town of the colony. In 1730, half the impost on negroes was devoted to paving. The improvement was quite as necessary as esthetic; the streets of old Newport were described as muddy with filth and sink drainage, which was splashed by passing vehicles, for "the spoiling and damnifying of people's apparell."
With the division of the colony into three counties (1729) two other colony or court- houses were ordered, one to be located on Tower Hill in South Kingstown, the other in Providence on a site satisfactory to the town. The General Assembly met in the colony house at South Kingstown for the first time on October 31, 1733. The South Kingstown Court- house was replaced by another on Kingston or Little Rest Hill, 1752. The South Kings- town Courthouse was ordered torn down and replaced in 1774, and the new building, still standing near the entrance to Rhode Island State College, was completed in 1776. It was voted in 1735 that "George Taylor have full power and free liberty to keep school in one of the chambers of the county house in Providence during the pleasure of the General Assem- bly ; provided he keeps the glass of said house in constant good repair (after the same is once repaired), and erect a sun dial in the front of said house, both for ornament and use,
" Five years later the judges of the inferior court of common pleas for Providence County granted the use of the Providence Courthouse to "Joseph Olney and sundry others of the Baptist denomination .... on the first day of the week to worship God . . . . till the sitting of the Assembly." The Assembly confirmed the use "during the pleasure of the
General Assembly, upon sufficient security being given to the sheriff for repairing and making good all damages that shall accrue to the said house by means of the said per- sons meeting in the same." In 1695 the use of the colony house at Newport for religious services had been forbidden, on objection raised by some of the inhabitants .* In 1754 per- mission was granted to Stephen Hopkins and others, who had purchased books "to furnish a small library," to build shelves on the west and north sides of the courthouse in Providence and put books therein, where the books would "be a real ornament to the house and afford an agreeable amusement to the members in their leisure hours." The petitioners were fur- ther granted authority "to make such acts and orders as may be fit and necessary for the proper regulating said library." Providence and South Kingstown might have their court- houses ; Newport continued to be the capital of the colony. When Joseph Jencks of Provi- dence, was elected as Governor in 1727 the General Assembly voted him £100 from the general treasury "for to defray the charges of removing his family to Newport . .. . for- asmuch as it is highly necessary for the Governor of this colony to live at Newport, the metropolis of the government." For sixty-four years under the Charter of 1663, including the years during the Andros usurpation, when Walter Clarke of Newport, the elected Gov- ernor, was in seclusion officially, the Governor had been a Newport man. The colony build- ings at Providence and South Kingstown were designated as "county houses" or as "court- houses." A new "colony house," to be "built and made of brick, at Newport, where the old one now stands, consisting of eighty feet in length and forty in breadth, and thirty feet stud ; the length whereof to stand near or quite north and south," was ordered in February, 1739. In May it was voted "that that part of the act for building a new colony house which directs the length there to be north and south be repealed; and that the length of said house be put east and west." And again in July, "upon the petition of sundry of the inhabitants of the town
*Probably as a rebuke to loyalist members of the Church of England.
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of Newport, setting forth that the new colony house to be built would look more commodious, etc., if the length thereof should be set north and south," it was voted, "that the late act passed for setting the length of the colony house east and west be repealed, and that the length thereof be built north and south; and that a cellar be made under the same." The plans were drawn by Richard Munday, who died long before the structure was completed. The old house was torn down almost immediately; for the election meeting in May, 1740, the General Assembly requested "of the people called Quakers, in Newport, the use of their meeting house for that day, for the purpose aforesaid, the colony making good all damages that shall accrue to said house, by meeting in it as aforesaid." But the building of the new colony house was delayed, probably because of the wars with Spain and France; in 1746, it was voted "that the committee appointed to build the colony house proceed forthwith, and finish the middle room in the chamber, and the staircases as soon as may be conveniently." In 1757 a shingled hip roof with balcony replaced the original lead roof. This was the famous colony house and later State House at Newport, in which the General Assembly met annually in May and at other times until 1901. The building was used as a courthouse until 1928, and is now preserved because of historic associations. The courthouse in Providence was destroyed by fire December 24, 1758. A new brick colony house was ordered built in 1759, on the old lot, or on the lot next north of that "whereon the meeting house of the people called Quakers stands, provided the same be purchased for the colony's use and for the pur- pose aforesaid without any charge to the government." The latter site was chosen; it was the school lot in Providence, on which the first schoolhouse owned by the town had been erected earlier than 1750. The school lot was exchanged for the colony house lot. On the latter the old brick schoolhouse, still standing on Meeting Street, was erected in 1768. On the original schoolhouse lot the Providence colony house, later known as the State House, and after 1900 as the Old State House, was erected. There on May 4, 1776, the General Assem- bly adopted the Rhode Island Declaration of Independence. Since 1901 the building has been occupied by the Sixth Judicial District Court. The setting off of Kent County from Provi- dence County in 1750 was conditional upon the erection and completion at the expense of the inhabitants of the new county of a courthouse substantially equal in size to the Provi- dence County Courthouse. In 1766 the colony appropriated £7000 to build a new courthouse at Bristol on the site of an older building.
READJUSTMENT OF REPRESENTATION-Samuel Cranston, who had served the colony as Governor continuously from March, 1698, died in office, April 26, 1727. In the almost thirty years of his administration the population had more than doubled. When Dean Berkeley came to Newport in January, 1729-1730, he found it the most populous, most prosperous, and most progressive town in North America, with a cultured social life, which the Dean and the group of brilliant men who accompanied him vastly enriched in the three years that Berkeley tarried in Rhode Island. Newport, like Athens and Venice, looked out upon the sea for wealth. A report to the English Board of Trade, requested in 1730, showed an increase in tonnage of colony-owned vessels of forty per cent. in ten years. Four hundred sailors were employed on the two ships, several brigs and many sloops plying in and out of Narra- gansett Bay in colonial commerce. Besides voyages to seaboard colonies on the North Atlan- tic, two sailings annually were made to England, two to Holland and Mediterranean ports, and ten or twelve to the West Indies. Exports, amounting in value to £ 10,000 sterling annually, included horses, cattle, lumber, fish and agricultural products, with butter and cheese from dairies. In 1740 120 vessels were owned in Rhode Island and constantly engaged in trade. The increase in population had suggested, for convenience in public business, par- ticularly in courts of justice, division of the colony into three counties in 1729. The develop- ment of town population suggested further division, partly for convenience in attending town meetings and in participating in military training, and partly for adjustment of representa-
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tion in the General Assembly. When Kingstown was divided into two towns in 1722-1723, North Kingstown and South Kingstown were guaranteed each an Assistant, which technically was in conflict with the Charter provision for choosing the Assistants at large from the colony. The same guaranty could not be made to the new towns set off after 1723, because (I) the Charter limited the number of Assistants to ten, and (2) South Kingstown was the tenth town, North Kingstown under the act for division being designated as the original town of Kingstown, from which South Kingstown had been taken. With ten towns the House of Deputies had thirty members. When, in 1711, Westerly sent four Deputies to the Gen- eral Assembly, none was seated, and the town was advised that it was entitled to only two Deputies under the Charter. The division of towns, as each new town created was entitled to two Deputies, tended to equity in adjusting representation. Providence, which included all of what is now Providence County except so much thereof as lies east of the Blackstone and Seekonk Rivers, was divided into four towns in February, 1730-1731. The old seven- mile line, seven miles west from Fox Hill, and a line one mile north of Pawtucket Falls, extended westward, marked the division into four towns-Providence, Smithfield, Scituate and Glocester, with ten instead of four Deputies in the General Assembly. Charlestown was set off from Westerly, 1738, and Westerly thus achieved four Deputies. Coventry was set off from Warwick, and West Greenwich from East Greenwich, in 1741. The western exten- sion of North Kingstown became Exeter in 1742-1743, and later in 1743 the northeastern portion of Newport became Middletown. Richmond was set off from Charlestown in 1747. There were then nineteen towns and forty-eight Deputies. Rhode Island as chartered in 1663 comprised four towns; five other towns were laid out, within the area covered by the Charter, but not within the area of the four original towns, before 1700, that is, Westerly, 1669; New Shoreham, 1672; Kingstown, 1674; East Greenwich, 1677; and Jamestown, 1678. In the process of reconstructing towns and erecting new towns in the first half of the eighteenth century the number of Deputies was increased from twenty-eight for nine towns to forty-eight for nineteen towns. The representation of six of the nine towns incorporated before 1700 had been modified thus: Newport (with Middletown), six to eight, Providence (with Smithfield, Scituate and Glocester), four to ten; Warwick (with Coventry), four to six; Westerly (with Charlestown and Richmond), two to six; Kingstown (North Kings- town, South Kingstown and Exeter), two to six; East Greenwich (with West Greenwich), two to four. Providence made further gains in representation during the colonial period, when Cranston (1754), Johnston (1759), and North Providence (1765) were created as towns within the original territory of the town of Providence. Portsmouth, New Shoreham and Jamestown remained unchanged; none of the three had experienced any considerable increase in population. The division of towns tended also to increase rural representation and to emphasize "town" and "rural" alignment on economic and political questions.
The settlement of the eastern boundary in May, 1746, restored to Rhode Island five towns which theretofore had been held by Plymouth and Massachusetts under the status quo pendente lite ruling of the King's commissioners in 1665. Bristol, Cumberland, Little Comp- ton, Tiverton and Warren (including Barrington), by royal decree entered May 28, 1746, became Rhode Island towns. The number of Deputies was increased thereby to fifty-eight, with Cranston, Johnston, North Providence and Barrington represented, the number of Deputies, by 1770, had become sixty-six. The town of Providence in 1708 included twenty per cent. of the population of the colony, and elected twenty-two per cent. of the Deputies ; in 1774, twenty-five per cent. of the population of the colony lived in towns within the origi- nal area of the town of Providence and elected twenty-four per cent. of the Deputies. New- port in 1708 had thirty per cent. of the population and elected thirty-three per cent. of the Deputies ; in 1774, Newport and Middletown had one-sixth of the population and elected one- eighth of the Deputies. Little Compton and Tiverton were added to Newport County in
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1746-1747, consistently with the initial purchase of Aquidneck, which included grass rights on the mainland lying east of Seaconnet River. Newport County then, as now, included, besides the two mainland towns, the island towns of Newport, Portsmouth, New Shoreham, Jamestown and Middletown. Bristol County, including Bristol and Warren (with Barring- ton), was incorporated in February, 1746-1747. Cumberland became part of Providence County in the same year. Kent County, including Warwick and Coventry, East Green- wich and West Greenwich, was set off from Providence County in 1750.
The census taken in 1748 disclosed a total population of 32,773; of these, 28,026 lived within Rhode Island as the colony had been before the eastern boundary decision, and 4747 in the five towns restored to Rhode Island. The gain in population in the eighteen years from 1730 had been 10, 191 in the original area, or approximately fifty-five per cent. Of the total population 28,439 were white, 3077 were negroes and 1257 were Indians. Newport was still the largest town, with 6508 inhabitants. Providence was second in size with 3452, and South Kingstown third with 1978. Of negroes 1606 were in Newport County, 749 in King's County, 283 in Providence County, 261 in Kent County, and 178 in Bristol County. More than one-third of negroes were in Newport; and more than one-half in Newport, James- town, North Kingstown and South Kingstown. In each instance, that is, for Newport alone, and for the four towns aggregated, the negro population was one-sixth of the total popula- tion. In South Kingstown 832 of 1405 people were white, the rest being 380 negroes and 193 Indians .* The census of 1755 returned a total population of 40,414, and that for 1774 a total of 59,707, excluding seamen and other persons not at home. The white population in 1774 was 54,435. Newport was twice as populous as Providence, the respective populations being 9209 and 432I.
IMPROVED TRANSPORTATION-The General Assembly continued through the colonial period its general interest in means of travel and transportation, letting and regulating ferry rights, making provision for the acceptance and laying out of main highways, and making grants from the general treasury for the construction or repair of bridges so generously that most of the rivers crossed by colony highways had been spanned before 1750. The bridges were built principally of wood, the decaying of which necessitated frequent reconstruction. Usually they were at so low a level relative to the water crossed that any serious rise in the latter endangered the bridges. How unsatisfactory a river may be as a boundary was illus- trated by the difficulties encountered in persuading Connecticut and Massachusetts to con- tribute their legitimate half-shares in the expense of maintaining bridges at Westerly and at Pawtucket. An innovation in traveling, the inauguration of a line of regular stage coaches between Newport and Boston, was promoted by grant, in 1736, of a monopoly for seven years. Three major engineering projects were investigated. The pier at Block Island was wrecked by storm, and, in 1723, the colony granted £ 123 as assistance for rebuilding it. Ten years later the pier was carried away again, and a committee was appointed to view the island in search of a new harbor. It was suggested that a channel might be cut through the beach into a large pond, but the project was abandoned and £ 1200 were granted by the General Assembly to assist in building a new pier. Ill-fortune pursued this venture. An excessive amount of lumber was ordered. In 1736, work on the pier had been abandoned, and the committee in charge of construction were sued for damages. Later, in 1742, £ 200,
*I have used the figures given in the Rhode Island Manual, which agree with the figures in the table, 5 R. I. Colonial Records, 270, in the column totals, and in town totals, except Newport. The total population for Newport given in the Manual is 995 larger than the total given in the Colonial Records; but the same 995 is exactly the error in the addition of the column for slave population in the Colonial Records. In the Colonial Records the number of negroes in Newport is given as 110. Assuming that this is erroneous, and that the error is typographical and consists in the dropping of the figure 5 from the chase, 5 being the last figure, the slave population of Newport would be 1105, and account accurately for the difference of 995 noted. Arnold, 2 History of Rhode Island, 173, gave the colony total as 34,128, of whom 29,750 were white. His figure for total population is 1355 greater than the total given by the Manual, and that for white popu- lation is 1316 greater than the figure for white population given by the Manual. ¡A similar project was successful in 1900.
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