system proper had cost $16,627,033 up to 1899 inclusive; and the
metropolitan parks $13,679,456 up to 1907 inclusive. There are
no municipal lighting-plants; but the companies upon which the
city depends for its service are (with all others) subject to the control
of a state commission. In 1885 a state law placed a limit on the
contractable debt and upon the taxation rate of the city. Revenues
were not realized adequate to its lavish undertakings, and loans were
used to meet current expenses. The limits were altered subsequently,
but the net debt has continued to rise. In 1822 it was $100,000; in
1850, $6,195,144; in 1886, $24,712,820; in 1904, $58,216,725; in
1907, $70,781,969 (gross debt, $104,206,706)—this included the debt
of Suffolk county which in 1907 was $3,517,000. The chief objects
for which the city debt was created were in 1907, in millions of
dollars: highways, 24.07, parks, 16.29, drainage and sewers, 15.05,
rapid transit, 13.57 and water-works, 4.53. Boston paid in 1907
36% of all state taxes, and about 33, 62, 47 and 79% respectively
of the assessments for the metropolitan sewer, parks, boulevards and
water services. About a third of its revenue goes for such uses or
for Suffolk county expenditures over which it has but limited
control. The improvement of the Back Bay and of the South
Boston flats was in considerable measure forced upon the city by
the commonwealth. The debt per capita is as high as the cost of
current administration relatively to other cities. The average
interest rate on the city obligations in 1907 was about 3.7%. The
city’s tax valuation in 1907 was $1,313,471,556 (in 1822, $42,140,200;
in 1850, $180,000,500), of which only $242,606,856 represented personalty;
although in the judgment of the city board of trade such
property cannot by any possibility be inferior in value to realty.
Population.—Up to the War of Independence the population was not only American, but it was in its ideas and standards essentially Puritan; modern liberalism, however, has introduced new standards of social life. In 1900 35.1% of the inhabitants were foreign-born, and 72.2% wholly or in part of foreign parentage. Irish, English-Canadian, Russian, Italian, English and German are the leading races. Of the foreign-born population these elements constituted respectively 35.6, 24.0, 7.6, 7.0, 6.7 and 5.3%. Large foreign colonies, like adjoining but unmixing nations, divide among themselves a large part of the city, and give to its life a cosmopolitan colour of varied speech, opinion, habits, traditions, social relations and religions. Most remarkable of all, the Roman Catholic churches, in this stronghold of exiled Puritanism where Catholics were so long under the heavy ban of law, outnumber those of any single Protestant denomination; Irish Catholics dominate the politics of the city, and Protestants and Catholics have been aligned against each other on the question of the control of the public schools. Despite, however, its heavy foreign admixture the old Americanism of the city remains strikingly predominant. The population of Boston at the end of each decennial period since 1790 was as follows:—(1790), 18,320; (1800), 24,937; (1810), 33,787; (1820), 43,298; (1830), 61,392; (1840), 93,383; (1850), 136,881; (1860), 177,840; (1870), 250,526; (1880), 362,839; (1890), 448,477; (1900), 560,892.
History.—John Smith visited Boston Harbour in 1614, and it was explored in 1621 by a party from Plymouth. There were various attempts to settle about its borders in the following years before John Endecott in 1628 landed at Salem as governor of the colony of Massachusetts bay, within which Boston was included. In June 1630 John Winthrop’s company reached Charlestown. At that time a “bookish recluse,” William Blaxton (Blackstone), one of the several “old planters” scattered about the bay, had for several years been living on Boston peninsula. The location seemed one suitable for commerce and defence, and the Winthrop party chose it for their settlement. The triple summit of Beacon Hill, of which no trace remains to-day (or possibly a reference to the three hills of the then peninsula, Beacon, Copp’s and Fort) led to the adoption of the name Trimountaine for the peninsula,—a name perpetuated variously in present municipal nomenclature as in Tremont; but on the 17th of September 1630, the date adopted for anniversary celebrations, it was ordered that “Trimountaine shall be called Boston,” after the borough of that name in Lincolnshire, England, of which several of the leading settlers had formerly been prominent citizens.[1]
For several years it was uncertain whether Cambridge, Charlestown or Boston should be the capital of the colony, but in 1632 the General Court agreed “by general consent, that Boston is the fittest place for public meetings of any place in the Bay.” It rapidly became the wealthiest and most populous. Throughout the 17th century its history is so largely that of Massachusetts generally that they are inseparable. Theological systems were largely concerned. The chief features of this epoch —the Antinomian dissensions, the Quaker and Baptist persecutions, the witchcraft delusion (four witches were executed in Boston, in 1648, 1651, 1656, 1688) &c.—are referred to in the article Massachusetts (q.v.). In 1692 the first permanent and successful printing press was established; in 1704 the first newspaper in America, the Boston News-Letter, which was published weekly until 1776. Puritanism steadily mellowed under many influences. By the turn of the first century bigotry was distinctly weakened. Among the marks of the second half of the 17th century was growing material prosperity, and there were those who thought their fellows unduly willing to relax church tests of fellowship when good trade was in question. There was an unpleasant Englishman who declared in 1699 that he found “Money Their God, and Large Possessions the only Heaven they Covet.” Prices were low, foreign commerce was already large, business thriving; wealth gave social status; the official British class lent a lustre to society; and Boston “town” was drawing society from the “country.” Of the two-score or so of families most prominent in the first century hardly one retained place in the similar list for the early years of the second. Boston was a prosperous, thrifty, English country town, one traveller thought. Another, Daniel Neal, in 1720, found Boston conversation “as polite as in most of the cities and towns in England, many of their merchants having the advantage of a free conversation with travellers; so that a gentleman from London would almost think himself at home at Boston, when he observes the number of people, their houses, their furniture, their tables, their dress and conversation, which perhaps is as splendid and showy as that of the most considerable tradesmen in London.”
The population, which was almost stationary through much of the century, was about 20,000 in the years immediately before the War of Independence. At this time Boston was the most flourishing town of North America. It built ships as cheaply as any place in the world, it carried goods for other colonies, it traded—often evading British laws—with Europe, Guinea, Madagascar and above all with the West Indies. The merchant princes and social leaders of the time are painted with elaborate show of luxury in the canvases of Copley. The great English writers of Queen Anne’s reign seem to have been but little known in the colony, and the local literature, though changed somewhat in character, showed but scant improvement. About the middle of the century restrictions upon the press began to disappear. At the same time questions of trade, of local politics, finally of colonial autonomy, of imperial policy, had gradually, but already long since, replaced theology in leading interest. In the years 1760–1776 Boston was the most frequently recurring and most important name in British colonial history. Sentiments of limited independence of the British government had been developing since the very beginning of the settlement (see Massachusetts), and their strength in 1689 had been strikingly exhibited in the local revolution of that year, when the royal governor, Sir Edmund Andros, and other high officials, were frightened into surrender and were imprisoned. This movement, it should be noted, was a popular rising, and not the work of a few leaders.
The incidents that marked the approach of the War of Independence need barely be adverted to. Opposition to the measures of the British government for taxing and oppressing the colonies began in Boston. The argument of Otis on the writs of assistance
- ↑ In 1851 the mayor of the English Boston sent over a copy of that city’s seals, framed in oak from St Botolph’s church, of which John Cotton, the famous Boston divine (he came over in 1633) had been vicar. The seals now hang in the city hall. In 1855 a number of Americans, including Charles Francis Adams and Edward Everett, and also various descendants of Cotton, united to restore the south-west chapel of St Botolph’s church, and to erect in it a memorial tablet to Cotton’s memory. The total amount raised by subscription for this purpose was £673.
