Before winter was over, the infant colony was threatened with famine; but the seasonable return of a vessel from England with provisions revived their drooping spirits, and instead of the fast, they observed a day of thanksgiving. Many of the emigrants, discouraged, and in some degree terrified, returned home and spread various reports injurious to the colony.
The second General Court, held in May, 1631, enacted a remarkable law, which clearly points out the basis on which, for the next half century, the government of Massachusetts continued to rest. " To the end that the body of commons may be preserved of good and honest men, it is ordered and agreed, that, for the time to come, no man shall be admitted to the freedom of the body politic, but such as are members of some of the churches within the limits of the same." This enactment narrowed down the number of citizens and voters very materially, since, in consequence of the difficulties attendant on becoming a member of one of the churches, not one fourth of the adult population were ever church-members. It was an attempt to establish a theocracy, a reign of the saints on the earth, and as every religious party in power thought it right to require conformity to the established order, so the Puritan settlers were persuaded that it was a duty to enforce their regulations by aid of the civil magistrate. The same experiment of a theocratic form of government was tried at a later date in England, with what result every reader of history knows.
Not only were a larger proportion of the people deprived of political rights, under this arbitrary system, but the legislation of this self-constituted body was characterized by a spirit of puritanical severity within themselves, and a harsh and rigid exclusiveness towards those without, which were no long in producing the same bitter fruits of persecution by which they had themselves suffered. The ministers acquired an undue degree of influence; minute enactments interfered with individual freedom of action; amusements, which, though innocent in themselves, were supposed to be inconsistent with the gravity of professing Christians, were studiously discouraged, and devotional exercises substituted in their room. "It was attempted, in fact," to use Mr. Hildreth's words, "to make the colony, as it were, a convent of Puritan devotees—except in the allowance of marriage and money-making—subjected to all the rules of the stricter monastic orders.'
