e famous order passed "mooneday
eighth of October, 1633," it appears that it was the regular
meeting-place of the inhabitants of the plantation for general purposes.
The Lynn church was formed in 1632, and the meeting-house appears to
have been built soon after, and was used for town meetings till 1806. It
was the same in towns of later settlement. In Brunswick, Maine, which
became a township in 1717, the first public building was the
meeting-house, and this also was the town-house for almost one hundred
years. Belfast, Maine, incorporated in 1773, held its first two town
meetings in a private house, afterwards, for eighteen years, "at the
Common on the South end of No. 26" (house lot),[A] whether under cover
or in open air is not known, after that, in the meeting-house generally,
till the town hall was built. In Harpswell, Maine, the old
meeting-house, like that described, when abandoned as a house of
worship, was sold to the town for one hundred dollars and is still in
use as a town-house.

[Footnote A: Williamson's History of Belfast.]

The town-house, therefore, though it cannot strictly be said to have
been coeval with the town, was essentially so, the meeting-house being
generally the first public building, and used equally for town meetings
and public worship.

How early, then, was the town? When the settlement at Plymouth took
place, in one sense a town existed at once. It was a collection of
families living in neighborhood and united by the bonds of mutual
obligation common in similar English communities. But it was a town as
yet only in that sense. In fact, it was a state. The words of the
compact signed on board the Mayflower were, in part: "We, whose names
are underwritten ... do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the
presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves
together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and
preservation, ... and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame
such just and equal laws, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to
time, as shall be most meet and convenient for the general good of the
colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience."

These words were the constitution of more than a town government. They
erected a democratic state--a commonwealth. It was a general government
separate from and above the town governments which were afterwards
instituted. It enacted general laws by an assembly of deputies in w