e could, within ten days, send his vote in
writing, with his name affixed, to the general recorder. If within ten
days the recorder received a majority of votes against any law, he was to
notify the president of that fact and the latter in turn was to give
notice to each town that such law was null and void. Silence as to the
remaining enactments was assumed to mean assent.

After 1658, the recorder was allowed ten days instead of six, as the
period within which the laws must be sent to the towns. The towns had
another ten days for consideration, and then if the majority of the free
inhabitants of any one of them in a lawful assembly voted against a given
enactment, they could send their votes sealed up in a package to the
recorder. If a majority from every town voted against the law it was
thereby nullified; but unless this was done within twenty days after the
adjournment of the court the law would continue binding. In 1660, three
months were allowed for the return of votes to the recorder. Instead of a
majority of each town, a majority of all the free inhabitants of the
colony was sufficient to nullify a law. The charter of King Charles II.
restricted the privilege of voting to freeholders and the eldest sons of
freeholders.

CHAPTER VIII.

Puritans and Education--Provision for Public Schools--Puritan Sincerity
--Effect of Intolerance on the Community--Quakers Harshly Persecuted--The
Salem Witchcraft Tragedy--History of the Delusion--Rebecca Nourse and
Other Victims--The People Come to Their Senses--Cotton Mather Obdurate to
the Last--Puritan Morals--Comer's Diary--Rhode Island in Colonial Times.

It is to the credit of the Puritans that promptly upon their settlement
in Massachusetts they made provision for education. Many of the Puritans
were learned men, and some of them graduates of Cambridge in England, and
when a school was established at Newtown for the education of the
ministry, the name of the place was changed to Cambridge. When John
Harvard endowed the school in 1638 with his library and the gift of one
half his estate--about $4000, but equal to much more than that amount at
the present day--the school was erected into a college and named Harvard
College after the founder. The central aim and purpose of Puritan
education was religious. The schools were maintained so that the children
could learn to read the Bible, and also incidentally the printed
fulminations of the ministers and magistrates. T