ding to custom, and which
they cultivated after the manner with which they were familiar. Free and
equal access to the soil was the principle upon which the original
grants were made: there were no quit-rents or charges; the allotments
were small, and so far as possible equal in value. And happily the
ideals of the settlers were suited to the environment in which they
found themselves. The soil was adapted to the raising of a variety of
farm products; corn and fodder and vegetables, swine and cattle and
horses; products requiring neither great estates nor servile labor for
profitable cultivation. Thus in New England the unit of settlement was a
group of small, free proprietors living together in villages and
managing their affairs by concerted action. The town and the town
meeting were as natural to New England as the plantation and the county
were to Virginia and the other Southern colonies.

But the community in New England was a spiritual as well as an
industrial enterprise, and the counterpart of the town was the church.
By the leaders especially, settlement was regarded more as a planting of
churches than as the founding of towns. In their view the church
covenant was the expression of the fundamental social pact, the public
confession of membership in the spiritual City of God, the very basis of
"that Church-State," that "due form of Government both civil and
ecclesiastical," which they had come to the New World to establish.

"We covenant with our Lord and with one another"--so runs the Salem
covenant, which may be taken as typical--"we avouch the Lord to be
our God, and ourselves to be his people, in the truth and
simplicity of our spirits. We promise to walk with our brethren,
with all watchfulness and tenderness, avoiding jealousy and
suspicion, back-bitings, censurings, provokings, secret risings of
spirit against them; but in all offenses to follow the rule of our
Lord Jesus, and to bear and forbear, give and forgive, as he hath
taught us. We do hereby promise to carry ourselves in all lawful
obedience to those that are over us, in church and commonwealth. We
resolve to approve ourselves to the Lord in our particular
callings; shunning idleness as the bane of any state; nor will we
deal hardly or oppressingly with any, wherein we are the Lord's
stewards."

Town and church were thus the basis of settlement; but whatever measure
of self-d