of the water-shed between the Merrimac and the Connecticut had ever had representatives admitted to seats. One effect of this policy had been that, toward the last, the Assembly had become even more exclusive than the Governor, and had refused to admit representatives from towns to which he had sent his precepts. Through this aggressive spirit of the Assembly, and the mild disposition of Governor Wentworth, the government of the province had, at the period of the Revolution, assumed many of the features of an oligarchy. Its controlling spirits were the aristocratic merchants of the seaboard county of Rockingham, which, down to 1770, contained more than half the population of the province. These merchants and their connections had sat so constantly in the Provincial Assembly, and had thereby become so familiar with public affairs, that they easily passed to the same commanding position in the new government which they had held in the old. No stronger proof of their superior political skill is needed than the adroit manner in which they committed the people of the northern and western towns to a system of representation, under the new constitution, which was entirely at variance with their predilections, and which consigned them to a hopeless minority in the legislative body. They had taken the initiatory steps in the formation of the new government, and had seen to it that the congress which framed the constitution was chosen upon the numerical basis of representation, and was empowered to resolve itself into a legislature after completing the frame of government. Following up the advantage thus gained, they had been able to secure the unsuspecting assent of all the members of the congress to a constitution which did not itself prescribe a plan of representation, but left that all-important matter to be determined by each legislature for its successor. It thus happened that the numerical basis had become entailed upon all future assemblies, until the constitution could be changed, for it could not be expected that the populous towns in the southeast, having once secured their just advantage, would ever yield to the demand of the small towns in the north and west for equal representation with them.

The Grafton and Cheshire County towns saw in this situation, and in the property qualification required of representatives, their own hopeless subjection to the oligarchical party in Rockingham County. It was the firm belief of the Connecticut Valley democracy that the right of representation inhered in the very nature of a town. They felt chagrined that their lack of vigilance had lost them this right, and incensed at the astute politicians of the old régime who had thus overreached them. But it was not altogether selfinterest which induced their belief in the right of town representation. They had brought it with them from Connecticut and Massachusetts. The

charters of those colonies recognized such a right; and what were those charters, it was triumphantly asked, but voluntary grants of liberties such as New Hampshire had now seized upon in even larger degree?

Still, at the time of the College Hall Convention, "a foundation of civil government within and for the colony " had certainly been laid, and all the people had participated freely in the work. The new government was in the full exercise of all its functions, and there could apparently be no just ground for denying its legitimacy or resisting its authority. The authors of the Address appreciated the difficulties which lay in their way, and proceeded by adroit and forcible argument to overcome them. To the objection that the people had already established a government, they answered that the assembly which then existed, and which had framed that government, "had been elected before the Declaration of Independence, and was expected to act only in the exigencies of the colony, under their distressed and difficult circumstances, as the case might require; and no one thought at the time that they were appointed to institute a plan of civil government, especially independent of, and in contradistinction to, Great Britain; therefore they were not elected for that purpose, and have not the power that an assembly ought now to have." The known dissatisfaction with the Exeter plan of representation was next adverted to, and arguments of great length and ingenuity advanced to aggravate the discontent. The inalienable right of every town to be represented as such in the legislative body was reiterated with the greatest stress, and in every possible form of expression. The opponents of this doctrine were stigmatized as Tories of the rankest kind, and the plan which had been adopted as worse than no representation at all. At last the point was reached of declaring, "if this principle must take place, we had better lay down our arms, and spend no more precious blood and treasure in the contest with Great Britain, for it is only destroying with one hand, and setting up the same thing, or that which is worse, with the other. They who will tamely submit to such a government as this deserve not a habitation among a free people." The right to resist the Exeter Government, and to withdraw from it, was sought to be made plain by enunciating the doctrine that no town could be effectually deprived of representation without its own express consent; that no majority, however large, of a legislature, or even of a constitutional convention, could take away the right, nor could any implied or indirect surrender amount to a forfeiture of it. Then followed the frank avowal that no town, deprived of its representation in the Legislature other than by its direct and voluntary surrender, was bound by anything that legislation might do. The Grafton and Cheshire towns, none of which had been separately represented, were

declared to be thus absolved from all allegiance to the Exeter Government, and resistance to it to be of a piece with resistance to Great Britain. Thus the towns in whose name the Address was issued were made to say: "As for ourselves, we are determined not to spend our blood and treasure in defending against the chains and fetters that are forged for us abroad, in order to purchase some of a like kind of our own manufacturing, but mean to hold them both alike detestable." Other towns concurring in the sentiments of the Address were requested to communicate with Bezaleel Woodward, "Clerk of the United Committees," from which it would appear that some sort of permanent organization was effected, as well as from the fact that the convention adjourned to meet again in the college hall in October following.

The wide circulation of this pamphlet had the effect to deter the whole of Grafton County, and a considerable part of Cheshire, from sending representatives to the new assembly summoned to meet at Exeter on December 19th. The precepts for the election, which were sent out in September, were generally returned by the disaffected towns with their action thereon-the reasons assigned for non-compliance being substantially the objections to the plan of government set forth in the College Hall Address ; some of them urging, in addition, that the recommendation of the Continental Congress for “a full and free representation of the people" had not been followed, and that the proceedings at Exeter were therefore void. The language employed by the towns in these returns was less scholarly and philosophical than that of the Address, but far more vigorous and picturesque; the town of Chesterfield, for instance, declaring: "It is our opinion that the State of New Hampshire, instead of forming an equitable plan of government conducing to the peace and safety of the State, have been influenced by the iniquitous intrigues and secret designations [designs] of persons unfriendly, to settle down upon the dregs of monarchical and aristocratical tyranny, in imitation of their late British oppressor." Conciliatory measures of every nature short of acceding to the demand for a new constitutional convention were at once resorted to by the Exeter Government, in the hope of winning back the revolted towns; but all efforts failed. Besides refusing to be represented, they withheld their quota of tax, and in every possible way emphasized their withdrawal from the compact of January 5th.

An important modification of the original plan of the college party seems to have followed this disruption. Instead of inaugurating a movement antagonistic to that which the Bennington party was conducting, it was arranged that the Gloucester and Cumberland County towns should no

longer hold aloof from that movement, but should unite to carry it forward, establish the State of Vermont, and then annex to it all the grants east of the river. Such an expansion would, of course, place the college party in ascendancy by sheer weight of numbers, and having thus a State under their control, their pet ambition would be realized as fully as if their first scheme had not been interfered with. Accordingly, in January, 1777, as has already been noted, the towns between the Connecticut and the Green Mountains went into convention at Westminster with those west of the Mountains, and the most formidable obstacle to the success of the Bennington project was for the time being removed. Their independence of New York was formally declared, and the fact notified to the Continental Congress, along with a petition for recognition and for representation in that body on an equality with the other States. The prompt interposition of the New York delegates, however, induced a halting policy on the part of Congress, which eventually emboldened the Bennington leaders wholly to deny its authority in the premises.

The Westminster Convention, having met by adjournment at Windsor on June 4, 1777, appointed a committee to draft a constitution, and called another convention to meet at the same place on July 2d following, to act upon the committee's report. The news of Burgoyne's advance and capture of Ticonderoga interrupted this latter convention in the midst of its labors, so that the constitution was hastily adopted in substantially the form reported by the committee-the Convention adjourning to December with the understanding that its work was to be perfected at that time, and the members hurrying to their homes to concert measures for the public defence. The constitution having been revised in December, the first election of officers under it was held on March 4, 1778, and the State Government fully organized on the 12th of the same month, at Windsor.

The Exeter Government, after striving for more than a year to arrest the defection in Grafton and Cheshire counties, at last took measures for calling a new constitutional convention, as the only means which held out any hope of success. This concession tended greatly to weaken the hold of the college leaders upon the people. In the hope of strengthening themselves, they resorted again to the printing-press, and issued, early in January, 1778, another pamphlet letter, signed "Republican,” containing an elaborate argument in support of the right of the grants on both sides. of the river to unite under one government, as well as the expediency of their doing so. This argument, manifestly from the same pen as the College Hall Address, was so skilfully framed as to apply with equal force to a union of the Grafton and Cheshire towns with Vermont, or to a new con

federation, which might either dismember Vermont, or perhaps merge it entirely. It emphasized the denial of the claims now put forth by the New York and New Hampshire Governments to rule over the grants as successors to the royal governments which they had supplanted; and maintained that the Exeter Government had virtually conceded its own illegitimacy by yielding to the demand for a beginning de novo of the work of constitutionmaking. But it is chiefly as an exposition of the views of the college party as to the political status of the Wentworth Grants that this pamphlet is remarkable. According to these views, the Declaration of Independence absolved the people of the grants from all political ties, and reduced them to "a state of nature" as to government; except that, by virtue of their town charters, they continued to be united into towns, each of which was a little republic by itself, independent of all the others-independent of Great Britain and of the United Colonies, and equally independent of New York and of New Hampshire, i.e., old New Hampshire, or the Mason Grant. These diminutive States were entirely free to maintain their separate existence, to confederate together, or to ally themselves with other bodies politic at their pleasure. No abridgment of this delightful state of independence was recognized as having taken place, although at the date of the pamphlet all of them had, by virtue either of the Exeter or of the Windsor Constitution, voluntarily merged themselves in a larger political body. Some of the suggestions contained in this pamphlet led to immediate practical results of the gravest import.

The body which met at Dresden on July 31, 1776, and issued the famous College Hall Address, had never been dissolved. Under the name of the UNITED COMMITTEES OF THE NEW HAMPSHIRE GRANTS, it continued to hold meetings, to circulate pamphlets, and in every way industriously to disseminate the doctrine that a union of all the grants under one government was a matter of prime political necessity. None but the most scanty records of its doings are now known to exist; but it is certain that on January 28, 1778, it met by adjournment at the house of Colonel Israel Morey, in Orford, and, among other things, recommended to the New Hampshire towns to show their devotion to the cause of the colonies by raising their respective proportions of the taxes called for by the Exeter Government and by the Continental Congress for that year, but to hold the same in their respective treasuries, to be applied by the towns in their sovereign capacity, in measures for the common defence, free from the control of any external authority whatever; and the recommendation appears to have been generally followed by the disaffected towns. The next meeting of which there is any record was held on February 12th, at the house of