boundaries and the
niceties of doctrine are not edifying, however honest may have been
those who entered into them. Massachusetts and Connecticut always showed
a disposition to stretch their demands for territory to the utmost and
to take what they could, sometimes with little charity or forbearance.
The dominance of the church over the organization and methods of
government and the rigid scrutiny of individual lives and habits, of
which the leaders, notably those of Massachusetts, approved, were hardly
in accord with democracy or personal liberty. Of toleration, except in
Rhode Island, there was none.

The unit of New England life was the town, a self-governing community,
in large measure complete in itself, and if left alone capable of
maintaining a separate existence. Within certain limits, it was
independent of higher authority, and in this respect it was unlike
anything to be found in England. At this period, it was at bottom a
religious community which owned and distributed the lands set apart for
its occupation, elected its own officials, and passed local ordinances
for its own well-being. At first, church members, landholders, and
inhabitants tended to be identical, but they gradually separated as time
went on and as new comers appeared and old residents migrated elsewhere.
Before the end of the century, the ecclesiastical society, the board of
land proprietors, and the town proper, even when largely composed of the
same members, acted as separate groups, though the line of separation
was often vague and was sometimes not drawn at all. Town meetings
continued to be held in the meeting-house, and land was distributed by
the town in its collective capacity. Lands were parceled out as they
were needed in proportion to contributions to a common purchase fund or
to family need, and later according to the ratable value of a man's
property. The fathers of Wallingford in Connecticut, "considering that
even single persons industrious and laborious might through the blessing
of God increase and grow into families," distributed to the meanest
bachelor "such a quantity of land as might in an ordinary way serve for
the comfortable maintenance of a family." Sometimes allotments were
equal; often they varied greatly in size, from an acre to fifty acres
and even more; but always they were determined by a desire to be fair
and just. The land was granted in full right and could be sold or
bequeathed, though at first only with the