pon a compact--so significant
for the development of the American conceptions of individual
liberty--was strengthened by the force of historical circumstances. A
handful of men went forth to found new communities. They began their
work of civilization scattered over wide stretches in the loneliness of
the primeval forest.[80] And so they believed that it was possible to
live outside of the state, in a condition of nature, and that when they
stepped out of that condition of nature they did it of their own free
will and were not constrained by any earthly power. With their small
numbers, representation was at first unnecessary, and the decisions were
reached in the town meetings of all belonging to the community,--the
form of a direct democracy grew naturally out of the given conditions
and strengthened the conviction, which does not correspond to the old
English conception, that the sovereignty of the people is the basis of
legislation and of government. To a generation that could point to such
beginnings for their state, the political ideas which later animated
the men of 1776 seemed to bear their surety in themselves: they were
"self-evident", as it reads in the Declaration of Independence.

The inherent fundamental right of religious liberty, for which Roger
Williams had striven so earnestly, found also in the seventeenth century
its official recognition in law, first in the laws of 1647 of Rhode
Island, and then in the charter which Charles II. granted the colony of
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in 1663.[81] It was therein
ordered in fulfilment of the colonists' request, in a manner ever
memorable, that in future in the said colony no person should be
molested, punished or called in question for any differences of opinion
in matters of religion; but that all persons at all times should have
full liberty of conscience, so long as they behaved themselves peaceably
and did not misuse this liberty in licentiousness or profaneness, nor
to the injury or disturbance of others.[82] Thus a colony was granted
that which in the mother-country at the time was contested to the
utmost. Similar principles are found for the first time in Europe in the
Practice of Frederick the Great in Prussia. But the principles of
religious liberty were recognized to a greater or less extent in other
colonies also. Catholic Maryland in 1649 granted freedom in the exercise
of religion to every one who acknowledged Jesus Christ.[83] Also th