cation was made in 1664. But the freemen were not long content to
see their privileges confined to the election of assistants and
magistrates. The first protest was characteristically English. In 1632
the minister of Watertown Church, George Phillips, more independent in
his manner of thinking than the majority of the clergy, induced his
congregation to pass the first resolution in America against taxation
without representation: "It was not safe," they contended, "to pay money
after that sort for fear of bringing their posterity into bondage." A
magisterial reprimand from Governor Winthrop reduced the protestants to
the level of an apology; but in 1634 the freemen demanded to see the
charter, and when it became generally known that supreme authority was
vested in the freemen assembled in general court, rather than in the
board of assistants, the latter was forced to concede to the former a
share in the business of lawmaking. Since it was inconvenient for all
the freemen to attend the sessions of the general court in person, they
adopted the custom of sending two deputies from each town to represent
them. The assistants, thus overbalanced by the deputies, demanded the
privilege of the negative voice, a contention which the deputies were
inclined to deny, but which resulted, in 1644, in the separation of the
general court into two houses, the board of assistants constituting the
upper chamber and the deputies the lower. During the same period the
discretionary powers of the magistrates in administering the laws gave
the deputies much concern; and their constant protests were not without
effect, although the victory was mainly to the magistrates. The results
of the first decade of conflict between leaders and followers over the
distribution of political power are registered in the famous Body of
Liberties which was promulgated in 1641.

In spite of concessions to the freemen, political privilege remained
narrowly limited. Between 1631 and 1674 the total number of freemen
admitted was 2527, about one fifth of the adult male residents. The
suffrage was thus far more exclusive than a freehold test would have
made it. In town meeting, voting was not always restricted to freemen;
but in deciding important matters non-freemen were usually excluded. And
yet the formal restriction of political privilege, narrow as it was,
gives no true measure of the real concentration of political power.
Deference to the magistrate, no less than