40 Chapter II
only 27 families by the name of Pitkin, whereas there were 160 families by the
name of Palmer, none of whose offspring seems ever to have enjoyed the slightest
political importance.^27 In neighboring Rhode Island, erratic in this as in other re-
spects, there was more turnover in governing personnel.
If the American councils, like comparable bodies in Europe, showed a strong
tendency toward self- perpetuation and aristocracy, the same cannot be said with
equal force for the elected assemblies. The assemblies had limited powers; each was
only one part of its colonial government structure; the right to elect assemblymen
was usually restricted to property owners, who, however, were often very numer-
ous; and apathy, inconvenience, lack of time, or the badness of roads often meant
that the right was not used. Representation by towns and counties, as in Britain
and Europe, was very uneven. Nevertheless, in a comparative view, having in mind
how the House of Commons, the Estates of Württemberg, or the Third Estate of
Languedoc was recruited, remembering that in Holland or Switzerland there were
few real elections at all, and recalling that the political zeal of Poles and Hungari-
ans was possible for not more than a tenth of the population, it seems certain that
the Anglo- American colonial assemblies, before the American Revolution, were
the most nearly democratic bodies to be found in the world of European civiliza-
tion. Practice varied from one colony to another, and more is known about some
colonies than others. In New Jersey, for example, where the election of 1754
aroused enough public interest to draw out most of the voters, it is known that
almost all the freeholders, or about half the adult white males, voted in Middlesex
county.^28 In New England, where there were few slaves and indentured servants,
and where ownership of small farms was very common, almost every adult male
had the right to vote. Actual voting was sporadic, but over 90 per cent of all men
over twenty- one years of age actually voted at Watertown, Massachusetts, in 1757;
and over 80 per cent at Weston in 1773.^29
For completeness it is worth while to mention the cabildos or town councils of
Spanish America. The cabildo was the one institution in the Spanish empire al-
lowing a measure of public representation. Some of its members were appointed
by royal authority, others owned or inherited their seats by property right, so that
family groups infiltrated the councils here as elsewhere. In the eighteenth century,
however, with the bureaucratic development under the Spanish Bourbons, the
cabildos of America, like the cortes in Spain itself, no longer enjoyed their former
activity and importance. They were not to revive until the eve of the wars of
independence.^30
27 U.S. Bureau of the Census: Heads of Families at the First Census... 1790: Connecticut ( Washing-
ton, 1908).
28 R. McCormick, History of Voting in New Jersey (New Brunswick, 1953), 63.
29 R. E. Brown, Middle- Class Democracy and the Revolution in Massachusetts, 1691‒1780 (Ithaca,
1955), 46; F. B. Tolles, “The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement: A Re-
evaluation,” in American Historical Review (Oct. 1954), 1–12.
30 J. M. Ots Capdequí, “Interpretacion institucional de la colonizacion espanola en America,” in
Pan American Institute of Geography and History, Ensayos sobre la historia del nuevo mundo, 304–7;
see also the remarks of C. C. Griffin, 110–11. Ots Capdequí, Nuevos aspectos del siglo XVIII espanol en
America (Bogota, 1946), 22.