14 The Environmental Debate
Document 12: Pollution in Plymouth Colony Harbor (1668)
Pollution from waste disposal, especially in harbors and along wharves, was a problem throughout the colonies.
In 1675, for example, Governor Edmund Andros of New York issued a decree forbidding people “to cast dung,
dirt or refuse of ye city, or anything to fill up ye harbor or among ye neighbors or neighboring shores, under
penalty of forty shillings.”^7 But it was not until more than two hundred years later that the U.S. government
began to address the issue of harbor pollution [see Document 61]. The records of Plymouth colony contain one
of the first references to harbor pollution in America and probably one of the earliest mentions of any kind of
pollution on the continent.Whereas great complaint is made of great
abuse by reason of fishermen that are strangers
who fishing on some of the fishing ground on
our coast in catches dresing and splitting theire
fish aboard through theire Garbidg overboard to
the great annoyance of fish which hath any may
prove greatly detrementall to the Country; it is
ordered by the Court that something be directed
from this Court to the Court of the Massachu-
setts to request them to take some effectuall
course for the restraint of such abuse as much
as may bee.
Source: William Brigham, ed., The Compact with The
Charter and Laws of the Colony of New Plymouth:
Together with the Charter of the Council at Plymouth
(Boston, Dutton and Wentworth: 1836), p. 153.Document 13: William Penn Contracts to Set Aside Timbered Lands (1681)
Whenever an English colony was established, it was customary for the charter holders to set aside a portion of
the land for the common use of the whole community. This frequently included wooded land for timber.In the American colonies, as in all societies,
there were individuals who wanted to use more
than their fair share of the common resources
[see Document 108] or who wasted common
resources through carelessness. Occasionally,
when burning timber to clear land for planting,
colonists allowed the fires to rage out of control,
thereby destroying more woodland than neces-
sary. Others cut an excessive amount of wood.
Consequently, just a few years after the estab-
lishment of Plymouth Colony, town meetings
instituted the first restrictions on the cutting and
burning of timber.
As payment for a debt that the king had owed
his father, William Penn was granted the terri-
tory that is now the state of Pennsylvania. In his
contract with the original purchasers and renters
of parcels of the land that he received from the
English Crown, Penn stipulated that woodland,
as well as land to be used for roads, would be
set aside prior to the allocation of the indi-
vidual parcels. Transportation within colonies,used for the same thing, even in the most
learned authors; which nevertheless ought not
to be so. For right is liberty, namely that lib-
erty which the civil law leaves us: but civil law
is an obligation, which takes from us the liberty
which the law of nature gave us. Nature gave a
right to every man to secure himself by his own
strength, and to invade a suspected neighbour, by
way of prevention: but the civil law takes away that
liberty.Source: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Michael Oakeshott
(New York: Macmillan/Collier Books, 1962; original ed. 1651),
pp. 103, 105, 121, 129, 185, 214-15.