It so happened that just at this time a
number of the friends of Wheelwright and the Hutchinsons were on their way
from England to settle in Massachusetts. The first act of the new
government was to exclude these new-comers by passing a law forbidding any
town to entertain strangers for more than three weeks without the consent
of two of the magistrates.
This oppressive statute caused such discontent that Winthrop thought it
necessary to publish a defence, to which Vane replied and Winthrop
rejoined. The controversy would long since have lost its interest had it
not been for the theory then first advanced by Winthrop, that the
corporation of Massachusetts, having bought its land, held it as though it
were a private estate, and might exclude whom they pleased therefrom; and
ever since this plea has been set up in justification of every excess
committed by the theocracy.
Winthrop was a lawyer, and it is but justice to his reputation to presume
that he spoke as a partisan, knowing his argument to be fallacious. As a
legal proposition he must have been aware that it was unsound.
Although during the reign of Charles I. monopolies were a standing
grievance with the House of Commons, yet they had been granted and
enforced for centuries; and had Massachusetts claimed the right to exclude
strangers as interlopers in trade, she would have stood upon good
precedent.
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