Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

erned itself and often an individual town would simply neglect to tax its
inhabitants for military or other expenses. As a result, taxes in Rhode Island
were in fact minimal. Twice yearly general elections for numerous posts, coupled
with an eager willingness to turn officials out, also kept a continuing
check on arrogance or entrenched power in the hands of public officials. Government
itself was so lax as to be charmingly irregular and freewheeling, and
even liberals such as Lord Bellomont were shocked at the democracy, decentralization,
failure to keep records, and generally minimal government abiding
in Rhode Island.
Even this great home of religious liberty, however, began to falter in its
ideals and principles. In the young town of Westerly, at the southwestern tip
of Rhode Island, a group of Sabbatarians, who celebrated Saturday as the Sabbath,
gained strength. Their neighbors began to denounce bitterly the Sabbatarian
"profanation" of Sunday. In 1725 the General Assembly officially
ordered Westerly to mend its ways and observe Sunday as the day of rest,
"considering that, though the ordinances of man may not square with their
private principles, yet they must be subject to them, for the Lord's sake."
Thus far had a land founded by Anne Hutchinson and Samuell Gorton and
Roger Williams fallen! And this was not all, for a law excluding Roman
Catholics from the franchise and from holding public office also appeared on
the books after the turn of the century.
As Rhode Island, in the early eighteenth century, began to slip toward uniformity
with the other colonies in the area of religious liberty and in its attitudes
toward the military, so too did it move toward the other colonies in
imposing, in 1724, a freehold property qualification for voting; specifically, a
freehold value of a hundred pounds sterling or an annual real estate income
of two pounds.
17