confusion of the Great Civil War, both ideas reached
an early maturity in the political system of the
Levellers. In the colony of Massachusetts Bay
the strength of the Puritan oligarchy weakened
only in the course of years after 1660; and the innate
political tendencies in Congregationalism grew more
slowly, but also more surely. Moreover, as the
connection of New England with Old England was
stronger before 1660 than in later years, New Eng-
land's political development was in the intellectual
atmosphere of the ancient theory of the fundamental
law rather than in the newer world of parliamentary
supremacy. Of course many other factors went to
form New England's contribution to American con-
stitutional theory. Even before 1640 the charter
and the plantation covenant had shown how they
might become the written constitutions of states.
John Locke had his influence in the critical days of
the American Revolution; though John Locke merely
said in 1690 what the Levellers had said in 1646.
But, speaking broadly, may not the Leveller move-
ment teach us that, while England was pledged to
the supremacy of government by 1660, and while
America a century later was led to the supremacy
of law, the Anglo-Saxon race in 1640 stood at the
parting of the ways between two theories, and might
logically have adopted either?

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