ABSTRACT
In New England, group grants had carried legislatively created corporate rights since the late seventeenth century, including the right to tax corporate members for the expenses of resettlement. Demographic pressure and ecological catastrophe explain the high demand for land. The deportation of the Acadians from Nova Scotia and the collapse of French power in North America explain the interest in the lands north and east of lower New England. Hutchinson also reinforced New England patterns of social and political organization, perhaps most particularly the sense that one of the functions of the colony’s government was to protect local and private interests against the intrusive and restrictive policies of the metropolitan government. By the mid eighteenth century, many New England towns settled in the seventeenth century had reached land-to-people ratios of one adult man to approximately forty acres. Some towns diversified their economies to absorb displaced agricultural labor, but many New Englanders preferred to move in search of new land.
