Note 48 — Taxation in Rhode Island, 1636-1689.

105We have of course no accurate records of the number of the population at that time. From the data which we do have however it is probably safe to say that when the four towns came together in 1647, the colony contained less than one thousand inhabitants, and that the number gradually increased until at the end of the period, it amounted to between four and five thousand. The royal commissioners reported in 1665, that the "Colony hath its scattered townes upon Rhode Island, two upon the maine land, and four small villages" (R.I. Col. Recs. II, 129). By 1678 the towns had increased to nine, at which number they remained for many years. Certain parts of the colony, as the island and some of the country in the south and to the west of the bay (the Narragansett country) seem to have been very fertile. Say the commissioners above quoted "In this Province also is the best English grasse, and most sheepe, the ground very fruitfull, ewes bring ordinarily two lambs, corn yields eighty for one, and in some places, they have had corne sixe years together without manuring." The industry of the colony at this period was wholly agricultural and tended to stock and dairy farming rather than to the raising of grain. Indeed the colony seems on some occasions to have been dependent on its neighbors to supplement its own supply of the latter article. The colonists seem to have been comfortably off, without either great wealth or great poverty. In Providence estates were of small size (a few acres), life was on a very humble scale, the inhabitants enjoying only the real necessities. On the island estates were also small in size but there was more wealth, and the Narragansett country a few years later saw the growth of large stock farms and plantations, sometimes five, six, or even ten square miles in extent, managed by slave labor. Perhaps the condition of the colony as a whole during the period from 1647 to 1689, is best summed up in the words of Governor Ward in a letter to the Board of Trade many years later, "for, although we were not rich, yet poverty was a stranger among us, till the year 1710." An excellent picture of the early economic development of Providence can be found in Dorr's "Planting and Growth of Providence," published as No. 15 of the Rhode Island Hist. Tracts. A description of the "Narragansett Planters" is given by Mr. Edward Channing (Johns Hopkins University Studies, Series IV, No. III). Not only were the people of that time lacking in wealth according to the standard of today, but the organization of their economic life was entirely different from that we now know. Each family possessed a sufficiency of land, but produced only enough to meet the current needs of the household. There was no chance for saving, investment and accumulation; there was no adequate money system. All this would make a tax fall much more heavily than under our present conditions. Another circumstance that added to the burden was that taxes were not levied continuously, a small amount each year, but in considerable amounts, at intervals of several years. The colony suffered greatly at the time of Philips war. Warwick and a large part of Providence were destroyed, the inhabitants taking refuge on the island. All these considerations must be taken into account in the endeavor to form a judgment of the burden of taxation during the period.