IN the history of political institutions, New England is famous for two inventions: the town meeting, the purest form of democratic local government since the Greek polis, and the Boston Caucus, America's first urban political machine which, expanded and modified, became the ancestor of modern party conventions and organization. In general, both historians and New Englanders have ignored the curious, implicit contradiction between the democratic practices of the town meeting in early Boston and the secretive, exclusive, notso-democratic control exercised by the Caucus during the colonial period. Such an oversight about the Caucus and democracy is easy to understand. Conclusive evidence about early Boston politics is sadly lacking, mainly because such activities are usually carried on by conversation in the proverbial smoke-filled rooms rather than by writing. Colonists also feared factionalism, and the members of a faction took great pains to subdue any hints or accusations of privately manipulating public decisions. Historians, therefore, must rely on meager written evidence, circumstantial elements, patterns of clues, educated guesses, and frankly speculative hypotheses in their attempts to illustrate the origins, membership, and operations of the Caucus. Today, it is taken for granted that relatively restrictive leadership and organization are necessary complements of democratic politics, but it is by no means certain why this is so or how this seemingly antithetical conjunction of interests began in the Caucus' control of the town meeting. Still, the historian must at least attempt to answer such questions about the Caucus as: Did it exist? When? Who was in it? How did it operate? And, most important, how did it affect democratic practices in colonial Boston?