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the colony which he had kept became the royal province of New York. The part which he had sold to Berkeley and Carteret remained for a while the proprietary colony of New Jersey, sometimes under one government, sometimes divided between two; but the rule of the lords proprietary was very unpopular, and in 1702 their rights were surrendered to the crown. The Carolinas and Georgia were also at first proprietary colonies, but after a while they willingly came under the direct sway of the crown. In general the proprietary governments were unpopular because the lords proprietary, who usually lived in England and visited their colonies but seldom, were apt to regard their colonies simply as sources of personal income. This was not the case with William Penn, or the earlier Calverts, or with James Oglethorpe, the illustrious founder of Georgia; but it was too often the case. So long as the lord's rents, fees, and other emoluments were duly collected, he troubled himself very little as to what went on in the colony. If that had been all, the colony would have troubled itself very little about him. But the governor appointed by this absentee master was liable to be more devoted to his interests than to those of the people, and the civil service was seriously damaged by worthless favourites sent over from England for whom the governor was expected to find some office that would pay them a salary. On the whole, it seemed less unsatisfactory to have the governors appointed by the crown; and so before the Revolutionary War all the proprietary governments had fallen, except those of the Penns and the Calverts, which doubtless survived because they were the best organized and best administered.

There were thus at the time of the Revolutionary

At the time

lution there

were three

forms of

ernment: 1.

2. Proprie

tary, 3. Royal.

War three forms of state government in the American colonies. There were, first, the Republiof the Revo- can colonies, in which the governors were elected by the people, as in Rhode Island and colonial gov. Connecticut; secondly, the Proprietary coloRepublican, nies, in which the governors were appointed by hereditary proprietors, as in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware; thirdly, the Royal colonies,1 in which the governors were appointed by the crown, as in Georgia, the two Carolinas, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. It is customary to distinguish the Republican colonies as Charter colonies, but that is not an accurate distinction, inasmuch as the Proprietary colonies also had charters. And among the Royal colonies, Massachusetts, having been originally a republic, still had a charter in which her rights were so defined as to place her in a somewhat different position from the other Royal colonies; so that Prof. Alexander Johnston, with some reason, puts her in a class by herself as a Semi-royal colony.

These differences, it will be observed, related to the character and method of filling the governor's office. In the Republican colonies the governor naturally represented the interests of the people, in the ProIn all three prietary colonies he was the agent of the Penns or the Calverts, in the Royal colonies.

forms there

was a representative assembly,

could im

he was the agent of the king. All the thirwhich alone teen colonies alike had a legislative assembly elected by the people. The basis of representation might be different in different colonies, as

pose taxes.

1 Or, as they were sometimes called, Royal provinces. In the history of Massachusetts many writers distinguish the period before 1692 as the colonial period, and the period 1692 to 1774 as the provincial period.

we have seen that in Massachusetts the delegates represented townships, whereas in Virginia they represented counties; but in all alike the assembly was a truly representative body, and in all alike it was the body that controlled the expenditure of public money. These representative assemblies arose spontaneously because the founders of the American colonies were Englishmen used from time immemorial to tax themselves and govern themselves. As they had been wont to vote for representatives in England, instead of leaving things to be controlled by the king, so now they voted for representatives in Maryland or New York, instead of leaving things to be controlled by the governor. The spontaneousness of all this is quaintly and forcibly expressed by the great Tory historian Hutchinson, who tells us that in the year 1619 a house of burgesses broke out in Virginia! as if it had been the mumps, or original sin, or any of those things that people cannot help having.

The govern

was a kind

house.

This representative assembly was the lower house in the colonial legislatures. The governor always had a council to advise with him and assist him in his executive duties, in imitation of the king's privy council in England. But in nearly all the or's council colonies this council took part in the work of upper of legislation, and thus sat as an upper house, with more or less power of reviewing and amending the acts of the assembly. In Pennsylvania, as already observed, the council refrained from this legislative work, and so, until some years after the Revolution, the Pennsylvania legislature was onechambered. The members of the council were appointed in different ways, sometimes by the king or the lord proprietary, or, as in Massachusetts, by the outgoing legislature, or, as in Connecticut, they were elected by the people.

The colonial

government

was like the English sys

tem in miniature.

Thus all the colonies had a government framed after the model to which the people had been accustomed in England. It was like the English system in miniature, the governor answering to the king, and the legislature, usually twochambered, answering to parliament. And as quarrels between king and parliament were not uncommon, so quarrels between governor and legislature were very frequent indeed, except in Connecticut and Rhode Island. The royal governors, representing British imperial ideas rather than American ideas, were sure to come into conflict with the popular assemblies, and sometimes became the objects of bitter popular hatred. The disputes were apt to be concerned with questions in which taxation was involved, such as the salaries of crown officers, the appropriations for war with the Indians, and so on. disputes bred more or less popular discontent, but the struggle did not become flagrant so long as the British parliament refrained from meddling with it.

The Americans never admitted the supremacy of parliament;

Such

The Americans never regarded parliament as possessing any rightful authority over their internal affairs. When the earliest colonies were founded, it was the general theory that the American wilderness was part of the king's private domain and not subject to the control of parliament. This theory lived on in America, but died out in England. On the one hand the Americans had their own legislatures, which stood to them in the place of parliament. The authority of parliament was derived from the fact that it was a representative body, but it did not represent Americans. Accordingly the Americans held that the relation of each American colony to Great Britain was like the relation between England and Scotland in

the seventeenth century. England and Scotland then had the same king, but separate parliaments, and the English parliament could not make laws for Scotland. Such is the connection between Sweden and Norway at the present day; they have the same king, but each country legislates for itself. So the American colonists held that Virginia, for example, and Great Britain had the same king, but each its independent legislature; and so with the other colonies, there were thirteen parliaments in America, each as sovereign within its own sphere as the parliament at Westminster, and the latter had no more right to tax the people of Massachusetts than the Massachusetts legis lature had to tax the people of Virginia.

except in the

maritime

In one respect, however, the Americans did admit that parliament had a general right of supervision over all parts of the British empire. Maritime commerce seemed to be as much the regulation of affair of one part of the empire as another, commerce. and it seemed right that it should be regulated by the central parliament at Westminster. Accordingly the Americans did not resist custom-house taxes as long as they seemed to be imposed for purely commercial purposes; but they were quick to resist direct taxation, and custom-house taxes likewise, as soon as these began to form a part of schemes for extending the authority of parliament over the colonies.

In England

natu- there grew

up the the

king ory of the

In England, on the other hand, this theory that the Americans were subject to the king's authority but not to that of parliament rally became unintelligible after the himself had become virtually subject to liament. The Stuart kings might call themselves kings by the grace of God, but since 1688 the sovereigns of Great Britain ove their seat upon the throne

par

imperial su

premacy of

parliament.

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