IN spite of the prevalence of similar political ideas among the colonies, there was much of mutual jealousy and antagonism due in part to boundary controversies. In 1702 none of the colonies had its boundaries accurately marked; and in every case except that of New Jersey the disputed lands were of considerable importance for the future development of the colony. Massachusetts had boundary disputes with Rhode Island and Connecticut on the south, and New York on the west; while she could not agree with New Hampshire either regarding the northern limits of the old Bay Colony or the western boundary of Maine. The disputes with New York and New Hampshire were important because of the large area involved; and the comparatively small strips at issue with Rhode Island and Connecticut related to settled townships. Connecticut had also a dispute with Rhode Island on the east and an unsurveyed line on the

west which was still to cause some trouble with New York.¹

     New York had a comparatively small controversy to adjust with New Jersey and a more important one with Pennsylvania as to the whole northern line of Penn’s charter. The latter issue did not, however, become serious during the first half of the century because of the slow movement of settlers into that territory. On the south, Penn and his heirs had a much more difficult question to settle. The Baltimores continued to claim the “lower counties” on the Delaware, and the southern line of Pennsylvania was still undetermined when in the second quarter of the eighteenth century immigrants began to enter the disputed territory. Of all the boundary controversies of the period, this was the most persistent and acrimonious. In the south there were similar boundary disputes which embittered the relations of the two Carolinas with each other and those of North Carolina with Virginia.

     Before the middle of the eighteenth century marked progress was made towards the settlement of these disputes. The interior lines of New England were substantially determined, though Massachusetts and New York had not yet come to terms regarding the territory between the Hudson and the Connecticut. In 1750 the Pennsylvania-Maryland

controversy was passed upon by the lord chancellor in England, though there was still some wrangling about details. A few years earlier, the North Carolina lines were drawn for some distance westward from the coast by agreement with her neighbors to the north and south.¹

     Trade jealousies were another source of friction. Discriminating duties in favor of home shipping were common and sometimes provoked retaliation, as in 1721, when New Hampshire retaliated against a Massachusetts law imposing double duties and light-house fees upon the inhabitants of the former province. There were similar incidents in the middle and southern colonies, and a serious instance of hostile feeling awakened by commercial regulations occurred between Virginia and North Carolina. The latter colony, being poorly supplied with ports, was accustomed to ship tobacco through Virginia; but this practice was prohibited by the Virginia assembly in acts of 1725 and 1726, on the ground that North Carolina tobacco was of an inferior quality. North Carolina complained to the Board of Trade, which recommended the disallowance of both acts.²

     There was also a considerable intercolonial rivalry in the Indian trade, notably between Virginia and South Carolina and between the latter colony and

Georgia. In both instances serious ill-feeling developed.¹

     Some intercolonial disputes were settled by amicable agreement; but often the intervention of the home government was necessary, and the final award left bad feeling behind on the part of one or both the parties. The difficulty of maintaining cordial relations between neighboring colonies is well illustrated by the experience of two pairs of provinces united for a time by the assignment of a single governor to both governments. New Hampshire and Massachusetts were combined under one governor over forty years, until 1741; when, partly because of the bad feeling between the two provinces, generated by the boundary dispute, this personal union was abandoned and New Hampshire received a separate government. For over thirty years the crown commissioned the same person as governor of New York and New Jersey; but in this case, as in the other, the weaker colony felt that its interests were being sacrificed to those of the stronger, and the practice was given up in 1738. The southern colonies were no more friendly neighbors during much of this period. William Byrd, one of the Virginia commissioners in the boundary dispute, repeatedly expressed his contempt for the North Carolina people; and in 1730 the South Carolina agents in London characterized the same province

as the “receptacle of all the vagabouns & runaways of the main land of America, for which reason and for their entertaining Pirates they are justly contemned by their neighbors.”¹

     Notwithstanding these unpleasant facts of intercolonial jealousy and strife, the most significant thing in the life of the colonies is the growing similarity of their political usages and aspirations. Leaving the two elective governments out of account, the fundamental fact of American politics in this as in the earlier period was the antagonism between the appointed governor and the elected assembly, between the organized colonists and the agent of external authority. The underlying constitutional issues remained essentially as they were at the close of the seventeenth century, but they sometimes presented themselves in different aspects; and among the colonists themselves there appeared new lines of party cleavage.

     Numerous controversies arose regarding the composition and organization of the assembly, in which the lower house sought to secure as much freedom as possible from executive control. Thus in North Carolina the lower house refused for many years to admit members elected from districts which had been created by the governor without the sanction of the assembly. Nevertheless, in this, as in a similar controversy in New Hampshire, the representatives

were finally beaten. The attempts to limit the governor’s freedom in summoning and dissolving assemblies also continued. Acts providing for triennial elections were passed during this period in South Carolina, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York; but the New Jersey and New York acts were disallowed by the crown. The Board of Trade regarded such acts as interfering with the legitimate prerogatives of the crown, and the governor’s point of view was probably stated accurately by Governor Montgomerie of New Jersey, when he said that his predecessors “could not have carried on the publick business so quietly and Successfully as they did, if they had been obliged to call a new Assembly every three years.”¹

     One of the most important questions of legislative privilege during this period was whether the house of representatives had the right to choose its own speaker independently of the governor. In most of the colonies, as in the mother-country, the presentation of the speaker to the governor was a mere formality; but in Massachusetts and New Hampshire the governors sometimes rejected candidates chosen by the house. The most important contest took place in Massachusetts in 1720, when Governor Shute vetoed the choice of the opposition leader as speaker of the house, on the ground that the charter gave him a negative upon all acts of

the general court. The home government finally issued, in 1725, an “explanatory charter” which decided the point in the governor’s favor.¹

     By the beginning of the Hanoverian period the practice of making temporary grants to the governors had been adopted by several of the colonies; but the home government was by no means ready to yield. The ideal of the board was a salary fixed by the crown, and governors were instructed to insist upon permanent settlements. The most interesting contests of this period took place in Massachusetts and New York.

     In Massachusetts the crisis came during the administration of Governor Burnet in 1728. The governor argued strongly for a permanent civil list as necessary to his freedom of action in legislative matters. He supported this argument by referring to the practice of the mother-country, and claimed also that temporary grants had been used to extort legislation in opposition to the governor’s judgment. The position of the house was summed up in a resolution declaring that, after a salary had once been settled, the governor with his uncertain tenure would have little interest in serving the welfare of the people. In this instance the governor held to his instructions and died at his post, refusing to the end the liberal grants which the assembly

was willing to give if he would only consent to give up the principle of a permanent establishment. The Privy Council in 1729, after the Massachusetts agents had argued the assembly’s case, commended Burnet and reiterated the demand for a permanent settlement of the governor’s salary; but under Burnet’s successors, Belcher and Shirley, the home government practically gave up the fight. A permanent settlement was still urged, but if that could not be had, temporary grants might be accepted.

     In New York the practice for several years after Queen Anne’s War was to grant the salary list for periods of five or three years; but the house finally resolved to grant revenue for one year only, and the home government was obliged to submit. At the beginning of the last French war the board practically acknowledged its defeat, as it had already done in Massachusetts, by instructing the governor not to press the matter. The same issue arose in South Carolina during the first years of the royal government, and the outcome was the same.¹

     The result of these controversies was that in South Carolina as well as in New England and the middle colonies the provincial assemblies had in their hands an effective offset to the administrative control exercised by the home government. A contemporary

statement regarding the proprietary province of Pennsylvania may be taken as applicable to several of the royal governments: “Every proprietary Governor has two Masters: one who gives him his Commission and one who gives him his Pay.”¹

     The powers thus gained, the assemblies were not slow to use for purposes which the royalists regarded as subversive of the constitution; and in these radical measures New England continued to exercise a strong influence, which was naturally felt most strongly in the neighboring provinces of New York and New Jersey, where it attracted the attention of the royal governors. Cosby, of New York, said in 1732 that the “example and spirit of the Boston people begins to spread amongst these colonys in a most prodigious maner”; and a few years later Governor Morris, of New Jersey, wrote of the fondness of his assembly for the example of “their neighbours in Pennsylvania & New England.” It is noteworthy that the New York assembly, in defending the triennial act of 1737, urged that their people ought not to be deprived of a privilege enjoyed by their neighbors. Even in the Carolinas the prevalence of “commonwealth maxims” was attributed to New England influence.²

     The most common encroachments of the provincial

assemblies were in the field of finance. In several colonies the assemblies attempted, with more or less success, either to authorize payments of money without the governor’s warrant, required by his instructions; or to make the warrant a mere formality by requiring a particular vote of the representatives in each instance. The assemblies also generally refused to allow the council to amend money bills, a policy which had appeared much earlier and was unsuccessfully resisted by the Board of Trade. In the first years of the royal government in South Carolina the issue was raised there. The governor’s instructions explicitly gave the council equal rights with the house; but the assembly denied that the king could limit their privileges in this way, and insisted upon their right to all the privileges of the House of Commons. The dispute went on for over twenty years and the house finally carried its point. In 1740 the Board of Trade made a stand in favor of the New Jersey council, but here again it was defeated. By the middle of the eighteenth century the exclusive control in the lower house of money bills was almost everywhere established.¹

     Provincial treasurers were generally appointed by the assemblies during the quarter-century following the English revolution; but there was some controversy

as to whether the appointment should be controlled by the lower house alone or whether it should follow the regular process of legislation by governor, council, and assembly. Usually the control rested practically if not formally with the lower house. Sometimes, as in Virginia and North Carolina, the close relation between the House and the treasurer was shown by combining that office with the speakership in a way which suggests the position of the English chancellor of the exchequer in the House of Commons.

     Other executive officers were frequently appointed by the assemblies during the eighteenth century. When, about the middle of the century, Governor Glen of South Carolina declared that the executive power was largely in the hands of commissioners appointed by the assembly, he made a statement which, with some allowance for exaggeration, might have been made with regard to several of the provincial governments. In 1751 the Board of Trade made a long statement about New York, in which they rehearsed the “fatal measures, by which the legal prerogative of the Crown (which alone can keep this or any Province dependent on the Mother Country) has been reduced” and “the most essencial powers of Goverm^t violently wrested out of the hands of the Governor.”¹

     While governor and assembly were thus struggling

for control of the provincial administration, other important issues were raised, involving the rights of individuals and the extent to which they shared in the legal privileges of English subjects. The general principle was stated during this period in two important legal opinions. The first, delivered by Richard West, special counsel to the Board of Trade, in 1720, declared that the common law of Eng land was the common law of the plantations.” Let an Englishman,” he said, “go where he will, he carries as much of law and liberty with him as the nature of things will bear.” The second opinion was delivered by Attorney-General Yorke in 1729, and dealt with the more difficult question of the statute law, which had been for many years an important political issue in Maryland. With special reference to that colony, Yorke asserted that general statutes enacted by Parliament since the settlement of the province, and not expressly applied to that colony or to the colonies in general, were not applicable there, unless they had either been declared so by act of assembly or “received there by long uninterrupted usage or practice,” which might imply the tacit consent of the proprietor and the colonists.

     The Maryland assembly asserted, however, that general statutes passed by Parliament, and not specifically restricted, were the common privilege of English subjects whether in England or America. The proprietor denied this proposition; and though the matter was frequently discussed and the assembly

gained a partial victory, it was never precisely settled.¹

     As a part of their inheritance in the common law, the American colonists enjoyed the familiar safeguards of property and personal liberty, and were accustomed to trial by jury both in civil and criminal cases. The habeas-corpus act of 1679 was not applicable to the colonies, and their acts extending its provisions to themselves were sometimes disallowed; but the privilege of the writ was generally secured in practice under the common law. Certain other personal rights now regarded as a matter of course were not then generally conceded. One of these was religious liberty; for, notwithstanding the substantial progress of the previous century, Catholics and Jews were still deprived of equal rights, and many men were compelled to support religious establishments of which they disapproved. So also the right of free criticism of public men and measures was not enjoyed as of course by the American of the provincial era, but was the outcome of serious conflicts with arbitrary power.²

     Shortly before the revolution of 1688 a clause had been commonly inserted in the governor’s instructions providing that no book should be printed and no printing-press set up without the governor’s

leave. This clause was retained during the reigns of William and Anne, and for a time in some of the colonies the censorship was actually enforced. In 1721, Governor Shute of Massachusetts asked for penal legislation against the authors of seditious papers, but the house of representatives refused, and resolved instead that “to suffer no books to be printed without a license from the governor will be attended with innumerable inconveniences and danger.” In the instructions to later governors the censorship clause was omitted.¹

     Yet the withdrawal of the governor’s censorship by no means perfectly secured the free expression of public opinion, which was still much restricted by prosecutions for criminal libel, in which the rights of defendants were not always thoroughly guarded. Representative assemblies also were at times guilty of arbitrary procedure in this respect.²

     Fortunately for the American people, the principle of a free press found an able defender in 1735, when John Peter Zenger, publisher of the Weekly Journal in New York, was tried for publishing false and malicious libels against Governor Cosby. Cosby had removed the chief-justice, Lewis Morris, for deciding against him in a suit about his salary, and the libels consisted in sharp criticisms of the governor’s conduct in the columns of Zenger’s Journal. The case was tried before the new chief-justice, De

Lancey, who had a natural bias against the prisoner. According to De Lancey’s theory the jury had to decide only on the fact of publication, simply accepting the decision of the court as to the libellous character of the statements made. This would of course have secured Zenger’s conviction.

     The defendant’s friends had, however, secured the services of an. able counsellor in the person of Andrew Hamilton, a well-known lawyer and politician of Pennsylvania. Hamilton insisted that the jury must decide whether the publication was really a false and malicious libel, and argued strongly for public criticism as the only safeguard of free government. By this appeal he won the jury, who acquitted Zenger and thus established a new barrier against arbitrary power.¹

     These constitutional controversies between the colonists and their governors were complicated by other disputes, especially on economic issues. In the royal and proprietary governments the land question was in some form or other an almost constant source of friction, the governors finding it difficult to secure the proper collection of quit-rents. In the proprietary provinces the colonists struggled to secure public control of land administration.

     Paper-money issues constituted another prolific source of party conflicts in which the governors and the administration parties sometimes stood out

against the popular demand, but often yielded to the pressure of colonial opinion, especially when they needed financial support. Even in the elective governments this became a disturbing political issue. In 1731, Governor Joseph Jenckes of Rhode Island carried his opposition to paper-money issues to the point of indorsing his dissent upon a bill which had been passed by both houses of the assembly. The charter, however, made no reference to an executive veto, and the legal advisers of the home government decided against the governor, holding that the assembly might make any law not actually in conflict with the laws of England. At the next election Jenckes lost his office.¹

     No definite and permanent organization of political parties can be traced in the provincial era, and the lines of party cleavage varied at different times and in different colonies. In Massachusetts there was a tendency to party division between social classes, especially during the period in which currency problems were under discussion. A radical party, recruited largely from the farmers and small traders, was opposed by the conservative “men of estates and the principal merchants,” who held out against the paper-money radicals and became later the basis of a distinctly royalist party. There was a similar division of parties in Rhode Island.²

     In New York, party contests assumed a more distinctly factional character. The suffrage was closely limited, and politics during the first half of the eighteenth century was largely a contest between a few influential families, such as the Livingstons and the De Lanceys, who built up their influence by means of marriage alliances and other social ties. This aristocratic type of family politics continued until after the War of Independence; but the constitutional controversies between the governor and the assembly were preparing the way for more clearly defined parties based on political principles rather than on personal allegiance.¹

     In Pennsylvania the Quakers formed a compact political body which until the middle of the eighteenth century controlled the provincial assembly, with the help of the conservative Germans. By that time the Penn family had joined the established church and the Quakers were usually in opposition. On the proprietary side there were usually the Anglicans, a small but relatively influential party, and the Presbyterians. During the last French war this proprietary party favored vigorous measures of defence. The comparative conservatism of the dominant Quaker party may be illustrated by the more moderate paper-money issues of Pennsylvania as compared with New England.²

     In the tobacco colonies, especially in Maryland, the divergent interests of the large and small planters led to important political disputes as to the regulation of the tobacco trade. Gradually the poorer and less educated people began to find political leaders in the lawyer class. In Virginia a prominent feature of politics during the first half of the eighteenth century was the great power exercised by a small group of aristocratic families who were strongly represented in the council and were able to make quite uncomfortable any governor whose policy interfered with the interests of their class. In South Carolina there was a strong group of Charleston merchants which, until about 1760, formed the backbone of the government party, opposing the paper-money legislation desired by the planters and taking a generally conservative position on public questions. It was largely this class which dominated the council, while the planters controlled the lower house.¹