AMERICAN colonial life at the close of the seventeenth century shows a striking tendency towards uniformity in political thought and action. In the earlier period two strong influences had been at work to produce variation rather than uniformity; the first was the policy of proprietary or chartered colonization, which gave to each proprietor and each group of self-governing colonists the opportunity to modify the common English tradition according to their special needs and ideals; the second was the geographical isolation of the various groups of settlers, which checked their interchange of ideas and experiences with each other and with the mother-country. Great differences had resulted in institutions and in political issues. The practical politics of Massachusetts under its theocratic-republican constitution had little in common with that of Virginia under the rule of Governor Berkeley or that of Maryland under the proprietary system.

     Gradually, however, the extension of imperial control

limited the opportunity for political experiment. The provincial system was established in half of the colonies and the proprietary governors themselves were held to a stricter accountability to the crown. Only the two small governments of Connecticut and Rhode Island remained wholly outside of the provincial system, and even they were troubled with appeals to the crown and acts of Parliament restraining their trade. The physical obstacles to colonial intercourse were still serious, but even these had been lessened. New settlements were gradually filling the intervening spaces, intercolonial trade was developing, and an intercolonial postal system had been begun. The common dangers of border warfare also forced the colonies into a rather grudging co-operation, and brought their leaders into more frequent contact with one another. Thus there arose a degree of uniformity which makes it possible to speak, not merely of the politics of Massachusetts or Virginia, but of certain common tendencies which appear in the political life of the colonies as a whole, or at least of that large majority of them which had been brought under the provincial system.

     These general principles of colonial politics cannot be understood without a study of the provincial constitution, using the term in its broadest sense to include proprietary as well as royal governments. The essential feature of this system was a governor appointed either by the king or by a proprietor,

except in those comparatively rare cases in which the proprietor governed the province in person. In any case, the governor represented the principle of external control, an authority outside of the community itself. His powers and duties were defined by his commission and instructions, issued by this same external authority and revocable at will. By his side stood the councillors, who, except in Massachusetts, derived their powers from the king or proprietor, and thus like him represented the principle of external control. Generally speaking, the home government took the governor’s advice in the appointment and dismissal of councillors, so that he could depend upon their political support. There were, however, frequent exceptions, and often, as in Virginia, the councillors belonged to a kind of local aristocracy whose point of view differed from that of the governor.

     The only royal province in which councillors were not appointed by the crown was Massachusetts. There they were annually chosen by joint ballot of the representatives and councillors, but the governor had the right of veto, which was frequently exercised during the first twenty years of royal government. Aggressive leaders of the popular party were thus kept out. of the council, and members once elected were disposed to conciliate the governor.

     The governor, either independently or with the council, was intrusted with the ordinary executive

Map Facing This Page: Types of Colonial Governments (1682-1730)

powers of appointment, military command, financial control, and, with some limitations, that of pardon. The governor and councillors also influenced the administration of justice through their appointment of judges and the direct exercise of certain judicial functions. These functions were not the same in all the provinces, but in the ordinary royal governments the governor and council served as a court of appeal in civil cases. Generally speaking, then, the executive and judicial powers were intrusted to representatives of external authority.

     In the legislative department alone was the principle of popular representation generally recognized by the authorities in England. By the close of the seventeenth century every province had its representative assembly, known by different names in different colonies. In Virginia, it was the house of burgesses; in South Carolina, the commons house of assembly; and in Massachusetts, the house of representatives. These different names, however, stood for essentially the same thing, an assembly of representatives, not of the whole people, but of the owners of property. The policy of the crown was to restrict representation to freeholders, as in the English counties, but this was not generally done.¹

     After a long period of controversy, two rights had been finally conceded to these representative

bodies. They had a right, shared with the council, to initiate legislation; and no taxes could be laid by any other department of the provincial government without their consent. The legislative power of the representatives was, however, seriously limited by at least two checks: in all the provinces (except Pennsylvania after 1701) measures enacted by the representatives required the consent of the council acting as an upper house; in proprietary provinces acts had to be further approved by the proprietors or their representatives. In the royal governments acts without a suspending clause became law on the approval of the governor, though still subject to disallowance by the crown, a condition which, as already observed, was also required in Pennsylvania.

     The fundamental fact of provincial politics after the revolution of 1689 is the conflict between the provincial governor and the representative assembly. The governor represented, first, the monarchical idea of prerogative, and, secondly, the principle of imperial control, whether exercised by king or Parliament. The assembly, on the other hand, stood not merely for the representative principle in government, but also for distinctly local interests. The policy of the colonial assemblies at its worst expressed a narrow and particularistic spirit, disregarding sound considerations of national or imperial policy; at its best it stood for the vital principle of local self-government, and for the protection

of legitimate American interests as against a narrow British policy.

     The popular party in America was stimulated by the course of politics in the mother-country. In 1689 the representative principle triumphed over prerogative, and the transfer of the crown was followed by the enactment of great fundamental statutes like the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement, which secured more completely than ever before the privileges of Parliament and the personal liberty of the subject. Among other measures at first rejected by William III., but finally forced upon him, were the triennial election of parliaments and the exclusion of office-holders from the House of Commons. The Commons also asserted more strictly their control of the national finances at the expense both of the king and the House of Lords. Large sums were given for the conduct of the foreign war, but the objects of expenditure were defined in detail; and, as already noted, an unsuccessful effort was made to establish a parliamentary council of trade. On the whole, the reigns of William and Anne show a clear though uneven advance towards the modern system of cabinet government, which practically enables a committee of the House of Commons to exercise the most important powers of the crown.

     The provincial governments reproduced on a smaller scale the constitution of the mother-country. As the governor felt the responsibility of maintaining

within the province the prerogative of the crown, so the assembly found support for its privileges and encouragement for its aspirations in the example of the English House of Commons. The colonial journals reproduce in surprising detail the parliamentary conflicts of the mother-country. Nevertheless, these ambitions of the colonial assemblies met with little sympathy from British statesmen of either school; the colonial prerogatives of the crown were identified with the political supremacy of England, and therefore had the support of English Whigs as well as English Tories.

     Another influence favorable to the popular party in America was the experience of the chartered colonies: where, as in Massachusetts, a royal government was established over colonists who had been accustomed to almost complete independence, the freer practice of the earlier days established precedents which the crown could not wholly disregard. In provinces without exceptional privileges of self-government, the example of the chartered colonies exerted a strong and, from the royalist point of view, a demoralizing influence. In the surviving proprietary colonies the active hostility of the home government contributed to weaken the authority of the governors as against the popular party. This was notably the case in South Carolina, where the colonists appealed successfully to the crown against obnoxious measures of the proprietors. In 1702 the secretary of Pennsylvania

wrote that the surrender of the Jerseys, taken together with other difficulties, had made “this government too precarious to be called one.” From such governments it was comparatively easy for the assemblies to extort concessions. Nowhere was the spirit of self-government so strongly entrenched as in New England and Pennsylvania, and during the eighteenth century their example was especially dreaded by the prerogative party. Thus the distinctly American traditions of the self-governing colonies combined with the parliamentary usages of the mother-country to strengthen the representative element in the provincial constitution.¹

     Among the most interesting illustrations of the similarity of English and colonial politics after the revolution are the statutes or charters proposed in the principal royal governments. Thus, in 1691, the Virginia assembly instructed its agent in England to secure, if possible, a new charter confirming that of Charles II. and all previous charters of liberties and privileges. The burgesses asked, among other things, specific recognition of the exclusive right of the assembly to levy taxes, and of the “ancient method” of allowing appeals from the general judicial court to the general assembly. In the same year the New York assembly passed an act stating “the Rights and Priviledges of their Majesties Subjects inhabiting within their Province of New York.” This act set forth certain privileges of the

representative assembly and certain securities for personal and property rights.¹ A year later, the first provincial assembly of Massachusetts passed an act “setting forth general privileges;” and in 1694 a supplementary act with special reference to the constitutional privileges of the house of representatives. Under these acts the people of the province were declared exempt from all taxes except those levied by the general court, and the house of representatives was declared to have “an undoubted right to all the liberties and priviledges of an English assembly.” The Maryland assembly took a somewhat similar course by inserting in the church act of 1696 a clause asserting that the people of the province “shall enjoy all their Rights and Liberties according to the Laws and Statutes of the Kingdom of England” on all points on which there was no provision in provincial statutes. Besides these general declarations, a number of acts were passed in the colonies affirming particular rights of the subject. Thus Massachusetts and South Carolina specifically asserted the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus.²

been mentioned were disallowed. In one instance, there was a minor and somewhat technical defect; in another, the act was declared unnecessary; and in another, the objections were not clearly stated. Two disallowances were particularly noteworthy: the New York act of 1691 was similar to that of 1683, which had been disallowed by James II., and the reasons given in the two cases were much alike. The later act was condemned by the Board of Trade, because it gave to the representatives “too great and unreasonable privileges”; because the exemption from the quartering of soldiers contained “several large and doubtful expressions.” The Massachusetts act for the prevention of illegal imprisonment was set aside on the ground that the privileges of the habeas corpus act of Charles II. had not as yet been granted in any of his majesty’s plantations.

     The colonial assemblies resembled the English House of Commons in desiring greater freedom from executive control and influence, and hence measures resembling the acts for triennial parliaments and the exclusion of office-holders from the Commons were more or less successfully advocated in the colonies. In Massachusetts the charter of 1691 permitted annual elections; Penn granted the same privilege to his colonists in his “charter” of 1701; and in both the Carolinas acts were passed for holding biennial elections; the Virginia assembly asked that assemblies might be held at least once

in two years; and in New Jersey, which under the proprietors had been accustomed to frequent elections, the king was urged, though without success, to provide for triennial assemblies. So far as such acts were passed, they limited the power which the provincial governors generally possessed of summoning, proroguing, and dissolving assemblies.

     Another parliamentary privilege jealously guarded by the colonists was that of judging elections; the Virginia burgesses declared, in 1692, that the house was the sole judge of the capacity or incapacity of its members; sheriffs who attempted to determine such questions were declared guilty of a breach of privilege, and two of them were ordered under arrest.¹

     The assemblies were not, however, content with securing their freedom in the exercise of legislative privileges. They desired also to strengthen their control over the provincial executive, and their chief instrument for this purpose was the power to grant or withhold taxes. Of all the royal provinces, the most aggressive in this respect was Massachusetts, where the colonists under the old charter had been accustomed to almost entire independence. Even the new charter allowed them privileges unusual in a royal province, including the right to appoint many administrative officers. There was, moreover,

in the province a strong radical party under the leadership of Elisha Cooke, one of the most aggressive members of the radical party which had been unwilling to accept the compromise charter of 1691. Cooke was repeatedly elected to the council, though several times excluded by the vetoes of Governor Phips and Governor Dudley. It appears to have been his policy to secure for the colony the largest measure of independence possible under the new charter.¹

     The programme of the popular party in Massachusetts is partially set forth in an act passed by the general court in 1694, but soon after disallowed by the crown, claiming for the assembly the right to appoint all civil officers not particularly designated in the charter, besides a complete control of public expenditures. All official salaries were to be fixed by the assembly; whenever revenue was to be raised, the house should be apprised of the purpose for which it was to be used; and no money was to be expended except for the objects specified by law. Except in the case of contingent charges, every warrant must indicate the specific service for which the money was used and the law by which it had been authorized. The disallowance of the act did not prevent the assembly from carrying out substantially the policy here indicated; for in the face of constant protests from royal governors and the home government, the assembly

steadily refused to make permanent provision for the civil list. The governor’s salary was voted from year to year, expenditures were controlled by detailed appropriations, and the province treasurer was appointed by act of assembly.¹

     This radical programme was not fully carried out in the other provinces, but nearly every feature of it may be found in one or more of the royal or proprietary governments. In Virginia, where the assembly had granted a standing appropriation before the revolution, a fixed salary was secured to the governor; but permanent grants were refused in nearly all of the other colonies. There was also a growing tendency to appropriate money in detail and for limited periods of time, a method particularly objectionable to the home government because it enabled the assembly to exert pressure upon the governor for the purpose of carrying distinctively popular measures.

     The claim of the assembly to control the finances came more and more to mean control by the representative house. Even before the English revolution, the Virginia burgesses refused to allow the council to act with them in laying the levy; and elsewhere the council was denied the right to amend money bills. This claim of the representative was resisted by the home government and was not always made good, though it was in

accordance with the usage of the House of Commons.¹

     In one respect the constitutional development of the colonies outstripped that of the mother-country. In England the formal appointment of ministers of state has remained to the present time in the hands of the crown, and, until the accession of the Hanoverians, Parliament had only an imperfect control. On the other hand, the appointment of administrative officers by the provincial assemblies became common soon after the English revolution, as a natural result of their theory of financial control. The money raised by public taxation belonged to the people, and their representatives had, therefore, the right to determine how it should be spent, and to provide the necessary safeguards for such expenditure.

     The most important application of this theory was the appointment of the province treasurer by the assembly. In 1691 the governor of Barbadoes complained that the treasurer was appointed by act of assembly, and that the lower house claimed the nomination as “absolutely its own.” In 1693 the Virginia council refused to accept a bill from the burgesses for appointing a treasurer; but after 1704 the treasurer of that province was regularly appointed by act of assembly. In New York the same policy was adopted during the early years of

the eighteenth century, after the passage of resolutions referring to previous misapplication of funds; and in 1715 the governor was convinced that resistance to that method of appointment was no longer practicable. Similar appointments by the assembly were made in the proprietary governments of Pennsylvania, the Jerseys, and South Carolina, and for a time at least in the temporary royal province of Maryland. In South Carolina the public receiver or treasurer had been appointed by act of assembly at least as early as 1691, and in 1707 the governor approved an act which gave the exclusive right of nomination to the “House of Commons.”¹ Thus, by the close of Queen Anne’s reign, the colonial assemblies were, with few exceptions, enforcing their claim not merely to lay taxes and determine expenditures, but also to appoint the chief financial officer of the province.

     Royal officers in the colonies and the Board of Trade in England often pointed out the marked tendency towards autonomy in provincial administration and sought to check it. In 1703 the board attempted to make a stand upon the salary question, and Governor Dudley urged repeatedly upon the Massachusetts assembly the establishment of a fixed salary; but the house answered his arguments

by insisting on “the native right and privilege” of English subjects, “from time to time to raise and dispose such sum and sums of money as the present exigency of affairs calls for.” Hunter, in New York, was equally aggressive, but the best he could do was to secure a civil list for a fixed term of years. In 1711 the Board of Trade suggested that the New-Yorkers might be brought to terms by threatening the intervention of Parliament; but the ministry, as a whole, was not then ready for such thorough-going measures.¹

     While engaged in these constitutional controversies, the colonists came to appreciate the necessity of having their interests guarded by agents in the mother-country. Until the latter part of the seventeenth century such agents, though occasionally appointed, were intended to meet special emergencies of some kind. After the revolution it gradually became the general custom to maintain standing agencies in London, in charge of the interests of the particular province. At first these agents were usually appointed by act of assembly, requiring the consent of the governor, council, and representatives; but sometimes, as in Massachusetts, the choice was practically that of the house; they were also instructed from time to time by the assembly.²

     Through these agencies, and by various other methods, the colonists came to have considerable influence in London. Money was used to some extent to promote colonial interests, and there was an impression in the colonies that men of influence might be won by the use of it. In 1693, Governor Fletcher represented some of the colonists as thinking that “anything may be Effected at Whitehall for mony.”¹ A few years later William Penn, after a considerable experience in English politics, was trying to secure the attorney-general’s approval of the Pennsylvania laws. He noted some objection which the latter had made, but added his opinion that “a good fee would go a great way to clear the scruple, if I had it to give him.”² The history of this colonial diplomacy in London has not yet been adequately studied; such a study should throw new light on the failure of the Board of Trade to repress the independent tendencies in colonial politics.

     The preceding survey seems to show that the practical effect of the imperialistic movement was counteracted by strong independent tendencies within the colonies, so that it is hard to avoid the paradoxical conclusion that a period characterized by the extension of imperial control was also one of growing independence on the part of the colonies. The explanation may be stated briefly thus: whereas,

during the larger part of the seventeenth century, the colonists were left almost wholly to themselves or their proprietary governors, a measure of imperial control was, thereafter, gradually extended over them, and a majority were brought under the influence of the provincial system. When, however, that new status was extended over communities hitherto accustomed to freer action, important concessions became necessary; and as the colonies were brought into closer relations with each other, modifications of that system which had been found necessary in one colony tended to become general. The influence of English precedents also contributed to this result. The provincial constitution was modelled closely on that of England, without its strong aristocratic upper house; and the colonial assemblies shared the aspirations of the Mother of Parliaments. Thus we have, at the same time, an extension of the provincial system and a vigorous development within that system of the self-governing spirit.

     By some contemporary observers the colonists were charged with cherishing the ideal of ultimate independence, and much was made of their violation of acts of Parliament, especially those relating to trade. Here and there, particularly in New England, men were said to dispute the validity of parliamentary statutes. Zealous royal officials were easily led to identify opposition to their own authority with disloyalty to the crown, and that

charge was most frequently and naturally brought against New England, where the old independent Puritan ideals clashed most sharply with the prevailing English system in church and state. This charge of disloyalty to the mother-country was, however, vigorously repelled by the New-Englanders, who pointed to their sacrifices in the intercolonial wars and emphasized important elements of common feeling underlying their political and ecclesiastical differences.¹

     Yet the charges of British officials had undoubtedly a certain basis. The political horizon of the colonists was hemmed in by the physical barriers which separated them from their fellow-subjects, so that they often displayed a lack of that broader loyalty which leads men to make sacrifices for objects not directly affecting their own interests or safety. It is true also that with this lack of interest in matters of more than purely local concern, there existed an intense desire to manage their provincial interests in their own way. This insistence on local autonomy was not peculiar to any group of colonies. It attracted most attention in New England; but it may be found also among the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the tobacco planters of Virginia, and the little slave-holding oligarchies of Barbadoes and South Carolina. Royal governors

like Hunter pointed out the inherent inconsistency between this spirit of autonomy and the authority of the mother-country as understood by colonial administrators in England. The danger of independence which they sought to avert, though not immediate, was not altogether imaginary.¹