The Three Classes of Colonies
As we have seen in the last chapter, colonies frequently passed from one class to another. Still, the three original types were preserved throughout the colonial period. This is the grouping at the time of the Revolution:
1. Charter Colonies: Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island
The charters were written documents guaranteeing to the people certain rights, and they may be compared to the State constitutions of the present day. They sprang, however, from the crown, and not from the people.
2. Proprietary Colonies : Pennsylvania and Delaware and Maryland
The proprietors, William Penn and Lord Baltimore and their descendants, held their provinces by patents emanating from the king, and these patents, together with the concessions of rights and privileges made to the people by the proprietors, had much the same effect as the New England charters.
3. Royal or Provincial Colonies: New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia
The governors of these colonies, in conjunction with assemblies and councils, administered them in conformity with written instructions given them from time to time by the crown. No charter or patent stood between the colony and the king; at the same time, the various concessions that the crown made to the people, together with the customary mode of government, formed a traditionary constitution or charter.
Common Political Features
While the thirteen colonies differed in constitutional features, they practically agreed in respect to governmental form, machinery, and administration. First, the sum total of powers and functions was distributed to local and to central institutions; secondly, the powers and functions distributed to each class of
institutions were, in the main, the same ; thirdly, the local institutions had certain general correspondences; and fourthly, the central governments conformed to one general type.
These local and central institutions will now be briefly described. Of the first class, there were three types: the Town type, found in New England; the County type, found in the South; the Mixed type, found in the Middle States.
I. The Town Type
The Puritan Ideas
The English Puritans desired to diminish the consequence of the higher clergy in church government, and to increase that of the local pastors and of the lay membership. They also desired to add to the importance of the plain people in all matters of government.To carry out these ideas, was the main object sought by those Puritans who came to New England. Furthermore, the first to come came as church societies accompanied by their ministers, not as individuals. Moreover, they mainly belonged to the English middle class, which tended to foster a feeling of equality and to render society homogeneous.
The First Towns
Such a church society, landing on the New England coast, would naturally make choice of some suitable spot where they could build a village or group of houses, and so all go to the same church. This they did, and continued to do as they moved westward. The first towns on the Connecticut River were founded by similar congregations migrating from Massachusetts. Such settlements were favored by the Massachusetts government, which made grants of land to similar societies wishing to live near together and attend one church. In later times, emigrations were sometimes made to the West in the same manner.
Influence of Physical Conditions
Physical conditions tended strongly to develop the village feature of NewEngland civilization. Large farms or plantations devotedto a single staple, as tobacco or rice, were an impossibility; the country admitted only of small farms and small farming. Then villages could be better defended against Indian attacks than scattered farms and houses. The rigor of the winter climate also drove the people together. Besides, the colonists interested themselves in commerce and fishing, and finally in manufacturing, as well as in agriculture; the coast was indented with natural harbors: and these circumstances favored compact societies and trading marts.
Education and Schools
The founders of New England were educated as well as religious men. They believed thoroughly in schools and in education, and the school, as well as the church, tended to centralize the common life. The first school law of Massachusetts, enacted in 1647, ordered “that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read…also that, where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth as far as they may be fitted for the university.” A public school system was also established
at an early day in Connecticut.
The Old New England Town
The primal cell of the New England political organism was a reproduction of the English parish under the name of the town, and it presented both a civil and an ecclesiastical phase. As a civil organization, it regulated, in town meeting and by its magistrates, all civil matters of merely domestic concern, and for this purpose imposed and collected taxes. It had its own representation in the colonial assembly, and its own
militia company. As an ecclesiastical organization, it was a church society, choosing its own minister and other officers, and regulating its own ecclesiastical affairs. In 1643 counties were first organized in Massachusetts. Each county had its own regiment, as each town had its own company. The county cut a small figure in New England.
Influence of the System
The influence of local self-government upon New England life was very great. It proved an excellent training school in the science and the art of politics. Samuel Adams, who had more to do with preparing the public mind of Massachusetts for the Revolution than any other one man, has been called the man of the town meeting. Mr. Jefferson expressed great admiration for town government, and strove to introduce it into Virginia. He said: “These wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government and for its preservation.” And again, “These little republics would be the main strength of the great one. We owe to them the vigor given to our Revolution in its commencement in the Eastern States.”
II. The County Type
Early Virginia Life
In social factors Virginia differed from Massachusetts. First, the emigrants did not bring with them democratic ideas in relation to religion and civil affairs, but were content with the English church and state systems. They did not come as organized societies, but as individuals. Secondly, social distinctions were far more marked in the emigration; there were paupers and criminals as well as gentlemen and tradespeople. Thirdly, the physical conditions were very different. The rivers, which have been called “fingers of an ocean hand,” brought seagoing vessels to the planter’s own dock, thus rendering commercial towns at first unnecessary. Lands were granted to individuals, not to communities, and in any quantity that they desired. Men of capital bought large tracts suitable for growing tobacco, just as men of capital in later times bought similar tracts in Dakota suitable for growing wheat. Previous to 1776, when entails were abolished, the oldest son commonly inherited his father’s landed estate. There were small farms, but the tendency was to large plantations. Plantation life compelled men to live in the country, while a genial climate and a picturesque nature rendered country life very attractive and enjoyable. In time the absence of towns became a serious inconvenience; there was little trade and less manufacturing; transportation, save on the rivers, was difficult, and the people were mainly dependent upon foreign merchants. Efforts were now made to stimulate the building of towns, but they were commonly fruitless. Few towns were built, and these were small.
The Virginia Parish
This was a reproduction, with some changes, of the English parish. The parish authority was the vestry, composed of twelve men, who were at first elected by the people, but who afterwards filled the vacancies that occurred in their own number. The vestry levied the parish taxes, appointed the church wardens, looked after the poor, and settled the minister of the parish. The sexton and the parish clerk may also be mentioned.
There were no schools or town meetings.
The Virginia County
This was the political unit of the colony. But since the county could not well meet in county meeting, as the New England town met in town meeting, local government was representative, not democratic. The justices of the peace, usually eight in number, formed the county court. They were appointed by the governor, commonly on the nomination of the court itself, which made the court a close corporation like the vestry.
The court appointed its own clerk, who kept the county as well as the court records, and nominated a list of three candidates from whom the governor appointed the sheriff. Besides its judicial functions, the court had charge of the construction of roads, highways, and bridges, appointed the constables, had charge of ferries, admitted attorneys to the practice of the law, licensed innkeepers, and, in early times divided the county into parishes. The other county officers were the coroner, the surveyor, and the lieutenant, who was chief commander of the militia and administrator of the military laws. The county was represented by two burgesses in the House of Burgesses.
Taxation
The vestry had a limited power of levying taxes for parish purposes. The county court made the county levy, and the General Assembly the colonial levy. The sheriff was the fiscal officer. “He was not only collector of both public and county levies, and sometimes that of the parish, but he was the custodian of the tobacco received, paying; it out on the proper warrant and renderingaccount therefor to the county or provincial court. He was, in short, ex officio county treasurer—there being no officer bearing that name in Virginia.”
The Southern States
Conditions similar to those that prevailed in Virginia in colonial days prevailed also in the other Southern Colonies. This likeness of conditions tended to create likeness of social and political ideas and institutions. Besides, the influence of Virginia on the whole South was considerable. As a result, the county system of government, with minor modifications, was established in all these colonies.
Influence of the System
The county system in colonial times tended to create an aristocratic and central-ized local government. And yet Virginia, in 1776, was aswell prepared for independence as Massachusetts. Hencewe must seek out the popular element in her political life. The vestrymen were usually the most discreet farmers ; dis- tributed through the parish, they were acquainted with thedetails and economy of private life, and they found ampleinducements to execute their duties well in their philanthropy, in the approbation of their neighbors, and in theresulting distinction. The parish and county governmentwas open to the public eye. On the political stump, whichoriginated in pre-Revolutionary days, were discussed therights of the colonies and their relations to England. Thecentralized administration created able poHtical leaders, just as the town meeting created a well-instructed democracy;while the forces of American life tended to array both alike against the crown and Parliament.
The Middle Colonies
The mixed system was dueto a variety of causes. First, population was less homogeneous in the Middle Colonies than in New England or in Virginia. The character of the country and of the people tended to produce a type of life midway between the town life of the North and the plantation life of the South. Besides, the influence upon these colonies of the older ones was considerable. Hence there appeared here a mixed form of local government. In fact there were two forms of the system, one originating in New York and the other in Pennsylvania.
Local Government in New York
The Dutch created in New York manors, villages, and chartered towns, but nothing corresponding to the county. After the conquest, in 1664, there was progressively developed a dual system that gave more prominence to the county than Massachusetts, and more prominence to the township than Virginia. But the township was first, and retained the local powers not delegated to the county.
Local Government in Pennsylvania
William Penn substantially destroyed the work of the Dutch and the Duke of York when, in 1682, he reorganized the local institutions of Pennsylvania. He set up an exclusive county organization. “The county thus instituted was employed for all the important purposes of self-government. It was a judicial organism, a unit of general civil administration, and a fiscal body.” Afterwards, owing to the thickening of population among other causes, the township appeared and began to develop in the colony. It grew up at the expense
of the county, as the county grew up at the expense of the township in New York.
Framework of the Central Governments
In every colony the central government consisted of three branches, the Legislative, the Executive, and the Judicial. Save in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Georgia, the Legislatures were bicameral, not unicameral; that is, they consisted of a lower house, commonly called the Assembly or House of Representatives, and an upper house called the Council. In the colonies mentioned, the Council had no legislative power, but was merely an advisory executive body.
Powers of the Central Governments
The wordcolony expresses dependence more or less strict. Hereafterwe shall see how the nature and extent of colonial dependence on England became the subject of angry contention;here it will suffice to describe the usual course of government. The Legislature claimed the right to legislate on all matters of merely local concern, and this the home governmentusually granted. The charters enjoined the colonies notto infringe upon the law^s of England; and about the closeof the seventeenth century Parliament enacted that ” all laws, by-laws, usages, and customs, which should be en-forced in any of the Plantations, repugnant to any law made,or to be made, in this kingdom, relative to said Plantationsshall be utterly void and of non-effect.” The power to decide what was repugnant, the home government retained inits own hands. All the colonies but Rhode Island andMaryland were required to submit their laws to the crownfor its approval ; still, they took effect immediately on theirpassage, and continued in force until formally set aside.Save in Connecticut and Rhode Island, the Governor hadaveto on all legislation ; he could also adjourn the Legislature, and in some instances dissolve it and call for theelection of a new Assembly. The Legislatures voted allcolonial taxes. The Courts adjudicated all cases arisingunder the colonial laws, subject, however, to an appeal tothe king in council. Mr. Bryce’s statement, ” practicallyeach colony was a self-governing commonwealth, left tomanage its own affairs, with scarcely any interference fromhome,” is a true description of the times preceding the dif-ferences leading to the Revolution.
Civil and Religious Rights
Speaking generally,the colonists who came to America seeking larger civil lib-erty found what they sought for. They possessed all thecivil rights of Englishmen. Trial by jury in both civil and criminal cases, and the writ of habeas corpus were firmly established. riie rights of life, property, and person were the common possession of the people, save as modified by the laws relating to religion. Religious liberty was less fully secured than civil liberty. In New England, save Rhode Island, the Congregational Church was established by law and supported by taxation, as the Episcopal Church was in Virginia and in some of the other colonies. Upon the whole, the colonies were fully abreast of any communities in the world in respect to civil and religious rights, and far in advance of most of them.
Political Rights
In all the colonies, the people participated in carrying on the government, but in different degrees. The people elected the more numerous and powerful branch of the Legislature. In Connecticut and Rhode
Island, they also elected the Council and the Governor. In Massachusetts, the Assembly elected the Council subject to the governor’s veto. In the proprietary colonies, the proprietors appointed the Governor and the Council. In the royal colonies, the crown appointed both the Council and the Governor. The crown also appointed the Governor in Massachusetts, which was a semi-royal colony. In some colonies, the Judges were for a time elected by the legislature, but at last they were all appointed by the crown, or by the governor acting in the name of the crown.
The Elective Franchise
The right to vote was sometimes regulated by charter, sometimes by law, sometimes by royal instructions to governors, and sometimes by custom. The regulations varied in different colonies, and in the same colony at different times. The county franchise and the town franchise did not always agree. The statutes did not forbid the suffrage to the Negro or the Indian, if he were otherwise qualified, save in the South. There was a tendency to confine voting to British subjects either by birth or naturalization. The New England colonies were disposed to impose moral qualifications, as that a person who had been fined or whipped for any scandalous offense should not vote until the court should manifest itssatisfaction. For a time, most of the same colonies limitedthe suffrage to church members. As a rule Roman Catholics were excluded from voting. Quakers were sometimes,but not generally, disqualified in terms, but their hesitationto take oaths often had that result. The rule was that anelector must be twenty-one years of age. Custom ex-cluded women, but not the law save in Virginia. Therewere also residential qualifications, while property qualifica-tions appear to have been universal. The Massachusettscharter of 1691 provided that no person should vote formembers to serve in the General Court unless he had a free-hold estate in land to the value of forty shillings per annumat the least, or other estate to the value of forty poundssterling. Many of the colonies required a freehold estate,some of them laying less stress on its value than on its size.Thus, Virginia confined the suffrage to freeholders who hadfifty acres of untilled land, or twenty-five acres with a plantation including a house twelve feet square. In New England freeman was originally a technical term,and it continued such in Connecticut and Rhode Island untilthe nineteenth century. ” A freeman did not become suchunless he possessed certain prescribed qualifications, anduntil he had been approved, admitted, and sworn.” Whenthat had been done, ” his position was analogous to that ofa freeman in a city or borough, and as such he became entitled to the exercise of the right of the elective franchise.” ^ This outline of Colonial Government will be all the more intelligible and instructive when compared with a similarone of the government of England.
The Saxon Township
The unit of political organizationin England is the township. Its original must be sought in the village community and mark of Germany; the community being asocial organization occupying the mark, as its home was called. The original bond was blood relationship. “As they fought side by side on the field,” says Mr. Green, “so they dwelt side by side on the soil. Harling abode by Harling, and Billing by Billing, and
each ‘wick’ and ‘ham’ and ‘stead’ and ‘ton’ took its name from the kinsmen who dwelt in it. In this way, the house or ‘ham’ of the Billings was Billingham, and the town or township of the Harlings was Harlington.” In the course of time, considerable changes were made in this primitive society. As a factor in the feudal system, it became the manor subject to a lord; as a factor in the church system, the parish presided over by a priest. But the township has never ceased to be the primary unit of the English constitution. Mr. Green thus describes the Saxon township government: “The life, the sovereignty, of the settlement was solely in the body of the freemen whose holdings lay round the moot-hill, or the sacred tree, where the community met from time to time to order its own industry and to make its own laws. Here new settlers were admitted to the freedom of the township, and by-laws framed and head-men and tithing-men chosen for its governance. Here ploughland and meadow-land were shared in due lot among all the vil- lagers, and field and homestead passed from man to man by the delivery of a turf cut from its soil. Here strife of farmer with farmer was settled according to the customs of the township as its eldermen stated them, and four men were chosen to follow headman or ealdorman to hundred-court or war.”
The Hundred
In Saxon England, as in ancient Germany, the townships were incorporated into the hundred, the head-man of which was the hundred-man, elder, or reeve. Here appeared the principle of representation, the germ of republican government. Says Mr. Green: “The four or ten villagers who followed the reeve of each township to the general muster of the hundred, were held to represent the whole body of the township from whence they came. Their voice was its voice, their doing its doing, their pledge its pledge. The hundred moot, a moot which was made by this gathering of the representatives of the townships that lay within its bounds, thus became at once a court of appeal from the moots of each separate village, as well as of arbitration in dispute between township and township.” Although the hundred fell out of place in England, the name ap- pears in the history of several of the American States.
The Shire or County
This was an aggregation of hundreds. The head-man of the shire was at first styled the elderman or alderman; afterwards the shire-reeve, or the sheriff, appeared as the special representative of the king. The shire-moot was rather a judicial than a political body. Mr. Green thus describes the latter form of the shire-moot: “The local knighthood, the yeomanry, the husbandmen of thecounty, were all represented in the crowd that gathered round thesheriff, as, guarded by his liveried followers, he published the king’s writs, announced his demands of aids, received the presentment of criminals and the inquest of the local jurors, assessed the taxation ofeach district, or listened solemnly to appeals for justice, civil and criminal, from all who held themselves oppressed in the lesser courts of the hundred or the soke. In all cases of civil or criminal justice the twelve sworn assessors of the sheriff, as members of a class, though not formerly deputed for that purpose, practically represented the judicial opinion of the county at large. From every hundred came groups of twelve sworn deputies, the jurors through whom the presentments of the district were made to the royal officer, and with whom the assessment of its share in the general taxation was arranged.”
The Kingdom of England
The Saxon invaders founded many dominions in Britain; in due time, these dominions were united into one kingdom under the name of England, the completedunion dating from the ninth century. This kingdom was composed of the shires or counties, and was governed by the king and his council, which was a representative body consisting of the aldermen, the bishops, whose dioceses at first coincided with the shires, and the royal thegns, or nobles whom the king had created. The council was called the Witenagemot, or Council of the Wise. From this simple government, the present imperial system of Great Britain was progressively developed. The council proper became the law-making authority, the king the law-executing authority. The single assembly became the two legislative houses, the House of Lords and the House of Commons, the one representing the aristocratic and the other the popular elements of the state. A well-known statute in the 25th Edward I declared that “no tallage or aid (that is, tax) should be taken or levied without the good will and assent of Parliament, composing the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, burgesses, and other freemen of the land. In time the power to vote all supplies was expressly limited to the Commons. The power to decide certain cases at law that the king and council at first possessed, passed to a cycle of courts, except that the House of Lords continued to retain a certain appellate jurisdiction. When this evolution was completed, the three functions of government had been committed to three separate branches or departments: the legislative to Parliament, the executive to the Crown, and the judicial to the Courts of Law. The crown finally lost its veto on legislation; but about the time when the veto became obsolete, a practical working connection between the legislature and the executive was effected by means of the device called the Ministry, and sometimes the Administration and the Government. It is to be said, however, that all these lines had not been clearly drawn when the English colonies were established.
The English System Free
It will be seen that the Saxons established in England a free system of government. It was carried on partly by the freemen themselves, and partly by their representatives. The king was not regarded as ruling by divine right, but as the delegate of the nation. It combined therefore both democratic and republican elements. Time wrought its changes ; the monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements varied in strength at dif- ferent times; but the great features of the Saxon constitution were never lost, and the government progressively became the freest in the world.
Likeness of the Colonies to England
The above recital of facts shows how like the thirteen colonies were to the parent state. With variations of detail, they all reproduced the political institutions of England; and, save that they were not sovereign states, they were Englands in miniature. Their town, county, and mixed systems of local government were an outgrowth, under new conditions, of the local institutions of England. Their legislative, executive, and judicial departments were copies of the Parliament, king, and courts of England. The houses of representatives and the councils were the House of Commons and the House of Lords over again. In fact, in some of the colonies the lower house was called the House of Commons. The people in England voted for members of the House of Commons only ; and in the colonies, with the exception of the two republican colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, they voted only for members of the popular branch of the legislature. An appointed Council had taken the place of the hereditary House of Lords, and an appointed Governor the place of the hereditary King. More men relatively exercised the right of suffrage in the colonies than in England, but their suffrage did not directly affect, with the exceptions named, more departments of the government. Hence, the common statement that the colonists came to America with new political ideas cannot be true of governmental forms and processes. In this respect they brought nothing new and established nothing new. They wished to give the people more weight in conducting the government according to the old forms, and this they accomplished. Besides, they were more interested in enlarging their civil and religious rights than their political rights.
New Modes of Government Rejected
At first some new modes of government, or at least modes unknown to the English people, were attempted. In Virginia the first local government was a despotism centered in the Council, limited only by the company and the king in England. Plymouth and Massachusetts both tried democracy for a few years. Moreover government by commercial companies such as the charters of 1606 and 1620 contemplate, or by a benevolent association, as in Georgia, was foreign to the English mind and habit. The thoroughness with which these devices were swept away, and the uniformity and promptness with which forms and modes of government familiar to the people were established, show the strength of political habit. Perhaps, too, proprietary government would have gone with the others, but for the fact that it was simple and easily understood, the proprietary being merely a lieutenant-king.
The Dual System
Circumstances, however, made one important departure from English precedent necessary. This was dual government, the double jurisdiction of the crown and the colony. If the planters had not insisted upon being admitted to participation in public affairs, they would not have been Englishmen. If the king had not insisted upon extending his authority over the Plantations, he would have had no colonies. Mr. Bryce says the American of to-day has “two loyalties and two patriotisms.” His colonial ancestors had them also. At Jamestown and Boston are found the roots of our federal system.
The Governments Growths
These well-defined governments, although they conformed so closely to the English model, were not set up at given places or times. Like all really useful political institutions, they were progressively developed. Not one of the charters fully describes the government existing in the colony organized under it. The Declaration of Independence charged the king with conspiring with others to subject the colonies to a jurisdiction foreign to their constitution. This language relates to the colonies collectively, as one. But the colonies as one had no constitution in the sense that the United States have one to-day. They did, however, have a constitution in a wider and less definite sense. The forms of government transplanted from England; the rights and usages belonging to all Englishmen and expressly guaranteed to the colonies, — these, modified by American conditions, made up the constitution that the king sought to overthrow.
English Colonies Compared with New Spain and NewFrance
Nothing could more clearly show the remarkable political genius of the English colonists than such a comparison carefully wrought out. The Spanish and French colonies were established by patronage or power, and they were ruled in the spirit of absolutism by royal governors. They did not desire self-government; in fact, did not know what it is ; and the more paternal the government became the more content they were. When Count Frontenac took steps in the direction of establishing municipal institutions at Quebec, Colbert, the great French minister, reproached him, saying: “It is well for you to observe that you are always to follow, in the government of Canada, the forms in use here; and since our kings have long regarded it as good for their service not to convoke the States-General of the kingdom, in order, perhaps, to abolish insensibly this ancient usage, you on your part, should very rarely, or, to speak more correctly, never give a corporate form to the inhabitants of Canada. You should even, as the colony strengthens, suppress gradually the office of the syndic, who presents petitions in the name of the inhabitants; for it is well that each should speak for himself, and no one for all.” Political life is impossible under such a regime as this. The Thirteen Colonies came up in a very different way; and, save in times of war, they were never so happy as when crown and Parliament left them most severely alone.
