mand invariably was made by the colonists themselves, for the supply of the lack, until the full outline of English governmental institutions was completed, as far as was applicable to colonial conditions.1 Referring to this subject, and to the persistence of the old tendency even in later and more modern States of the American Union, Mr. Bryce observes: "The similarity of the frame of government in the thirty-two republics which make up the United States a similarity which appears the more remarkable when we remember that each of the republics is independent and self-determined as respects its frame of government - is due to the common source whence the governments flow. They 1 The scope of the present volume does not admit of a discussion of the interesting questions associated with the history of American townships and local government. It is just possible those questions have been pressed too far. But the student of ancient institutions must recognize their great importance. Nor can he fail to appreciate the force with which evidence drawn from such sources confirms the truth of the development of American governments from the historic past. See Scott, Development of Constitutional Liberty, 174; Fiske, American Political Ideas, 17-56; Fiske, "Town Meeting," Harper's Magazine, January, 1885; Professor Adams, "Germanic Origin of New England Towns," in Johns Hopkins University Studies, 1st Series, II.; E. Channing, "Town and County Government," Ibid., 2d Series, X.; Doyle, English Colonies in America, Puritan, etc., II. 7-26; Professor Andrews, "Origin of Conn. Towns," Annals of American Academy, Vol. I.; Hildreth, History, I. chap. vii.; De Tocqueville, Bowen's Translation, Democracy in America, I. chap. v.; Parker, Origin, Organization and Influence of Towns of New England; Massachusetts Historical Society, 1866-67, etc. See also Statutes of New England States, Law Reports, etc. are all copies, some immediate, some mediate, of ancient English institutions; viz. chartered self-governing corporations, which under the influence of English habits and with the precedent of the English parliamentary system before their eyes, developed into governments resembling that of England in the eighteenth century. Each of the thirteen colonies had, up to 1776, been regulated by a charter from the British crown, which, according to the best and oldest of all English traditions, allowed it the practical management of its own affairs. The charter contained a sort of skeleton constitution which usage had clothed with nerves, muscles, and sinews, till it became a complete and symmetrical working system of free government." 1 "The English Constitution was generally the type of these colonial governments," remarks Sir Erskine May. "The governor was the viceroy of the crown; the legislative council, or upper chamber, appointed by the governor, assumed the place of the House of Lords, and the representative assembly, chosen by the people, was the express image of the House of Commons.” 2 In the words of the author of the History of the English People, "The colonists proudly looked on the constitutions of their various States as copies of that of the mothercountry. England had given them her law, her language, her religion, and her blood." 1 Bryce, American Commonwealth, I. 458. The king But the American colonies not only copied English ¦ institutions; they long remained politically united to Great Britain, and her government long continued to be their own supreme or imperial government. Though every colony was independent of every other colony, and possessed much freedom of local administration, yet allegiance to the mother-country and to the throne bound all together, and prepared the way for the subsequent federal system of the United States. There was, in fact, even then, a beginning of the federal system, and London was the colonial capital, as Washington of to-day is the federal capital.1 The colonists were British subjects. was "supreme and sovereign lord " of all alike, - the central executive. Parliament, with whatever limitations in practice, was the central legislature, and the Privy Council exercised the jurisdiction of supreme judicial tribunal. The authority of the king was employed with a varying degree of directness in different colonies. His prerogatives were, for the most part, put in operation by the local governors. In crown colonies, where the royal contact was closest, civil government largely depended upon special instructions and commissions issued from time to time directly from the throne. Colonial legislation was subject to the sovereign's approval or veto. All charters were granted by him, and his powers were exercised on occasion in other acts affecting the fundamental status of colonial administration.2 1 The analogy is not close, but it is real as far as it goes. 2 "The fact that the soil upon which the English colonies in Parliament made laws for the supreme government of the colonies. While some confusion of ideas existed as to the proper exercise of this power, the power was always claimed unlimitedly by Parliament itself, and its operation was willingly conceded by the colonists in cases affecting foreign, commercial, and Indian affairs, and what might be called imperial as distinct from internal interests. The legislation of the colonial assemblies was, indeed, occasionally annulled by a board or council in England, as well as by Parliament. And denial of all parliamentary authority, though made in some of the colonies after the passage of the Stamp America were planted, came to them through royal grants, the fact that every form of political organization established thereon rested upon royal charters, were the foundation stones upon which the colonists gradually built up, in the light of their actual experience, their theory of the political relations which bound them to the mother-country. Their rights as Englishmen endowed with 'all liberties, franchises, and immunities of free denizens and natural subjects' flowed from their charters, which, as between themselves and the crown, were irrevocable though not non-forfeitable contracts. The earliest form of direct legislative control to which any of the colonies were subjected in the form of ordinances or instructions for their government emanated, not from the law-making power of the king in Parliament, but from the ordaining power of the king in council. And at a later day, when the colonial assemblies began the work of legislation on their own account, the validity of their enactments depended, not upon the approval of the English Parliament, but upon that of the royal governor, who stood as the everpresent representative of his royal master. With the founding of the colonies, and with the organization of their political systems, the crown had everything to do." - Taylor, Origin and Growth of the English Constitution, 25, 26. Act of 1765, was not general until the verge of actual separation from the mother-country. The jurisdiction of the Privy Council as a supreme court for colonial affairs, in appeals from decisions of the colonial judiciary, and in other matters, was constantly exercised. And it was fully recognized by all the colonies at the period of the American Revolution, and regarded as a benefit and protection. Yet notwithstanding mutual ties of blood and institutions, it is easy to perceive, looking back from our own time, that there existed fair opportunity for friction, and even for eventual separation in the somewhat complex and vaguely defined relations, and in the gradually diverging interests of Great Britain and her distant children. Among causes of uneasiness is often mentioned the development of a democratic tendency among the colonists, manifesting itself in varied forms, but chiefly in contests between the legislatures and the royal governors. This tendency, which eventually became characteristic, is, perhaps, not to be wondered at, if it be remembered that the colonists were commoners, without the restraining presence of a resident nobility, and that the colonial period was a period which witnessed the overthrow of Charles I. by his House of Commons, the rise of the English Commonwealth, and the Revolution of 1688, as contemporaneous movements in the mother-country, ending in the modern control of the crown by the popular branch of Parliament. But the truth is, that as the colonists grew in |