trading in furs and timber and catching fish on the shores of
Massachusetts Bay. After a disastrous beginning this company was
dissolved, but only to be immediately reorganized on a greater scale.
In 1628 a grant of the land between the Charles and Merrimack rivers
was obtained from the Plymouth Company; and in 1629 a charter was
obtained from Charles I. So many men from the east of England had
joined in the enterprise that it could no longer be fitly called a
Dorchester Company. The new name was significantly taken from the
New World. The charter created a corporation under the style of the
Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. The freemen
of the Company were to hold a meeting four times a year; and they were
empowered to choose a governor, a deputy governor, and a council of
eighteen assistants, who were to hold their meetings each month. They
could administer oaths of supremacy and allegiance, raise troops
for the defence of their possessions, admit new associates into the
Company, and make regulations for the management of their business,
with the vague and weak proviso that in order to be valid their
enactment must in no wise contravene the laws of England. Nothing was
said as to the place where the Company should hold its meetings, and
accordingly after a few months the Company transferred itself and
its charter to New England, in order that it might carry out its
intentions with as little interference as possible on the part of the
crown.

Whether this transfer of the charter was legally justifiable or not
is a question which has been much debated, but with which we need not
here vex ourselves. The lawyers of the Company were shrewd enough to
know that a loosely-drawn instrument may be made to admit of great
liberty of action. Under the guise of a mere trading corporation the
Puritan leaders deliberately intended to found a civil commonwealth in
accordance with their own theories of government.

[Sidenote: Government of Massachusetts; the General Court]
After their arrival in Massachusetts, their numbers increased so
rapidly that it became impossible to have a primary assembly of all
the freemen, and so a representative assembly was devised after the
model of the Old English county court. The representatives sat for
townships, and were called deputies. At first they sat in the same
chamber with the assistants, but in 1644 the legislative body was
divided into two chambers, the deputies forming the lower house, while
the upper was composed of the assistants, who were sometimes called
magistrates. In elections the candidates for the upper house were put
in nomination by the General Court and voted on by the freemen. In
general the assistants represented the common or central power of
the colony, while the deputies represented the interests of popular
self-government. The former was comparatively an aristocratic and the
latter a democratic body, and there were frequent disputes between the
two.

It is worthy of note that the governing body thus constituted was at
once a legislative and a judicial body, like the English county court
which served as its model. Inferior courts were organized at an early
date in Massachusetts, but the highest judicial tribunal was the
legislature, which was known as the General Court. It still bears this
name to-day, though it long ago ceased to exercise judicial functions.

[Sidenote: New charter of Massachusetts]
Now as the freemen of Massachusetts directly chose their governor and
deputy-governor, as well as their chamber of deputies, and also took
part in choosing their council of assistants, their government was
virtually that of an independent republic. The crown could interpose
no effective check upon its proceedings except by threatening to annul
its charter and send over a viceroy who might be backed up, if need
be, by military force. Such threats were sometimes openly made, but
oftener hinted at. They served to make the Massachusetts government
somewhat wary and circumspect, but they did not prevent it from
pursuing a very independent policy in many respects, as when,
for example, it persisted in allowing none but members of the
Congregational church to vote. This measure, by which it was intended
to preserve the Puritan policy unchanged, was extremely distasteful to
the British government. At length in 1684 the Massachusetts charter
was annulled, an attempt was made to suppress town-meetings, and the
colony was placed under a military viceroy, Sir Edmund Andros. After
a brief period of despotic rule, the Revolution in England worked a
change. In 1692 Massachusetts received a new charter, quite different
from the old one. The people were allowed to elect representatives to
the General Court, as before, but the governor and lieutenant-governor
were appointed by the crown, and all acts of the legislature were
to be sent to England for royal approval. The general government of
Massachusetts was thus, except for its possession of a charter, made
similar to that of Virginia.

[Sidenote: Connecticut and Rhode Island]
The governments of Connecticut and Rhode Island were constructed
upon the same general plan as the first government of Massachusetts.
Governors councils, and assemblies were elected by the people. These
governments were made by the settlers themselves, after they had come
out from Massachusetts; and through a very singular combination of
circumstances[3] they were confirmed by charters granted by Charles II
in 1662, soon after his return from exile. So thoroughly republican
were these governments that they remained without change until 1818 in
Connecticut and until 1842 in Rhode Island.

[Footnote 3: See my _Beginnings of New England_, pp. 192-196.]


We thus observe two kinds of state government in the American
colonies. In both kinds the people choose a representative legislative
assembly; but in the one kind they also choose their governor, while
in the other kind the governor is appointed by the crown. We have now
to observe a third kind.



[Sidenote: Counties palatine in England]
[Sidenote: Charter of Maryland]
After the downfall of the two great companies founded in 1606, the
crown had a way of handing over to its friends extensive tracts of
land in America. In 1632 a charter granted by Charles I to Cecilius
Calvert, Lord Baltimore, founded the palatinate colony of Maryland. To
understand the nature of this charter, we must observe that among the
counties of England there were three whose rulers from an early time
were allowed special privileges. Because Cheshire and Durham bordered
upon the hostile countries, Wales and Scotland, and needed to be ever
on the alert, their rulers, the earls of Chester and the bishops of
Durham, were clothed with almost royal powers of command, and similar
powers were afterwards granted through favouritism to the dukes of
Lancaster. The three counties were called counties palatine (i.e.
"palace counties"). Before 1600 the earldom of Chester and the duchy
of Lancaster had been absorbed by the crown, but the bishopric of
Durham remained the type of an almost independent state, and the
colony palatine of Maryland was modelled after it. The charter of
Maryland conferred upon Lord Baltimore the most extensive privileges
ever bestowed by the British crown upon any subject. He was made
absolute lord of the land and water within his boundaries, could erect
towns, cities, and ports, make war or peace, call the whole fighting
population to arms and declare martial law, levy tolls and duties,
establish courts of justice, appoint judges, magistrates, and other
civil officers, execute the laws, and pardon offenders. He could erect
manors, with courts-baron and courts-leet, and confer titles and
dignities, so that they differed from those of England. He could make
laws with the assent of the freemen of the province, and, in cases of
emergency, ordinances not impairing life, limb, or property, without
their assent. He could found churches and chapels, have them
consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of England, and
appoint the incumbents.[4] For his territory and these royal powers
Lord Baltimore was to send over to the palace at Windsor a tribute of
two Indian arrows yearly, and to reserve for the king one fifth part
of such gold and silver as he might happen to get by mining. "The king
furthermore bound himself and his successors to lay no taxes, customs,
subsidies, or contributions whatever upon the people of the province,
and in case of any such demand being made, the charter expressly
declared that this clause might be pleaded as a discharge in full."
Maryland was thus almost an independent state. Baltimore's title was
Lord Proprietary of Maryland, and his title and powers were made
hereditary in his family, so that he was virtually a feudal king. His
rule, however, was effectually limited. The government of Maryland was
carried on by a governor and a two-chambered legislature. The governor
and the members of the upper house of the legislature were appointed
by the lord proprietary, but the lower house of the legislature was
elected, here as elsewhere, by the people; and in accordance with
time-honoured English custom all taxation must originate in the lower
house, which represented the people.

[Footnote 4: Browne's _Maryland: the History of a Palatinate_, p.
19.]

[Sidenote: Charter of Pennsylvania.]
[Sidenote: Mason and Dixon's line]
Half a century after the founding of Maryland, similar though somewhat
less extensive proprietary powers were granted by Charles II. to
William Penn, and under them the colony of Pennsylvania was founded
and Delaware was purchased. Pennsylvania and Delaware had each its
house of representatives elected by the people; but there was only one
governor and council for the two colonies. The governor and council
were appointed by the lord proprietary, and as the council confined
itself to advising the governor and did not take part in legislation,
there was no upper house. The legislature was one-chambered. The
office of lord proprietary was hereditary in the Penn family. For
about eighty years the Penns and Calverts quarrelled, like true
sovereigns, about the boundary-line between their principalities,
until in 1763 the matter was finally settled. A line was agreed upon,
and the survey was made by two distinguished mathematicians, Charles
Mason and Jeremiah Dixon. The line ran westward 244 miles from the
Delaware River, and every fifth milestone was engraved with the arms
of Penn on the one side and those of Calvert on the other. In later
times, after all the states north of Maryland had abolished slavery,
Mason and Dixon's line became famous as the boundary between slave
states and free states.

[Sidenote: Other proprietary governments.]
At first there were other proprietary colonies besides those just
mentioned, but in course of time the rights or powers of their lords
proprietary were resumed by the crown. When New Netherland was
conquered from the Dutch it was granted to the duke of York as lord
proprietary; but after one-and-twenty years the duke ascended the
throne as James II., and so the part of 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.

[Sidenote: At the time of the Revolution there were three forms of
colonial government: 1. Republican, 2. Proprietary, 3. Royal.]
There were thus at the time of the Revolutionary War three forms of
state government in the American colonies. There were, _first_,
the Republican colonies, in which the governors were elected by the
people, as in Rhode Island and Connecticut; _secondly,_the
Proprietary colonies, in which the governors were appointed by
hereditary proprietors, as in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware;
_thirdly_, the Royal colonies,[5] 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.

[Footnote 5: 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.]

[Sidenote: In all three forms there was a representative assembly, which
alone could impose taxes.]
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
Proprietary colonies he was the agent of the Penns or the Calverts,
in the Royal colonies he was the agent of the king. All the thirteen
colonies alike had a legislative assembly elected by the people. The
basis of representation might be different in different colonies,
as 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.

[Sidenote: The governor's council was a kind of upper 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 colonies this council took
part in the work 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 one-chambered. 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.

[Sidenote: The colonial government was like the English system 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 two-chambered, 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. Such 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.



[Sidenote: The Americans never admitted the supremacy of parliament;]
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 legislature had to tax the people of Virginia.

In one respect, however, the Americans did admit that parliament had a
general right of supervision over all parts of the British empire.[6]
Maritime commerce seemed to be as much the affair of one part of the
empire as another, 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.

[Footnote 6: except in the regulation of maritime commerce.]

In England, on the other hand, this theory that the Americans were
subject to the king's authority but not to that of parliament
naturally became unintelligible after the king himself had become
virtually subject to parliament.[7] The Stuart kings might call
themselves kings by the grace of God, but since 1688 the sovereigns of
Great Britain owe their seat upon the throne to an act of parliament.

[Footnote 7: In England there grew up the theory of the imperial
supremacy of parliament.]

To suppose that the king's American subjects were not amenable to the
authority of parliament seemed like supposing that a stream could rise
higher than its source. Besides, after 1700 the British empire began
to expand in all parts of the world, and the business of parliament
became more and more imperial. It could make laws for the East India
Company; why not, then, for the Company of Massachusetts Bay?

[Sidenote: Conflict between the British and the American theories was
precipitated by George III.]
Thus the American theory of the situation was irreconcilable with
the British theory, and when parliament in 1765, with no unfriendly
purpose, began laying taxes upon the Americans, thus invading the
province of the colonial legislatures, the Americans refused to
submit. The ensuing quarrel might doubtless have been peacefully
adjusted, had not the king, George III., happened to be entertaining
political schemes which were threatened with ruin if the Americans
should get a fair hearing for their side of the case.[8] Thus
political intrigue came in to make the situation hopeless. When a
state of things arises, with which men's established methods of civil
government are incompetent to deal, men fall back upon the primitive
method which was in vogue before civil government began to exist.
They fight it out; and so we had our Revolutionary War, and became
separated politically from Great Britain. It is worthy of note, in
this connection, that the last act of parliament, which brought
matters to a crisis, was the so-called Regulating Act of April, 1774,
the purpose of which was to change the government of Massachusetts.
This act provided that members of the council should be appointed by
the royal governor, that they should be paid by the crown and thus
be kept subservient to it, that the principal executive and judicial
officers should be likewise paid by the crown, and that town-meetings
should be prohibited except for the sole purpose of electing town
officers. Other unwarrantable acts were passed at the same time, but
this was the worst. Troops were sent over to aid in enforcing this
act, the people of Massachusetts refused to recognize its validity,
and out of this political situation came the battles of Lexington and
Bunker Hill.

[Footnote 8: See my _War of Independence_, pp. 58-64, 69-71
(Riverside Library for Young People).]


QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1. Various claims to North America:--

a. Spanish.
b. English.
c. French.

2. What was needed to make such claims of any value?

3. The London and Plymouth companies:--

a. The time and purpose of their organization.
b. The grant to the London Company.
c. The grant to the Plymouth Company.
d. The magnitude of the zones granted.
e. The peculiar provisions for the intermediate zone.
f. First attempts at settlement.

4. To what important principle of the common charter of these
two companies did the colonists persistently cling?

5. The influence of these short-lived companies upon the settlement
and government of the United States:--

a. A review of the zones and their assignment.
b. The states of the northern zone and their origin.
c. The states of the southern zone and their origin.
d. The states of the middle zone and their origin.
e. The influence of the movement of population on local
government in each zone.

6. Early state government in Virginia:--

a. The part appointed and the part elected.
b. The first legislative body in America.
c. The dignity of its members.
d. The reason for the name "House of Burgesses."

7. Early state government in Massachusetts:--

a. The Dorchester Company.
b. The government provided for the Company of Massachusetts
Bay by its charter.
c. The real purpose of the Puritan leaders.
d. The change from the primary assembly of freemen to the
representative assembly.
e. The division of this assembly into two houses, with a comparison
of the houses.
f. The reason for the name "General Court."
g. The loss of the charter and the causes that led to it.
h. The new charter as compared with the old.

8. Compare the early governments of Connecticut and Rhode
Island with the first government of Massachusetts.

9. What two kinds of state government have thus far been
observed?

10. Early state government in Maryland:--

a. The favouritism of the crown as shown in land grants.
b. The palatine counties of England.
c. The bishopric of Durham the model of the colony of
Maryland.
d. The extraordinary privileges granted Lord Baltimore.
e. The tribute to be paid in return.
f. The ruler a feudal long.
g. Limitations of the ruler's power.

11. Early state government in Pennsylvania and Delaware:--

a. The powers of Penn as compared with those of Calvert.
b. One governor and council,
c. The legislature of each colony.
d. The quarrels of the Penns and Calverts.
e. Mason and Dixon's line.

12. What other proprietary governments were organized, and
what was their fate?

13. Why were proprietary governments unpopular? (Note the
exceptions, however.)

14. Classify and define the forms of colonial government in existence
at the beginning of the Revolution.

15. Show that these forms differed chiefly in respect to the governor's
office.

16. A representative assembly in each of the thirteen colonies:--

a. The basis of representation.
b. The control of the public money.
c. The spontaneousness of the representative assembly.

17. The governor's council:--

a. The custom in England.
b. The council as an upper house.
c. The council in Pennsylvania.

18. Compare the colonial systems with the British (1) in organization
and (2) in the nature of their political quarrels.


19. What was the American theory of the relation of each colony
to the British parliament?

20. What was the American attitude towards maritime regulations?

21. What was the British theory of the relation of the American
colonies to parliament?

22. How was the Revolutionary War brought on?

23. Describe the last act of parliament that brought matters to a
crisis.



Section 2. _The Transition from Colonial to State Governments._

[Sidenote: Dissolution of assemblies and parliaments.]
[Sidenote: Committees of Correspondence.]
During the earlier part of the Revolutionary War most of the states
had some kind of provisional government. The case of Massachusetts
may serve as an illustration. There, as in the other colonies, the
governor had the power of dissolving the assembly. This was like the
king's power of dissolving parliament in the days of the Stuarts.
It was then a dangerous power. In modern England there is nothing
dangerous in a dissolution of parliament; on the contrary, it is a
useful device for ascertaining the wishes of the people, for a new
House of Commons must be elected immediately. But in old times the
king would turn his parliament out of doors, and as long as he could
beg, borrow, or steal enough money to carry on government according to
his own notions, he would not order a new election. Fortunately such
periods were not very long. The latest instance was in the reign of
Charles I, who got on without a parliament from 1629 to 1640.[9] In
the American colonies the dissolution of the assembly by the governor
was not especially dangerous, but it sometimes made mischief by
delaying needed legislation. During the few years preceding the
Revolution, the assemblies were so often dissolved that it became
necessary for the people to devise some new way of getting their
representatives together to act for the colony. In Massachusetts this
end was attained by the famous "Committees of Correspondence." No one
could deny that town-meetings were legal, or that the people of
one township had a right to ask advice from the people of another
township. Accordingly each township appointed a committee to
correspond or confer with committees from other townships. This system
was put into operation by Samuel Adams in 1772, and for the next two
years the popular resistance to the crown was organized by these
committees. For example, before the tea was thrown into Boston
harbour, the Boston committee sought and received advice from every
township in Massachusetts, and the treatment of the tea-ships was from
first to last directed by the committees of Boston and five neighbour
towns.

[Footnote: 9: The kings of France contrived to get along without a
representative assembly from 1614 to 1789, and during this long period
abuses so multiplied that the meeting of the States-General in 1789
precipitated the great revolution which overthrew the monarchy.]

[Sidenote: Provincial Congress]
In 1774 a further step was taken. As parliament had overthrown the old
government, and sent over General Gage as military governor, to put
its new system into operation, the people defied and ignored Gage, and
the townships elected delegates to meet together in what was called a
"Provincial Congress." The president of this congress was the chief
provincial executive officer of the commonwealth, and there was a
small executive council, known as the "Committee of Safety."

[Sidenote: Provisional governments; "governors" and "presidents."]
This provisional government lasted about a year. In the summer of
1775 the people went further. They fell back upon their charter and
proceeded to carry on their government as it had been carried on
before 1774, except that the governor was left out altogether. The
people in town-meeting elected their representatives to a general
assembly, as of old, and this assembly chose a council of twenty-eight
members to sit as an upper house. The president of the council was the
foremost executive officer of the commonwealth, but he had not the
powers of a governor. He was no more the governor than the president
of our federal senate is the president of the United States. The
powers of the governor were really vested in the council, which was
an executive as well as a legislative body, and the president was
its chairman. Indeed, the title "president" is simply the Latin for
"chairman," he who "presides" or "sits before" an assembly. In 1775
it was a more modest title than "governor," and had not the smack of
semi-royalty which lingered about the latter. Governors had made so
much trouble that people were distrustful of the office, and at first
it was thought that the council would be quite sufficient for the
executive work that was to be done. Several of the states thus
organized their governments with a council at the head instead of
a governor; and hence in reading about that period one often comes
across the title "president," somewhat loosely used as if equivalent
to governor. Thus in 1787 we find Benjamin Franklin called "president
of Pennsylvania," meaning "president of the council of Pennsylvania."
But this arrangement did not prove satisfactory and did not last long.
It soon appeared that for executive work one man is better than a
group of men. In Massachusetts, in 1780, the old charter was replaced
by a new written constitution, under which was formed the state
government which, with some emendations in detail, has continued to
the present day. Before the end of the eighteenth century all the
states except Connecticut and Rhode Island, which, had always been
practically Independent, thus remodelled their governments.

[Sidenote: Origin of the Senates.]
These changes, however, were very conservative. The old form of
government was closely followed. First there was the governor, elected
in some states by the legislature, in others by the people. Then there
was the two-chambered legislature, of which the lower house was the
same institution after the Revolution that it had been before. The
upper house, or council, was retained, but in a somewhat altered
form. The Americans had been used to having the acts of their popular
assemblies reviewed by a council, and so they retained this revisory
body as an upper house. But the fashion of copying names and titles
from the ancient Roman republic was then prevalent, and accordingly
the upper house was called a Senate. There was a higher property
qualification for senators than for representatives, and generally
their terms of service were longer. In some states they were chosen by
the people, in others by the lower house. In Maryland they were chosen
by a special college of electors, an arrangement which was copied in
our federal government in the election of the president of the United
States. In most of the states there was a lieutenant-governor, as
there had been in the colonial period, to serve in case of the
governor's death or incapacity; ordinarily the lieutenant-governor
presided over the senate.

[Sidenote: Likenesses and differences between British and American
systems.]
Thus our state governments came to be repetitions on a small scale of
the king, lords, and commons of England. The governor answered to the
king, with his dignity very much curtailed by election for a short
period. The senate answered to the House of Lords except in being a
representative and not a hereditary body. It was supposed to represent
more especially that part of the community which was possessed of most
wealth and consideration; and in several states the senators were
apportioned with some reference to the amount of taxes paid by
different parts of the state.[10] When New York made its senate a
supreme court of appeal, it was in deliberate imitation of the House
of Lords. On the other hand, the House of Representatives answered to
the House of Commons as it used to be in the days when its power was
really limited by that of the upper house and the king. At the present
day the English of Commons is a supreme body. In case of a serious
difference with the House of Lords, the upper house must yield, or
else new peers will be created in sufficient number to reverse its
vote; and the lords always yield before this point is reached. So,
too, though the veto power of the sovereign has never been explicitly
abolished, it has not been exercised since 1707, and would not now be
tolerated for a moment. In America there is no such supreme body. The
bill passed by the lower house may be thrown out by the upper house,
or if it passes both it may be vetoed by the governor; and unless the
bill can again pass both houses by more than a simple majority, the
veto will stand. In most of the states a two-thirds vote in the
affirmative is required.

[Footnote 10: See my _Critical Period of American History_, p.
68.]

QUESTIONS ON THE TEXT.

1. The dissolution of assemblies and parliaments:--

a. The governor's power over the assembly in the colonies.
b. The king's power over parliament in England.
c. The danger of dissolution in the time of the Stuarts.
d. The safety of dissolution in modern England.
e. The frequency of dissolution before the Revolution.

2. Representation of the people in the provisional government
of Massachusetts:--

a. The committees of correspondence.
b. Their function, with an illustration from the "tea-ships."
c. The provincial congress.
d. The committee of safety.
e. The return to the two-chambered legislature of the charter.

3. Executive powers in the provisional government of Massachusetts;--

a. The foremost executive officer.
b. Where the power of governor was really vested.
c. Why the name of president was preferred to that of governor.
d. The example of Massachusetts followed elsewhere.
e. The end of provisional government in 1780.

4. The council transformed to a senate:--

a. The principle of reviewing the acts of the popular assembly.
b. The borrowing of Roman names.
c. The qualifications and service of senators.
d. The lieutenant-governor.

5. Our state governments patterned after the government of
England:--

a. The governor and the king.
b. The Senate and the House of Lords.
c. The House of Representatives and the House of Commons.
d. Some differences between the British system and the American.



Section 3. _The State Governments._

[Sidenote: Later modifications.]
During the present century our state governments have undergone
more or less revision, chiefly in the way of abolishing property
qualifications for offices making the suffrage universal, and electing
officers that were formerly appointed. Only in Delaware does there
still remain a property qualification for senators. There is no longer
any distinction in principle between the upper and lower houses of the
legislature. Both represent population, the usual difference being
that the senate consists of fewer members who represent larger
districts. Usually, too, the term of the representatives is two years,
and the whole house is elected at the same time, while the term of
senators is four years, and half the number are elected every two
years. This system of two-chambered legislatures is probably retained
chiefly through a spirit of conservatism, because it is what we
are used to. But it no doubt has real advantages in checking hasty
legislation. People are always wanting to have laws made about all
sorts of things, and in nine cases out of ten their laws would be
pernicious laws; so that it is well not to have legislation made too
easy.

[Sidenote: The suffrage.]