[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.]