Civil Government in the United States Considered with Some Reference to Its Origins

by John Fiske

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.