The Colonies, 1492-1750

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

At first American territory was granted to chartered commercial companies,—notably the Virginia Company and the Council for New England,—which sought to control their colonies from England, under the supervision of the Crown. The Virginia colony was early deprived of its charter by the Crown (1624); but members of the Massachusetts Company boldly emigrated to America, and taking advantage of the confusion in England, kept up a practically independent state for two generations; though at last (1692) the people were obliged to accept a new charter establishing a royal governor. The colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut obtained charters direct from England, with privileges of self-government, and lived under them till long after they had become States. New Hampshire, after having been governed by Massachusetts, became a royal province without having passed through the charter or proprietary stage. The other colonies were proprietary, but all finally reverted to the Crown. Maryland and Pennsylvania and Delaware were still proprietary at the outbreak of the Revolution, having been restored to the proprietors after reversion.

Two houses.

The two houses of Parliament had made the colonists accustomed to the bicameral system. In Virginia under company management the corporation council in England served in a measure as the upper house, with powers of general direction. In Massachusetts (where the company was technically resident in the colony), and in the proprietary and royal colonies as well, there was for a long time but one house. Finally, often as the result of dissensions between the deputies and the officials, the former came to sit apart,—the colonies thus in most cases returning to the English system of two houses; but the council was small, and had administrative functions which made it very different from the House of Lords. These colonial assemblies were schools for the cultivation of the spirit of independence. Burke said the colonists "had formed within themselves, either by royal instruction or royal charter, assemblies so exceedingly resembling a parliament in all their forms, functions, and powers that it was impossible they should not imbibe some opinion of a similar authority."

26. Privileges of the Colonists.

The suffrage.

Electoral qualifications varied greatly. In the consideration of this, as well as of other institutions, Massachusetts and Virginia must be taken as types of opposite systems, the other colonies departing more or less from them, according to proximity. Originally in Massachusetts, "any person inhabiting within the town" could vote at town-meetings; later, with the arrival of objectionable immigrants, this privilege was restricted (1634) to freemen,—practically all the members of the church,—and still later (1691), to "the possessors of an estate of freehold in land to the value of 40s. per annum, or other estate to the value of £40." In Virginia, at the start, all freemen were allowed to vote. But it was afterwards decided (1670) that the "usuall way of chuseing burgesses by the votes of all persons who, haveing served their time, are freemen of this country," was detrimental to the colony; and the principle was laid down that "a voyce in such election" should be given "only to such as by their estates, real or personall, have interest enough to tye them to the endeavour of the publique good." By the beginning of the eighteenth century a freehold test obtained in most, if not in all, the colonies. In 1746 Parliament added a further qualification, in the guise of a general naturalization law, providing that a voter must have resided seven years in his colony, taken the oath of allegiance, and professed the "Protestant Christian faith."

Representation.

The principle of representation, by which a few are charged with acting and speaking for the many in the conduct of public affairs, has been familiar to Englishmen since the time when a parliament was convoked during the contest between John and the barons (1213). The practice was adopted early in the history of the colonies,—the first house of burgesses of Virginia meeting in 1619; while in Massachusetts, the refusal of Watertown (1632) to be taxed without representation caused the adoption of the plan of sending deputies to the General Court. The American colonial assemblies were more truly representative of the great body of the people than the English Parliament of the period; to-day, male suffrage is nearly universal in England, and entirely so in all the British dependencies, with the exception of the Crown colonies.

Rights of the colonists.

In the American colonies the execution of the laws was as a rule comparatively an easy task. The English colonists had been trained in the political art of self-control; they had an abounding regard for just laws and the courts; they respected precedent, and stoutly stood for the common law, or recognized customs of their race. They were restive under statutes which conflicted with the customary rights of Englishmen, which had come down to them from the earliest times, and had been confirmed by Magna Charta. These rights had not been strictly observed by the Tudor sovereigns, and many of the earlier settlers had in the mother-country assisted in agitation for their renewal. Now that they were transplanted to America, the struggle was continued at long range with the Stuarts, thus developing in the colonists a habit of resistance which was to stand them in good stead in the troublous period leading up to the American Revolution.