A School History of the United States Part 11

[Footnote 1: From a model in the National Museum, Washington.]

Maryland was in the same condition. Her people raised tobacco, and with it bought their clothing, household goods, bra.s.s and copper wares, and iron utensils in Great Britain.

In South Carolina rice was the great staple, just as tobacco was the staple of Virginia, and there too were large plantations and no towns.

All the social, commercial, legal, and political life of the colony centered in Charleston, from which a direct trade was carried on with London.

[Ill.u.s.tration: %An old Maryland manor house%]

Labor on the plantations of Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia was performed exclusively by negro slaves and redemptioners.

%101. Civil Government in the English Colonies.%--If we arrange the colonies according to the kind of civil government in each, we find that they fall into three cla.s.ses:

1. The charter colonies (Connecticut, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Rhode Island).

2. The proprietary colonies (Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland).

3. The royal, or provincial, colonies (New Hampshire, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia).

The charters of the first group were written contracts between the King and the colonists, defined the share each should have in the government, and were not to be changed without the consent of both parties. In colonies of the second group some individual, called the proprietary, was granted a great tract of land by the King, and, under a royal charter, was given power to sell the land to settlers, establish government, and appoint the governors of his colony. In the third group, the King appointed the governors and instructed them as to the way in which he wished his colonies to be ruled.

With these differences, all the colonies had the same form of government. In each there was a legislature elected by the people; in each the right to vote was limited to men who owned land, paid taxes, had a certain yearly income, and were members of some Christian church.

The legislature consisted of two branches: the lower house, to which the people elected delegates; and the upper house, or council, appointed by the governor. These legislatures could do many things, but their powers were limited and their acts were subject to review: 1. They could do nothing contrary to the laws of England. 2. Whatever they did could be vetoed by the governors, and no bill could be pa.s.sed over the veto. 3.

All laws pa.s.sed by a colonial legislature (except in the case of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Maryland), and approved by a governor, must even then be sent to England to be examined by the King in Council, and could be "disallowed" or vetoed by the King at any time within three years. This power was used so constantly that the colonial legislatures, in time, would pa.s.s laws to run for two years, and when that time expired would reenact them for two years more, and so on in order to avoid the veto. In this way the colonists became used to three political inst.i.tutions which were afterwards embodied in what is now the American system of state and national government: 1. The written const.i.tution defining the powers of government. 2. The exercise of the veto power by the governor. 3. The setting aside of laws by a judicial body from whose decision there is no appeal.

%102. The Colonial Governors.%--The governor of a royal province was the personal representative of the King, and as such had vast power.

The legislature could meet only when he called it. He could at any moment prorogue it (that is, command it to adjourn to a certain day) or dissolve it, and, if the King approved, he need never call it together again. He was the chief justice of the highest colonial court, he appointed all the judges, and, as commander in chief of the militia, appointed all important officers. Yet even he was subject to some control, for his salary was paid by the colony over which he ruled, and, by refusing to pay this salary, the legislature could, and over and over again did, force him to approve acts he would not otherwise have sanctioned. In Connecticut and Rhode Island the people elected the governors. This right once existed also in Ma.s.sachusetts; but when the old charter was swept away in 1684, and replaced by a new one in 1691, the King was given power to appoint the governor, who could summon, dissolve, and prorogue the legislature at his pleasure.

%103. Lords of Trade and Plantations.%--That the King should give personal attention to all the details of government in his colonies in America, was not to be expected. In 1696, therefore, a body called the Lords of the Board of Trade and Plantations was commissioned by the King to do this work for him. These Lords of Trade corresponded with the governors, made recommendations, bade them carry out this or that policy, veto this or that cla.s.s of laws, examined all the laws sent over by the legislatures, and advised the King as to which should be disallowed, or vetoed.

In the early years of our colonial history the Parliament of England had no share in the direction of colonial affairs. It was the King who owned all the land, made all the grants, gave all the charters, created all the colonies, governed many of them, and stoutly denied the right of Parliament to meddle. But when Charles I. was beheaded, the Long Parliament took charge of the management of affairs in this country, and although much of it went back to the King at the Restoration in 1660, Parliament still continued to legislate for the colonies in a few matters. Thus, for instance, Parliament by one act established the postal service, and fixed the rates of postage; by another it regulated the currency, and by another required the colonists to change from the Old Style to the New Style--that is, to stop using the Julian calendar and to count time in future by the Gregorian calendar; by another it established a uniform law of naturalization; and from time to time it pa.s.sed acts for the purpose of regulating colonial trade.

%104. Acts of Trade and Navigation.%--The number of these acts is very large; but their purpose was four fold:

1. They required that colonial trade should be carried on in ships built and owned in England or in the colonies, and manned to the extent of two thirds of the crew by English subjects.

2. They provided a long list of colonial products that should not be sent to any foreign ports other than a port of England. Goods or products not in the list might be sent to any other part of the world.

Thus tobacco, sugar, indigo, copper, furs, rice (if the rice was for a port north of Cape Finisterre), must go to England; but lumber, salt fish, and provisions might go (in English or colonial ships) to France, or Spain, or to other foreign countries.

3. When trade began to spring up between the colonies, and the New England merchants were competing in the colonial markets with English merchants, an act was pa.s.sed providing that if a product which went from one colony to another was of a kind that might have been supplied from England, it must either go to the mother country and then to the purchasing colony, or pay an export duty at the port where it was shipped, equal to the import duty it would have to pay in England.

4. No goods were allowed to be carried from any place in Europe to America unless they were first landed at a port in England.[1]

[Footnote 1: Edward Eggleston's papers in the _Century Magazine_, 1884; Scudder's _Men and Manners One Hundred Years Ago_; Lodge's _English Colonies_.]

SUMMARY

1. The men who began the long struggle for the rights of Englishmen lived in a state of society very different from ours, and were utterly ignorant of most of the commonest things we use in daily life.

2. Labor was performed by slaves, by criminals sent over to the colonies and sold, and by "indented servants," or "redemptioners."

3. Manufactures were forbidden by the laws of trade. n.o.body was permitted to manufacture iron beyond the state of pig or bar iron, or make woolen goods for export, or make hats.

4. Taking the colonies in geographical groups, the Eastern were engaged in fishing, in commerce, and in farming; the Middle Colonies were agricultural and commercial; the Southern were wholly agricultural, and raised two great, staples--rice and tobacco.

5. As a consequence, town life existed in the Eastern and Middle Colonies, and was little known in the South, particularly in Virginia.

6. Over the colonies, as a great governing body to aid the King, were the Lords of Trade and Plantations in London. Under them in America were the royal and proprietary governors, who with the local colonial legislatures managed the affairs of the colonies.

LIFE IN THE COLONIES IN 1763.

_Social and Industrial Condition_.

Population.

Implements and inventions unknown.

The printing press.

The postal service.

Trades and occupations then unknown.

Labor.}The apprentice.

}The "indented servant."

}The redemptioner.

}The slave.

No manufactures. }Iron making Acts of trade regulating. }Cloth making.

The cities. }Hat making.

Travel.

The Navigation Acts.

State of agriculture.

_Government_.

The charter colonies.

The proprietary colonies.

The royal colonies.

The colonial governor.

The Lords of Trade and Plantations.

The King.