With excellent sagacity, -for true humanity perfects the judgment, the gentle William Penn, forerunner and teacher of Franklin and of America, matured a plan of a permanent union, by a national representation of the Amer ican states. On the eighth day of February, 1697, he delivered his project for an annual "congress," as he termed it, of two delegates from each province, with a special king's commissioner as the presiding officer, to establish intercolonial justice, "to prevent or cure injuries in point of commerce, to consider of ways and means to support the union and safety of these provinces against the public enemies. In this congress, the quotas of men and charge will be much easier and more equally set than it is possible for any establishment here to do; for the provinces, knowing their own condition and one another's, can debate that matter with more freedom and satisfaction, and better adjust and balance their affairs, in all respects, for their common safety;" and he added, "The determination, in the assembly I propose, should be by plurality of voices."

The proposition was advocated before the English world in the vigorous writings of Charles Davenant. He disdained the fear of a revolt of the colonies, "while they have English blood in their veins and have" profitable "relations with England." "The stronger and greater they grow," thus he expressed his generous confidence, "the more this crown and kingdom will get by them. Nothing but such an arbitrary power as shall make them desperate can bring them to rebel. . . . And as care should be taken to keep them obedient to the laws of England, and dependent upon their mother country, so those conditions, privileges, terms, and charters should be kept sacred and inviolate, by which they were first encouraged, at their great expense and with the hazard of their lives, to discover, cultivate, and plant remote places. . . . Any innovations or breach of their original charters (besides that it seems a breach of the public faith) may, peradventure, not tend to the king's profit."

But the ministry adopted neither the military dictatorship of Locke and his associates, nor the peaceful congress

of William Penn, nor the widely read and long-remembered advice of Davenant, but trusted the affair of quotas and salaries to royal instructions. Two causes served to protect the colonies from any other system. Responsible ministers were unwilling to provoke a conflict with them, and a generous love of liberty in the larger and better class of Englishmen compelled them as patriots to delight in its extension to all parts of the English dominions.

England, at "the abdication" of its throne by the Stuarts, was, as it were, still free from debt; and a direct tax on America, for the benefit of the English treasury, was, I think, at that time not dreamed of. That the respective colonies should contribute to the common defence against the French and Indians was desired in America, was earnestly enjoined from England; but the demand for quotas continued to be directed to the colonies themselves, and was refused or granted by the colonial assemblies, as their own policy prompted, though the want of concert and the refusal of contributions readily suggested the interference of parliament.

If the declaratory acts, by which every one of the colonies asserted their right to the privileges of Magna Charta, to the feudal liberty of freedom from taxation except with their own consent, were always disallowed by the crown, it was done silently, and the strife on the power of parliament to tax the colonies was willingly avoided. The colonial legislatures had their own budgets; and financial questions arose: Shall the grants be generally for the use of the crown, or carefully limited for specific purposes? Shall the moneys levied be confided to an officer of royal appointment, or to a treasurer responsible to the legislature? Shall the revenue be granted permanently, or from year to year? Shall the salaries of the royal judges and the royal governor be fixed, or depend annually on the popular contentment? These were questions consistent with the relations between metropolis and colony; but the supreme power of parliament to tax at its discretion was not yet maintained in England was always denied in America.

In this way, there grew up a great system of administra

tion by the use of the prerogative. It controlled legislation. In England, the veto power ceased to be used. In the course of a few years, it came to be applied to all the colonies except Connecticut and Rhode Island.

The crown obtained everywhere the mastery over the Judiciary; for the judges, in nearly all the colonies, received. their appointments from the king and held them at his pleasure; and the right of appeal to the king in council was maintained in them all. Nor was the power given up to bring a chartered colony, by a scire facias, before English tribunals.

Where the people selected the judges, as in Connecticut and Rhode Island, they were chosen annually, and the public preference, free from fickleness, gave stability to the office; where the appointment rested with the royal governor, the popular instinct desired for the judges an independent tenure for life. The security of personal freedom was not formally denied to America. Massachusetts, in an enactment of 1692, claimed the full benefit of the writ of habeas corpus; "the privilege had not yet been granted to the plantations," was the reply even of Lord Somers; it was not become a vested right; and the act was disallowed. When, afterwards, the privilege was affirmed by Queen Anne, the burgesses of Virginia, in their gratitude, did but esteem it "an assertion to her subjects of their just rights and properties." England conceded the security of personal freedom as a boon; America claimed it as a birthright. Copying the precedents of the Stuarts, the obsolete instructions, by which every royal governor was invested with the censorship over the press, were renewed. Yet, in spite of them, the press was generally as free in America as in any part of the world.

In like manner, the governors were commanded to "allow no one to preach without a license from a bishop;" but the instruction was, for the most part, suffered to slumber. For the advancement of the Anglican church, the crown incorporated and favored the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts; but to dissenters in America royal charters were refused.

The most terrible of the royal instructions was that which fostered slavery. Before the English crown became directly concerned in the slave-trade, governors were charged to keep the market open for merchantable negroes; and measures adopted by the colonial legislatures to restrain the traffic were nullified by the royal veto.

In May, 1689, the lords of the committee of colonies, willing even to derive power from the usurpations of James II., represented to King William that "the present relation" of the charter colonies to England is a matter "worthy of the consideration of parliament, for the bring ing those proprieties and dominions under a nearer dependence on the crown." But at that time, I think, nothing was designed beyond the strict enforcement of the naviga tion acts.

In March, 1701, less than ten years after the grant 1701. of the charter of Massachusetts, the board of trade invited "the legislative power" of England to resume all charters, and reduce all the colonies to equal "dependency;" and, in April, a bill for that end was introduced into the house of lords.

As the danger of a new war with France increased, William was advised that, "besides the assistance he might be pleased to give the colonies, it was necessary that the inhabitants should on their part contribute to their mutual security;" and a new requisition for quotas was made by the warlike sovereign. For Pennsylvania the quota was three hundred and fifty pounds; William Penn himself was present to urge compliance; but war, reasoned the Quakers, is not better than peace; trade and commerce are no less important than weapons of offence; and, professing "readiness to acquiesce wtih the king's commands," the assembly of Pennsylvania, like Massachusetts, made excuses for an absolute refusal. Immediately in January, 1702, the board of trade turned to their sovereign, representing the defenceless condition of the plantations: "Since the chartered colonies refuse obedience to the late requisitions, and continue the retreat of pirates and smugglers, the national interest requires that such independent

1702. Jan.

administrations should be placed by the legislative power of this kingdom in the same state of dependence as the royal governments." Such was the deliberate and abiding opinion of the board, transmitted across half a century to the Earl of Halifax and Charles Townshend. But the charters had nothing to fear from William of Orange; for him the sands of life were fast ebbing, and in March he was no

more.

The white inhabitants of British America, who, at the accession of William III., were about one hundred and eighty thousand, were, at the accession of Anne, 1702 at least two hundred and seventy thousand. Their governors were instructed to proclaim war against France; and a requisition was made of quotas "to build fortifications and to aid one another." "The other colonies will not contribute," wrote Lord Cornbury, from New York, "till they are compelled by act of parliament;" and he afterwards solicited" an act of parliament for the establishment of a well-regulated militia everywhere." In Virginia, the burgesses would do nothing "that was disagreeable to a prejudiced people," and excused themselves from complying with the requisition. So did all the colonies: "New York, the Jerseys, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas," were informed against, as "transcripts of New England," which furnished "the worst of examples."

1702 to

1706.

"Till the proprieties are brought under the queen's government," wrote Lord Cornbury, in 1702, "they will be detrimental to the other settlements." "Connecticut and Rhode Island," he added, the next year, "hate everybody that owns any subjection to the queen." The chief justice of New York, in July, 1704, assured the secretary of state that "antimonarchical principles and malice to the church of England daily increase in most proprietary governments, not omitting Boston; and, to my own knowledge, some of their leading men already begin to talk of shaking off their subjection to the crown of England."

Roused by continued complaints, the privy council, in December, 1705, summoned the board of trade "to lay be