The Americans never admitted the supremacy of Parliament

private domain and not subject to the control of Parliament. This theory lived on in America, but died out in England. On the one hand the Americans had their own legislatures, which stood to them in the place of Parliament. The authority of Parliament was derived from the fact that it was a representative body, but it did not represent Americans. Accordingly the Americans held that the relation of each American colony to Great Britain was like the relation between England and Scotland in the seventeenth century. England and Scotland then had the same king, but separate Parliaments, and the English Parliament could not make laws for Scotland. Such is the connection between Sweden and Norway at the present day; they have the same king, but each country legislates for itself. So the American colonists held that Virginia, for example, and Great Britain had the same king, but each its independent legislature; and so with the other colonies, there were thirteen parliaments in America, each as sovereign within its own sphere as the Parliament at Westminster, and the latter had no more right to tax the people of Massachusetts than the Massachusetts legislature had to tax the people of Virginia.

In one respect, however, the Americans did admit that Parliament had a general right of

except in the regulation of commerce

maritime

supervision over all parts of the British empire. Maritime commerce seemed to be as much the affair of one part of the empire as another, and it seemed right that it should be regulated by the central Parliament at Westminster. Accordingly the Americans did not resist custom-house taxes as long as they seemed to be imposed for purely commercial purposes; but they were quick to resist direct taxation, and custom-house taxes likewise, as soon as these began to form a part of schemes for extending the authority of Parliament over the colonies.

there grew

up the theory

of the imperial suParliament

premacy of

In England, on the other hand, this theory that the Americans were subject to the king's authority but not to that of Parlia- In England ment naturally became unintelligible after the king himself had become virtually subject to Parliament. The Stuart kings might call themselves kings by the grace of God, but since 1688 the sovereigns of Great Britain owe their seat upon the throne to an act of Parliament. To suppose that the king's American subjects were not amenable to the authority of Parliament seemed like supposing that a stream could rise higher than its source. Besides, after 1700 the British empire began to expand in all parts of the world, and the business of Parliament became more and more imperial. It could make laws.

for the East India Company; why not, then, for the Company of Massachusetts Bay?

Conflict between the British and the Ameri

can theories

was precipitated by George III.

Thus the American theory of the situation. was irreconcilable with the British theory, and when Parliament in 1765, with no unfriendly purpose, began laying taxes upon the Americans, thus invading the province of the colonial legislatures, the Americans refused to submit. The ensuing quarrel might doubtless have been peacefully adjusted, had not the king, George III., happened to be entertaining political schemes which were threatened with ruin if the Americans should get a fair hearing for their side of the case. Thus political intrigue came in to make the situation hopeless. When a state of things arises, with which men's established methods of civil government are incompetent to deal, men fall back upon the primitive method which was in vogue before civil government began to exist. They fight it out; and so we had our Revolutionary War, and became separated politically from Great Britain. It is worthy of note, in this connection, that the last act of Parliament, which brought matters to a crisis, was the so-called Regulating Act of April, 1774, the purpose of which was to change the government of Massachusetts. This act pro

1 See my War of Independence, pp. 58-64, 69-71 (Riverside Library for Young People).

vided that members of the council should be appointed by the royal governor, that they should be paid by the Crown and thus be kept subservient to it, that the principal executive and judicial officers should be likewise paid by the Crown, and that town-meetings should be prohibited except for the sole purpose of electing town officers. Other unwarrantable acts were passed at the same time, but this was the worst. Troops were sent over to aid in enforcing this act, the people of Massachusetts refused to recognize its validity, and out of this political situation came the battles of Lexington and Bunker Hill.

§ 2. The Transition from Colonial to State Gov

ernments.

of assemblies

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 Dissolution like the king's power of dissolving and ParParliament in the days of the Stuarts. liaments 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 1640.1 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

Committees of Correspondence

1 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 StatesGeneral in 1789 precipitated the great revolution which overthrew the monarchy.