they now severally assumed the position of independent States, limited only by the concessions of authority, mostly tacit, which they made to their general Congress.

Colonial Legislation. The people of the Colonies had previously exercised a somewhat indefinite power to make their own laws, which was very general in some Colonies and greatly restricted in others. In all of them the proprietary or royal Governor might defeat legislation by refusing his assent; and in some a council not chosen by the people formed a second legislative chamber, whose concurrence was necessary. Colonial legislation was also sometimes nullified in England, by the authority of an executive board or council, or by Parliament. Parliament itself also exercised the power to make laws for the Colonies, and in some cases the power was conceded, though its exercise in particular instances was complained of as an abuse, while in other cases the power itself was denied. It was conceded that, in all matters of what may be denominated imperial concern, the common legislature of the realm must legislate for all the dominions of the Crown, and that under this head fell the commerce of the Colonies with the mother country and with other nations and colonies. The most severe instances of the exercise of this authority were the Navigation Laws and the laws respecting manufactures in the Colonies, the general purpose of which was to subject the commerce and manufactures of the Colonies to such regulations and restraints as should be beneficial to the commerce and general business interests of the mother country. It was never disputed that the Colonies, like all other portions of the British dominions, must necessarily come under the control of the Crown and the Parliament in respect to all their foreign relations; and, though Indian affairs were for the most part left to the control and management of colonial authorities, yet these also were brought under imperial control to any

extent that to the home government at any time seemed politic or desirable.

The distinct claim of a right in the Colonies to make their own laws was not made until parliamentary legislation appeared to threaten oppression. The first actual resistance which assumed general importance was when an attempt was made to impose internal taxation by authority of the imperial Parliament. The proposed taxes were not in themselves a serious burden, and might possibly have passed unchallenged, if it had been certain that the tax law was not to be the herald. and the pioneer of others of a different sort, and which would touch the colonists in particulars in which they were even more sensitive than in respect to their pecuniary interests. The power which could tax New England could impose an episcopal hierarchy upon it, and the disposition to do this, not only in New England but in New York, had often manifested itself to an extent that excited the most serious alarm. What vital powers of sovereignty in respect to American concerns might be asserted and exercised, no one could foresee; and the tax laws were therefore resisted rather as the representatives of unknown dangers than for the burdens they imposed. The government for a time abstained from pushing its claims to an extreme, but, lest its doing so might be understood as an assent to the claims of the Colonies, Parliament, when repealing the Stamp Act, which had been rendered abortive by the resistance of the people, took occasion to assert an unqualified right to legislate for the Colonies on all subjects whatever.1 This claim afterwards assumed practical form in an attempt to collect a tax on tea imported for consumption in the Colonies. The levy of the tax was resisted as an invasion of the undoubted rights of

1 Pitkin, Hist. of U. S., ch. 6; Frothingham, Rise of the Republic, ch. 5, 6.

Englishmen, who, in taking up their home in the Colonies, had not lost their right to the protection of the ancient laws of the realm. In Massachusetts and New York cargoes of the taxed tea were destroyed by armed mobs; in Maryland the importer was compelled to set fire to the vessel by means of which he had offended, and in other colonies the taxed commodity was either refused a landing, or not suffered to be sold after the landing had been effected; and the tax law was by these means completely nullified.1

Liberty a Birthright. The resistance in the cases mentioned, and in some others, was grounded on the claim that the colonists, as Englishmen, according to the Constitution of the realm, were entitled to certain rights which the government was attempting to override by the exercise of tyrannical power. The evidence of these rights was to be found in part in certain historical documents which in both England and America had been looked upon and revered as the charters of liberty. The first of these was

Magna Charta, extorted from King John in 1215, as a restriction upon what was then an almost unlimited kingly power; the most important provision of which was, that "No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned or disseized or outlawed or banished or anyways destroyed, nor will the King pass upon him or commit him to prison, unless by the judgment of his peers or the law of the land." In the same instrument is foreshadowed parliamentary taxation in the clause which requires the common consent of the realm to the levy of unusual burdens. Grounded upon this charter the fabric of constitutional liberty was

8

1 Frothingham, Rise of the Republic, ch. 5; Pitkin, Hist. of U. S., ch. 7.

2 Pitkin, Hist. of U. S., ch. 3.

3 Blackstone's Charters; 4 Bl. Com. 424; Story on Const., § 1779; Stubbs, Const. Hist., ch. 12; Cooley, Const. Lim., ch. 11.

slowly and patiently erected; parliamentary institutions acquired form and strength under the House of Lancaster; and though the promise of a regular administration of the law was as often violated as kept, the right of the subject to its benefits was never surrendered, and at length, at the beginning of the reign of Charles I., it received further assurance and confirmation in the royal assent to

The Petition of Right.1- By this petition it was prayed, among other things, "that no man be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge, without common consent by act of Parliament; that none be called upon to make answer for refusal so to do; that freemen be imprisoned or disseized only by the law of the land, or by due process of law, and not by the king's special command without any charge." In the next reign was enacted

The Habeas Corpus Act,2 the purpose of which was to give speedy relief from all unlawful imprisonments, and to enforce upon judicial and other officers the duty of deliverance. The fourth of the great charters of English constitutional liberty was

8

The Bill of Rights, which embodied in statutory form the principles enumerated in the Declaration of Rights presented by the Convention Parliament to the sovereigns called by that body to the throne on the Revolution of 1688. The purpose of this act was to enumerate and reaffirm such rights of the people as the House of Stuart in any of its reigning representatives had set aside, encroached upon, or ignored.

The Common Law. The charters above mentioned declared general principles, but the common law was the expositor of these, and the extent of the protection they 11 Ch. I., ch. 1 (1626). 2 31 Ch. II., ch. 2 (1679).

8 1 Wm. & Mary, Ses. 2, ch. 2 (1689).

should give could only be determined by its rules. That law was the growth of many centuries; its maxims were those of a sturdy and independent race of men, who were accustomed in an unusual degree to freedom of thought and action, and to a share in the administration of public affairs. So far as they declared individual rights, they were a part of the constitution of the realm, and of that "law of the land" the benefit of which was promised by the charter of King John to every freeman. They were modified and improved from age to age, by changes in the habits of thought and action among the people, by modifications in the civil and political state, by the vicissitudes of public affairs, by judicial decisions, and by statutes.

The colonists claimed that this code of law accompanied them, as a standard of right and of protection in their emigration, and that it remained their law, excepting as in some particulars it was found unsuited to their circumstances in the New World. Relying upon it, they had well known and well defined rules of protection; without it, they were at the mercy of those who ruled, and, whether actually oppressed or not, were without freedom.2

Violations of Constitutional Right. The complaints of violation of constitutional right were principally directed to four points: -1. .Imposing taxes without the consent of the people's representatives. 2. Keeping up standing armies in time of peace to overawe the people. 3. Denying a right to trial by a jury of the vicinage in some cases, and providing for a transportation of persons accused of crimes in America for trial in Great Britain. 4. Expos

1 Cooley, Const. Lim., 4th ed., p. 31. Van Ness v. Pacard, 2 Pet. 137, 144.

2 "Not the man alone who feels, but who is exposed to tyranny, is without freedom.".

Sir Wm. Meredith, quoted in Life of Iredell,

i. 212.