. 1.] towns. Inter-colonial Communication. 25 which is now made in one night by the large steamboats which ply on Long Island Sound then required a week's time and often more. In England, the era of coaching was beginning; but on the western side of the Atlantic, colonial roads and lack of business warranted no such regular and expensive accommodation - except for short distances in the vicinity of the larger It then cost as much to send a letter from New York to Boston as it cost to send a letter from New York to London, and one-third as much to send a letter sixty miles inland from New York as to either of the cities just mentioned. Nor was the rate low enough to encourage frequent communication, as it cost a dollar to send one ounce of mail matter from New York to Boston; the same service is now performed for onefiftieth of that sum - not taking into account the difference in the value of money. In 1766, the rates for inter-colonial water communication were reduced to one-third of the 1760 rate. Owing mainly to the great expense attending the transportation of commodities and the spread of "news," the conditions of colonial life, away from the larger towns, were not unlike those which prevailed in England in the Middle Ages. The greatest differences, perhaps, were to be found in a change in ideals and in the possibilities of existence. American Most colonists realized that there was a better mode of life than that which they were obliged to lead. They knew also that the way to that better mode of living- so far, at least, as they were concernedlay in the possession of wealth. Wealth also conferred power on its possessor. In common with many other persons they confounded money with wealth, and in this way the acquisition of money became the one great all-absorbing task of the colonists. In England, as well as in Western Europe, the old social systems remained. In those countries a man ordinarily lived and died a member of the class into which he had been born an agricultural labourer or a mechanic seldom attained any higher grade. In the colonies the class distinctions, which rested on the written and unwritten laws of society, were fast disappearing. As the second half of the eighteenth century is passed in review, the attentive student will observe that in the colonies each year saw some social barrier swept away—one might almost say that each month saw something done toward the democratization of colonial society.. It thus came about that the possession of wealth on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean was equivalent to a patent of nobility in Great Britain. Few travellers understood the meaning of the intense struggle for wealth which all recognized as dominating American life. The people seemed to be struggling for money for its own sake, so to speak. In reality, they were intent on its acquisition for the power and social position its possession would confer on the possessor and his family. The ignorant immigrant, in this regard, evinced more intelligence than the cultured traveller. In his old home in Great Britain or Ireland, he led an easy careless existence. In the new world he rose early and worked the day through with a feverish anxiety as if conscious that every tree he felled on his little clearing in the wilderness placed him nearer his goal. In all this, however, the mainspring of his action was a most commendable desire to seize the opportunity which was suddenly placed before his eyes to better his condition. In thus raising his own level, the colonist felt that he was working toward the bettering of the condition of all the colonists and indeed of the human race. He seemed to be conscious of the grandeur of the undertaking, and "appealed to the world" in justification of his course. Colonial Governments. The "English colonies" on the continent comprised, in 1760, thirteen governments. They may be described as belonging to one of two forms, royal provinces governed directly by the Crown, and colonies in which the right to exercise many of the func 1.] Constitutional Position of the Colonists. 27 tions of the Crown had been delegated to persons called proprietaries or to the voters of the colony as in the cases of Connecticut and Rhode Island. The English settlers, to whichever colony they went, carried with them to their new homes "as much of the common law of England as was applicable to their condition." The qualification, contained in this latter phrase, made the constitutional relations of the colonists to the Crown and to Parliament very vague and uncertain, and different as to the inhabitants of the several colonies, or of the same colony at different stages in its development. The title of the king of England to the soil was based on the discovery of John Cabot, so far as other Christian monarchs were concerned. According to English legal theories, the king was lord of the soil as territory conquered from the Indians. Acting on this theory, successive monarchs had granted a large part of North America to single proprietors, to groups of proprietors, and to corporations. Most of these grants had in one way or another returned to the Crown, except as to rights which had become "vested." Some of them had been confirmed or regranted under other conditions. In 1774, Jefferson in his Summary View stated a different theory as to the ownership of the soil. He said, in substance, that the soil of the colonies belonged to the communities by whose exertions it had been converted to the uses of man, that is to the colonists themselves. The British government had no doubts as to the validity of the legal theory. In 1763 the king, by proclamation, established the waterparting between the rivers flowing into the Atlantic and those discharging into the Mississippi as the western boundary of the seaboard colonies. This seriously limited the extent of many colonies; but his right so to limit them does not seem to have been questioned at that time. In the period of the Revolution, however, the colonists treated the Proclamation of 1763 as of no legal force. The Crown and the colonists. The king held the same position toward the colonists, with the exception of the inhabitants of New York, that he held toward the people of Great Britain. They were all subjects of the English Crown. The colony of New York, however, had been settled originally by the Dutch and had been conquered by the English about a century before the time of which we are now speaking. Over it as a conquered colony, and not as one which had been originally settled by Englishmen under license from the Crown, the king wielded authority which he did not possess in the other colonies. For years after the conquest, New York had no representative assembly; but this had been remedied and the government of New York had been assimilated to that of the other royal provinces. The king could not tax English subjects without their consent, nor could he authorize others so to do. Legislative bodies had been established, therefore, in all the colonies, save New York, soon after their settlement. The earliest of these was the Virginia General Assembly, which met for the first time in 1619. The king's prerogative extended to the colonies, and the judges were appointed by him or by his agents. He was also the head of the military establishment, and where there was a Church establishment he was the head of the Church as well. The royal rights were oftentimes vigorously enforced. The best example of this, perhaps, was the enforcement of the title of the Crown to a share in the catch of whales and other "royal fish American coast. In the earlier time, the kings, beginning with James I, had denied to Parliament any share in the direction of colonial affairs. But during the Puritan régime, the Long Parliament had taken the control of colonial affairs into its hands; after the Restoration, Parliament continued to regulate colonial trade without any protest from the Crown. The Revolution of Parliament and the colonists. on the 1.] Representative Institutions. 29 1688-89, by making Parliament supreme in the State, completely altered the existing relations between Parliament and the colonial legislative bodies. But before 1761 the colonists had, tacitly at least, acknowledged the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament. They had not objected to the regulation of colonial trade by act of Parliament. They had accepted without remark the Post Office Act of Queen Anne, which really levied a direct tax on the colonists; and no protest had been raised against the act establishing the New Style, which affected the daily life of every colonist. No direct issue had been raised as to the power of Parliament to levy taxes. It will be convenient to describe in this place, however, the difference which existed between colonial representative institutions and those of Great Britain, for in that difference lay the key to the constitutional opposition to the acts of Parliament in the years 1761-1774. was fa Representative Government. The phrase "no taxation without representation miliar to both sections of the British people; but it conveyed very different meanings to the people of Great Britain and to those of the English colonies. The members of the British House of Commons were elected in 1760 in accordance with a system which was in itself the growth of centuries of British history. The House of Commons may be said to have fairly represented the several classes of the community- the landowners and their tenants and labourers, the merchants and their clerks and other employees, the manufacturers and their workmen, the Church, and the legal profession. Although its members were chosen on a basis both of apportionment and franchise, which would not now be tolerated in Great Britain, they were amenable to public opinion and may be regarded as giving the consent of the people of Great Britain to the levying of taxes. In the colonies, representation was apportioned on a territorial basis, an attempt being made in a few colonies |