CHAPTER IV CONTENTS OF AMERICAN CONSTITUTIONS Evolution of American Constitutions. The chartered companies and the proprietors sent over to the colonies large numbers of colonists to protect the trading posts from the Indians and to do the work incident to the establishment of permanent communities. Afterward, larger numbers of emigrants came at their own expense to better themselves and to escape religious and political disabilities. Besides these settlers, thousands of poorer people and many criminals were transported to the colonies to be sold as indentured servants either to pay the cost of their passage or as a penalty for misdeeds. All of the colonies thus populated had to have governments to provide for the protection of the people from the attacks of savages, to punish disorderly conduct and crime, and to compel each one to do his share of the work of building houses and clearing forest lands. The government in England was three thousand miles away and could not provide for the needs of small communities existing under entirely different conditions. Consequently, the companies and the proprietors first sent over officials authorized to act as governors and to appoint advisory councils. Later on, the colonies obtained new charters which authorized the establishment of elective assem blies and otherwise modified the forms of their governments. These political conditions continued until the outbreak of the War for Independence when State governments were informally established by provincial congresses, which sent delegates to the Continental Congress. Thereafter, national and state governments were formed, modelled more or less closely upon the three-fold type of the colonial governments. These charters, patents, and written plans of government were constitutions or laws of government and in the highest sense were laws. In the case of Commonwealth v. Collins, decided in 1839 by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Justice Huston described as follows the legal nature of a constitution: A Constitution is but a law; it emanates from the people, the depository and the only one of all political power; it is, therefore, the supreme law. It organizes and defines the different parts of the government, confers on each department the powers and duties allotted to each, and limits the powers of every department. It has this further quality; having distributed the different powers to the different departments, it leaves those powers to be exercised by those departments, and leaves to the sovereign people themselves no other power than of choosing their own officers or representatives. The people can do no act, except make a new Constitution or make a revolution. 2 In the case of Commonwealth v. Roxbury, previously referred to, Chief Justice Shaw of Massachusetts described as follows the origin and nature of the govern 18 Watts (Penna.) Rep., 331, 409. '9 Gray (Mass.) Rep., 451, 478. |