governors in those colonies to royal approval. Likewise the governors themselves were required to take oaths, binding them to uphold the acts of trade, before beginning their work. The penalty for neglect of duty in this respect made the offender liable to dismissal from office and a fine of £1000.

Furthermore, the Act empowered either the Lords of Treasury, or their agents, the Commissioners of the Customs, to station customs officials anywhere in the colonies, where the good of the service made their presence necessary. The customs service itself was reorganized, to make it more effective, and a regular system of vice-admiralty courts in charge of royal officials, was established in the colonies. Thus the requirements of administration made necessary the evolution of a complex official structure in the colonies, all of which was entirely beyond the legal reach of the Americans.

The highest authority over the colonies was the Privy Council. During the seventeenth century its powers were, theoretically, absolute, and even the rise of the Cabinet did not deprive it of more than a fraction of its influence. Under the Privy Council and the Cabinet there was a whole series of boards, such as the Treasury Board, the Admiralty Board, and others. As the Cabinet developed, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department became its agent in colonial matters.

Administrative machinery can generally be depended on to increase in size, if not in effectiveness, very much as a snowball grows larger and more unwieldy the longer it rolls. As the number of commissions increases, the directing powers will call for the creation of a supercommission, to administer its predecessors, to make them function smoothly and to try to create efficiency, where it is most needed and generally least possible. So, in 1696, a royal order created the Board of Trade, to succeed the Lords of Trade, and to have general oversight of all colonial and commercial questions. This new Board was composed of eight ministers, who were ex-officio members, and eight active members, not connected with the ministry, who did most of the work. The Board passed upon all instructions issued to the colonial governors, and kept on file for study and reference, all reports sent in from the colonial executives. Furthermore, it examined all new laws passed by the colonial legislatures, and advised the Privy Council with reference to its action regarding them. It was supposed to be the body from which the

Privy Council, the Cabinet, the various boards, and any interested individuals, could get information about the colonies.

The Board of Trade failed to function with entire satisfaction as a colonial office, because it had too little authority. The Board could formulate plans, but it was not closely enough bound up with the Cabinet to force the adoption of its policies. It could give advice about prospective appointments to colonial posts, but it had no way of compelling good selections, or of preventing bad ones. When any secretary of state wished to use a colonial office as a place of refuge for a political friend, the Board could not prevent him. Also, the Admiralty Board and the Customs Board, to name only two, had highly developed senses of their own importance, and incidentally, a peculiarly keen appreciation of the need of preventing any reform that might cut down the number of jobs available. When the services of the Board were most needed, that is, after 1760, political controversies in Parliament and in the unstable ministries of George III virtually nullified its influence.

From 1700 to 1760, there were no changes in the principles governing the regulation of the colonies. The Navigation Acts furnished the guides, and the work of administration was carried out by the various boards. The patent defects of the system, if it can be called a system, are obvious. No part of all this complicated machinery had been planned solely with reference to colonial needs. The Board of Trade was concerned with all the trade of the empire, and all the manufacturing too. So it was quite possible that the Board might lose sight of colonial matters in its efforts to solve comprehensive problems. Moreover, as the "plantations" of the seventeenth century grew into the prosperous colonies of the eighteenth, the British system recognized no change in their legal status. In the beginning there had been no doubt of the authority of the Privy Council to regulate colonial affairs. This was true, even in Massachusetts. Although the Puritans ignored England, they were able to do so only because circumstances in England made interference in America practically impossible. As the colonies grew, their legislators were converted to the belief that in all colonial affairs, they should have the final decision. This theory was naturally inconsistent with the principle of English supremacy. But there were certain matters, such as commerce, which needed regulation, and as the twelve separate American legislatures were clearly unable to do the

work, the English government continued to do it. Eventually, the colonial theory of complete autonomy was bound to clash with the British theory of supremacy.

As a matter of fact the system of British control did not interfere with the potential prosperity of any one colony nearly as much as the federal government does with that of some of the states to-day. What might New York do, for example, with a tariff on exports, and a series of import duties of her own!

CHAPTER IX

THE DEVELOPMENT OF COLONIAL

GOVERNMENT

This system of commercial regulation just described represented the more important part of British colonial policy. Down to the very eve of the Revolution matters of government were secondary to those of trade. And yet there had been problems of government, even in the early years of colonization, and these increased in importance, and in difficulty, as the task of enforcing the Navigation Acts became more complicated. If such problems could have been solved satisactorily, the Revolution might conceivably have been avoided; in any event, the final break in 1775 indicates a failure to fathom the secrets of successful colonial relations.

If it be granted that this failure occurred, the apparent causes of it can be found in the course of governmental evolution, both in England and in America. During the greater part of the colonial period, Englishmen were so busy in the task of remodeling their own system that they were not always fully aware of what was going on in their "plantations" across the Atlantic. It happened that colonial settlement coincided in time with the great English constitutional struggle, which first subjected the king to the control of Parliament, and then produced the Cabinet.

Before this contest started, the king and the Privy Council had held the dominant place in England, and they naturally took charge of the colonies. During the reign of Charles I the Privy Council officially denied the right of Parliament to intervene in colonial matters. But with its power steadily increasing in England, Parliament could hardly avoid touching upon American matters, even if it had desired to do so. Then, during the Cromwellian period, with kingship and council both abolished, Parliament proceeded to define some of its new-found powers. In 1650 the following resolution was adopted:

Whereas the islands and other places in America, where any English are planted, are and ought to be subject to and dependent upon England and

both ever since the planting thereof, have been and ought to be subject to the laws, orders, and regulations as are and shall be made by the parliament."

Perhaps the first concrete application of this theory is to be found in the Navigation Acts. Then after 1689, Parliament frequently turned its attention to colonial matters, and by 1765 it had placed upon the statute books about sixty laws which directly affected the colonies. Two thirds of these dealt with matters pertaining to commerce and navigation. As Parliament became more actively interested in colonial matters, its authority was duly upheld by the English courts. In 1720 the chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas declared that the colonies "may be bound by Laws, made respectively for them by an English Parliament."

COLONIAL LEGISLATURES

Legally this assertion of Parliamentary authority was sound. In the beginning there had been no doubt of the supremacy of the king and the Council, and Parliament succeeded to their power. There were, however, practical difficulties which virtually invalidated the theory of Parliamentary supremacy. Not the least of these were the very facts of colonial growth. While Parliament had been getting the upper hand in England, a somewhat similar process had been going on in America. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the colonial legislatures were undergoing a very rapid and interesting growth. Beginning as mere borough assemblies, they developed into miniature parliaments, with a sense of power and of pride in their achievements that would have done credit to their model in England. These bodies worked hard, and increased in wealth and prestige. Free from English interference for the most part, they developed a philosophy of their own regarding lawmaking and taxation, in which there was scant place for any notions of Parliamentary supremacy. Their work dealt with matters of primary concern in America, and as compared with their output, in quantity, the sixty Acts of Parliament relating to the colonies seemed hardly worth considering. So it happened that after 1760, when Parliament was ready to devote more time to a legislative program for the colonies, the Americans would have none of it. They wanted no legislation beyond that produced at home.

The actual course of this growth is one of the most illuminating