Fortunately, as we have seen, the previous constitutions of all the colonies had accustomed the people, to a great extent, to the business of government; and when the recommendation of the Continental Congress to the several colonies to adopt such governments as would best conduce to their happiness and safety was made immediately after the first effusion of blood, it was addressed to civil societies, in which the people had, in different modes, been long accustomed to witness and to exercise the functions of legislation, and in all of which there were established forms of law, of judicature, and of executive power.

The new political situation in which they now found themselves required, in many of the colonies, but little departure from these ancient institutions. The chief innovation necessary was to bring into practical working the authority of the people in place of that of the crown of England, as the source of all political power. The changes requisite to effect this were of course to be made at once; the materials for these changes existed everywhere, in the representative institutions which had long been a part of the system of every colony since the first settlement of the country. . . . The foundations . . . for popular governments existed in all the colonies, and furnished the means for substituting the new source of political power, the will of the people, in the place of that of an external sovereign.

But there were other materials, also, for the formation of regular and balanced governments, with nearer approaches to perfection and with far greater completeness than a mere democracy can afford to any people, however familiar they may be with the exercise and the practice of government. The people of these colonies had been so trained as to be able to apply those principles in the construction and operation of government which enable it to work freely, successfully, and wisely, while resting on a popular basis. They were able to see that the whole of what is meant and understood by government is comprehended in the existence and due operation of legislative, executive, and judicial powers. They had lived under political arrangements, in which these powers had been distributed so as to keep them for the most part distinct from

each other, and so as to mark the proper limitations of each. If, in some instances, the same individuals had exercised more than one of these powers, the distinctions between the departments, and the principles which ought to regulate such distinctions, had become known. The people of the colonies, in general, therefore, saw that nothing was so important, in constructing a government with popular institutions, as to balance each of these departments against the others, so as to leave to neither of them uncontrolled and irresponsible power.

. . . Three of the colonies, namely, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Virginia, proceeded to form constitutions of government before the Declaration of Independence was adopted, under a special recommendation given to each of them by Congress, in the latter part of the year 1775, addressed to the provincial convention, advising them "to call a full and free representation of the people, to establish such a form of gov ernment as in their judgment will best promote the happiness of the people, and most effectually secure good order in the province during the continuance of the present dispute between Great Britain and the colonies." . . . On the 15th of May, 1776, the Provincial Convention of Virginia proceeded to prepare a declaration of rights and a constitution. The latter declared that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments ought to be distinct and separate, and divided the legislative department into two branches, the house of delegates and the senate, to be called "the General Assembly of Virginia." The members of the house of delegates were chosen from each county, and one from the city of Williamsburg, and one from the borough of Norfolk. The senate consisted of twenty-four members, chosen from as many districts. A governor and council of state were chosen annually by joint ballot of both houses. The legislature appointed the judges, who were commissioned by the governor, and held their offices during good behaviour.

G. T. CURTIS, Constitutional History.1 I. 80-84.

BORGEAUD (1892)

European critics of American democracy almost always make the mistake of looking only at the Federal Constitution of the 1 Copyright, 1889, by George Ticknor Curtis.

United States and of leaving unexamined the institutions of the several States. It may be said, in their defence, that the Americans themselves are the cause of this, since, for a century, they have devoted all their zeal to the history and criticism of Federal public law and are only now beginning the systematic study of their local constitutions. But the mistake,

though explicable and pardonable, is none the less grave. Recently two masters of political science, M. E. Boutmy, in France, and Mr. James Bryce, in England, have called attention to its unhappy consequences. They have easily shown that the institutions of the States are the edifice itself of which the Federal constitution is but the completion, that they are the real foundation of the national institutions, and that American democracy cannot be understood or judged apart from the environment in which its development has taken place.

CHARLES BORGEAUD, Adoption and Amendment of Constitutions in Europe and America, translated by C. D. Hazen. 137.

BRYCE (1896)

When, in 1776, the thirteen colonies threw off their allegiance to King George III., and declared themselves independent States, the colonial charter naturally became the State constitution. In most cases it was remodelled, with large alterations, by the revolting colony. But in three states it was maintained unchanged, except, of course, so far as Crown authority was concerned, viz., in Massachusetts till 1780, in Connecticut till 1818, and in Rhode Island till 1842. The other States admitted to the Union in addition to the original thirteen, have entered it as organized self-governing communities, with their constitutions already made by their respective peoples. Each Act of Congress which admits a new State admits it as a subsisting commonwealth, sometimes empowering its people to meet and enact a constitution for themselves (subject to conditions mentioned in the Act), sometimes accepting and confirming a constitution so already made by the people. Congress may impose conditions which the State constitution must fulfil; and in admitting the six newest States has affected to retain the power of maintaining these conditions in force. But the authority of the State constitutions does not flow from

Congress, but from acceptance by the citizens of the States for which they are made. Of these instruments, therefore, no less than of the constitutions of the thirteen original States, we may say that although subsequent in date to the Federal Constitution, they are, so far as each State is concerned, de jure prior to it. Their authority over their own citizens is nowise derived from it. Nor is this a mere piece of technical law. The antiquity of the older States as separate commonwealths, running back into the heroic ages of the first colonization of America and the days of the Revolutionary War, is a potent source of the local patriotism of their inhabitants, and gives these States a sense of historic growth and indwelling corporate life which they could not have possessed had they been the mere creatures of the Federal Government.

JAMES BRYCE, The American Commonwealth 300, 301.

SCHOULER (187)

Expressed in concise and admirable language, the Virginia Bill of Rights (whose sixteen sections we have thus condensed) was broad and universal in sentiment, breathing the spirit of human brotherhood, without a hint of race or class subjection. The declaration served well for example to the other twelve states; and, so proud of this instrument have Virginians remained that they affixed it unchanged to their new constitution of 1830, and, amending it but slightly for the constitution of 1850, incorporated it once more intact in the new framework of 1864.

JAMES SCHOULER, Constitutional Studies. III. 33, 34.

FISHER (1897)

Virginia's constitution was finished June 29. 1776, a few months after South Carolina's. It was made by a convention of forty-five members of the house of burgesses, and has prefixed to it a bill of rights, adopted June 12, 1776, the first part of which has the language of the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. The rest of the bill of rights is remarkable as being very full and complete and containing more provisions than had ever appeared before in the colonies. Besides the ordinary bill-of-rights provisions, the bill contains 1 Copyright, 1896, by the Macmillan Co.

some political maxims, and among these is the first statement in our constitutions of the principle that the legislative, executive, and judicial departments of government should be separate, and that the same persons should never exercise the powers of any two of them.

S. G. FISHER, The Evolution of the Constitution of the United States. 75.

THORPE (1898)

Before the close of the seventeenth century America was at the threshold of a new civil experience, the distinguishing feature of which was the formulation of the "ancient and undoubted rights of the people of the colonies." A like process was going on in England. The famous Bill of Rights of 1688 is contemporaneous with like measures in the colonies. Americans are more familiar with the political speculations that dominated the country in 1776 than with those equal in influence, that dominated it nearly a century earlier. One clause of the English bill of 1688 survives in its original form in the Constitution of the United States, and in many State constitutions; but it was not accompanied in the seventeenth century by those provisions with which it is now associated. . . .

When the transition from colonies to commonwealths came, it seems, at first glance, almost instantaneous. The State constitutions of 1776 seem struck off at a single stroke in a sense that is not true of the national Constitution. A little reflection, however, will demonstrate that the constitutions, state and national, which distinguish America during the last quarter of the eighteenth century are in no sense political miracles or the product of chance or sudden ideas. These instruments must be taken, in the aggregate, as the written form of a political organism long growing and essentially homogeneous. They give the political fabric a common pattern. They register the civil experience, not of the colonists only, but of the people of other and earlier times. They may be called chapters in the Bible of politics contributed by democracy in America. Therefore, they must be considered together as a political unit, whose details are local applications of a few common principles contained in the bill of rights

The typical declaration is that of Virginia of 1776, which, by