547 CHAP. XVII. FREE CONSTITUTIONS OF BRITISH COLONIES: SOVEREIGNTY OF ENGLAND COMMERCIAL RESTRICTIONS:-TAXATION OF THE AMERICAN COLONIES:-THEIR RESISTANCE AND SEPARATION:- CROWN COLONIES:-CANADA:- AUSTRALIA:-COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION AFTER THE AMERICAN WAR: NEW COMMERCIAL POLICY AFFECTING THE COLONIES: - RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT:- DEMOCRATIC COLONIAL CONSTITUTIONS:INDIA. have borne the laws of England. IT has been the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race to Colonists spread through every quarter of the globe their courage with them and endurance, their vigorous industry, and their love of freedom. Wherever they have founded colonies they have borne with them the laws and institutions of England, as their birthright, so far as they were applicable to an infant settlement. In territories acquired by conquest or cession, the existing laws and customs of the people were respected, until they were qualified to share the franchises of Englishmen. Some of these,held only as garrisons, others peopled with races hostile to our rule, or unfitted for freedom,-were necessarily governed upon different principles. But in quitting the soil of England to settle new colonies, Englishmen never renounced her freedom. Such being the noble principle of English colonisation, circumstances favoured the early development of colonial liberties. The Puritans, who founded the New England colonies, having fled from the oppression of Charles I., carried with them a stern 1 Blackstone's Comm., i. 107; 9, 139, 181, &c.; Sir G. C. Lewis on Lord Mansfield's Judgment in the Government of Dependencies, Campbell v. Hall; Howell's St. 189-203, 308; Mills' Colonial Tr., xx. 289; Clark's Colonial Law, Constitutions, 18. Ordinary form of colonial constitutions. love of civil liberty, and established republican institutions. The persecuted Catholics who settled Maryland, and the proscribed Quakers who took refuge in Pennsylvania, were little less democratic.2 Other colonies founded in America and the West Indies, in the seventeenth century, merely for the purposes of trade and cultivation, adopted institutions,-less democratic, indeed, but founded on principles of freedom and selfgovernment. Whether established as proprietary colonies, or under charters held direct from the crown, the colonists were equally free. The English constitution was generally the type of these colonial governments. The governor was the viceroy of the crown: the legislative council, or uppe: chamber, appointed by the governor, assumed the place of the House of Lords; and the representative assembly, chosen by the people, was the express imag of the House of Commons. This miniature Parlia ment, complete in all its parts, made laws for the internal government of the colony. The governor assembled, prorogued, and dissolved it; and sign fied his assent or dissent to every act agreed to by the chambers: the upper house mimicked the dignity! of the House of Peers1; and the lower house insisted 1 In three of their colonies the council was elective; in Connecticut and Rhode Island the colonists also chose their governor.-Adam Smith, book iv. ch. 7. But the king's approval of the governor was reserved by 7 & 8 Will. III. c. 22. 2 Bancroft's Hist. of the Colonisation of the United States, i. 264; iii. 394. Merivale's Colonisation, ed. 1861, 95, 103. 4 In 1858, a quarrel arose between the two Houses in Newfoundland, in consequence of the Upper House insisting upon ceiving the Lower House at a craference, sitting and covered,assumption of dignity which w resented by the latter. The g vernor having failed to accommodate the difference, prorogued the Parliament before the supplies were granted. In the next sessive these disputes were amicably ar ranged. Message of Council, April 23rd, 1858, and reply of House of Assembly; Private Correspondence of Sir A. Bannerman, on the privileges of the Commons, especially that of originating all taxes and grants of money, for the public service. The elections were also conducted after the fashion of the mother country.2 Other laws and institutions were imitated not less faithfully. Jamaica, for example, maintained a court of king's bench, a court of common pleas, a court of exchequer, a court of chancery, a court of admiralty, and a court of probate. It had grand and petty juries, justices of the peace, courts of quarter-sessions, vestries, a coroner, and constables.3 England. Every colony was a little state, complete in its legis- The sove lature, its judicature, and its executive administration. reignty of But, at the same time, it acknowledged the sovereignty of the mother country, the prerogatives of the crown, and the legislative supremacy of Parliament. The assent of the king, or his representative, was required to give validity to acts of the colonial legislature: his veto annulled them1; while the Imperial Parlia ment was able to bind the colony by its acts, and to supersede all local legislation. Every colonial judicature was also subject to an appeal to the king in council, at Westminster. The dependence of the colonies, however, was little felt in their internal government. They were secured from interference by the remoteness of the mother country, and the ignorindifference, and preoccupation of her rulers. ance, 1 Stokes' British Colonies, 241; Edwards' Hist. of the West Indies, ii. 419; Long's Hist. of Jamaica,i.56. 2 Edwards, ii. 419; Haliburton's Nova Scotia, ii. 319. 3 Long's Hist. of Jamaica, i. 9. In Connecticut and Rhode Island, neither the crown nor the governor were able to negative laws passed by the Assemblies. 5 "Three thousand miles of ocean lie between you and them," said Mr. Burke. No contrivance can prevent the effect of this distance in weakening government." Adam Smith observed:-" Their situation has placed them less in the view and less in the power the mother country."-Book iv. ch. 7. of Commer cial re In matters of imperial concern, England imposed her own policy: but otherwise left them free. Asking no aid of her, they escaped her domination. All their expenditure, civil and military, was defrayed by taxes raised by themselves. They provided for their own defence against the Indians, and the enemies of England. During the seven years' war, the American colonies maintained a force of 25,000 men, at a cost of several millions. In the words of Franklin," they were governed, at the expense to Great Britain, of only a little pen, ink and paper: they were led by a thread." But little as the mother country concerned herself in strictions. the political government of her colonies, she evinced jealous vigilance in regard to their commerce. Commercial monopoly, indeed, was the first principle in the colonial policy of England, as well as of the other maritime states of Europe. She suffered no other country but herself to supply their wants: she appropriated many of their exports; and, for the sake of her own manufacturers, insisted that their produce should be sent to her in a raw, or unmanufactured state. By the Navigation Acts, their produce could only be ex ported to England in English ships.2 This policy was avowedly maintained for the benefit of the mother country, for the encouragement of her commerce, her shipping, and manufactures, to which the interests of the colonies were sacrificed. But, in compensation for this monopoly, she gave a preference to the produce of her own colonies, by protective and prohibitory duties upon foreign commodities. In claiming a monopoly of their markets, she, at the same time, gave them a re 1 Evidence before the Commons, 1766; Parl. Hist., xvi. 139–141. 2 The first Navigation Act was passed in 1651, during the Com monwealth; Merivale, 75, 84, 80; ciprocal monopoly of her own. In some cases she encouraged the production of their staples by bounties. A commercial policy so artificial as this, the creature of laws striving against nature,-marked the dependence of the colonies, crippled their industry, fomented discontents, and even provoked war with foreign states.1 But it was a policy common to every European government, until enlightened by economical science; and commercial advantages were, for upwards of a century, nearly the sole benefit which England recognised in the possession of her colonies.2 tribute common to encies. In all ages, taxes and tribute had been characteristic Taxes and incidents of a dependency. The subject provinces of Asiatic monarchies, in ancient and modern times, had dependbeen despoiled by the rapacity of satraps and pashas, and the greed of the central government. The Greek colonies, which resembled those of England more than any other dependencies of antiquity, were forced to send contributions to the treasury of the parent state. Carthage exacted tribute from her subject towns and territories. The Roman provinces "paid tribute unto Cæsar." In modern times, Spain received tribute from her European dependencies, and a revenue from the gold and silver mines of her American colonies. It was also the policy of France, Holland, and Portugal to derive a revenue from their settlements.3 colonies But England, satisfied with the colonial trade, by English which her subjects, at home, were enriched, imposed free from upon them alone all the burthens of the state. Her imperial 1 Adam Smith's Wealth of Na- Raynal, Livres i. ii. vi.—ix. xii. xiii. tions, book iv. ch. 7. 2 Ibid. 3 Sir G. C. Lewis on the Government of Dependencies, 99, 101, 106, 112, 124, 139, 149, 211, et seq.; Adam Smith, book iv. ch. 7; "The English colonists have never yet contributed anything towards the defence of the mother country, or towards the support of its civil government."-Ädam Smith, book iv. ch. 7. taxation. |