§ 186] ROYAL PROVINCES 149 great English economist, Adam Smith: "Those prohibitions are only impertinent badges of slavery, imposed upon [the colonies] without sufficient reason by the groundless jealousy of the manufacturers of the mother country."1 185. Another source of justifiable irritation was the "Sugar Act" of 1733 (Source Book, No. 100, c). This Act placed duties on sugar and molasses from "foreign plantations" so high as to prevent the colonists from getting these articles any longer from the French West Indies, except by smuggling. The purpose of the law was to compel the colonies on the continent to buy their sugar from another English colony, Jamaica, where the sugar planters were in financial distress: it aimed to take from the mass of American colonists for the benefit of a specially privileged class of colonists. It is said that the law was suggested by a Boston merchant who owned plantations in Jamaica. 186. Attempts by the English government at closer political control first took the form of efforts to make colonies into royal provinces. For sixty years Virginia had been the only royal province. In 1685 New York was added to this class, when its proprietor became king. William III, at the opening of his reign, made Massachusetts practically a royal government (§ 153); and, by a stretch of authority, he cut off New Hampshire from Massachusetts and gave it that kind of government. Then came a series of attempts to change all colonies into royal provinces. In the remaining charter and proprietary. colonies the Board of Trade found many just grounds for complaint. Besides the old offenses (evasion of navigation laws, refusals to permit appeals to England, discrimination against the English Church, etc.), the Board was annoyed by Rhode Island's stubborn persistence in a shameful trade with pirates; by the refusal of Connecticut to let royal officers command her 1 Unhappily the colonists seem to have felt aggrieved quite as much by the well-intended, if not always tactful, efforts of England to preserve American forests from careless and greedy destruction, and to prevent the issue of dishonest colonial paper money. militia in war against the French; and by the absence in Pennsylvania and New Jersey of all militia. Experience had shown that English courts could not be depended upon to annul colonial charters (§§ 148, 152); and so, in 1701, the Board recommended, in a strong paper, that the eight charter and proprietary governments be "reunited" to the crown by act of parliament. A bill to this effect passed two readings, with little opposition; but the hurried departure of King William for a campaign in Ireland forced a timely adjournment of parliament. The following year another bill was being prepared, when the death of the King compelled parliament to dissolve. In the next reign these efforts were renewed. But time had been given for the proprietors in England and the charter governments in America to rally all their influences, public and secret.' The Whigs in parliament had great respect for charters and for "vested rights"; and the movement came to nothing. 187. The English government then fell back upon the early policy of William III, and attacked colonial grants one by one, as occasion offered. Before 1730, by taking advantage of a legal flaw, a serious disorder, or of the willingness of an embarrassed proprietor to sell, it added New Jersey and North and South Carolina to the list of royal provinces. Out of the last named, Georgia was carved for a proprietary province a little later; but it, too, soon came under a royal government. Down to the Revolution Maryland and Pennsylvania remained proprietary, and Connecticut and Rhode Island remained" corporate" colonies. 188. The common distinction between royal, proprietary, and charter colonies is not of great consequence. Connecticut and Rhode Island did keep their right to elect all branches of their government. Pennsylvania, not classed as a charter colony, possessed, through its grant from Penn, the next freest constitution, in the security of its legislature from interruption (§ 175). Massachusetts, with its charter, had less valuable privileges, and resembled a royal province in all practical respects. But the 1 The report of the Board of Trade is in the Source Book (No. 111). Greene's Provincial America (58-62) gives an excellent account. § 189] VETO OF KING AND GOVERNOR 151 really important thing about the colonial governments was their resemblances. All had representative Assemblies, with no small degree of control oveľ their governors (§ 189) and all had the private rights of Englishmen, jury trial, free speech, freedom from arbitrary imprisonment, — which were not then found in the colonies of any other country. 189. The next step in the new colonial policy was to attempt closer control in the charter and proprietary colonies: (1) to require royal approval for the appointment of proprietary gover nors; (2) to place the militia of charter colonies under the command of a neighboring royal governor;1 (3) to set up appointed admiralty courts, without juries, so as to prevent evasion of the navigation laws; (4) to compel colonial courts to permit appeal to the privy council in England; (5) to enforce a royal veto upon colonial legislation; and (6) to free royal and proprietary governors from dependence upon colonial Assemblies. The last two points require some explanation. (a) In theory, the king always possessed a veto, just as in parliament; but, even in Virginia, so early a royal colony, he rarely exercised it until after Bacon's Rebellion. Thereafter, it was expressly reserved in all colonial grants (as in that to Penn and in the Massachusetts charter of 1691), and the right was emphasized in every commission to a governor of a royal province (cf. Source Book, No. 112). True, a colonial law went into effect pending adverse royal decision; but the veto was no mere form. Scores of important statutes were disallowed, sometimes after they had been in force for years. Fifteen Massachusetts laws of 1692 were vetoed in 1695, and eight statutes of North Carolina as late as 1754. (b) Even in a royal province, the governor often showed little desire to carry out English instructions that conflicted with colonial views. Partly, this was because the governor, living in close touch with the colonists, was likely to see their side of the case; 2 but more commonly it was because his salary depended upon 1 Special report on Connecticut's resistance to Governor Fletcher of New York. See Johnston's Connecticut, and cf. Source Book, No. 111, d, for Fletcher's aggrieved letter. 2 For illustrations, cf. Berkeley's Report (Source Book, No. 104). |