which has its basis in the sense of the personality of the English State. The English idea always was that the English State might incorporate other States or communities into itself, but that it could never confederate with other States or be incorporated by another State into itself— that any union with other States must result so that the English State was the Central and Governing Power of the whole organism. All communities not incorporated into the English State so as to form a part of its personality were considered to be "in a state of nature" with respect to it-that is, subject to its will, which, if not yielded to, was to be executed by force. The Union with Scotland in 1707 had been an incorporating merger of the Scotch population with the English under such terms that the population of Scotland was in fact segregated and made dependent on the population of England acting through the majority in Parliament, and hence, practically, dependent on the State of England, except that trade and intercourse between them was free from imposition or tax.

It was only natural, therefore, that any Englishman should look with suspicion upon any interpretation of the Constitution of the British Empire according to which it was to be regarded as a federal organism, in which Great Britain—that is, England-was the Central Government, and the American Colonies the Member-States. Such an arrangement, no doubt, seemed to Englishmen to place England in an equivocal position with relation to the Colonies, since it would be their agent, delegate, or representative, even though it had power to adjudicate upon the limits of its own jurisdiction.

Knox and Grenville did the Colonies a service in demolishing the position that the rights of their inhabitants were the rights of Englishmen, and compelling them to base their rights on general principles; and also in pointing out that the moment they claimed that the power of

Parliament was different in the Colonies from what it was in Great Britain, they declared themselves to be States distinct from the State of Great Britain, and compelling them to base their rights upon an interpretation of the existing relationship between themselves as States, and Great Britain.

The criticism contained in this pamphlet changed the whole course of political thought in America. It had been shown that the rights of the Colonies did not arise from their ancestors having been Englishmen and were not derived through any rights pertaining to individuals, but arose out of the nature of things, which made it just and necessary that political communities external to a State and so far distant or distinct from it that a merger of their populations with that of the State was impossible, should be regarded and should regard themselves as States, in a constitutional relationship of subordination to the Imperial State, and as constituting, with it, a Federal Empire. It forced the Colonies to base their claims upon their rights as States, and to found their claim of right to statehood to the extent of exclusive self-taxation, upon their capacity for governing themselves as States and upon the existence of a moral sense which would have made it repugnant to the populations of the Colonies to refuse to abide by the solemn and impartial adjudications of Great Britain concerning the limits of its jurisdiction, or to make use of the services of Great Britain as the Central Government, having the function of protection and co-ordination of all the parts of the whole organism, without paying for these services. In other words, in so far as the Colonies had attempted to work out their rights from the rights of their inhabitants, as individuals, the American position (involving as it did the proposition that the British Empire was a Unitary State) was demolished; but in so far as it was attempted to work out the rights of the

inhabitants of the Colonies from the rights of the Colonies, as Member-States of the British Empire, it was uninjured, because impregnable, -the British Empire being, in fact, a federal organism.

Had the resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress been remodelled so as to meet this criticism, they would have read, it would seem, somewhat as follows:

Resolved: That the American Colonies, as dependencies of Great Britain, are Member-States and component parts of the British Empire as a Federal Empire, of which Great Britain is the Imperial State and Central Government, with power to determine expertly and on just principles the limits of its own jurisdiction. To such adjudications, whether made through the King in Council or through the King, Lords, and Commons in Parliament assembled, the Colonies owe the respect and reverence which is properly and rightly due to tribunals of so august a character.

That all the dependencies of Great Britain are justly entitled to the highest degree of member-statehood consistent with their highest development and the highest development of the whole Empire.

That it is inconsistent with the degree of member-statehood to which the American Colonies are justly entitled and to which they have been heretofore recognized as being entitled, that they should not have exclusive control of their internal and external taxation.

That the British Constitution is in force in the Colonies except in so far as it is rendered inapplicable by local conditions and circumstances, and that the local circumstances and conditions in the Colonies are not such as to require the abolition, to any extent, of the right of trial by jury.

No opportunity occurred for reviewing the resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress until the Continental Congress met in 1774. When that Congress met, it was evident that the criticism of Knox and Grenville had had its effect, and that the Colonies had profited by it.

THE

CHAPTER XIV

REALM, NOT EMPIRE, 1769-1774

HE work done by Knox and Grenville, in the pamphlet, The Controversy between Great Britain and the Colonies Reviewed, was not wholly negative and critical of the American propositions. A large part of it was devoted to an attempt to prove affirmatively that Great Britain and the Colonies constituted a single Unitary State-that there was no British Empire, but only a British Realm, of which the Colonies were integral parts.

Their first point was that the Parliament of Great Britain was the Supreme Legislature of every person subject to the power of the State of Great Britain, on the theory that every individual within that State, by becoming and remaining subject to its power, had tacitly assented that Parliament should be the Supreme Legislature. They said on this subject:

The subjects of Great Britain [in the Colonies] are not without their representatives, though the members who compose the House of Commons cannot be said to be distinctly So. Neither are they bound by laws, nor is their money taken from them without their own consent given by their representatives. The King, Lords, and Commons are their representatives; for to them it is that they have delegated their individual rights over their lives, liberties, and property; and so long as they approve of that form of government, and continue under it, so long do they consent to whatever is done by those they have intrusted with their rights.

16

"Laws they are not (says Hooker) which public approbation hath not made so. But approbation not only they give, who personally declare their assent by voice, sign, or act, but also when others do it in their names, by right originally at the least derived from them. And to be commanded we do consent, when that society whereof we are part hath at any time before consented, without revoking the same after by the like universal agreement." And Mr. Locke, who followed this learned investigator of the rights of mankind, in his answer to Sir Robert Filmer, after having shown that the origin of all power is from the people only; that every form of government, whether a democracy, an oligarchy, an elective or hereditary monarchy, is nothing more than a trust delegated by the society to the person or persons so appointed, lays it down as a fundamental maxim in all Governments: "That the Legislative is the joint power of every member of the society, given up to that person or assembly which is legislator; and that even the Executive, when vested in a single person, is to be considered as the representative of the Commonwealth." And he then adds: "Nobody doubts but an express consent of any man entering into society makes him a perfect member of that society, a subject of that Government. The difficulty is what ought to be looked upon as a tacit consent; and to this I say, that every man that hath any possessions or enjoyment of any part of the dominions of any Government, doth thereby give his tacit consent, and is as far forth obliged to obedience to the laws of that Government during such enjoyment, as any one under it."

Upon this principle, the King and the two Houses of Parliament, are by our Constitution representatives of the Legislative, as the King alone is of the Executive power of the Commonwealth; and upon this principle, every subject of Great Britain, when he is taxed by Parliament, is taxed by his own consent, for he is then taxed by consent of those whom the society has impowered to act for the whole; and every member of that community must therefore subscribe his tacit consent to all such taxes as may be imposed, or other legislative acts that may be done by those whom the society