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"FUNDAMENTAL CONSTITUTIONS" OF CAROLINA 609

to communities so remote from the mother country as the American settlements. Their very distance from England made it impossible for their inhabitants to enjoy the same privileges as Englishmen, and unless they were kept in a position of subordination the colonies could have no value for the parent State. "Provincial or dependent Empire", wrote Harrington, "is not to be exercised by them that have the balance of Dominion in the Province, because they would bring the Government from Provincial and Dependent to National and Independent." He recognised that imperialism, as it was understood in his day, could not be accommodated to his theory of the balance of property, and that settlers inheriting the Anglo-Saxon passion for freedom could not permanently be maintained in a subordinate status. These considerations led him to pen his prophetic warning of the dissolution of the Empire.

The remote possibility of the Oceana system of government being adopted by England vanished with the Puritan régime, but the establishment of new settlements in America furnished an admirable opportunity for testing the value of Harrington's ideas. At least two of the new settlements, Carolina and Pennsylvania, were honoured by the application of Oceana principles, and it is worth noting that all the transatlantic communities followed a practice which was implicit in the principle of the equal agrarian, by which the amount of land that one person could acquire was to be strictly limited. The adoption of this involved the doom of the English system of primogeniture, which had never been imitated by the English settlers in America, where circumstances led them to follow the rule of equal division of property among heirs.

The Carolina version of Oceana, as expounded in the "Fundamental Constitutions", distorted Harrington's ideas by giving them an anti-democratic bias. The settlers were divided into categories according to the proportion of land they owned, and the whole system was so arranged that no office could be held without a property qualification. Executive power was monopolised by the proprietors, and legislative power was divided between a Grand Council of fifty, of whom only fourteen could be said to represent the people in any way, and a Parliament, the function of which was to vote on the measures referred to it by the Council. Other recommendations of Harrington, the ballot, religious toleration, universal military training, were embodied in the Constitutions, which were to be read and sworn in every Parliament, while Harrington's suspicion of lawyers was echoed in the provision that no man might plead a cause for money. But in following the letter of Harrington's suggestions, those who drafted the "Fundamental Constitutions" departed from the spirit which had inspired their author by making no provision for the equal division of property among children and by safeguarding the integrity of estates. Every attempt, however, of the Carolina

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proprietors to induce the settlers to accept this scheme of government proved unsuccessful.

More in the line of succession to Harrington's leading thoughts was the method of application attempted by William Penn. This great Quaker had probably a hand in drafting the schemes of government for the Jerseys, where principles suggestive of Oceana were incorporated in the constitutions of 1676 and 1683, but it was in his own colony of Pennsylvania that he had the greatest opportunity of testing his most cherished ideas. His "Holy Experiment" savours too strongly of Harrington's devices not to have been influenced by him. The Legislature consisted of a provincial council of 72 and an Assembly of 200. The principle of rotation was applied to the former, one-third of the council being elected annually, and its function was to propose measures on which the Assembly was to vote. In the choice of the Assembly a process of indirect election and the ballot were employed. The importance of land was shown in the requirement that only landowners could share in the government of the colony, but the constitution was much more democratic than that of Carolina. Nevertheless this democratic version of Oceana was no more successful than the Carolina variation. The ballot was objected to, the Assembly refused to confine itself to the function of voting, and by 1701 it had established its right to debate and initiate legislation.

The direct influence of Harrington in America ceased with the reign of Charles II. During the revolutionary period he hardly attained the status of even a minor prophet of insurrection, but when the fighting was over and the Americans were confronted with the task of framing constitutions for themselves, he once more exercised some influence through the medium of John Adams, who had a share in the drafting of several State constitutions. The principle of a property qualification and the system of checks and balances, with which the name of Harrington is associated, are particularly conspicuous in the constitution of Massachusetts, where the influence of Adams naturally counted for most.

So many of the devices with which Harrington has made us familiar have been incorporated in the constitution of the United States that it would be easy to exaggerate his influence. The explanation is to be found in the fact that his writings have presented us with the most comprehensive exposition of Puritan political thought in the first half of the seventeenth century, so that many of the features of the American constitution are to be attributed rather to the general influence of Puritanism than to the particular championship of Harrington. The written constitution, for example, was a commonplace of Puritan thought. But the notion of a fixed law was one with which few Englishmen of the seventeenth century would have quarrelled; for the concept had been created by the need of repelling the pretences of the Divine Right theory of monarchy. Magna Carta,

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in particular, stood upon a pinnacle which could not be reached by the will of any ruler. "In every government", said Cromwell, "there must be somewhat fundamental, somewhat like a Magna Carta, that should be standing and be unalterable." The Puritans, as the opponents of the Crown in the great constitutional quarrel of the century, inevitably became the principal champions of the idea of a fundamental law which they carried over to America.

The other practices of America which suggest the influence of Harrington are the ballot, indirect election, the multiplication of offices and the principle that they should be held only for a limited period, rotation, the use of petitions, the separation of powers, the popular ratification of constitutional legislation, and the employment of special machinery for assuring the preservation of the constitution. Popular education, the spread of which has been honourably associated with Puritanism, also found a niche in his thesis, while the doctrine of religious freedom, if not inherent in Puritanism, was assuredly advanced by the championship which it received from writers like Milton and Harrington. The device of the referendum, too, which is employed in America, was implicit in the Oceana, for in Valerius and Publicola (1659) the author describes his Assembly as "nothing else but an Instrument or Method whereby to receive the Result of the whole Nation with order and expedition, and without any manner of tumult and confusion". The doctrine of the separation of powers, which forms a cardinal point in the Oceana system of government, has received its fullest application in America; but though the idea dates back to the period of the Commonwealth, it was through Montesquieu that it exerted its most constructive influence on American thought.

The fundamental reason why Puritanism lost its hold on England was that it was associated with elements hostile to the national tradition. This is exemplified even in the case of Harrington, although he stands apart from his contemporaries by the fact that he made no use of the social compact as a peg on which to hang his theories but appealed to experience. Yet the recourse to history, unillumined by the notion of continuity, led him to introduce into his scheme of government a hotch-potch of foreign elements, and he missed the point of Dr Gauden's criticism that "Models of new government heal not, Government must fit the genius of a people"." This was the true lesson of history, and the failure to read it aright was the cause of the downfall of the Puritans.

Against the mounting sentiment in favour of monarchic government the despairing vehemence of John Milton spent itself in vain. The proposals set forth in his pamphlet, The Ready and Easy Way to establish a Free Commonwealth (1659), were hardly of the nature to win 1 Carlyle, T., Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell (ed. Lomas), Speech III, п, 382. 2 Kakоupyo sive Medicastri: slight healers of publique hurts (Brit. Mus., E. 1019).

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the favour of an England which remembered with distaste the exclusiveness of the Rump. The Grand Council suggested by Milton bore too close a resemblance to that body to be popular, particularly as it was further proposed that its members should be chosen for life. Suspecting that few Englishmen would tolerate a "perpetual Council", Milton was prepared to accept a "partial rotation" whereby one-third of the Council would be renewed at stated intervals. Composed of the "ablest men", and vested with a sovereignty that was 'not transferred, but delegated only", the Council would "consult of public affairs from time to time for the common good", and for the execution of such matters as demanded "secrecy and expedition would act through a Council of State. The security of liberty was to be provided by a system of local government in which every unit was to be made "a kind of subordinate commonalty or commonwealth". "The good old Cause" had lost its hold on England, as Milton himself recognised, and the pamphlet was never seriously considered by those who were in a position to control the destinies of the nation. But it contained ideas which must have commended it to the colonies, especially in New England, where the works of Milton were familiar in every household of standing. To communities ever jealous of their local independence Milton's proposal for the delegation of local affairs to local assemblies must have made congenial reading. The commonwealth described by him amounted in effect to a federal system of government, and the future was to show that the Miltonic scheme as a whole was more adapted to the needs and desires of America than the elaborate and cumbrous devices of Oceana, for the United States approximated more closely than any other State to Milton's grand dream of "many commonwealths under one united and intrusted sovereignty".

While Harrington and Milton were drafting constitutions for England, merchants connected with the West Indian trade, of whom the most prominent were Thomas Povey and Martin Noell, were engaged in formulating a more effective system of colonial government. The Spanish Council of the Indies offered itself as an attractive model. Bacon had suggested the establishment of a special council to "regulate what concerns the colonies", and in Oceana Harrington proposed the institution of four councils to carry on the work of the State. The scheme put forward by Povey and his associates was of a more detailed and comprehensive character. It was their aim to reduce the number of governments in America and bring them under the control of a council, acting through governors whose salaries were to be paid from the English exchequer. Such a system was well designed to make the Plantations really, as well as legally, a part of the realm.

It was on the lines suggested by Povey and his companions that colonial government was organised after the Restoration. The

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council appeared as the Council for Trade and Plantations, without, however, the comprehensive powers which Povey had assigned to his organisation. And while it continued to be one of the main objects of the Council to render the governors independent of their Assemblies, the only feasible method by which this could have been accomplished, that of paying their salaries from England, was not adopted. The plea of Povey for the reduction of the number of governments in America was echoed by Samuel Maverick in his Account of New England, published in 1660, wherein he urged the consolidation of the New England colonies under the Crown and the seizure of the New Netherland from the Dutch. These measures seem to have been in the minds of English officials at the time of the Restoration, and the acquisition of New York was followed by an effort, culminating in the reign of James II, to bring the New England settlements under one government.1

After 1660 further additions to the Empire engendered a great activity in colonial affairs. The formulation of the colonial system was in itself a sign of developing interest in imperial matters, but it was an interest almost entirely confined to courtiers, merchants and officials, each class having a peculiar outlook of its own, but none having the capacity to appreciate the significance of factors which could not be estimated in terms of profit. None comprehended, for example, that the Puritan ideals rejected by England were pursuing an unimpeded course in New England and that local government which was declining in vigour and in importance at home was one of the most vital elements in American life. The mercantile and official vision is always more concerned with the near horizon than with the long perspective. The fact is that the commercial instinct of the race was so overwhelming that it canalised the national thought, so that Englishmen found it all but impossible to think of the colonies except in terms of trade. It has always been the weakness as well as the virtue of English common sense that it concerns itself with the immediately practical and dismisses every other matter from thought. The idea of empire as a congeries of nations did not exist; the various factories, plantations, and colonies simply formed part of the English realm.

It followed from the ideas prevalent in England with regard to the colonies that the colonial system embodied a rigidly nationalist policy, shaped primarily to extend the trade of the nation, and largely justified by the political conditions of the seventeenth century, when commerce was almost regarded as a weapon of war. Under its aegis England successfully challenged the maritime supremacy of Holland, and the Revolution, which so far as the nation was concerned settled all the outstanding constitutional issues, prepared her for the wider career that awaited her in the eighteenth century.

1 Vide supra, p. 260.

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