NORMAL TYPE OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 409 war, the General Assemblies continued to meet. Laws were passed, taxes were levied for local expenditure, and the business of shaping the constitution and procedure of the Assembly was continued. Whenever peace came, as at Ryswick in 1697, the separatist influences revived, and in some quarters the opposition went so far as to demand complete independence for each island in all matters of civil concern. When war again threatened, as in 1701, the need of centralisation was felt, and the General Assembly was restored. But as the years passed, the latter gradually lost ground. With the arrival of Governor Parke and the disorders which accompanied his unfortunate administration, the quarrel between local rights and the royal prerogative reached its height. A last Assembly met to enquire into the circumstances of Parke's murder, December 1710, and sat from February to March 1711; but at its own request it was dissolved and for more than eighty years never met again. Particularism and the jealous maintenance of local rights won the day over centralisation and a system of federal co-operation. In the history of these four little islands in the West Indies, we find many of the features that characterised the struggle of the larger continental colonies, first against any sort of federal union under the Crown, and later to organise a federal system after independence had been won.

Thus by the beginning of the eighteenth century all experiments with different varieties of government for the royal colonies in America came to an end, and a normal type of organisation, familiar to us as the "old representative system", became established. This system prevailed everywhere (except in Connecticut and Rhode Island, which were completely self-governing), for even in the proprietary colonies, all but two of which were destined to become royal before the middle of the century, conditions were essentially the same, the proprietor taking the place of the King. The government consisted of a governor and council, representing the outside control of the royal prerogative, and an elected Assembly, representing the voting constituencies of the colony. In the development of the system from its early beginnings, though variations appear in practice and procedure, the characteristics and tendencies were everywhere the same. On the other hand, throughout the entire period to the American Revolution grave differences of opinion prevailed between the Home Government and the delegates in Assembly as to the relative importance of the executive and legislative branches of the government and the place that the Assembly should occupy in the composite group. To the King and his advisers the dominant factors in the government were the governor and council, who drew their authority from the prerogative and in whose hands lay the ultimate control of all administrative, financial, and judicial business; while the popular Assembly was in an inferior position, partaking of the nature of a provincial or municipal council, the function of which was

the passage of by-laws and ordinances for meeting the immediate needs of the colony itself. Despite the various attempts that were made, between 1664 and 1689, to prevent the establishment of a popular Assembly, as in New York and New England, or to deprive such Assembly of the right of initiation and deliberation, as in Jamaica and Virginia, the presence of such a representative body was everywhere recognised before the end of the century, as essential to the prosperity and good government of a colony. But there was no intention at home of allowing the popular branch of the government to diminish in any way the power of the prerogative in America, for the King and his ministers saw no parallel between the position of the Parliament in England, which had won its preponderant influence through a steady encroachment on the powers of King and Council, and the position of the Assemblies in America in their relation to the governors and their councils there. As events were to show, the struggle in one case was similar in principle to the struggle in the other. For the first century and a half the constitutional conflict in America was between the popular Assemblies and the prerogative; and it was not until that victory had been won and the growth of these Assemblies had led to the decline of the royal system of government in the colonies, that they were destined to face the British Parliament as the great antagonist.

After 1689, the ultimate control of affairs within the realm of England and in the colonies lay in the hands of Parliament, the supremacy of which appears in the not infrequent threats of royal officials to call upon that body to legislate when the colonies seemed unusually contumacious, and in their efforts to obtain from that body increased authority for the King in America. It seems strange at times that Parliament did not intervene, especially when the colonies were flouting the Royal Instructions, in such cases, for example, as the passage of perpetual revenue bills; but the explanation probably lies in Parliament's fear of any action that would increase anywhere the powers of the Crown. It limited its activities to the supervision of colonial trade and its attendant interests, chiefly of a financial nature, and in but very few instances dealt with matters that affected colonial government. There can be no doubt but that in the eighteenth century it considered itself wholly competent to legislate for the colonies and that the colonies recognised without serious demur its right to do so. It is equally clear that before 1765 Parliament held almost entirely aloof and left to the King and Privy Council complete oversight of colonial affairs, taking care, however, that at their hands there should be no increase of the prerogative, which was a matter of the common law, unless ousted or restrained by statute. Thus, in fact, in all that concerned the government in America, the King and Privy Council constituted the highest authority in the kingdom and their decisions were final. They constituted the

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ultimate court of appeal in civil, criminal, and admiralty matters, and they alone could give legal sanction to the recommendations of the Board of Trade. The executive departments of the Treasury and the Admiralty exercised their functions only by virtue of their commissions from the King, and only as servants of the King could the secretaries of state perform their duties.

Throughout the period under consideration, colonial administration was never conceived of apart from the regular government of the realm. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, as interest in the colonies increased, an occasional official was appointed for colonial purposes, such as the surveyor and auditor-general of all the royal revenues arising in America, whose business it was to bring the royal revenue in the Plantations "under a more certain method of account",1 in a manner similar to that employed by other auditors of the Exchequer in England. There were also a few officials and clerks appointed in the London Custom House to take charge of such revenues as the Plantation duty and the 4 per cent.; and in the office of the Secretary of State for the Southern Department is found an occasional extra official who was the custodian of papers accumulating as the result of relations with the colonies. But these were exceptional. Generally speaking, no new machinery was set up for the supervision of the colonies. By enlargement and adjustment the prevailing system was adapted to meet the new demands, and even these demands did not become serious until after the middle of the eighteenth century. Except in the case of the papers of the Board of Trade and the Secretary of State, no special files of documents were set apart containing the record of business done with America and the West Indies. In the various offices of the Admiralty, Treasury, and War Office, in the Custom House, Post Office, and High Court of Admiralty, the details of colonial administration were entered in the regular books or filed in the regular bundles that contained the record of official business done in England or elsewhere as part of the ordinary routine of the day.

With but few exceptions, every official in a royal colony exercised his authority by virtue of a grant from the King either directly, or through one of the executive departments in England, or through the governor or secretary in the province itself. This delegation of power created in the colonies a group of office holders-chief among whom was the governor himself-who held their offices at the King's pleasure and considered themselves responsible to the King alone. These offices of governor, lieutenant-governor, secretary, attorney-general, receiver-general, deputy auditor, provost marshal, sheriff, naval officer, and collector of customs-were held as a property, sometimes even as an investment from which a profit might be made. Though the method of appointment varied—some of the appointees being patent

1 Massachusetts Col. Recs. v, pt II, 521-6.

officers and some provincial officers, some commissioned under the great seal, others under the signet or sign-manual, and still others under the provincial seal-and though in the different colonies the same official might be appointed in different ways, the general fact remains that ultimately the King was the source of all authority exercised by the officials in a royal colony and thus stood at the apex of the entire official system in America. He expressed his will and pleasure in a variety of forms-commissions, instructions, and royal warrants, the last usually countersigned by a secretary of state or other official or board concerned, but he appears to have followed no certain plan or precedent in the delegation of his powers. For instance, in Jamaica all royal officials held by patent under the great seal, while in the Island of St John (Virgin Is.) all received their authorisations under the sign-manual. In other colonies, the proportion of patent officials to provincial officials varied widely. At best, the whole system of appointment seems to have been somewhat casual, though a tendency can be discovered, due partly to the policy of consolidation and partly to the desire for patronage at home, to concentrate appointments as much as possible in the hands of the leading officials in England.

The King never acted alone, but always in conjunction with his advisers, the members of the Privy Council, with whom he sat as the King in Council, constituting the most important executive body in charge of colonial affairs. Its range of interest was a wide one. It received petitions and appeals from the colonies, of both a financial and a judicial nature; confirmed or disallowed colonial laws; placed its imprimatur on drafts of governors' commissions and instructions; approved appointments to colonial councils; appointed commissioners of review in colonial boundary disputes; exercised an ultimate authority in cases of controversy between governors and royal appointees in the colonies; considered with care and concern the proper development of colonial resources; sought to protect the Plantation trade, and endeavoured to meet as far as possible the demands of imperial defence. As time went on, its activities settled down into a fairly fixed routine, covering petitions and grievances, appeals from colonial common law courts and, after 1745, from colonial vice-admiralty courts, review of colonial legislation, and commissions and instructions to colonial governors. Decisions took the form of Orders of the King (or Queen) in Council, the most authoritative expression of the royal will that could be uttered and without which no executive action could legally be taken. Powerful as the Privy Council appeared to be in law, it was in fact a registering and not a deliberating body. The real work was done by the Committee of the whole Council, that is, the Council sitting as Committee, in which capacity it had somewhat the importance of a department. All matters that came before the Council were immediately referred to Committee and there debated

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413 and discussed. The Committee could call in witnesses, deponents, and counsel, hear plaintiff and defendant through their agents or lawyers, send for information from any source whatever, and deliberate as to the character of the report to be made to the Council itself. Appeals from colonial and vice-admiralty courts involving points of law never went beyond the Committee, and matters of a military nature were generally acted upon without further reference; but in by far the greater number of cases the Committee in an Order of Council referred the business to some other board or department-the Board of Trade, the Admiralty, the Treasury, the Master-General of the Ordnance, the Commissioners of the Customs, the Secretary at War, or the Attorney and Solicitor-General. When in reply the Committee received a report or representation regarding the matter in hand, it took the recommendation under advisement; sometimes it sent it, back for further consideration or additional information, or even despatched it elsewhere for examination and further report. When all the preliminary work had been completed, the Committee made its own report to the Council, which embodied this report, without alteration or change, in a formal order. It is true that in a majority of cases the Committee accepted the advice of its referees without further debate, so that nearly all Orders in Council relating to the colonies rest ultimately on a decision of some board or department and represent the opinion of that body. It is also true that the Committee sometimes took its own time about the business before it, and that many cases remained undecided for years or were never acted on at all; but at that time, slackness and inefficiency were characteristic of administration generally, particularly in all that concerned the colonies. The most important body advisory to the King in Council on all that was happening in America was the Board of Trade, commissioned by William III in 1696. This small group of eight men, supplemented by the occasional attendance of certain of the high officials named in the commission, including the Bishop of London after 1702, sat for eighty-six years. Though the personnel changed frequently and the Board passed through periods of varying efficiency, reaching its lowest level of ineptitude and indifference between 1730 and 1748, it carried out with a considerable measure of success the terms of its commissions. It pursued its enquiries into all phases of colonial administration, but its main object was to deal with trade and with the Plantations chiefly as they promoted a favourable balance of trade for the realm. The members, representative of the eighteenth-century ruling class, were mercantilist in their principles and policies, and were strict constructionists in all that concerned the interpretation of the Navigation Acts, the prevention of manufacturing in the colonies, the advancement of the interests of the merchants, and "the careful and strict maintenance of the just prerogative" of the King. In the hundreds of reports and representations