the constitutional views are more elaborately argued. He attacks on legal, constitutional grounds, the objectionable legislation of Parliament. He urges to the front "those political principles which exempt us from the jurisdiction of the British Parliament," and says, "the true ground on which we declare those laws void is, that the British Parliament has no right to exercise authority over us." When Parliament passes its "Act for suspending the legislature of New York," says Jefferson, "one free and independent legislature takes upon itself to suspend the powers of another, free and independent as itself." The allegiance of the colonists was due to the crown; and by reason of this, his majesty "possesses, indeed, the executive power of the laws in every state; but they are the laws of the particular state which he is to administer within that state, and not those of any one within the limits of another."

This great constitutional debate closed with the Declaration of Independence, which is a fitting summary of all the constitutional arguments so earnestly pressed by the colonists. Its most striking features are those of a conservative legal document. It indicts the king for those violations of their constitution which justify the Americans in renouncing forever, as they do, all allegiance to him. It refers in apt terms to the legal grounds upon which they have conducted their side of the great debate. It rests its conclusions securely upon the fact that the colonists had simply adopted, with Great Britain, a common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual amity, "but that submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution."

It is not clear to what extent Adams and Jefferson had been cognizant of each other's arguments, prior to the

framing of the Declaration. But the prior State papers of both show that the propositions of this document, so far from being dogmatic, are the legitimate deductions from those elaborate arguments which both had made public during the progress of the great debate.

So the era of what we call the Revolution is, on the part of the Americans, marked by much of conservatism. It was on their part, a constitutional, defensive struggle, from first to last. As Trescot says, "they conducted a revolution with the caution of a law-suit, and justified each step, as they advanced, by the authority of a precedent." This being the dominant disposition of the patriot fathers, it is not strange that the Continental Congress urged the states, when the war became flagrant, to prepare for themselves forms of written constitution. It was the most natural thing in the world, that out of this great constitutional struggle should emerge a vigorous nation, built on and devoted to its written constitution.

V.

THE REPUBLICAN COLONIES: TWO EXPERIMENTS IN POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY.

When the American colonies declared their independence of the mother country, they asserted, and when they won their independence, they in their own behalf established the political doctrine of the Sovereignty of the People. Although they did not begin the conflict for the purpose of asserting or maintaining that principle, yet belief in that doctrine had grown during the growth of the colonies, until it had become a part of the fixed political thought of the large majority of the colonists. This growth is traceable in different degrees in the several colonies, at different periods in their history. But the aristocratic tendencies in Virginia, Maryland and the Carolinas, the proprietary rights in Pennsylvania and Maryland, the influence and power of the patroons in New York, and the theocracy in Massachusetts, had all so far yielded to the inevitable domination of the democratic sentiment, that when the time was ripe for revolution, the colonies were practically assimilated in this respect. Though they still exhibited differences in their

forms of government, the influential majority in each colony recognized the sovereignty of the people.

One hundred years of success in the administration of our political system having justified the expectations of its founders, it is interesting now to trace the earliest applications in the colonies of that political principle. These are found in the small and apparently unimportant colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut. The example of democratic government set by them was, sooner or later, followed by the other colonies, and by the whole people, until it has become the American example.

These two colonies are classed as the Republican Colonies, in a division of all the colonies into three classes, as Royal, Proprietary and Republican Colonies. This distinction has reference to the manner in which their Governors were appointed. In the Royal Colonies it was the Crown, and in the Proprietary Colonies it was the Lord Proprietor, whose right it was to appoint the executive, and as whose deputy that official acted. But in the Republican colonies, the people had from the first the privilege of choosing their own Governors. This privilege, exercised by them at the inception of their colonial life, was secured to them by the charters granted by Charles II, and thus came to be claimed and defended as a right. How the King ever "received his own consent" to make this concession, is a problem to historians. That a Stuart, and the grandson of James I, should have so misapplied his inherited King-craft that, while industriously endeavoring to extend his prerogative at home, he should actively aid in erecting two infant republics on his own domains in America, is one of the anomalies of history.

But it is not alone in this sense that Connecticut and

Rhode Island were the Republican colonies. They are entitled to this distinction because, in their very beginning, each was an avowed democracy. Each originated in a deliberate attempt to establish government of the people, by the people, for the people. Those engaged asserted at the beginning that right which is now acknowledged to be the corner-stone of the American system. This is true of no other colony. No reference is now made to individual opinion or example. Doubtless there were men in every colony who espoused this political dogma. Doubtless this democratic doctrine was in the very air breathed by the Puritans, if not in that breathed by the Cavaliers. Doubtless it was influential in bringing over to several of the colonies many of their foremost men. This is true of Massachusetts, in whose jurisdiction both Roger Williams and Thomas Hooker were colonists, and took early opportunities to urge their peculiar views. The fact to be noted is that every other colony was founded in pursuance of some outside authority, emanating from the King as its source, who was recognized as the Lord Paramount of the English domains in America, and the source of authority to colonize. For whatever purpose the colony was projected, whether as a trading enterprise, or as a transplanting to American soil of an English theocracy, or as an attempt to build up a community on the principle of brotherly love, in all instances but these two, authority was first sought and obtained; and this authority had to be overthrown and repudiated before democracy could rule. The people of the two colonies referred to asserted their own right and power as their authority for the founding of a new state.

It was a democratic tendency which led to the first

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