legislatures, but at last they were all appointed by the Crown, or by the Governors acting in the name of the Crown.

72. CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS RIGHTS.-Speaking generally, the colonists who came to America seeking larger civil liberty found what they sought for. They possessed all the civil rights of Englishmen. Trial by jury in both civil and criminal cases, and the writ of habeas corpus were firmly established. The rights of life, property, and person were the common possession of the people, save as modified by the laws relating to religion. Religious liberty was not as fully secured as civil liberty. Pennsylvania and Delaware extended full toleration to all Christians, but not to non-Christians. Rhode Island denied the suffrage to Catholics, who were also discriminated against in other colonies. In the three other New England States, the Congregational Church was established by law and supported by taxation, as the Episcopal Church was in Virginia and in some of the other colonies. Upon the whole, the colonies were fully abreast of any communities in the world in respect to civil, religious, and political rights, and far in advance of most of them.

73. CONFORMITY TO THE ENGLISH MODEL.-These legislative, executive, and judicial departments are copies of the Parliament, King, and Courts of England. The Houses of Representatives and the Councils are the House of Commons and the House of Lords over again. In fact, in some of the colonies the lower house was called the House of Commons. The people in England voted for members of the House of Commons only; and in the colonies, with the exception of the two republican Colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, they voted only for the members of the lower branch of the legislature. An appointed council had taken the place of the hereditary House of Lords, and an appointed governor the place of an hereditary king. More men relatively exercised the right of suffrage in the colonies than in England but their suffrage did not directly effect, with the exceptions named, more departments of the government. Hence, the com

mon statement that the Colonists came to America with newpolitical ideas cannot be true of governmental forms and processes; in this respect they brought nothing new and established nothing new. All that the statement can mean is, that they wished to give the people more weight and power in conducting the government but according to the old forms. Besides, they were more interested in enlarging their civil and religious rights than their political rights.

74. NEW MODES OF GOVERNMENT REJECTED.-At first some new modes of government, or at least modes unknown to the English people, were attempted. In Virginia the first government was a despotism centered in the local council, limited only by the Company and the King in England. Plymouth and Massachusetts both tried democracy for a few years. Moreover, government by a commercial company, as in Virginia, or by a benevolent association, as in Georgia, was foreign to the English mind and habit. The thoroughness with which these new devices were swept away, and the uniformity and promptness with which forms and modes of government familiar to the Colonists were established, shows the strength of political habit. Perhaps, too, proprietary government would have gone with the others, only, on the one hand, it was a simple form, easily understood; while, on the other, the proprietary was really a lieutenant-king, and so readily understood.

75. THE DUAL SYSTEM.-Circumstances, however, made one important departure from English precedent necessary. This was dual government, the double jurisdiction of the Colony and the Crown. If the planters had not insisted upon being admitted to participation in public affairs, they would not have been Englishmen. If the King had not insisted upon extending his authority over the plantations, he would have had no colonies. Mr. Bryce says the American of to-day has "two loyalties and two patriotisms." His colonial ancestors had them also. At Jamestown and Boston are found the roots of our federal system.

76. THE COLONIAL GOVERNMENTS A GROWTH.-These well defined governments, although they conformed so closely to the English model, were not set up at any given places or times. Like all really useful political institutions, they were progressively

developed. Not one of the charters fully describes the government existing in the colony organized under it. The Declaration of Independence charged the King with conspiring with others to subject the Colonies to a jurisdiction foreign to their constitution. This language relates to the Colonies collectively, as one. But the Colonies as one had no constitution in the sense that the United States has one to-day. They did, however, have a constitution in a wider and less definite sense. The forms of government transplanted from England; the rights and usuages belonging to all Englishmen and expressly guaranteed to the colonies,-these, modified by American conditions, made up the constitution that the King sought to overthrow.

77. THE COLONIES COMPARED WITH THOSE OF SPAIN AND FRANCE.-Nothing could more clearly show the remarkable political genius of the English Colonists than such a comparison carefully wrought out. The Spanish and French colonies were established by patronage or power, and they were ruled in the spirit of absolutism by royal governors. They did not desire self-government; in fact, did not know what it is; and the more paternal the government became the more content they were. Political life is impossible under such a regimen. The English colonies came up in a very different way; and they were never so happy as when the Crown and the Parliament left them most severely alone.

78. SLAVERY ESTABLISHED.-In 1619, the very year that Virginia won her House of Burgesses, a Dutch ship of war landed a few negroes at Jamestown, and with that act the history of slavery in the United States began. For a time its growth was very slow; few negroes were imported, and their natural increase was small. Afterwards, both importations and the natural increase became more rapid. The increase in the total number of slaves, as well as their distribution north and south of Mason and Dixon's line, is shown by this table:1

Slavery extended to all the colonies. Generally the colonies were opposed to the slave trade and to slavery. Statutes by the

1 Lalor's Cyclopedia of Political Science, "Slavery."

score designed to limit or prohibit the importation of slaves, are found in their statute books. But this opposition was always overborne by British traders, supported by the British government. The feeling of the country is shown by a resolution adopted by Congress, April 6, 1776, three months before independence was declared. "That no slaves be imported into any of the thirteen United Colonies." Some of the States, as Virginia, had already taken the same action.

CHAPTER III.

AMERICA INDEPENDENT.

79. THE GROWTH OF THE COLONIES.-At first this was slow, afterwards rapid. This growth included all the material and moral elements of power-territory, population, wealth, intelligence, and religion. In the war that transformed all of the French dominions on the continent east of the Mississippi to England, the Colonies were a very prominent factor. Colony, which originally meant a single feeble settlement on the sea-shore, now meant a vigorous and thriving commonwealth. In 1775, Virginia, for example, was no longer Jamestown, but a noble province that extended to the Ohio River, embracing many hundreds of plantations and containing half a million of people.

80. POPULATION.-In colonial days there were no regular or complete censuses; and historians, dealing with population and wealth, are compelled to rely on very imperfect data. Mr. Bancroft supposes that the population of the country in 1774 was 2,600,000.' This is about one-fourth of the population of England and Wales at that time. Nearly all of this population was American-born. In the case of no colony had the emigration from Europe been of long continuance or great in numbers. The younger colonies, to a considerable extent, drew their population from the older ones.

81. WEALTH AND COMMERCE.-Unfortunately, there are no statistics showing the growth of the Colonies in wealth, or 1 History, IV, 62.