their own to be a copy, or rather an improvement, with additional privileges not enjoyed by the common people there. The elective franchise was more equally diffused; there were no decayed boroughs, or unrepresented towns; representation, which was universal, conformed more nearly to population; for more than half the inhabitants, their legislative assemblies were chosen annually and by ballot, and the time for convening their legislatures was fixed by a fundamental law; the civil list in every colony but one was voted annually, and annually subjected to scrutiny; appropriations of money often, for greater security against corruption and waste, included the nomination and appointment of the agents who were to direct the expenditures; municipal liberties were more independent and more extensive; in none of the colonies was there an ecclesiastical court, and in most of them there was no established church or religious test of capacity for office; the cultivator of the soil was, for the most part, a freeholder; in all the continent the people possessed arms, and the able-bodied men were enrolled and trained to their use: so that in America there was more of personal independence, and far more of popular power, than in England.

The relations of the colonies to Great Britain, whether to the king or to the parliament, were still more vague and undefined. They were planted under grants from the crown, and, to the last, the king in council was their highest court of appeal; yet, while the court lawyers of the seventeenth century asserted for the king unlimited legislative authority in the plantations, the colonies set bounds to.the royal prerogative, either through charters which the crown was induced to grant, or by the traditionary principles of English liberty, or by the innate energy which, aided by distance, fearlessly assumed self-direction.

The method adopted in England for superintending American affairs, by means of a board of commissioners for trade and plantations, who had neither a voice in the deliberation of the cabinet nor access to the king, involved the colonies in ever increasing confusion. The board framed instructions, without power to enforce them, or to propose meas

ures for their efficiency; it took cognizance of all events, and might investigate, give information, or advise, but it had no authority to decide any political question whatever. In those days, two secretaries of state managed the foreign relations of Great Britain. The executive power with regard to the colonies was reserved to the one who had the care of what was called the Southern Department, which included the Spanish peninsula and France. The board of trade, framed originally to restore the commerce and encourage the fisheries of the mother land, was compelled to hear complaints from the executive officers in America, to issue instructions to them, and to receive and consider all acts of the colonial legislatures; but it had no final responsibility for the system of American policy that might be adopted. Hence, from their very feebleness, the lords of trade were ever impatient of contradiction; easily grew vexed at disobedience to their orders; and inclined to suggest the harshest methods of coercion, knowing that their petulance would exhale itself in official papers, unless it should touch the pride or waken the resentment of the responsible minister, the crown, and parliament.

The effect of their recommendations would depend on the character and influence of the person who might happen to be the secretary of state for the south. A long course of indecision had multiplied the questions on which the demands and the customs of the colonies were at variance with the maxims of the board of trade.

In April, 1724, the seals for the southern department and the colonies had been intrusted to the Duke of Newcastle. His advancement by Sir Robert Walpole, who shunned men of talents as latent rivals, was owing to his rank, wealth, influence over boroughs, and personal imbecility. For nearly four-and-twenty years he remained minister for British America; yet, to the last, knew little of the continent of which he was the guardian. It used to be said that he addressed letters to "the island of New England," and could not tell but that Jamaica was in the Mediterranean. Heaps of colonial memorials and letters remained unread in his office; and a paper was almost sure of neglect, unless some agent

remained with him to see it opened. His frivolous nature could never glow with affection, or grasp a great idea, or analyze complex relations. After long research, I cannot find that he ever once attended seriously to an American question.

The power of the house of commons in Great Britain rested on its exclusive right to grant annually the supplies necessary for carrying on the government; thus securing an ever recurring opportunity for demanding the redress of wrongs. In like manner, the strength of the people in America consisted in the exclusive right of its assemblies to levy and to appropriate colonial taxes. In England, the king obtained a civil list for life; in America, the rapacity of the governors made it expedient to keep them dependent for their salaries on annual grants, of which the amount was regulated, from year to year, by a consideration of the merits of the officer, as well as the opulence of the province. It was easy for the governors to obtain instructions to demand peremptorily a large, settled, and permanent support; but the assemblies treated instructions as binding executive officers only, and claimed an uncontrolled freedom of deliberation and decision. To remove the inconsistency, the king must pay his officers from an independent fund, or change his instructions. Newcastle did neither; he continued the instructions, and privately consented to their being slighted. Having the patronage of a continent, he would gratify his connections in the aristocratic families of England, by intrusting the royal prerogative to men of broken fortunes, dissolute and ignorant, too vile to be employed near home; so that America became the hospital of Great Britain for decayed members of parliament and abandoned courtiers, whose conduct was sure to provoke distrust and to justify opposition. But he was satisfied with distributing to them offices; and, for their salaries, abandoned them to the annual deliberations of the colonial legislatures. Standing between the lords of trade, who issued instructions, and the cabinet, which alone could propose measures to enforce them, he served as a non-conductor to the angry zeal of the former, whose places, under

such a secretary, became more and more nearly sinecures; while America, neglected in England, and rightly resisting her deputed rulers, went on her way rejoicing towards freedom and independence.

Disputes accumulated with every year; but Newcastle temporized to the last; and in February, 1748, on the resignation of the Earl of Chesterfield, he escaped from the embarrassments of American affairs by taking the seals for the northern department. Those of the southern, which included the colonies, were intrusted to the Duke of Bedford.

The new secretary was 66 a man of inflexible honesty and good-will to his country," "untainted by duplicity or timidity." His abilities were not brilliant; but his inheritance of the rank and fortune of his elder brother gave him political consideration. In 1744, he had entered the Pelham ministry as first lord of the admiralty, bringing with him to that board George Grenville and the Earl of Sandwich. In that station, his orders to Warren contributed to the conquest of Louisburg. In the last war he had cherished "the darling project" of conquering Canada, and "the great and practicable views for America were said by Pitt to have "sprung from him alone." Proud of his knowledge of trade, and his ability to speak readily, he entered without distrust on the administration of a continent.

Of the two dukes, who, at this epoch of the culminating power of the aristocracy, guided the external policy of England, each hastened the independence of America. Newcastle, who was childless, depended on office for all his pleasure; Bedford, though sometimes fond of place, was too proud to covet it always. Newcastle had no passion but business, which he conducted in a fretful hurry, and never finished; the graver Bedford, though fond of "theatricals and jollity," was yet capable of persevering in a system. Newcastle was of " so fickle a head, and so treacherous a heart," that Walpole called his "name Perfidy;" Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, said "he had no friends, and deserved none; and Lord Halifax used to revile him as a knave and a fool;" he was too unstable to be led by

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others, and, from his own instinct about majorities, shifted his sails as the wind shifted. Bedford, who was bold and unbending, and would do nothing but what he himself thought "indisputably right," was "always governed," and was also "immeasurably obstinate in an opinion once received;" being "the most ungovernable governed man in England," and the most faithful to the vulgar and dissolute "bandits " who formed his political connection. Neither was cruel or revengeful; but, while the one "had no rancor or ill-nature,” and no enmities but freaks of petulance, the other carried decision into his attachments and his feuds. Newcastle lavished promises, familiar caresses, tears and kisses, and cringing professions of regard, with prodigal hypocrisy; Bedford knew no wiles, was blunt, unabashed, and, without being aware of it, rudely impetuous, even in the presence of his sovereign. Newcastle was jealous of rivals; Bedford was impatient of contradiction. Newcastle was timorous without caution, and, often arbitrary from thoughtlessness, rushed into difficulties which he evaded by indecision; the positive Bedford, energetic without sagacity, and stubborn with but a narrow range of thought, scorned to shun deciding any question that might arise, grew choleric at resistance, could not or would not foresee obstacles, and was known throughout America as ready at all hazards to vindicate authority.

VOL. III.