Part 3 Relations with Britain, Volume 2, Chapter 34, Assembly vs. Governor
We have so far been discussing events and conditions in the American colonies that have
been essentially domestic, occurring within a specific colony or within the colonies as
as a whole. Now we turn to relations and problems that were essentially foreign, relations with
the home country and, as part of the British Empire, other countries, especially their
possessions on the American continent. While a hard and fast line cannot be drawn between
domestic and overseas, or internal and external relations of an imperial appendage, we can
can still delineate such domestic developments as the growth of liberal thought, even though
heavily influenced from abroad, as against such directly imperial relations as assembly
versus royal governor, mercantilist regulations, or such foreign affairs as war against New
France.
By the first half of the eighteenth century, the internal political institutions of the
various colonies had reached an uneasy overall quasi-stability, within which a tug of war
for power raged between an appointed royal governor and council on the one hand and an
elected assembly on the other.
The governor had an absolute veto over acts of the legislature, and the council was appointed
by the crown on recommendation of the governor. The notable exception was Massachusetts, where
the council was elected by the assembly. The governor and council not only constituted
the upper legislative body with the governor as the supreme executive of the colony, but
but also constituted the supreme judicial agency, creating and appointing the lower
courts. Furthermore, governors, as designated vice admirals, also established vice admiralty
courts to try navigation act violations. Appeals confined to major cases could only be taken
from judicial decisions of governor and council to the supreme organ of the crown, under the
King, the Privy Council. Above and beyond the governors, of course, was the Crown, which
could disallow the acts of colonial legislatures. The Crown also appointed customs officials
to collect customs revenue and naval officers to enforce the Navigation Acts. While never
in command of naval forces, the governors of New York, South Carolina and Georgia commanded
and regular troops stationed on the frontier. As controllers of the public domain, the governors
also had authority to make grants of land to whom they pleased. The assemblies, however,
were not without formidable resources of their own. Their major resource was that sine qua
non of government, money. Only the assemblies could levy taxes and appropriate funds for
for the government, including such crucial items as governor's salaries.
Also the assembly's consent was needed for any positive legislation in the colonies.
In addition, the assembly established the common law courts with their critical guarantee
of the right to trial by jury, that is, by the people rather than by royal officials.
The picture was not very different in the proprietary colonies, Pennsylvania, Delaware
and Maryland, where the proprietary took on the chief executive role, appointing the governor,
trying to collect quid rents and so forth, under the overall watchful eye of the crown.
Only the chartered colonies, Connecticut and Rhode Island, which elected their own governors,
represented a different picture, and even this virtual independence was subject to the
overall regulations of the Crown.
Throughout the colonies, the tug of war of royal governor and council versus the elected
assembly had by the middle of the 18th century resulted in marked dominance by the assembly.
In each of the colonies, the critical money power of the assembly over the governor helped
First the colony established a virtual de facto control over the executive and hence a virtual
independence by mid-century.
One important reason for the emergent triumph of the colonial assemblies as will be seen
below was the deliberate failure of the British government to enforce the numerous mercantile
In his brilliant work, The Origins of American Politics, Professor Bernard Balin posed the
How is it that, in Britain, where the Parliament was theoretically absolute, the King and his ministers were in practice able to dominate a supine Parliament, whereas in the American colonies, where the Governor was theoretically dominant, he invariably lost out to assembly rule?
Why was the executive able to dominate in the home country, but not in the colonies?
This disparity, Balen pointed out, is particularly puzzling because a. The colonial governors
had the right of absolute veto over legislation, whereas the king had no veto over acts of
parliament. b. The governors had the legal right to delay or dissolve the legislatures,
Where as the king had lost that power in Britain, and c. the governors constituted the supreme
judicial power in the colonies while the crown had been forced to accept independent judges
in Britain. How, then, the accretion of power to the executive in Britain accompanied by
its decline in the colonies? Balin answered that the crucial difference between the two
2 was that English libertarians of the day denounced as corruption the ability of the
Crown and its ministers to buy up, to put it bluntly, the will of Parliament.
In Britain, the patronage at the control of the Crown was enormous, enabling the ministers
to purchase parliamentary support. As Balaam points out, in Britain, some boroughs, twenty-five
were owned outright by the government, in the sense that a majority of their electorates were office holders who could be dismissed if they opposed the government.
In others, the election of members favorable to the government could be assured by the proper application of electioneering funds.
Beyond this, control of the House was assured by the distribution of the Crown Patronage available to any administration
and by the management of the core of placement that resulted.
In the middle of the 18th century, about 200 of the 558 members of the House of Commons
held crown places of one sort or another, and another 30 or 40 were more loosely tied to government
by awards of profitable contracts.
Of those who held places, forty at least held offices intimately involved in the government
and were absolutely reliable. The other 160 held a variety of sinecures, household offices,
pensions and military posts, which brought them well within the grasp of the administration
but yet required constant solicitation and management. A fluctuating number of other
Baylin concludes that for executive dominance of the legislature, several preconditions had to exist. Notably, the existence of an abundance of patronage in places, and a strictly limited amount of money.
Franchise. For the larger the voting population, the greater the government's difficulty in
controlling elections. England, with a mass of patronage at the disposal of the Crown,
its severely limited franchise, and a plethora of rotten and pocket boroughs represented
in Parliament, had these conditions in abundance in the 18th century. But, Balin points out,
points out, these preconditions for executive control and manipulation of the legislature
were conspicuous by their absence in the American colonies. While the governors began with limited
yet extensive patronage powers, they were systematically stripped of them by royal prescription
and, most importantly, by the alert and continuing pressure of the assemblies, which one for
were themselves ever-increasing powers of appointing executive and judicial officials.
The Assemblies did so under the guidance of Cato's letters and other expressions of libertarian
hostility to the deeply corrupting powers of executive patronage.
The Assemblies, in contrast to the Parliament, were moved to assert themselves to obtain
were given such powers by virtue of the far greater representation and the far more extensive
franchise in the colonies than in the mother country. There were no rotten or pocket burrows
in the colonies and representation far more accurately proceeded proportionately to the
growth and dispersion of population. Whereas the common 40-shilling land ownership qualification
for Voting proved highly restrictive in Britain. It turned out to be highly permissive in
the colonies. Usually, from 50 to 75 percent of the adult male white population in the
colonies was eligible to vote. Additional relative advantages enjoyed by the colonial
The first major legislatures were the early growth of express and rigorous instructions by the towns and counties to their representatives, binding them to the will of the voters, a practice which scarcely existed in England, the impermanence of the tenure of the governors in contrast to the lengthy tenure of the leading assemblymen, and the ability of the colonies to go over the heads of the governors
Adding to the virtual independence by mid-century of the colonies and their assemblies was the determination of the British government not to enforce the myriad of mercantilist regulations passed by Parliament, controlling and restricting the trade and industry of the colonies.