Early Colonial Constitutions

O ur own constitutional history has been studied, and is still being studied, with all the thoroughness and patient care demanded by so great a subject. On the other hand, the early constitutional history of our colonies has attracted less attention than it deserves. Probably this is because the shadow of a great failure hangs over it; if alluded to at all, it is only to point a moral at the folly which lost the American colonies. And yet a system which, with all its shortcomings, played so large a part in preparing the way for the constitution of the United States, and for our own colonial empire as it at present exists, is certainly worthy of investigation. English colonial government may be said to have been founded in the American colonies, but not to have attained its full development, if it has yet done so, until after their separation. It is, therefore, not surprising that such attention as the subject has recently received should have been devoted to it by American rather than by English writers. I propose to-day to deal with the early forms of government established in the colonies, and to point out how some of them, as in Massachusetts, were calculated from the outset to make for separation, while others, as in Virginia, lent themselves readily to maintaining the connection with the mother country, and are still used in our existing colonies

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