Greed Prompted Representative Institutions

in the seventeenth century the "adventures to America" had their goal in gain. Therefore they courted immigration. History, we are told often, and incorrectly, repeats itself. History simply records that the principles of human action remain the same. When, two hundred and fifty years after Captain John Smith and the Pilgrim Fathers, foreign immigration poured into the Far West, under the stimulus of the great railroad companies, the tactics of the directors of the London Company of 1611 were repeated. To induce population, the corporations and proprietaries of colonies offered rare privileges to all who would come, and the Crown, yielding to influence, permitted political privileges, of which the most important was the right to choose a colonial Assembly. Thus representative government in America owes much, if not all, to the love of gain. Until the excuse became a travesty-and the farce ran on for more than a hundred years—colonization was carried on for the purpose of propagating the Christian religion among the Indians and bringing them "to human civility and to a settled and quiet government." When the last piece of colonization was attempted the purpose was no longer veiled; the people of Georgia were to destroy the savages and increase the trade, navigation, and wealth of the realm.*

American colonization was primarily a commercial venture, and the price paid for it was repre

* Charter, 1732.

commerce.

sentative government. The few who, in some colonies, sought "freedom to worship God" soon caught the infection of the age, and as time passed developed a masterful leadership in trade and Written in the light of results, the history of the colonies is economic, and the ecclesiastical is not the controlling element. It was found that they could not prosper unless political privileges demanded by the people were granted. The three Virginia charters illustrate this.

Political organization took a form tending to the democratic. In Massachusetts the corporation was a distinct class. Only after great compulsion did it consent to receive new members, and these of its own choosing. It set qualifications which still kept the mass of the population out of the political organization. Necessity dictated reform. If it were denied, the reformers would emigrate and establish a new colony. The struggle began in 1633, and was the beginning of that for the extension of the suffrage and for equitable representation. Roger Williams grounded his demands on economic equities, long familiar to later generations in the saying that taxation and representation go together. Rhode Island was as much the fruit of this doctrine in the seventeenth century as American independence in the eighteenth. In granting the reform, Massachusetts prescribed conditions which may be called the first American electoral qualifications. They regulated the political life of the province. The conditions, some

Conflicting Notions Concerning Representation

what modified, continued until 1820, and, further modified, to the present time.

In attempting to measure the forces which have shaped democracy in this country, that of individualism must be assigned perhaps the first rank. It has dominated our laws and constitutions. It was bred by the economies of colonial life. Provincial Assemblies legislated in its interest. That each must protect his own was the dominating spirit of colonial life. Eventually the idea got in the saddle, became the controlling principle of a political party, and overran the laws and constitutions of the country.

By 1640 the idea of representation was well established in Massachusetts, and the rights of individuals and of towns were the two halves of the political idea. The town idea was communal. This early division has continued to our own times, and in its history worked out two groups of political thinkers: one basing government on persons; the other basing it on corporations. The idea has had many applications. That of greatest moment has emphasized the national as distinguished from the commonwealth idea: the nation. being founded on individuals, as intimated in the phrase "we the people of the United States "; the commonwealth being a political corporation. Under the charter of 1629 there grew up in Massachusetts three political groups-first, the executive, comprising, by the terms of the charter, the governor, the deputy-governor, and the assistants; secondly, these persons and the deputies

from the towns, together constituting the general court, or Legislature; and, thirdly, the freemen, who participated at regular times in the town elections. Of these groups, the first and second represented the qualified electors, or freemen. At first the governor, deputy-governor, and assistants were chosen at the town elections, but when the charter was vacated the executive became a Crown officer. There was no effort in Massachusetts to copy after the British Parliament. The assistants were not analogous to the Lords, neither were the deputies chosen out of analogy to the members of the House of Commons. Nowhere in the colonies did the analogy prevail. Not as yet was there an equit able apportionment of representation. No clear idea of proportional representation was evolved in England or America during the seventeenth century. After the adoption of the national Constitution it became necessary to work out the idea, and it remains a permanent though a partly solved problem.

Not until the seventeenth century was almost over did the Crown fully recognize the right of the colonies to choose representatives to their local Assemblies. It was specifically acknowledged in the Connecticut charter of 1662, in the Rhode Island charter of the following year, and in the Massachusetts charter of 1692. It was recognized because the Revolution of 1648 in England had demonstrated that there were constitutional limits to executive authority, and the Crown realized that a monarchical form of government could not be

Formation of Two Legislative Chambers administered in England without a formal recognition of them. Experience in the administration of government both in England and America led to the formal recognition, by the British Crown and Parliament, of the ancient and undoubted rights of Englishmen to choose their own representatives. In England these were the members of the House of Commons; in America, of the General Assemblies.

In the earlier part of the seventeenth century the Governor and his council or assistants and the deputies of the towns met in the same room. The first meeting of the House of Burgesses of Virginia was with the Governor. The beginning of the bicameral system in this country was in Massachusetts, where as early as 1635 there arose a difference of opinion between the assistants and the deputies of the towns, respecting the request of some inhabitants of Newtown who wished to migrate into Connecticut. This led to the separation of the assistants and the deputies, which was essentially the formation of the two Houses of the Legislature. In 1644 the two groups, assistants and deputies, agreed in enacting a law that thenceforth they should sit apart as co-ordinate bodies. Evidently the bicameral system thus begun was quite as much of native origin as a copy of the home government. Thirty-four years later the two parts of the Connecticut Assembly were recognized by law, and before the century closed custom there compelled the Governor and council to submit their several propositions to the entire legis