so that he can check every jarring movement in the administration. He has a negative on the different Legislatures throughout his dominions, so that he can prevent any repugnancy in their different laws.

The connection and harmony between Great Britain and us, which it is her interest and ours mutually to cultivate, and on which her prosperity, as well as ours, so materially depends, will be better preserved by the operation of the legal prerogatives of the Crown, than by the exertion of an unlimited authority by Parliament.

To Wilson's essay there was appended, in the printed pamphlets, the following note, which, though not signed, was evidently written by Dickinson, since, in his next published pamphlet, to which reference will hereafter be made, Dickinson showed a decided tendency toward Wilson's view in the modified form suggested by this note, and since Wilson's essay was published almost contemporaneously with Dickinson's pamphlet in which these views were expressed:

After considering, with all the attention of which I am. capable, the foregoing opinion--that all the different members of the British Empire are distinct States, independent of each other, but connected together under the same Sovereign in right of the same Crown-I discover only one objection that can be offered against it. But this objection will, by many, be deemed a fatal one. "How," it will be urged, can the trade of the British Empire be carried on, without some power, extending over the whole, to regulate it? The legislative authority of each part, according to your doctrine, is confined within the local bounds of that part: how, then, can so many interfering interests and claims, as must necessarily meet and contend in the commerce of the whole, be decided and adjusted?"

Dickinson's criticism, it will be perceived, amounted to his asking the question: Granted that the functions of

Great Britain, as the Imperial State, toward the Colonies, are such as can be performed properly only by the expert branch of the British Government, how can these functions be performed except through the medium of legislation, and how can the King legislate?

To this Wilson replied in a note which, in the pamphlets, was printed immediately below Dickinson's. This note was as follows:

Permit me to answer these questions by proposing some others in my turn. How has the trade of Europe-how has the trade of the whole globe, been carried on? Have those widely extended plans been formed by one superintending power? Have they been carried into execution by one superintending power? Have they been formed-have they been carried into execution, with less conformity to the rules of justice and equality, than if they had been under the direction of one superintending power?

It has been the opinion of some politicians, of no inferior note, that all regulations of trade are useless; that the greatest part of them are hurtful; and that the stream of commerce never flows with so much beauty and advantage, as when it is not diverted from its natural channels. Whether this opinion is well founded or not, let others determine. Thus much may certainly be said, that commerce is not so properly the object of laws, as of treaties and compacts. In this manner, it has been always directed among the several nations of Europe.

But if the commerce of the British Empire must be regulated by a general superintending power, capable of exerting its influence over every part of it, why may not this power be intrusted to the King, as a part of the royal prerogative? By making treaties, which it is his prerogative to make, he directs the trade of Great Britain with the other States of Europe: and his treaties with those States have, when considered with regard to his subjects, all the binding force of laws upon them. (1. Bl. Com. 252.) Where is the absurdity in supposing him vested with the same right to regulate the commerce of the distinct parts of his dominions with one another, which he has

to regulate their commerce with foreign States? If the history of the British Constitution, relating to this subject, be carefully traced, I apprehend we shall discover, that a prerogative in the Crown, to regulate trade, is perfectly consistent with the principles of law. We find many authorities that the King cannot lay impositions on traffic; and that he cannot restrain it altogether, nor confine it to monopolists; but none of the authorities, that I have had an opportunity of consulting, go any farther. Indeed many of them seem to imply a power in the Crown to regulate trade, where that power is exerted for the great end of all prerogative—the public good.

If the power of regulating trade be, as I am apt to believe it to be, vested, by the principles of the Constitution, in the Crown, this good effect will flow from the doctrine; a perpetual distinction will be kept up between that power, and a power of laying impositions on trade. The prerogative will extend to the former; it can, under no pretence, extend to the latter: as it is given, so it is limited, by the law.

Dickinson's criticism thus forced Wilson finally to take the position that the King of Great Britain had, and of right ought to have, under a proper constitution of the British Federal Empire, the right to legislate to the extent necessary to enable the State of Great Britain to fulfil its functions as the Imperial State. This conclusion was strictly logical, so long as Parliament persisted in its claim that its power in the Empire, as well as in the Realm, was unconditioned and unlimited. As that claim could not be allowed by the Colonies, they necessarily had to find an Imperial Legislature somewhere in the whole political organism composed of Great Britain and the Colonies, which could exercise powers of legislation to the extent necessary to effectuate the dispositions regarding the Colonies made by the King in Council, or to admit that they were seeking independence. Such an Imperial Legislature Wilson found in the King in Council.

Such a doctrine was dangerous, in that it tended to weaken the hold which the people of England had over the King, under the Act of Settlement of 1689, by admitting him to have legislative power otherwise than in subordination to Parliament, and because it tended to lead to the belief that the Colonies stood in that slight and shadowy relation toward Great Britain which is now known as "personal union," which exists when two independent States have the same person as Chief Executive, but are otherwise entirely distinct from one another.

Those to whom Wilson showed his essay, when it was first written, evidently thought it dangerous on these accounts. Wilson stated, in the "Advertisement," printed at the beginning of the pamphlet, that the essay was originally written "during the late non-importation agreement; but that agreement being dissolved before the sheets were ready for the press, it was judged unseasonable to publish them." The non-importation agreement in Philadelphia was dissolved in September, 1770. It was evidently considered wiser by Dickinson, Wilson's preceptor, that, just at the time that matters were becoming quiescent, a pamphlet should not be published in America which so greatly aggrandized the King at the expense of Parliament, and which might so easily be misconstrued into a claim of entire legislative independence on the part of the Colonies.

One of the most important pamphlets brought out during the discussion in the year 1774, which arose on account of the retaliatory acts of the British Government after the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, was Governor Bernard's Select Letters on the Trade and Government of America, from which extracts have already been quoted. From the preface of this pamphlet, it appears that his opinions expressed in 1765 had undergone some modification, and that, in 1774, he was inclining to the opinion that, if the Americans were admitted to be

heard in Parliament, it ought to be as parties or witnesses summoned in order that Parliament might inform itself of the circumstances before making an adjudication and disposition concerning the rights of the respective Colonies, and not as participants in a legislative or contractual act. Bernard's final conclusion seems to have been that it was the business of Parliament to make "settlements of the Governments of the Colonies," according to which the governmental power should be divided, in distinct spheres, between Great Britain and the Colonies. In this preface he said:

At the time of the passage of the Act of Parliament for raising money in America by a stamp duty, there was no fixed idea of the relation between Great Britain and America; not one of the Governments there had, what not one of them should have been without, a Parliamentary Constitution. And therefore it is not to be wondered at that, when they were called upon to pay money to the order of Parliament, they should answer-" We know not what is the relation between you and us, that authorizes you to raise money from us or our lands."

And, indeed, it may afford cause of wonder that, in the course of one hundred and fifty years, (for so many it is, at least, since Governments were first constituted in America), there never has been a Parliamentary settlement of the American Governments, or any adjustment of the nature of the subjection, and the mode of subordination, that was due to, or expected from the dependent Governments to the Imperial State. Before the Revolution [of 1688], this neglect is to be accounted for; the rights of Government were then not well understood in England, and in America they were wholly misconceived. The lands acquired by the English there, and the government of them, were supposed to be the absolute property of the King, and were disposed of accordingly. The Parliament was scarce allowed to have anything to do with them, and interfered very little in their government.