territories of eleven self-governing commonwealths, hardly notices the fact. He uses one coinage and one postoffice; he is stopped by no custom houses; he sees no officials in a State livery; he thinks no more of the difference of jurisdictions than the passenger from London to Liverpool does of the counties traversed by the line of the North-Western Railway.

An American may, through a long life, never be reminded of the Federal Government, except when he votes at presidential and congressional elections, buys a package of tobacco bearing the government stamp, lodges a complaint against the postoffice, and opens his trunks for a custom-house officer on the pier at New York when he returns from a tour in Europe. His direct taxes are paid to officials acting under State laws. The State, or local authority constituted by State statutes, registers his birth, appoints his guardian, pays for his schooling, gives him a share in the estate of his father deceased, licenses him when he enters a trade (if it be one needing a license), marries him, divorces him, entertains civil actions against him, declares him a bankrupt, hangs him for murder. The police that guard his house, the local boards which look after the poor, control highways, impose water rates, manage schools - all these derive their legal powers from his State alone. Looking at this immense compass of State functions, Jefferson would seem to have been not far wrong when he said that the Federal government was nothing more than the American department of foreign affairs. But although the National government touches the direct interests of the citizen less than does the State government, it touches his sentiment more. Hence the strength of his attachment to the former and his interest in it must not be measured by the frequency of his dealings with it. In the partitionment of government functions between state and nation, the State gets the most but the nation the highest, so the balance between the two is preserved.— James Bryce, "The American Commonwealth," pp. 411, 425.

2 Massachusetts' Colonial Government.-The government of Massachusetts is descended from the Dorchester Company formed in England in 1632, for the ostensible purpose of trading in furs and timber and catching fish on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. After a disastrous beginning this company was dis

solved, but only to be immediately reorganized on a greater scale. In 1628 a grant of the land between the Charles and Merrimack rivers was obtained from the Plymouth Company; and in 1629 a charter was obtained from Charles I. So many men from the east of England had joined in the enterprise that it could no longer be fitly called a Dorchester Company. The new name was significantly taken from the New World. The charter created a corporation under the style of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. The freemen of the Company were to hold a meeting four times a year; and they were empowered to choose a governor, a deputy governor, and a council of eighteen assistants, who were to hold their meetings each month. They could administer oaths of supremacy and allegiance, raise troops for the defense of their possessions, admit new associates into the Company, and make regulations for the management of their business, with the vague and weak proviso that in order to be valid their enactment must in no wise contravene the laws of England. Nothing was said as to the place where the Company should hold its meetings, and accordingly after a few months the Company transferred itself and its charter to New England, in order that it might carry out its intentions with as little interference as possible on the part of the crown.

Whether this transfer of the charter was legally justifiable or not is a question which has been much debated, but with which we need not here vex ourselves. The lawyers of the Company were shrewd enough to know that a loosely-drawn instrument may be made to admit of great liberty of action. Under the guise of a mere trading corporation the Puritan leaders deliberately intended to found a civil commonwealth in accordance with their own theories of government.

After their arrival in Massachusetts, their numbers increased so rapidly that it became impossible to have a primary assembly of all the freemen, and so a representative assembly was devised after the model of the Old English county court. The representatives sat for townships, and were called deputies. At first they sat in the same chamber with the assistants, but in 1644 the legislative body was divided into two chambers the deputies forming the lower house, while the upper was composed of the assistants,

who were sometimes called magistrates. In elections the candidates for the upper house were put in nomination by the General Court and voted on by the freemen. In general the assistants represented the common or central power of the colony, while the deputies represented the interests of popular self-government. The former was comparatively an aristocratic and the latter a democratic body, and there were frequent disputes between the two.

It is worthy of note that the governing body thus constituted was at once a legislative and a judicial body, like the English county court which served as its model. Inferior courts were organized at an early date in Massachusetts, but the highest judicial tribunal was the legislature, which was known as the General Court. It still bears this name to-day, though it long ago ceased to exercise judicial functions.

Now as the freemen of Massachusetts directly chose their governor and deputy-governor, as well as their chamber of deputies, and also took part in choosing their council of assistants, their government was virtually that of an independent republic. The crown could interpose no effective check upon its proceedings except by threatening to annul its charter and send over a viceroy who might be backed up, if need be, by military force. Such threats were sometimes openly made, but often hinted at. They served to make the Massachusetts government somewhat wary and circumspect, but they did not prevent it from pursuing a very independent policy in many respects, as when, for example, it persisted in allowing none but members of the Congregational Church to vote. This measure, by which it was intended to preserve the Puritan policy unchanged, was extremely distasteful to the British government. At length in 1684 the Massachusetts charter was annulled, an attempt was made to suppress town-meetings, and the colony was placed under a military viceroy, Sir Edmund Andros. After a brief period of despotic rule, the Revolution in England worked a change. In 1692 Massachusetts received a new charter, quite different from the old one. The people were allowed to elect representatives to the General Court, as before, but the governor and lieutenant-governor, were appointed by the crown, and all acts of the legislature were to

be sent to England for royal approval. The general government of Massachusetts was thus, except for its possessions of a charter, made similar to that of Virginia.—John Fiske, “Civil Government in the United States," pp. 146-149.

3 Causes of the Separaton.-American government did not originate in any abstract theories about liberty and equality, but in the actual experience gained by generation after generation of English colonists, in managing their own political affairs. The Revolution did not make a breach in the continuity of their institutional life. It was not a social cataclysm, the overthrow of a dominant class, the establishment of a new estate in power. It was rather an expansion of the energy of the ruling agricultural and commercial classes, that burst asunder the bonds with which the competing interests in England sought to restrain their growing enterprise. American shipwrights could build vessels as fleet and strong as any that sailed the seas, and they were determined to conquer by main strength a free place in the world's market. American merchants were as ingenious as those who made England the nation of shopkeepers, and they could ill brook the restraints which condemned them to buy important staples in the marts of Great Britain. America was rich in timber, raw materials and mineral resources, and American manufacturers chafed under laws compelling consumers to look beyond the seas for commodities which might well have been made in New England or Pennsylvania. It was discontent with economic restrictions, not with their fundamental political institutions, which nerved the Revolutionists to the great task of driving out King George's governors, councillors, judges, revenueofficers, and soldiers. The American Revolution, therefore, was not the destruction of an old regime, although it made the way for institutional results which its authors did not contemplate; and it was not motived by the levelling doctrines with which the French middle class undermined the bulwarks of feudalism.Charles A. Beard, "American Government and Politics,” p. 1.

4 State Constitutions.— A State Constitution is not only independent of the central government, it is also the fundamental organic law of the state itself. The State exists as a commonwealth by virtue of its Constitution, and all the State authorities,