both meet in the adoption of a common form of representative government, subservient to the economic interests of the people, a form of government operating under the protection of the sovereignty of Great Britain.

In lands where kings have fought for wounded pride, where dreams of conquest and empire, the code duello, the spirit of chivalry and other remnants of absolutism have played a leading part in affairs of state, the industrial interests have often been lost sight of. Here in America the industrial forces of society, from necessity, were dominant in the beginning, and since that time have been the leading factors in every new political formation. This being the prime motive of our society in the establishment of government, its polity being based on the general welfare, all assumptions of sovereignty on the part of England which were opposed to this interest were resisted with united force. Finally the thirteen colonies, having won their independence from the absolutism of the British colonial policy, for the purpose of furthering their economic interests by establishing for themselves a broader sovereignty adjusted to their economic well-being, organized under a federal constitution and provided for the admission of other States on the same footing. Instead of that sovereignty being vested in a King, it was retained by the people whose interests it was organized to protect. The sovereignty of each separate State had, during the confederacy, been in the people of that State. Now the sovereignty of the United States was in the people of the empire. The exercise of its functions was apportioned among the Federal and State governments in such manner as the people of the United States in the formation. and adoption of their constitutions adjudged to be to their highest welfare.10 In the organization of their gov

10 For further discussion of this subject see Chap. IV.

ernment and the apportionment of the exercise of sovereign powers the people retained to themselves a place; they, to that extent, incorporated themselves in and became a part of the government. Among the powers the exercise of which the people retained to themselves are the following:

(1) The right of altering and abolishing any form of government which was opposed to the general welfare and of "organizing its powers in such form as to them seems most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

(2) The right of appointing (electing) officers and agents of government to perform those functions which, under the constitutions adopted by them, were to be performed by their representatives.

(3) The right to impress their will on the agents of government.

(4) The right to participate in certain acts of legislation and administration in which they deemed to their best interest to have a direct voice.

It is with the evolution of popular co-operation in these capacities that the chapters following have to do.

CHAPTER III.

GOVERNMENT BY POPULAR ASSEMBLY, OR PURE DEMOCRACY; ITS EVOLUTION AND PRESENT PLACE IN OUR SYSTEM.

The growth of our institutions during the colonial period, was from the smaller to the larger political whole. The primitive plantation grew. The colonial government, which at first was coterminous, with a single town or settlement, came to include several. The primitive settlement evolved the commonwealth. Finally, the several commonwealths, by federation, became an empire. In this federation that polity which seemed best adapted to the welfare of the local community was retained by it; that more general polity which seemed best adapted to the welfare of the several States (commonwealths) was retained by them; while for the federation (the empire) a still broader polity was established for the purpose of conserving the welfare of the federated whole.

In all this complex system, elements of pure democracy may be found from its inception. Popular cooperation in government has appeared in two forms, viz.: Co-operation by popular assembly, or in pure democracy, and co-operation in election and by what has become known as the referendum,' or in representative democracy. It is the form of co-operation first named that attracts our attention during the colonial period. The township, the parish, the tithing, the unincorporated town, the hundred, the manor, the borough, the county, and, in the very earliest times the central government

1 For definition of the referendum, see Chap. IV, p. 100, n. 2.

of the colony, are political divisions in which the people themselves assembled for the purpose of exercising functions of government. The colonies in which all of the political people assembled in a public capacity were Rhode Island, Plymouth, New Haven, Massachusetts Bay and Maryland; but, as shown above (pp. 5362) when the population became numerous and the area of distribution large this form of central government was abandoned.2

In most of the colonies the counties grew up as an administrative and judicial division instead of a legislative unit and the evidences of acts of government therein by popular assembly` are few. In Virginia, however, where there was no township and very little municipal organization, the people at times took an active. part in the county courts. These county courts, following the English example of the close corporation— the closed vestry-till 1662, made no provision for popular activity except in election of burgesses; but in that year, by legislative act, it was made necessary to submit the laws enacted for the county to the people assembled at these general courts. In 1679, however, this privilege was withdrawn and provision made for parish representatives to sit with the justices of the peace to make laws for the county. Thereafter little or no trace of the

The facility with which the Americans adapted their institutions to their environments is a quality which peculiarly fitted them for the development of a government in harmony with the general welfare. The fact that Rome had not this facility was one of the chief causes of her political decay. The Roman state began with government by popular assembly. When the political conditions became adverse to the successful operation of such a system it still retained the popular assembly with the result that the state was finally governed by the mobs and aggregations of idlers that swarmed about the capital. In America new conditions evolved new adaptations suited to the welfare of the state.

3 Colonial Laws, 1662, II Henning, 171-2.

4 Colonial Laws, 1679, II Henning, 441.

use of the popular assembly is found in the Virginia county other than as an electorate.

In States where the borough existed it became merged into the city or the county; if acts of government by popular assembly were ever exercised at all in these this form was abandoned at an early date."

It is probable that in Maryland and in some of the other proprietary colonies where the manor was the local political unit that by-laws were enacted by popular assemblies in the court leet. This system, however, expired at a comparatively early date. With the withdrawal of the political rights of the proprietary, the court leet, in its feudal relation came to an end.

The history of the hundred, in most of the colonies, is little more than the history of a name; except in Maryland it had little or no legislative function. In Maryland, by the act of 1649, the assembly of freemen in each hundred is recognized "as a general folk-moot" with power to enact and enforce local ordinances relating to the common safety. Except where the hundred has assimilated the functions of the township, as in Delaware, it is no more.

In some of our States the parish still remains as a po

See Holcom, Pennsylvania Boroughs; Allen and Penrose, Philadelphia.

See Johnson, Old Virginia Manors; Wilhelm, Local Institutions of Maryland, p. 28 et seq.

7 In Delaware the hundred was the name given to the political subdivision similar to the township and became a permanent part of the government. Howard, I, p. 282.

8 "The hundred of Maryland was a living organism, in character reminding one far more of the institutions in the days of Eadgar than in those of the Stuarts. The 'court' for the election of burgesses or assessors, the assembly for the enactment of by-laws and even the meeting to frame petitions to the assembly or indict an address to the king, each discharged the function of the real folk-moot thus in part supplying the place of a town meeting for the purpose of selfgovernment." Howard, p. 281. See, also, Local Institutions of Maryland, p. 39, et seq.