154 Chapter VII
of three branches, as in Britain: namely, a lord lieutenant, certain “barons” created
for the purpose, and a house of commons chosen by the several colonial assem-
blies. The new parliament, incidentally, was to supervise the colleges, those “grand
nurseries of the late rebellion.”^28
The case of Joseph Galloway is more fully known.^29 In 1774 he had tried to
restrain the First Continental Congress by submitting a plan of American union,
which that body had rejected as too favorable to parliamentary claims. During the
war, after spending some time in New York, where he convinced himself that all
Americans of any standing agreed with him, Galloway proceeded in 1778 to En-
gland, where for ten years he submitted a series of plans on colonial government to
various persons in authority in London. These plans built on the plan of 1774, re-
taining its proposal for an autonomous inter- colonial parliament subordinate to
the Parliament of Great Britain; but they added new ideas of structural reform.
The revolutionary states in America, according to Galloway, would be dissolved
by the coming British victory, and the old forms of government would be forfeited
by rebellion. There would therefore be a “state of nature without a civil constitu-
tion,” or what he also called a Chart Blanche, “a perfect blank upon which a new
policy shall be established.” Opportunity would thus be afforded for certain long-
needed changes. Temporarily, because of the war, there were two parties in Amer-
ica, the party of independence, “actuated by views of ambition and private inter-
est,” and the party favoring perpetual union with Great Britain. The former was “a
mere republican party firmly attached to democratical government”; it had “vested
the powers of all their new states originally and ultimately in the People.” The
other party, favoring union with England, preferred a “mixed form of government,”
to guard against abuse of power by either the sovereign or the people. Most Amer-
icans, Galloway was persuaded, were tired of being pushed about by revolutionary
cliques. Most of the colonists, and certainly most men of property, would therefore
welcome his plan of reorganization.
In this reorganization, the old governments of the charter provinces (Connecti-
cut and Rhode Island) and of the proprietary provinces (Pennsylvania and Mary-
land) were to be abolished, and all the provinces made to conform to the same
model, the balanced government of the British constitution. If Britain and Amer-
ica were to remain long together, it was imperative that they should have “the same
customs, manners, prejudices and habits.” These would then give “the same spirit
to the laws.” There should be an American union with a lord lieutenant or gover-
nor general representing the crown, an upper house appointed for life and with
“some degree of rank or dignity above the Commons,” and a lower house chosen
by the various colonial assemblies. The “weight and influence” of the crown would
be assured by making all offices, “civil and military, honorable and lucrative,” de-
pend on royal appointment. Thus a group of Americans would be built up, hostile
to pure democracy and with an interest in mixed government and the British con-
nection. The Americans also, declared Galloway, recurring to the almost forgotten
28 Sabine, op.cit., 4 8 7.
29 J. P. Boyd, Anglo- American Union: Joseph Galloway’s Plans to Preserve the British Empire, 1774–
1788 (Philadelphia, 1941).