A History of the American People

forced to concede their rights to assemblies. These were all further milestones along a road
which led only in one direction, to ultimate independence.
In constitutional terms, the story of the first half of the 18th century in the American mainland
colonies is the story of how the lower, elected houses of each assembly took control. The
governor had the power of veto over legislation and he was expected. using his council members
sitting in the upper chamber, to take the lead, with the elected assemblies deferentially
subordinate. The reverse happened. In 1701 the Pennsylvania elite extracted from William Penn
a charter of privileges which made it the most advanced representative body in America. When
South Carolina ceased being a proprietary colony and became a crown one in the 1720s, which
might in theory have led to a diminution of popular power, the House of Burgesses exploited the
handover to increase its influence. In the first three decades of the 18th century, lower houses not
only in Pennsylvania and South Carolina but in New York and Massachusetts also waged
constitutional battles with governors, councils, and the crown, blocked orders, and, on the whole,
determined the political agenda. In every colony, the lower houses increased their power during
the first fifty years of the 18th century, sometimes very substantially. They ordered their own
business, held elections, directed their London agents, and controlled the release of news to the
press. They claimed and got the sole right to frame and amend money Bills, and so to raise or
lower taxes. They controlled expenditure by specific allocations-something the British
parliament could not do because of the huge power of the Treasury-and this meant they
appointed and paid money commissioners and tax-collectors, regulated the fees of the
administration, and subjected all officials, including the governor, to annual salary regulations. In
fact, unlike the House of Commons, they gradually acquired all kinds of executive
responsibilities and began to think of themselves as government.
It was not a one-way struggle by any means. Governors, on behalf of the crown, tried to cling
on to their prerogative powers-to appoint judges and regulate the courts, to summon, dissolve, or
extend assemblies. They made efforts to build up court parties' or buttress conservative factions among the burgesses, especially in New Hampshire, Maryland, and Massachusetts. In Virginia and New York, governing councils managed to retain power over land policy, an important source of patronage. As elsewhere in the British Empire, they tried divide and rule. Squabbles between coastal elites and up-country men were perennial. Franchises were heavily weighted in favor of property owners. So were constituency boundaries. For instance, in Pennsylvania, the threeold' counties of Chester, Bucks, and Philadelphia elected twenty-six deputies to the
legislature, the five frontier ones only ten. The young Thomas Jefferson, himself frontier-born,
complained that 19,000 men `below the falls' legislated for more than 30,000 elsewhere. But in
most cases the majority of adult males had votes. The further from the coast, the more recent the
settlement, the more the franchise became democratic. In practice, it was impossible to enforce
any regulation which most people did not like. In the towns mobs could form easily. There were
no police to control them. There was the militia, to be sure. And most members of the mob
belonged to it!
But there was no real need for mobs. People were too busy, making money, pushing
themselves upwards. A growing number got experience of local government, being elected to
one office or another, sometimes several. If Americans, in an economic sense, were already
predominantly middle class by 1760, the colonies were also in many respects a middle- class
democracy too."' But this applied more to New England, especially Massachusetts, than to, say,
Virginia, where a good deal of deference remained. It is a fact that most people elected to the
assemblies, especially in the South, and certainly most of the men who set the tone in them and