Page:A View of the Constitution.djvu/20

14 subversion of the Saxon institutions, effected by William, the practice was, at least, suspended until the reign of Henry III. The provincial constitutions of America were, with two exceptions, modelled with some conformity to the English theory; but the colonists of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations were empowered to choose all their officers, legislative, executive, and judicial; and about the same time a similar charter was granted to Connecticut. "And thus," complains Chalmers, a writer devoted to regal principles, "a mere democracy or rule of the people was established. Every power deliberative and active was invested in the freemen or their delegates, and the supreme executive magistrate of the empire, by an inattention which does little honour to the statesmen of those days, was wholly excluded." He expresses his own doubts whether the king had a right to grant such charters.*

But, although in all the other provinces, the charters were originally granted or subsequently modified so as to exclude the principle of representation from the executive department, these two provinces, at the time of our revolution, retained it undiminished. The suggestion of the full unqualified extension of the principle of representation may therefore be justly attributed to the example of Rhode Island and Connecticut, which, when converted into States, found it unnecessary to alter the nature of their governments, and continued the same forms, in all respects, except the nominal recognition of the king's authority, until 1818, when Connecticut made some minor changes and adopted a formal Constitution. Rhode Island,