Page:American Historical Review, Vol. 23.djvu/114

104 of the building trades lies an untouched field. These subjects are suggested as types of investigation now greatly needed in the field of ancient history. It is only through such studies, and others like them, that we can attain a real knowledge of ancient industrial life.

There has recently been published in the Columbia University Studies a monograph by Dr. E. B. Russell on The Review of American Colonial Legislation by the King in Council. In the closing chapter of his monograph, Dr. Russell lays some stress on the influence of this veto power as contributing "largely to the final breach between the colonies and the mother country". This view seems on the whole justified by the prominence given to the subject in the Declaration of Independence, where the enumeration of grievances against the British crown begins with the familiar indictment, "He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good", a charge which is followed up by a number of specifications in the succeeding paragraphs. It should be remembered, however, that in the earlier controversies, as well as in those of the Revolutionary era, the issue was not always clearly defined as between the imperial government on the one side and the whole body of colonists on the other. Sometimes, as for instance in the case of currency and "bank" legislation, a conservative minority in America was disposed to seek imperial protection against a radical majority. In other cases the royal veto was invoked to protect a colony against injurious legislation by one of its neighbors.

Generally speaking, the colonists did not question the legality of this prerogative and even so radical a person as Jefferson recognized its place in the constitution of the empire. His position was clearly set forth in 1774 in his "Summary View of the Rights of British America", where he describes the British Empire as a quasifederal or personal union, having no authorized central legislature, in which the king was "as yet the only mediatory power between the several states". An important part of this "mediatory power" was the royal veto. The actual exercise of that power the king had "for several ages past" "modestly declined" to continue "in that part of his Empire called Great Britain". The two houses of