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 1762-74] Interference with "assemblies" 181 colonies, now began to spread. They appear in New Hampshire in 1762, and in one or two other colonies after the passage of the Act of George III, 1767, specifically giving jurisdiction to the Superior Courts of the several colonies to grant writs of assistance. They were thus granted in New York, refused in Pennsylvania, refused in Virginia as general writs, but granted as special ones, and not granted or refused apparently in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maryland, and other colonies. After the Declaration of Independence, State after State put into its constitution provisions against the issuance of general search warrants, of whatever kind ; and one of the ten amendments to the Constitution of the United States, brought forward and adopted at the beginning of the new government, followed the lead of the States. This was only in conformity with the general common law of England ; to which the granting of writs of assistance in the English Exchequer itself was finally made conformable, in the year 1817. The complaint that gatherings or assemblies of the people to consider supposed grievances against Great Britain had been prohibited and broken up by the government, and that legislation t of the colonies had been suspended and denied assent, may be shortly disposed of. The complaint generally was of the abuse, not of the want, of authority; enough that it was abuse it was therefore an invasion of legal right. Little if any attempt was made to find the boundary of authority. Indeed no bounds could be laid down; all that could be done was to declare that Great Britain was invading the rights of her colonies. The Continental Congress at Philadelphia, in the autumn of 1774, referring particularly to the troubles in Massachusetts, acute as they were, could only say that assemblies had been frequently dissolved, contrary to the rights of the people, when they were attempting to deliberate upon their grievances, and resolve that the people have a right peaceably to assemble, consider their grievances, and petition the King for redress, and that all prosecutions, prohibitory proclamations and commitments in such cases were illegal. The subject passed into the constitutions of the various States and into the first amendment to the Federal Constitu- tion ; but, so far as gatherings of the people were concerned, it was still impossible to use terms of definition of authority. The most that could be said was that " The people have a right, in an orderly and peaceable manner, to assemble to consult upon the public good," as the Massachu- setts Declaration of Rights put it. As for suspending legislation, that of course could be dealt with effectually, at a single blow. " The power of suspending the laws, or the execution of the laws, ought never to be exercised but by the legislature, or by authority derived from it," said the same Declaration of Rights ; and so in effect the constitutions of the States generally. The division of powers between the federal and the State governments prevented, it was thought, after much debate in the Constitutional Convention, the need or propriety of any declaration in CH. VI.