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314 314 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. ing Georgia which was not :'epresented) to act together in certain specified ways. Immediately following the Declaration of Independence, in 1776, came the work in each of the Colonies of setting up independent State governments with 'written Constitutions more or less elabo- rate. This was in each instance the work of each new State act- ing by itself. There was some copying by one from another of provisions in the several Constitutions, but there was apparently no interference of one State with another in this work, and ap- parently no attempt to secure harmonious results. It was indeed a reconstruction period, but there was no Federal or National Government to aid or hinder the independent action of each of the new Thirteen States. Each State made secure in its own way the life, liberty, and property, and the privileges and immunities, of its own citizens. In Rhode Island and Connecticut the Colonial Charters were made to serve as State Constitutions. It is interesting to note that in none of the new States except Connecticut was there any constitutional provision made defining or securing the rights of non-residents, that is, of citizens of the other States when within the State. In a few of the new States — e. g. Pennsylvania and North Carolina — it was provided -dX for- eigners might, after taking an oath of allegiance, acquire real estate, and after a year's residence be deemed free citizens. In Connecticut, in an act passed in 1776 establishing the frame of the new government, it was declared : — "That all the free inhabitants of this or any other of the United States of America and foreigners in amity with this State shall enjoy the same justice and law within this State which is general for the State in all cases proper for the cognizance of the civil authority and Court of Judicature within the same, and that without partiality or delay." ^ One reason for such omission may possibly be the fact that the Articles of Confederation, which were framed July 9, 1778, though not finally ratified till 1781, were in process of making, and were known to the people after 1776 as their expected Constitution.^ In Article IV. of the Articles of Confederation it was provided : — 1 Thayer's Cases on Constitutional Law, Vol. I. p. 433. 2 Fiske, The Critical Period of American History, p. 97.