Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/164

 124 those propounded in the first, and, indeed, was manifestly a mere amendment of them.

§ 136. These constitutions (for experience does not seem to have imparted more wisdom to the proprietaries on this subject) contained the most objectionable features of the system of government, and hereditary nobility of the former constitutions, and shareda common fate. They were never generally assented to by the people of the colony, or by their representatives, as a body of fundamental laws. Hewatt says, that none of these systems ever obtained "the force of fundamental and unalterable laws in the colony. What regulations the people found applicable, they adopted at the request of their governors; but observed these on account of their own propriety and necessity, rather than as a system of laws imposed on them by British legislators."

§ 137. There was at this period a space of three hundred miles between the Southern and Northern settlements of Carolina; and though the whole province was owned by the same proprietaries, the legislation of the two great settlements had been hitherto conducted by separate and distinct assemblies, sometimes under the same governor, and sometimes under different governors. The legislatures continued to remain distinct down to the period, when a final surrender of the proprietary charter was made to the crown in 1729. The respective territories were