Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/198

 158 was levied. But it failed of its object. The spirit of resistance had then become stubborn and uncontrollable. The colonists were awake to a full sense of all their rights; and habit had made them firm, and common sufferings had made them acute, as well as indignant in the vindication of their privileges. And thus the struggle was maintained on each side with unabated zeal, until the American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence embodied in a permanent form a denial of such parliamentary authority, treating it as a gross and unconstitutional usurpation.

§ 171. The colonial legislatures, with the restrictions necessarily arising from their dependency on Great Britain, were sovereign within the limits of their respective territories. But there was this difference among them, that in Maryland, Connecticut, and Rhode-Island, the laws were not required to be sent to the king for his approval; whereas, in all the other colonies, the king possessed a power of abrogating them, and they were not final in their authority until they had passed under his review. In respect to the mode of enacting laws, there were some