Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol I).djvu/184

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144
HISTORY OF THE COLONIES.
[BOOK I.

blies, composed of the governor, the council, and the representatives, were constituted; (the council being a separate branch or upper house, and the governor having a negative upon all their proceedings, and also the right of proroguing and dissolving them;) which assemblies had the power of making local laws and ordinances, not repugnant to the laws of England, but as near as may be agreeable thereto, subject to the ratification and disapproval of the crown. The governors also had power, with advice of council, to establish courts, and to appoint judges and other magistrates, and officers for the province; to pardon offences, and to remit fines and forfeitures; to collate to churches and benefices; to levy military forces for defence; and to execute martial law in time of invasion, war, and rebellion.[1] Appeals lay to the king in council from the decisions of the highest courts of judicature of the province, as indeed they did from all others of the colonies. Under this form of government the provinces of New-Hampshire, New-York, New-Jersey, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, were governed (as we have seen) for a long period, and some of them from an early period after their settlement.[2]

§ 160. Secondly, Proprietary Governments. These (as we have seen) were granted out by the crown to individuals, in the nature of feudatory principalities, with all the inferior royalties, and subordinate powers of legislation, which formerly belonged to the owners of counties palatine.[3] Yet still there were these express conditions, that the ends, for which the grant was made, should be substantially pursued; and that nothing
  1. Stokes's Hist, of Colonies, 157, 158, 184, 264.
  2. 1 Doug. Summ. 207.
  3. 1 Black. Comm. 108; Stokes's Hist. Colon. 19.