to transmit home all laws passed in Pennsylvania, and to submit to the disannulling of such laws if not approved. So too, the right of appealing to the King in Council was in the Rhode Island charter expressly reserved, which was not the case in either of the two charters which had preceded it. Again, the last charter to Massachusetts was much more limited than the first, and express reservation had been made in it of the Admiralty jurisdiction.[1] So also the charter to Georgia had only twenty-one years' duration, and the powers under it were then to revert to the Crown.[2] By such gradual limitations as these it had come to pass (under the régime of the Revolution) that the extensive political rights and commercial liberties granted to the colonies by the Stuart kings in virtue of their prerogative had been lessened, until at last the theory of the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament was brought forward to override the rights of the colonial assemblies to tax themselves for the purposes of revenue.
The revenue of the different states of North America consisted, broadly speaking, of two different parts, the one raised by taxation originating in votes of supply, and the other springing from independent sources, such as rents, fines, escheats, quit-rents,[3] and forfeitures. The relative proportions of these two descriptions of revenue varied enormously, and according as the second was great or small, the dependence of the Governor on the Assembly was small or great. In North and South Carolina a considerable royal revenue in theory existed, but it was so difficult of collection as to be of little practical value; in Virginia and Maryland the opposite was the case, while in Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, the independent proprietary or royal revenue was either altogether inadequate for the purposes of government or practically did not exist at all.
Thus in the great majority of the States, the Governor
- ↑ The original charter had been invalidated under a quo warranto in the last years of Charles II. A fresh charter was granted under William III.
- ↑ Abercromby's Report.
- ↑ Franklin, in the Appendix to the Memorandum on the Settlement of Ohio (1770), represents the income arising from quit-rents as having been practically nil for many years. (Works, v. 479.)
