THE RISE OF AMERICAN ASSEMBLIES- HISTORY OF COLONIAL AMERICA

During the reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714), England and Scotland agreed to an Act of Union (1707) that created the Kingdom of Great Britain. Subsequently, during the reigns of George I (1714-1727) and George II (1727-1760), royal bureaucrats relaxed their supervision of internal American affairs. They preferred to encourage the growth of trade with the colonies in tobacco, rice, and sugar. Two generations later, British political philosopher Edmund Burke praised this trade-based colonial policy as being one of “salutary [healthy] neglect.”

The American representative assemblies seized the opportunity created by lack of strict imperial controls to increase their own powers. In theory, royal and proprietary governors were the dominant political forces in the colonies. They commanded the provincial militia, and they could recommend members for the upper legislative body or council, approve land grants, and appoint judges, justices of the peace, and other legal officials. In reality, the governors had to share their power with the American assemblies. The colonial legislatures copied some of the methods used by English politicians to boost Parliament's authority such as insisting on controlling taxes and on being consulted on appointments to public office.

From 1700 to 1750 political power gradually shifted from the English-appointed governors and councils to the American-elected assemblies. British officials resisted, arguing that colonial assemblies were overstepping their bounds. First in Massachusetts and then in New Jersey, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, the assemblies showed their strength by refusing to pay their governors any salary for several years.

The rise of the assembly created an elitist rather than a democratic political system in America. Most white men who owned property had the right to vote, but reflecting British political customs, only men of considerable wealth and status were expected to seek election to office. For example, in Virginia during the 1750s, seven members of the influential Lee family sat in the House of Burgesses, and along with other powerful Virginia families, dominated its major committees. A political elite also emerged in New England, where descendants of the original Puritans formed the core of colonial leadership.

However, the assemblies lacked the power (and the military force) to impose unpopular decrees on the people. When New Jersey landlords in the 1730s enlisted public officials to drive tenants from disputed lands, mobs of farmers forced them to stop. In Boston, a crowd destroyed the public market building, demanding that peddlers be allowed to trade throughout the town after the assembly had banned such activities. These expressions of popular will demonstrated the extent to which a philosophy of self-rule had taken deep root in the British colonies.