Lably
Skip to content

Colonial government in the Thirteen Colonies

Government in British America

  • 11 min read
  • 5 chapters

Related on Lably

Through Governor, Executive (government) and Legislature

Lab · Class 6–11How India Is Governed

In domestic matters, the colonies were largely self-governing on many issues; however, the British government did exercise veto power over colonial legislation, and regardless of the type of colonial government, retained control of the law and equity courts; judges were selected by the British government and served at the king's pleasure. Diplomatic affairs were handled by the British government, as were trade policies and wars with foreign powers (wars with Native Americans were generally handled by colonial governments).

The American Revolution (1775–1783) was a dispute over the British Parliament's right to enact domestic legislation for the American colonies. The British government's position was that Parliament's authority was unlimited, while the American position was that colonial legislatures were coequal with Parliament and outside of its jurisdiction. As the revolution progressed, the colonial governments were replaced by temporary provincial congresses and ultimately by state constitutions establishing republican governments. The colonial experience informed and shaped the new state constitutions and, ultimately, the United States Constitution adopted in 1789.

Imperial government

British constitution

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Great Britain was governed as a constitutional monarchy with sovereignty residing in the King-in-Parliament. Parliament was a bicameral legislature. Aristocrats inherited seats in the House of Lords, while the gentry and merchants elected the House of Commons. The British monarch possessed executive authority, but he relied on the cabinet ministers of the Privy Council to actually run the government. These ministers depended on majority support in both houses of Parliament to govern effectively. While only 25 percent of adult men met the property qualifications to vote in parliamentary elections, historian Alan Taylor notes:

the English constitution was extraordinarily open and libertarian when compared with the absolute monarchies then developing in the rest of Europe. Consequently, it mattered greatly to the later political culture of the United States that England, rather than Spain or France, eventually dominated colonization north of Florida.

By the start of the American Revolution, the thirteen colonies had developed political systems featuring a governor exercising executive power and a bicameral legislature made up of a council and an assembly. The system was modeled on the British constitution, with the governor corresponding to the monarch, the council to the House of Lords and the assembly to the House of Commons. The American colonists were proud of their status as British subjects and claimed the same rights of Englishmen as their counterparts in the mother country.

Crown

The Thirteen Colonies were all founded with royal authorization, and authority continued to flow from the monarch as colonial governments exercised authority in the king's name. They were part of what was then British America in the Kingdom of Great Britain.

A colony's precise relationship to the Crown depended on whether it was a corporate colony, proprietary colony or royal colony as defined in its colonial charter. Whereas royal colonies belonged to the Crown, proprietary and corporate colonies were granted by the Crown to private interests.

Historian Robert Middlekauff describes royal administration of the colonies as inadequate and inefficient because lines of authority were never entirely clear. Before 1768, responsibility for colonial affairs rested with the Privy Council and the Secretary of State for the Southern Department. The Secretary relied on the Board of Trade to supply him with information and pass on his instructions to colonial officials. After 1768, the Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs was responsible for supervising the colonies; however, this ministry suffered from ineffective secretaries and the jealousy of other government ministers.

Parliament

Parliament's authority over the colonies was unclear and controversial in the 18th century. As English government evolved from government by the Crown toward government in the name of the Crown (the King-in-Parliament), the convention that the colonies were ruled solely by the monarch gave way to greater involvement of Parliament by the mid 1700s. Acts of Parliament regulated commerce , defined citizenship, and limited the printing of colonial paper money .

The British government argued that Parliament's authority to legislate for the colonies was unlimited. This was stated explicitly in the Declaratory Act 1766. The British also argued that the colonists, while not actually represented in Parliament, were nonetheless virtually represented.

The American view, shaped by Whig political philosophy, was that Parliament's authority over the colonies was limited. For the Americans, legislation was different from taxation. While the colonies initially recognized Parliament's right to legislate for the whole British Empire—such as on matters of trade—they argued that parliamentary taxation was a violation of the principle of taxation by consent since consent could only be granted by the colonists' own representatives. Later, Americans argued that the colonies were outside of Parliament's jurisdiction and that the colonists owed allegiance only to the Crown. In effect, Americans argued that their colonial legislatures were coequal—not subordinate—to Parliament. These incompatible interpretations of the British constitution would become the central issue of the American Revolution.

Judicial appeals

The Privy Council (technically, the King-in-Council) exercised appellate jurisdiction over the colonies. Appellate jurisdiction was delegated to the Board of Trade in 1678 and transferred to the Privy Council Appeals Committee in 1697.

The Appeals Committee was severely flawed because its membership was actually a committee of the whole of the Privy Council, of whom a quorum was three. Even worse, many Privy Councillors were not lawyers, all Privy Councillors had equal voting power on appeals, and there was no requirement that any of the Privy Councillors hearing a particular appeal had to be a lawyer. As a result, parties to appeals could and did try to tilt the outcome of appeals in their favor by persuading nonlawyer Privy Councillors to show up for the hearings on their appeals. For this reason, the Appeals Committee fell into disrepute among better-informed lawyers and judges in the colonies.

Sign in to keep reading

4 more chapters are free with a Lably account.

More in Early modern

Qing dynastyManchu-led dynasty of China (1644–1912)East India CompanyBritish joint-stock company (1600–1874)Ming dynastyImperial dynasty of China (1368–1644)PrussiaGerman state from 1525 to 1947Kingdom of Great BritainSovereign state in Western Europe (1707–1801)Kingdom of PrussiaGerman state (1701–1918)