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America’s First Constitutions and Declarations of Rights
so long as British regiments and British fleets defended America when
wars arose with the French or the Spaniards, and so long as the colonies
held the real political power in provincial assemblies. Thus the colonies
enjoyed what Edmund Burke called the ‘‘salutary neglect’’ of London officialdom. The more the colonies were neglected politically by England,
the more the colonists prospered.
Because England had no real political interest in the colonies, especially
in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, colonial administration
of the colonies was unplanned and haphazard. No single agency was ever
given primary responsibility for the colonies until the very eve of the
Revolution. By the early 1700s, there were six agencies of the British government, all located in London and out of touch with America, sharing
responsibility for administering the colonies: the Board of Trade, The
Privy Council, the Treasury and Customs Office, the Admiralty, the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, and, of course, Parliament.
But the colonies were never overrun with meddlesome bureaucrats. Even
though the Americans were subjects of George III in 1776, few of them saw
many outward signs of British sovereignty. Only nine of the colonies had
royal governors, and these grand figures stayed close to the colonial capitals, or else spent much of their time in England. Judges, though appointed by the Crown, were usually American-born. Uniformed British
troops were at the frontiers, but not regularly in the settlements. The only
fairly numerous body of officials of the British government were the revenue officers who collected port duties under the Navigation Acts, and
they too were mostly American-born.
In the eyes of the English, the colonies were technically mere corporations—subordinate to Parliament and without any inherent sovereignty.
Colonial legislatures possessed only such privileges as the King chose to
grant to them. British officials also insisted that the rights and powers
won by Parliament in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 did not automatically extend to the colonial assemblies, and that the royal prerogative (inherent powers reserved by the Crown that were not surrendered to Parliament) was therefore more extensive over the American legislatures
than over Parliament.
Acting upon these assumptions, British officials repeatedly rejected