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America’s First Constitutions and Declarations of Rights
power of appointment and removal. Even the local militia were under
the control of the assemblies. Similar incidents occurred in Pennsylvania,
Massachusetts, and the Carolinas.
Between 1699 and 1766, the Virginia offices of treasurer and speaker of
the House of Burgesses were always held by the same person, thereby
giving the legislature not only control over fiscal policy but custody of
the funds as well. In nearly all of the provinces money granted for special
purposes, such as the payment of troops, was often lodged in the hands
of commissioners named in an appropriation act. ‘‘He who pays the
piper,’’ according to an old English proverb, ‘‘can call the tune.’’ The importance of local control of revenue and expenditures can hardly be overestimated. Governors were virtually helpless in many instances to support the royal prerogative or the wishes of the King’s ministers in the face
of colonial assemblies that could specify the expenditures of every cent
and withhold funds from any governmental function they pleased. This
situation contributed substantially to the growth of colonial independence and the gradual decline of British power in America.
In 1763, Patrick Henry defended the dominion of Virginia in an action
at law called the Parson’s Cause. The case arose when clergymen of the
Church of England—which was Virginia’s established church—brought
suit against the commonwealth because Virginia’s Assembly in 1758 had
passed a statute that temporarily reduced the salaries paid to clergymen.
In England, the Privy Council had declared the law to be unconstitutional; a parson therefore had to file suit to obtain the funds he had been
denied. Although the jury in the Parson’s Cause trial gave a verdict for
the plaintiff, it awarded him only one penny in damages. The verdict was
actually a victory, then, for the Assembly that had reduced the parsons’
salaries. Patrick Henry, whose eloquence had won over the jury, argued
in the case that the British Crown, as represented by the Privy Council
in England, had no power to set aside an act of the Virginia Assembly.
This argument was clearly close to declaring that Virginia was politically independent of Britain. Twelve years later, of course, Henry ended
his famous speech to the Virginia Assembly with the cry, ‘‘Give me liberty, or give me death!’’ It was by such audacious men that colonial assemblies were persuaded by 1775 to cast off the authority of Crown and
Parliament.