Colonial government in the Thirteen Colonies

[2] After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Great Britain was governed as a constitutional monarchy with sovereignty residing in the King-in-Parliament.

[3] The British monarch possessed executive authority, but he relied on the cabinet ministers of the Privy Council to actually run the government.

[4] While only 25 percent of adult men met the property qualifications to vote in parliamentary elections, historian Alan Taylor notes: [5] 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.

[6] 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.

[9] 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.

[14] The American view, shaped by Whig political philosophy, was that Parliament's authority over the colonies was limited.

Later, Americans argued that the colonies were outside of Parliament's jurisdiction and that the colonists owed allegiance only to the Crown.

Appellate jurisdiction was delegated to the Board of Trade in 1679 and transferred to the Privy Council Appeals Committee in 1696.

New England's corporate colonies were virtually independent of royal authority and operated as republics where property owners elected the governor and legislators.

Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware remained proprietary, while Rhode Island and Connecticut continued as corporate colonies.

Their official instructions from London demanded that they protect the Crown's power—the royal prerogative—from usurpation by the assembly; at the same time, they were also ordered to secure more colonial funding for Britain's wars against France.

[26] The executive branch included an advisory council to the governor that varied in size ranging from ten to thirty members.

[30][page needed] As in Britain, the right to vote was limited to men with freehold "landed property sufficient to ensure that they were personally independent and had a vested interest in the welfare of their communities".

Groups excluded from voting included laborers, tenant farmers, unskilled workers and indentured servants.

As the American Revolution drew near, this subject was a point of contention and conflict between the provincial assemblies and their respective governors.

[30] The perennial struggles between the colonial governors and the assemblies are sometimes viewed, in retrospect, as signs of a rising democratic spirit.

However, those assemblies generally represented the privileged classes, and they were protecting the colony against unreasonable executive encroachments.

In addition to conducting trials, the county court was responsible for many other functions including:[36] Before the American Revolution, attempts to create a unified government for the thirteen colonies were unsuccessful.

[37] During the American Revolution, the colonial governments ceased to function effectively as royal governors prorogued and dissolved the assemblies.

By 1773, committees of correspondence were governing towns and counties, and nearly all the colonies had established provincial congresses, which were legislative assemblies acting outside of royal authority.

[39] In the fall of 1775, the Continental Congress recommended that New Hampshire, South Carolina and Virginia form new governments.