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COLONIAL GOVERNMENT! !English Influences! Government in the Colonies Was Shaped by the Traditions Established in England

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COLONIAL GOVERNMENT! !English Influences! Government in the Colonies Was Shaped by the Traditions Established in England COLONIAL GOVERNMENT! !English Influences! Government in the colonies was shaped by the traditions established in England. Unlike France and Spain, England had long lived under a system where the powers of the king were limited. In 1215, King John had been forced to sign Magna Carta (Great Charter). Magna Carta had established the idea that even the King had to obey the law, and the right to trial by jury. It also established a Parliament made up of representatives of nobles and freemen that had to give its permission for the King to levy taxes. Over time, the Parliament would evolve into an elected, !representative body that could pass laws and set taxes for the citizens of England.! In the early 1600’s England fought a bloody civil war when King Charles I attempted to disband Parliament. Although Charles I was defeated and executed, a later king, James II, attempted to re-assert control over parliament. Parliament acted quickly and forced James II off the throne in a bloodless revolution that came to be known as the Glorious Revolution. James’ daughter, Mary, and her Dutch husband, William of Orange were placed on the throne in exchange for William signing the English Bill of Rights. The English Bill of Rights established, once and for all, that only the elected representatives of English citizens could pass laws and set taxes. Also, the people had the right to petition, or make a formal request or demand, the King. These !rights would have huge consequences for the colonies and England.! ! !Government in the Colonies! All colonies had to be settled with the permission of the King, and granted a charter - a formal document that outlined the boundaries of the colony and how it would be governed. The extreme distance between the colonies and England, however, required that the colonies be !able to establish their own laws.! The colonies started in one of three forms: proprietary, corporate, or royal. As stated earlier, a proprietary colony was a colony in which the land was owned by a single individual. The best examples are Pennsylvania and William Penn, and Georgia and James George Oglethorpe. A corporate colony was started by a joint stock company as a means of making money. Jamestown stands out as the best example of a corporate colony. The final colony, a royal colony, had a governor appointed by the King to represent him in America. Over time, all !colonies would be converted to royal colonies.! Regardless of the type, most colonies were self-governing, in which the colonists elected representatives to a general assembly to make laws for the colony. The only limitation was that the royal governor appointed by the king could veto any law. However, since the governor was paid by the assembly, it was easy for the assemblies to get the governor to do what they wanted by withholding his salary. The practice of electing representatives to make laws for colonies got its start in Jamestown when the Virginia Company gave permission for the colonists to establish !the House of Burgesses, which was the first assembly in the colonies. ! At the local level, the New England colonies started the tradition of town meetings in which all eligible citizens could debate and vote on local rules and laws for their town. This practice would spread throughout much of the colonies.! The combination of general assemblies and town meetings made the colonies much more democratic than most of Europe, and even England. Still, there were limits. Only white, male landowners were allowed to vote. Women, slaves, and non-landowning males had no direct say !in the colonial government. ! !Other Evidence of Democratic Government! Several colonies drafted written constitutions, or plans of government, that laid out the rights and privileges of people within the colony. The first written constitution in the Americas - The Fundamental Orders - appeared in the colony of Connecticut. It guaranteed the religious freedom and the write to vote to all qualified citizens. South Carolina also had a constitution written by the famous English philosopher John Locke. The ideas and writings of Locke would !later be the guiding light for the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.! !Asserting Rights - The Peter Zenger Trial! Early on, the colonists learn to assert their rights whenever English authority overstepped its bounds. One of the most famous examples is the trial of Peter Zenger. In 1735, Peter Zenger, the publisher of the New York Weekly Journal, faced charges of of libel for printing a critical report about the royal governor of New York. In court, Zenger’s lawyer argued that freedom of speech was a basic right of all English citizens, and that the jury should base its decision on whether or not his report was true, and not on whether the article was offensive. The jury agreed and found that Zenger was not guilty. The case is seen as the first in the America’s to protect freedom of speech, and established the idea, still followed today, that printing the truth, no matter how bad, cannot be punished. To this day, Americans enjoy more freedom of speech than any people in history, or in the world. !.
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