nd Mary, a Bill of Rights was
framed and enacted into law by King and Parliament, naming liberties
and rights of the subject which ought not to be abridged. Succeeding
Kings and Parliaments seem to have respected the provisions of this
Bill of Rights in their legislation for British subjects. Had they
conceded the claim of the people of the American Colonies that they
also were protected by its provisions, the course of our political
history might have been different. As it was, however, the British
government practically held that neither Magna Charta, the Petition of
Right, nor the Bill of Rights restrained it in its dealings with the
Colonies, and this in despite of the protests of some of its most
eminent statesmen. The resolutions of the various Colonial
legislatures and the formal Declaration of Independence recite many
grievous instances of arbitrary action by the government in disregard
of the doctrines of those charters.

So bitter was their experience that, when the people of the various
Colonies came to frame constitutions for "a government of the people,
by the people, and for the people" independent of the British crown
and all other external authority, they very generally insisted that
even such a government should have its powers defined and limited,
that some rights of the individual should be specified which the
government should not infringe nor have the lawful power to infringe.
From their own experience the people were convinced that such
definitions and limitations were necessary for the security of the
individual even under a popular government.

The first step of the representatives of the people of Virginia toward
a declaration of independence of the British crown, and the setting up
an independent government, was the adoption of a declaration of rights
in the individual which no government should infringe. This was
adopted and promulgated sometime before the constitution proper was
framed. The statement was declared to be necessary in order that the
government might be "effectually secured against maladministration."
Similar limitations upon the powers of the government were imposed in
the early constitutions of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey,
Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina;
also in the first constitution of Connecticut in 1818, and in the
first constitution of Rhode Island in 1842. The people of New Jersey
in 1844 made the limitations more defin