and
assembly found expression were many--quit-rents in Maryland, control of
the judges in New York, taxation of proprietor's estates in
Pennsylvania, and everywhere questions growing out of the problem of
defense and the demand for paper money. Instructed in English precedent,
the assemblies knew well how to condition the grant of salary or
necessary revenue upon the governor's surrender to their demands. But
more insidious and far-reaching in its constitutional effects was the
practice by which the governor's executive and administrative functions
were restricted. Money bills, even when unconnected with special riders,
were often made minutely specific, both in respect to the purposes for
which the money was to be used, and in respect to the officials by whom
it was to be expended. Even salaries in the army were sometimes granted
by individual appropriation. In many colonies, and notably in New York,
it was by the constant and excessive use of specific appropriations that
the governors were reduced to the level of executive figureheads--mere
agents of the colonial assembly rather than representatives of the Crown
exercising wise and effective administrative discretion. This process
was especially rapid during the French wars, when the assemblies were
enabled to exact tremendous concessions in return for indispensable aid
against the common enemy. "The New York Assembly," said Peter Kalm about
1750, "may be looked upon as a Parliament or Diet in miniature.
Everything relating to the good of the province is here debated." In
1763 he might have said the same, not of New York alone, but of
Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. And the
governors of these provinces could have told him, as they repeatedly
told the Board of Trade, that not only was everything debated there, but
there everything was finally decided.

The assemblies, which had thus so largely taken to themselves the
functions of government, claimed to declare the rights and defend the
interests of the people. But in fact they represented their colonies
very much as Parliament represented England. In every colony a property
test restricted the number of those who had a voice in the elections;
while political methods and the traditions of society united to place
effective control in the hands of the eminent few. No secret ballot or
Australian system guarded the independence of the voter. It was not an
age in which every individual was supposed to