Such disputes bred more or less popular
discontent, but the struggle did not become flagrant so long as the
British parliament refrained from meddling with it.
[Sidenote: The Americans never admitted the supremacy of parliament;]
The Americans never regarded parliament as possessing any rightful
authority over their internal affairs. When the earliest colonies were
founded, it was the general theory that the American wilderness was
part of the king's private domain and not subject to the control of
parliament. This theory lived on in America, but died out in England.
On the one hand the Americans had their own legislatures, which stood
to them in the place of parliament. The authority of parliament was
derived from the fact that it was a representative body, but it did
not represent Americans. Accordingly the Americans held that the
relation of each American colony to Great Britain was like the
relation between England and Scotland in the seventeenth century.
England and Scotland then had the same king, but separate parliaments,
and the English parliament could not make laws for Scotland. Such is
the connection between Sweden and Norway at the present day; they have
the same king, but each country legislates for itself.
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