the Governor's consent, to audit the public accounts, and to control the troops. In Shute's administration the normal relation created by the provincial charter between the Province and the mother country first assumed its true outline and proportions. Every threat of cancelling that instrument was an evidence of ill-will on one side, and tended to aggravate the existing jealousy on the other. But it was impossible, from the first, that the working of the new constitution should be satisfactory to both parties. As often as it favored one, it offered some annoyance to the other. Before the first half-century of the administration of Massachusetts under the charter of William and Mary had reached its close, the most material dispute which had arisen between the Colony and the Crown was virtually settled against the pretension of prerogative. Governor Burnet and Governor Belcher brought peremptory instructions to the Province to cease holding its Governors in dependence by controlling the provision for their maintenance. The Colony would not be convinced, nor persuaded, nor intimidated. The popular branch of the Legislature, doubtfully seconded by the inconstant Council, stood firmly upon its claim. The home government hesitated, then yielded, and that which, among possible measures of protection against injustice, seemed to the patriots of Massachusetts the most material for the moment, was won by their enlightened pertinacity. This was no triumph of good abstract theory. No maxim of political science is more indisputable than that for free governments the executive and legislative authorities must be kept distinct. Yet such is the difficulty or impossibility of preventing by special provisions all encroachment of one upon the other, that it is doubtful whether any thing can effect it when there exists mistrust between the two departments. If one apprehends an attempt at usurpation on the other's part, its natural defence is in the most extended exercise of its own powers that is any way defensible or plausible. The method is retaliated, and the contest becomes one of extreme pretensions on both sides. So it was in England in the time of King Charles the First. So it was in Massachusetts when the Legislature persisted to hold the Gov ernor in thrall by determining his means of livelihood. So it was in the first years that succeeded the overthrow of the Slave-Power Rebellion in the United States. Extreme as may appear some of the measures of the patriot legislators of Massachusetts in their opposition to royal Governors, it is striking to observe how they were justified by later events. To the end that executive and judicial officers may do their duty without fear or favor, undoubtedly it is true that they ought not to be dependent for their living on grants made by a legislature from time to time, wherever circumstances are such that to exempt them from this form of dependence is in reality to secure to them the disinterested guidance of their own conscience and judgment. But, most unfortunately, the constitution of government under the provincial charter of Massachusetts was such, that the people could not make their Governor and Judges independent of themselves without throwing them into the adverse interest, and making them the partial and powerful dependants of the crown. When, in the next generation after Governor Belcher's time, the Colonies were plunging into the armed contest for political independence, the champions of American rights illustrated in elaborate argument the occasions which had existed all along for keeping the Governors and Judges dependent on the people, as affording the only security against their becoming at once obsequious and powerful tools of the King, and accordingly as constituting an absolute necessity of freedom. But as soon as, by the overthrow of foreign 1 Dickinson, Pennsylvania Farmer's Letters, 89 et seq. authority, it became possible to place the administrators of the chief executive and the chief judicial powers in a position of absolute independence, the importance of that arrangement as a condition of good government was cordially recognized in that Constitution of the free Commonwealth of Massachusetts which imposed the unalterable law that the salaries of her Governors and of the Judges of her Court of Final Appeal should not be liable to reduction during their term of service. 1780. 1697-1701. Richard, Earl of Bellomont. 1702-1711. Thomas Povey. * An asterisk marks the names of Counsellors chosen by the General Court in 1692, and omitted from the Board constituted by the Provincial Charter. (See above, p. 86.) Some of the new or restored Counsellors of the Charter, as Richards, Phillips, Joliffe, and Middlecot, this Court rid themselves of at the first election. 600 David Waterhouse, 1689. Thomas Hinckley, 1692. William Bradford, 1692-1698. John Walley, 1692, 1693, 1696-1706. Samuel Daniell, 1692, 1693, 1700. Joseph Lynde, 1694-1705, 1707-1716. Samuel Hayman, 1703 - 1705. Ephraim Hunt, 1703 - 1713. Isaac Winslow, 1703 - 1736. Peter Sergeant, 1707–1713. John Wheelwright, 1708-1732. Joseph Church, 1708. Thomas Noyes, 1711-1714, 1716-1718 1721. William Tailer, 1712-1729. Benjamin Lynde, 1713 – 1736. Addington Davenport, 1714-1729, 1734. Thomas Hutchinson, 1714-1723, 1725, 1726, 1728-1739. John Clark, 1714 – 1719, 1724. Elisha Cook, 1715, 1717, 1724-1726, 1728. Samuel Brown, 1715-1730. John Pynchon, 1715, 1716. Thomas Fitch, 1715-1730, 1734. Edmund Quincy, 1715-1729, 1734-1737. Nathaniel Byfield, 1716-1719, 17241728. Adam Winthrop, 1715-1718, 17211726, 1728. William Dummer, 1717-1720, 1722, Jonathan Belcher, 1718-1720, 1722, Jonathan Dowse, 1718-1726, 1728-1730. John Turner, 1721-1740. Spencer Phips, 1721-1723, 1725 - 1732. Symonds Epes, 1724-1735. Thomas Palmer, 1724-1726, 1730-1734. Meletiah Bourne, 1724-1731, 17331739. Samuel Appleton, 1703-1708, 1713, 1714. John Stoddard, 1724, 1727, 1728. Nathaniel Payne, 1703 - 1707. Simeon Stoddard, 1704, 1705, 1707. John Cushing, 1706. Ichabod Plaisted, 1706 - 1715. John Leverett, 1706. John Appleton, 1706-1723. John Clark, 1724–1726. Edward Hutchinson, 1725, 1726, 1738 1740. Jonathan Remington, 1727, 1730-1740. Timothy Lindall, 1727, 1728. John Chandler, 1727, 1728. Charles Chambers, 1727, 1728. |