rd to this most delicate
of all objects. The colonies were from the beginning subject to the
legislature of Great Britain on principles which they never examined;
and we permitted to them many local privileges, without asking how they
agreed with that legislative authority. Modes of administration were
formed in an insensible and very unsystematic manner. But they gradually
adapted themselves to the varying condition of things. What was first a
single kingdom stretched into an empire; and an imperial
superintendence, of some kind or other, became necessary. Parliament,
from a mere representative of the people, and a guardian of popular
privileges for its own immediate constituents, grew into a mighty
sovereign. Instead of being a control on the crown on its own behalf, it
communicated a sort of strength to the royal authority, which was wanted
for the conservation of a new object, but which could not be safely
trusted to the crown alone. On the other hand, the colonies, advancing
by equal steps, and governed by the same necessity, had formed within
themselves, either by royal instruction or royal charter, assemblies so
exceedingly resembling a parliament, in all their forms, functions, and
powers, that it was impossible they should not imbibe some opinion of a
similar authority.

At the first designation of these assemblies, they were probably not
intended for anything more (nor perhaps did they think themselves much
higher) than the municipal corporations within this island, to which
some at present love to compare them. But nothing in progression can
rest on its original plan. We may as well think of rocking a grown man
in the cradle of an infant. Therefore, as the colonies prospered and
increased to a numerous and mighty people, spreading over a very great
tract of the globe, it was natural that they should attribute to
assemblies so respectable in their formal constitution some part of the
dignity of the great nations which they represented. No longer tied to
by-laws, these assemblies made acts of all sorts and in all cases
whatsoever. They levied money, not for parochial purposes, but upon
regular grants to the crown, following all the rules and principles of a
parliament, to which they approached every day more and more nearly.
Those who think themselves wiser than Providence and stronger than the
course of Nature may complain of all this variation, on the one side or
the other, as their several humors and prejudi