ss 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. So the American
colonists held that Virginia, for example, and Great Britain had the
same king, but each its independent legislature; and so with the
other colonies,--there were thirteen parliaments in America, each as
sovereign within its own sphere as the parliament at Westminster, and
the latter had no more right to tax the people of Massachusetts than
the Massachusetts legislature had to tax the people of Virginia.

In one respect, however, the Americans did admit that parliament had a
general right of supervision over all parts of the British empire.[6]
Maritime commerce seemed to be as much the affair of one part of the
empire as another, and it seemed right that it should be regulated by
the central parliament at Westminster. Accordingly the Americans did
not resist custom-house taxes as long as they seemed to be imposed
for purely commercial purposes; but they were quick to resist direct
taxation, and custom-house taxes likewise, as soon as these began to
form a part of schemes for extending the authority of parliament over
the colonies.

[Footnote 6: except in the regulation of maritime commerce.]

In England, on the other hand, this theory that the Americans were
subject to the king's authority but not to that of parliament
naturally became unintelligible after the king himself had become
virtually subject to parliament.[7] The Stuart kings might call
themselves kings by the grace of God, but since 1688 the sovereigns of
Great Britain owe their seat upon the throne to an act of parliament.

[Footnote 7: In England there grew up the theory of the imperial
supremacy of parliament.]

To suppose that the king's A