Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/256

250 H. W. SCOTT. But it is impossible, for progress is but the result of our joint public opinion, and he only can destroy who can replace. Innovation is attractive to many minds ; but it is a settled principle that while no form of civilization ever can endure in perpetuity, and though the time must come when venerable systems must die, yet the mere spirit of innovation is not the spirit of reform. Our Revolution, in its causes, was little understood at the time, either in the mother country or in our own. The main cause of our Revolution was that the knowledge and experience of the colonists in America had not kept pace with the progress of constitutional and parliamentary gov- ernment in England. The charters under which the colo- nial governments were organized were royal grants ; they were not concessions from the English Legislature. In contemplation of English law, the whole group of colonial governments in America, created or confirmed by royal charters, were corporations created by the King, and sub- ject to his visitorial power, and to the power of the courts to dissolve them in a proper case presented for the pur- pose. The governor of the colony was a reflected image of kingship ; and when the colonial assemblies began the work of legislation on their own account, the validity of their acts depended, not upon the approval of the English Parliament, but upon the approval of the royal governor, who stood as the ever-present representative of his royal master; hence, the whole tendency of their early experi- ence was to lead the colonies to believe that the crown was the only tie that bound them to the mother country. But, in course of time, revolution in England had greatly changed the relations of King and Parliament reducing the authority of the King and immensely augmenting that of the Legislature. With this progress the colonists, in their isolation, had not kept pace. In their local leg- islatures they had learned how to tax themselves and how