A MASTERPIECE OF CONSTITUTIONAL FOLLY.
BY A. M. BARNES.
IT is doubtful if, since the world began,
there has been a product of the combined
brains of philosopher and statesman that con
tained within itself so much of arrant non
sense, of pure folly, as the Grand Model of
Locke and Shaftesbury, better known as the
Fundamental Constitutions of the Province
of Carolina. Yet it formulated a most elabo
rate scheme of government, one that had for
its object the reign of aristocracy in a colony
of adventurers, " in the wild woods among
savages and wild beasts."
This wonderful document was a very pretty
instrument, that is as to its visionary con
ceptions in their elaborate dressing of words.
This fascinating brain child of administrative
temperament first saw the light at Exeter
House, the home of Lord Ashley, afterward
Earl of Shaftesbury, March, 1669. John
Locke, then but at the dawning of his fame,
was not only the private secretary of my
Lord, but also his close friend and adviser.
Lord Ashley had great admiration for the
brain force of the budding philosopher. The
document is said by some to be a collabora
tion; by others it is claimed as the entire
work of Locke. The former opinion is more
generally accepted, since there are certain
terms and expressions in the Grand Model
that have a highly perceptible flavor of Par
liament.
We are told that when this wonderful in
strument, containing its beautiful elaboration
of laws for the governing of bold freemen
and wild Indians in the forests of the new
world, was shown to the proprietors they,
"with some modifications," — only slight
ones, however — "solemnly adopted it."
This was in July of 1 669. On October 2 1
of that year the same solemn assembly,
with but one or two exceptions, met to or
ganize the highest judiciary under the new
form of government, the Palatine Court. The Grand Model was then declared in ef fect — the high-sounding array of laws written for the upholding of the aristocracy and the demoralization of the real bone and sinew of the country, the plain people. First of all this remarkable document de clared that the two principal objects it had in view were " the pleasing " of " Our Sover eign Lord the King," who out of " his royal grace and bounty," has " bestowed upon us," etc., and the " establishing of the interests of the Lords Proprietors." Not a clause, not one word was there with reference to any rights and privileges of the people. In short, it was to be a government in which the commonalty, the lower herd, had neither part nor parcel, were simply " not in it," to use an expression of slang. It is no wonder that it became its own accuser from the very beginning of its enforcement, arousing in the breast of freemen the first mutterings of that storm which later broke with such force over the heads of the Lords Proprietors, leaving devastation in its track. Happy it was for the country that that same will of the peo ple, the spirit of free and equal rights to all, could build above the wreckage the structure of better government. Under the rulings of the Grand Model the Province was constituted a County Palatine, the political head of which was known as the Palatine. The clause of the constitution containing this provided that the oldest of the Lords Proprietors should become Pala tine, and that upon his death the next in line of age should succeed him. He, together with the other Proprietors, constituted the Palatine Court. This body possessed vice regal power, corresponding to that of the King in his monarchy. Only his authority was superior to theirs. In other words it
