150 years of neglect! England wanted to develop trading partners through colonization. The incentives they offered took two main forms. Royal Proprietorship and Joint-Stock Companies. Jamestown, VA 1607, the first permanent English settlement in America. The Virginia Company of London had a grant of land in Virginia and their settlers sailed for America on the Mayflower.
When they landed off Cape Cod in today’s Massachusetts they decided to stay and write their own rules. The product of this precedent-setting act became the first self-governing document in history. The Mayflower Compact. Land in the American colonies was cheap and available. This had profound meaning for the political development of England’s American colonies.
Labor was the problem. So indentured servants were imported in huge numbers. When that didn’t satisfy the shortage, African slaves were imported. Because of this shortage, free workers and indentured servants could do better financially in America than anywhere else. So they came here in great numbers. Land laws were more inclusive in America.
Many charters included guarantees of rights of Englishmen and this became accepted practice and belief throughout the Colonies. In fact, the Massachusetts Body of Liberties included many of the basic rights enjoyed by those in England and established a precedent for written guarantees of rights in all the colonies. This is particularly true with regard to magistrates.
The Massachusetts Body of Liberties limited the right to vote-the franchise. But extended rights of Englishmen to even those who couldn’t vote. Pennsylvania became the first colony to guarantee rights of conscience to colonists in writing. What are rights of conscience? Are these rights in the news today?
The right to vote was generally restricted to white, adult, men who owned at least 50 acres of land. Women were not granted political or legal rights. Their legal status was that of minors. Coverture was the idea that after marriage, the husband and wife were one entity and all legal rights were retained by the husband only. Indentured servants had no political rights. Native Americans were treated as citizens of their own countries and were denied their political rights in the colonies on that basis. (Until 1924…!)
Slavery was the most egregious example of denial of rights to people in the colonies. 20% of the colonial population were slaves in Remember there were relatively few slaves in the North so that puts the percentage of slaves in the South much higher. (Why was this so?) Their status was as property-like cattle. And protected by the universally accepted natural rights of life, liberty, property.
Generally the charters that covered the Colonies had three characteristics-an appointed governor would run it, a small number of councilors would advise him, and an elected assembly would decide a few issues. Beyond that, the Colonists had to fill in the blanks. By the time they wrote the Constitution they had a century and a half of experience in self-government. …and were good at it.
In 1636, some people in Massachusetts decided to move to new land in Connecticut. Once there, they wrote the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut-helping establish America’s preference for written governing documents here. More colonies wrote their governing documents and they mostly had these things in common; a list of fundamental rights, belief in the rule of law, representative government, and separation of powers- legislative, executive, judicial.
Americans believed that the most important right was to secure their property rights. If this was true, then you could make an argument for limiting the right to vote to those who owned land. Virtually all of America’s elected officials were and are required to live in the district they represent in order that they are familiar with the wants and needs of their constituents. In the 1776 British Parliament the MP’s were not required to live in the district and didn’t know or care what their constituents wanted or needed.