Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

of the Assemblies, which won for themselves ever-increasing powers of
appointing executive and judicial officials. The Assemblies did so under the
guidance of Cato's Letters and other expressions of libertarian hostility to
the deeply corrupting powers of executive patronage.
The Assemblies, in contrast to the Parliament, were moved to assert
themselves to obtain such powers by virtue of the far greater representation
and the far more extensive franchise in the colonies than in the mother
country. There were no rotten or pocket boroughs in the colonies, and representation
far more accurately proceeded proportionately to the growth and
dispersion of population. Whereas the common forty-shilling land-ownership
qualification for voting proved highly restrictive in Britain, it turned out to
be highly permissive in the colonies; usually, from fifty to seventy-five percent
of the adult male white population in the colonies was eligible to vote.
Additional relative advantages enjoyed by the colonial legislatures were:
the early growth of express and rigorous instructions by the towns and
counties to their representatives, binding them to the will of the voters—a
practice which scarcely existed in England; the impermanence of the tenure
of the governors, in contrast to the lengthy tenure of the leading assemblymen;
and the ability of the colonies to go over the heads of the governors
to the authorities in Britain.*
Adding to the virtual independence, by midcentury, of the colonies and
their Assemblies was the determination of the British government not to
enforce the myriad of mercantilist regulations passed by Parliament, controlling
and restricting the trade and industry of the colonies.
*lb¡d., pp. íí-SÍ.
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