retariat responsible both to the King and the whole Parliament as representatives of the Imperial State, and the Foreign Secretariat responsible to the King.

This final recommendation of Pownall's came too late, for on February 27, 1768, Lord Hillsborough, who had previously been the President of the Board of Trade and Plantations, was commissioned as "Secretary of State for the Colonies"-not because it was the intention of the British Government to recognize the Colonies as States united, as such, in a relationship of political subordination, to the State of Great Britain, and forming with it a Federal Empire, and to provide for the application of just principles to the exercise of the functions of Great Britain, as the Imperial State, but because, as the Letters Patent containing the Commission stated, "the public business of the Colonies and Plantations increasing, it is expedient to appoint one other Principal Secretary of State, besides the two ancient Principal Secretaries."

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As the Committee of the Privy Council for Plantation Affairs and the Board of Trade and Plantations were still left in existence, the only effect of the appointment of a Secretary of State for the Colonies was to make this Secretary an under-Secretary for Imperial Affairs, along with the Board of Trade and Plantations, except in so far as he could succeed in inducing the King to act directly on his advice, which meant that he had to induce the King to prevent certain matters from being considered by the Committee of the Privy Council for Plantation Affairs. This was, of course, a difficult matter, and as the Secretary of State for the Colonies was a member of the Cabinet, and as the Cabinet was tending every day to become responsible to the House of Commons, the Secretary for the Colonies was interested, for his own aggrandizement, to regard the affairs of the Empire as the affairs of the Realm and thus, by throwing the management of them.

into the hands of Parliament, to free himself from the interposition of the Committee of the Privy Council for Plantation Affairs.

The title given to the incumbent of the office—the Secretary for the Colonies-was unfortunate, since it tended to make the British public consider the Colonies as mere appendages or appurtenances of the Realm, and to make the Americans regard them as States foreign to Great Britain. Had the officer been called the Secretary for Imperial Affairs, and the Federal Empire of Great Britain thus recognized, the duties of the Secretary would have been understood by all to be, to ascertain the rules and regulations equitably and justly necessary for the common welfare of the component parts of the whole Empire, considering the Constitution, laws and economic conditions of the Imperial State and the charters, laws, customs, and economic conditions of the Colonies, and to advise the King and Parliament so that they, as the representatives of the Imperial State, might cause such rules and regulations to be put in force.

Pownall's proposition that the political organism theretofore called the British Empire was a Unitary State was exactly contradictory of his proposition that there ought to be a special Secretariat of State having charge of the relations with the Colonies. If the Colonies were integral parts of the British State, there was no more reason why the relations with them should be placed in charge of a Department of the Government of Great Britain, than that the relations with any County in England should be made a Department of the Government. If, therefore, Pownall was right when he claimed that the affairs of the Colonies ought to be in the charge of a Secretary of State's office, he was wrong when he claimed that the Colonies were integral parts of the British State, and vice versa.

The British Government followed exactly the same

course of inconsistency. The Secretary of State for the Colonies was appointed, and at the same time the Colonies were treated by Parliament as integral parts of the Realm.

CHAPTER XIII

AMERICA'S POSITION CRITICISED, 1769

N 1769, there appeared in England an anonymous pam

IN

phlet, entitled The Controversy between Great Britain

and the Colonies Reviewed, which was in fact written by William Knox, who had been attached to the Colonial Government of Georgia in the year 1760, assisted by Hon. George Grenville, who had been Prime Minister when the Stamp Act was passed. By this pamphlet the arguments in favor of the proposition that the British Empire was a Unitary State were put as strongly as they possibly could be. It was, in fact, a defence of the whole policy of the Grenville Ministry, and its purpose was to show that that Administration was right, and that its successor, the Rockingham Ministry, in procuring the repeal of the Stamp Act, had committed a constitutional error.

The propositions advanced by the Stamp Act Congress, as modified by those advanced by Dickinson in his Farmer's Letters, were considered and answered in consecutive order. Criticising the first resolution of the Stamp Act Congress,-that "his Majesty's subjects in these Colonies owe all due subordination to that August Body, the Parliament of Great Britain," the authors of the pamphlet pointed out that in the expression "August Body," there was necessarily contained the implication that Great Britain was a foreign State, and that this proposition was contradictory of the proposition contained in the other resolutions-that the inhabitants of the Colonies were entitled to all the rights and liberties

of Englishmen-because they could only have the rights of Englishmen in case they were members of the population of the State of Great Britain, and in that case Parliament would be the "Supreme Legislature" of the Colonies and their inhabitants, to the will of which they would owe "obedience,"-not an "August Body," to which they would owe "due subordination." The argument on this subject was a follows:

The title of "August Body," which they give the Parliament, is another subterfuge for seeming to respect its authority, whilst they mean to disavow it. An "August Body" it certainly is, and foreigners frequently call it so; but the subjects of the Realm know it by another title, that of Supreme Legislature. That title would, however, have implied obedience to its laws in those who gave it; but the committees, not intending to acknowledge such obedience, avoided giving it that title which is only proper from subjects, and gave it one which implied no relation or dependence on it, and yet carried so much the appearance of respect, that it might be mistaken to mean it.

The distinction they mark in their resolutions between the people of America and the people of England, by terming the one" his Majesty's liege subjects in the Colonies," and the other “his natural-born subjects," or his " subjects born within the Realm," plainly, though indirectly, declares it to be their opinion, that the people in the Colonies are not the King's "natural-born subjects," or his "subjects born within the Realm." They cannot therefore claim the rights and privileges of Englishmen from their being British subjects in common with the people of England, or the subjects born within the Realm; and yet no other title to those rights do any of them pretend, than that such are the rights and privileges of Englishmen or British subjects. For they go on to resolve "that it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them but with their own consent, given personally, or by their representatives;"—"that trial by jury is the inherent