Such a doctrine was dangerous, in that it tended to weaken the hold which the people of England had over the King, under the Act of Settlement of 1689, by admitting him to have legislative power otherwise than in subordination to Parliament, and because it tended to lead to the belief that the Colonies stood in that slight and shadowy relation toward Great Britain which is now known as "personal union," which exists when two independent States have the same person as Chief Executive, but are otherwise entirely distinct from one another.

Those to whom Wilson showed his essay, when it was first written, evidently thought it dangerous on these accounts. Wilson stated, in the "Advertisement," printed at the beginning of the pamphlet, that the essay was originally written "during the late non-importation agreement; but that agreement being dissolved before the sheets were ready for the press, it was judged unseasonable to publish them." The non-importation agreement in Philadelphia was dissolved in September, 1770. It was evidently considered wiser by Dickinson, Wilson's preceptor, that, just at the time that matters were becoming quiescent, a pamphlet should not be published in America which so greatly aggrandized the King at the expense of Parliament, and which might so easily be misconstrued into a claim of entire legislative independence on the part of the Colonies.

One of the most important pamphlets brought out during the discussion in the year 1774, which arose on account of the retaliatory acts of the British Government after the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, was 'Governor Bernard's Select Letters on the Trade and Government of America, from which extracts have already been quoted. From the preface of this pamphlet, it appears that his opinions expressed in 1765 had undergone some modification, and that, in 1774, he was inclining to the opinion that, if the Americans were admitted to be

heard in Parliament, it ought to be as parties or witnesses summoned in order that Parliament might inform itself of the circumstances before making an adjudication and disposition concerning the rights of the respective Colonies, and not as participants in a legislative or contractual act. Bernard's final conclusion seems to have been that it was the business of Parliament to make "settlements of the Governments of the Colonies," according to which the governmental power should be divided, in distinct spheres, between Great Britain and the Colonies. In this preface he said:

At the time of the passage of the Act of Parliament for raising money in America by a stamp duty, there was no fixed idea of the relation between Great Britain and America; not one of the Governments there had, what not one of them should have been without, a Parliamentary Constitution. And therefore it is not to be wondered at that, when they were called upon to pay money to the order of Parliament, they should answer-" We know not what is the relation between you and us, that authorizes you to raise money from us or our lands."

And, indeed, it may afford cause of wonder that, in the course of one hundred and fifty years, (for so many it is, at least, since Governments were first constituted in America), there never has been a Parliamentary settlement of the American Governments, or any adjustment of the nature of the subjection, and the mode of subordination, that was due to, or expected from the dependent Governments to the Imperial State. Before the Revolution [of 1688], this neglect is to be accounted for; the rights of Government were then not well understood in England, and in America they were wholly misconceived. The lands acquired by the English there, and the government of them, were supposed to be the absolute property of the King, and were disposed of accordingly. The Parliament was scarce allowed to have anything to do with them, and interfered very little in their government.

But at the Revolution [of 1688], when the rights of Government were well understood and formally settled; when the power of Parliament was greatly enlarged, and allowed to extend over all the dependencies of the Crown of Great Britain, as well as its own Kingdom; at that time, and ever since, it has been an unfortunate omission of policy that the constitutions of the Governments of America were not settled in Parliament, and the rights of the Imperial State over them acknowledged, with such regulations and limitations as the several natures of them, upon constitutional principles and good policy, should require; that we might not, at this time of day, when the Empire is so greatly enlarged, and is still increasing, be at a loss for principles upon which the connection of its subordinate Governments with the Imperial State may be best preserved, and the union of the whole maintained and continued.

But no care has been taken of this important business; and America has been left to that miserable servitude where law is uncertain and unknown. Instead of a certain constitutional law, adapted to the nature of the Governments established by the dependent or subordinate States, America has been hitherto governed by temporary expedients, which have sometimes been allowed to have the force of laws, and have sometimes been refused it. In this state of things, it was impossible but the time would come when the authority of Great Britain over America would be brought into question.

Bernard had nearly thought out the Federal Empire. The Imperial State, according to him, was, through its Parliament, to "settle" the "constitutions of the American Governments," and to abide by such "settlements.' Such settlements" could not fail to partake of the nature of adjudications. Such Acts of Parliament were not acts of legislation in the ordinary sense; they were acts of disposition or adjudication, and of legislation to effectuate the adjudication.

Edmund Burke, in his speech in opposition to American taxation, delivered in Parliament on April 19, 1774,

distinguished between the unconditioned and unlimited power of Parliament within the Realm of Great Britain, and its power as the representative of Great Britain, as the Imperial State, so conditioned and limited as to be only a power of "provident and beneficent superintendence" of the Colonies. In that speech he said:

What is to become of the Declaratory Act asserting the entireness of British legislative authority, if we abandon the practice of taxation ?

For my part, I look upon the rights stated in that Act, exactly in the manner in which I viewed them on its very first proposition, and which I have often taken the liberty, with great humility, to lay before you. I look, I say, on the Imperial rights of Great Britain, and the privileges which the colonists ought to enjoy under these rights, to be just the most reconcilable things in the world. The Parliament of Great Britain sits at the head of her extensive Empire in two capacities: one as the Local Legislature of this Island, providing for all things at home, immediately, and by no other instrument than the Executive power. The other, and I think her nobler capacity, is what I call her Imperial character, in which, as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all the several inferior Legislatures and guides and controls them all without annihilating any. . . . It is necessary to coerce the negligent, to restrain the violent, and to aid the weak and deficient, by the overruling plenitude of her power. She is never to intrude into the place of others, whilst they are equal to the common duties of their institution. But in order to enable Parliament to answer all these duties of provident and beneficent superintendence, her powers must be boundless.

Such, Sir, is my idea of the Constitution of the British Empire, as distinguished from the Constitution of Britain.

It has been noticed that Dulany, in 1765, first used the word "superintendence" to describe the power of the Imperial State, and that he applied it to the power over the American Colonies exercised by the British Parliament,

as the representative of Great Britain; and that Wilson, in his note in answer to Dickinson's criticism, had used the expression "superintending power" to describe the power of Great Britain, as the Imperial State, exercised by the King in Council. The distinction between the superintending power" of Parliament acting as agent for Great Britain as the Imperial State, and the "legislative power" of Parliament acting as the "Local Legislature" of Great Britain, was, therefore, American, not British.

Burke, however, added to the previous thoughts by pointing out that the power of the Imperial State was a conditioned, as distinguished from a limited power, when he said: "In order to enable Parliament to answer all these duties of provident and beneficent superintendence, her powers must be boundless." A power of "provident and beneficent superintendence" is necessarily a power without specific limits predetermined by an external human power, but it is conditioned upon the holder of the power adjudicating the limits of his own powers according to his own opinion of the necessity for his interference in each particular case as it arises, in order that the whole organism under his superintendence may most perfectly and beneficently perform its functions.

On July 18, 1774, the inhabitants of Fairfax County, Virginia, at a meeting presided over by George Washington, as chairman, adopted a series of resolutions, prepared by George Mason, which showed that in Virginia the conception of the British Empire as a federal organism was beginning to manifest itself. In these resolutions it was declared:

That the Colony and Dominion of Virginia cannot be considered as a conquered country; and if it was, that the present inhabitants are the descendants, not of the conquered, but of