George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[16] the forms of civil government of which they had ever

chap. I.} 1748.

heard or read, no one appeared to them so well calculated to preserve liberty, and to secure all the most valuable advantages of civil society as the English;¹ and of this happy constitution of the mother country, which it was usual to represent, and almost to adore, as designed to approach perfection,² they held their own to be a copy, or rather an improvement, with additional privileges not enjoyed by the common people there.³ The elective franchise was more equally diffused; there were no decayed boroughs, or unrepresented towns; representation, which was universal, conformed more nearly to population; in colonies which contained more than half the inhabitants, the legislative assembly was chosen annually and by ballot, and the time for convening the legislature was fixed by a fundamental law; the civil list in every colony but one was voted annually, and annually subjected to scrutiny; appropriations of money often, for greater security against corruption and waste, included the nomination and appointment of the agents who were to direct the expenditures; municipal liberties were more independent and more extensive; in none of the colonies was there an ecclesiastical court, and in most of them there was no established church or religious test of capacity for office; the cultivator of the soil was for the most part a freeholder; in all the continent the people possessed arms, and the able-bodied men were enrolled and trained to their use; so that in America there was more of personal independence and far more of popular power than in England.