1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 3861 
governed by elective legislatures with limited powers under the 
sovereign supervision of Great Britain. 
In settling this country, whether from circumstances or from a 
race instinct which had been before exemplified in the Saxon 
Heptarchy, they divided into several separate communities. Here 
they had no Danes to the east, no Scotch or Irish to the north and 
west, no French upon the south to hammer them into a single state 
by repeated blows. Barely enough of threats and pressure from the 
outside they had to maintain the feeling of common origin and 
common destiny. Even this was maintained more by the common 
bond that united them all to the mother-country. That mother 
was sometimes severe, often selfish and still more often negligent. 
They could, however, look with confidence to her to protect them 
from other European interference. Such enemies as they had on 
this side of the ocean they soon proved able to cope with in their 
own strength. 
Their distance, the peculiarities of their situation and their own 
self-reliance was a guarantee sufficient that men who had been 
taught to work such organizations would form local legislative bod- 
ies, and they did. Their own weakness and the temper of the 
British government was an assurance that its sovereignty over them 
would not be forgotten. The legislative powers of the colonial 
assemblies in the nature of things must expand with every step in 
the growth of the colonies, and however clearly the limitation on 
those powers, imposed by the sovereignty of the British Crown and 
Parliament, might be marked in theory, a wider and wider function 
must necessarily fall to these colonial legislatures. 
The British doctrine of the supreme authority of Parliament 
soon collided with these growing legislative powers, and when the 
two became incompatible it was thrown off. The confederation 
of the colonies was brought about by the revolutionary struggle 
and lasted through it, although in the meantime its weakness 
became thoroughly apparent. It proved entirely ineffectual to hold 
together the thirteen colonies after peace. So it came that when 
the problem of putting an efficient substitute in the place of the 
confederation was met, the most important element in that problem 
was tne existence of the thirteen state governments that were 
occupying the ground. The confederation was dead and, as the 
Hibernicism has it, was conscious of it. It offered no resistance. 
__ The thirteen colonies, fortunately, had, for the most part, con- 
