188 HISTORY OF THE [book vi. 
claim of the colonists to legislate for themselves, 
by means of those assemblies, and to display the 
principles on which this claim was confirmed by 
the mother country. Afterwards, I shall inquire 
by what means their allegiance to the crown of 
Great Britain, and profitable subordination to the 
British parliament, are secured and maintained. 
From the arguments that have been urged in the 
latter part of the preceding chapter, concerning a 
prerogative in the crown to invest the colonial 
council-boards with some share of legislative au¬ 
thority, I trust it will not follow, that the English 
constitution has at any time lodged in the king, the 
still greater prerogative of establishing in the Bri¬ 
tish dependencies, such a form and system of go¬ 
vernment as his Majesty shall think best. It is 
surely one thing to say, that the crown may intro¬ 
duce into the plantations such checks and controls 
as are congenial to those institutions by which free¬ 
dom is best secured in the mother country, and 
another, to aver that the crown may withhold from 
the colonies the enjoyment of freedom altogether. 
Nevertheless, were the maxim well founded, that 
the prerogative of the crown in arranging the sys¬ 
tem of colonial establishments is unlimited, no 
conclusion could be drawn from it that would im¬ 
peach, in the smallest degree, the claim of the 
British colonists in America to a British constitu¬ 
tion; inasmuch as the sovereign, representing the 
whole nation, has repeatedly recognized in the first 
settlers and their posterity, by various solemn 
