Parliamentary influence. The colonies had little occasion to feel or to
resent direct royal prerogative. To them the Crown was represented by
governors, with whom they could quarrel without being guilty of treason,
and from whom in general they feared very little, but whom they could not
depose. Governors shifted rapidly, and colonial assemblies eventually took
over much of the executive business from the governors, or gave it to
officers whom they elected. But while, in the eighteenth century, the
system of a responsible ministry was growing up in England under the
Hanoverian kings, the colonies were accustomed to a sharp division between
the legislative and the executive departments. Situated as they were at a
great distance from the mother-country, the assemblies were obliged to
pass sweeping laws. The easiest way of checking them was to limit the
power of the assemblies by strong clauses in the charters or in the
governor's instructions; and to the very last the governors, and above the
governors the king, retained the power of royal veto, which in England was
never exercised after 1708. Thus the colonies were accustomed to see their
laws quietly and legally reversed, while Parliament was growing into the
belief that its will ought to prevail against the king or the judges. In a
wild frontier country the people were obliged to depend upon their
neighbors for defence or companionship. More emphasis was thus thrown upon
the local governments than in England. The titles of rank, which continued
to have great social and political force in England, were almost unknown
in America. The patroons in New York were in 1750 little more than great
land-owners; the fanciful system of landgraves, palsgraves, and caciques
in Carolina never had any substance. No permanent colonial nobility was
ever created, and but few titles were conferred on Americans. An American
aristocracy did grow up, founded partly on the ownership of land, and
partly on wealth acquired by trade. It existed side by side with a very
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