Of this rapid growth the colonists were well aware. They took to themselves full credit, as their descendants have done ever since, for having transformed a wilderness into a land of peace and plenty. With Richard Burnaby they could quite agree that such a town as Philadelphia, planted scarce eighty years, must be the "object of every one's wonder and admiration." It was this sense of unparalleled achievement that gave courageous conviction to the steady assertion of colonial rights. And the form of government in the provinces was well suited to secure for the colonists that independence which they claimed as a birthright, and the practical achievement of which is the cardinal political fact of the century. For it was no part of British policy to burden the English exchequer with the maintenance of the colonial establishments. The normal province was thought to be one in which legislation was entrusted mainly to local assemblies elected by the colonists, while executive and administrative authority rested mainly with a governor and council responsible to the king. At the opening of the eighteenth century, colonial governments mostly conformed to this model: in each colony the owners of property regularly elected an assembly which levied taxes and made laws; in each colony, except in Rhode Island and Connecticut, the governor, and usually the council as well, were appointed by the Crown. With authority thus divided, conflict was sure to arise. In theory, the interests of colony and Crown may have been identical; in fact the assemblies looked at the affairs of the colony from the point of view of immediate local needs, while the governor was bound by his instructions to regard his province as but one of many whose special interests must be subordinated to the welfare of the whole empire. Of the assemblies' many advantages in this perennial conflict, control of the purse was the chief. "The governor," says a contemporary, "has two masters; one who gives him his commission, and one who gives him his pay." It required no little courage, and was likely to prove useless in the end, to ignore the latter master in obedience to the former. Placemen were little inclined to irritate those who paid them and were on the spot to watch their every move; while even the ablest governors often found themselves deserted by the Crown whose interests they attempted to defend. Before the middle of the century ministers were generally indifferent to the constitutional tendencies in the colonies; repeated recommendations of the Board of Trade for an independent civil list went unheeded, and governors, such as Spotswood, who stirred up trouble by endeavoring to carry out their instructions, were likely to be replaced by others whose adroit concessions to the assemblies created the illusion of a successful administration.