UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1760-1775. Crown, Parliament and Colonies. The English theory and the American theory of their relations. "The people of every colony were subject to two jurisdictions, one local and one general, that must be adjusted to each other. To effect such adjustment caused no little friction; and the Colonies and the Mother Country got on peaceably as long as they did, only because neither one pushed its theory of colonial relations to an extreme, each yielding something to the other and thus effecting a compromise. The Colonies held that the dominion which the Cabots discovered in America belonged to the King, rather than to the Kingdom, of England. Englishmen adventuring into this dominion to plant colonies were entitled to all the privileges of free-born Englishmen at home; trial by jury, habeas corpus, and exemption from taxes that their own representatives had not voted. The British Empire was not one dominion, but several dominions. Everyone of these dominions had, or should have, its own legislature to enact laws for its government. The Colonies were not one dominion, but 13 dominions; and in everyone the legislature was as supreme as Parliament was in England. Parliament, therefore, had nothing more to do with Massachusetts or Virginia than the legislatures of those colonies had to do with England. The King, who alone had a voice in the matter, had, in their charters, guaranteed to the Colonies the common law so far as this was applicable to their condition, and he was now powerless to withdraw what he had thus conceded. Such, in outline, was the American theory of colonial relations. Still, no one pretended that this theory had ever been fully carried out in practice. It must also be said that it did not appear fully formed at once, but grew up gradually. The British theory was that Englishmen continued Englishmen when they emigrated to the American dominions of the King; that the power of Parliament, to which they were subject in the old home, followed them to the new one; and that Parliament could yield them more or fewer powers of self-government for a time, and then withdraw them. It was also claimed that the Colonies were already represented in the House of Commons; since the several members of that body did not represent particular districts or constituencies, but the whole British Empire. Besides, it was asserted that the Colonies themselves had repeatedly acknowledged the authority of Parliament by submitting to its legislation. Still no one pretended that this theory had ever been fully carried out." _B. A. Hinsdale, The American Government, sections 92-93._ ALSO IN: _R. Frothingham, Life and Times of Joseph Warren, pages 30-32._