The political unit at the South was the parish; in the North it was the town. Jury trial prevailed in all the colonies. Local self-government was vigorous everywhere, yet the most so in the North. The town regulated its affairs, such as the schools, police, roads, the public lands, the poor, and in Massachusetts and Connecticut also religion, at first by pure mass meetings where each citizen represented himself and which were both legislative and judicial in function, then by combining these meetings in various ways with the agency of selectmen. Where and so soon as a colony came to embrace several towns, representative machinery was set in motion and a colonial legislature formed, having two chambers nearly everywhere, like Parliament. The county, with the same character as at present, was instituted later than the oldest towns and parishes, but itself subsequently became, in thinly settled parts, the unit of governmental organization and political action, being divided into towns or parishes only gradually. Voting was subject to a property qualification, in some colonies to a religious one also; but no nobility of blood or title got foothold. The relation of the colonial governments to England is a far more perplexing matter. From the preceding chapters it appears that we may distinguish the colonies, if we come down to about 1750, as either (1) self-governing or charter colonies, in which liberty was most complete and subjection to England little more than nominal; and (2) non-self-governing, ruled, theoretically at any rate, in considerable measure from outside themselves. Rhode Island and Connecticut made up the former class. Of the latter there were two groups, the royal or provincial, including New Hampshire, Massachusetts; New York, New Jersey, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and the proprietary, viz., Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. Yet we are to bear in mind that many important constitutional and governmental changes had occurred by 1750. Massachusetts, as we have seen, had ceased to be self-governing as at first, yet it retained a charter which conferred large liberty. All the provincial colonies began as proprietary, and all the proprietary were for a time provincial. Under Andros, New England stretched from the St. Croix to Delaware Bay. After 1689 the tendency in all parts of the country was strong toward civil freedom, which, favored by the changes and apathy of proprietaries and the ignorance and quarrels of the English ministry, gradually rendered the other colonies in effect about as well off in this respect as Rhode Island and Connecticut.