Law must have some sanction. There can be only three. It may be considered either as the dictum of some supernatural being, or as the command of an earthly sovereign,—not, of course, necessarily an individual,—or as receiving its sanctity from the consent of the governed. The supernatural was tried only in New England theocracies, and soon abandoned as unworkable. The sovereignty of the empire obviously resided in “the King in Parliament,” but that, for practical purposes, the colonists usually denied or strove against. The consent of the governed, in a strictly local sense, was all that remained, and it has continued, also in a local or partial sense, to control American obedience to law. Even if local law was fairly well obeyed when passed by the colonists themselves, respect for law as law could not fail to be lessened by their constant breaking or ignoring of the imperial laws. Without attempting to go into detail or to adopt a chronological arrangement, we may note some of the ways in which this was brought about. A constant source of lawbreaking, particularly in the North, was the legislation by Parliament with regard to what were called “the King’s Woods.” In that day of sailing ships, trees suitable for masts were in great demand. England preferred to depend upon the forests of America rather than upon the foreign ones of the Baltic Provinces, and laws were made to save for the use of the Royal Navy all trees above a certain size upon lands not specifically granted to individuals. The colonists on the spot felt this to be an abridgement of their right to exploit the continent and use all its resources themselves. Not only were the laws disobeyed and the authority of the officially and legally appointed “Surveyors of the Woods” flouted, but force was[Pg 106] used to oppose authority, and rioting not seldom was employed against law. Again, according to the generally accepted economic theory of the day, colonists were supposed not to manufacture in competition with the home country, but to supply her with the raw materials. Laws against manufacturing worked, as a rule, but little hardship on the colonies, owing to high wages, scarcity of skilled labor, and other reasons, but they did in a few instances, as in the case of wool and smaller hardware such as nails. These were mostly household manufactures, but they were carried on by nearly every household in conscious defiance of imperial laws.