Government and Administration of the United States | Page 5

of a nation, however organized, that there is no discussion concerning the expediency of their exercise by the state. We may, therefore, group governmental duties under two heads: the necessary, and the optionable; or, as Professor Wilson has named them, the Constituent and the Ministrant.[1] Under the first head is embraced all those functions which must exist under every form of government; and under the second title those "undertaken, not by way of governing, but by way of advancing the general interests of society." The following is Professor Wilson's classification:
#I. The Necessary or Constituent Functions.#--
(1). The keeping of order and providing for the protection of persons and property from violence and robbery. (2). The fixing of the legal relations between man and wife, and between parents and children.
(3). The regulation of the holding, transmission, and interchange of property, and determination of its liabilities for debt or for crime.
(4). The determination of contract rights between individuals.
(5). The definition and punishment of crime.
(6). The administration of justice in civil causes.
(7). The determination of the political duties, privileges, and relations of citizens.
(8). Dealings of the state with foreign powers; the preservation of the state from external danger or encroachment, and the advancement of its intellectual interests.
#II. Optional or Ministrant Functions.#
(1). The regulation of trade and industry. Under this head we must include the coinage of money, and the establishment of standard weights and measures, laws against forestalling, engrossing, the licensing of trades, etc., as well as the great matters of tariffs, navigation laws, and the like.
(2). The regulation of labor.
(3). The maintenance of thoroughfares, including state management of railways, and that great group of undertakings which we embrace within the comprehensive terms 'Internal Improvements,' or 'The Development of the Country.'
(4). The maintenance of postal and telegraph systems, which is very similar in principle to (3).
(5). The manufacture and distribution of gas, the maintenance of water-works, &c.
(6). Sanitation, including the regulation of trades for sanitary purposes.
(7). Education.
(8). Care of the poor and incapable. (9). Care and cultivation of forests and like matters, such as stocking of rivers with fish.
(10). Sumptuary laws, such as 'prohibition' laws.
Under this second head have been included by no means all of the functions whose exercise by the government has been attempted or proposed, but they show the principal ones, and serve to indicate the nature of the optional field of governmental activity.
[Footnote 1: Wilson, The State, Section 1232.]
CHAPTER IV.
Colonial Governments; Their Relation to Each Other, and to England.
To understand clearly the early history of our country; to appreciate the reasons for the grievances of the colonists against their mother country; and to gain an intelligent idea of the events of that most critical period of our history, when the colonies, then free, were in doubt as to the nature of the federal government they should adopt; properly to understand all these facts, it is of essential importance that we should gain a correct knowledge of the condition of the colonies during those times, their relations to one another, their governmental connection with and attitude towards England.
The thirteen American colonies, which in 1775 dared defy the might of Great Britain, and which in a stubborn struggle were able to win their independence, were settled at various times, and by colonists actuated by widely different motives. At the time of the beginning of their resistance to the oppressive acts of their mother country, they were, in their governments, entirely separate from and independent of each other. "Though the colonies had a common origin, and owed a common allegiance to England, and the inhabitants of each were British subjects, they had no direct political connection with each other. Each in a limited sense, was sovereign within its own territory.... The assembly of one province could not make laws for another.... As colonists they were also excluded from all connection with foreign states. They were known only as dependencies. They followed the fate of their mother country both in peace and war.... They could not form any treaty, even among themselves, without the consent of England."[1]
[Footnote 1: Story's Commentaries on the Constitution, Vol. I, p. 163.]
All the colonies did not bear the same relation to the English government. Owing to the different manner in which the right of settlement, and occupancy of the soil had been obtained from the king, the colonies had obtained different rights of government, and were placed under different obligations to the crown. There came thus to be three types of colonial governments; the provincial or royal, the proprietary, and charter governments.
#I. Provincial Colonies.#--Those colonies which possessed a provincial form of government were royal colonies, being governed almost entirely by England, as she governs many of her colonies to-day. At the head of each was a Governor appointed by the King of England. He was assisted by a council,