COLONIAL PROGRESS.

But nothing in progression can rest on its original plan. We may as well
think of rocking a grown man in the cradle of an infant. Therefore as
the colonies prospered and increased to a numerous and mighty people,
spreading over a very great tract of the globe; it was natural that they
should attribute to assemblies, so respectable in their formal
constitution, some part of the dignity of the great nations which they
represented. No longer tied to by-laws, these assemblies made acts of
all sorts and in all cases whatsoever. They levied money, not for
parochial purposes, but upon regular grants to the Crown, following all
the rules and principles of a parliament to which they approached every
day more and more nearly. Those who think themselves wiser than
Providence, and stronger than the course of nature, may complain of all
this variation, on the one side or the other, as their several humours
and prejudices may lead them. But things could not be otherwise; and
English colonies must be had on these terms, or not had at all.


FEUDAL PRINCIPLES AND MODERN TIMES.

In the first place, it is formed, in many respects, upon FEUDAL
PRINCIPLES. In the feudal times, it was not uncommon, even among
subjects, for the lowest offices to be held by considerable persons;
persons as unfit by their incapacity, as improper from their rank, to
occupy such employments. They were held by patent, sometimes for life,
and sometimes by inheritance. If my memory does not deceive me, a person
of no slight consideration held the office of patent hereditary cook to
an earl of Warwick. The earl of Warwick's soups, I fear, were not the