Beginning at the time of colonization with substantially the same
principles of liberty and government, the two regions developed under
circumstances so different that, at the end of a century and a half, they
were as different from each other as from their prototype.

[Sidenote: Separation of departments.]
[Sidenote: Aristocracy.]

The Stuart sovereigns of England steadily attempted to strengthen their
power, and the resistance to that effort caused an immense growth of
Parliamentary influence. The colonies had little occasion to feel or to
resent direct royal prerogative. To them the Crown was represented by
governors, with whom they could quarrel without being guilty of treason,
and from whom in general they feared very little, but whom they could not
depose. Governors shifted rapidly, and colonial assemblies eventually took
over much of the executive business from the governors, or gave it to
officers whom they elected. But while, in the eighteenth century, the
system of a responsible ministry was growing up in England under the
Hanoverian kings, the colonies were accustomed to a sharp division between
the legislative and the executive departments. Situated as they were at a
great distance from the mother-country, the assemblies were obliged to
pass sweeping laws. The easiest way of checking them was to limit the
power of the assemblies by strong clauses in the charters or in the
governor's instructions; and to the very last the governors, and above the
governors the king, retained the power of royal veto, which in England was
never exercised after 1708. Thus the colonies were accustomed to see their
laws quietly and legally reversed, while Parliament was growing into the
belief that its will ought to prevail against the king or the judges. In a