58. Recommendation for the Removal of a Governor

(1762)

BY THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS FOR TRADE AND PLANTATIONS This extract illustrates the remedy for persistent disobedience or corruption on the part of a governor.

COPY

OPY of Representation from the B: of Trade to the King in Council, for removing M: Hardy from the Government of New Jersey, dated March 27th 1762 for his having appointed three Judges of that Province during their good behaviour, in Disobedience to his Majesty's Instructions.

To the Kings most Excellent Majesty,

May it please your Majesty...

We have already in Our humble Representation to your Majesty of the 11th of November last so fully set forth Our Opinion of the impropriety of the Judges in the Plantations holding their Offices during good behaviour and the operation, weh in the present state of those Plantations such a Constitution would have to lessen their just and proper dependance upon your Majesty's Government that it is unnecessary for Us to add any thing further upon that head, and your Majesty's General Instructions to all your Governors and those Instructions in particular which were grounded upon that Representation are so full and so positive that We cannot offer any thing that may in the least degree extenuate so premeditated and unprecedented an Act of disobedience of your Majesty's Governor of New Jersey, in a matter so essential to your Majesty's interest and Service, not only in that Province but in all other your Majesty's American Dominions.

The appointing Mr Morris to be Chief Justice after the Contempt he had shown of your Majesty's authority, by procuring a person who had been appointed to that Office in consequence of His late Majesty's Warrant, to be superseded by a Judgment of that Court, in which he claimed to preside by a bare authority of the Governor, is alone such an example of misconduct, as does, in our opinion, render the Governor unworthy of the Trust your Majesty has conferred upon him.

But aggravated as his Guilt is by the mode of the appointment and by the influence which it will necessary have in the neighbouring Provinces of Pensylvania and New York, and particularly in the latter, where the utmost zeal and efforts of the Lieut Governor has been hardly sufficient to restrain the intemperate zeal and indecent opposition of the Assembly to your Majesty's authority, and Royal Determination upon this point: It becomes, under these Circumstances, our indispensible duty to propose that this Gentleman may be forthwith Recalled from his Government, as a necessary example to deter others in the same situation from like Acts of Disobedience to your Majesty's Orders, and as a measure essentially necessary to support your Majesty's just Rights and authority in the Colonies and to enable Us to do Our duty in the station your Majesty has been graciously pleased to place Us in, and effectually to execute the Trust committed to Us..

F. W. Ricord and W. Nelson, editors, Documents relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey (Newark, 1885), IX, 361–362 passim.

59. The Ground of Dispute over Salaries (1764)

BY LATE GOVERNOR THOMAS POWNALL

This question was the chief occasion of dispute between governors and their assemblies. Pownall had special opportunities for knowing the difficulties of the situation. Bibliography as in No. 53 above.

HE next general point yet undetermined, the determination of which very essentially imports the subordination and dependance of the colony governments on the government of the mother country, is, the manner of providing for the support of government, and for all the executive officers of the crown. The freedom and right efficiency of the constitution require, that the executive and judicial officers of government should be independent of the legislative; and more especially in popular governments, where the legislature itself is so much

influenced by the humours and passions of the people; for if they be not, there will be neither justice nor equity in any of the courts of law, nor any efficient execution of the laws and orders of government in the magistracy: according, therefore, to the constitution of Great Britain, the crown has the appointment and payment of the several executive and judicial officers, and the legislature settles a permanent and fixed appointment for the support of government and civil list in general: The crown therefore has, à fortiori, a right to require of the colonies, to whom, by its commission or charter, it gives the power of government, such permanent support, appropriated to the offices, not the officers of government, that they may not depend upon the temporary and arbitrary will of the legislature.

The crown does, by its instructions to its governors, order them to require of the legislature a permanent support. This order of the crown is generally, if not universally rejected, by the legislatures of the colonies. The assemblies quote the precedents of the British constitution, and found all the rights and privileges which they claim on the principles thereof. They allow the truth and fitness of this principle in the British constitution, where the executive power of the crown is immediately administred by the King's Majesty; yet say, under the circumstances in which they find themselves, that there is no other measure left to them to prevent the misapplications of public money, than by an annual voting and appropriation of the salaries of the governor and other civil officers, issuing from monies lodged in the hands of a provincial treasurer appointed by the assemblies: For in these subordinate governments, remote from his Majesty's immediate influence, administred oftentimes by necessitous and rapacious governors who have no natural, altho' they have a political connection with the country, experience has shewn that such governors have misapplied the monies raised for the support of government, so that the civil officers have been left unpaid, even after having been provided for by the assembly. The point then of this very important question comes to this issue, whether the inconveniencies arising, and experienced by some instances of misapplications of appropriations (for which however there are in the King's courts of law, due and sufficient remedies against the offender) are a sufficient reason and ground for establishing a measure so directly contrary to the British constitution: and whether the inconveniencies to be traced in the history of the colonies, through the votes and journals of their legislatures, in which the support of governors,

judges, and officers of the crown will be found to have been withheld or reduced on occasions, where the assemblies have supposed hat they have had reason to disapprove the nomination, — or the person, or his conduct; whether, I say, these inconveniencies have not been more detrimental, and injurious to government; and whether, instead of these colonies being dependent on, and governed under, the officers of the crown, the scepter is not reversed, and the officers of the crown dependent on and governed by the assemblies, as the Colonists themselves allow, that this measure "renders the governor, and all the other servants of the crown, dependent on the assembly." This is mere matter of experience; and the fact, when duly enquired into, must speak for itself: - but the operation of this measure does not end here; it extends to the assuming by the assemblies the actual executive part of the government in the case of the revenue, than which nothing is more clearly and unquestionably settled in the crown. In the colonies the treasurer is solely and entirely a servant of the assembly or general court; and although the monies granted and appropriated be, or ought to be, granted to the crown on such appropriations, the treasurer is neither named by the crown, nor its governor, nor gives security to the crown or to the Lord High Treasurer, (which seems the most proper) nor in many of the colonies, is to obey the governor's warrant in the issue, nor accounts in the auditor's office, nor in any one colony is it admitted, that he is liable to such account. In consequence of this supposed necessity, for the assembly's taking upon them the administration of the treasury and revenue, the governor and servants of the crown, in the ordinary revenue of government, are not only held dependent on the assembly, but all services, where special appropriations are made for the extraordinaries which such services require, are actually executed and done by commissioners appointed by the assembly, to whose disposition such appropriations are made liable. It would be perhaps invidious, and might tend to prejudging on points which ought very seriously and dispassionately to be examined, if I were here to point out in the several instances of the actual execution of this assumed power, how almost every executive power of the crown lodged in its governor, is, where money is necessary, thus exercised by the assembly and its commissioners. I beg leave here to repeat, that I do not enter into the discussion of these points; my only aim is, fairly to state them, giving the strongest and clearest explanations I am capable of to both sides, that the discussion may be brought to some deter

minate issue; and from that state of them to suggest, the absolute necessity there is of their being determined by that part of government, which shall be found to have the right and power to determine them; and to be so determined, that while the rights, liberties, and even privileges of the colonies are preserved, the colonies may be retained in that true and constitutional dependance to the mother country, and to the government of the mother country, which shall unite them to it as parts of one whole.

It is a duty of perfect obligation from government towards the colonies, to preserve the liberty of the subject, the liberty of the constitution: It is a duty also of prudence in government towards itself, as such conduct is the only permanent and sure ground, whereon to maintain the dependance of those countries, without destroying their utility as colonies.

Thomas Pownall, The Administration of the Colonies (London, 1765), 49-54.

60. A Reprimand to a Colonial Governor (1772)

BY SECRETARY THE EARL OF DARTMOUTH

Dartmouth was one of the English secretaries of state from 1772 to 1775, and in charge of colonial affairs. This rebuke illustrates the discipline which might be applied to governors, short of removal (see No. 58 above).

Sir,

A

S I have mentioned to you in my Dispatch of this day's date No 4. that the state of what has passed respecting the lands between the Rivers Hudson & Connecticut and also respecting grants of Lands in General, would probably be the subject of a separate letter, I must not loose this opportunity of telling you that the Reports of the Board of Trade upon those subjects have not yet been decided upon at the Council Board, and therefore the instructions which I am to give, in consequence of their Lord PP determination, must be deferred till the next Packet-It becomes my duty however, in obedience to the King's commands, to acquaint you, that the deviations from the letter, & spirit of the Kings instructions in respect to the New Hampshire Townships to the west of Connecticut River; to grants of Land to the North of Crown point, and to Licenses to private persons to purchase lands of the