Conflict
The perennial struggles between governors and the Assemblies are sometimes taken as symptoms of a rising democratic spirit. However, these assemblies represented only the privileged classes, and were protecting the colony against executive encroachments. Legally, a governor's authority was unassailable. In resisting that authority, assemblies resorted to justification by arguments from natural rights and general welfare, giving life to the notion that governments derived, or ought to derive, their authority from the consent of the governed.
Read more about this topic: Colonial Government In The Thirteen Colonies
Famous quotes containing the word conflict:
“He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty helps us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“There is no prescribed method for resolving every specific conflict a mother has with her child, and there is certainly no method that will enable her to have exactly what she wants....There is, however, a larger goal, which is to establish and over-all climate of reasonableness, one in which she and her child can hear each other.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“This conflict between the powers of love and chastity ... it ended apparently in the triumph of chastity. Love was suppressed, held in darkness and chains, by fear, conventionality, aversion, or a tremulous yearning to be pure.... But this triumph of chastity was only an apparent, a pyrrhic victory. It would break through the ban of chastity, it would emerge—if in a form so altered as to be unrecognizable.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)