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:
“Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.”
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