appointed by this absentee master was liable to be more devoted to his interests than to those of the people, and the civil service was seriously damaged by worthless favourites sent over from England for whom the governor was expected to find some office that would pay them a salary.  On the whole, it seemed less unsatisfactory to have the governors appointed by the crown; and so before the Revolutionary War all the proprietary governments had fallen, except those of the Penns and the Calverts, which doubtless survived because they were the best organized and best administered.

[Sidenote:  At the time of the Revolution there were three forms of colonial government:  1.  Republican, 2.  Proprietary, 3.  Royal.] There were thus at the time of the Revolutionary War three forms of state government in the American colonies.  There were, first, the Republican colonies, in which the governors were elected by the people, as in Rhode Island and Connecticut; secondly,the Proprietary colonies, in which the governors were appointed by hereditary proprietors, as in Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware; thirdly, the Royal colonies,[5] in which the governors were appointed by the crown, as in Georgia, the two Carolinas, Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire.  It is customary to distinguish the Republican colonies as Charter colonies, but that is not an accurate distinction, inasmuch as the Proprietary colonies also had charters.  And among the Royal colonies, Massachusetts, having been originally a republic, still had a charter in which her rights were so defined as to place her in a somewhat different position from the other Royal colonies; so that Prof.  Alexander Johnston, with some reason, puts her in a class by herself as a Semi-royal colony.

[Footnote 5:  Or, as they were sometimes called, Royal provinces. In the history of Massachusetts many writers distinguish the period before 1692 as the colonial period, and the period 1692 to 1774 as the provincial period.]

[Sidenote:  In all three forms there was a representative assembly, which alone could impose taxes.] These differences, it will be observed, related to the character and method of filling the governor’s office.  In the Republican colonies the governor naturally represented the interests of the people, in the Proprietary colonies he was the agent of the Penns or the Calverts, in the Royal colonies he was the agent of the king.  All the thirteen colonies alike had a legislative assembly elected by the people.  The basis of representation might be different in different colonies, as we have seen that in Massachusetts the delegates represented townships, whereas in Virginia they represented counties; but in all alike the assembly was a truly representative body, and in all alike it was the body that controlled the expenditure of public money.  These representative assemblies arose spontaneously