22.  How was the Revolutionary War brought on?

23.  Describe the last act of parliament that brought matters to a crisis.

Section 2. The Transition from Colonial to State Governments.

[Sidenote:  Dissolution of assemblies and parliaments.] [Sidenote:  Committees of Correspondence.] During the earlier part of the Revolutionary War most of the states had some kind of provisional government.  The case of Massachusetts may serve as an illustration.  There, as in the other colonies, the governor had the power of dissolving the assembly.  This was like the king’s power of dissolving parliament in the days of the Stuarts.  It was then a dangerous power.  In modern England there is nothing dangerous in a dissolution of parliament; on the contrary, it is a useful device for ascertaining the wishes of the people, for a new House of Commons must be elected immediately.  But in old times the king would turn his parliament out of doors, and as long as he could beg, borrow, or steal enough money to carry on government according to his own notions, he would not order a new election.  Fortunately such periods were not very long.  The latest instance was in the reign of Charles I, who got on without a parliament from 1629 to 1640.[9] In the American colonies the dissolution of the assembly by the governor was not especially dangerous, but it sometimes made mischief by delaying needed legislation.  During the few years preceding the Revolution, the assemblies were so often dissolved that it became necessary for the people to devise some new way of getting their representatives together to act for the colony.  In Massachusetts this end was attained by the famous “Committees of Correspondence.”  No one could deny that town-meetings were legal, or that the people of one township had a right to ask advice from the people of another township.  Accordingly each township appointed a committee to correspond or confer with committees from other townships.  This system was put into operation by Samuel Adams in 1772, and for the next two years the popular resistance to the crown was organized by these committees.  For example, before the tea was thrown into Boston harbour, the Boston committee sought and received advice from every township in Massachusetts, and the treatment of the tea-ships was from first to last directed by the committees of Boston and five neighbour towns.

[Footnote:  9:  The kings of France contrived to get along without a representative assembly from 1614 to 1789, and during this long period abuses so multiplied that the meeting of the States-General in 1789 precipitated the great revolution which overthrew the monarchy.]

[Sidenote:  Provincial Congress] In 1774 a further step was taken.  As parliament had overthrown the old government, and sent over General Gage as military governor, to put its new system into operation, the people defied and ignored Gage, and the townships elected delegates to meet together in what was called a “Provincial Congress.”  The president of this congress was the chief provincial executive officer of the commonwealth, and there was a small executive council, known as the “Committee of Safety.”