Representation.

The imperial system was not designed for provincial assemblies to become the central governing force, but in all provinces (most had become royal by the mid eighteenth century) this is precisely what happened. In 1619 the first local representative body in British America assembled in Virginia. It was called the House of Burgesses (a burgess was an English representative from a local borough or corporate town). The words of Virginia governor Sir George Yeardley in 1618 concerning the formation of this new representative government could just as well have been said of the other colonial governments that would follow: they were, he said, "to imitate and follow the laws and administration of justice used in the realm of England as near as may be." The members of local assemblies, from the first in Virginia to the last in Georgia, saw their representative...