ATTENTION may now be turned to the governor’s relation to a body which had a far more important influence in the constitutional history of the colonies, namely, the General Assembly, or General Court, as it was variously called.

     A word must first be said as to the constitution of the assembly. In all the royal and proprietary governments, except Pennsylvania, it consisted of two houses,—the council appointed on the governor’s recommendation, and a lower representative house. In Pennsylvania, as has already been seen, the councillors were excluded from direct participation in legislation, though the governor was required to take their advice. This requirement was very unpopular with the assembly, which naturally felt that in this way the council became practically an upper house.

     The governor, by his commission, had other important powers in the constitution of the assembly. In the first place, the calling of the assembly was left in his hands, subject, however, to the advice and consent of the council: no assembly could even come into existence without his action.¹ This power was limited in two ways, however, first by specific requirements of charter or statute, and secondly by the practical necessity of calling assemblies in order to get supplies. In two colonies, Pennsylvania [Delaware] and Massachusetts, the charters, though giving to the governor the right of summons, required annual elections and sessions at

fixed dates.¹ In a few other colonies there were triennial or septennial acts, which required the calling of a new assembly at the end of a fixed period of time, but still left the governor comparatively free.² By far the more important check, however, from a practical point of view, was to be found in the financial necessities of the provincial governments. An assembly which held the purse-strings could not be dispensed with; and the result was that annual sessions became the rule in nearly all the colonies, though there were some exceptions. The Virginia statutes, for example, show several considerable gaps: from 1686 to 1691 there was no legislation and apparently no legislature, also from 1715 to 1718, and finally from 1748 to 1752, periods of three and four years.³ It will be remembered that in Virginia official salaries were paid out of a permanent fund.

     The right of summons has another aspect in its bearing upon the election of members of the lower house, or House of Representatives. Elections to this body were held regularly in accordance with writs issued by the governor to the sheriffs directing the choice of a certain number of representatives from each district.⁴ The question then arises as to whether the governor had any discretion in the issue of the writ, so far, for example, as to determine the number of members who should be returned from a particular district, or to grant the right of representation to a new district. To this it may be said that in general the writ of summons was purely formal, though sometimes the question was raised in a practical form. An example is seen in a petition of the Maryland House, in 1676, protesting against the proprietor’s abuse of the right of summons; the petition admitted the right of the proprietor (then governor) to determine the number to be elected, but

there was dissatisfaction because, out of four persons elected, only two had been called out by writ to serve. The governor agreed at that time to summon four.¹ In 1681 and 1682 the lower house attempted to regulate the number of representatives by statute; but the proprietor resisted, and finally himself issued an ordinance regulating the representation. Thereupon the House demanded something more permanent, asking the passage of an act for that purpose; but the governor refused to surrender his prerogative. The appointment of delegates and the form of the writ were, however, finally settled by statute.²

     A similar question arose in North Carolina, where complaint was made that Governor Burrington and his council arranged electoral districts without the consent of the assembly in order to control elections. The governor insisted that he had precedents; but this claim the assembly denied, and finally went so far as to exclude members from new precincts not fixed by act of assembly. For a time the point was gained, and the representation was fixed by acts of assembly.³ Finally, however, the home government interfered: the acts of assembly creating electoral districts were disallowed, and the principle was laid down that the right to elect members ought to be conferred only by the crown, a principle which was carried out in the form of proclamations issued in the king’s name by the governor.⁴ In New Hampshire also the same point was the occasion of a contest, in which after long deadlocks the assembly was finally beaten.⁵ A different position was taken in New

Jersey, where the original apportionment of representatives was made in the governor’s instructions. New assignments, however, were here fixed by acts of assembly, although these acts were passed with a clause suspending execution till the crown should give its assent.¹ In the other colonies the crown apparently made at first no objection to apportionment by acts of assembly; in fact, this method formed the general rule until the latter part of the colonial period, when the governors were specifically forbidden to assent to any act increasing the number of members of the assembly.²

     Owing to the fact that elections were held in accordance with the governor’s writs addressed to the sheriffs, who were his appointees, the governor had some opportunity to influence the election of members. Indeed, corruption of this kind was distinctly charged against several provincial governors; and in a report on the condition of the colonies, made to the Board of Trade in 1715, the governors generally were accused of influencing elections unlawfully.³ It must be said, however,

that this charge is supported by comparatively little direct evidence during the latter part of the colonial period. After the assembly had once met, the governor of the colony claimed some control over the organization of the House. The royal commission contained the apparently innocent provision that the regular oaths of allegiance and fidelity should be administered by the governor to the members of the assembly, and that no one should be permitted to sit until he had taken the oath.¹ This practice seems generally to have been a mere formality; but in two colonies the governor attempted to make such use of the function as to impair the ancient parliamentary privilege of the right of the assembly to judge of the election of its members. For example, Governor Belcher of New Hampshire claimed that he had the right to judge what members were duly elected; the House took a decided stand against this assumption, and refused to proceed to business till the members in question were qualified; whereupon the governor yielded and administered the oath.² Similarly, Governor Cornbury of New Jersey refused, at the suggestion of his council, to swear certain members whom the council declared not qualified; and though he succeeded in having his way for the time being, yet he was censured by the Board of Trade, which wrote that his lordship would “do well to leave the Determination about Elections of Representatives to that House, and not to intermeddle therein.”³ It is clear, then, that the governor’s interpretation was not sanctioned by the home government.

     In nearly all the colonies it was customary, in accordance with the usage of the mother country, to present the newly-elected speaker to the governor for the latter’s approval. In England this presentation had become a mere formality, and

it appears to have been so in most of the colonies; the governor seems usually to have given his approval as a matter of course, even when, as in one instance in North Carolina, the choice must have been extremely distasteful to him.¹ There were, however, a few cases in which this usually formal procedure became of practical importance. In 1707, Governor Cornbury of New Jersey strongly objected to the assembly’s choice of Samuel Jennings, a Quaker, as speaker, and was at first inclined to reject the appointment; but in order to avoid trouble, he finally decided to approve it, though he seems to have had no doubt of his legal right to negative the choice of the assembly.²

     In Massachusetts the presentation of the speaker seems at first, as in most of the other colonies, to have been regarded as a mere formality.³ When, however, in 1705, the House chose as speaker one Oakes, to whom Governor Dudley strongly objected, the latter refused to give his approval; whereupon the House ignored the governor’s action and proceeded to business. Dudley finally yielded, but with a formal protest that he did so with a saving of his prerogative and owing to the pressure of the war.⁴ The claim was revived under more favorable circumstances in 1720, when Governor Shute negatived the speaker chosen by the House, supporting his action by the opinion of the home government given at the time when the question was referred to it by Dudley. Shute advised the House to choose a new speaker, and to appeal to the home government for an explanation of that part of the charter which referred to the governor’s negative upon all acts of the General Court. The House, however, held its ground,

refusing to choose a new speaker, and was dissolved. In 1721 the assembly chose another speaker. The governor declared his approval, which the House then pronounced unnecessary.¹ The dispute was finally settled by the so-called “explanatory” charter, which decided the question against the assembly.² In New Hampshire also the same point was successfully asserted by the governor, and his veto was sometimes used with effect.³

     After the House had thus been summoned, had met, and had organized itself, the governor still had great power over it, inasmuch as the continuance of its sessions depended entirely upon his will, at least so far as the terms of the royal commission could confer that power. The governor was authorized by his commission to adjourn, prorogue, and dissolve all general assemblies as he might think necessary; and by a later instruction he was directed not to allow the assembly to adjourn itself except from day to day. To this general rule two exceptions must be noted. In Pennsylvania the charter provided for annual elections, and directed also that the assembly should sit on its own adjournments; but these provisions did not at first prevent the governor from exercising

his powers of prorogation and dissolution. In Massachusetts there was a similar charter provision for annual elections and annual meetings; but the power of prorogation and dissolution remained within these limits.¹

     In regard to the question of prorogation, it was held by the crown law officers that the governor might prorogue to any time or to any place, that he might even prorogue an assembly when not in session.² How was this power actually exercised? In the first place, assemblies that proved refractory were often prorogued, in the hope that a short interval of consideration might bring them to a more favorable mood.³ Furthermore, it was charged by the assemblies, and probably with some truth, that the governor also used this power merely as a means of harassing the assembly in the hope of forcing it to accede to his demands.⁴ This view seems to be taken for granted by Douglass in his “Summary,” where he says that the governor “calls, dissolves, prorogues, adjourns, removes, and other ways harasses the General Assembly at Pleasure.”⁵

     There can indeed be no doubt that assemblies were sometimes prorogued in order to prevent them from taking action not in accordance with the governor’s wishes. A serious charge of this sort was brought against Governor Belcher when he was governor of both Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The crown, it seems, had recommended that the assembly of each province appoint commissioners to present its boundary

claims; and it was charged against Governor Belcher, who was a Massachusetts man by birth and whose sympathies were strongly on the side of that province, that he prorogued the assembly till some days after the date fixed for the meeting of the arbitrators; it was also charged that he afterwards prevented the assembly from meeting in time to appeal from the decision as reported by these arbitrators. For this conduct he was severely censured by the home government.¹ Other instances occurred in 1765 and 1768, when the governors of New York and Georgia used their right of prorogation in a similar way to prevent action by their assemblies on the Stamp Act Congress and the Massachusetts circular letter.² It must be remembered, too, that this control over adjournments worked both ways: if the governor might adjourn or prorogue the assembly against its will, he might also keep it in session equally against its will.³

     The question in regard to dissolution now occurs. Prorogation merely ended a particular session; dissolution terminated the life of an assembly: it is therefore not difficult to see that the governor, with this power of dissolution in his hands, had a very effective hold upon the assembly. This right belonged to the governor in every colony except Pennsylvania where it was disputed and seems finally to have been abandoned.⁴ Dissolution was a common method of getting rid of an obstinate assembly, in the hope of securing one which would prove more tractable. For example, Governor Shute dissolved the Massachusetts General Court in 1720, with the announcement that he would serve out a new summons speedily, when he

hoped that representatives would be chosen “that should fear God, and honour the King”; and Governor Johnston of North Carolina declared that the assembly had failed to “mend” and that he had therefore dissolved it.¹ The assembly was sometimes dissolved because the governor feared action inconsistent with his own interests. Thus, Governor Reynolds of Georgia was charged with having dissolved an assembly, with the taxes of the coming year unprovided for, in order to prevent an inconvenient inquiry into the conduct of one of his favorites.² Of course the dread of dissolution must have had some influence upon the action of members who were by no means sure of being returned at a new election; but on the whole it may be questioned whether the dissolution of a refractory assembly brought the governor any very great advantage in the long run, especially during the latter part of the colonial era, when the issue between local interests as represented by the assembly and royal interests as represented by the governor became more clearly marked, and when an abrupt dissolution would have tended to emphasize that issue more sharply. The result of such action might very well have been that a new election would be fatal to many of the governor’s supporters, and that the new house would be more decided in its opposition than its predecessor.

     Another feature of the right of dissolution, and perhaps on the whole a more dangerous one, was the power to refuse dissolution. If it was desirable to dissolve an unfavorable assembly, it was just as clearly desirable to keep a compliant one when once chosen, a consideration which often caused assemblies to be kept in existence for several years. For example, in Virginia the assembly which was first called in February, 1727, held its second session in May, 1730, its third session in May, 1732, and its fourth session in August, 1734. Another striking case is that of the assembly of 1742,

which held its second session in 1744, its fourth in 1746, and its fifth in 1747.¹ The New Hampshire assembly of 1722 presented as a grievance the fact that it was five years since it first met, and prayed for a dissolution.² In another case in the same province, the governor refused to dissolve the assembly till the king’s business was done, that is, till an appropriate supply was granted.³ Hamilton, in his famous speech in defence of Zenger, referred to the case of a governor in his time who had kept an assembly for “near twice seven years together.”⁴

     That the necessity of limiting the action of the governor in the exercise of his functions of summons, prorogation, and dissolution was strongly felt, is seen in the large number of triennial and septennial acts passed in the different colonies. Reference has already been made to the charter provisions in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. In some of the other provinces there survived traditions of a freer practice before the days of the royal government. Thus, South Carolina during the proprietary period had passed a statute limiting the life of an assembly to two years, and providing that sessions should be held at least once a year, closing, however, with a saving of the proprietors’ prerogative to adjourn, prorogue, and dissolve any assembly “when and as often as they shall think fit.”⁵ In 1721, the second year of the royal government, a similar act was passed, requiring dissolution once in every three years.⁶ Under the act of 1745 an annual dissolution was required; but this action seems to have been regarded as radical, for two years later a provision was made for dissolution only once in two years.⁷ In North Carolina there had been a biennial assembly act during the proprietary period, but it was disallowed by the crown.⁸ In East and West Jersey under

the proprietors, provisions for annual elections had been made; and in West Jersey the assembly adjourned itself.¹

     These precedents naturally had their influence upon the action of the assemblies. In 1723 the New Hampshire assembly passed a triennial act with a suspending clause; the bill was not favorably received by the home government, however, and it became evident that the royal assent was not likely to be given. In 1728 a new bill was brought in and passed; but this time the assembly prudently omitted the suspending clause, declaring with questionable logic that failure to disallow the act proved that it was not offensive to the crown.² Other attempts to enact triennial laws proved less successful. New Jersey passed a triennial act in 1728, but it was disallowed by the crown; and a similar bill passed the assembly in 1739, only to be vetoed by the governor.³ In New York a triennial act was passed in 1737, and a strong message was sent home by the assembly urging the royal assent. In this appeal, reference was made to the long continuance of the last two assemblies as a serious grievance, and particular emphasis was laid on the fact that the corrupting influence of patronage upon the assembly was so great that “in some Counties,” to use the words of the message, “even their very Representatives have become themselves their greatest Grievance.” The Board of Trade, on consultation with its counsel, declared the act an infringement of the royal prerogative, and recommended its disallowance; a few years later, however, a poor substitute was secured in a septennial act, limiting the continuance of the assembly to seven years.⁴ Virginia passed a septennial act in 1762, requiring that a session should be held at least once in three years.⁵ Finally, in 1767, the home government declared itself definitely on the whole subject of such limitations

of the governor’s power, by a general instruction of that year directing the governors not to assent to any act fixing the duration of the assembly.¹

     As the motives that led to the passage of these acts are plainly apparent, so those which animated the opposition to them seem equally clear. It was believed that such acts tended to weaken the dependence of the colonial legislature upon the governor, and therefore its dependence upon the crown, whose representative he was. Governor Montgomerie of New York and New Jersey probably stated accurately the feelings of many of his fellow-governors when, in urging the disallowance of the New Jersey triennial act, he said that his predecessors “could not have carried on the publick business so quietly and Successfully as they did, if they had been obliged to call a new Assembly every three years.”²

     In addition to these constitutional means of influence, there was another effective method by which the governor acted on the assembly, namely, through his power of dispensing patronage, a function that in many of the provinces was undoubtedly an element of considerable importance. Thus, according to a contemporary writer, the independence of the Virginia assembly was seriously impaired by the assignment of offices to various members of the lower house.³ Similar charges were made in Massachusetts; in a pamphlet issued in this province in 1708, entitled “The Deplorable State of New-England,” is an interesting passage which shows at least something of the state of popular feeling at the time.⁴ The writer attributes the governor’s

influence over the representatives to his distribution of official patronage. Allowance must of course be made here for extreme partisanship; but much the same view is gained from more trustworthy sources.¹ The New York assembly, in urging the passage of the triennial act, had emphasized the corrupting influence of official patronage upon the members of the assembly.² Maryland furnishes an extreme illustration of the same point. It was at one time a favorite policy of the proprietor, and of his secretary, to win over the members of the opposition by appointing them to provincial offices. At one time, indeed, an elaborate system of corruption was proposed, by which the assembly was to be kept permanently under control.³

     Something should be said in regard to the attempts made by the various assemblies to check this dangerous abuse. In 1678 the question was raised in the Maryland assembly as to whether the proprietary sheriffs or law officers should be allowed to sit in the assembly. Soon afterwards an act was passed disqualifying sheriffs and ordinary-keepers (who received their licenses from the governor); and three years later the assembly enforced its view by throwing out all sheriffs who had been elected members.⁴ In 1716 an act was finally passed disqualifying for membership in the assembly ordinary-keepers and all other persons disqualified to sit in the British Parliament.⁵ In 1757 the lower house passed a radical measure, disqualifying for election to the assembly all holders of proprietary offices; providing, furthermore, that if any person

within six years after ceasing to be a member of the assembly should hold any office of trust or profit, or receive any pension, he should be fined one thousand pounds; and, finally, forbidding members to solicit offices for their friends under penalty of a fine of the same amount.¹ This was an extreme measure, and was of course rejected by the upper house;² but it is interesting, because it shows that civil service reform had made some progress in Maryland even at that early date.

     A Virginia act of 1730 disqualified sheriffs absolutely, and provided that members accepting other offices of profit should resign their seats, though they might be re-elected. A similar act was passed in 1762.³ A South Carolina statute of 1745 disqualified salaried officers of the province for membership in the assembly.⁴ The New York assembly, after an attempt to disqualify all officers, finally in 1770 passed an act disqualifying judicial officers for sitting in the assembly; but the act was disallowed by the crown.⁵ These are comparatively insignificant results, but they are at least interesting as showing an appreciation of the evils which they were designed to correct.

     THUS far attention has been given to the indirect action of the governor upon legislation through his influence over the assembly. But the governor was not limited to this indirect influence: he was himself a part of the legislative system. Some of the early governors had been invested with legislative authority, either independently or with the cooperation of the council; but, as has been seen, this abnormal condition gradually passed away, leaving to the governor only a limited right of issuing ordinances and the power to approve or veto the legislation of the assembly.

     Reference has already been made to the governor’s right of issuing ordinances or proclamations of two classes, namely,

those for the regulation of fees and those for the erection of courts. It will be remembered also that in both of these cases his use of this authority gave rise to serious disputes.¹ With these exceptions, however, the issue of ordinances by the governor seems as a rule to have been kept within reasonable bounds, and complaints of his exercise of the power are comparatively rare. The most common of the ordinances issued by him were proclamations enforcing the provisions of statute or treaty, and regulations regarding subjects that might fairly be considered matters of executive concern. Some instances may be taken almost at random. Thus, in the Virginia statutes is a proclamation regarding settlement on the outlands in time of danger; another forbidding the seating of certain lands near the North Carolina border; a third establishing regulations for trade with the westward Indians.² Again, the governor of North Carolina is recommended by his council to issue a proclamation regulating the sale of liquor to Indians.³ A Maryland proclamation of 1672 prohibits the export of sheep, a measure intended to check evasion of the statute prohibiting the export of wool.⁴ During the French and Indian troubles the New Hampshire council, at Governor Dudley’s direction, issued an ordinance requiring the registration of all Frenchmen within the province.⁵ In 1721 the governor of Massachusetts, anticipating war with the Indians, issued an order to the frontier settlers directing them to remain on their estates and keep possession of the country; and though his authority was questioned, yet some extension of the power to issue ordinances may be justified by the stress of military necessity.⁶ Another case, which seems more distinctly an encroachment upon legislative ground, is the ordinance issued by the governor of New Jersey in 1717 in regard to the regulation of ferriage.⁷ On the whole, however, it may fairly be

said that there is no evidence of general or serious abuse of the power of issuing ordinances.

     The governor was furthermore, as has been said, a part of the regular legislative system of the province, acting with the cooperation of the council and assembly: the commission empowered him, with the consent of the council and assembly, to make laws not repugnant but, as nearly as might be, agreeable to the laws of England.¹ In theory this power seems considerable. How much did it actually mean in practice?

     In some of the colonies during the earliest period there had been, as has been seen, an effort to secure for the governor the right of initiative in legislation. All such attempts had failed, however; and during the later period also any attempt on the part of the governor to initiate legislation was regarded with great suspicion. This feeling was so strong, indeed, that when Governor Wentworth of New Hampshire sent down the draft of two orders on money matters, to be passed upon by the House, his action was resented as tending to impair the independence of the assembly.² In reality, the governor had the bare right of recommending legislation; and this he usually did in his speech delivered before the assembly at the beginning of its sessions. In this speech he ordinarily gave some account of the condition of the province, and, in time of war, of the conduct of military operations or of negotiations with the Indians; he then advised the passage of laws necessary to meet the needs of the province, usually urging as his most prominent recommendation the passage of a supply act.³ The governor was also made the medium through which the home government communicated with the assembly, receiving always in his instructions a number of articles directing him to recommend the passage of particular legislation desired by the crown.⁴

     Since the right of recommendation necessarily carried with it very little actual power, the governor was left to find his really important legislative function in his right to approve, or to refuse to approve, bills passed by the council and the representative house. The commission gave him a negative vote on all laws, statutes, and ordinances, “to the end that nothing may be passed or done by Our said Council or Assembly, to the Prejudice of us, Our Heirs and Successors.”¹ Furthermore, this veto was not merely suspensive: there was no such thing as passing a bill over the governor’s head.

     On the other hand, the governor’s right of assent to legislation was neither final nor unrestricted, inasmuch as bills approved by him were still liable to disallowance by the crown at any time. The home government required that all acts passed by the provincial assemblies be sent over, within three months after their passage for approval or disallowance by the crown;² and although such acts were in force until actually disallowed by the crown, yet this disallowance might take place at any time without any limitation. When, however, an act was once confirmed by the crown, it could not be repealed except in the regular course of legislation.

     In the second place, the governor was restricted in his right of assent to legislation, in that there were certain kinds of

bills that he was forbidden to approve, a precaution intended in particular to protect imperial or British interests against injurious local legislation. He was not, for example, to allow the final enactment of bills for the issue of paper money, or to approve acts imposing discriminating duties on British ships or manufactures.¹ Some of these acts might be passed with the so-called “suspending clause,” by which execution was suspended until the royal consent could be given; but others were forbidden absolutely. Sometimes a penalty was annexed; that is, the governor was forbidden to pass particular acts on pain of the royal displeasure and of recall from his province.²

     These restrictions, however, were much more easily imposed than enforced. The colonists generally believed that they were unreasonable, that they were infringements of the inherent legislative independence of the assemblies, and consequently they usually resisted instructions of this kind. Thomas Pownall, who was certainly entitled to speak with some authority, declared: “In some cases of emergency, and in the cases of the concerns of individuals, the instruction has been submitted to, but the principle never.”³ The instructions prohibiting the issue of paper money, or, in the proprietary colonies, those forbidding the taxation of proprietary estates presented peculiar difficulties. If, as sometimes happened, an assembly absolutely refused, unless such acts were passed, to appropriate military supplies urgently needed for the conduct of the war, what was the governor to do? It was almost inevitable

that he should do what in the majority of cases he actually did, that is, yield to the pressure thus put upon him. The assemblies soon learned to make the most of these difficulties and to increase them by various expedients, one of which was the practice, pursued in direct defiance of the royal instructions, of inserting items entirely foreign to the main body of the bill, of attaching legislative riders to bills appropriating money. Thus in an act for the inspection of tobacco the Maryland assembly inserted sections limiting officers’ fees;¹ and in the supply bill of 1759 the North Carolina assembly inserted a provision for the appointment of an agent.²

     Another device was that of coupling the supply bill with some other act desired by the assembly, and refusing to pass the one till the other had received the governor’s assent. Thus, the North Carolina assembly of 1760 refused to pass the aid bill until certain other measures were approved by the governor.³ In 1715 Governor Hunter of New York wrote that the revenue act had been passed in return for his assent to the naturalization act.⁴ Again, in 1741, the assembly of the same province resolved that it would not raise any support for the government unless the governor first assented to all the bills that it had sent or should send up to him.⁵ In 1759 the governor of New Hampshire presented to the House an additional instruction, directing the assembly to settle salaries on the judiciary; whereupon the House replied that it would settle suitable salaries on the justices when the province was divided into three counties, and not before.⁶ Furthermore, the assembly, through its control of the governor’s salary, was able to appeal to more selfish motives.

     Under these circumstances, what wonder is it that instructions were constantly violated? That they were so violated is proved by abundant evidence. In 1749 Governor Johnston

of North Carolina apologized for assenting to a paper-money bill, urging that only in this way could he raise the necessary supplies; and the first royal governor of South Carolina violated his instructions by passing a similar act.¹ New Hampshire also furnishes a striking illustration of the governor’s difficult position. In 1745, in response to a request from the assembly asking the passage of a bill for the issue of paper money, Governor Wentworth of that province referred to his instructions prohibiting such action, and refused to pass the desired bill. He afterwards yielded, on condition that a committee of the assembly should instruct its agent to implore the crown to excuse his action.²

     These few illustrations, which might easily be multiplied, are in accord with the general testimony of the home government; indeed, the order requiring that laws should be sent to England for approval was so often evaded that the crown had frequently no opportunity whatever to pass upon the legislation of a provincial assembly.³ It is clear, then, that the royal restrictions upon the governor’s power of assent to provincial legislation were by no means universally observed, that they often proved ineffective against a strong popular sentiment.