The Localized Structure of Power

When the thirteen colonies of British North America were first founded in the seventeenth century, their provincial governments had exercised significant power. They had established structures of central governance, created institutions of local government, and legislated substantive law, sometimes in the form of complete codes of law. But, as the colonies grew in population and spread out geographically, provincial governments grew weaker. By the middle of the eighteenth century, eleven of the thirteen colonies had governors appointed by the Crown or by proprietors in England, and only two, Connecticut and Rhode Island, had elected governors. Because the appointed governors typically