Читать книгу THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (Complete Edition In 2 Volumes) - Fiske John - Страница 10

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During the session of the Albany Congress, a first attempt was made to establish a permanent union of the thirteen colonies. It was to Franklin that the plan was chiefly due. The legislative assembly of each colony was to choose, once in three years, representatives to attend a federal Grand Council; which was to meet every year at Philadelphia, a town which could be reached by a twenty days’ journey either from South Carolina or from New Hampshire. This Grand Council was to choose its own speaker, and could neither be dissolved nor prorogued, nor kept sitting longer than six weeks at any one time, except by its own consent or by especial order of the Crown. The Grand Council was to make treaties with the Indians and to regulate the Indian trade; and it was to have sole power of legislation on all matters concerning the colonies as a whole. To these ends, it could levy taxes, enlist soldiers, build forts, and nominate all civil officers. Its laws were to be submitted to the king for approval, and the royal veto, in order to be of effect, must be exercised within three years.

To this Grand Council each colony was to send a number of representatives, proportioned to its contributions to the continental military service; yet no colony was to send less than two or more than seven representatives. With the exception of such matters of general concern as were to be managed by the Grand Council, each colony was to retain its powers of legislation intact. On an emergency, any colony might singly defend itself against foreign attack, and the federal government was prohibited from impressing soldiers or seamen without the consent of the local legislature.

The supreme executive power was to be vested in a president or governor-general, appointed and paid by the Crown. He was to nominate all military officers, subject to the approval of the Grand Council, and was to have a veto on all the acts of the Grand Council. No money could be issued save by joint order of the governor-general and the council.

This plan, said Franklin, “is not altogether to my mind, but it is as I could get it.” It should be observed, to the credit of its author, that this scheme, long afterward known as the “Albany Plan,” contemplated the formation of a self-sustaining federal government, and not of a mere league. As Frothingham well says, “It designed to confer on the representatives of the people the power of making laws acting directly on individuals, and appointing officers to execute them, and yet not to interfere with the execution of the laws operating on the same individuals by the local officers.” It would have erected “a public authority as obligatory in its sphere as the local governments were in their spheres.” In this respect it was much more complete than the scheme of confederation agreed on in Congress in 1777, and it afforded a valuable precedent for the more elaborate and perfect Federal Constitution of 1787. It was in its main features a noble scheme, and the great statesman who devised it was already looking forward to the immense growth of the American Union, though he had not yet foreseen the separation of the colonies from the mother-country. In less than a century, he said, the great country behind the Alleghanies must become “a populous and powerful dominion;” and he recommended that two new colonies should at once be founded in the West,—the one on Lake Erie, the other in the valley of the Ohio,—with free chartered governments like those of Rhode Island and Connecticut.

But public opinion was not yet ripe for the adoption of Franklin’s bold and comprehensive ideas. Of the royal governors who were anxious to see the colonies united on any terms, none opposed the plan except Delancey of New York, who wished to reserve to the governors a veto upon all elections of representatives to the Grand Council. To this it was rightly objected that such a veto power would virtually destroy the freedom of elections, and make the Grand Council an assembly of creatures of the governors.