Penn’s Back in Town:
Revamp Real Estate/Settlement Strategy and Charter of Privilege
He’s Back in Office–Penn arrived in December 1699. From the beginning he was well aware, he had lost effective control over provincial politics and the Assembly.
Upon arrival in the province, Penn set for himself five tasks: to settle London’s dictate that Pennsylvania had to support Britain’s war effort, to establish conformity with English colonial trade regulations, to stabilize and establish a government accepted by him and the Lloyd faction, to restore the Proprietary prerogatives and rejuvenate the Proprietary, and to reboot his land-settlement strategy to pay off his debts, and generate future profits to himself and his family [99] see Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics, 1681-1726 (Northeastern University Press, New Edition, 1993), pp. 217.
He was “under the gun”, stressed for time, in each of these tasks. With a crowded agenda, it was always likely that the blowback or feedback loop if one prefers, from each of these tasks was a volatile dynamic in the achievement of any. Given Penn’s own demonstrated lack of political skill, volatile and uneven temperament and curious practice of business management, the future was always, in hindsight, in doubt. In the end, he did better–and worse–than might be expected.
His support in Philadelphia, which had doubled in population since he left in 1684 (it was catching up to Boston the colony’s largest), was restricted to an older landed and merchant Quaker budding aristocracy–a minority in the city elite and general Pennsylvania’s population. His hold over his Quaker co-religionists was marginal:
In both city and [countryside], the majority of Quakers were content to follow the entrenched Quaker leaders, foremost of whom was David Lloyd–“the chief director of government” … Enjoying the support of the Quaker merchants of Philadelphia, and most of the country Quakers, Lloyd’s party clearly controlled affairs at all levels of government. Both the Council (upper house of the legislature] and the Assembly were under its sway, as were the provincial and county courts…. But inversely opposed to the Quaker leaders were [Quaker evangelist/fundamentalist wing] and a growing Anglican minority. [Penn wrote the time his reaction to this] ‘seventeen years faction in Government and almost indissolvable knots in Property’. It is also a colony habituated to self-rule, as turbulent as that might be. Proprietary prerogatives so long as Penn remained in England had been systematically disregarded.
Penn had lost his control over the commanding heights of Pennsylvania’s economic base. Merchants gravitated to Philadelphia and county seats–Pennsylvania’s urban settlements. Their wealth and influence resulted from foreign trade, seaborne trade of food staples/lumber/furs, and Lower County tobacco to the West Indies. From the West Indies these Pennsylvania shippers took on sugar, molasses, run, wine. In England the shippers picked up the commodities needed in Pennsylvania, hard goods, dry and manufactured goods. Like Boston and New York a smuggling, off the books economy, had also taken root to avoid the British Navigation laws–and preying on all this shipping were the famous pirates we so love. Pirates bought their booty to time where it was purchased by merchants for internal consumption. Other merchants and ship builders stocked and repaired the pirate’s ship.
Penn was caught in the middle, with the Vice-Admiralty Courts and everybody else in London expecting him to honor his deal and break up this anti-English nexus. Enjoying a honeymoon of sorts he was able to pass a strong bill condemning the maritime abuses and securing the praise of his British overlords. Penn was victorious in part because his discussions with Lloyd had made it clear Penn was willing to renegotiate the Frames, so long as he could secure a strong bill supporting Britain’s maritime.
The victory, however, ended his love affair with Philadelphia merchants, and consumed much of his already limited political capital. His relations with the Anglican merchants, and Anglicans in general deteriorated almost immediately. Penn appoint a court of inquiry,, composed exclusively of Quakers, to investigate and determine the validity of Anglican concerns with his Proprietary and himself. This did not go well from anyone’s perspective.
The few allies Penn still held (Markham, the most important), were remnants from the now departed royal governor’s administration, and moderate Quakers who opposed aggressive Quaker fundamentalism that polarized Pennsylvania’s Quaker community. These moderate, relatively pro-Penn forces maintained a tenuous hold on the upper chamber (the Provincial Council, and its derivative the Commission).
Since Penn could no longer rely on his closeness to the King, he was able to take advantage of his contacts in Parliament and Whitehall to advocate for the merchants. He also could “play off of’ William and Mary’s all-too-obvious determination to bring Pennsylvania into the colonial fold. On a personal level, he had a new wife and a new set of sons and daughter. Penn was no longer the charismatic religious leader he was fifteen years previous; rather he was a battered shell of his former Holy Experiment self.
On a good day, however, he was a disillusioned realist. More damaging to his larger interests, he sat on a precarious jumble of personal debt/legal troubles and debt resulting from his financing of Pennsylvania colony. If he had tempered is religious mission, his personal finances became his obsession. His land/ settlement/fur trade/quitrent Secretariat tasked with the implementation of the economic strategy of getting his family out of debt–at almost any cost to his larger image and standing in the colony.
The Land Sales/Property/Settlement Strategy –Penn had left Pennsylvania in 1684 due in large measure to his mishandling of land sales, and his micro-management/capricious. of not arbitrary, settlement strategy crudely tilted to generate profits to him personally. His Personnel Secretariat handled this matter, but once incorporated land administration was mostly taken over by local government: township and county courts and their judicial bodies. Quitrent collection, for the most part fell into the Secretariat, but enforcement in the judicial bodies. To the land owner in particular, a flood of administrative and elected offices got involved with whatever land problems arose, including subsequent private land sales.
In Penn’s absence this bureaucratic morass collapsed completely, with a strong aroma of Proprietary corruption and incompetence permeating throughout the general population, which by nature of daily life could not escape its grasping and incompetent tentacles. Upon his arrival Penn, determined that restoring his finances meant rejuvenating the agencies with new personnel and mass termination of his previous employees. He launched upon his revival a revamped Secretariat, under his young twenty-five year old protégé, James Logan, with orders to clean up the mess, and start the flow of money into Penn coffers.
Upon arrival Penn began terminating his own previous administration, from customs and wharves, to Secretariat, to courts and personnel in general. This, of course, made former allies, enemies. Several were well-connected in London, and back they went to stir up the natives in Whitehall. Over his tenure in Pennsylvania, concerns arose in London as to what exactly Penn was doing? Was he undermining colonial policies and administration or supporting it? Worse, was he setting up his own power base to the detriment of British colonial governance? In the end, it was a combination of these issues and concerns, which really prompted Penn to return to England (permanently) after only about eighteen months in Philadelphia. The perceived reality of many in Pennsylvania, on the other hand, was they had given him the boot. For many the popular antipathy to Penn was caused by his land sales-settlement-quitrent program carried out by Logan.
This proved to be a near-fatal mistake. His advocacy for colonial trade laws and support of the war effort was thrust upon him, in many instances against his natural inclinations. With the Markham 1696 compromise he had demonstrated a willingness to negotiate a meaningful restructuring of provincial government, but his Proprietary land-settlement strategy had never sat well with Pennsylvania residents or their elites. To the general population, the Secretariat was a private government of a landlord imposed on their private property, their homestead or business, and on the local government set up upon settlement. The Lloyd anti-Proprietary party was dead-set against its continuance. for a variety of reasons, including a logical position that all unsold Pennsylvania land was Penn’s personal property, untaxed, and unregulated.
Considering that property extended westerly to who knows where (no agreed upon western boundary), his landholdings was an empire unto itself. The incorporation of towns and boroughs and Penn’s dominance in the governments of towns and counties government/courts made the legislature an island on the top of huge mass of Proprietary land and supportive governments. To be sure in 1700, the Governor Fletcher disruption had allowed Penn’s opposition to gain a foothold in the older local counties and towns, the huge yet unsettled hinterland, was still Penn’s to dominate. In that the fiction that Penn’s return to Proprietorship had restored the Frames, or whatever was left of them, court decisions and bureaucratic administration of land matters was a real burden to any who had to deal with them.
Quitrents in particular, which Quakers seemingly hated almost as much as war, were more than a sore point; civil disobedience was widespread, making a mockery of the terms of Penn’s initial land sale, and opening the door to outright or semi-squatters, who lacking clear title were almost vulnerable and nervous if they ran afoul of Penn and his Secretariat. As we shall see Indian relations figured mightily in the settlement-land sales, and that always contained an element of life or death implications if things went awry. In short, Penn’s land sales-settlement strategy touched nearly everybody in Penn’s Pennsylvania. Get it wrong, and Penn would alienate the bulk of its population, regardless of religion or ethnicity.
Into this minefield stepped young, brilliant, arrogant, headstrong and insensitive twenty-five year old converted newly-arrived Quaker, James Logan. Logan would become one of the two or three most important leaders in the first half century of Pennsylvania, and a man of the Enlightenment to boot; but in these first years he was not the man Penn needed to reboot his land-settlement strategy–at least in the respect of keeping the population from rushing headlong into David Lloyd’s opposition.
Logan possessed considerable organizational skills, and a hard, diligent and competent manager he got things back in a business, ship-shape manner–but scattered along the way was a mass of landowners displaced, dispossessed, perceptually harassed, pretty hot-to-trot, mad under-the-collar hinterland resident. The agent of this displease was Penn’s “Court of Inquiry” set up within days of his arrival in December 1699. Merry Christmas, y’awl. Under Logan it was tasked to inspect all land titles, review all previous land sales, and examine who had paid what (or not) in quitrents.
The response from the start was electric, “a great Agrievance” and “contrary to their Rights and Privileges as Free-born English Subjects, And Not Warranted by any Law, Custom or Usage of this Province“. Few even showed up when called in for a review. “Logan met with nothing but resentment and obdurate refusals wherever he went“. Logan himself in later years in reflection admitted that “Penn was hard to the People; and thereby lost the affection of many who had almost ador’d him” [99] see Gary B. Nash, Quakers and Politics, 1681-1726 (Northeastern University Press, New Edition, 1993), pp. 216
the Charter of Privileges–Penn’s political reform agenda was itself pretty crowded. The division between the Lower and Upper Colonies needed attention. The rivalry between the two was substantial, and the former had never reconciled itself to Penn’s Proprietary land grant. Despite a full year of negotiations, no agreement was reached.
In regards to reform of the Frames, Lloyd entered into discussions and negotiations with Penn almost immediately upon arrival. The process consumed a year and a half, and was a clumsy protracted process, marked by fits of temper. It culminated in the final week of Penn’s second stay in Pennsylvania, and parts of it were approved after he left. As he left he enjoyed little leverage in the negotiations, and in Lloyd’s mind the Frames, the constitution, needed considerable modification to allow the Assembly a more significant role in governance and economic life.
On top of this. Lloyd mightily disagreed with William and Mary’s colonial policies. and simply hated their reformulated Navigation Laws. Before Penn’s arrival he successfully was able to circumvent the latter through support of pirates, smuggling and competitive trade with West Indies–all of which inured him to Philadelphia’s commercial elite. Probably with Lloyd assistance, many merchants compiled a reform petition from Philadelphia’s commercial elite (September 1701) which was sent to the Assembly. This was to be the legislative counter to the Frames. The petition called for radical changes in property law, land sales and judiciary (the Charter of Properties), and for a restructuring of the Frames government (Charter of Privileges).
David Lloyd was the chief advocate for Pennsylvania’s version of colonial provincial legislature. His authority and voting majority in this Assembly was secured by a Quaker political-economic elite “which showed scant regard for the proprietor who made their New world existence possible” [99] Joseph E. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: a History (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), p. 61-2. If this were not sufficient in itself, 1700 was an age that witnessed the rise in colonial popular legislatures.
In the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, with William and Mary’s reform of the Navigation Acts, nearly every American colony went through its own version of transforming its provincial legislature into provincial sovereignty personified in the legislature, the colonial version of Parliament in the wilderness. We shall discuss this in more detail in our discussion of Massachusetts, but ” the common feature of these colonial structures [provincial assemblies] was the rising power of the lower house of the legislature, a body controlled, in Pennsylvania as elsewhere, by the [resident] economic and social elite. Content to mimic the procedures of Parliament at the time, these [legislators] would ultimately consider their respective assemblies the equals of the House of Commons“. As the source of colonial legitimacy, the Assembly were the voice of its people–and to this definition of liberty David Lloyd was fully committed. [99] Joseph E. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: a History (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), p. 61
As with the Lower/Upper Counties, a year of negotiation proved fruitless. What finally got everyone’s attention was Penn’s determination in early 1701 that he needed to return to England in order to defend his Proprietary against legislation in Parliament. This forced the issue for both parties. Because the Frames reform always included a reform of his Proprietary land sales-quitrent-no taxes on Penn’s property, and the role of courts and Proprietary offices in the administration of land sales and titles/records, Lloyd the two issues were hopelessly intertwined. It was agreed, under pressure, to separate them into two distinct charters: the political under Charter for Privileges, and the property-court related under the Charter on Property. Tossed into the mix was the incorporation of Philadelphia (Municipal Corporation of Philadelphia, as a third action. That was initiated by Penn and promulgated by his executive order, the day before he left town.
At the time, it was the Charter of Property that drew the most attention, anti Proprietary opposition, and Penn’s resistance. Debate and negotiation on that document stalled. The Charter of Privileges had an easier go because in the end it was easy for both to fall back on the 1696 Act of Settlement (called at the time Markham’s Frame). Lloyd sensing opportunity, carved out special legislation on court structure. The lower county courts were empowered (counties could be created by the Legislature), and although Penn retained his power over judicial appointments, the Legislature was able to delink judges from absolute dominance by Proprietary.
A third bill created a special Court for Property, stripping Penn of the right of land sales and the administration of property law. That body included eight men appointed by the proprietor and thirteen elected at large by the province electorate. That law also empowered the Assembly to create counties, and to approve the incorporated of chartered land development corporations. This ability of the Legislative to carve out a legitimate role in the activities of counties (and through counties, towns and boroughs), proved to be a major victory for Lloyd and the Legislature–although it would take the better part of three decades to break the Proprietary hold over local governments. The reader should take note of this as it will be the subject of several modules–and a major element in the legacy of Penn’s colony on the future American state.
Literally, on the night before his departure at New Castle, Penn agreed to the Charter of Privileges. He later claimed he opposed it, but signed it because he believed London would later reject it. In other letters during the negotiating period, he strongly stated that the increase in legislative powers would both provide defense to the colony in the event of another royal governor being appointed, and simultaneously allow the Assembly to not have its leadership determined by any future royal governor. In 1701, with another bill in Parliament threatening his second loss of the Proprietary Charter, these were salient concerns to the viability of his battered Holy Experiment.
The Frame of 1701, better known as the Charter of Privileges, reiterated the fundamental rights of Pennsylvanians–a sort of Holy Experiment Bill of Rights. Whatever their limitations today, these rights were not universally available to all Americans in 1700. Structurally, the 1701 Charter collapsed the two house legislature into one–eliminating the more powerful Upper House, the Provincial Council which was Penn’s structural bastion. Pennsylvania became a unicameral legislature, the only one in the thirteen provinces.
Penn assented to the elevation of the Legislature to the level of the Executive Branch by empowering it to control the timing of its sessions, election of its own leadership and delegation of powers to set franchise eligibility for the election of its members. Most importantly it gave to the Assembly the right to submit its own bills for consideration, rather than rely exclusively on those from the (defunct) upper house or the Governor/Deputy Governor. In 1701 not all of the American colonial legislatures had this power–and to many the power was considered radical, an opening to rule by the Mob.
The Frame of 1701 … represented a rejection of the Quaker leader’s thinking on the nature of political institutions . The devices found in the Frames of 1682 and 168– a bicameral legislature, with a powerful upper house, the ballot indirect election, rotation–were omitted from the new instrument of government. Thus the Pennsylvania Assembly became the only such unicameral body in the British Empire, with the right to initiate legislation, elect officers nd appoint committees, and decide who could sit and the length of the session. The [former] Council [the combination upper house and advisory cabinet to the Governor] would be appointed by the Proprietor, but have no role in the legislative process [99] Joseph E Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: a History, p. 69
A second bill, authored by David Lloyd, created a judicial branch independent of the proprietorship, and defined the jurisdictions of the original and appellate courts created. On the merits, the Judiciary Act of 1701 was solid and corrected what had been at best a very confused, little understood judicial process. The Judiciary in Penn’s original Frame of Governance was, ultimately, subordinate to the proprietorship, and its structure and application of the law did little to enhance popular support or justice. The fourth bill passed created a municipal corporation for the city of Philadelphia–granting it limited self-rule. By that time, 1701, Pennsylvania’s population was estimated at 20,000,; in 1784 it was about 2,500.
A second bill, authored by David Lloyd, created a judicial branch independent of the proprietorship, and defined the jurisdictions of the original and appellate courts created. On the merits, the Judiciary Act of 1701 was solid and corrected what had been at best a very confused, little understood judicial process. The Judiciary in Penn’s original Frame of Governance was, ultimately, subordinate to the proprietorship, and its structure and application of the law did little to enhance popular support or justice. The fourth bill passed created a municipal corporation for the city of Philadelphia–granting it limited self-rule. By that time, 1701, Pennsylvania’s population was estimated at 20,000,; in 1784 it was about 2,500.
[the upper house and governor’s cabinet] would be appointed by the proprietor, but have no role in the legislative process [ i.e. functioning as an advisory cabinet to the Deputy and Governor] [99] Joseph E. Illick, Colonial Pennsylvania: a History, p. 69.
We can see Penn’s Whiggish tendencies best in this–but as remarkable was his willingness to limit his Proprietary rule so fundamentally. Most today tend to ascribe this to his having to confront reality; that such power in Pennsylvania had already been conceded in practice, and nothing was gained in maintaining a constitutional level fiction. In this vein during the course of debate on the Frame of 1701 in the Legislature, the delegates from the three southern counties simply left the Pennsylvania Assembly for their own separate Assembly the de facto legislature of the southern three counties.
Much of the “spirit” behind the Frame of 1701 was to update the older Frames to the realities that had befallen them in the nearly decade and half since their first formulation. For its negotiators, there was no going back on the wreck the imposition of the royal governor had rendered on their viability and coherence. The 1701 Frame included a clause acknowledged existence and legitimacy of the two legislatures within his sole proprietorship.
As to the Charter on Property, negotiations continued on the deck of Penn’s ship, becalmed in port, Penn and Lloyd negotiated for three days. Just before the ship sailed, Lloyd delivered a final copy of those discussions, Penn, as only Penn would do, “hastily scanned it” and gave it his provisional support–and then left. On the way home he found Lloyd had inserted material that Penn contended should not have been there. Lloyd’s version would have significantly altered the landlord-property rights of the Proprietor–setting up an independent body to approve and administer most land related activities.
Penn formally disavowed the document when he landed in London. The rejection of the Charter of Properties meant that Penn’s Proprietary retained authority and dominance in the settlement of Pennsylvania. That crucial economic development strategy and nexus of policies essential to the growth and development of the colony-province was to be a preserve of the Proprietary, and independent of the Legislature and provincial government. That division of power and authority would remain until the American Revolution threw the Proprietary out Pennsylvania’s door.
To the extent Penn administered the sole proprietorship after 1701, it was from London, through the appointment of individuals to serve as his surrogate Deputy Governor. Penn did not resolve his financial problems, which continued to his death. At his death Penn’s will asserted that he had lost a sum of 2,000 pounds in support of Pennsylvania [99] John Pomfret, the First Purchasers, p. 161. Interestingly, Penn in the future consistently defended Pennsylvania from the Board of Trade, and Parliamentary intrusions–asserting his powers of sole proprietorship as superior to that of those bodies. His sons did as well. Whatever the depth of the family’s despair on the state of Pennsylvania politics and policy, or their own inability to make a living off the economics of the colony, the Penn family held true to an essential element of the Holy Experiment–that Pennsylvania was a refuge from the excesses of royal will, a place where religious toleration and freedom from royal arbitrary governance were cornerstones.
The sole proprietorship, as amended by the Frame of 1701, continued until overthrown during the first month of the American War of Independence in 1776.
Thoughts
Whatever their faults, the three Frames as amended in 1701 are considered as the Constitution of the Province of Pennsylvania. In effect, the nineteen years trial and experience of governance in the colony had served as a nearly two decade long constitutional convention that yielded in a frame of government, but not a Charter of Property, and the beginning of an independent judiciary. It also made Pennsylvania a federation of two sets of counties each governed by their own legislature within the Proprietary Province.
Included was a Holy Experiment mini Bill of Rights that exalted religious tolerance, civil liberties, and the right to free opinion and economic opportunity. From it would come, immediately upon its passage in 1701, a political civil war between Pennsylvania’s executive branch, the Proprietary, and its legislative branch, the Assembly. At no point through 1776 were the two branches not locked in their version of mortal combat. In 1765, the war was carried to London, demands for the termination of the Proprietary and the appointment by the King of a royal governor. That too failed, and the two belligerent branches limped on through the final years leading into the American Revolution.
I place a great deal of responsibility for Pennsylvania’s colonial political and economic evolution on the impact of the Frames constitution. In that the reader ought anticipate the following modules will suggest I am troubled with Pennsylvania’s political development, and strongly suggest that led to Pennsylvania’s failure to “institutionalize” important elements of its policy system-to the detriment of its economic development policy-making. It also fostered a tendency to form political machine-like (bosses) political entities to conduct its affairs. Perhaps more important, that constitution led directly to a very distinctive sub-state policy system–a decentralized one, and a very fragmented one. Both dynamics have been continued to the present day.
Also, one economic development strategy, homesteading-western settlement, figured prominently in the post-1750 evolution of the state, not because it was successfully managed, but rather the opposite. In this dynamic, the clash of political cultures that resulted created by the time of the Revolution an eastern versus western conflict of sub-policy systems that heavily impacted the two American state policy systems that followed after 1776. That clash of political cultures created a serious urban-hinterland regional distinction that is also present in contemporary policy/political life. It also will serve as an important introduction for our discussion of a major theme in this history: populism. These factors I believe also contributed to Pennsylvania’s decentralized tilt to its policy systems.
Perhaps surprisingly, the opposite holds true for Pennsylvania’s economic growth, which on the whole was outstanding in the colonial period. I attribute that to government’s inability to extend itself into the economy or its management, leaving Philadelphia in particular, a sort of colonial free trade zone, for the most part in the hands of its own commercial and financial elites. In fact, the reader will discover that I believe the constitution’s inadequacies fostered a intermittent involvement of private elites into political affairs, and a strong reliance on the private sector to make what in other colonies government-led policy.
That reliance on the private sector, what has been called “privatism” continued into the political affairs of the State of Pennsylvania after the Revolution. We will take this a bit father in future chapters, as Pennsylvania’s private elites, those who did not return to England after the Revolution, played a very important role in the post-Revolutionary Federalist and anti-Federalist political movements. Privatism will be very evident as we discover the initial escapades of both Mainstream Economic Development and Community Development.
That is an awful lot to attribute to a “failed” constitution. A good deal of carrying that troubled load, however, is laid upon the failure of the sole proprietor policy system that governed the colony during the colonial period. The constitution is itself a sad expression of the sole proprietorship’s inability to govern effectively. In colonial America, Pennsylvania was the only example of a colony that with a small exception of two or three years, that was governed by a sole proprietorship in which an individual-family, not a business corporation (the other form of proprietorship) governed throughout the entire colonial period.
If the reader still remembers our initial question that underlies this history, why are states different but alike, the sole proprietorship offers an excellent start to answering how and why Pennsylvania is different than Maryland, New York,, Ohio on its present day borders, and why it is different from the other twelve colonies in the colonial period–and after. “As the Twig is Bent”–remember.
Delving inside the constitution-making that these modules describe offers several, hopefully helpful insights into ED/CD policy making. First, Pennsylvania constitution-making was not the product of a constitutional convention, or a output of the colonial charter. Almost twenty years of political experience as well as the philosophy and private goals of its founder, William Penn–and crucially the Holy “Quaker” Experiment he conducted served as the core backdrop in its making.
Pennsylvania constitution-making was profoundly personal, between Penn and his chief opponent David Lloyd, the “boss” of his opposing Quaker Party machine. Hovering in the background was a past period of great instability and a future period of some unpredictability caused by the evolution of British colonial administration. In our conceptual model we call this an example of a global competitive hierarchy–an external force-dynamic that intrudes upon the Pennsylvania policy system, putting its heavy thumb on the course of Pennsylvania policy decisions.
That colonial administration, personalized by our reference to London, the Board of Trade, or Whitehall, could not avoid being a major player in Pennsylvania–after all Pennsylvania was a colony of England–which in this module has taken a few major steps down the path to becoming the United Kingdom, the proud owner of the emerging British Empire, whose industrial, trade and finance economic base was hugely tilted to benefit the Homeland, not its colonial “possessions”. Pennsylvania’s constitution-making (and sole proprietorship) got caught up in that trip down the path to greatness–as did the other colonies as well. While Pennsylvania was trying to make her constitution, other American colonies, Connecticut for example, was hiding theirs in an Oak Tree.
We shall pick up on that topic in the next chapter on Massachusetts (New England), but suffice it to say here, the British colonial mercantile system was making up colonial policy and trade regulations as it traversed on its path to Empire, English instability and improvisation–and its experience in its path to political democracy–placed enormous pressure on individual colony charters and the constitutions they spawned. The Spanish or French path yielded vastly different outputs and implications–consider poor New Orleans, Texas or even Florida, not to mention the granddaddy of American wacko policy systems, California, and her protégé Oregon. The distinction in colonial systems and their economic and political implications is still another major reason why American states are different today–and have been different throughout this history.
Finally, on the “micro” policy process spectrum, I call attention to poor William Penn’s policy agenda in the 1699-1701 constitution-making period. Talk about a crowded agenda and a limited time span. Penn had a series of highly prioritized policy initiatives, spanning across “war/defense” agenda of his colonial superiors, securing conformity of the province (which BTW in no meaningful way could he control) to its economic and trade program, to constitution-making, structural reform and effective governance, to pursuit of his personal profit through a public program in homesteading and western settlement of Pennsylvania, while still somehow preserving the essentials of his Holy Experiment. It makes us somewhat cautious regarding the so-called “rationality” behind ED/CD policy making; it also leaves open a policy making conflict between and among expert professionals and one wonders if it makes sense to think of ED/CD policy-making as non political or even non-partisan. In Pennsylvania even the distinctions between private and public sectors are blurred to the point both are the other.
Each of these initiatives had their own implications on the success and future effectiveness of the others. There was even an implied hierarchy in them–considering the power of the colonial masters. This (i.e. the extended feedback loops of separate policy area policy initiatives) will not be an infrequent matter in our economic development policy-making history. It suggests to me, at least, a warning to my readers that ED/CD policy-making does not occur in isolation of other policy areas, and that ED and CD policy making can even conflict with itself.
My concern is too often we think of policy areas and specific policy studies in descriptions in which they are isolated from the effects of other policy making ongoing at the same time. That is one benefit of thinking of ED/CD as a policy output of a policy system–it forces us to think of multi-policy policy-making as a factor in the content, implementation and evaluation of ED/CD strategies, programs, tools, EDOs, and initiatives. ED/CD does not live on a desert policy island (Thank you John Donne).
The Frames “Charter” – Constitution was one province’s story surrounding a turbulent period in British-North American colonial history that began in King James II in 1686 and ended in the first decade of the 18th century. Under the coverall of the Glorious Revolution, a major shift in British political politics and policy system resulted in a new interpretation of the role of British colonies within the fledgling embryonic British Empire. From as early as 1599 England had carved out of the various geographies of the world, ranging from India, Barbados and West Indies, and eventually in North America a number of legally separate “colonies”, whose charters were granted by the sole prerogative of the King. The Navigation Acts were
After the English Civil War, the Restoration, and finally the 1688 Glorious Revolution and the 1707 Kingdom of Great Britain–the forerunner of the United Kingdom of 1800
Ron W. Coan 