THE MATRIX OF EMPIRE 
JULIUS GOEBEL, Jr. 
We are accustomed to think of our institutions as grown from the good seed 
of democracy and to hold of little account what is owed to the strain of prerogative. 
The very word prerogative acquired an odor of repugnancy during the 
long stretch of one hundred and sixty-nine years of our colonial condition, because 
it stood for a political reality which was a recurrent point of controversy 
in the relations with the sovereign. The eighteenth-century Englishman 
might pride himself that the arbitrary element had been nearly abstracted from 
the prerogative, but his colonial kinsman, who drew no benefits from the great 
emancipating statutes of the seventeenth century, must perforce live by a constitution 
in which the medieval components were far from being mere vestiges. 
It is doubtful if at any juncture even the best-informed lawyers in the plantations 
were acquainted with more than a piece of the pedigree of the system by 
which these establishments came to be governed or controlled from Whitehall 
1 And despite the many competent explorations of this system as a going 
concern, present-day knowledge of its origins is not much further advanced. 
This failure to probe into beginnings may be attributed partly to the fact that 
study of how our internal polity developed has been largely influenced by 
what the British call the Whig interpretation of history. In consequence the 
1 The lawyers who undertook to deal with 
problems of imperial relations were led into 
the medieval background through the precedents 
used by Coke, Vaughan, and others. The 
degree to which they treated of historical 
foundations depended somewhat upon their 
literary resources. Rymer's Foedera, from 
which a considerable part of the background 
can be reconstructed was probably unavailable 
in most provinces. Rymer is cited by Jefferson 
jn his Notes on Virginia. He apparently did 
not use it for his pre-Revolutionary Summary 
View. Examples from pamphlet writings 
are, Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer, 
Nos. 4 and 10, in 14 Mem. Hist. Soc. Pa. 305; 
Wilson, On the Legislative Authority of the 
British Parliament (2 Works of James Wilson 
[Andrews ed.] 505 et seq.); Dulany, Considerations 
on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes 
. (1765); Otis, Rights of the British Colonies 
Asserted and Proved (Mullett ed., 1929) in 
4 Univ. of Missouri Studies 76 et seq. The 
anonymous Massachusettensis, whom John 
Adams believed to be the lawyer Jonathan 
Sewall, confined his history to events after 
settlement. Nevertheless, his letters provoked the 
most complete of all historical investigations of 
the time, the Novanglus of John Adams. Cf. 
Novanglus and Massachusettensis (reprint of 
1819). The historical allusions in parliamentary 
debates no doubt had some effect in turning 
colonial attention to the historical arguments; 
cf. the long and interesting memorial of colony 
agent Charles Garth on a speech of Pitt (So. 
Carolina Hist. Soc, Misc. MSS., Box 1700-1784, 
Jan. 19, 1766).