" (Civil Government, Locke-pg.128) The argument was that a man was to have his title to it if he has labored in it. .
With the growth of the British colonies through the late 1600's, there was a new view, no colonial right to self-government. Instead there was a Privilege in which the king could grant or take away as it pleased him. Colonists, however, came to regard self-government, which they defined as being able to elect representatives to their assemblies, as an essential constitutional right. .
The English government had existed to establish order among men whose passions, if left unchecked, would create chaos or anarchy. Power flowed downward from the top of the social structure, from the king and the great nobility to lesser aristocracy down to the merchants, shopkeepers, farmers, and laborers. They were all subject to their authority.
For the Americans, power in the newly established area's immediately drained into local units of governments-the towns the counties and the provincial legislatures-and power flowed from the bottom up as well as from England to America. "It is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them but with their own consent, given personally or by their representatives." (Declaration of the Stamp act Congress, pg.170) The Americans established their own government. Like the Englishmen in the early stages of the 17th century, the colonists had their own land to labor with and discover. The individuals who lived on the lands were entitled, according to the way of the newly established colonial government, to be able to have their rights to the land. They discovered the property and it was their right to work with it. Why would a government in a distant country such as England have the ability to control the land property of a man in the new colonies? A question such as that one did cause the civilians of America to gather with their local leaders of their own established government.
