Presentation Transcript

1. Early English Documents

   Influence on American Government
2. Creation of colonial governments The first English colonist saw the need for an orderly regulation of their relationships with one another – that is, for government. They created local governments, based on those they had known in England. Many of the offices the early settlers established are all found at the local level today: the offices of sheriff, coroner, assessor, and justice of the peace, the grand jury, counties, townships, and several others.
3. Limited Government Those first English colonists brought with them the idea that government is not all-powerful. That is, government is limited in what it may do. Each individual has certain rights that government cannot take away. The concept of limited government was deeply rooted in English belief and practice by the time the first English ships reached the Americas.
4. It had been planted there in England with the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, and it had been developing there for nearly 400 years before Jamestown was settled in 1607.
5. Representative government Early English settlers also carried another important concept to America: representative government. The idea that government should serve the will of the. With it had come a growing insistence that the people should have a voice in deciding what government should and should not do.
6. As with the concept of limited government, this notion of “government of, by, and for the people” found fertile soil in America, and it flourished here. These basic notions can be traced to several landmark documents in English history.
7. Magna Carta Included such fundamental rights as trail by jury and due process of law – protection against the arbitrary taking of life, liberty, or property. These protections against the absolute power of the king were originally intended only for the privilege classes.
8. Over time, they become the rights of all English people and were incorporated into other documents. Magna Carta established the principle that the power of the monarchy was not absolute.
9. The Petition of Right Magna Carta was respected by some monarchs and ignored by other for 400 years. During this time, England’s Parliament, a representative body with the power to make laws, slowly grew in influence. In1628, when Charles I asked Parliament for more money in taxes, Parliament refused until he signed the Petition of Right.
10. The Petition of Right limited the king’s power by demanding that the king not imprison political critics without trial by jury; not declare martial law, or rule by the military, during peacetime; nor require people to shelter troops without the homeowner’s consent. In addition, the document stated that no man should be “compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge, without common consent by act of parliament.”
11. The English Bill of Rights In 1688 Parliament offered the crown to William and Mary of Orange during the Glorious Revolution. To prevent abuse of power by William and Mary and all future monarchs, Parliament, in 1689, drew up the Bill of Rights to which William and Mary had to agree.
12. The Bill of Rights prohibited a standing army in peacetime, except with the consent of Parliament, and required that all parliamentary decision be free.
13. The document declared “that the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of Parliament is illegal…. that levying money for or to the use of the crown…without grant of Parliament…is illegal… that it is the right of the subjects to petition the king…and that prosecution for such petitioning are illegal…”
14. Also it included such guarantees as the right to a fair and speedy trial, and freedom from excessive bail and from cruel and unusual punishment.
15. Our nation has built on, changed, and added to those ideas and institutions that settlers brought here from England. Still, much in American government and politics today is based on these early English ideas.