The development of a residential qualification for representatives in colonial legislatures

Foreword

Geographically this study only covers the colonies which later became known as the Thirteen Original Colonies,

In point of time it extends from the period of first settlement down to the end of the colonial period. In most of the colonies the requirement that a representative must be a resident of the district he represents was incorporated into the Revolutionary constitutions. In those colonies where this was not done the study has been continued, but not in detail into the period of statehood.

At the very beginning some space has been given to a survey of English Constitutional history so far as it relates to the subject in hand.

This is justified by the close relationship, racial, social and institutional, which existed between the colonies and the mother country ; a relationship so vital that we should expect to find every developing colonial institution to have a direct connection with some already well-developed English practice.