The "Grand Model" Government: Locke's

The parliament shall meet once every two years. It shall consist of all the proprietors or their deputies, the land-graves, the casiques, and one commoner from each precinct, chosen by the freeholders in their respective precincts. These four estates shall sit in one room, each man having one vote. .

No matter shall be proposed in parliament that had not previously been prepared and passed by the grand council.

No act shall continue in force longer than to the next biennial meeting of parliament, unless in the mean time it shall have been ratified by the palatine and a quorum of the proprietors.

While a bill is on its passage before the parliament, any proprietor or his deputy may enter his protest against it, as being contrary to any of the fundamental constitutions of government. In which case, after debate, the four orders shall retire to four separate chambers; and if a majority of either of the four estates determines against the bill, it shall not pass. .

The Church of England being deemed the only true orthodox church, no provision shall be made by parliament for any other church. .

No, man above the age of seventeen years, shall have any benefit of the laws, whose name is not recorded as a member of some church or religious profession.

These fundamental and unalterable constitutions were signed by the lords proprietors the first of March, 1669. It would be difficult to account for some of the articles that are contained in this plan of government, except by recurring to the old adage that respects Scylla and Charybdis.

The proprietors, or some of them, had lately smarted under a government that was called republican. They were zealous royalists; and they expected, by the help of a powerful aristocracy, to obviate the return of republican measures; but we are sorry to find among the works of John Locke, who was an advocate for civil and religious liberty, a plan of government that in some articles does not consist with either.

It will readily be perceived that a government to be administered by nobles was not well adapted to a country in which there was not one nobleman. . The lords proprietors, in the mean time, resolved to come as near to the great model as possible. For this purpose, Governor Stevens of Albemarle and Sayle of Carteret were instructed to issue writs requiring the freeholders to elect five persons, who, with five others to be chosen by the proprietors, were to form a grand council for the governor.

The parliament was to be composed of this great council and twenty delegates, who were also to be chosen by the freemen. In the mean time the proprietors made temporary laws for the preservation of good order in the several colonies,--laws that were little respected by men who had not been consulted in forming them.

Locke's governmental scheme never took root in Carolina. It was a government of theory, not the result of a natural growth, as all persistent government must be, and was utterly unsuited to the conditions of a thinly-settled colony inhabiting a wilderness and composed of persons little disposed to submit to regulations more aristocratic than those from which they had emigrated. The plain and simple laws under which the colonists had previously lived were suited to their circumstances, while the "great model," with its nobles, palatines, and other grand officers, was in ridiculous contrast with the actually existing condition of sparse population, rude cabins, and pioneer habits. A strong effort was made to establish it, but the people effectually resisted, and, after twenty years of contest, Locke's constitution, which had simply kept the country in a state of discord, was voluntarily abrogated by the proprietaries.