Such prejudices were founded in the fixed habits of society.

Not only the thirteen colonies, but the whole American hemisphere, had been governed by European States from the period of its discovery.

The very soil belonged to the trans-atlantic monarchs by discovery, or by ecclesiastical gift.

Dominion over it attached by divine right to their persons, and drew after it obligations of inalienable allegiance upon those who became the inhabitants of the new world.

The new world was indeed divided between different powers, but the system of government was the same.