Conservative Americans, almost as commonly as those on the left, are inclined to believe that bureaucracy is a necessity of modern government. According to this conventional wisdom, the bureaucratization of America has been going on – inevitably – for over a century. This conviction is decidedly pessimistic: after all, “bureaucracy” is a pejorative term. No matter how much we might try to use it with a neutral sense, its connotations of vapid formality, mindless routinization, and obtuse impersonality shine through. Even the greatest defender of bureaucracy, Max Weber, confessed that this form of rule is inhuman. In considering bureaucratization, then, we must ask whether modern government can be good government. Nevertheless, American government today is more highly bureaucratized than ever before, and it is likely to become more so. American government today, due to this, is not good government.
nglish islanders, to the envy of their Dutch and French neighbours, enjoyed such constitutional privileges as the right to elect semipopular assemblies. Barbados once hoped to have two representatives in Parliament, and some Barbadians, during the English (Glorious) Revolution (1688–89), thought of making their island an independent state, but nothing came of this.
The original English mainland colonies—Virginia (founded 1607), Plymouth (1620), and Massachusetts Bay (1630)—were founded by joint-stock companies. The later New England settlements—New Hampshire, New Haven, Connecticut, and Rhode Island—began as offshoots of Massachusetts, which acquired jurisdiction over the Maine territory. The New England colonies were first peopled partly by religious dissenters, but except for the separatist Plymouth Pilgrims they did not formally secede from the Church of England for the time being.
Proprietary colonies, under individual entrepreneurs, began with Maryland, founded in 1634 under the Catholic direction of Cecilius and Leonard Calvert. Also proprietary was Pennsylvania, which originally included Delaware, founded by the Quaker William Penn in 1682. Maryland and Pennsylvania, except for a brief royal interlude in Maryland, continued under Calvert and Penn heirs until the American Revolution; all other colonies except Connecticut and Rhode Island ultimately had royal governments. The Carolinas, after abortive attempts at colonization, were effectively founded in 1670 and became first proprietary and, later, royal colonies. Georgia, last of the 13, began in 1732, partly as a philanthropic enterprise headed by James Oglethorpe to furnish a rehabilitation home for debtors and other underprivileged Englishmen. All the mainland colonies eventually had representative assemblies, chosen by the propertied classes, to aid and often handicap their English governors.
The original settlers, predominantly English, were later supplemented by French Huguenots, Germans, and Scots-Irish, especially in western New York, Pennsylvania, and the southern colonies. New York, acquired from the United Provinces of the Netherlands and including New Jersey, continued to have some Dutch flavour long after the Dutch had become a small minority. By the French and Indian War (1754–63, the American port
