AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

Autobiographical Essay

Autobiographical Essay

Poverty in Colonial Days

I am Abraham Nicholas, 19, living by the shores of New York City. No Observation is more universal, and at the same time more true, than that one half of the worlds are unaware of how the other half lives.

Poor, what does it means? Does anyone have any specific definition about this? No one is ready to give a specific idea about poor. Most of us feel that when a nation or an individual is lacking in something means basics need of life like food, shelter, and clothing so we can identify it as poverty (John, Iceland, 2003).

The number of poor all over the world grew by more than 200 million in the colonial period. At present, nearly 800 million people suffer constant hunger and 1.5 billion people produce less than one dollar each day the worldwide average for horrible poverty (Billy G. Smith, 2004).

Emergence of Colonial Government

The lack of controlling influence by the English government was the striking feature in all phases of colonial development. Georgia emerged as companies of shareholders, or as feudal proprietorships stemming from deeds established by the Crown. Over the New World settlements to stock companies and proprietors the fact that the king had transferred his immediate sovereignty, mean that the colonists in America were automatically free of outside control. Under the terms of the Virginia Company charter, for example, full governmental authority was vested in the company itself.

For their measurement, the colonies had never thought of themselves as subservient. To a certain extent, they considered themselves as commonwealths or states. In 1618 the Virginia Company issued instructions to its appointed governor providing that free people of the cultivated area should elect representatives to unite with the governor and an appointive council in passing ordinances for the welfare of the colony.

The colonists had a right to participate in their own government that was generally accepted by everyone. In the majority of cases, the king, in making future grants, provided in the charter that the free men of the colony should have a right to be heard in legislation affecting them.

In the colonies the assumption of self-government did not go completely recognized. In the 1670s, a royal committee established to enforce the mercantile system on the colonies by the Lords of Trade and Plantations. The government's economic policy was resisting by the colony.

Other positive effects on the colonies were The Glorious Revolution. The Bill of Rights and Toleration Act of 1689 confirmed freedom of worship for Christians. Colonial politics in the early 18th century remind you of English politics in the 17th. The supremacy of Parliament was confirmed by the Glorious Revolution, except colonial governors required exercising powers in the colonies that the king had lost in England. The colonial legislatures held two important powers parallel to those held by the English Parliament: the right to begin legislation rather than simply act on proposals of the governor and the right to vote on taxes and expenditures, by the early 18th ...