Why should they, when they were only registering the will or the wishes of their superiors?
But among the relatively small number who constituted the governing class there was a high standard of intelligence.

Popular magazines were unheard of and newspapers were infrequent, so that men depended largely upon correspondence and personal intercourse for the interchange of ideas.

There was time, however, for careful reading of the few available books; there was time for thought, for writing, for discussion, and for social intercourse.

It hardly seems too much to say, therefore, that there was seldom, if ever, a people-certainly never a people scattered over so wide a territory-who knew so much about government as did this controlling element of the people of the United States.
The practical character, as well as the political genius, of the Americans was never shown to better advantage than at the outbreak of the Revolution, when the quarrel with the mother country was manifesting itself in the conflict between the Governors, and other appointed agents of the Crown, and the popularly elected houses of the colonial legislatures.

When the Crown resorted to dissolving the legislatures, the revolting colonists kept up and observed the forms of government.
When the legislature was prevented from meeting, the members would come together and call themselves a congress or a convention, and, instead of adopting laws or orders, would issue what were really nothing more than recommendations, but which they expected would be obeyed by their supporters.