by David Aaron White

Created on: October 22, 2009

Democracy is defined as a form of government in which the majority of the people hold power through elections. These elections are done to appoint political representatives and pass policy changes in a town, city, state, or nation. In short, the essence of democracy is rooted around rule by the majority. In colonial society, the people did not have true democracy because the system of government did not revolve around the majority of the people; instead, a small portion of the people were able to make the decisions while the majority were kept out of the process.

The colonies defined eligible voters as white, land-owning, males. This automatically eliminates half of the white population, women, as well as slaves and men without enough money to afford land. A conservative estimate shows that at least half the population of the colonies was ineligible to vote; because democracy is based on the idea that the majority of the people should hold power in government, this proves that the colonies were not truly democratic. Right off the bat, the majority of the population was excluded from the election process, making democracy impossible to achieve.

However, in only two colonies, Rhode Island and Connecticut, was the actual government elected by the people; in other colonies, the King appointed his own representatives to govern the people. If the King appointed representatives, none of the people had a say in the decision, let alone the majority. In colonies such as New York and Virginia, there was not even an attempt at democracy; rather, Britain had set up the people's government for them. Proprietary colonies did not have democracy either because their governors were private land owners who were not interested in what the majority of the population wanted, but instead had their own industrial agenda.

In some colonies, participation was greatly limited, even with the already limiting definition of an eligible voter. For example, in Virginia, the House of Burgesses was exclusive to the point at which only a few select families of wealthy landowners could participate in making political decisions. Additionally, many of the common people, which included white landowners, did not have the confidence to cast their influence in elections or town meetings and would instead rely on the people they thought were better qualified to do so; more specifically, they believed the richer, elite class of people were better suited to make decisions than they were.

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