However, the people did not gain the advantages they had expected because the Parliament then became supreme and, to some extent, autocratic. This type of republic was just starting to emerge in Great Britain during the Colonial Era by reducing the autocratic powers of the king and forcing him to share his power with the Parliament. The two republics they most closely observed were a unitary parliamentary republic and a confederated republic.Ī Unitary parliamentary republic is a single unit or state composed of a legislative or parliamentary body that is supreme over the government of the entire nation. As they later discovered, neither was suitable for the vision they held of a free people under fixed law. In the Colonial Era, America’s Founders were aware of two types of republics.
