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Show 126 ACTS RELATING Part II. 365L11l. TO THE COLONIES. 127 indifference to the government in England. Suppofing the Englifh clergy to be as any of the powers of political govern- intolerant as the molt uncandid of their ment. enemies have ever reprclentcd them, yet impoling commercial duties, but they here were no endowments to tempt their could lay no domefii: taxes, either on avarice. Few, if any, of freemen or non-freemen. They could ereft no courts. The people whom they the fettlers were of the church of Eng- fent out, or fuch of the adventurers as land. They were of various feé‘ts, no one went of their own accord, had no other of which but had tefiified its hatred to the reft. Yet even this law they thought mfg/2t legally be put in execution againfl‘ them. They felt that they were legally fubjeé‘t to it. And they therefore prayed protefl‘ion for their rights than what was The fccne was too remote to be galling to their pride. a {pecific exemption from it. If Without that fpecific exemption they would have been fubjeéts to this law, why not to others? The charter of Maflachufet's Bay cone tains nothing more than an exclufive right. of trading within a particular difiriét of America. This right is conveyed to a I company company refiding in England. That come pany had extenlive privileges, but hardly They had indeed the power of to be found in the courts fiere in England; the fame proteflion which a Gentoo may find at preient. The patentees were exn empted from cufloms and duties for a gi- ven time; but file/1 an exemption f0 limited, is itfelf the firongell confirmation of the right. Some of thefe defcfts are {upplied in the charters granted to Connecticut and Rhode Ifland. But in neither of HIE/é is there exprefied or implied any thing like a total emancipation from the power of par- |
