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By Root 1941 0

to by the Colony, and hath been, in the most express Terms, acknowledged by the Legislature and, except about the Time of Anarchy and Confusion in England which preceeded the Restoration of King Charles the Second, I have not discovered that it has been called in Question even by private or particular Persons until within seven or eight Years last past. Our Provincial or Local Laws have, in numerous Instances, had Relation to Acts of Parliament made to respect the Plantations in general and this Colony in particular, and in our Executive Courts both Juries and Judges have to all Intents and Purposes, considered such Acts as Part of our Rule of Law. Such a Constitution, in a Plantation, is not peculiar to England but agrees with the Principles of the most celebrated Writers upon the Law of Nations that “when a Nation takes Possession of a distant Country and settles there, that Country, though separated from the principal Establishment or Mother Country, naturally becomes a Part of the State equally with its ancient Possessions.”

So much however of the Spirit of Liberty breathes thro’ all Parts of the English Constitution, that although from the Nature of Government there must be one supreme Authority over the whole, yet this Constitution will admit of subordinate Powers with legislative and executive Authority, greater or less according to local and other Circumstances. Thus we see a Variety of Corporations formed within the Kingdom with Powers to make and execute such Bylaws as are for their immediate Use and Benefit, the Members of such Corporations still remaining subject to the general Laws of the Kingdom. We see also Governments established in the Plantations which, from their separate and remote Situation, require more general and extensive Powers of Legislation within themselves than those formed within the Kingdom, but subject nevertheless, to all such Laws of the Kingdom as immediately respect them or are designed to extend to them, and accordingly we in this Province have, from the first Settlement of it, been left to the Exercise of our legislative and executive Powers, Parliament occasionally though rarely, interposing as in its Wisdom has been judged necessary.

Under this Constitution, for more than One Hundred Years, the Laws both of the supreme and subordinate Authority were in general, duly executed, Offenders against them have been brought to condign Punishment, Peace and Order have been maintained and the People of this Province have experienced as largely the Advantages of Government, as, perhaps, any People upon the Globe, and they have from Time to Time in the most public Manner expressed their Sense of it and, once in every Year, have offered up their united Thanksgivings to God for the Enjoyment of these Privileges and, as often, their united Prayers for the Continuance of them.

At Length the Constitution has been called in Question and the Authority of the Parliament of Great-Britain to make and establish Laws for the Inhabitants of this Province has been, by many, denied. What was, at first, whispered with Caution, was soon after openly asserted in Print and, of late, a Number of Inhabitants in several of the principal Towns in the Province, have assembled together in their respective Towns and, having assumed the Name of legal Town Meetings, have passed Resolves which they have ordered to be placed upon their Town Records, and caused to be printed & published in Pamphlets and News-Papers. I am sorry that it is thus become impossible to conceal what I could wish had never been made public. I will not particularize these Resolves or Votes and shall only observe to you, in general, that some of them deny the supreme Authority of Parliament, and so are repugnant to the Principles of the Constitution, and that others speak of this supreme Authority, of which the King is a constituent Part and to every Act of which his Assent is necessary, in such Terms as have a direct Tendency to alienate the Af fections of the People from their Sovereign who has ever been most tender of their Rights, and whose Person,