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cajole them, and drops all prosecution of their crimes; whilst honest citizens, threatened in their lives and fortunes, flee the province, as having no confidence in the public protection. We are daily threatened with more of these tumults; and the government, which in its distress called aloud on the sober inhabitants to come with arms to its assistance, now sees those who afforded that assistance daily libelled, abused, and menaced by its partisans for so doing; whence it has little reason to expect such assistance on another occasion. In this situation, what is to be done? By what means is that harmony between the two branches of government to be obtained, without which the internal peace of the province cannot be well secured? One project is, to turn all Quakers out of the assembly; or, by obtaining more members for the back counties, to get a majority in who are not Quakers. This, perhaps, is not very difficult to do; and more members for those counties may, on other accounts, be proper; but I much question if it would answer this end, as I see among the members, that those who are not Quakers, and even those from the back counties, are as hearty and unanimous in opposing what they think proprietary injustice, as the Quakers themselves, if not more so. Religion has happily nothing to do with our present differences, though great pains is taken to lug it into the squabble. And even were the Quakers extirpated, I doubt whether the proprietaries, while they pursue the same measures, would be a whit more at their ease.

Another project is, to choose none for assembly men but such as are friends to the proprietaries. The number of members is not so great, but that I believe this scheme may be practicable, if you look for representatives among proprietary officers and dependants. Undoubtedly it would produce great harmony between

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governor and assembly; but how would both of them agree with the people? Their principles and conduct must greatly change, if they would be elected a second year. But that might be needless. Six parts in seven agreeing with the governor, could make the House perpetual. This, however, would not probably establish peace in the province. The quarrel the people now have with the proprietaries, would then be with both the proprietaries and assembly. There seems to remain, then, but one remedy for our evils, a remedy approved by experience, and which has been tried with success by other provinces; I mean that of an immediate Royal Government, without the intervention of proprietary powers, which, like unnecessary springs and movements in a machine are so apt to produce disorder.

It is not to be expected that the proposal of a change like this, should meet with no objections. Those you have mentioned to me, concerning liberty of conscience and the privileges of Dissenters, are, however, not difficult to answer; as they seem to arise merely from want of information or acquaintance with the state of other colonies, before and after such changes had been made in their government. Carolina and the Jerseys were formerly proprietary governments, but now immediately under the crown; and their cases had many circumstances similar to ours. Of the first we are told;

"There was a natural infirmity in the policy of their charter, which was the source of many of the misfortunes of the colony, without any imputation on the noble families concerned. For the grantees [the proprietors], being eight in number, and not incorporated, and no provision being made to conclude the whole number by the voices of the majority, there could not be

timely measures always agreed on, which were proper or necessary for the good government of the plantation. In the mean time, the inhabitants grew unruly and quarrelled about religion and politics; and while there was a mere anarchy among them, they were exposed to the attacks and insults of their Spanish and Indian neighbours, whom they had imprudently provoked and injured; and, as if they had conspired against the growth of the colony, they repealed their laws for liberty of conscience, though the majority of the people were Dissenters, and had resorted thither under the public faith for a complete indulgence, which they considered as part of their Magna Charta. Within these four years an end was put to their sorrows; for about that time, the lords proprietors and the planters, (who had long been heartily tired of each other) were, by the interposition of the Legislature, fairly divorced for ever, and the property of the whole vested in the crown."* And the abovementioned injudicious and unjust act against the privileges of Dissenters, was repealed by the King in council.

Another historian tells us; "Their intestine distractions, and their foreign wars, kept the colony so low, that an act of Parliament, if possible to prevent the last ruinous consequences of these divisions, put the province under the immediate care and inspection of the crown."+

And Governor Johnson, at his first meeting the assembly there, after the change, tells them;

"His Majesty, out of his great goodness and fatherly care of you, and at the earnest request and solicitation

"New and Accurate Account of Carolina," p. 14; printed at London, 1733.

"Account of the British Settlements in America," p. 233, concerning Carolina.

of yourselves, has been graciously pleased, at a great expense, to purchase seven eighths of the late lords proprietaries' charter, whereby you are become under his immediate government, a blessing and security we have been long praying for, and solicitous of; the good effects of which we daily experience by the safety we enjoy, as well in our trade, by the protection of his ships of war, as by land, by an independent company maintained purely for our safety and encouragement. The taking off the enumeration of rice is a peculiar favor," &c.*

By these accounts we learn, that the people of that province, far from losing by the change, obtained internal security and external protection, both by sea and land; the Dissenters a restoration and establishment of their privileges, which the proprietary government attempted to deprive them of; and the whole province, favors in point of trade with respect to their grand staple commodity, which from that time they were allowed to carry directly to foreign ports, without being obliged, as before, to enter in England.

With regard to the neighbouring province of New Jersey, we find, in a representation from the Board of Trade to the crown, dated "Whitehall, October 2d, 1701," the following account of it, namely; "That the inhabitants, in a petition to his Majesty the last year, complained of several grievances they lay under, by the neglect or mismanagement of the proprietors of that province, or their agents; unto which they also added, that during the whole time the said proprietors have governed, or pretended to govern, that province, they have never taken care to preserve or defend the same from the Indians or other enemies, by sending or

VOL. IV.

* Historical Register, No. 63, for 1731.

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providing any arms, ammunition, or stores, as they ought to have done; and the said inhabitants thereupon humbly prayed, his Majesty would be pleased to commissionate some fit person, to be governor over them. That it has been represented to us by several letters, memorials, and other papers, as well from the inhabitants as proprietors, that they are at present in confusion and anarchy, and that it is much to be apprehended, lest by the heats of the parties that are amongst them, they should fall into such violences, as may endanger the lives of many persons, and destroy the colony."

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In consequence of these disorders, and petitions from the people, the proprietors were obliged to surrender that government to the crown; Queen Anne then reigning, who, of all our crowned heads since the Revolution, was by far the least favorable to Dissenters; yet her instructions to Lord Cornbury, her first governor, were express and full in their favor, viz.

"Instruction 51st. You are to permit a liberty of conscience to all persons (except Papists), so that they may be contented with a quiet and peaceable enjoyment of the same, not giving offence or scandal to the gov

ernment."

"Instruction 52d. And whereas we have been informed that divers of our good subjects inhabiting those parts, do make a religious scruple of swearing, and by reason of their refusing to take an oath in any court of justice and other places, are or may be liable to many inconveniences, our will and pleasure is, that, in order to their ease in what they conceive to be matter of conscience, so far as may be consistent with

* "Grants and Concessions, and Original Constitutions of New Jersey," printed at Philadelphia by W. Bradford, p. 606.

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