Digital Paxton: Digital Collection, Critical Edition, and Teaching Platform

Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of Our Public Affairs - 15

is, that in order to their Ease in what they conceive to be Matter of Conscience, so far as may be consistent with good Order and Government, you take care that an Act be passed in the General Assembly of our said Province, to the like Effect as that passed here in the Seventh and Eighth Years of his late Majesty’s Reign, entitled, An ACT that the solemn Affirmation and Declaration of the People called Quakers, shall be accepted instead of an oath in the usual Form; and that the same be transmitted to us, and to our Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, as before directed.”

INSTR. 53. “And whereas we have been farther informed, that in the Settlement of our the Government of said Province, it may so happen, that the Number of Inhabitants fitly qualified to serve in our Council, in the General Assembly, and in other Places of Trust and Profit there, will be but small; it is therefore our Will and Pleasure, that such of the said People called Quakers, as shall be found capable of any of those Places and Employments, and accordingly be elected or appointed to serve therein, may, upon their taking and signing the Declaration of Allegiance to us, in the Form used by the same People here in England, together with a solemn Declaration for the true Discharge of their respective Truths, be admitted by you into any of the said Places or Employments, &c. (c)

And the same Privileges have been, and still are, fully enjoy’d in that Province by Dissenters

(c) Grants and Concessions, &c. page 633.

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