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

Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of Our Public Affairs - 16

of all Kinds; the Council, Assembly, and Magistracy, being fill’d with Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Quakers, promiscuously, without the least Distinction or Exclusion of any. We may farther remark, on the above Report of the Board of Trade, That the Decree of a Proprietary Province was originally look’d upon as the Duty of the Proprietaries, who receiv’d the Quit-rents, and had the Emoluments of Government; whence it was, that in former Wars, when Arms, Ammunition, Cannon and Military Stores of all Kinds, have been sent by the Crown to all the Colonies under its immediate Government, whose Situation and Circumstances requir’d it; nothing of the Kind has been sent to Proprietary Governments. And to this Day, neither Pennsylvania nor Maryland have receiv’d any such Assistance from the Crown; nor did Carolina, till it became a King’s Government.

Massachusetts-Bay, in New-England, lost its Charter in the latter End of King CHARLES’s Reign, when the Charters of London, and all the Corporations in England, were seized. At the Revolution the Crown gave them a better Constitution, which they enjoy to this Day: No Advantages were taken against the Privileges of the People, tho’ then universally Dissenters. The same Privileges are enjoy’d by the Dissenters in New-Hampshire, which has been a Royal Government ever since 1679, when the Freeholders and Inhabitants petition’d to be taken under the immediate Protection of the Crown.------Nor is there existing in any of the American Colonies, any Test imposed by Great-Britain, to exclude Dissenters from Offices. In some Colonies, in-

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