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Cool Thoughts on the Present Situation of Our Public Affairs - 21

shackled by Proprietary Instructions, will be at Liberty to join with the Assembly in enacting wholesome Laws. At present, when the King requires Supplies of his faithful Subjects, and they are willing and desirous to grant them, the Proprietaries intervene and say, unless our private Interests in certain Particulars are served, NOTHING SHALL BE DONE. This insolent Tribunitial VETO, has long encumbered all our Publick Affairs, and been productive of many Mischiefs. By the Measure proposed, not even the Proprietaries can justly complain of any Injury. The being oblig’d to fulfill a fair Contract is not Injury. The Crown will be under no Difficulty in compleating the old Contract made with their Father, as there needs no Application to Parliament for the necessary Sum, since half the Quit-Rents of the Lower Counties belongs to the King, and the many Years Arrears in the Proprietaries Hands, who are the Collectors, must vastly exceed what they have a Right to demand, or any Reason to expect. ✝

On the whole, I cannot but think, the more the Proposal is considered, of an humble Petition to the KING, to take this Province under his Majesty’s immediate Protection and Government, the more unanimously we shall go into it. We are chiefly People of three Countries: British Spirits can no longer bear the Treatment they have received, nor will they put on the Chains prepared for them by a Fellow Subject. And the Irish and Germans have felt too severely the Oppres-

✝ In 1722 the Arrears then in their Hands were computed at £18,000 Sterling.

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