By the Royal Charter of 1629, the King encouraged the Massachusetts Company by remitting all taxes upon the property of the Plantations for the space of seven years, and all customs and duties upon their exports and imports, to or from any British port, for the space of twenty-one years, except the five per cent.

due upon their goods and merchandise, according to the ancient trade of merchants; but the Massachusetts delegates obtained an ordinance of Parliament, or rather an order of the House of Commons, complimenting the colony on its progress and hopeful prospects, and discharging all the exports of the natural products of the colony and all the goods imported into it for its own use, from the payment of any custom or taxation whatever.[74] On this resolution of the Commons three remarks may be made: 1.

As in all previous communications between the King and the Colony, the House of Commons termed the colony a "Plantation," and the colonists "Planters." Two years afterwards the colony of Massachusetts Bay assumed to itself (without Charter or Act of Parliament) the title and style of "a Commonwealth." 2.

While the House of Commons speaks of the prospects being "very happy for the propagation of the Gospel in those parts," the Massachusetts colony had not established a single mission or employed a single missionary or teacher for the instruction of the Indians.3.

The House of Commons exempts the colony from payment of all duties on articles exported from or imported into the colony, _until the House of Commons shall take further order therein to the contrary_,--clearly implying and assuming, as beyond doubt, the right of the House of Commons to impose or abolish such duties at its pleasure.