I., pp.

410, 411, in a note.) It is clear from the legal opinion, as has been shown in the foregoing pages, that the first Puritans of Massachusetts, though only a chartered company, set up an independent government, paid no attention whatever to the provisions of the Charter under which they held their land and had settled the colony, but acted in entire disregard and defiance of the authority, which had granted their Charter.

Mr.Neal very candidly says: "The old Charter was, in the opinion of persons learned in the law, defective as to several powers which are absolutely necessary to the subsistence of the Plantation: for example, it gave the Government no more power than every corporation in England has; power in capital cases was not expressed in it; it mentioned no House of Deputies, or Assembly of Representatives; the Government had thereby no legal power to impose taxes on the inhabitants that were not freemen (that is, on _four-fifths_ of the male population), nor to erect Courts of Admiralty, so that if the judgment against this Charter should be reversed, yet if the Government of New England should exercise the same powers as they had done before the _quo warranto_, a new writ of _scire facias_ might undoubtedly be issued out against them.

Besides, if the old Charter should have been restored without a grant of some other advantages, the country would have been very much incommoded, because the provinces of _Maine_ and _New Hampshire_ would have been taken from Massachusetts, and _Plymouth_ would have been annexed to New York, whereby the Massachusetts Colony would have been very much straitened and have made a mean figure both as to its trade and influence.
"The new Charter grants a great many privileges to New England which it had not before.

The colony is now made a province, and the General Court has, with the King's approbation, as much power in New England as the King and Parliament have in England.