Crown were those charters afterwards revoked. By the Crown, too, we are told, all the grants of liberties, all the charters which had passed from the company during its existence, to the colony, were, upon the revocation of the company's charters and its dissolution, confirmed and ratified to us. Under the immediate protection, direction, and government of the Crown have we been from that time to this. In short, thenceforward all the Acts of our Legislature either have, or constitutionally ought to have been, transmitted to Great Britain and subjected to the royal government, either to be disallowed, or ratified and confirmed by the ultimate sanction of the royal assent, previously to their having the force and validity of laws, without any parliamentary interposition whatever. So that the King, not as a branch of the British Legislature, but as a sovereign lord and absolute proprietor of the colony, in conjunction with his commissioner the Governor, his Council of State, and the people's representatives here, we suppose, form that aggregate Legislature, to the Acts of which alone, in all articles of internal government (of which taxation is a most important one) we owe obedience. To such alone, and to no other, have we paid obedience quite from our first establishment to this present day. And to such alone, in all such articles, particularly that of taxes, if I mistake not the sentiments of my countrymen, will they ever be disposed or prevailed on to pay obedience by any other argument than what some have called the ultima ratio regum, which may, for aught I know, be as convincing in matters of policy, as fire and faggot have been in those of religion. Besides all this, whenever the colony hath labored under any grievance which the branches of the Legislature here resident could not redress, or hath found it necessary to crave any indulgence or
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LETTERS OF JAMES MAURY.
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