to exempt the exports and imports of the
colony from all taxation, both Houses of Parliament passed an Act for
the appointment of a Governor-General and seventeen Commissioners--five
Lords and twelve Commoners--with unlimited powers over all the American
colonies. Among the members of the House of Commons composing this
Commission were Sir Harry Vane and Oliver Cromwell. The title of this
Act, in Hazard, is as follows:

"An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament: whereby
Robert Earl of Warwick is made Governor-in-Chief and Lord High Admiral
of all those Islands and Plantations inhabited, planted, or belonging to
any of his Majesty the King of England's subjects, within the bounds and
upon the coasts of America, and a Committee appointed to be assisting
unto him, for the better government, strengthening and preservation of
the said Plantations; but chiefly for the advancement of the true
Protestant religion, and further spreading of the Gospel of Christ[77]
among those that yet remain there, in great and miserable blindness and
ignorance."[78]

This Act places all the affairs of the colonies, with the appointment
of Governors and all other local officers, under the direct control of
Parliament, through its general Governor and Commissioners, and shows
beyond doubt that the Puritans of the Long Parliament held the same
views with those of Charles the First, and George the Third, and Lord
North a century afterwards, as to the authority of the British
Parliament over the American colonies. Whether those views were right or
wrong, they were the views of all parties in England from the beginning
for more than a century, as to the relations between the British
Parliament and the colonies. The views on this subject held and
maintained by the United Empire Loyalists, during the American
Revolution of 1776, were those which had been held by all parties in
England, whether Puritans or Churchmen, from the first granting of the
Charter to the Company of Massachusetts Bay in 1629. The assumptions and
statements of American historians to the contrary on this subject are at
variance with all the preceding facts of colonial history.[79]

Mr. Bancroft makes no mention of this important ordinance passed by
both Houses of the Long Parliament;[80] nor does Hutchinson, or Graham,
or Palfrey. Less sweeping acts of authority over the colonies, by
either of the Charters, are portrayed by these historians with
minuteness a