t from other violations of it),
pardoning the past and assuring them he would not cancel but restore and
establish their Charter, provided they would fulfil certain conditions
which were specified. They joyously accepted the pardon of the past, and
the promised continuance of the Charter as if unconditional, without
fulfilling the conditions of it, or even mentioning them; just as their
fathers had claimed the power given them in the Royal Charter by Charles
the First in 1628, to make laws and regulations for order and good
government of the Massachusetts Bay Plantation, concealing the Charter,
claiming absolute power under it, and wholly ignoring the restrictive
condition that such laws and regulations were not to be "contrary to the
laws of England"--not only concealing the Charter, but not allowing
their laws and regulations to be printed until after the fall of Charles
the First, and resisting all orders for the production of their
proceedings, and all Commissions of Inquiry to ascertain whether they
had not made laws or regulations and performed acts "contrary to the
laws of England." So now, a generation afterwards, they claimed and
contended that Charles the Second had restored their Charter, as if done
absolutely and unconditionally without their recognising one of the five
conditions included in the proviso of the King's letter. Nothing could
have been more kindly and generously conceived than the terms of the
King's letter, and nothing could be more reasonable than the conditions
contained in its proviso--conditions with which all the other British
colonies of America readily complied, and which every province of the
Dominion of Canada has assumed and acted upon as a duty and pleasure
from the first establishment of their respective Governments. Of all the
colonies of the British Empire for the last three centuries, that of
Massachusetts Bay is the only one that ever refused to acknowledge this
allegiance to the Government from which it derived its existence and
territory. The conditions which Charles the Second announced as the
proviso of his consenting to renew and continue the Charter granted by
his Royal father to the Company of Massachusetts Bay, were the
following:

"1. That upon a review, all such laws and ordinances that are now, or
have been during these late troubles, in practice there, and which are
contrary or derogatory to the King's authority and government, shall be
repealed.

"2. That the rul