re observed or violated,
or whether his own prescribed conditions of continuing the Charter were
ignored or fulfilled, without examination; and how could such an
examination be made except by a Committee of the Privy Council or
special Commissioners? This was what the King did, and what the Governor
and Court of Massachusetts Bay resisted. They accepted with a profusion
of thanks and of professed loyalty the King's pardon and favours, but
denied his rights and authority. They denied any other allegiance or
responsibility to the King's Government than the payment of five per
cent. of the proceeds of the gold and silver mines. The absurdity of
their pretensions and of their resistance to the Royal Commission, and
the injustice and unreasonableness of their attacks and pretended
suspicions, are well exposed in the documents above quoted, and
especially in the petition of the "minority" of their own
fellow-colonists. But all in vain; where they could not openly deny,
they evaded so as to render nugatory the requirements of the King as the
conditions of continuing the Charter, as will appear from their
correspondence with the Royal Commissioners. I will give two or three
examples.

They refused to take the oath of allegiance according to the form
transmitted to them by the King's order, or except with limitations that
neutralized it. The first Governor of their Corporation, Matthew
Cradock, took the oath of allegiance as other officers of the Crown and
British subjects, and as provided in the Royal Charter; but after the
secret conveyance of the Charter to Massachusetts Bay and the
establishment of a Government there, they, in secret deliberation,
decided that they were not British subjects in the ordinary sense; that
the only allegiance they owed to the King was such as the homage the
Hanse Towns paid to Austria, or Burgundy to the Kings of France; that
the only allegiance or obligation they owed to England was the payment
of one-fifth per cent. of the produce of their gold and silver mines;
that there were no appeals from their acts or decisions to the King or
Courts of England; and that the King had no right to see whether their
laws or acts were according to the provisions of the Charter. When the
King, after his restoration, required them to take the oath of
allegiance as the first condition of continuing the Charter, they evaded
it by attaching to the oath the Charter _according to their
interpretation of it_. Any Ame