ed all the burdens
of the State upon four-fifths of their fellow (male) colonists who had
no voice in the legislation or administration of the Government. Yet
this sectarian Government is called by New England historians a free
Government; and these eleven hundred electors--electors not because
they have property, but because they are Congregationalists--are called
"the people of Massachusetts," while four-fifths of the male population
and more than four-fifths of the property are utterly ignored, except
to pay the taxes or bear the other burdens of the State, but without
a single elective voice, or a single free press to state their grievances
or express their wishes, much less to advocate their rights and those of
the King and Parliament.

III. Thirdly, from the facts and authorities given in the foregoing
pages, there cannot be a reasonable pretext for the statement that the
rulers of Massachusetts Bay had not violated both the objects and
provisions of the Royal Charter, variously and persistently, during the
fifty-four years of its existence; while there is not an instance of
either Charles the First or Second claiming a single prerogative
inconsistent with the provisions of the Charter, and which is not freely
recognized at this day in the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain, by
the free inhabitants of every Province of the British Empire. The fact
that neither of the Charleses asked for anything more than the
toleration of Episcopal worship, never objected to the perfect freedom
of worship claimed by the Congregationalists of Massachusetts; and the
fact that Charles the Second corresponded and remonstrated for twenty
years and more to induce the rulers of Massachusetts Bay to acknowledge
those rights of King and Parliament, and their duties as British
subjects, shows that there could have been no desire to interfere with
their freedom of worship or to abolish the Charter, except as a last
resort, after the failure of all other means to restrain the disloyal
and oppressive acts of the rulers of that one colony. In
contradistinction to the practice of other colonies of New England, and
of every British colony at this day, Charles the First and Second were
bad kings to England and Scotland, but were otherwise to New England;
and when New England historians narrate at great length, and paint in
the darkest colours, the persecutions and despotic acts of the Stuart
kings over England and Scotland, and then infer that