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Clarendon recommended submission; and the king, in his answer, reproached the colonists with making groundless complaints, and justified the commission as the only proper method of rectifying provincial disorders.

Meanwhile, the commissioners having completed the conquest of New Netherlands, to which the name of New York was now given, proceeded to the discharge of their civil functions in New England. The grant of the newly-acquired province to the Duke of York, had raised a question of boundaries between its territory and that of Connecticut, which the commissioners adjusted to the perfect satisfaction of the latter colony. A claim of the Duke of Hamilton, and other persons, arising from grants by the Plymouth council, was also disposed of with a similar result. As the acts of the commissioners in no way conflicted with the interests of the colony, they met with no opposition; and in their report they praised the dutifulness and obedience of Connecticut.

In Rhode Island, the commissioners were favourably received; but Plymouth treated them coldly, declined their promise of a new charter, and with many thanks and professions of loyalty, chose to retain their ancient privileges.

On the return of the commissioners to Massachusetts, their pretensions were resisted at every step. Their conferences with the general court were anything but amicable, and their attempt to assume the judicial government of the colony was defeated by the authorities and derided by the people.

Suspending for a time their operations at Boston, the commissioners repaired to New Hampshire and Maine, and setting aside the claims of Mason and Gorges, as well as the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, they suppressed the existing authorities, and erected a new system of government, directly dependent on the crown, in each of these provinces. This proceeding, however, was rendered nugatory immediately after their departure from the country, by the provinces returning to their former state of dependence on Massachusetts.

On the return of the commissioners to Boston, the general court declared that the measures they had pursued tended to

PRESENTS TO THE KING.

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the disturbance of the public peace, and demanded a conference, which was refused with an asperity of reproach that put an end to all farther communication. The king soon after recalled these functionaries, expressed his satisfaction at the conduct of all the colonies except Massachusetts, and commanded the general court of that province to send deputies to answer in his presence the charges preferred against the colony.

The general court evaded this order by pretending to doubt the authenticity of the royal mandate; and at the same time, aware that their recent proceedings must be regarded as an open defiance of the British government, they offered addresses expressive of their loyalty; and to demonstrate that they were willing to afford substantial evidence of this feeling, even while ready to defend to the utmost their chartered rights, they presented a shipload of masts to the king, and a supply of provisions to his fleet in the West Indies. Charles, knowing the determined temper of the Massachusetts people, thought proper to accept their presents very graciously, assuring them that their zeal for the royal service was acceptable, and he deferred, without for a moment abandoning, his design of remodelling the institutions of New England.

The system of government, says Grahame, that prevailed in Massachusetts, coincided with the sentiments of a great majority of the people; and even those acts of municipal administration that imposed restraints on civil liberty, were reverenced on account of their manifest design, and their supposed efficiency to promote an object which the people held dearer than civil liberty itself. A printing-press had heen established at Cambridge for upwards of twenty years; and the general court had recently appointed two persons to be licensers of the press, and prohibited the publication of any book or other composition that had not received their censorial approbation. The licensers having sanctioned the publication of Thomas à Kempis's admirable treatise, De Imitatione Christi, the court interposed, and, declaring that "the book was written by a Popish minister, and contained some things

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less safe to be infused among the people," recommended a more diligent revisal to the licensers, and in the mean time suspended the publication. In a constitution less popular, a measure of this nature would have been regarded as an outrage upon liberty. But the government of Massachusetts expressed, and was supported by, the sentiments and opinions of the people; and the general respect which its administration commanded was the reason why the inhabitants of New Hampshire and Maine, rejecting the constitution which they had received from the royal commissioners, again solicited and were received into the rank of dependencies on its jurisdiction.

All traces of the visitation of the commissioners having been thus effaced, and the apprehensions that their measures had excited, forgotten, the affairs of the New England colonies continued for several years to glide on in a course of silent but cheerful prosperity. The navigation act not being aided by the establishment of an efficient customhouse, and depending for its execution upon officers annually elected by their own fellow-citizens, was completely disregarded. The people enjoyed a commerce practically unrestricted a consequent increase of wealth was visible among the merchants and farmers, and habits of industry and economy continuing to prevail with unabated force, the plantations underwent a progressive improvement, and many new settlements arose. Theft was rare, and beggary unknown. in New England. Josselyn, who returned about two years before this period, from his second visit to America, commends highly the beauty and agreeableness of the towns and villages of Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the substantial structure and interior comfort of all the private dwellings.

Nothing had contributed more to promote the commerce and security of New England, than the conquest of Nova Scotia by Cromwell; and the cession of this province by Charles II. to France, with limits so indefinite as to open a source of continued discord between the English colonists and their neighbours, was regarded as a most untoward circum

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POPULATION OF NEW ENGLAND.

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stance (1667). Agents had been sent to England to remonstrate against the grant; but in vain. The French regained possession of their ancient settlement; and both New England and the mother country had afterwards abundant cause to regret the admission of a restless and ambitious neighbour, possessing paramount influence over the Indian tribes, and often exerting it with terrible effect in the wars of the succeeding century.

The population of New England at this time is uncertain. Mr. Bancroft supposes it to have been fifty-five thousand in 1675. Of these he gives seven thousand to Plymouth, fourteen thousand to Connecticut, twenty-two thousand to Massachusetts, and four thousand each to Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. The people were chiefly engaged in agriculture, the fisheries, and commerce. In Maine and New Hampshire, ship-building, and the cutting, sawing, and exportation of lumber, were at this early period, as they still are, favourite pursuits. That spirit of hardy enterprise, which a century later attracted the attention and drew forth the encomiums of Burke, was even then a striking trait in the New England character.

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HE attempts to Christianize the Indians of New England have already been noticed. Many of them, by the efforts of Elliot and the Mayhews, had been won from heathenism and the customs of savage life, to a knowledge and love of the Christian religion, and a preference for some of the habits of civilization. Still the great mass of the aboriginal population remained heathens. Mr. Bancroft estimates the Indian population in New England, west of the St. Croix, at about thirty thousand. Of these, five thousand were in Maine, three thousand in New Hampshire, eight thousand in Massachusetts and Plymouth, and fifteen hundred in Connecticut. He supposes the white population west of the Piscataqua to

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