"
The president and councils, or the major part of them, were empowered,
from time to time, to make, ordain, and constitute laws, ordinances, and
officers for the better government of the colony, provided that none of
these laws affected life or limb in the settlers. Their enactments were
also required to be, in substance, consonant to the jurisprudence of
England, and the King or the council in the mother-country was invested
with absolute power at any time to rescind and make void the acts of the
provincial councils.
As the colonists should increase in population and influence the King
reserves to himself the right to legislate for them; but condescends to
restrict his law-making energies to such action as might be "consonant to
the law of England or the equity thereof."
And to show his tender feelings toward the aborigines, whose lands he was
so deliberately appropriating to the use of his subjects, his majesty
requires that they shall be treated with all kindness and charity and
that all proper means should be used to bring them to "the knowledge of
God and the obedience of the King, his heirs and successors, under such
severe pains and punishments as should be inflicted by the respective
presidents and councils of the several colonies."
On these kindly ordinances the philosophic reader will not fail to
observe the impress of the man.
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