Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/474

 460 ///. THE COLONIAL PERIOD future be established upon a different footing from that of Great Britain. In return for so great a favor from the Crown we apprehend the people of Connecticut ought to submit to the acceptance of an explanatory charter whereby that colony may for the future become at least as dependent upon the Crown and their Native Country as the people of Massachusetts Bay now are whose charter was formerly the same with theirs. And we think ourselves the rather bound in duty to offer this to his Majesty's consideration because the people of Connecticut have hitherto affected so entire an independence of Great Britain that they have not for many years transmitted any of their laws for his Majesty's con- sideration nor any account of their public transactions. Their governors whom they have a right to choose by their charter ought always to be approved by the King, but no presentation is ever made by them for that purpose. And they, tho required by bond to observe the laws of Trade and Navigation, never comply therewith, so that we have reason to believe that they do carry on illegal commerce with impunity, and in general we seldom or never hear from them except when they stand in need of the countenance, the pro- tection or the assistance of the Crown." ^ With this report the case of Winthrop vs. Lechmere, growing as it did, out of the land system of the New Eng- land colonies, has brought us step by step dangerously near to the principles and theories which underlay restriction on the one side and revolution on the other. How far this par- ticular case and the discussions which grew out of it aided in the shaping of those principles, we need not attempt to discover. As part of the larger question of the uniting of the colonies and the annulling of the charters, its influence was direct and definite. After 1700 the fact of parliamen- tary supremacy was proven each time an effort was made to limit the independence of the proprietary and charter colonies and to bind them more firmly to the Crown ; and at the same time the continuance of such efforts for thirty years increased the familiarity of Parliament with the task of controlling the »B. T. Papers, Proprieties, Entry Book, H. ff. 25-27. Cf. Wilks's Statement in Talcott Papers, I, pp. '217-219, 222.