as to join the Church; and abandoned men who wanted public preferment
could join the Church with loud professions and gain their ends, and
make Church membership a byeword. Under the Charter by William and Mary,
in 1691, the qualification of electors was then fixed at a 'freehold of
forty shillings per annum, or other property of the value of L40
sterling.'" (Elliott's New England History, Vol. I., p. 113.)]

[Footnote 202: Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. III., B. iii.,
Chap. ii., p. 41, in a note.]

CHAPTER VII.

THE SECOND ROYAL CHARTER; HOW OBTAINED--MASSACHUSETTS NEARLY SIXTY YEARS
UNDER THE SECOND CHARTER, FROM 1691 TO 1748; TO THE CLOSE OF THE FIRST
WAR BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE, AND THE PEACE OF AIX-LA-CHAPELLE.

I have traced the characteristics of the Government of the Massachusetts
Bay Colony during fifty-four years under its first Charter, in its
relations to the Crown, to the citizens of its own jurisdiction, to the
inhabitants of the neighbouring colonies, and to the Indians; its denial
of Royal authority; its renunciation of one form of worship and Church
polity, and adoption of another; its denial of toleration to any but
Congregationalists, and of the elective franchise, to four-fifths of the
male population; its taxing without representation; its denial of the
right of appeal to the King, or any right on the part of the King or
Parliament to receive appeals, or to the exercise of any supervision or
means of seeing that "the laws of England were not contravened" by their
acts of legislation or government, while they were sheltered by the
British navy from the actual and threatened invasion of the Dutch,
Spaniards, and French, not to say the Indians, always prompted and
backed by the French, thus claiming all the attributes of an independent
Government, but resting under the aegis of an Imperial protection to
maintain an independence which they asserted, but could not themselves
maintain against foreign enemies.

I will now proceed to note the subsequent corresponding facts of their
history during seventy years under the second Royal Charter.

They averred, and no doubt brought themselves to believe, that with
their first Charter, as interpreted by themselves, was bound up their
_political life_, or what they alleged to be dearer to them than life,
and that in its loss was involved their _political death_; but they made
no martial effort to prolong that life, or to save themselves fro