or for more than one year at a time. Yet,
upon the whole, the new system of government in the Province of
Massachusetts was considered preferable to that of the neighbouring
colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut, which retained their old
Charters and elected their Governors. Mr. Hutchinson says:

"Seventy years' practice under a new Charter, in many respects to be
preferred to the old, has taken away not only all expectation, but all
desire, of ever returning to the old Charter. We do not envy the
neighbouring Governments which retained and have ever since practised
upon their ancient Charters. Many of the most sensible in those
Governments would be glad to be under the same Constitution that the
Massachusetts Province happily enjoys."[220]

But Massachusetts and other New England colonies had incurred
considerable debts in their wars with the Indians, prompted and aided by
the French, who sought the destruction of the English colonies. But most
of these debts were incurred by loans to individual inhabitants and by
the issue of paper money, which became greatly depreciated and caused
much confusion and embarrassment in the local and Transatlantic
trade.[221]

At the close of the war between England and France by the peace and
treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1749, Mr. Hutchinson thus describes the state
of Massachusetts:

"The people of Massachusetts Bay were never in a more easy and happy
situation than at the conclusion of the war with France (1749). By the
generous reimbursement of the whole charge (L183,000) incurred by the
expedition against Cape Breton, the province was set free from a heavy
debt in which it must otherwise have remained involved, and was enabled
to exchange a depreciating paper medium, which had long been the sole
instrument of trade, for a stable medium of silver and gold; the
advantages whereof to all branches of their commerce was evident, and
excited the envy of other colonies; in each of which paper was the
principal currency."[222]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 203: Palfrey's History of New England, Vol. III., B. iii.,
Chap. ix, pp. 396-398.]

[Footnote 204: The Plymouth Colony tolerating the proscribed Baptists of
Massachusetts Bay, the Court of Massachusetts Bay admonished them in a
letter, in 1649, saying "that it had come to its knowledge that divers
Anabaptists had been connived at within the Plymouth jurisdiction, and
it appeared that the 'patient bearing' of the Plymouth authorities