transmitted hither for Our Approbation ; And to set down and represent as aforesaid the Usefulness or Mischeif thereof to Our Crown, and to Our said Kingdom of England, or to the Plantations themselves, in case the same should be established for Lawes there ; And also to consider what matters may be recommended as fitt to be passed in the Assemblys there, To heare complaints of Oppressions and maleadministrations, in Our Plantations, in order to represent as aforesaid what you in your Discretions shall thinke proper ; And also to require an Account of all Monies given for Publick uses by the Assemblies in Our Plantations, and how the same are and have been expended or laid out.
E. B. O'Callaghan, editor, Documents relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York (Albany, 1854), IV, 145-148 passim.
47. "Englishmen Hate an Arbitrary Power" (1710)
Wise was one of the foremost prose writers of the colonial period, and minister at Ipswich. —Bibliography: Tyler, American Literature, II, 104-116; Palfrey, New England, III, 525-527; Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VI, ch. I; J. A. Doyle, English in America, Puritan Colonies, II, 378; Channing and Hart, Guide, § 130.
ENGLISHMEN hate an arbitrary power (politically considered) as they hate the devil.
For that they have through immemorial ages been the owners of very fair infranchizements and liberties, that the sense, favor or high esteem of them are (as it were) extraduce, transmitted with the elemental materials of their essence from generation to generation, and so ingenate and mixed with their frame, that no artifice, craft or force used can root it out. Naturam expellas furca licet usque recurrit. And though many of their incautelous princes have endeavored to null all their charter rights and immunities, and agrandize themselves in the servile state of the subjects, by setting up their own seperate will, for the great standard of government over the nations, yet they have all along paid dear for their attempts, both in the ruin of the nation, and in interrupting the increase of their own grandeur, and their foreign settlements and conquests.
