Select charters and other documents illustrative of American history, 1606-1775.

Front matter

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Preface

The present work forms a companion volume to my " Select Documents illustrative of the History of the United States, 1776- 1861," and follows, in the main, the general method and arrangement of the earUer work. The aim has been to bring together, in a form suitable for class-room use, the chief constitutional and legal documents of the American colonial period commonly dwelt upon in systematic general courses of instruction. The list will be found to contain, among other pieces, the significant portions of the most important colonial charters, grants, and frames of government, and the acts of Parliament most directly affecting the American colonies. The statutes and state papers of the period immediately preceding the Revolution have not, so far as I know, been readily available hitherto for students who did not have access to large libraries. It has not been possible, however, consistently with the plan and scope of the volume, to deal as fully and satisfactorily with the half century from 1700 to 1750 as with the years preceding and following those dates ; and the meagre treatment of this "neglected period" by historians, small and great, is, to some degree, reflected here.

In reprinting the texts, I have written out the obsolete contractions wherever they occurred, and have disregarded the ancient use of / and j, n and v, and long s. Corrections of a few obvious errors and misprints in the originals have been noted in brackets. Omissions and contractions incident to condensation are indicated by the usual signs.

While it has not seemed proper so to abridge the charters as to destroy their essentially formal character, certain provisions common to nearly all of them have been, as a rule, omitted.

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Such are the sections relating to the tenureof land, nominal payments to king or proprietor, the right to make local laws and ordinances not repugnant to the laws of England, the right of waging offensive and defensive war, etc. These provisions, taking form, for the most part, in the three charters of Virginia, I have thought it unnecessary to repeat on their later recurrence, save in the case of some substantial change in the power granted.

I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for permission to reprint, from William Wirt Henry's " Life, Correspondence, and Speeches of Patrick Henry," the Virginia resolutions of 1773 ; and to the Hon. Josiah Quincy of Boston, and Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., for permission to use the. text of the writ of assistance in Quincy's " Massachusetts Reports." Edward. McCrady, Esq., of Charleston, S.C., kindly cleared up for me some points in connection with Locke's "Fundamental Constitutions." To Mr. William Coolidge Lane and Mr. Thomas J. Kiernan of the Harvard University Library, Mr. C. B. Tillinghast of the Massachusetts State Library, and Mr. George T. Little of the Bowdoin College Library, I am under obligations for special privileges in the use of the collections under their care.

WILLIAM MACDONALD.

Brunswick, Maine, October, 1899.

Contents

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3- 4- 5- 6.

7- 9-

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