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SELECT CHARTERS AND OTHER

DOCUMENTS

ILLUSTRATIVE OF

AMERICAN HISTORY

1606-1775

The

SELECT CHARTERS

AND OTHER DOCUMENTS

ILLUSTRATIVE OF

AMERICAN HISTORY

1606-1775

EDITED WITH NOTES

BY

WILLIAM MACDONALD

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND POLITICAL SCIENCE IN BOWDOIN COLLEGE
EDITOR OF SELECT DOCUMENTS ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE HISTORY
OF THE UNITED STATES, 1776-1861"

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

1899

All rights reserved

E
173
.M13

COPYRIGHT, 1899,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Norwood Press

J. S. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith

Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

PREFACE

THE present work forms a companion volume to my "Select Documents illustrative of the History of the United States, 17761861," and follows, in the main, the general method and arrangement of the earlier 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 i and j, u 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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