George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[49] vainly struggled, as auditor-general of the colonies, to

chap. II.} 1749.

gain a sinecure allowance of five per cent. on all colonial revenues, reported a bill to overrule charters, and to make all orders by the king, or under his authority, the highest law of America.

Such a coalition of power seemed in harmony with that legislative supremacy, which was esteemed the great whig doctrine of the revolution of 1683; it also had the semblance of an earlier precedent. In the reign of Henry the Eighth, parliament sanctioned ‘what a king, by his royal power, might do,’¹ and gave the energy of law to his proclamations and ordinances. In this it did but surrender the liberties of its own constituents: Halifax and his board invited the British parliament to sequester the liberties of other communities, and transfer them to the British crown.

The people of Connecticut,² through their agent, Eliakim Palmer, protested against ‘the unusual and extraordinary’ attempt, ‘so repugnant to the laws and constitution’ of Great Britain, and to their own ‘inestimable privileges’ and charter, ‘of being governed by laws of their own making.’ By their birthright, by the perils of their ancestors, by the sanctity of royal faith, by their own affectionate duty and zeal, by their devotion of their lives and fortunes to their king and country, they remonstrated against the bill. Pennsylvania and Rhode Island pleaded their patents, and reminded parliament of the tribute alrleady levied on them by the monopoly of their commerce.