George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 2, 17th edition.

[41] New England is the monument of its power to estab-

Chap XI.}

lish free states. The ancient institutions of England would not yield to new popular establishments; but the bloom of immortality belongs to the example of Vane, to the poetry of Milton, and, let us hope, to the institutions of New England.

To New England, the revolutions in the mother country were not indifferent; the American colonies attracted the notice of the courts of justice in Westminster Hall. They were held, alike by the nature of the English constitution, and the principles of the common law, to be subordinate to the English parliament, and bound by its acts, whenever they were specially named in a statute, or were clearly embraced within its provisions. An issue was thus made between Massachusetts and England, for that colony had, as we have seen, refused to be subject to the laws of parliament, and had remonstrated against such subjection, as ‘the loss of English liberty.’ The Long Parliament had conceded the justice of the remonstrance. The judges, on the restoration, decreed otherwise, and asserted the legislative supremacy of parliament over the colonies without restriction. Such was the established common law of England.¹

Immediately on the restoration of Charles II., the

1660

convention parliament² granted to the monarch a subsidy of twelve pence in the pound, that is, of five per cent., on all merchandise exported from, or imported into, the kingdom of England, or ‘any of his majesty's dominions thereto belonging.’³ Doubts arising, not