The subject of publishing a Series of Collections was agitated soon after the establishment of the Society. Various circumstances served to retard this project until ZACHARIAH ALLEN, Esq. a member, presented to the Society a manuscript copy of Roger Williams’ Key to the Indian Language which he had procured from the printed copy in the Bodliean Library at Oxford. This manuscript has since been carefully compared with the printed copy of the same work, in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. At this time, when philosophers are engaged in searching for the origin, and philanthropists, in meliorating the condition, of the aborigines, it was thought by the Society that the publication of this curious and valuable relick of the venerable founder of the State would be particularly acceptable and appropriate; and in the hope that both pleasure and profit may be derived from its perusal, it is now respectfully commended to the attention and favor of the public. CHARTER OF THE RHODE-ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. Whereas Jeremiah Lippitt, William Aplin, Charles Norris Tibbitts, Walter R. Danforth, William R. Staples, Richard W. Greene, John Brown Francis, William G. Goddard, Charles F. Tillinghast, Richard J. Arnold, Charles Jackson, and William E. Richmond, have petitioned this General Assembly to incorporate them into a society, by the name of the Rhode-Island Historical Society: Therefore, Section 1. _Be it enacted by the General Assembly, and by the authority thereof it is enacted_, That the aforesaid persons, together with such others as they shall hereafter associate with them, and their successors, are hereby constituted, ordained and created a body corporate and politic, by the name of _The Rhode-Island Historical Society, for the purpose of procuring and preserving whatever relates to the topography, antiquities, and natural, civil and ecclesiastical history of this State_; and by the name aforesaid shall have perpetual succession; and by the same name are hereby made able and capable in law, as a body corporate, to have, hold and enjoy goods, chattels, lands and tenements, to the value of five thousand dollars, exclusive of their library, cabinet and historical collections and antiquities, and the same at all times to dispose of; to have a common seal, and the same at pleasure to change and destroy; to sue and be sued, to plead and to be impleaded, to answer and to answer unto, to defend and to be defended against, in all courts of justice and before all proper judges; and to do, act and transact all matters and things whatsoever, proper for bodies corporate to do, act and transact; and to establish and enact such a constitution and such by-laws as shall be deemed necessary and expedient, provided that they be not repugnant to the laws of this State, or of the United States; and to annex to the breach of those laws such fines as they may deem fit.