The charter of Charles II. was a practical recognition of the right of self-government. The government which it established, like that instituted by the colonists in their first organization, was a pure democracy, emanating from the people and framed for their good. In form it consisted of a Governor, a Deputy-Governor, ten assistants, and a House of Deputies, six of whom represented Newport, four Providence, four Portsmouth, four Warwick, and two each other towns. The first appointments of Governor, Deputy-Governor, and assistants, as preparatory to a permanent organization, were made by the King. The organization once effected, they were chosen annually at Newport, on the first Wednesday in May. The deputies were elected by the people in their respective towns. Thus election day became the great civil festival of the year, bringing the inhabitants of the towns together to interchange thoughts and feelings, and make merry with their wives and children in the chief town of the Colony. Although the new charter was negotiated by John Clarke, it is impossible not to recognize in it the spirit of Roger Williams. The original right of the natives to the soil was acknowledged, practically, in other colonies; but it was acknowledged as subordinate to the right of the King. The royal grant preceded the actual purchase. But in Rhode Island the royal grant followed the Indian title-deed, and was never accepted as sufficient of itself to justify the occupation of Indian territory. This doctrine, so widely at variance with the received doctrine of the age, stood first in the list of heresies for which Massachusetts had driven Roger Williams into exile. No less prominent in the second charter was that great principle which had formed the leading characteristic of the first. "Noe person," it says, "within the sayd colonye, at any tyme hereafter, shall be any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any difference of opinion in matters of religion which doe not actually disturb the civill peace of our sayd colonye; but that all and everye person may, from tyme to tyme and at all tymes hereafter, freelye and fullye have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments, through the tract of lande hereafter mentioned, they behaving themselves peaceablie and quietlie, and not using this libertye to licentiousness, and profaneness, nor to the civill injurye or outward disturbance of others."