Legislation begins to take notice of charitable institutions. Attention had already been called to the condition of the insane, and now a fund was formed for the relief of disabled sailors and their families by deducting sixpence a month from the wages of every seaman in active service. This money was paid over to the town in which he lived and which was bound to support him. The respect for the rights of conscience which forms the fundamental principle of the colonial polity, still meets us from time to time in some new application. In 1730 the militia law was modified for the protection of the Quakers. Provision was also made for the protection of the Indians by an act requiring the assent of two justices of the peace to give validity to any bond of apprenticeship in which they were concerned. In 1730 the Board of Trade called for a census. The population was found to have increased six thousand in ten years--numbering fifteen thousand three hundred whites, sixteen hundred and fifty blacks, and nine hundred and eighty Indians--nearly eighteen thousand in all, almost equally divided between the three counties. Of these eighteen thousand nearly nine hundred were enrolled in the militia. Providence was divided into four towns. The question of paper money still excited the Colony. Governor Jenckes was against it, but it was upheld by a majority of the Assembly. By September, 1731, one hundred and ninety-five thousand three hundred pounds had been issued in bills of credit, of which one hundred and twenty thousand pounds were still outstanding. Silver had risen from eight to twenty shillings an ounce. Yet such was the general infatuation that in this very year a new bank was voted of sixty thousand pounds. Yet trade increased and the Colony prospered. The shipping had risen in ten years from thirty-five hundred tons to five thousand, manned by four hundred men. Boston was the principal mart for supplies, but two ships came annually from England, two from Holland and the Mediterranean, and ten or twelve from the West Indies. The exports which comprised live stock, logwood, lumber, fish and the products of the field and dairy, amounted to ten thousand pounds a year. The ordinary expenses of the government amounted to two thousand, the extraordinary to twenty-five hundred pounds a year, colonial currency. The paper money controversy had raised a question as to the governor's power of veto. The law officers of the crown were consulted by the Board of Trade and declared that he had none. They decided also that the King himself had none.