persecutions; because each contending party courted their votes and interest, to help to pull down its adversary. This has been the religious-political free system and practice of Connecticut since 1662. In speaking of the religious phrenzies and persecutions in Connecticut under the sanction of the charter, I must notice the words of an eminent Quaker, who, as a blasphemer, had been whipped, branded, burnt in the tongue, set on the gallows, banished, and, upon return, sentenced to be hanged. “Dost thee not think,” said he to his Judges, “that the Jews, who crucified the Saviour of the World, had a _Charter_?” Many have been the disputes between Connecticut and the neighbouring Colonies concerning their several boundaries, and much blood has been spilt on those occasions. On the north and east, where lie the Massachusets and Rhode-Island, Connecticut has, in some degree, been the gainer; but has lost considerably on the west and south, to the engendering violent animosity against the _loyal_ New-Yorkers, to whom it will probably prove fatal in the end. The detail is briefly as follows: The Dutch settlers on New-York Island, Hudson’s river, and the west end of Long Island, being subdued by Colonel Nichols in September, 1664, the royal Commissioners, after hearing the Deputies from Connecticut in support of the charter granted to that province against the Duke of York’s patent, ordered, in December following, that Long-Island should be annexed to the government of New-York, and that the West boundary of Connecticut should be a line drawn from the mouth of Mamaroneck river north-north-west to the line of the Massachusets. This settlement, although it infringed their charter, was peaceably acquiesced in by the people of Connecticut; and not complained of by those of New-York till 1683, when they set up a claim founded upon a Dutch grant, _said_ to be made in 1621, of all the lands from Cape Cod to Cape Henlopen. In furtherance of their pretensions, they had recourse to invasion and slander. Of the latter Mr. Smith has given a specimen in his History of New-York, where he says that the agreement in 1664 “was founded in ignorance and fraud;” because, forsooth, “a north-north-west line from Mamaroneck would soon intersect Hudson’s river!” Could any one of common-sense suppose the Dutch on the banks of Hudson’s river, who no doubt were consulted upon the occasion, less acquainted with the course of it, than persons residing on the banks of the Connecticut? Extraordinarily absurd as such an insinuation might be, the people of Connecticut were aware of its probable weight with the Duke of York, whose patent grasped half their country; and therefore, knowing by whom a contest must be decided, they consented to give up twenty miles of their land east of Hudson’s river, hoping that would content a company of time-serving Jacobites and artful Dutchmen. But neither were they nor their Patron satisfied; and the