In the year 1663, Charles II. granted the soil and seigniory of Carolina to eight Lords Proprietors, who, to encourage emigration, held out favorable terms. They promised to adventurers gratuities in land according to the number of their respective families, and the most perfect freedom in the exercise of religion. A civil government was established purely representative; a circumstance to which may be attributed, in a great degree, the republican feelings and opinions which soon characterized the colony, and which led to the plan of civil polity under which we now live. When the Lords Proprietors discovered that the colony was likely to become numerous and powerful they endeavored to restrain the civil and religious liberty which they had promised to emigrants: they established a new form of government, declaring their object to be "to make the government of the colony agree as nearly as possible with the monarchy of which it was a part, and to avoid erecting a numerous democracy." This plan of government was the joint work of Lord Ashley and the celebrated John Locke; and its chief aim was to appoint orders of nobility, establish a powerful aristocracy and check the progress of republican opinions and manners. A more ridiculous plan for the government of the colony could not have been devised. The people were accustomed to equality and self-government; a rank of nobility was odious to them, and they disregarded laws which they had not been consulted in making. The prosperity of the colony declined, public morals relaxed, the laws lost their energy, a general spirit of discontent grew up and ripened into rebellion; the Governors became corrupt, and the people idle and vicious. The attempt to give effect to the new plan of government entirely failed, and the Lords Proprietors abolished it as unsuited to the condition of the colony. Two factions then arose; one that wished to establish a high-toned prerogative government; the other consisted of High-churchmen, who gained the ascendency, and by their violence brought the government into contempt. Their object was to deprive all dissenters of the right of suffrage, to curtail their civil rights, and render their situation so oppressive as to compel them to leave the colony. A party of French Huguenots had emigrated to the colony to enjoy that liberty of conscience and of worship which was denied to them in their native country. These people, entitled by their sufferings no less than by their Protestantism to the friendship and hospitality of the colonists, were treated with a cruelty that disgraced the High-church party. Being aliens, they were incapable of holding lands until they were naturalized; and this party having the ascendency in the Assembly, not only refused to naturalize them, but declared their marriages by ministers not ordained by Episcopal Bishops illegal and their children illegitimate. The progress of this violent, persecuting