of England, lest in case they should decline, England might prohibit all trade with them, both in point of exportation and importation of any commodities, which were a host sufficiently prevalent to subdue New England, not being able to subsist:—even so they seem to threaten us, by cutting us off from all commerce and trade with them, and thereby to disable us from any comfortable subsistence, being that the concourse of shipping, and all other sorts of commodities, are universally conversant among themselves: as also knowing that ourselves are not in a capacity to send out shipping of ourselves, which in great measure is occasioned _by their oppressing us_, as yourself well knows:—as in many other respects, so in this for one, that we cannot have any thing from them, for the supply of our necessities, but in effect they make the price, both of their commodities and our own. Also, because we have no English coin, but only that which passeth among these barbarians, and such commodities as are raised by the labor of our hands, as corn, cattle, tobacco, &c. to make payment in, which they will have at their own rates, or else not deal with us; whereby though they gain extraordinarily by us, yet, for the safeguard of their religion, they may seem to neglect themselves in that respect; for _what will not men do for their God_? Sir, this is our earnest and pressing request unto you in this matter, that as you may perceive by our answer unto the united colonies, we fly as our refuge in all civil respects to his Highness and honorable Council, as not being subject to any other in matters of our civil state, so may it please you to have an eye and ear open, in case our adversaries should speak, to undermine us in our privileges granted unto us, and plead our cause in such sort, as that we may not be compelled to exercise any civil power over men’s consciences, so long as human orders in point of civility are not corrupted and violated, which our neighbors about us do frequently practise, whereof many of us have absolute experience, and judge it to be no less than a point of ABSOLUTE CRUELTY. “JOHN SANFORD, _Clerk of Assembly_.”