But there were other motives than religious ones. There came many Welsh, Irish, and Scotch farmers. The Welsh were a valuable stock; the same cannot be said of the Irish, who began to come in 1719, and continued to arrive in such large numbers that special legislation in regard to them was required in 1729. An act laying a duty on foreigners and Irish servants imported into the province was passed May 10, 1729. This act was repealed, but many features of it were embodied in an act of the following year, imposing a duty on persons convicted of heinous crimes, and preventing poor and impotent persons being imported into the province. It must be acknowledged that the Catholic religion, professed by these immigrants, had not a little to do with the temper of the legislation which restrained them, in a colony which had been modelled on the principles of religious freedom. It was not assuring, on the other hand, for the legislators to discover that the sympathy which the Roman priests showed for the French enemies of the province foreboded mischief. * * * * * It has been told in a previous chapter how New Jersey passed from the state of a conquered province to that of a proprietary or settled colony, and how little the change of dynasty in England affected the public affairs of this section of the middle colonies. The proprietors of East New Jersey had grown weary of governing the province, and in April, 1688, had drawn up an act surrendering their share. The revolutionary disturbances in England which soon followed prevented action upon this surrender; but when, at the beginning of the next century, the proprietors of West New Jersey also showed themselves willing to surrender the burden and cares of government to the crown, the Lords of Trade gave it as their opinion that no sufficient form of government had ever been formed in New Jersey, that many inconveniences and disorders had been the result of the proprietors’ pretence of right to govern, and advised the Law Lords to accept the surrender. The proprietors reserved to themselves all their rights in the soil of the province, while they abandoned the privilege of governing. East and West New Jersey, now become again one province, was to be ruled by a governor, a council of twelve members appointed by the crown, and twenty-four assembly-men elected by the freeholders. The governor was given the right of adjourning and dissolving the assembly at pleasure, and of vetoing any act passed by council and assembly, his assent being subject to the approval or dissent of the king.