Severity is stamped upon the very face of the act, in making the disobedience of a governor, the forfeiture of a charter, meant to secure the liberties of thousands, who might not have any the least power of preventing such disobedience. The proprieties and charter colonies were so disinclined to admit of appeals to his majesty in council, and were thought so to thirst after independence that these and other objections against them were laid before the parliament, [1701.] and a bill thereupon brought into the house of lords for re-uniting the right of government in those colonies to the crown: but better council prevailed, and matters were left unaltered. Some are for bringing as a precedent for the parliament’s raising a revenue from the colonies, what was passed in 1710, viz. “An act for establishing a general post-office for all her majesty’s dominions, and for settling, a weekly sum out of the revenues thereof, for the service of the war and other her majesty’s occasions.” By this act the postage of England, Scotland, Ireland, and America, were consolidated, to the end that a general post-office might be established through Great-Britain and Ireland, her colonies and plantations in North-America and the West-Indies, and all her other dominions, in such manner as might be most beneficial to the people: and that the revenue arising form the said office might be better improved. The consolidation made a new act necessary; and afforded the opportunity of advancing the rates of letters. The weekly sum amounted to £.700 and was to be paid out of the revenue for 32 years; the payment was made perpetual in the third year of her successor, having been soon after granted, appropriated by another act toward paying off, with interest at six _per cent._ the principal of £.2,602,200, which government borrowed of the public. By the act, the post-riders carrying the mail, were exempted from paying any thing for passing the ferries in North-America, and the ferryman was subjected to a penalty of five pounds, if he did not convey them over within half an hour after demanded. Whatever power over the colonies the parliament might exercise in the act, the dissimilarity between this and the sugar act, passed in 1764, will not admit of the former’s being quoted, with propriety, as a precedent for the latter. The colonists were in no wise uneasy at it, and considered not the American postage in the light of an internal tax, designed for the raising of a revenue from them; for it was but a few comparatively who were affected by it; and these were accommodated in the conveyance of their letters, received a full equivalent for the postage of them, and were not bound to send them by the public post, when they preferred a private conveyence. In respect of the readiness of the colonies to co-operate with each other and the mother country, for the general good, they manifested the same as occasion required.