[1748.] No sooner were the distresses of war closed, by the renewal of peace, than the colonists, particularly of _New-England_, were alarmed with the report of an _American Episcopacy_; which it was the most earnest desire of Dr. _Thomas Secker_, late archbishop of _Canterbury_, to establish. The doctor, when bishop of _Oxford_, in his sermon before the society for propagating she gospel, &c. “began those invectives against the colonists and their religious character, which have been unwarily continued, and were founded entirely upon misinformations and misrepresentations of interested persons, the missionaries especially, who found their account in abusing better christians than themselves.”[65] This conduct had not the least tendency to reconcile them to the project, but the direct contrary: and argued a secret bitterness of spirit, which promised no great moderation, if the scheme of episcopising succeeded. The talk of introducing bishops into America, was very warm among the episcopalians in Connecticut; and it is not an uncharitable conjecture, that it originated from, or was promoted by the zeal of bishop Secker. During the height of the conversation, a worthy divine, now at Rhode-Island, had the hopes of a bishopric held out to him, to induce him to turn episcopalian, though without effect. The colonists had reason to dread the introduction of episcopacy, for it could not be thought it should come unaccompanied with such a degree of civil power as would at length trample upon the rights of other denominations. An extensive and united hierarchy, however named, when armed with civil authority and in alliance with state power, is a dangeaous engine, if under the direction of a crafty politician. The failure of the episcopising project at this period, might be owing in a great measure, to the part the _dissenting deputation_ acted upon the occasion: for which the representatives of the Massachusetts Bay returned them their thanks, in a message signed by the speaker.[66] But though the colonies were relieved from this cause of uneasiness, they were laid under another, by the parliament’s passing an act, enacting, “That from and after the twenty-fourth of June, 1750, no _mill_ or _other engine_ for _slitting_ or _rolling_ of _iron_, or any _platting forge_, to work with a _tilt hammer_, or any _furnace_ for _making steel_, shall be erected; or, after such erection, continued _in any of his majesty’s colonies in America_.” The four New-England colonies, however, had no just reason to complain, when the power of parliament passed an act [1751.] “to regulate and restrain paper bills of credit in said governments, and to prevent the same being legal tenders in payment of money;” as they had made the act absolutely necessary, that so British creditors might be secured from being defrauded by a legal tender of a depreciated and depreciating paper currency.