I have upon this occasion looked into the Charter of the province in which the COMPACT between the King and the people is contain'd, and I find not a single word about the King's paying his Governor. If therefore the Charter is altogether silent about it, Mucius is certainly to be justified in saying that by the compact the King may not pay him; that is, there is nothing in the Charter to warrant it. But it is asked, whether the King may not pay his Governor notwithstanding? And ought it not to be looked upon as a mark of royal bounty and goodness, thus to save the people from being "burdened by a tax upon their polls and estates for a Governor's support?" This is the Court language; and great pains have been taken by some gentlemen, whose particular business it is to ride through the several counties, to spread it in every part of the province. But it has a tendency to mislead and ensnare. It no doubt sounds very agreeably in the ears of an unwary man, that by this ministerial manoeuvre, the province have a saving of a thousand pounds sterling every year, for the support of a Governor. Let us consider the matter a little. Did not our ancestors, when they accepted this Charter, understand that they had contracted for a free government? And did not the King on his part intend that it should be so? Was it not understood, that by this contract every power of government was to be under a check adequate to the importance of it, without which, according to the best reasoners on government, and the experience of mankind in all ages of the world, that power must be a tyranny? Undoubtedly it was the sense of both parties in the contract, that the government to be erected by the Charter, should be a free government, and that every power of it should be properly controuled in order to constitute it so. I would then ask, what weight remains in the scale of the democratick part of the constitution to check the monarchick in the hands of the governor, if the king has not only an uncontroulable power to nominate and appoint a governor, but may pay him too? If any one will point out to me a sufficient weight to balance the scale, I will differ from Mucius: But until that is done, I must be of his mind, that the king has no right to pay his governor: "For that, he must stipulate with the people;" otherwise our civil constitution is rendered materially different from what the contracting parties intended it should be, viz, a free constitution. It places the governor in such a state of independency as must make any man formidable. - It puts it in his power in many instances to act the tyrant, even under the appearance of all the forms of the constitution. The man who is possessed of a power to act the tyrant when he thinks proper, let him become possessed of it as he may, is at least an USURPER of power that cannot belong to him in any free state - Power is intoxicating: There have been few men, if any, who