And, as your Excellency has been pleased to tell us, you have not discovered, that the supreme authority of Parliament has been called in question, even by private and particular persons, until within seven or eight years past; except about the time of the anarchy and confusion in England, which preceded the restoration of King Charles the II. we beg leave to remind your Excellency of some parts of your own history of Massachusetts Bay. Therein we are informed of the sentiments of "persons of influence," after the restoration; from which, the historian tells us, some parts of their conduct, that is, of the General Assembly, "may be pretty well accounted for." By the history, it appears to have been the opinion of those persons of influence, "that the subjects of any prince or state, had a natural right to remove to any other state, or to another quarter of the world, unless the state was weakened or exposed by such remove; and, even in that case, if they were deprived of the right of all mankind, liberty of conscience, it would justify a separation, and upon their removal, their subjection determined and ceased." That "the country to which they had removed, was claimed and possessed by independent princes, whose right to the lordship and sovereignty thereof had been acknowledged by the Kings of England," an instance of which is quoted in the margin. "That they themselves had actually purchased, for valuable consideration, not only the soil, but the dominion, the lordship and sovereignty of those princes;" without which purchase, "in the sight of God and men, they had no right or title to what they possessed." They had received a charter of incorporation from the King, from whence arose a new kind of subjection, namely, "a voluntary, civil subjection;" and by this compact, "they were to be governed by laws made by themselves." Thus it appears to have been the sentiments of private persons, though persons by whose sentiments the public conduct was influenced, that their removal was a justifiable separation from the mother state, upon which, their subjection to that state, determined and ceased. The supreme authority of Parliament, if it had then ever been asserted, must surely have been called in question, by men who had advanced such principles as these.