and despotic power. But the construction which your Excellency puts upon the words, reduces us to a state of vassalage, and exposes us to oppression and despotic power, whenever a Parliament shall see fit to make laws for that purpose, and put them in execution. We flatter ourselves, that, from the large extracts we have made from your Excellency's history of the colony, it appears evidently, that under both charters, it hath been the sense of the people and of the government, that they were not under the jurisdiction of Parliament. We pray you again to turn to those quotations, and our observations upon them; and we wish to have your Excellency's judicious remarks. When we adduced that history, to prove that the sentiments of private persons of influence, four or five years after the restoration, were very different from what your Excellency apprehended them to be, when you delivered your speech, you seem to concede to it, by telling us, "it was, as you take it, from the principles imbibed in those times of anarchy, (preceding the restoration,) that they disputed the authority of Parliament;" but, you add, "the government would not venture to dispute it." We find in the same history,10 a quotation from a letter of Mr. Stoughton, dated seventeen years after the restoration, mentioning "the country's not taking notice of the acts of navigation, to observe them." And it was, as we take it, after that time, that the government declared, in a letter to their Agents, that they had not submitted to them; and they ventured to "dispute" the jurisdiction, asserting, that they apprehended the acts to be an invasion of the rights, liberties, and properties of the subjects of his Majesty in the colony, they not being represented in Parliament, and that "the laws of England did not reach America." It very little avails in proof, that they conceded to the supreme authority of Parliament, their telling the Commissioners, "that the act of navigation had for some years before, been observed here; that they knew not of its being greatly violated; and that, such laws as appeared to be against it, were repealed." It may as truly be said now, that the revenue acts are observed by some of the people of this province; but it cannot be said that the government and people of this province have conceded, that the Parliament had authority to make such acts to be observed here. Neither does their declaration to the Commissioners, that such laws as appeared to be against the act of navigation, were repealed, prove their concession of the authority of Parliament, by any means, so much as their making provision for giving force to an act of Parliament within this province, by a deliberate and solemn act or law of their own, proves the contrary.