114 Industrial Experiments in Colonial America. 



impossible, there being no license in their last charter to pur- 

 chase lands. King William had evidently considered Maine 

 and Massachusetts as one province, and it was impossible that 

 one part of a province could be the private property of another.^ 

 It was certainly the part of a conservative legal adviser to the 

 Crown, like Mr. West, in a question of authority to give the 

 king the benefit of the doubt; and according to the letter of the 

 law he could hardly have decided otherwise. On the other 

 hand, it is needless to say that, had the New England colonies 

 contented themselves with the powers to which a literal inter- 

 pretation of the wording of the charter of 1629 entitled them, 

 they could scarcely have attained the state of virtual autonomy 

 of which the champions of the king's prerogative complained. 

 But by 1 719, it was too late to undo the work of nearly a cen- 

 tury. Cooke undoubtedly represented an extrem.e view of the 

 extent of authority which Massachusetts possessed, either by 

 charter right or by usurpation. Whether the right of pur- 

 chase was recognized or not, Maine, as a part of Massachusetts, 

 was still under royal jurisdiction, and the king must have had 

 as much right to the woods in Maine as he had to those in 

 Massachusetts: in other words, so far as the right of reserva- 

 tion held for Massachusetts, it held for Maine. 



The act of 1711^ had enumerated all the New England prov- 

 inces, as subject to a reservation of the trees of specified dimen- 

 sions. But in view of the acrimonious temper of the Massa- 

 chusetts Assembly, and the disposition of the inhabitants to re- 

 sent the interference of the king's officers with the exercise of 

 their most lucrative industry, it is not surprising that they 

 should have upheld Cooke as the defender of their rights. 

 Therefore Cooke continued unhindered to buy up the timber 

 lands of Maine and offer them for sale. He even offered 

 Bridger's deputy a lot, at a low price. On Bridger's advice, 

 the deputy refused to buy; but, said Bridger, "anybody else 

 may buy it, and what is to become of the king's masts ?"^ Cooke 



^Mr. West's report on the above papers, B. T. New Erg., W: 22. 



^9 Anne, c. 22. 



^Mr. Bridger to the Board of Trade, B. T. New Eng., X: 72. 



