159 



right of the House to adjourn itself without the gov- 

 ernor's consent which led to the explanatory charter of 

 1726 and the right of the legislature to fix the amount 

 and the time of payment of the governor's salary, which 

 the assembly succeeded in maintaining against the long- 

 continued efforts of the Board of Trade and the Privy 

 Council. 



The interference of the Home government in the affairs 

 of the province was next explained. By the terms of 

 the charter all acts were to be sent to England for tfie 

 Royal approval or disallowance, and under this provision 

 the Home government claimed and exercised a power 

 which, in the course of time, became intolerable to. the 

 people of the Province. Many suggestions and decisions 

 of the Board of Trade and of the Privy Council were, 

 nevertheless, wise ; and to their interference we are in- 

 debted for much of the toleration that characterizes the 

 later laws and manners of provincial times, as well as the 

 defeat of some disastrous financial schemes, the checking 

 of bigotry and superstitions tendencies, the rejection of 

 .some narrow and injurious commercial theories, and some- , 

 thing of personal liberty. 



The laws of the province being thus submitted to the 

 Crown for rejection or approval received the attention of 

 the best minds in England. As expounders of our con- 

 stitutional rights under the charter, and as critics and 

 guides of the legislation and political economy of this 

 little community, such names as Lord Chancellor Somers, 

 the father of the British Constitution, Locke, the philos- 

 opher, Joseph Addison, the English Atticus, and Mat- 

 thew Prior, the poet, appear in the list with Lords Kay- 

 mond, Hardwicke, Talbot and Mansfield, and the many 

 other eminent lawyers, statesmen and scholars who sup- 

 ported the throne as its ministers of state for the eighty 



