Imatges de pàgina
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XCVIII. The terms of admittance and communion with any church or profession shall be written in a book, and therein be subscribed by all the members of the said church or profession; which book shall be kept by the public register of the precinct wherein they reside.

XCIX. The time of every one's subscription and admittance shall be dated in the said book or religious record.

C. In the terms of communion of every church or profession, these following shall be three; without which no agreement or assembly of men, upon pretence of religion, shall be accounted a church or profession within these rules:

I. "That there is a GOD.

2. "That GOD is publicly to be worshipped.

3. "That it is lawful, and the duty of every man, being thereunto called by those that govern, to bear witness to truth; and that every church or profession shall in their terms of communion set down the external way whereby they witness a truth as in the presence of GOD, whether it be by laying hands on, or kissing the Bible, as in the Church of England, or by holding up the hand, or any other sensible way."

CI. No person above seventeen years of age shall have any benefit or protection of the law, or be capable of any place of profit or honour, who is not a member of some church or profession, having his name recorded in some one, and but one religious record at once.

CII. No person of any other church or profession shall disturb or molest any religious assembly.

CIII. No person whatsoever shall speak any thing in their religious assembly, irreverently or seditiously of the government or governors, or of state-matters.

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CVI. No man shall use any reproachful, reviling, or abusive language, against any religion of any church or profession; that being the certain way of disturbing the peace, and of hindering the conversion of any to the truth, by engaging them in quarrels and animosities, to the hatred of the professors and that profession, which otherwise they might be brought to assent to.

CVII. Since charity obliges us to wish well to the souls of all men, and religion ought to alter nothing in any man's civil estate or right, it shall be lawful for slaves, as well as others, to enter

themselves, and be of what church or profession any of them shall think best, and thereof be as fully members as any freeman. But yet no slave shall hereby be exempted from that civil dominion his master hath over him, but be in all other things in the same state and condition he was in before.

CVIII. Assemblies, upon what pretence soever of religion, not observing and performing the abovesaid rules, shall not be esteemed as churches, but unlawful meetings, and be punished as other riots.

CIX. No person whatsoever shall disturb, molest, or persecute another for his speculative opinions in religion, or his way of worship.

CX. Every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves, of what opinion or religion soever. CXI. No cause, whether civil or criminal, of any freeman, shall be tried in any court of judicature, without a jury of his peers.

CXII. No person whatsoever shall hold or claim any land in Carolina by purchase or gift, or otherwise, from the natives or any other whatsoever; but merely from and under the lords proprietors; upon pain of forfeiture of all his estate, moveable or immoveable, and perpetual banishment.

CXIII. Whosoever shall possess any freehold in Carolina, upon what title or grant soever, shall, at the farthest from and after the year one thousand six hundred eighty-nine, pay yearly unto the lords proprietors, for each acre of land, English measure, as much fine silver as is at this present in one English penny, or the value thereof, to be as a chief rent and acknowledgment to the lords proprietors, their heirs and successors for ever. And it shall be lawful for the palatine's court by their officers, at any time, to take a new survey of any man's land, not to out [oust] him of any part of his possession, but that by such a survey the just number of acres he possesseth may be known, and the rent thereupon due may be paid by him.

CXIV. All wrecks, mines, minerals, quarries of gems, and precious stones, with pearl-fishing, whale-fishing, and one half of all ambergris, by whomsoever found, shall wholly belong to the lords proprietors.

CXV. All revenues and profits belonging to the lords proprietors, in common, shall be divided into ten parts, whereof the

palatine shall have three, and each proprietor one; but if the palatine shall govern by a deputy, his deputy shall have one of those three-tenths, and the palatine the other two-tenths.

CXVI. All inhabitants and freemen of Carolina above seventeen years of age, and under sixty, shall be bound to bear arms, and serve as soldiers whenever the grand council shall find it necessary.

CXVII. A true copy of these Fundamental Constitutions shall be kept in a great book by the register of every precinct, to be

subscribed before the said register. Nor shall any person of

what degree or condition soever, above seventeen years old, have any estate or possession in Carolina, or protection or benefit of the law there, who hath not, before a precinct register, subscribed these Fundamental Constitutions in this form:

"I A. B. do promise to bear faith and true allegiance to our sovereign lord King Charles the Second, his heirs and successors; and will be true and faithful to the palatine and lords proprietors of Carolina, their heirs and successors; and with my utmost power will defend them, and maintain the government according to this establishment in these Fundamental Constitutions."

CXVIII. Whatsoever alien shall, in this form, before any precinct register, subscribe these Fundamental Constitutions, shall be thereby naturalized.

CXIX. In the same manner shall every person, at his admittance into any office, subscribe these Fundamental Constitutions. CXX. These Fundamental Constitutions, in number a hundred and twenty, and every part thereof, shall be and remain the sacred and unalterable form and rule of government of Carolina for ever.

No. 34. Third Navigation Act

1672

THE immediate object of the act of 1672 was to prevent the illegal trade in tobacco between the American colonies and the continent of Europe. Tobacco was one of the articles which, by the Navigation Act of 1660, could be exported only to England or to another colony; but the increasing demand for this product, together with the high price which must be paid for such tobacco as had paid customs duty in England, served to encourage smuggling and illicit trade. The distinguishing feature of the act of 1672 is the requirement of a

bond that the "enumerated articles" would be landed in England, and the imposition of specified duties in case of failure of the merchant to comply. REFERENCES. - Text in Statutes of the Realm, V., 792, 793. The act is cited as 25 Car. II., c. 7. The regulation of the trade in tobacco was the subject of various acts; these are enumerated and discussed in the works of Channing and Beer, cited under No. 22, ante.

AN ACT for the incouragement of the Greeneland and Eastland Trades, and for the better secureing the Plantation Trade.

[V.] AND whereas by one Act passed in this present Parlyament in the twelfth yeare of your Majestyes Raigne entituled An Act for (*) encouragement of Shipping and Navigation, and by severall other Lawes passed since that time it is permitted to shipp, carry, convey and transport Sugar, Tobacco, Cotton-wooll, Indicoe, Ginger, Fusticke and all other Dying wood of the Growth, Production and Manufacture of any of your Majestyes Plantations in America, Asia or Africa from the places of their Growth Production and Manufacture to any other of your Majestyes Plantations in those Parts (Tangier onely excepted) and that without paying of Custome for the same either at ladeing or unladeing of the said Commodityes by meanes whereof the Trade and Navigation in those Commodityes from one Plantation to another is greatly increased, and the Inhabitants of diverse of those Colonies not contenting themselves with being supplyed with those Commodities for their owne use free from all Customes (while the Subjects of this your Kingdome of England have paid great Customes and Impositions for what of them hath beene spent here) but contrary to the expresse Letter of the aforesaid Lawes have brought into diverse parts of Europe great quantities thereof, and doe alsoe [dayly †] vend great quantities thereof to the shipping of other Nations who bring them into diverse parts of Europe to the great hurt and diminution of your Majestyes Customes and of the Trade and Navigation of this your Kingdome; For the prevention thereof. . . bee it enacted . . . That from and after the first day of September which shall bee in the yeare of our Lord One thousand six hundred seaventy and three If any Shipp or Vessell which by Law may trade in any of your Majesties Plantations shall come to any of them to shipp and take on board any of the aforesaid Commodities, and that Bond

*The in the original Ms.

+ Interlined in the Roll.

shall not be first given with one sufficient Surety to bring the same to England or Wales or the Towne of Berwicke upon Tweede and to noe other place, and there to unloade and putt the same on shoare (the danger of the Seas onely excepted) that there shall be answered and paid to your Majestie your Heires and Successors for soe much of the said Commodities as shall be laded and putt on board such Shipp or Vessell these following Rates and Dutyes, That is to say

For Sugar White the hundred Weight containing one hundred and twelve pounds five shillings;

And Browne Sugar and Muscavadoes the hundred weight containing one hundred and twelve pounds one shilling [and*] six pence;

For Tobacco the pound one penny;

For Cotton-wooll the pound one halfe-penny;

For Indicoe the pound, two pence;

For Ginger the hundred Weight containing one hundred and twelve pounds one shilling;

For Logwood the hundred Weight containing one hundred and twelve pounds, five pounds,

For Fusticke and all other Dying-wood the hundred Weight containing one hundred and twelve pounds six pence;

And alsoe for every pound of Cacao-nutts one penny, to be leavyed, collected and paid at such places, and to such Collectors and other Officers as shall be appointed in the respective Plantations to collect, leavy and receive the same before the ladeing thereof, and under such Penalties both to the Officers and upon the Goods as for non-payment of, or defrauding his Majestie of his Customes in England.

[VI.] AND for the better collection of the severall Rates and Dutyes aforesaid imposed by this Act, Bee it enacted . . . That this whole business shall bee ordered and mannaged, and the severall Dutyes hereby imposed shall be caused to be leavyed by the Commissioners of the Customes in England, now and for the time being by and under the authoritie and directions of the Lord Treasurer of England or Commissioners of the Treasury for the Time being.

& in the original.

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