[Footnote 76: In the subsequent year Parliament exempted New England from all taxes "until both houses should otherwise direct;" and, in 1646, all the colonies were exempted from all talliages except the excise, "provided their productions should be exported only in English bottoms."]
These manifestations of mutual kindness were not interrupted by an ordinance of Parliament, passed in 1643, appointing the earl of Warwick, governor in chief and lord high admiral of the colonies, with a council of five peers, and twelve commoners, to assist him; and empowering him, in conjunction with his associates, to examine the state of their affairs; to send for papers and persons; to remove governors and officers, appointing others in their places; and to assign over to them such part of the powers then granted as he should think proper. Jealous as were the people of New England of measures endangering their liberty, they do not appear to have been alarmed at this extraordinary exercise of power. So true is it that men close their eyes on encroachments committed by that party to which they are attached, in the delusive hope that power, in such hands, will always be wielded against their adversaries, never against themselves.
This prosperous state of things was still farther improved by a transaction which is the more worthy of notice as being an additional evidence of the extent to which the colonies of New England then exercised the powers of self-government. A treaty of peace and commerce was entered into between the governor of Massachusetts, styling himself governor of New England, and Monsieur D'Aulney, lieutenant general of the King of France in Acadié. This treaty was laid before the commissioners for the colonies and received their sanction.
[Sidenote: Petition of the non-conformists.]
The rigid adherence of Massachusetts to the principle of withholding the privilege of a freeman from all who dissented from the majority in any religious opinion, could not fail to generate perpetual discontents. A petition was presented to the general court, signed by several persons highly respectable for their situation and character, but, not being church members, excluded from the common rights of society, complaining that the fundamental laws of England were not acknowledged by the colony; and that they were denied those civil and religious privileges to which they were entitled, as freeborn Englishmen, of good moral conduct. Their prayer to be admitted to the rights, or to be relieved from the burdens, of society, was accompanied with observations conveying a very intelligible censure on the proceedings of the colony, and a threat of applying to Parliament, should the prayer of their petition be rejected.