to harmonize and indeed to success in public matters, so that he was deservedly beloved by all. "The funeral takes place to-morrow (Thursday), when the remains will be interred in a vault in the Lady Chapel of Melford Church." CHARLES DEANE, Esq., LL.D. Yours sincerely, ROBERT C. WINTHROP. Mr. Quincy was appointed to prepare a Memoir of Mr. Sprague; and Mr. Foote, one of Dr. Walker, for the Society's Proceedings. MARCH MEETING, 1875. A stated monthly meeting was held on the 11th instant at 11 o'clock A.M., Vice-President ADAMS in the chair. The Recording Secretary read the record of the preceding Meeting, which was approved. The Librarian read his list of donors to the Library for the past month. The Corresponding Secretary read a letter of acceptance from Professor C. F. Dunbar. The Chairman reported a recommendation from the Council to transfer the following names from the Corresponding to the Honorary list,-namely, the Rev. Leonard Woods, D.D., LL.D.; David Masson, LL.D.; John Forster, LL.D., and the recommendation was unanimously adopted. The Hon, Charles Devens, Jr., was elected a Resident Member. Messrs. Saltonstall, A. T. Perkins, and Smith were appointed a Nominating Committee, to report a list of officers for the Annual Meeting. Messrs. Lawrence, Mason, and W. Amory were appointed a committee on the Treasurer's account. The Chairman laid before the Society the following letter: To the President of the Massachusetts Historical Society. SIR, The Inhabitants of the Town of Concord, Massachusetts, cordially invite a delegation from the Massachusetts Historical Society to be present as their guests at Concord, on the nineteenth of April, 1875, and to join with them in celebrating the Centennial Anniversary of the opening of the Revolutionary War. E. R. HOAR, R. W. EMERSON, Committee of Invitation. Whereupon it was Voted, to accept the courteous invitation on behalf of the inhabitants of the Town of Concord; and that the Council be requested to represent the Society as delegates on the occasion. DR. QUINT said, In these times of centennials of Revolutionary events, it is well to be accurate in our statements. I notice that some reputable newspapers have fallen into the error of regarding the Salem North Bridge affair, of February, 1775, as the first armed resistance to Great Britain. It is, of course, scarcely necessary to remind any one present of the first affair at Great Island, below Portsmouth, N. H., when, on the 14th of December, 1774, a party moved by beat of drum in the streets of Portsmouth, with reinforcements from neighboring towns, scaled the walls of Fort William and Mary, confined the small garrison, and carried off ninety-seven barrels of powder, most of which was used at Bunker Hill. It may not be fresh in mind, however, that the assault was resisted by both artillery and musketry fire, and that the patriots not only "gave three Huzzas," but also deliberately "hauled down the King's colours." A vain tradition has obtained some circulation, that this attack was a night surprise. It was at three o'clock in the afternoon, and the commander of the fort had had three hours' notice of the approach. The commander's official report, as well as three or four letters of Governor Wentworth, and an account of the seizure given in the Portsmouth paper of a few days' later date, are sufficient evidence. Ebenezer Bennett was the last survivor of the Durham party, which was led by John Sullivan. The veteran died in 1851; but I heard a statement of his recollections taken from his own lips, and the traditionary spot where the powder was hidden (under the pulpit of the old Durham meeting-house) was familiar to me in boyhood. Unless some earlier affair appears, I think that this capture must be regarded as the first armed resistance. On motion of Mr. WHITMORE, it was Voted, that the Committee on the Sewall Papers report at the next meeting the probable cost of transcribing so much of those papers as will be required to make one printed volume. Mr. NORTON exhibited a cast of the face of Cromwell, in plaster, recently taken from the original mask, and thought by Mr. Carlyle, from whom Mr. Norton read an interesting letter respecting it, to be the best likeness now extant of the Pro tector. Mr. T. C. AMORY called the attention of the Society to a new serial of the Proceedings on the table, which contained the letter of Luzerne to Vergennes, relating to General Sullivan. He hoped the letter would be read with care, believing as he did that the inferences which have been drawn from it by the historian are unwarrantable. Mr. WHITMORE referred to some letters recently published in "The St. Chrysostom's Magazine" in New York, purporting to be written from Boston, by the Rev. Robert Ratcliffe, the first Episcopal minister in Boston, saying he thought there were good reasons for doubting the genuineness of those letters. - Dr. QUINT stated that he had made a complete copy of " Pike's Journal," in the Society's Library, with some notes to it, for publication in the Society's Proceedings, and he would place his copy in the hands of the Committee of Publication. Mr. ADAMS exhibited a copy of an oration professing to have been delivered by Samuel Adams in Philadelphia, August 1, 1776, republished in London, from a Philadelphia imprint. The existence of such a pamphlet had been well known; but Mr. Adams said there was no evidence that Samuel Adams ever delivered such an oration, nor had there ever been discovered a copy published in Philadelphia. The Cabinet-keeper communicated a gift of a piece of glass once forming part of a window in a house in the town of Wilmington, Mass., on which was inscribed, with a diamond or some other hard substance, these words: "August 2, 1769, the infamous governor left our town." The gift was made by Dr. Samuel A. Toothaker, of North Reading, formerly a resident of Wilmington. The inscription is supposed to refer to Governor Bernard. Letters from the President of the Society had been received by the Recording Secretary dated at Cannes, 19th and 30th January, and 5th February,-the first containing a slip from the Journal des Débats, noticing the decease of our distinguished Corresponding Member, "M. d'Avezac, Membre de l'Institut, Président Honoraire de la Société de Géographie," who died on the 14th of January, at his own house in Paris, Rue du Bac, 42. Professor WASHBURN read the following paper discussing a recently mooted question as to whether the Colony laws enacted under the first Massachusetts charter were repealed by the vacating of the charter: Did the Vacating of the Colony Charter annul the Laws made under it? I propose to tax the indulgence of the Society with some remarks bearing upon the question whether the vacating of the Colony Charter in 1684, by a decree in the English Chancery, annulled the statutes which had been enacted under it, or whether the adoption of the Province Charter of 1691 had that effect? The question, indeed, has no practical importance, except from the historical interest which surrounds it; and the occasion for its discussion has grown out of the progress of the work now going on under the charge and editorial labors of two of our honored associates, whereby the public are to be put in possession of a complete collection of the Province Laws of Massachusetts. A writer in the Boston "Globe," in noticing the second volume of this work, takes occasion to remark that "there has been no general repeal of the provincial statutes, whereas, of the colonial statutes, it was the law of the day, and so regarded at the time, by everybody on both sides of the Atlantic, and for a century afterwards, that by the arrival of the Province Charter, after the repeal of the Colonial Charter, the statutes passed by the colonial legislatures had become annulled." The writer, it will be perceived, ascribes this effect "to the arrival of the Provincial Charter;" and he adds: "This view of the subject was expounded by President John Quincy Adams, historically and constitutionally, in his discourse on education at Braintree on the 24th October, 1839.” If it were true that the question had been settled by so high and competent an authority as that which is cited by the writer, it might seem presumptuous to treat it as an open one. But the language of the discourse referred to hardly seems to warrant such an assumption. It is this: "By the vacation of the charter, all the preceding colonial laws were understood to have been superseded with it." This is all that he says upon the subject; but, instead of being a judgment formed, it was but repeating the popular impression, without stating or examining the grounds upon which it rested. That such an impression prevailed with many in the community, is, undoubtedly, true. But I propose to ask you to look at the point historically, and see if there is any thing in the transaction itself, or in the action of the people through their representatives, which could justify the assumption that it worked such an effect, or that this was conceded by the people of Massachusetts at any time after the dissolution of the old charter? Let us, in the first place, see what powers of government, as to making and administering laws, were conferred upon the people of Massachusetts by their Colony Charter. They were made a corporation consisting of a Governor, Deputy-Governor, Assistants, and the Freemen of the Colony. The freemen, acting with the Governor and at least six Assistants, might choose freemen, and elect such officers as they should see fit, "for the ordering, managing, and despatching of the affairs of the said Governor and Company and their successors, and might make laws and ordinances for the good and welfare of the Company, and for the governing it, and ordering of the said lands and plantations, and the people inhabiting and to inhabit the same, as to them shall be thought meet, so as such laws and ordinances be not contrary or repugnant to the laws and statutes of their own realm of England"; "giving," thereby, in the words of Judge Story, "full legislative power." (1 Const. 48.) Under this power the Colony allotted and conveyed lands to individuals, beginning as early as May, 1629. In 1641, an ordinance took from the State or sovereign the property in the shore or lands lying between high and low water mark upon the borders of the sea, and gave it to the conterminous owners of the upland, to which I refer here for reasons hereafter mentioned. Towns were also created with sundry important municipal powers and privileges, so that when the charter was revoked there were seventy-five of these municipalities in Massachusetts, and seventeen in Plymouth, and sixty thousand inhabitants had then been collected under this form of government in Massachusetts alone. What should be classed as crimes and what should be their punishment, by whom marriages should be celebrated, what should be the privileges of freemen and who should share them, the founding and establishing a system of free schools, and the adoption and promulgation of a Body of Liberties answering to a Bill of Rights, were among the acts of colonial legislation under which a body politic had grown up in the enjoyment of what was symbolized by these and kindred laws. It was while in the enjoyment of these privileges that a decree was rendered in the English Chancery, without any opportunity on the part of the Colony to be heard, by which, in the language of the Province Charter, the patent or charter of Charles I. was "cancelled, vacated, and annihilated." The inquiry which now presents itself is, What effect, if any, did this action of the Court of Chancery have upon the existing laws of the Colony? As we pursue this inquiry, it may be well to bear in mind that the people of the Colony never regarded the judgment vacating their charter as valid, for the reason already mentioned, that they had had no opportunity to meet the charges upon which it was rendered. And it may be inquired, if it had the effect to annul these statutes, where are we to find the laws by which the people were governed between 1684, when the judgment was rendered, and 1692, when the new charter went into effect? If the Colony laws were annulled, the condition of the people would have been far worse than if they had been conquered by an enemy, and a new government been instituted over them. Such a conquest would not, of itself, have repealed any of the existing laws, nor changed the titles or rights of property in the lands of the citizens. (Montesq. B. 10, c. 3; Wheat. pt. 4, c. 2, § 5; 12 Peters, 436; 1 Kent, 178 m.) And as for the common law which the colonists brought with them from England (1 Mass. Rep. 59; 2 do. 534), it is difficult to imagine how it could have been affected by the revocation of the charter, since it derived its force and vigor from a source as high as the charter itself. If we refer to writers upon the subject, with a very few exceptions, they speak of those colonial laws as still in force, so far as they bear upon the present condition of the people of the Commonwealth. Mr. Dane regards the ancient colonial statutes as being still important, "as they make parts of our titles." (6 Abr. 537.) And when speaking |