granted by it. Whether a power obtained would be for the present beneficial or fruitless was not, practically, a final question. If not effective at present, occasion might come for it to be reduced to some useful application. And a corresponding apprehension was as naturally entertained on the other side. Nothing immediately depended on the question whether the Houses of Legislature or the governor should appoint a Fast, or on the higher sounding question whether the Representatives' choice of their Speaker should be subject to the governor's approval. But such pretensions on the part of the Representatives were regarded by the governor as "continual encroachments on the few prerogatives left to the crown." And the Board of Trade, to whom he told his story, thought "it was apparent from recent transactions, that the inhabitants were endeavoring to wrest the small remains of power out of the hands of the crown, and to become independent of the mother-country."

After the death of Elisha Cooke, the antago

nist of Mather and of Dudley, his policy 1715. was prosecuted by his son, who succeeded to his great popularity. The gentleman who had been Speaker of the House in the last years, John Burrill of Lynn, had been much esteemed in that capacity. But, as the temper in which the Representatives now were required a 1720. bolder leadership, he was promoted to the May. Council, and Cooke was elected to fill his place.

The transactions which followed illustrate the unfriendly relation between the parties.

A committee of the Representatives went to the governor's house and informed him of their choice. According to their report, he said, "Very well," and they took their leave. The same afternoon he came to the Council Chamber, and informed the Representatives by a message that he was now ready to hear from them respecting the choice of a Speaker. They replied that he had already been acquainted with it, and that his answer had been recorded in their journal; and they proceeded to desire the Council, as usual, to go into convention with them for the choice of counsellors for the coming year. The governor said that no such convention could be held before he was informed how the House was organized. The Representatives sent up a committee to communicate that information anew. The gov

ernor refused to approve Mr. Cooke, and desired them to proceed to another choice. This they declined to do, and renewed the proposal to the Council to go into an election of counsellors. A doubt whether, by the charter provision, this election could be legally made on any subsequent day, induced the governor to desist from opposition to the choice of a Speaker, after acquainting the House by a message that the power he claimed was conferred by the English Constitution and by the charter, and, as he was told, had been exercised by Governor Dudley. An elec

tion was accordingly made of counsellors, of whom he rejected two. This done, he sent a message to the House, urging his competency to prevent the elevation of Cooke, who had invaded. the royal rights in the woods of Maine, and from whom, personally, he had received ill treatment. He advised them to choose another Speaker, with a reservation of their asserted right till the authorities in England should be consulted. Without a dissenting voice they refused to do so, and he immediately dissolved the Court, and issued writs for another to meet in six weeks. It was composed of nearly the same members as the last. But, as another dissolution would have much embarrassed the public business, the House did not persist in a re-election of Cooke, but contented itself for the present with remonstrance and protest as having acted under duress.

July 13.

Their surly session lasted only ten days. They denied the governor's request for a small sum of money to gratify the Penobscot Indians. They set up a new claim to choose notaries-public, without the concurrence of the Council. They refused the money to pay for the customary celebration of public holidays, such as the anniversary of the King's birthday. After an unusual delay, they made a grant to the governor of five hundred pounds, in the depreciated currency, for a half-year's compensation, instead of the six hundred pounds which had been their usual allowTo the lieutenant-governor, instead of the

ance.

accustomed fifty pounds or more, they voted thirtyfive pounds, which he refused to receive, at the same time informing them that his office had cost him more than fifty pounds a year. Their whole legislation seemed but an expression of their dissatisfaction and ill-will. The most favorable interpretation to be put on it is, that they designed to show that they had power to make terms for themselves by obstructing and retaliating.

The matter of the reservation of pine-trees for masts and spars for the royal navy was a standing subject of contention. The House

maintained that, though, by the charter, trees fit for this use, while standing upon land which had not become private property at the date of that instrument, belonged to the King, yet, after they had been felled, the property in the timber reverted to the occupant of the land. And Cooke persisted in his argument that the whole claim was wrongful, Massachusetts having bought Maine of Gorges, free from any such encumbrance. The House raised a committee to seize for the use of the province such timber as had been cut under the commissioner's license, alleging that it had not been devoted to the King's use, but had been converted by that officer to his own profit. Bridger had at the same time lost the confidence of his English masters. One Burniston, appointed to succeed him, sent John Armstrong to New England as his deputy; a

1719.

June 13.

man, writes the angry ex-official, who was "bred a kind of clerk to a country attorney in Cumberland, or that way. He knows not an oak from a pine, nor one pine from another." Bridger thought it hard treatment to be displaced, when, as he wrote to the Lords of Trade, he had been nearly twenty-five years in office, and 1721. when he had "made the first tar, and March 10. sowed and cured the first hemp, that ever was made or raised in New England fit for the service of the navy."

1667.

1692.

1696.

At this time Nova Scotia received a permanent organization as a British province. It had been ceded to France by the Treaty of Breda, and subsequently was occupied to some extent by a French population. Having, a year 1690. after the Revolution, been successfully in- May 20. vaded by a Massachusetts force under Sir William Phipps, it was presently included in that province by the charter of William and Mary. The petition of Massachusetts to the crown, praying it to garrison Port Royal, must be interpreted as expressive of a desire to be rid of a possession which was merely a burden and a charge. In the same year, by the Treaty of Ryswick, Nova Scotia was again handed back to France. The surrender to Governor Nicholson gave it once more to Great Britain, of which it has since remained a permanent possession, being confirmed as 1713. such by an article of the Treaty of Utrecht. April 11.

1710.