Of course I am speaking now in a broad and general way, and without reference to such special privileges or immunities as cities and boroughs frequently obtained by royal charter in feudal times.

I have devoted a brief chapter to the origin and development of written constitutions, and the connection of our colonial charters therewith.

gentleman had inferred that England had contracted to support the constitutional charter.

The governors were chosen by the people in secret ballot, until the liberal charter granted by Charles I. was revoked, and a royal governor was placed over the four confederated Colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven.

"The Constitution of the United States is also a perpetual charter, which it was treason to violate.

It was for his skill with the pen that he was selected to draft the immortal charter of American freedom, which endeared him to the hearts of the people, and which no doubt contributed largely to cement the States together in their resistance to Great Britain.

This last building was situated on one of a number of pieces of land which, though within the French bounds, belonged to the Dutch before the grant of the imperial charter, and which the Dutch had always refused to sell.

But who are you, that have this exclusive charter of trading in the liberties of mankind?

[Sidenote: Mediæval charters.

Is it by those glorious charters you have inherited from your fathers, and which your present rulers have called Heaven to witness, they would preserve inviolate?

In the three colonies last named formal corporate charters were granted by the Crown, which in themselves were constitutions in embryo, and the colonists thus acquired written rights as to the government of their internal affairs, upon the maintenance of which they jealously insisted.

The public then acquiesced in the validity of the excuse, and while the State legislatures did not exact from them their forfeited charters, Congress, in accordance with the recommendation of the Executive, allowed them time to pay over the public money they held, although compelled to issue Treasury notes to supply the deficiency thus created.

In the three colonies last named formal corporate charters were granted by the Crown, which in themselves were constitutions in embryo, and the colonists thus acquired written rights as to the government of their internal affairs, upon the maintenance of which they jealously insisted.

The German Empire having died, its late Emperor Francis, also King of Hungary, chose to entitle himself Austrian Emperor, in 1806; but even in that fundamental charter he solemnly declared that Hungary and its annexed provinces are not intended to make, and will not make, a part of the Austrian Empire.

They have got the four points of their own genuine charter; those who would infuse further vague hopes are not doing them any other service than to divert them from the substance to the shadow.

In Professor Stubbs's admirable collection of charters and documents illustrative of English history, we read that "on the 6th of July the whole force of the country was summoned to London for the 3d of August, to resist the army which was coming from France under the queen and her son Edmund.

" That they who form a settlement by a lawful charter, having committed no crime, forfeit no privileges, will be readily confessed; but what they do not forfeit by any judicial sentence, they may lose by natural effects.

She told me of her plan of founding a hospital,the long-cherished idea of my life; and said that she had opened a little dispensarythe charter for which was procured during the preceding winter, under the name of "The New-York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children"on the 1st of May, two weeks before, and which was designed to be the nucleus for this hospital, where she invited me to come and assist her.

In the American state there is a power above the legislature Germs of the idea of a written constitution Development of the idea of contract in Roman law; mediaeval charters The "Great Charter" (1215) The Bill of Rights (1689) Foreshadowing of the American idea by Sir Harry Vane (1666)

The same may be said of state constitutions and municipal charters, which have suffered incessant changes, mostly unfortunate and ill-judged, except during the last few years, when a spirit of real wisdom and constructiveness has shown itself, though sporadically and as yet with some timidity.

These increased in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in the eighteenth century this form of organization was adopted also and parliamentary charters obtained, by groups of men for building turnpikes and canals and for carrying on other kinds of business.

Yet nature laughs at us, and ordains such inequalities at birth itself as make our peremptory charter of the value of men's souls seem a play of fancy.

Sir John Colleton, one of the leading planters in that little island, proposed to several of his powerful Cavalier friends in England that they join him in applying for a proprietary charter to the vacant region between Virginia and Florida, with a view of attracting Barbadians and any others who might come.

The following table presents a convenient historical summary of the progress in political rights: On July 2, 1776, two days before the Declaration of Independence was signed, New Jersey, in her first State constitution, en-franchised the women by changing the words of her provincial charter from "Male freeholders worth £50" to "all inhabitants worth £50," and for 31 years the women of that State voted.

Section VI: "It is Ordained, That the Great Charter be kept in all its points in such manner, that if there be in the said Charter any point obscure or doubtful, it shall be declared by the said Ordainours, and others whom they will, for that purpose, call to them, when they shall see occasion and season during their power."