OF THE PRIVY COUNCIL OF ENGLAND. COLONIAL SERIES. VOL. III. A.D. 1720-1745. EDITED THROUGH THE DIRECTION OF THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL BY W. L. GRANT, M.A.. PROFESSOR OF COLONIAL HISTORY IN AND JAMES MUNRO. M.A., BEIT LECTURER IN COLONIAL HISTORY IN THE UNDER THE GENERAL SUPERVISION OF SIR ALMERIC W. FITZROY, K.C.V.O., PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHORITY OF THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS OF HIS MAJESTY'S TREASURY. HEREFORD: PRINTED FOR HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE, And to be purchased, either directly or through any Bookseller, from OLIVER & BOYD, TWEEDDALE COURT, EDINBURGH; or E. PONSONBY, LTD., 116, GRAFTON STREET, DUBLIN. 1910. Price Ten Shillings. PREFACE. This volume includes all references to the colonies in the Register of the Privy Council, George I, Vols. III-V, and George II, Vols. I-IX, with such extracts from later volumes as were necessary to our plan of making each section complete in itself. It thus covers the period from 1720 to 1745, includes the supremacy of Sir Robert Walpole, and terminates with the French and Spanish wars which broke that long and prosperous period of political lethargy. During these years the proportion of the Register devoted to colonial matters steadily increases. Thus George II, Vol. III, a typical volume in the middle of the period, contains 517 pages, of which 255 relate to the colonies. The rest of the volume is made up of 54 pages about the Channel Islands, 96 on Ireland, and 112 on other matters, ranging from the nomination of sheriffs to the affairs of the East India Company. Of the colonial portion 83 pages deal with legal appeals. Most of the documents of public importance in this volume deal with such matters as the boundary quarrels which constituted the bulk of the foreign affairs of the continental colonies, or the quarrels between colonial governors and Assemblies, which were the chief feature of their domestic history, and have already been printed in other collections. What is new tends on the whole to confirm the ordinary idea of XVIII Century colonial administration before the Seven Years War as a time during which little was embittered and nothing was solved. Administration was conducted in a gentlemanlike and easy-going fashion. Colonial efforts for greater freedom, if resolutely pushed, were but feebly resisted, or granted in practice, with a reservation of the general principle. Thus by insisting on voting him no more than |