"  A  commission  under  the  great  seal,  wherein  four  persons
(one  of  them  our  professed  enemy)  are  impowered  to  receive
and  determine  all  complaints  and  appeals  according  to  their
discretion,  subjects  us  to  the  arbitrary  power  of  strangers,  and
will  end  in  the  subversion  of  our  all.
"  If  these  things  go  on,  your  subjects  here  will  either  be
forced  to  seeke  new  dwellings  or  sink  under  intolerable  bur-
dens. The  vigor  of  all  new  endeavors  will  be  enfeebled  ;  the
king  himself  will  be  a  loser  of  the  wonted  benefit  by  customs,
exported  and  imported  from  hence  into  England,  and  this
hopeful  plantation  will  in  the  issue  be  ruined.
"  If  the  aime  should  be  to  gratify  some  particular  gentle-
men by  livings  and  revenues  here,  that  will  also  fail,  for  the
poverty  of  the  people.  If  all  the  charges  of  the  whole  gov-
ernment by  the  year  were  put  together,  and  then  doubled  or
trebled,  it  would  not  be  counted  for  one  of  those  gentlemen
a  considerable  accommodation.  To  a  coalition  in  this  course
the  people  will  never  come ;  and  it  wdll  be  hard  to  find  an-
other people  that  will  stand  under  any  considerable  burden  in
this  country,  seeing  it  is  not  a  country  where  men  can  subsist
without  hard  labor  and  great  frugality.
