A royal donation, under the great seal, is the greatest security that may be had in human affairs.

Under the encouragement and security of the royal charter, this people did, at their own charges, transport themselves, their wives and families, over the ocean, purchase the land of the natives, and plant this colony, with great labor, hazards, cost, and difficulties; for a long time wrestling with the wants of a wilderness and the burdens of a new plantation; having also now above thirty years enjoyed the privilege of GOVERNMENT WITH THEMSELVES, as their undoubted right in the sight of God and man.

To be governed by rulers of our own choosing and laws of our own, is the fundamental privilege of our patent.
"A commission under the great seal, within 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 seek new dwellings or sink under intolerable burdens.

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 aim should be to gratify some particular gentlemen by livings and revenues here, that will also fail, for the poverty of the people.
If all the charges of the whole government 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 will be hard to find another 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.
"God knows, our great ambition is to live a quiet life, in a corner of the world.