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person deceased, till his death be registered in the respective registry.

LXXXIX. He that doth not enter, in the respective registry, the birth or death of any person that is born, or dies, in his house or ground, shall pay to the said register one shilling per week for each such neglect, reckoning from the time of each birth, or death, respectively, to the time of registering it.

XC. In like manner the births, marriages, and deaths, of the lords proprietors, landgraves, and cassiques, shall be registered in the chamberlain's court.

XCI. There shall be in every colony one constable, to be chosen annually by the freeholders of the colony; his estate shall be above a hundred acres of freehold within the said colony, and such subordinate officers appointed for his assistance, as the county-court shall find requisite, and shall be established by the said county-court. The election of the 'subordinate annual officers shall be also in the freeholders of the colony. · XCII. All towns incorporate shall be governed by a mayor, twelve aldermen, and twenty-four of the common-council. The said common-council shall be chosen by the present householders of the said town; the aldermen shall be chosen out of the commoncouncil; and the mayor out of the aldermen, by the palatine's court.

XCIII. It being of great consequence to the plantation, that port-towns should be built and preserved; therefore whosoever shall lade or unlade any commodity at any other place but a port-town, shall forfeit to the lords proprietors, for each tun so laden or unladen, the sum of ten pounds sterling; except only such goods as the palatine's court shall license to be laden or unladen elsewhere.

XCIV. The first port-town upon every river shall be in a colony, and be a port-town for ever.

XCV. No man shall be permitted to be a freeman of Carolina, or to have any estate or habitation within it, that doth not acknowledge a God; and that God is publicly and solemnly to be worshipped.

VOL. X.

XCVI. [As the country comes to be sufficiently planted and distributed into fit divisions, it shall belong to the parliament to take care for the building o churches, and the public maintenance of divines, to be employed in the exercise of religion, according to the church of England; which being the only true and orthodox, and the national religion of all the king's dominions, is so also of Carolina; and therefore it alone shall be allowed to receive public maintenance, by grant of parliament*].

XCVII. But since the natives of that place, who will be concerned in our plantation, are utterly strangers to christianity, whose idolatry, ignorance, or mistake, gives us no right to expel, or use them ill; and those who remove from other parts to plant there, will unavoidably be of different opinions concerning matters of religion, the liberty whereof they will expect to have allowed them, and it will not be reasonable for us on this account to keep them out; that civil peace may be maintained amidst the diversity of opinions, and our agreement and compact with all men may be duly and faithfully observed; the violation whereof, upon what pretence soever, cannot be without great offence to Almighty God, and great scandal to the true religion, which we profess; and also that Jews, heathens, and other dissenters from the purity of the christian religion, may not be scared and kept at a distance from it, but by having an opportunity of acquainting themselves with the truth and reasonableness of its doctrines, and the peaceableness and inoffensiveness of its professors, may by good usage and persuasion, and all those convincing methods of gentleness and meekness, suitable to the rules and design of the gospel, be won over to embrace and unfeignedly receive the truth; therefore any seven or more persons, agreeing in any religion, shall constitute a church or profession, to which

* This article was not drawn up by Mr. Locke; but inserted by some of the chief of the proprietors, against his judgment; as Mr. Locke himself informed one of his friends, to whom he presented a copy of these constitutions.

they shall give some name, to distinguish it from others.

XCVIII. The terms of admittance and communion with any church or profession shall be written in a book, and therein be subscribed by all the members of the said church or profession; which book shall be kept by the public register of the precinct where they reside.

XCIX. The time of every one's subscription and admittance shall be dated in the said book or religious record.

C. In the terms of communion of every church or profession, these following shall be three; without which no agreement or assembly of men, upon pretence of religion, shall be accounted a church or profession within these rules:

1. "That there is a GOD.

2. "That GOD is publicly to be worshipped.

3. "That it is lawful, and the duty of every man, being thereunto called by those that govern, to bear witness to truth; and that every church or profession shall in their terms of communion set down the external way whereby they witness a truth as in the presence of GOD, whether it be by laying hands on, or kissing the Bible, as in the church of England, or by holding up the hand, or any other sensible way.'

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CI. No person above seventeen years of age shall have any benefit or protection of the law, or be capable of any place of profit or honour, who is not a member of some church or profession, having his name recorded in some one, and but one religious record at once.

CII. No person of any other church or profession shall disturb or molest any religious assembly.

CIII. No person whatsoever shall speak any thing in their religious assembly, irreverently or seditiously of the government or governors, or state-matters.

CIV. Any person subscribing the terms of communion in the record of the said church or profession, before the precinct register, and any five members of the said church or profession; shall be thereby made a member of the said church or profession.

CV. Any person striking out his own name out of any religious record, or his name being struck out by

any officer thereunto authorised by each church or profession respectively, shall cease to be a member of that church or profession.

CVI. No man shall use any reproachful, reviling, or abusive language, against any religion of any church or profession; that being the certain way of disturbing the peace, and of hindering the conversion of any to the truth, by engaging them in quarrels and animosities, to the hatred of the professors and that profession, which otherwise they might be brought to assent to.:

CVII. Since charity obliges us to wish well to the souls of all men, and religion ought to alter nothing in any man's civil estate or right, it shall be lawful for slaves, as well as others, to enter themselves, and be of what church or profession any of them shall think best, and thereof be as fully members as any freeman. But yet no slave shall hereby be exempted from that civil dominion his master hath over him, but be in all other things in the same state and condition he was in before.

CVIII. Assemblies, upon what pretence soever of religion, not observing and performing the abovesaid rules, shall not be esteemed as churches, but unlawful meetings, and be punished as other riots.

CIX. No person whatsoever shall disturb, molest, or persecute another for his speculative opinions in religion, or his way of worship.

CX. Every freeman of Carolina shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves, of what opinion or religion soever.

CXI. No cause, whether civil or criminal, of any freeman, shall be tried in any court of judicature, without a jury of his peers.

CXII. No person whatsoever shall hold or claim any land in Carolina by purchase or gift, or otherwise, from the natives or any other whatsoever; but merely from and under the lords proprietors; upon pain of forfeiture of all his estate, moveable or immoveable, and perpetual banishment.

CXIII. Whosoever shall possess any freehold in Carolina, upon what title or grant soever, shall, at the farthest from and after the year one thousand six hundred eighty-nine, pay yearly unto the lords proprietors,

for each acre of land, English measure, as much fine silver as is at this present in one English penny, or the value thereof, to be as a chief rent and acknowledgment to the lords proprietors, their heirs and successors for ever. And it shall be lawful for the palatine's court by their officers, at any time, to take a new survey of any man's land, not to out him of any part of his possession, but that by such a survey the just number of acres he possesseth may be known, and the rent thereupon due may be paid by him.

CXIV. All wrecks, mines, minerals, quarries of gems, and precious stones, with pearl-fishing, whalefishing, and one half of all ambergris, by whomsoever found, shall wholly belong to the lords proprietors.

CXV. All revenues and profits belonging to the lords proprietors, in common, shall be divided into ten parts, whereof the palatine shall have three, and each proprietor one; but if the palatine shall govern by a deputy, his deputy shall have one of those three-tenths, and the palatine the other two-tenths.

CXVI. All inhabitants and freemen of Carolina above seventeen years of age, and under sixty, shall be bound to bear arms, and serve as soldiers whenever the grand council shall find it necessary.

CXVII. A true copy of these Fundamental Constitutions shall be kept in a great book by the register of every precinct, to be subscribed before the said register. Nor shall any person of what condition or degree soever, above seventeen years old, have any estate or possession in Carolina, or protection or benefit of the law there, who hath not, before a precinct register, subscribed these Fundamental Constitutions in this form:

"I A. B. do promise to bear faith and true allegiance to our sovereign lord King Charles the Second, his heirs and successors; and will be true and faithful to the palatine and lords proprietors of Carolina, their heirs and successors; and with my utmost power will defend them,

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