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66th. The Grand Jury at the several assizes, shall upon their oaths and under their hands and seals, deliver into their itinerant Judges, a presentment of such grievances, misdemeanours, exigencies, or defects, which they think necessary for the public good of the country; which presentments shall by the itinerant Judges, at the end of their circuit, be delivered in to the grand council, at their next sitting. And whatsoever there. in concerns the execution of laws, already made, the several Proprietor's courts, in the matters belonging to each of them respectively, shall take cognisance of it, and give such order about it, as shall be effectual for the due execution of the laws. But whatever concerns the making of any new law, shall be referred to the several respective courts, to which that matter belongs, and be by them prepared and brought to the grand council.

67th. For terms, there shall be quarterly, such a certain number of days, not exceeding one and twenty at any one time, as the several respective courts shall appoint. The time for the beginning of the term in the Precinct court shall be the first Monday in January, April, July and October; in the County court, the first Monday in February, May, August and November; and in the Proprietor's courts, the first Monday in March, June, September, and December.

68th. In the Precinct court, no man shall be a Juryman, under fifty acres of freehold. In the County court, or at the assizes, no man shall be a grand juryman, under three hundred acres of freehold; and no man shall be a petty juryman, under two hundred acres of freehold. In the Proprietor's courts, no man shall be a juryman under five hundred acres of freehold.

69th. Every jury shall consist of twelve men; and it shall not be necessary they should all agree, but the verdict shall be according to the consent of the majority.

70th. It shall be a base and vile thing, to plead for money, or reward; nor shall any one, (except he be a near kinsman, nor farther off than cousin german to the party concerned) be permitted to plead another man's cause, till before the Judge, in open court, he hath taken an oath that he doth not plead for money or reward, nor hath, nor will receive, nor directly, nor indirectly, bargained with the party whose cause he is going to plead, for money, or any other reward for pleading his cause.

71st. There shall be a Parliament consisting of the Proprietors, or their deputies, the Landgraves and Casiques, and one freeholder out of every precinct, to be chosen by the freeholders of the said precinct respectively. They shall sit all together in one room, and have, every member, one vote.

72d. No man shall be chosen a member of Parliament, who hath less than five hundred acres of freehold within the precinct for which he is chosen; nor shall any have a vote in choosing the said member, that hath less than fifty acres of freehold within the said precinct.

73d. A new Parliament shall be assembled the first Monday of the month of November, every second year, and shall meet and sit in the town they last sat in, without any summons, unless by the Palatine's court they be summoned to meet at any other place. And if there shall be any occasion of a parliament in these intervals, it shall be in the power of the Palatine's court, to assemble them in forty days notice, and at such time and place as the said court shall think fit; and the Palatine's court shall have power to dissolve the said Parliament, when they shall think fit.

74th. At the opening of every Parliament, the first thing that shall be done, shall be the reading of these Fundamental Constitutions, which the Palatine and Proprietors, and the rest of the members then present,

LOCKE'S

CONSTITUTION

CONSTITUTION

LOCKE'S shall subscribe. Nor shall any person whatsoever, sit or vote in the Par'liament, till he hath that session subscribed these Fundamental Constitutions, in a book kept for that purpose, by the clerk of the parliament.

75th. In order to the due election of members, for the biennial Parliament, it shall be lawful for the freeholders of the respective precincts to meet the first Tuesday in September, every two years, in the same town or place that they last met in, to choose parliament men; and there choose those members that are to sit the next November following; unless the steward of the precinct, shall by sufficient notice, thirty days before, appoint some other place for their meeting in order to the election.

76th. No act or order of Parliament shall be of any force, unless it be ratified in open Parliament during the same session, by the Palatine or his deputy, and three more of the Lords Proprietors or their deputies; and then not to continue longer in force, but until the next biennial Parliament, unless in the mean time it be ratified under the hands and seals of the Palatine himself, and three more of the Lords Proprietors, themselves, and by their order published at the next biennial Parliament.

77th. Any Proprietor or his deputy may enter his protestation against any act of the Parliament, before the Palatine or his deputy's consent be given as aforesaid; if he shall conceive the said act to be contrary to this establishment, or any of these Fundamental Constitutions of the Government. And in such case, after full and free debate, the several estates shall retire into four several chambers, the Palatine and Proprietors into one; the Landgraves into anothe; the Casiques into another; and those chosen by the Precincts into a fourth; and if the major part of any of the four estates shall vote that the law is not agreeable to this establishment, and these Fundamental Constitutions of the Government; then it shall pass no farther, but be as if it had never been proposed.

78th. The quorum of the Parliament shall be one half of those who are members, and capable of sitting in the house, that present session of Parliament. The quorum of each of the Chambers of Parliament, shall be one half of the members of that chamber.

79th. To avoid multiplicity of laws, which by degrees always change the right foundations of the original government, all acts of Parliament whatsoever, in whatsoever form passed or enacted, shall at the end of a hundred years after their enacting, respectively cease, and determine of themselves, and without any repeal become null and void, as if no such acts or laws, had ever been made.

80th. Since multiplicity of comments, as well as of laws, have great inconveniences, and serve only to obscure and perplex; all manner of comments and expositions, on any part of these Fundamental Constitutions, or on any part of the common or statue laws of Carolina, are absolutely prohibited.

81st. There shall be a registry in every precinct, wherein shall be enrolled all deeds, leases, judgements, mortgages, and other conveyances. which may concern any of the lands within the said precinct; and all such conveyances, not so entered and registered, shall not be of force against any person or party to the said contract or conveyance.

82d. No man shall be Register of any precinct, who hath not at least three hundred acres of freehold within the said precinct.

83d. The freeholders of every precinct shall nominate three men, out of which three, the Chief Justice's Court shall choose and commission one to be Register of the said precinct, whilst he shall well behave himself. S4th. There shall be a Registry in every Signiory, Barony and Colony, wherein shall be recorded all the births, marriages and deaths that shall happen within the respective Signiories, Baronies and Colonies.

85th. No man shall be Register of a Colony that hath not above fifty LOCKE'S acres of freehold within the said colony.

86th. The time of every one's age, that is born in Carolina, shall be reckoned from the day that his birth is entered in the registry, and not before. 87th. No marriage shall be lawful, whatever contract and ceremony they have used, till both the parties mutually own it, before the Register of the place where they were married, and he register it, with the names of the father and mother of each party.

88th. No man shall administer to the goods, or have a right to them, or enter upon the estate of any person deceased, till his death be registered in the respective registry.

89th. 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 entering it in the register.

90th. In like manner, the births, marriages, and deaths of the Lords Proprietors, Landgraves and Casiques, shall be registered in the Chamberlain's Court.

91st. 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.

92d. 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 common council, and the mayor out of the aldermen, by the palatine's court.

93d. 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.

94th. The first port town upon every river, shall be in a colony, and be a port town forever.

95th. 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 worshiped.

96th. (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 of 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.)

97th. 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 obtained amidst diversity of opinions,

CONSTITUTION

LOCKE'S and our agreement and compact with all men, may be duly and CONSTITUTION 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 aud 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 they shall give some name, to distinguish it from others. 98th. 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 wherein they reside.

99th. The time of every one's subscription and admittance, shall be dated in the said book or religious record.

100th. 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 pro fession within these rules.

1st. "That there is a God."

2d. "That God is publickly to be worshipped."

3d. "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 eternal 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."

101st. 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 honor, who is not a member of some church or profession, having his name recorded in some one, and but one religious record, at once.

102d. No person of any other church or profession shall disturb or mo lest any religious assembly.

103d. No person whatsoever, shall speak any thing in their religious assembly irreverently or seditiously of the government or governors, or of state matters.

104th. 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.

105th. Any person striking his own name out of any religious record, or his name being struck out by any officer thereunto authorized by such church or profession respectively, shall cease to be a member of that church or profession.

106th. 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.

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107th. Since charity obliges us to wish well to the souls of all men, and LOCKE'S CONSTITUTION 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 things in the same state and condition he was in before.

108th. Assemblies upon what pretence soever of religion, not observing and performing the above said rules, shall not be esteemed as churches, but unlawful meetings, and be punished as other riots.

109th. No person whatsoever shall disturb, molest, or persecute another, for his speculative opinions in religion, or his way of worship. 110th. Every freeman of Carolina, shall have absolute power and authority over his negro slaves, of what opinion or religion soever.

111th. No cause, whether civil or criminal, of any freeman, shall be tried in any court of judicature, without a jury of his peers.

112th. 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. 113th. 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 and eighty-nine, pay yearly unto the Lords Proprietors, for each acre of land, English measure, as much fine silver as is at this present time in one English Penny, or the value thereof, to be as a chief rent and acknowledgement to the Lords Proprietors, their heirs and successors forever. 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 oust 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 thereon due, may be paid by him.

114th. All wrecks, mines, minerals, quarries of gems and precious stones, with pearl fishing, whale fishing, and one half of all ambergris, by whomsoever found, shall wholly belong to the Lords Proprietors.

115th. 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, the deputy shall have one of those three-tenths, and the palatine the other two tenths.

116th. 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.

117th. 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 degree or condition 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:

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"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 Pala"tine and Lords Proprietors of Carolina, their heirs and successors; and with my utmost power, will defend them "and maintain the government, according to this establish"ment in these fundamental Constitutions."

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