PREFATORY NOTE.

This volume, though issued first, is the second in the series, and is, therefore, so numbered. The plan of the publication, as directed by the Legislature, includes not only the text of the laws passed since October, 1700, but also such illustrative matter, legal and historical, as the Commission find appropriate. To meet this requirement and to have in chronological order the whole body of statute laws from the foundation of the colony, it is deemed necessary to reprint the charters and laws enacted prior to the period mentioned, together with the action of the Crown upon those laws; the unpublished commissions and secret instructions to the several deputy governors, which explain many of the difficulties they labored under in assenting to the enactments of the assembly; and the various essential documents on which our colonial legislation was fundamentally based. This material, much of which was only to be procured by diligent search among the papers of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Public Record Office in London, and elsewhere, will properly form the introductory volume, and will, therefore, be called number one. Its publication, however, is deferred with the view of obtaining some additional matter, and for the purpose of inserting a general survey of the work, which latter can only be prepared after all the subsequent volumes are in type. The present volume contains the earliest legislation still in force. The enrolments of the laws are defective in many instances, age having caused the originals to crumble and decay. The defects have been made good from the "Act Books," and are indicated by the use of brackets. Occasional clerical lapses and omissions, also, have been supplied by the Commission, and are indicated in a similar manner. The notes and index to this volume have been prepared, under the supervision of the Commission, by Charles R. Hildeburn, with the assistance of Edwin Jaquett Sellers and Isaac Elwell, Esquires.