Part 17

LXXXIV. 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.

LXXXV. No man shall be register of a colony, that hath not above fifty acres of freehold within the said colony.

LXXXVI. 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.

LXXXVII. 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.

LXXXVIII. No man shall administer to the goods, or have right to them, or enter upon the estate of any 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 housholders 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.

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 Lord's Proprietors for each run 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.

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 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].

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.

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 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.

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 of 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."

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 the 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 therefore 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.