The Upper House. 167

May it please Your Excellency
Our Inclinations to serve the Country we live in and the Honour
of Our House oblige us to acquaint your Excellency that upon
Wednesday last we sent a Message to the Lower house of Assembly
by one of our Members who upon his application for Leave to deliver
it was told by their Serjeant as from that House to wait
From this Indignity offered us and to prevent the like ill Treatment
for the future we were induced agreable to the Practice of the Upper
houses of Assembly and Councils of State in most if not all his
Majestys Plantations to send our Clerk to the Lower House w^th
Several Paper Bills and with a Message acquainting them that the
Extraordinary Treatment one of Our members had received on a

U. H. J.
No. 33

Message to them had Obliged us to prevent unnecessary Debates to
the delay of the Publick Business and Indignity thereafter to send
Our Messages by our Clerk
When our Clerk applied for Leave to deliver this message the
Speaker very unexpectedly came out of the House and received it
and a Message in answer to it was sent to us by two members from
the Lower house complaining that their Speaker was called out
of the Chair and out of the House by Our Clerk and had several
Papers delivered to him by the said Clerk and One among them
which they should have taken as a Message from us had it been
brought or delivered in the usual manner
That that Behaviour of our Clerk they conceived to be such an
Indignity to their House as Obliged them to demand immediate
Reparation
That as to the unexpected and extraordinary Treatment men-
tioned in that Paper delivered their Speaker they could with the
greatest Truth and sincerity declare they had no Intentions to treat
our House or any Member of it with the Greatest Decency and good
manners and that if any thing had happened which seemed to have
a different Appearance it was not designed and if we had not a
strong Inclination to enter into unnecessary disputes with their
House which must Retard the publick Business and of Course be-
come injurious to the whole Province we should have taken a very
different Course from that we Chose
And further that as to what was mentioned in the Paper under
Consideration of sending future Messages by our Clerk they should
be very well Content with it and follow our Example in sending all
their Messages by their Clerk
This Message very much surprized us and the doubt of the Lower
House made of anything having happened which seemed to have
an appearance different from decency and Good Manners and their
charging us with a very strong inclination to enter into unnecessary
disputes that would be injurious to the Province and their demand-
ing Reparation for an Injury they had really done us convinced us

p. 539