376 Assembly Proceedings, July 10-August 8, 1729.

U. H. J.

and other Officers, after the word Lawyers, be left out, & in 24^th
Line of 4^th Page between the Words Counter, and, any, the Words
following be inserted, such Person paying the whole Cost accruing
upon such Prosecution
Signed p Order John Ross Cl. Up. Ho.

Sent to the Lower house by Benjamin Tasker Esq^r with the fol-
lowing Message

By the Upper house of Assembly 6^th August 1729
Gentlemen
We have read & Considered your Message of the 2^d Instant by
M^r Beale & five others in Answer to Ours of the 30^th of July last, &
are sorry to find our Reasons therein given for not passing the bill
sent up by your house for improving the staple of Tobacco, & for
easing the Inhabitants of this Province in the Payment of Tobacco
Debts have not given you Satisfaction; but we are much more Con-
cerned and surprized at your alledging that you never heard any
Attempts have been made to procure his Lordships Dissent to the
former Tobacco Law when it has been so publickly talked of & no-

p. 75

toriously known throughout this whole Province that the Clergy
have had some meetings upon that Occasion, & as 'tis generally
thought some of them are gone over to Great Britain, on purpose to
procure a Dissent to that Law, Our surprize is still augmented when
you say you cannot conceive to what End such Application should be
made, whereas it is known to all Persons who have any Experience
in Publick Affairs that such Applications have heretofore proved
fatal to our Laws by inducing his Lordship to dissent to them, for
altho it be true as you assert that we have a legislative Power within
this Province, and that Our Laws when-Enacted here have the force
of Laws, yet we have repeated Instances that when the Royal Pre-
rogative or that Part of it which his Lordship is invested with by
the Royal Charter has been exercised in dissenting to Our Laws,
they have been no longer esteemed as such, nor are ever put in Exe-
cution to those Ends & Purposes for which they were designed; you
confess that his Lordship has dissented to several of Our Laws, &
tell us that you hope it will soon be determined whether he has Au-
thority so to do, or not, to which We answer that whenever it shall
be determined by a proper Authority that his Lordship has not that
dissenting Power, we shall readily submit to such Determination,
but till then We think Ourselves obliged to be conformable to Our
legislative Constitution in such manner as it has been derived to us
from our Ancestors
We are very much alarmed & think ourselves injured by forced
Constructions put upon Our Message, as if We intended anything