18 Assembly Proceedings, July 7-29, 1740.

U.H.J.

Eodem Die post Meridiem
This House met again according to Adjournment

Present as in the Morning
Read the second time the Bill Entituled an Act for raising and

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issuing Money for maintaining his Majestys Forces to be raised in
this Province and transporting them to the Place of Rendezvous in
the West Indies; and passed and sent to the Lower House by
Benjamin Tasker Esq^r with the following Message.
By the Upper House of Assembly 17 July 1740
Gentlemen
We very well approve your Resolution of not spending your time
and the Countrys money in long and Useless Messages, and assure
you, We have as little Inclination to do so as you have, whose Fault
it was that so much was mispent the last Session We must leave to
all Impartial Persons to Judge
We cannot find anything in Our former Message that has the least
Tendency to deny your House the priviledge of forming Bills to
raise money, and proposing proper Funds for that Purpose, and
therefore are at a Loss to know, why you should make Your Message
more Prolix in endeavouring to Assert that Right; but we hope, you
will be so Ingenious as to allow, that when you have formed such
Bills providing such Funds and sent them to Our House we have a
Right and Priviledge of reading and considering them, and if We
find them deficient or inconvenient, have a Negative upon them, or
may propose Amendments to them and Alterations in them, or else
why do you send them to us
We did not pretend that we have any Law now in force which
invested his Lordship or any of his Chief Officers with a legal Right
to the Fees for Ordinary Licenses, but We think We may justly
assert that as the Laws heretofore made for regulating Ordinaries
always have annexed those Fees as a Perquisite to his Lordship or
the one or the Other of the Chief Officers without any Regard to
Services done or Favours for them as you endeavour to insinuate
therefore besides the opinion of the Attorney General in England
mentioned in our former Message to confirm that Right we think
we may truly say that his Lordship or the one or other of those
Officers have an Equitable Right to claim those Fees, and that they
are only deprived of them by Prejudices conceived against the
Officers in the Lower House of Assembly who from time to time
have refused to revive or reenact that Law and by that means suffered
the Ordinaries to become Incentives to Extravagancy and Debauch-
ery without any Restraint
To complain of Oppressions and Aggrievances is a thing very

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natural and easy, but to point them out and demonstrate them to be
such in the Case at present before us We believe would be very diffi-