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the extraordinary Answer your Excellency was pleased to send us
to our Address, in consequence of your Speech at the Opening of
this Session.
We are sorry to be involved in a Dispute with your Excellency
at the Beginning of this new Assembly; but as you have thought
fit to enter obliquely, into a Vindication of the Conduct of the Upper
House, for refusing Bills so frequently sent them for Supporting
an Agent, and by remote Intimations to contest the Necessity of
employing One in the Service of this Province, we conceive our
Silence might be construed into an Acquiescence in your Excellency's
Opinion, and are therefore under an indispensible Obligation to
assert the Expediency of exercising a Right so essential to the most
important Interests of our Constituents.
In our Address to your Excellency, we had no other Intention in
mentioning the Want of an Agent, than to vindicate the Conduct
of the late Lower House, and to account for the Generality of the
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L. H. J.
Liber No. 52
April 17
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Reprehension contained in Lord Egremont's Letter, and repeated
in your Speech, which we conceived would have been restrained to
the Upper House, had the Subject been properly represented. Hence
we inferr'd the Want of an Agent, and the injurious Treatment the
People of this Province have met with from the Upper House, by
their repeated Refusal of Bills for the Support of a Person in that
Character. This being the Case, we think your Excellency had not
the least Foundation for engaging in a Controversy with us on this
Head, nor can any Design be fairly inferr'd from our Address, of
imputing the Miscarriage of the Bills for Support of an Agent to
your Excellency, as you are pleased to intimate. We therefore think
your Excellency went a little out of your Way, in supposing we
intended to include you in a Charge which is expressly confined
to them.
Although your Excellency has not entered into a formal or express
Denial of the general Necessity of employing a Provincial Agent in
London, yet if your Reasoning in the particular Instance you men-
tioned can be supported, it necessarily supersedes the Expediency
of employing one on every other Contest between the Government
and People. The Transmittal of the Journals and Bills to his
Majesty's Ministers seems, in your Excellency's Opinion, to exclude
the Necessity of establishing an Agent to represent our Transactions
at Home, on the particular Subject of the late Supply Bills. If this.
Argument be admitted, it will follow, that let the Measure of his
Lordship's Administration be ever so oppressive to the People, and
the Remonstrances of their Delegates be ever so well founded, your
Excellency may also presume, that if the Journals may be supposed
to contain a true Representation of their Proceedings, there cannot
be that great Occasion which they apprehend for the Support of an
Agent, because those Journals have been regularly transmitted for
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p. 56
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