xlii Introduction.

Upon the reading of the above message in the Lower House, it was ordered,
April 13, that a committee headed by Edward Tilghman, with James Tilghman,
William Murdock, John Hammond, Thomas Ringgold, and Robert Lloyd
prepare an answer (p. 118, 119). After the message in reply was read in the
Lower House it was adopted by a vote of twenty-eight to twenty-one
(pp. 130-131). On this vote, Simon Wilmer, who had but recently taken his
seat in the Lower House, and Gantt, voted with the Proprietary party against
its adoption (pp. 126, 131).

In its reply, dated April 16, the Lower House averred that it was a matter
of great concern to it that the attitude of the upper chamber, as expressed in
its message of April 13, deprived it of all hopes of the two houses coming
to an agreement on a Supply bill for His Majesty's Service, because of the
obstinate adherence of the Upper House to the objection that had been made
by it to the 1758 Supply bill, although many of these objections had since been
removed. The house then proceeded to express its political views on the matters
in dispute. It declared that "It is a Maxim in Politics, almost universally
adopted, that the Representative is justified by the Instructions of Constituents,
in acting even against his own Judgment, and we were willing to entertain
Hopes, that your Honours might be at present more at large than heretofore,
with respect to the Tax on the Proprietary Estate, and the great Offices of the
Government, which we take to have been your real Objections to the Bill in
1758, to cover which, most of the others were only thrown in as a Barrier".
The house regretted that an occasional waiver of its rights in the past in the
case of money bills had resulted in claims by the Upper House in matters of
this kind, which even the House of Lords has rarely attempted to exercise
in the mother country. If the old Assembly journals, which it is regretted
there has not been time to examine, showed a few instances in the infancy
of the Province where the Upper House helped to draw up such bills, this
was a regrettable inattention and inadvertency on the part of our predecessors,
an inadvertency to which the very existence of an Upper House itself was due
and the evils which have been the result of its existence. It added that the
upper chamber is disingenuous in saying that the bill only provided for supply-
ing four hundred Provincial troops and eighty-four recruits for the regular
regiment, as the bill calls for only one-third of the money raised under it to
be used for these purposes, the other two-thirds to be used for the return of
money advanced by the Crown at the time of the Forbes expedition, and for
expenditures to which it was engaged under former "resolves of the Lower
House" relative to the defense of the frontiers, and the quartering of regular
troops upon the inhabitants. That the Upper House on the contrary seemed
willing to thus disgrace the public credit and to deny payments to those who
had marched to the defense of the frontiers [in 1757 and 1758], and to those
who had suffered greatly by the quartering upon them of the regular troops
(pp. 127-130).

In a belated and very lengthy message, dated April 24, 1762, the last day
of the session, the Upper House replied to the message of the Lower House
of April 16. The Upper House declared that the claim of the Lower House