Appendix. 407

They claim a Right to amend Money Bills; why did they not exercise
that Right upon this Occasion ? They claim a Right to frame Money
Bills; if the Bill sent to them, by the Lower House, was so funda-
mentally defective and exceptionable, that no Amendment could
render it perfect or proper to its End, why did not their Honours
form and send down a Bill to the Lower House ? It is very probable
indeed it would not have been received, but this they cannot urge in
their own Justification, since it is the Duty of every Branch to
exercise the Rights they think themselves invested with, for the
public Good. Wherefore, if His Majesty should hereafter be dis-
appointed in His Expectations of Supplies from this Province,

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Pamphlet
Md.Hist.Soc.

it will be entirely owing to the Perseverance of that House, in a
Measure which nothing but a determined Resolution to evade an
Appeal to His Majesty, by refusing the Lower House an Agent,
could have induced them pertinaciously to adhere to. — Let it then
be allowed (as I have observed before) that their Honours were
right in rejecting the Assessment Bill, because it was too faulty to
be amended, and that the Lower House were right in persevering
in it, because they thought a Bill upon that Plan might be made a
good One; yet as neither of the Houses had a Right to decide for
the other, and perhaps both in some Particulars were wrong, it
follows, that the House which proposed the only possible Expedient
of settling the Difference, were upon the whole right, and the House
which opposed and frustrated this Expedient, were upon the whole
wrong. With this View, among others, the Lower House offered the
Upper House a Bill for the Support of an Agent in London, which
their Honours were pleased to reject, and are therefore, with humble
Submission to better Judgments, chargeable with all the Conse-
quences. — It would redound much more to the Honour of the Gentle-
men who compose the Upper House, to forward an Accommodation
of our unhappy Misunderstandings, by this rational Measure, than
to endeavour to throw an Odium upon the other Branch, by the little
Expedients of Opinions obtained upon ex Parte Representations, of
Messages thrown in just at the Close of a Session, and Addresses to

p. 60

the Governor, filled with Scurrility and Abuse, of which no Notice
can be taken in a Parliamentary Course of Proceeding.
These are the Arts of that Left-handed Wisdom called Cunning,
and are as remote from sound Policy as a Mountebank is from a
Physician. As many of their Honours are Men of Property, and
have Families depending upon them, they should consider that their
nearest Interests are connected with the Public Good, that their
Station and Offices do not descend to their Children, and that they
would make a very bad Bargain for their Descendants, by extending
the Power of the Proprietor beyond its due Limits, for the Sake
of a little temporary and precarious Gain. If there be any among
them who owe their Rise entirely to the Proprietor's Favour, depend
31

p. 70