Appendix. 453

of an honest and laudable industry, have acquired a competency for
themselves and their posterity; an act of the legislature, which must
have the effect of banishing them, (when it cannot be proved that
the safety or welfare of the community requires that such an ex-
treme measure should take place) could not we think, be defended
upon any principle of justice or policy."

Had the Lower House, when they were about to offer a supply
bill in 1762, thought fit to alter the assessment bill, with respect to
these four points, or even with respect to only the first part of them,
there would have been some room for the Gentlemen of the Upper
House to hope, that the Lower was then willing to grant for his

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Md.Hist.Soc.

Majesty's service the supplies they had voted; and in order to obtain
such supplies, would have thought it worth while by a message, or
at a conference, if the Lower House had agreed to one, to enter
again into a discussion of the other objections which might have
been obviated; and if they could not have offered sufficient argu-
ments in support of such their objections, they must have waved
them, or else have justly incurred his Majesty's displeasure, and the
censure of the whole Province. But when on perusal of this bill, they
perceived so little regard had been paid to their opinions already
communicated, and could see the conduct of the Lower House, in
offering such a bill, in no other light than an attempt to deprive
them of a right to exercise their own judgments, and compel them
to assent to a bill, which in their opinion was calculated to raise,
by an unequal taxation, a much larger sum of money, than they would
then appropriate, to vest the Lower House with extraordinary
power and influence, and to sacrifice one part of the people to the
humour and caprice of another, it was incumbent on them, as a

p. 151

branch of the legislature, to reject the bill, without giving a reason;
and their making any overture in order to obtain its passage, would
doubtless have been considered by the Lower House as a willingness
on their part to wave the objections they had adhered to during
the eight preceding sessions, and to which, while the Lower House
leave them unanswered, as hath been hitherto the case, they will,
it is presumed, ever adhere, disregarding the calumny or sug-
gestions of such as would insinuate, that the objections expressly
mentioned were only as a barrier to cover others, while they are
persuaded that the force of these objections, so expressly mentioned,
will to every impartial person at all acquainted with the constitution
and circumstances of the Province, fully justify their conduct in
rejecting the bill that was offered, and to which such obligations
were applicable.

In answer to the Remarker and the Querists assertion, that it is
entirely owing to the conduct of the Upper House, that the dispute
which has subsisted so long about the assessment bill has not been
determined, and money granted for his Majesty's service raised,

p. 152