THE BAHAMA ISLANDS 437 



Council chamber to meet the President of the Council. He upbraided the 

 members of the House for their opprobrious conduct, warned them that he 

 could not suffer them to oppress an individual any longer, and prorogued them, 

 soon to follow up this with a dissolution.^^ 



Another fruitless attempt to harmonize the branches of the government 

 was made in March of the following year, on the meeting of the new House 

 whose election had occurred meantime. It was found that this body also was 

 as little disposed to compromise as either of the two that had sat before it. 

 The same results were met with. But there was an additional grievance at 

 this time, in that members of the House of Assembly had been summoned for 

 service on juries. The House claimed for its members exemption from jury 

 service. If the claim was well grounded, this was a breach of the privileges of 

 its members.'^ A prorogation followed. 



The " Healing Act." " 



Before another meeting of the legislature took place there was a for- 

 tunate change in the Executive of the Colony. Major-General Lewis Grant 

 had been sent out as Governor of the Bahamas. The opportunity of the new 

 Governor, who had had no part in the struggles of the preceding years, to act 

 the part of mediator, was taken advantage of with the happy result of a resto- 

 ration of the accustomed quiet to the community. The session had only 

 opened, however, when the House rehearsed the whole matter in an address to 

 the new Governor."' Some of the members of the House suspected, when they 

 did not receive the desired response from the Prince Eegent, that their ad- 

 dresses had never been laid before him at all. To them the new Governor re- 

 plied firmly that the home government had no intention of granting that the 

 House was in the right in its determination that the General Court, the Council, 

 and the Attorney-General sliould bow to its will;'' further, that there was no 

 change in the views of those who had made the former assurances to the House, 

 The Governor had been instructed that it was not necessary to require of the 

 House any acknowledgment that it had acted in an unconstitutional manner in 

 its conduct towards the other branches of the government. He desired to pass 

 over the whole difficulty, to allow it to drop out of notice, and to proceed to 



'-- Loc. cit., pp. 33-35. 

 "H. v., 1819, p. 36. 

 =^H. v., 1820, pp. 26, 27. 

 ^^H. v., 1820, p. 26. 



