chap, i.] - WEST INDIES. i 77 
seal, as I have elsewhere related; appeals from 
chancery therefore lie not before them, but are by 
the king’s order, revoked before his majesty him¬ 
self in council. 
Fifthly. The council is a constituent part of the 
legislature; their consent being necessary in the 
enacting of laws. In this capacity of legislators, 
they sit as the upper house, and in most of the 
colonies, distinct from the governor; claim privi¬ 
lege of parliament, order the attendance of persons, 
and the production-of papers and records, and com¬ 
mit for contempts ; enter protests on their journals 
after the manner of the house of peers, and have 
their chaplain, clerk, usher of the black rod, &c. 
&c. &c. 
It has been thought strange that one and the 
same body of men should act in two such diffe¬ 
rent capacities and functions, as a privy-council 
sworn to secrecy and fidelity, and an upper house 
of legislature ; “ the admitting such a distinction, 
says a late governor, may be supposed even to free 
them from all obligations of the oath they take as 
counsellors : because their duty to the people as le¬ 
gislators, may seem to oblige them very frequent¬ 
ly to support opinions repugnant to a governor’s 
schemes.”* 
* This opinion of Go’vernor Lyttleton is quoted more at large in 
the History of Jamaica by IVL-, Long, vol. i. p. iy6. 
Vol. III. 
z 
