CHAP. I. ] WEST INDIES. 185 
After all, the objections which have been made 
to the present constitution of this body, arising 
from its want of sufficient stability and indepen¬ 
dence, are of an important and serious nature. 
Men are very unfit for legislators, whose delibera¬ 
tions are liable to be biassed by external and im¬ 
proper influence. If, on some occasions they are 
instruments of good, on others they may prove in¬ 
struments of great evil. Yet I am willing to hope 
that even this inconvenience might find its remedy, 
if the colonial assemblies would take the subject 
-into serious and temperate consideration. Were it 
required by law that no person should be appointed 
of the council who was not possessed of a landed 
estate within the colony to some given value, as 
an indispensable qualification, so that the private 
interests of the members might be blended with 
those of every other citizen, and were the terrors 
of suspension, which, like the sword of Damocles, 
hangs but by a thread, removed from them, they 
would become a respectable and most useful body.* 
tinct estates, it enabled them the more easily to secure the privilege 
which they claimed, that their laws should be immediately in force as 
soon as consented to by the governor, without waiting for the royal 
confirmation. 
* There arises, however, some difficulty in considering this point. 
While the council are liable to be suspended at the will of an arbitrary 
aud capricious governor, (and I remember an instance in Jamaica, of 
seven members being suspended in one day, on a very frivolous pre¬ 
tence), their authority is very lightly regarded, and sometimes they are 
even treated with contempt and insult. On the other hand, if they 
were appointed for life, they might, in their legislative capacity, be- 
Vol. III. 
A a 
