i86 HISTORY OF TKfE [book vi. 
At the same time it will behoove the representa¬ 
tives of the people, in an especial manner, to 
keep in their own hands, undirainished and unim¬ 
paired, as a sacred deposite, the great and exclusive 
privilege of granting or withholding the supplies. 
If the council, independent of the governor and 
the people, shall once possess themselves of the 
smallest share in this most important of all popular 
rights, they will become, from that moment, a 
standing senate, and an insolent aristocracy. 
come formidable both to the king’s representative and the people; 
They might obstruct the supplies for no better reason than to get a 
new governor. I am of opinion, therefore, that they should still be 
amovable, but, in order to give them greater weight than they possess 
at present, they should be amovable only by the king’s express cider, 
ip consequence of a joint address from the commander in chief and the 
house of assembly. Their present constitution certainly requires 
some correction and amendment; the more so, as in some of the colo¬ 
nies they have set up pretensions of a very wide and extraordinar] r na¬ 
ture. They have, at different times, claimed and exercised the-power 
of arbitrarily imprisoning for contempt, and .formerly even for fines 
laid by their own authority. They have claimed a right of origina¬ 
ting public bills at their board, and even of amending money 
bills passed by the assembly. They have also claimed the right of 
appropriating the publ ic .revenue, &c. &c. All these, and other pre¬ 
tensions, are equally inconsistent with their original appointment of a 
council of assistants to the governor, and with the tenure by which 
they at present exist, and ought to be constantly and firmly resisted by 
the people’s representatives. 
