After debate,

The question was put thereupon?

It was resolved in the Negative.

The order of the clay being read, for the third reading of the Bill, intituled, "An Act for the better Regulating the Government of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England," and for the Lords to be summoned,

The said Bill was accordingly read the third time.

Moved, "That the Bill, with the amendments, do Pass?"

Which being objected to;

After long debate,*

The question was put, "whether this Bill, with the amendments, shall Pass?"

It was resolved in the Affirmative.

Dissentient.

Because this Bill, forming a principal part in a system of punishment and regulation, has been carried through the House without a due regard to those indispensable rules of public proceeding, without the observance of which, no regulation can be prudently made, and no punishment justly inflicted. Before it can be pretended, that those rights of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, in the election of Counsellors Magistrates, and Judges, and in the return of Jurors, which they derive from their charter, could, with propriety, be taken away, the definite legal offence, by which a forfeiture of that charter is incurred, ought to have been clearly stated, and fully proved; notice of this adverse proceeding ought to have been given to the parties affected; and they ought to have been heard in their own defence. Such a principle of proceeding would have been inviolably observed in the courts below. It is not technical formality, but substantial justice. When therefore, the magnitude of such a cause transfers it from the cognizance of the inferior courts, to the high judicature of Parliament, the Lords are so far from authorized to reject this equitable principle, that we are bound to an extraordinary and religious strictness in the observance of it. The subject ought to be indemnified by a more liberal and beneficial justice in Parliament, for what he must inevitably suffer, by being deprived of many of the forms which are wisely established in the courts of ordinary resort, for his protection against the dangerous promptitude of arbitrary discretion.

2dly. Because the necessity alleged for this precipitate mode of judicial proceeding cannot exist. If the numerous land and marine forces, which are ordered to assemble in Massachusetts Bay, are not sufficient to keep that single Colony in any tolerable state of order, until the cause of its charter can be fairly and equally tried, no regulation in this Bill, or in any of those hitherto brought into the House, are sufficient for that purpose; and we conceive that the mere celerity of a decision against the charter of that Province, will not reconcile the minds of the People to that mode of Government, which is to be established upon its ruins.

3dly. Because Lords are not in a situation to determine how far the regulations, of which this Bill is composed, agree or disagree with those parts of the constitution of the Colony that are not altered, with the circumstances of the People, and with the whole detail of their municipal institutions. Neither the charter of the Colony, nor any account whatsoever of its courts and judicial proceedings, their mode or exercise of their present powers, have been produced to the House. The slightest evidence concerning any one of the many inconveniences stated in the preamble of the Bill to have arisen frow the present constitution of the Colony judicatures, has not been produced, or even attempted. On the same general allegations of a declamatory preamble, any other right, or all the rights, of this, or any other public body, may be taken away, and any visionary scheme of Government substituted in their place.

4thly. Because we think that the appointment of all the members of the Council, which by this Bill, is vested in the Crown, is not a proper provision for preserving the equilibrium of the Colony constitution. The power given to the Crown of occasionally increasing or lessening the number of the Council, on the report of Governors, and at the pleasure of Ministers, must make these Governors and Ministers masters of every question in that Assembly; and by destroying its freedom of deliberation, will wholly annihilate its use. The intention avowed in this Bill, of bringing the Council to the platform of other Colonies, is not likely to answer its own end; as the Colonies, where the Council is named by the Crown, are not at all better disposed to a submission to the practice of taxing for supply, without their consent, than this of Massachusetts Bay. And no pretence of bringing it to the model of the English constitution can be supported, as none of those American Councils have the least resemblance to the House of Peers, so that this new scheme of a Council stands upon no sort of foundation, which the proposers of it think proper to acknowledge.

5thly. Because the new constitution of judicature provided by this Bill, is improper and incongruous with the plan of the administration of justice in Great Britain. All the Judges are to be henceforth nominated, (not by the Crown,) but by the Governor; and all, except the Judges of the Superior Court, are to be removable at his pleasure, and expressly without the consent of that very Council which has been nominated by the Crown. The appointment of the Sheriff is by the will of the Governor only and without requiring in the person appointed, any local or other qualification; that a Sheriff, a magistrate of great importance to the whole administration and execution of all justice, civil and criminal, and who, in England, is not removable even by the royal authority during the continuance of the term of his office, is by this Bill made changable by the Governor and Council, as often, and for such purposes as they shall think expedient. The Governor and Council thus entrusted with powers with which the British constitution has not trusted his Majesty and his Privy Council, have the means of returning such a Jury, in each particular cause, as may best suit with the gratification of their passions and interests. The lives, liberties, and properties of the subject are put into their hands without controul; and the invaluable right of trial by Jury, is turned into a snare for the People, who have hitherto looked upon it as their main security against the licentiousness of power.

6thly. Because we see in this Bill the same scheme of strengthening the authority of the Officers and Ministers of State, at the expense of the rights and liberties of the subject, which was indicated by the inauspicious Act for shutting up the harbour of Boston. By that Act, which is immediately connected with this Bill, the example was set of a large important city, containing vast multitudes of People,

* The Bill passed (the Commons) by a prodigious majority, after a debate which lasted with uncommon spirit for many hours. Equally warm debates attended the Bill in the House of Lords. The objections were nearly the same with those made in the House of Commons, with particular reflections upon the greater rapidity with which it was hurried through the House of Lords: and the peculiar impropriety in a court of justice, of condemning the Colony, and taking away its charter, without any form of process. The Lords in opposition, cried out against a Bill altering the constitution of a Colony without having so much as the charter containing the constitution so altered, laid before them. That the Bill had also altered the courts and the mode of judicial proceedings in the Colony, without an offer of the slightest evidence to prove any one of the inconveniences, which were stated in general terms in the preamble, as arising from the present mode of trial in the Province.

The absolute necessity of a powerful and speedy remedy for the cure of a Government, which was nothing but disorder, was, in substance, the principal reason alleged for the omission of inquiry and evidence, and the superseding the ordinary rules of judicial proceeding. Besides, the Ministerial Lords denied, that the process was of a penal nature; they insisted that it was beneficial arid remedial, and a great improvement of their constitution, as it brought it nearer to the English model. This again was denied by the Lords of the minority, who said that the taking away of franchises granted by charters, had ever been considered as penal, and all proceedings for that purpose conducted criminally. Otherwise, it was said, nothing could be safe in any man's hands, the taking away of which another man might consider as beneficial. That a Council holding their places at the pleasure of the Crown, did not resemble the House of Lords; nor approach in any thing to the perfection of the British constitution.

The debate on the third reading was long, but the division only twenty to ninety-two.—Ann. Regis.

This Bill occasioned several long and warm debates. But the Lords still keeping their House shut, and not even admitting the members of the House of Commons, unless to deliver Bills, and then to depart immediately, it is not known that any account of these debates has been preserved any where.

At the beginning of the next Session, (which was the first Session of the fourteenth Parliament,) the Duke of Manchester recommended to the House a relaxation of the standing order, excluding all strangers from admission below the bar of the House; and also recommended the admission of the members of the House of Commons, as formerly. Both recommendations were agreed to; and from that time the debates of the Lords, have been preserved.—Parl. Deb.