The Clerk of this House waited on his Excellency the Governour, and acquainted him that a sufficient number of Members to constitute a House were met, and to desire his Excellency to issue a Commission, and appoint some of the members of Council to see them qualified.

Being returned, brought for answer that his Excellency would appoint two of the Members accordingly.

The Honourable Lewis H. De Rosset, and Alexander McCulloch, Esquires, two of the members of Council came to the House; and the above forty-eight Members were qualified, by taking the oaths by law appointed for the qualification of publick officers, and repealing and subscribing the test.

Mr. Caswell and Mr. Macknight waited on his Excellency the Governour to inform him that the Members had qualified, and that they waited to receive his commands.

Being returned, reported to the House that his Excellency would send a Message to the Members to wait on him.

Received from his Excellency the Governour a verbal message by his Secretary, desiring the attendance of the Members in the Palace at 12 o’clock.

The Members waited on his Excellency the Governour in the Palace, when he was pleased to direct that they return to the House and make choice of a Speaker.

The Members being returned to the House, Mr. Samuel Johnston proposed and set up John Harvey, Esquire, who was unanimously chosen Speaker, and placed in the chair accordingly.

On motion, Ordered, Mr. Knox and Mr. McCulloch wait on his Excellency the Governour, and acquaint him the House had made choice of a Speaker, and desire to know when they shall wait on his Excellency to present him.

Being returned, informed the House his Excellency would send a message when he would receive them.

Received from his Excellency the Governour a verbal message by his Secretary, requiring the immediate attendance of the House in the Palace.

The House waited on his Excellency the Governour in the. Palace, and presented their Speaker, whom his Excellency was pleased to approve of.

Then Mr. Speaker requested his Excellency to confirm the rights and privileges of the House, and that no mistake or errour of his might be imputed to the House; to which his Excellency was pleased to answer, he would support the House in all their just rights and privileges, and then made a Speech to His Majesty’s Council and this House.

Mr. Speaker with the House being returned, Mr. Speaker reported that his Excellency the Governour had made a Speech to the Council and this House, a copy of which, to prevent mistake, he had obtained, and laid the same before the House.

Then, on motion, Ordered, the said Speech be read.

Read the same, and is as follows, to wit:

Gentlemen of His Majesty’s Honourable Council,
Mr. Speaker, and Gentlemen of the House of Assembly:

I have now met you in General Assembly, in hopes that, dismissing every cause of private dissention from your minds you will calmly, unitedly, and faithfully apply yourselves to the discharge of the high and important office of legislation, in which you bear so great a share, according to the Constitution of this Country, that calls upon you for relief at this time in a most peculiar and pressing manner.

I look, gentlemen, with the extremest horrour and concern to the consequences of the violent and unjustifiable proceedings in some of His Majesty’s Colonies of this Continent, where in many places the innocent, unwary, and ignorant part of the people have been cruelly betrayed into measures highly inconsistent with their duty and allegiance to our most gracious Sovereign and the State, that tend immediately to involve them in the most embarrassing difficulties and distresses, and which, if pursued, must inevitably precipitate these Colonies from their present unparalleled state of prosperity into a train of miseries most dreadful to contemplate, whence ages of time will not redeem them to their now envied felicity. You, gentlemen, are bound by your duty to the King, to the State, and to this People, as well as I, by mine, to obviate the contagion of these evil examples in this Country, and to defend it, if possible, from the ruin and distraction to which they plainly lead.

I see with infinite concern the unhappy influence they have already had among us. The meetings to which the people have been excited, the appointment of Committees, the violences these little unrestrained and arbitrary tribunals have done to the rights of His Majesty’s subjects, the flagrant and unpardonable insults they have offered to the highest authorities of the State, by some of their acts, which have been made publick; and the stop that has been put in some of the Counties to the regular course of justice, in imitation of the unwarrantable measures taken in other Colonies, but too plainly evince their baneful progress here, and loudly demand the most effectual exertion of your restraining and correcting powers.

You are now, gentlemen of the Assembly, by your duty to yourselves and to your constituents, most peculiarly called upon to oppose a meeting of Delegates, which the people have been invited to choose, and who are appointed to assemble at this very time and place in the face of the Legislature. This illegal meeting, pursuant to my duty to the King and to the Constitution of this Country, and from regard to your dignity and the just rights of the people, I have counteracted, and I shall continue to resist it by every means in my power. What can this mean, gentlemen? Are you not the only lawful Representatives of the people in this Country, and competent to every legal purpose? Will you, then, submit to see your constituents misled, to violate their dearest privileges by wounding your dignity, and setting up Representatives derogatory to your just power and authority? This, gentlemen, is an insult to you of so violent a nature that it appears to me to demand your every possible discouragement, for its evident tendency is to excite a belief in the people that they are capable of electing Representatives of superiour powers to the Members of your House; which, if it can possibly obtain, must lead to obvious consequences, to the destruction of the essence, if not the very being of an Assembly in this Province, and finally to the utter dissolution and overthrow of its established happy Constitution.

This, gentlemen, among others I have before mentioned, is one of the fatal expedients employed in some of the other Colonies, under the influence of factious and wicked men, intent upon promoting their own horrid purposes at the hazard of their Country’s ruin. I hope they have been adopted here more from a, spirit of imitation than ill principles, and that you, clearly discerning the mischiefs with which they are pregnant, will heartily concur with me in opposing dawnings of so dangerous a system.

As an object of the greatest consequence to all the Colonies, I would recommend it to your first attention to employ your utmost care and assiduity to remove those false impressions, by which the engines of sedition have laboured to effect (but too successfully) a most unnatural division between the Parent State and these Colonies, which, under her protecting, indulgent, fostering care, have attained to a degree of prosperity beyond all example. The basest arts have, beet) practised upon the innocent people, and they have been blindly led to partake in guilt, to which their hearts are confessedly averse; and thus, step by step, they will be seduced from their duty, and all the bonds of civil society will be destroyed, unless timely remedies: are applied. This, gentlemen, is a melancholy prospect, that must seriously alarm every good subject, every humane, every honest man; and it will be your duty, as guardians of the constitutional rights of the people, vigorously to oppose proceedings so manifestly subversive of their freedom and happiness.

Be it your care, then, gentlemen, to undeceive the people; to lead them back from the dangerous precipice to which an ill spirit of faction is urging them, to the paths of their duty; set before them the sacred tie of allegiance, by which, as subjects, they are bound to the State; inform them of the reciprocal benefits which their strict observance thereof entitles them to; and warn them of the danger to which they must expose their Jives and properties, and all that they hold dear, by revolting from it.

The frequent occasions you have had, in your several Capacities as Members of the Legislature and Magistrates, most solemnly to swear this allegiance, which is an implied