Jamaica experienced, in a greater degree than any other colony, the effects of those unfavourable impressions with which the motives and proceedings of her legislature were regarded, and of those feelings of distrust and suspicion which influenced the relations of the executive government and the Assembly. Her Assembly was more sensitive, more zealous, more tenacious than any other colony in vindicating the privileges of her legislature, whenever an attempt was made to violate them. The people of Jamaica, when that colony first formed part of the British empire, did not become subjects of England by conquest--they were by birth Englishmen, who, by the invitation and encouragement of their sovereign, retained possession of a country which its former inhabitants had abandoned. They carried with them to Jamaica all the rights and privileges of British-born subjects. The proclamation of Charles II. is not a grant, but a declaration, confirmation, and guarantee of those rights and privileges. The constitution of Jamaica is based on those rights and privileges. It is, to use the emphatic language of Mr Burke, in speaking of our North American colonies, "a constitution which, with the exception of the commercial restraints, has every characteristic of a free government. She has the express image of the British constitution. She has the substance. She has the right of taxing herself through her representatives in her Assembly. She has, in effect, the sole internal government of the colony." The history of the colony records many attempts of the governor and of the government to deprive her of that constitution, by violating the privileges of her Assembly; but it records also the success with which those attempts were resisted, and the full recognition of those privileges by the ample reparation which was made for their violation. That very success rendered the people of Jamaica still more jealous of those privileges, and more determined in the uncompromising firmness with which they maintained them. But it did not render the governors or the home government less jealous or less distrustful of the motives and proceedings of the Assembly. As the whole expense of her civil, military, and ecclesiastical establishment was defrayed by the colony, with the exception of the salaries of the bishop, archdeacon, and certain stipendiary curates; and as that expense, amounting to nearly £400,000, was annually raised by the Assembly, it might have been supposed that the power of stopping the supplies would have had its effect in creating more confidence and conciliation, but it may be doubted whether it did not produce a contrary effect.