Upon the first of the two bills, the protesting lords _Richmond_, _Portland_, _Abingdon_, _King_, _Effingham_, _Ponsonby_, _Rockingham_, _Abergavenny_, _Leister_, _Craven_ and _Fitzwilliam_, dissented among other reasons, “because definitive legal offence, by which a forfeiture of the charter is incurred, has not been clearly stated and fully proved, neither has notice of this advers proceeding been given to the parties effected; neither have they been heard in their own defence—because all the judges are to be 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 is to be nominated by the king; the sheriff is made changeable by the governor and council, as often and for such purpose as they shall think expedient, whereby the governor and council are intrusted with powers, with which the British constitution has not trusted his majesty and privy council, and have the means of returning such a jury in each particular case, as may best suit with the gratification of their passions and interests, so that the lives and properties of the subject are put into their hands without control.” The protesting lords took occasion to mention concerning the Boston port-act, “that, unexampled on the records of parliament, it had been entered on the journals of the house as voted _nemine dissentiente_, and had been stated in the debate of the day, to have been sent to the colonies as passed without a division in either house, and therefore as conveying the uncontroverted universal sense of the nation; and that an unfair advantage had been taken, on the final question for passing the penal bill, of the absence of those lords who had debated it for several hours, and strongly dissented from it on the second reading, the period on which it is most usual to debate the principle of a bill.” On the second bill, the protesting lords _Richmond_, _Fitzwilliam_, _Ponsonby_, _Rockingham_, _Portland_, _Craven_, _Leister_, and _Manchester_, dissented among other reasons “because the bill amounts to a declaration, that the house knows no means of retaining the colonies in due obedience, but by an army rendered independent of the ordinary course of law in the place where they are employed; because the bill seems to be one of the many experiments toward an introduction of essential innovations into the government of the empire.” They said, “The authority given by this bill to compel the transportation from America to Great-Britain, if any number of witnesses at the pleasure of the parties prosecuting and prosecuted, without any regard to their age, sex, health, circumstances, business or duties, seems to us so extravagant in its principle, and so impracticable in its execution, as to confirm us further in our opinion of the spirit which animates the whole system of the present American regulations.”