Your Excellency's speech to the General Assembly, at the opening of this session,2 has been read with great attention in this House. We fully agree with your Excellency, that our own happiness, as well as his Majesty's service, very much depends upon peace and order; and we shall at all times take such measures as are consistent with our constitution, and the rights of the people, to promote and maintain them. That the government at present is in a very disturbed state, is apparent. But we cannot ascribe it to the people's having adopted unconstitutional principles, which seems to be the cause assigned for it by your Excellency. It appears to us, to have been occasioned rather by the British House of Commons assuming and exercising a power inconsistent with the freedom of the constitution, to give and grant the property of the colonists, and appropriate the same without their consent. It is needless for us to inquire what were the principles that induced the councils of the nation to so new and unprecedented a measure. But, when the Parliament, by an act of their own, expressly declared, that the King, Lords, and Commons, of the nation "have, and of right ought to have full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity, to bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatever," and in consequence hereof, another revenue act was made, the minds of the people were filled with anxiety, and they were justly alarmed with apprehensions of the total extinction of their liberties.