Richmond Enquirer

WEST INDIES.

COLONIAL PARLIAMENT.

Bermuda, June 2.—The Honorable the House of Assembly met the Governor in the Council Chamber in this town on Thursday last, at 11 o'clock—when his Excellency delivered the following speech.

WM. LUMLEY.

'Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Legislative Council.

Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the House of Assembly,

I have now called upon you to meet me for a purpose which, for many and various reasons intimately connected with the welfare of the Colony, I most deeply deplore; but which, owing to as strange and unaccountable proceedings as ever took place in a Legislative Body will admit of no alternative.

To the Legislative Council my best thanks are due, for the readiness they have evinced to meet my proposed measures with cordiality, and to promote the best interests of the Community.

It has been asserted in another place, that I have attempted to overawe his Majesty's Council—to poison the springs of justice—and to drive from his Majesty's service, men of talents and upright principles: assertions which every Member of that Council knows, and can declare to be, utterly false: and the object of which was evidently to injure my character, and to bring into disrepute the subsequent proceedings of that Body.

Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the House of Assembly,

I received a Message from your House, of the 2d of May, relative to the Powder Laws: together with a report of a Committee of the House on the above, dated April the 18th, of this year; and you have gravely called my attention to a voluminous mass of Special Pleading, and have solicited my communicating with Earl Bathurst, for the information of his Majesty thereof; and you have done this in a very few days after having solemnly assured your Sovereign, that his Majesty's Representative is wholly ignorant of Civil Government. I shall not therefore condescend to enter into any detailed explanation.

I cannot however avoid remarking, that in all the elaborate researches, and comments of your House on the Powder Fund Laws, through a period of nearly seventy years, the most important time of the whole should have been omitted, between 1767 and 1781; for 6 or 7 years of which a Civil War was raging in America, and some most extraordinary occurrences took place here, connected with that subject—occurrences which I do not now deem it necessary to comment upon.

If the Act of 1742 was in actual operation until 1809, (which your House has boldly but most erroneously asserted,) it might fairly be asked, how it was possible that all the old Members of the House, together with Chief Justice Leonard and Attorney General Esten should at that very period know nothing of such an Act—should not even have known, that such an Act was ever in operation, when the two last named specifically advised the then Governor (Godson) to replace the Fund under the control of his Majesty's Servants, (the Governor and Council,) in conformity to the Act of 1690, where it had been previously for many years—where it ever ought to have remained—and where it has since continued undisputed, until last year—and which your House is now pleased to call "recently wresting it from its purpose."

Your House does not yet seem to comprehend that the Proceedings here, during the whole or any part of the period to which it refers, can have no control over the Records and Proceedings of the Mother Country, or the decisions from the Throne—and from which Earl Bathurst states what I must again repeat—“that the Act of 1742 has not been confirmed, nor that of 1690 repealed: and that the Act of 1690 is still the law of the Island for the levy of Powder Duty."

In your last Message to me, of the 3d of May, you speak of extraordinary language.—To your House indeed this reverts, and becomes most applicable—when, in language truly uncouth, but not to be misunderstood, you presume to tell our gracious Sovereign, that he has selected a man as his representative, whom you have been pleased to decide to be wholly unfit for such a charge. Your opinion was never asked, nor would in any case be called for. Your House is both de jure and de facto, totally unequal and incompetent to such a decision.

You have lavished on your Governor, the Representative of your King, the grossest reproach—the basest contumely. You have brought Charges against him, as absurd as they are false, mischievous, and injurious (not to him,) but to the peace and wellbeing of the Community at large—and you then affect astonishment, that he should speak, even in general terms, of Faction and a Factious Spirit in the Colony.

Blinded by error, or some more dreadful infatuation, you have finally, in direct terms, refused to do your duty. You are proceeding at your own peril, and are collectively and individually responsible to your God, your King and your Country, for all the evils you may have entailed upon the Country.

May 31st, 1821. W. L.'

The Colonial Parliament was then declared to be Prorogued until the 5th of July next.