judges, and officers of the crown will be found to have been withheld or reduced on occasions, where the assemblies have supposed that they have had reason to disapprove the nomination, — or the person, or his conduct ; — whether, I say, these inconveniencies have not been more detrimental, and injurious to government ; and whether, instead of these colonies being dependent on, and governed under, the officers of the crown, the scepter is not reversed, and the officers of the crown dependent on and governed by the assemblies, as the Colonists themselves allow, that this measure "renders the governor, and all the other servants of the crown, dependent on the assembly." This is mere matter of experience ; and the fact, when duly enquired into, must speak for itself: — but the operation of this measure does not end here; it extends to the assuming by the assemblies the actual executive part of the government in the case of the revenue, than which nothing is more clearly and unquestionably settled in the crown. In the colonies the treasurer is solely and entirely a servant of the assembly or general court ; and although the monies granted and appropriated be, or ought to be, granted to the crown on such appropriations, the treasurer is neither named by the crown, nor its governor, nor gives security to the crown or to the Lord High Treasurer, (which seems the most proper) nor in many of the colonies, is to obey the governor's warrant in the issue, nor accounts in the auditor's office, nor in any one colony is it admitted, that he is liable to such account. In consequence of this supposed necessity, for the assembly's taking upon them the administration of the treasury and revenue, the governor and servants of the crown, in the ordinary revenue of government, are not only held dependent on the assembly, but all services, where special appropriations are made for the extraordinaries which such services require, are actually executed and done by commissioners appointed by the assembly, to whose disposition such appropriations are made liable. It would be perhaps invidious, and might tend to prejudging on points which ought very seriously and dispassionately to be examined, if I were here to point out in the several instances of the actual execution of this assumed power, how almost every executive power of the crown lodged in its governor, is, where money is necessary, thus exercised by the assembly and its commissioners. I beg leave here to repeat, that I do not enter into the discussion of these points ; my only aim is, fairly to state them, giving the strongest and clearest explanations I am capable of to both sides, that the discussion may be brought to some deter-
