FRtR > Documents > governor on salary
Governor Burnet of Massachusetts on the governor's salary,
17 september 1728
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Gentlemen of the House of Representatives,
I Thought it proper to delay answering your Message
of the 12th Instant, in which you desired to Rise that you
might advise with your Towns, till I had seen the Draught
which you had accepted as what might be necessasary to
advise the Towns how far the Court had proceeded in the
matter of a Salary to the Governour; for by your Vote of
the 7th appointing a Committee to draw it up, you seemed
to allow that your own going home would be needless
since you resolved to transmit to them what might be
necessary, and since upon that they might if they pleased send
you Directions how to act for them.
But you have now carried the thing much further, for
you conclude, that you dare neither come into an Act for
fixing a Salary on the Governour for ever, nor for a limited
time, what then can it signify to know the minds of your
Principals and advise with your Towns since youdare not
take their Advice, if it should differ from your own
Opinion, all your meaning therefore can only be that you would
go home to give Advice to your Towns, but that you are
fully resolved to take none from them, which is not a very
respectful Treatment of those who have Chosen you to
represent them: You say, That the House to prevent any
Misrepresentations that may be made to the several Towns
in this Province have concluded upon this Account of the
Proceedings in this Affair, and of the Grounds and Reasons
thereof; It were to be wished you had pursued this Design
impartially, instead of which you have set forth the
Strength of the Argument on one side and concealed it on
the other, so that your Account can only serve to
misinform those who rely upon it, and this the generality of
People in the Country will naturally do, if they are not
warned of their Danger of being misled, for it cannot be
supposed that they will have the time or take the pains
to compare it with the pages of the Votes as they are cited,
but will of course expect that you have taken all that is
material out of them. Now as this has not been done, I
thought my self obliged in Justice to the publick, to point
out the defects and mistakes of this Account, and to set the
matter once more in a true Light, that as you have found
your selves at a loss to give any Reply to my long Message
of the 3d Instant, you may have as little success in your
design of filling the minds of the People with the same
wrong Notions, which have already been and are so easy
to be confuted. In the very beginning you omit taking any
notice at all of my Speech in which I observed, That
Parliaments had made it a Custom to grant the Civil List
to the King for Life, and that the same Maxims that made
Great Britain shine would make you flourish.
You begin with His Majesties 23d Instruction (p. 2)
where you omit mentioning, That His Majesty had de
clared your Compliance necessary to preserve his favour
and your not shewing an immediate regard to his Pleasure
therein an undutiful Behaviour, which would oblige Him
to lay the Affair before the Legislature at home, but when
you come to your own first Resolve (p. 6) to grant 1700 l.,
you insert it at length and almost word for word; then
again when you come to my Message (p. 11) you only
say that I informed you that I was utterly disabled from
consenting to the Resolve of that Grant, it being contrary
to His Majesties Instruction, but you should have men
tioned my Reason,because it was the very thing against
which this Instruction was levelled as done in order to
keep the Governour the more dependent on the Council
and Representatives; just after you give a very particular
Account of your Proceedings with the Council and your
second Grant, and your Message with it (p. 18, 22, 23)
and then you give a short account of the Allegations of
my Message (p. 28) omitting what I insisted on to
support and prove them, viz.,That Gentlemen knew in their
Consciences that the Allowances for the Governour's Salary
had been kept back till other Bills of moment had been
consented to; you had once put off this Charge with a
turn as if Salarys always looked forward, but as I have
smce shewn this to be plainly contrary to the proceedings
of last Winter. you now very prudently say nothing at all
about it, nor what gave occasion to it.
The next thing you mention is a draught of your own
(p. 31, 32, 33) which was never offered to me, and
consequently not answered, and therefore you find it convenient
to give some account of it in this place; whereas you say
but a word or two of a like Paper delivered to me, after
wards (p. 52, 53) which contains much the same matter
with this draught, and not one word of the Contents of my
Reply to it (p. 55, 56, 57) except something of the
Conclusion, which Reply was so full that you have thought fit
to drop the Dispute upon it; and so that you might mention
your own Arguments without being discovered to conceal
my Answers, you bring them in only on this former
Occasion, but I will restore them to their proper place, and
go on in order to observe, that you give all the particulars
of a Dispute you had with the Council at full length (p.
35, 33, 39, 41, 42, 43) and then at once grow very short
again when you come to mention any thing that came
from me; you just say of my Answer to your Message
(p. 47) that I signified Icould not agree to a Recess 'till
His Majesties 23d Instruction was complied with, without
mentioning a very short and strong reason which I had
given for it,because I should thereby make your
immediate Regard to His Majesties Pleasure impossible; then you
run over your Reply (p. 49) and my Message (p. 50) and
your Message with Reasons (p. 52, 53) and my Reply
(p. 55, 56, 57) with such precipitation (tho' the last were
the two longest Papers that had passed between us) that
one would think you were unwilling to have them read and
considered, which, as it has a quite different effect with
me I am willing to stop a little where you are so much in
a hurry, and shew in this place that all that you mentioned
before out of your draught (p. 31, 32, 33) is sufficiently
answered in a few words of my Reply (p. 55, 56, 57) as
follows, I cannot see why you apprehend that passing Acts
pursuant to the Instruction has a direct tendency to weaken
your happy Constitution especially since you now
acknowledge what I had formerly observed, that each Branch of
the Legislature (and consequently the Governour) ought
to be enabled to support his own Dignity and Freedom,
which is all that is intended by the Instruction.
After that you are got beyond this long Reply of mine,
which you make so much haste to pass by, then you are
at leisure to give an ample Account of your own proceed
ings (p. 58) and afterwards of the latter part of my
Answer (p. 59) which you insert at length, but think proper
to say nothing 6f the beginning of it, where I informed you
that I thought my Duty would not permit me to agree to a
Recess, and where I make a kind of Appeal to you by
saying that I had given you my Reasons and answered all
your Objections; to which you never replied, and yet you
seem not to desire that the Country should know that the
Dispute remains in such a state as will incline every
impartial person to believe that I have Truth and Justice on
my side. You finish your Narrative with mentioning your
last difference with the Council (p. 62) and then although
you had already brought together every Circumstance that
you thought made for you, and omitted what seemed to
make most strongly against you: You seem still
apprehensive that People may not be enough prejudiced in your
Favour, and therefore you conclude all with four Reasons
at length, which contain the substance of your former
Allegations, as if they were unanswerable, or at least had
never been answered, whereas in Fact I have given a
sufficient Reply to every thing contained in them, and there
fore it would have been no more than a piece of Justice
to me to have set down the substance of my Answers as
fully as the Reasons themselves, but since that is not done
as I might have expected, I think it necessary to do it my
self in the fairest manner, by first repeating your Grounds
and Reasons word for word, from whence you say it may
plainly appear, that you dare neither come into an Act for
fixing a Salary on the Governour for ever, nor for a limited
time.
- 1st. Because it is an untrodden path which neither you
nor your Predecessors have gone in, and you cannot
certainly foresee the many dangers there may be in it, and
you must depart from that way which has been found safe
and comfortable.
In answer to this I have already shewn (p. 50) that the
same methods which are found no ways to prejudice the
Rights and Liberties of the People of Great Britain nor of
other Colonys cannot prejudice those of this Province; and
again upon your replying,That the British Constitution
differed from yours in many respects, I said (p. 56) That I
took the chief difference to have been in the use made of
the Constitution, which has been no ways to your
advantage for by Great Britain's keeping up to the Constitution
publick Credit still continues at the height, notwithstanding
the vast Charges and Debts of the Nation; but with you
Credit has fallen lower and lower in an amazing manner
and this has proceeded plainly from the want of a
sufficient Check in the other Branches of the Legislature to the
sudden and unadvised Measures of former Assemblies. By
this you might have seen how safe and comfortable your
way of Granting Allowances so as to keep the Governour
dependent has been, since it produced nothing less than the
Fall of publick Credit. But since you seem not to be
satisfied with what has been already observed against your first
Reason, I must remind you that your lessening Governour
Shute's Salary in pursuance of this Way of making
Allowances as you please from time to time, was no slender
motive of his going home, and complaining of the divers
Incroachments on the King's Prerogative committed by the
House of Representatives, and that upon a Hearing of
Seven Articles of his Charge, the Council for the House of
Representatives expressly declared,that they did not insist
upon, or claim on the behalf of the House of
Representatives any Right or Authority in the Matters charged upon
them by the 1st, 3d, 5th, 6th, and 7th. And that His late
Majesty in Council ordered an Explanatory Charter to be
granted upon the 2d and 4th Articles, with this Conclusion,
That if such Explanatory Charter shall not be accepted,
and a just regard shewed to His Majesties Royal
Prerogative by the House of Representatives for the future in all
the particulars aforesaid, it may be proper for the Con
sideration of the Legislature what further Provision may
be necessary to support and preserve His Majesties just
Authority in this Province, and prevent such presumptuous
Invasions for the future: So safe was your Way that it
helped in a great measure to bring this Complaint upon
the House, which ended in obliging those who appeared
for you to a Confession to many of your illegal
Proceedings, and in putting you under a necessity of accepting an
Explanatory Charter, that your former One might not be
brought into Parliament, where Mr. Agent. Dummer's
Letter, which I sent to you on the 12th Instant shews
plainly enough, what Fate it was like'4o have undergone.
What Comfort this Way may have given to those then
employed by the Country I shall not determine, but all
the Comfort the People had from it was an immense
Charge without succeeding in any one particular. I hope
by this time I have sufficiently shewn, how safe and com
fortable your usual Way has been.
I come now to your 2d Reason,
- 2dly. Because it is the undoubted Right of all English
men by Magna Charta to raise and dispose of Moneys for
the publick Service of their own free accord without Compulsion.
To this it has been answered (p. 28) that the Right of
Englishmen can never entitle them to act in a wrong
manner, and therefore the Priviledge in your CHARTER to
raise Money for the Support of the Government is therein
expressed to be by wholesome and reasonable Laws and
Directions, and consequently not by such as are hurtful to
the British Constitution, and that by your usual Way the
Governour must either be deprived of the undoubted Right
of an Englishman, which is to act according to his
Judgment, or the Government must remain without Support;
and again (p. 56) I produced to you an undeniable
Instance of the House's making use of this Way last Winter
in order to compel the Lieut. Governour to a Compliance,
so that I have proved that you have done the very thing
you here complain of. But I may again call upon you to
shew where the Compulsion lies: Is waiting with patience
`till you shew a due Regard to His Majesties Pleasure any
Compulsion? is not His Majesties Favour free to be
continued or withdrawn as well as you are free to raise or
not to raise Money? And is not the Governour as free to
keep the Court setting or not as he judges proper? But I
must repeat to you what I observed to you before (p. 57)
That you seem to allow the Governour's Powers only so
far as he uses them according to your Pleasure, but in
using your own Powers you take it very ill to be directed
by any Body.
Your 3d Reason is,
- 3dly. Because this must necessarily lessen the Dignity
and Freedom of the House of Representatives in making
Acts and raising and applying Taxes etc., and consequently
cannot be thought a proper Method to preserve that
Ballance in the three Branches of the Legislature which seems
necessary to form maintain and uphold your Constitution.
In answer to this I have already observed (p. 56)
That the fall of Credit here has proceeded from the want
of a sufficient Check in the other Branches of the
Legislature to the sudden and unadvised Measures of former
Assemblies, so that if ever you hope to come near the
Happiness of Great Britain it must be by supporting those
parts of the Legislature which of late have been too much
depressed, but are in themselves necessary to guard the
Liberties and Properties of the Inhabitants as well as the
House of Representatives. I have shewn (p. 57) that you
cannot be in earnest when you say, that other things which
depend on a Governour are vastly more than a
Counterballance to his Support or Subsistence, and just after you
cast an odious Aspersion on an undoubted Branch of the
Power lodged with the Governour, which is to keep the
Court together as long as he thinks the publick Affairs
require it. I will only add now that all the World will think
it very odd in you to talk of the Danger of not preserving
the Ballance in the three Branches of the Legislature while
you have a majority of three to one in the Choice of the
Council, and while you leave but Five Hundred Pounds
to be disposed of by the Governour and Council during a
Recess.
Your 4th Reason is,
- 4thly. Because the CHARTER fully impowers the
General Assembly to make such Laws and Orders as they shall
judge for the good and welfare of the Inhabitants, and if
they or any part of them judge this not to be for their good
they neither ought nor can come into it, for as to act be
yond or without the Powers granted in the CHARTER
might justly incur the Kings Displeasure, so not to act up
and agreable to those Powers might justly be deemed a
betraying the Rights and Priviledges therein granted: More
over, if you should now give up this Right you should
open a Door to many other Inconveniences.
In answer to this I must remind you, that I observed
(p. 57) That as I was still of Opinion that as you have
acted upon mistaken Notions, I could not give over hopes
of your coming to see things in that true Light in which
I flattered my self I had stated the Point in Question. I
may again renew my Appeal, whether I have not answered
all your Objections, and if so, then how can I think that
you have reason to judge the fixing a Salary not to be for
your good; a bare assertion of that kind without proof can
go for nothing with the publick, and it must always be
supposed that any stiffness that has no real foundation
will go off in time. But to cut off all pretence as if the
Granting what is now proposed were against the Powers
of your CHARTER, I will set down the words of the
Statute of the 25th of Edward the first, King of England,
Chap. 6, Entitled a Confirmation of the Great Charter,
That for no Business from henceforth we shall take such
manner of Aids, Tasks nor Prices, but by the common
assent of the Realm, and for the common Profit thereof,
saving the ancient Aids and Prices due and accustomed. I
will likewise set down the words of the Statute of the 34th
of the same King Chap. 1, which was Enacted to make
the former more full and certain-No Talliage or Aids
shall be taken or levied by Us or Our Heirs in Our Realm
without the good will and assent of ArchBishops, Bishops,
Earles, Barons, Knights, Burgesses, and other Freemen of
the Land. These Clauses of Acts of Parliament are as
strong at least as any words in your Charter, which gives
no power of raising and disposing of Money greater than
those of all Englishmen, and yet I defy you to shew that
these Acts of Parliament or any other were ever pretended
to be an Objection against granting to the King a Revenue
for Life, which appears to have been done, and much more
time out of mind by the Preamble of the first of James the
first, Chap. 33, which is too long to be inserted in this
place, but where you will find that the same Dutys of
Tunnage and Poundage that had been granted to Henry
the 7th, Henry 8th, Edward the 6th, Queen Mary, Queen
Elizabeth, and other the Kings Progenitors, Kings of
England, were given to King James the first, To have, take,
enjoy and perceive the Subsidies aforesaid and every of
them, and every part and percel of them to the Kings
Majesty during his Life natural. So that it is a mere
Invention without any ground to say, that a Charter to grant
Moneys is any reason against granting them either for a
limited or an unlimited time. And since this is now so
fully proved I hope you will no longer be amused with
so wrong a notion.
Your last Observation of the many other
Inconveniencies to which a Door will be opened, cannot be answered
`till it is explained what those Inconveniencies are, and
it looks as if at the very end of your Paper you felt the
Imperfections of it, since you are reduced to call for Help
from what you have not mentioned, and which I may
justly believe to be of no more force than what you have.