e

DISPUTE BETWEEN THE COUNCIL AND THE ASSEMBLY. 75

result of oppression, no such apology can to the same extent be offered in behalf of their opponents. In October, 1825, the council passed a resolution to the effect that they would not in future be disposed to give their assent to any bill for appropriating money, unless the sums «and services therein contained should be submitted in separ- ate resolutions for their concurrence. This resolution was "not agreeable to the assembly, who claimed the sole right of originating all money bills, and who denied the right of the “council to alter or amend them. This difference of opinion .led to a protracted controversy. In May, 1827, the council sent a message to the assembly, in which the question was elaborately argued, to which the assembly returned an equally elaborate reply. The dispute resulted, in 1827, in the council agreeing to the two principal bills of supply, and rejecting an ad valorem duty bill; but in the following session—that of 1828—the appropriation bill was rejected by the council, which obliged the governor to confine the expenditure of the year to purposes of necessity. In meet- ing the house, in 1829, the governor expressed the hope that the unfortunate dispute of the last session would be brought to an amicable adjustment, and recommended a system of mutual compromise as the most effectual mode of securing that object. Although the council had resolved to transact no further business with the assembly until the latter body expunged a previous resolution from their journals con‘ taining certain imputations on the council, yet the house had refused to do so. Business communication was, how- ever, resumed, and continued as if nothing had happened. On the sixth of January, 1825, died Benjamin Chappell, late postmaster of the island, in the eighty-seventh year of his age. He and his brother \Villiam emigrated from Eng- land in the year 1775. They owned one of the first packets