OUR ISLAND STORY 41

came to its decision “not to proceed" to do business with the Executive Council until such time as that branch shall be re- modeled so as to reflect the opinions of the inhabitants of this colony.” '

In the same address the majority in the House of Assembly assured Her Majesty that provision would be made for the Chief Justice and other officials of the Government appointed by the Imperial authorities. It was also pointed out that, “As all the members of Her Majesty’s Executive Council have resigned their seats to His Excellency there does not now exist any im-

pediment in the way of His Excellency to remodel his Execut-

‘ive Council in accordance with the principles of Responsible GOV ernment, that the Assembly may be enabled to proceed with business."

Fearing, apparently, that the Address to the Queen might be miscarried the House of Assembly also sent an address to the Imperial House of Commons, soliciting the powerful influence of that “Honourable Body" with Her Majesty’s Government "on behalf of the claim put forth by this House to a full parti- cipation in all the political rights of their fellow subjects in the other colonies and in Britain.”

The concluding paragraph of this Address, expressed the belief that ”too often misled by vacillating and contradictory despatches, and their power too often rendered nugatory by the exercise of the secret and unfair influences of interested parties in the colony, who unfortunately have been permitted to inter- pose their selfish designs between the interests and opinions of the people'and the gracious wishes of the Sovereign, the House of Assembly appeals to your protection, relying upon your well- known attachment to the principles of constitutional liberty which have been so clearly and satisfactorily explained by the First Minister of the Crown,——-your power and readiness to secure for the humblest class of colonists in the Empire the inalienable rights of British subjects—-are induced to hope that through your prompt and generous interference on their behalf, they may no longer be deprived of a participation in all those advantages which a full extension of the British Constitution is calculated