Samuel Barnard Esq Speaker of the Assembly, his Speech to the Governour, Sept. 21. 1682.
May it please your Excellency,
TO confirm their own Judgment, the Assembly are pleased to continue me their Speaker; and that I take likewise to be the reason that prevails with you to approve their Choice. I shall not presume, Sir, to be tedious: however, we do in all humility acknowledge the frequent and ample Testimonies of his most Sacred Majesties repeated Favours, whose goodness, like the Sun extends to the utmost corners of his Dominions; and especially for this last and most signal one in returning your Excellency to us, thereby demonstrating your Government to be both to his satisfaction, and that of all his subjects here; who shall always preserve their Loyalty entire to him, and of consequence their Obedience to your Excellency his immediate Mini∣ster: and that however represented, we can never believe any distinction between the King's interest and the Peoples; for indeed whoever preaches up that Destructive Position, doth from an ill division of an ill chosen Text, deduce worse Doctrine.
The uncertainties and difficulties, under which for some years past we have laboured, have been very great: I am willing to touch on that no farther than to say, being impartially weighed, it can never be reasonably imagined we had any other designe but to continue under our old form of Government, which his Majesty had been pleased to constitute at first, as near that of his Realm of England, as so great a Volume could be comprised in so small an Epitome, and to preserve the quiet fruition of those Estates which our own industry (blest be divine Providence) had acquired, under the same me∣thod of making Laws, as is observed in our Native Country, from which, as the famous Roman saith, there is defended, a greater Inheritance to us, than