Doctor Conolly was arrested previous to the meeting, by my orders, on his avowing himself the author of the advertisement requiring the people to meet as a militia, and committed on refusing to find sureties for his good behaviour till next court.

I was in hopes the sending him out of the way would have put an end to it altogether; but I was mistaken. About eighty persons in arms assembled themselves, chiefly from Mr. Croghan's neighbourhood, and the country west of and below the Monongahela, and after parading through the town and making a kind of feu de joy, proceeded to the Fort where a cask of rum was produced on the parade, and the head knocked out. This was a very effectual way of recruiting.

As a scene of drunkenness and confusion was likely to ensue, I got the Magistrates (who attended in consequence of the letters I had sent them) together, and read the enclosed paper, which we had concocted that morning, and at the conclusion, when they were required to disperse, they replied they had been invited there, but came with peaceable intentions, and would go home again without molesting any one; on which we left them; however, towards night, their peaceable disposition forsook them, and I should probably have felt their resentment had I not got intimation of their design. I thought it most prudent to keep out of their way.

I have no doubt but the Magistrates will do their duty with spirit, and I shall take the earliest opportunity to make them acquainted with the support your Honor is determined to afford them. In some parts of the country they will have a difficult task, and I am really affraid this affair will be productive of a great deal of confusion. I shall not fail to give them the necessary cautions with regard to the Riot Act, and I think I can judge pretty nearly how far it may be safely extended.

Mr. Conolly has most certainly a commission from Lord Dunmore, expressly for Pittsburg and its dependencies, and his subalterns are John Stephenson, a brother of Mr. Crawford, our senior magistrate, William Harrison, a son-in-law of his, and Dorsey Penticost, who was lately in the commission of the peace here. Mr. Penticost has, I hear, been down to Mr. Conolly since his confinement, and taken the necessary oaths to qualify him for his military office, and is to assemble the people at Red Stone and take possession of Fort Bard. I have wrote to the Justices in that part of the country to watch his motions. Mr. McKee is said to be appointed a Justice by Lord Dunmore, but I would fain hope without his consent; at any rate he behaved very well on the late occasion, and as he was doubted, I made a point of having him there under pretence of his being Indian Agent, but in fact, if he was a friend or abettor of Conolly's measures.

It is, sir, extremely grateful to me that my conduct in any part meets with your approbation; but should I forget to be attentive to any thing that may disturb the happiness of your Government, or from which you may receive a personal injury, I should be guilty of the grossest breach of duty, as well as the blackest ingratitude, neither of which I trust will ever be the case.

I am, sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

AR ST. CLAIR.

The Honorable John Penn, Esq.

Paper enclosed in Arthur St. Clair's Letter to the Governor, of February 2, 1774.

As friends and fellow countrymen, which we ought all to consider each other, from whatever different quarters of the globe we have met here, suffer that we make you acquainted with some things of which you ought not to be ignorant.

We do not blame you for having an affection for the laws of the countries and provinces in which you have been born; 'tis a natural, 'tis a praiseworthy affection! And it required a length of time and diligent application to discover and give the deserved preference to different systems of laws and forms of Government, for which but few have either leisure or opportunity.

We do not tell you the plan of Pennsylvania is a perfect one. Such no human institution is or ever was; but the rapid progress Pennsylvania has made, the numbers of people that flock to it from every part of the world, and particularly the much greater value of landed property than in the adjoining parts of the neighbouring countries, evince that it is no very defective one; evince that its laws are mild and salutary, and that property and liberty, civil and religious, is well secured, and that it has some advantages over its neighbours.

We doubt not but you will readily acknowledge these matters; but you will reply, it is nothing to us; the soil we live on being no part of Pennsylvania; we can have no part of the advantages or disadvantages arising from its constitution.

We well know much pains have been taken to persuade many of you to a belief of this, and likewise that the Proprietaries have industriously delayed to settle their boundary. There is not the least foundation for either.

The Proprietaries of Pennsylvania claimed the country about Pittsburg, and the settlers quietly acquiesced in that claim; and as soon as doubts began to arise about it they took effectual pains to satisfy themselves whether or not they were right in that claim, and actually found the country a considerable distance west of that place within their Province: And so far are they from delaying the running their boundary line, we have the best authority for saying that a petition has been a considerable time before his Majesty for that very purpose. You must be sensible it would be to little purpose to run it without the concurrence of the Crown; certainly it would never be conclusive.

The jurisdiction of Pennsylvania has been regularly extended to Pittsburg, and exercised there for a number of years, as the records of Cumberland, Bedford, and Westmoreland counties testify; and you yourselves have acknowledged it, by applying for your lands in that Province. Whether that extension has been legally made or not, can be determined by the Crown alone; but must be submitted to till it is determined. And It must be evident to you that Lord Dunmore, as Governor of Virginia, can have no more right to determine this matter then one of us, for this plain reason: the charters of Pennsylvania and Virginia both flowed originally from the Crown; on that footing they are perfectly independent of each other; but they are both parties in this dispute, and consequently neither can be judge.

We would fondly hope no person in this country would wish to be from under the protection of law. A state of anarchy and confusion, and total subversion of property must inevitably ensue. We cannot help thinking contending jurisdictions in one and the same country must produce similar effects, and every attempt to introduce modes or regulations not warranted by the laws or constitution of Pennsylvania will also do so in a certain degree.

Any grievances the inhabitants of this part of the country suffer there is no doubt the Legislature want only to be informed of to redress. Should it be imagined the protection of a military force is necessary, the votes and proceedings of the last winter session of Assembly will shew that, probably, it was owing to the representations of the Indian Agent, that an Indian war would certainly follow, establishing a military force at Pittsburg, that such protection was not then granted, and time seems to have shewn he was not in the wrong.

If that effect would have supervened at a time when his Majesty's troops were just withdrawn, when the country was naked, defenceless, and alarmed, and when the Indians were accustomed to the idea of troops in their neighbourhood, much more is it to be doubted the establishing a militia, which is a military force, will produce that effect now when they have been so long disused to it.

As his Majesty's Justices and Protectors of the public peace of Pennsylvania, it is our duty to tell you your meeting is an unlawful one, and that it tends to disquiet the minds of his Majesty's liege subjects. We do in his Majesty's name require you to disperse, and retire yourselves peaceably to your respective habitations.

Present when this was read.