even those who have injured us in an odions light, prevent us from giving a particular account.

"The General declares that 'the communication between the Town and Country has been always free and unmolested, and is so still.' We shall only give the facts: Guards are fixed at every entrance into the Town; no person was allowed to cross the ferry to Charlestown after eight o'clock, in the evening, however urgent his business; passengers on the Neck stopped for hours by the Guard; their property injured or destroyed; one inhabitant stopped in his chaise, and his horse stabbed with a bayonet; others shamefully beaten, abused, and confined; and many other instances very alarming to our friends in the country, whose free ingress to the Town is essential to our subsistence.

"The General, perhaps, might not justify, these enormities, but could he not have prevented them, by removing the cause of those frequent abuses? Be that as it may, could he, with justice, assert that 'the communication between the Town and Country has been always free and unmolested, and is so still?'

"We wish the General had given us some particular instances concerning 'the menaces of blood and slaughter,' which he intimates made it his duty to alarm and distress the people in the manner he has already done. We doubt not that we shall be able to answer his Excellency whenever he is pleased to descend to particulars; we can only say, at present, that we conceive his Excellency to have been very ill-advised in the measures he has pursued, and that we ardently wish for an opportunity to meet our accusers upon equal grounds."

The above Report having been duly considered, it was voted, nem. con., that the same be accepted, and that the Moderator of this meeting be desired to transmit a copy of the Report to the Honourable Peyton Randolph, Esquire, by the first opportunity.

The following Vote, expressive of the gratitude of the Town, for the benevolent assistance received from the other Colonies, under our present calamities, and the kind recommendation of the late respectable Continental Congress, for future support, passed, nem. con.:

Whereas the Town of Boston has unfortunately become the most striking monument of Ministerial tyranny and barbarity, as is particularly exhibited in the sudden shutting up this Port, thereby cruelly depriving the inhabitants of this Metropolis of the means they have hitherto used to support their families; and whereas our brethren in the other Colonies, well knowing that we are suffering in the common cause of America, and of mankind, have, from a general, generous, and brotherly disposition, contributed largely towards our support in this time of our distress, without which many worthy and virtuous citizens must have been in imminent danger of perishing with cold and hunger; and whereas the Honourable Members of the Continental Congress have kindly recommended us to our sister Colonies as worthy of further support from them, while the iron hand of unremitted oppression lies heavy upon us; therefore,

Voted, That this Town, truly sensible of the generous assistance they have received from their sympathizing brethren, return them their warmest and most sincere thanks for the same, and pray that God, whose beneficence they so gloriously imitate, may bestow upon them the blessing he has promised to all those who feed the hungry and clothe the naked; and the thanks of this Town are accordingly hereby given to our benefactors aforementioned, and to the honourable the Members of the Congress for their benevolence towards us expressed as aforesaid; which support, if continued, cannot fail of animating us to remain steadfast in the defence of the rights of America.

The Town then made choice of the following gentlemen for their Delegates at the Provincial Congress to be held at the Town of Cambridge, on or before the first of February next, viz: The Honourable Thomas Cushing, Esq., Mr, Samuel Adams, the Honourable John Hancock, Esq., Doctor Joseph Warren, Doctor Benjamin Church, Mr. Oliver Wendell, Mr. John Pitts.

The meeting was then adjourned to the first Wednesday of February next, at eleven o'clock.

Attest:

WILLIAM COOPER, Town Clerk.

THOMAS CUSHING TO J. QUINCY, JUN., LONDON.

Boston, December 30, 1774.

DEAR SIR: While at Philadelphia I received your favours of the 20th and 25th of August last, and agreeably to your request, I spoke to divers gentlemen to favour you with letters and with intelligence, I should have written you from Philadelphia, but I was so engaged that I had not a moment's time; and as Mr. John Adams and Mr. Reed told me they should write you by the same conveyance that I wrote Doctor Franklin, I Knew' you would by them be favoured with the proceedings of the Congress and the necessary intelligence, and therefore that my writing would at that time be needless. Since I have returned home I have had nothing of importance to communicate.

The proceedings of the Continental Congress are universally approved, and will be sacredly adhered to. The inhabitants of Canada are much dissatisfied with the late Acts relative to that Province; and instead of aiding Administration in carrying the late Acts relative to this Province into execution, they will unite with the Continent in measures to obtain their repeal.

When you left the Province it was in a convulsed state; they had a complication of difficulties and distresses to encounter. Under these circumstances, it was necessary to have a Provincial Congress, to consult upon measures to save themselves from impending rain, and to preserve their inestimable liberty. They met in October last. If, in any of their proceedings, they have gone beyond the true line marked out by the Constitution, certainly people of candour and consideration will excuse it, and make all due allowance for a people in such an alarming, perplexed, and critical situation, and under the dreadful apprehension of having their dearest rights and liberties torn from them by the hand of violence. You are fully acquainted with our distressed situation; you doubtless have been furnished with the proceedings of the Provincial Congress, in October last; and as as you are capable, so, I doubt not, you will be disposed to make the most favourable representation of our conduct during this time of perplexity.

The Provincial Congress adjourned from October 29th to November 23d, when they met at Cambridge, and dissolved on the 10th instant. Their proceedings, or most of them, you have in the publick papers.

The late order of the King in Council, prohibiting the exportation of Powder, or any sort of Arms or Ammunition, from Great Britain, unless by special license, has alarmed the people in America; it forebodes the most vigorous exertions of martial force. They are therefore adopting the most effectual methods to defend themselves against any hostile invasion of the enemies to America. The people of Rhode-Island have used the precaution to remove the Powder, Cannon, and other Military Stores from the Fort at Newport, into the country. The people at Portsmouth, in New-Hampshire, have done the like by their Cannon and other Military Stores, at the Fort at New-Castle, at the entrance of their Harbour.

I remain, with strict truth, your friend and humble servant,

THOMAS CUSHING.

P. S. Pray let me hear from you how it is likely to fare with my dear country.

EXTRACT OF A LETTER RECEIVED IN NEW-YORK, FROM A MERCANTILE HOUSE IN YORKSHIRE, DATED DECEMBER 31, 1774.

We are much obliged to you for the Resolves of the Congress. Unless the Americans are absolutely determined to throw off all dependence on Great Britain, (which to us seems the case,) they cannot seriously expect the one third of what they require. They publish it as a deliberatory Bill of Rights, but addressed so generally, that Parliament cannot with propriety notice it; a vague pamphlet would ill become the serious attention of the great National Council. If they expect any notice to be paid to it, they should have deputed a certain number from the Congress to have attended the House of Commons with their petitions and requisitions. The thinking part of America can't surely be weak enough to suppose that, on the strength of their Address to the People of Great Britain, we must immediately erect the standard of rebellion too,