three churchmen, without any legal meeting warned for that purpose; and yet to intend them as equitable resolves (in contradistinction to the general run of the resolves of other towns) for the town of Hebron, when said town had no knowledge of them.

Bolton Committee of Correspondence.

In our names, and in behalf, and at the desire of the attendants, or said visitors from Tolland, Coventry, and Bolton.

P S. Mr. Peters confessed that he had wrote sundry pieces of the like nature of his said resolves for the press, which his brother Solomon John Peters, our informer, did in truth think the said Reverend had sent to England.

MR. PETERS'S RESOLVES.

To THE PRINTER: AS every town seems fond of shewing their opinions relative to the late Acts of Parliament, founded upon some violent conduct of the loyal people in the town of Boston, I know not why we, who are the inhabitants of Hebron, may not also be heard, though we are few in number, who are convened on this occasion. We have presumed (after reading many resolves and some histories) to resolve that the most of those multiplied resolutions are wrong, and our own just and legal—as follows:

1. All Charters are sacred to serve the end for which they were given, and no further.

2. No Charter from the King &c., can be found, in which the grantees have a right to the seas, as all our Charters bound us upon the sea coast as that runs.

3. The duty laid on teas, is not a tax upon America, because tea grows not within the limits of our Charters.

4. Since they have not placed a tax upon ours, but their own specie, which they certainly have a right to do, it is our duty not to purchase their teas, unless we have a mind to do it; and the East India Company claim no right to force us to buy their teas.

5. The King, &c., have an undoubted right to prohibit our trade with the Dutch, or any other foreign Nation, in whole or in part, if they judge the interest of the Nation requires it.

6. The East India Company have a Charter from the Crown, and they pay £2,000,000 sterling, annually to support the Nation, only for these privileges mentioned in their Charter: one of which privileges is, that they (the East India Company) shall have the sole right to supply America, &c., with teas at two shillings and six pence sterling, by the pound, and no higher.

7. The East India Company have a purchased and equitable right to put a stop to the Dutch trade, in the article of tea; and if we will live without teas, as our fathers did in the purity of this country, the tax will not hurt us, nor will the tea trade profit the East India Company.

8. The Nation is profited six pence on each pound of tea consumed in America, sent by the East India Company, but not a farthing profit is received by the Nation from all the Dutch teas.

9. America by trading with the East India Company for their tea, have a great advantage, as their teas are the second growth, and the Dutch teas are the third growth, and a pound of second growth tea costs two shillings, when a pound of the third growth costs but eight pence in the East Indies. In Amsterdam the tea sells for one shilling; in London, two shillings and six pence; but in Boston at one and the same price. Hence is visible the reasons why the Dutch traders in Boston destroyed the English teas, viz: one shilling and ten pence by the pound, that Colonel Hancock gains by his Dutch trade, while Colonel Erving gains but six pence, by the pound, in his trade with the East India Company.

10. As one shilling and four pence by the pound, or private interest of these Dutch factors, caused this great waste of the property of the East India Company, they (the Dutch factors) in justice ought to pay for their teas out of their exorbitant gains from poor countrymen, arising from the sale of five thousand boxes of Dutch teas within two years last past.

11. The Bostonians are able to support their own poor, after Windham and other towns have paid them their legal demands.

12. We cannot find out any reasons why the good people of Windham undertook to arraign and condemn Governour Hutchinson, "for treason against his country," and those distinguished ministers, merchants, barristers and attornies, for ignorance, insult and treason against law and common sense, only for differing in sentiments with some of their neighbours—since there were a few names in Sardis.

13. Farmington burnt the Act of Parliament, in great contempt, by their common hangman, when a thousand of their best inhabitants were convened for that glorious purpose of committing treason against the King; for which vile conduct they have not been styled a pest to Connecticut, and enemies to common sense, either by his Honour, or any King's attorney, or in any town meeting. "We sincerely wish and hope," a day will be set apart by his Honour, very soon, for fasting and prayer throughout this Colony, that the sins of those haughty people may not be laid to our charge as a Government, and we recommend a due observation of said day to all our neighbours, by giving liberally food and raiment to the indigent poor in every town in Connecticut, and also to draw up resolutions that for the future we will pay the poor their wages, and every man his due.

MR. PETERS'S DECLARATION.

I, the subscriber, have not sent any letter to the Bishop of London, or the venerable Society for the propagation of the Gospel, &c., relative to the Boston Port Bill, or the tea affair, or the controversy between Great Britain and the Colonies, and design not to, during my natural life, as those controversies are out of my business as a clergyman; also, I have not wrote to England to any other gentlemen or designed Company nor will I do it.

Witness my hand, this 15th August, 1774, at Hebron,

SAMUEL PETERS, Clerk.

THADDEUS BURR TO GOVERNOUR TRUMBULL.

Boston, October 13, 1774.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR HONOUR: AS an inhabitant of the Colony of Connecticut, and a real friend to its invaluable rights and privileges, I look upon myself in duty bound to give your Honour this early notice of some secret machinations forming in this town, which may eventually, if not guarded against, bring our Charter into question, and be a means of curtailing, if not destroying it. Without saying any more to apologize for my troubling your Honour with this, I shall go on to give you an account of the matter in as clear and concise a manner as I am able.

In a few days after I came to town, which was the first of this month, I was informed that Mr. Peters, a Church of England clergymen from Hebron, was come to town with a design to go to England to make a representation of the treatment he had met with in Connecticut. As I knew the general character of the man, I had but little to fear from any representations he could make of himself; but when I found he was countenanced by the Governour, and his Mandamus Counsellors, the Commissioners, the body of the Church Clergy, and, in short, by all those who style themselves friends to Government, I thought he might, in conjunction with them, form some scheme that would be detrimental to the Colony. I therefore made it my business to find out as far as I possibly could what their designs were; and from the best authority, I am warranted to say that the whole body as represented before, are setting the treatment which Mr. Peters met with in its most glaring colours, so exaggerated as to exceed all bounds of truth; and are now preparing to represent to Administration that the Colony of Connecticut, as such, is determined to persecute and drive out all the Church of England Clergymen from among them.

Who is to go home with this false and malicious plan, I cannot yet find out; am rather inclined to think Mr. Peters himself. From the character of the gentlemen who have been so kind as to assist me in detecting this wicked and secret scheme, and from what I myself, as a stranger, have collected from that party, I make no doubt of the truth of it.