not even spare the ten thousand which Gage wrote for. The Address to the Soldiers had very great effect in England and Ireland.*

ADDRESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF ANSON COUNTY, NORTH-CAROLINA, TO THE GOVERNOUR.

To His Excellency JOSIAH MARTIN, Esq., &c.:

MOST EXCELLENT GOVERNOUR: Permit us, in behalf of ourselves, and many others of His Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects within the County of Anson, to take the earliest opportunity of addressing your Excellency, and expressing our abomination of the many outrageous attempts now forming on this side the Atlantick, against the peace and tranquillity of His Majesty’s Dominions in North America, and to witness to your Excellency, by this our Protest, a disapprobation and abhorrence of the many lawless combinations and unwarrantable practices actually carrying on by a gross tribe of infatuated anti-monarchists in the several Colonies in these Dominions; the baneful consequence of whose audacious contrivance can, in fine, only tend to extirpate the fundamental principles of all Government, and illegally to shake off their obedience to, and dependance upon, the imperial Crown and Parliament of Great Britain; the infection of whose pernicious example being already extended to this particular County, of which we now bear the fullest testimony.

It is with the deepest concern (though with infinite indignation) that we see in all publick places and papers disagreeable votes, speeches, and resolutions, said to be entered into by our sister Colonies, in the highest contempt and derogation of the superintending power of the legislative authority of Great Britain. And we further, with sorrow, behold their wanton endeavours to vilify and arraign the honour and integrity of His Majesty’s most honourable Ministry and Council, tending to sow the seeds of discord and sedition, in open violation of their duty and allegiance.

We are truly invigorated With the warmest zeal and attachment, in favour of the British Parliament, Constitution, and Laws, which our forefathers gloriously struggled to establish, and which are now become the noblest birthright and inheritance of all Britannia’s sons. We should be criminally wanting in respect and gratitude to the manes of those ancestors, and ill deserve the protection of that superiour Parliamentary power, could we tamely suffer its authority to be so basely controverted and derided, without offering our protest to your Excellency against such ignominious disobedience and reproach; for we consider that, under. Divine Providence, it is solely upon the wisdom and virtue of that superiour legislative might that the safety of our lives and fortunes, and the honour and welfare of this Country, do most principally depend.

Give us leave, therefore, Sir, to express our utter detestation and abhorrence of the late unjustifiable violation of publick commercial credit in the Massachusetts Government. We protest against it with the utmost disdain, as the wicked experiment of a most profligate and abandoned Republican faction, whereby the general repose and tranquillity of His Majesty’s good subjects on this Continent are very much endangered and impaired. We think it indispensably necessary, and our duty at this alarming crisis, to offer this memorial and protest to your Excellency, against all such enthusiastick transgressions, (more especially the late ones committed by the common cause Deputies within this Province,) to the intent that it may be delivered down to posterity, that our hands were washed pure and clear of any cruel consequence, lest the woful calamities of a distracted Country should give birth to sedition and insurrection, from the licentiousness of a concert prone to rebellion.

And we cannot omit expressing further to your Excellency, that we consider all such associations at this period of a very dangerous fatality against your Excellency’s good Government of this Province, being calculated to distress the internal welfare of this Country, to mislead the unwary ignorant from the paths of their duty, and to entail destruction upon us, and wretchedness upon our posterity.

We do, most excellent Governour, with all obedience and humility, profess and acknowledge, in our consciences, that a law of the high Court of Parliament of Great Britain is an exercise of the highest authority that His Majesty’s subjects can acknowledge upon earth, and that we do believe it hath legal power to bind every subject in that land, and the dominions thereunto belonging. And we do, moreover, with all duty and gratitude, acknowledge and reverence in the utmost latitude an Act of Parliament made in the sixth year of the reign of his present most sacred Majesty, entitled “An Act for the better securing the dependance of His Majesty’s Dominions in America on the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain.”

And we do further beg leave to express our detestation of the many scandalous and ignorant deliberations on the power of that Parliament in the control of His Majesty’s Provincial Charters. For could the doctrine of such unruly propositions possibly exist, or should their insolent attempt unhappily prevail, it must at once extinguish those Laws and that Constitution which are the glory of the British Empire, and the envy of all Nations around it.

We are truly sensible that those invaluable blessings which we have hitherto enjoyed under His Majesty’s auspicious Government, can only be secured to us by the stability of his Throne, supported and defended by the British Parliament, the only grand bulwark and guardian of our civil and religious liberties.

Duty and affection oblige us further to express our grateful acknowledgments for the inestimable blessings flowing from such a Constitution. And we do assure your Excellency that we are determined, by the assistance of Almighty God, in our respective stations, steadfastly to continue His Majesty’s loyal subjects, and to contribute all in our power for the preservation of the publick peace; so that, by our unanimous example, we hope to discourage the desperate endeavours of a deluded multitude, and to see a misled people turn again from their atrocious offences to a proper exercise of their obedience and duty.

And we do furthermore assure your Excellency, that we shall endeavour to cultivate such sentiments in all those under our care, and to warm their breasts with a true zeal for His Majesty, and affection for his illustrious family. And may the Almighty God be pleased to direct his Councils, his Parliament, and all those in authority under him, that their endeavours may be for the advancement of piety, and the safety, honour, and welfare of our Sovereign and his Kingdoms, that the malice of his enemies may be assuaged, and their evil designs confounded and defeated; so that all the world may be convinced that his sacred person, his Royal family, his Parliament, and our Country, are the special objects of Divine dispensation and Providence.

Signed by two hundred and twenty-seven of the Inhabitants of the County of ANSON.

ADDRESS OF THE INHABITANTS OF ROWAN AND SURRY COUNTIES, NORTH-CAROLINA, TO THE GOVERNOUR.

To His Excellency JOSIAH MARTIN, & c.:

Permit us, on the behalf of ourselves and many others of His Majesty’s most dutiful subjects within the Counties of Rowan and Surry, to protest against any person or persons, who may violate any of His Majesty’s laws, or the peace of this Government. We are truly invigorated with the warmest zeal and attachment to the British Constitution

* Williamsburgh, Va., June 17, 1775.—It was with great surprise, and, I must confess, with a good deal of concern, that I observed in Mr. Purdie’s Gazette, of the 9th instant, an extract of letter from London, dated the 10th of March last, which mentions, “that the Merchants of Glasgow, upon the present unhappy differences subsisting betwixt Great Britain and her American Colonies, sent up a very spirited Petition to Parliament, but at the same time let Lord North know, by their Member, Lord Frederick Campbell, that they did not mean any opposition by it, but only to get credit in America.” The writer of this letter must have either been greatly misinformed, or actuated by interest or resentment; for from the most certain intelligence, I can assure the good people of this Colony that the latter part of the paragraph mentioned is equally false as it is injurious to the Merchants of the City of Glasgow, and the gentlemen with whom they are connected in this Colony. No part of the British Nation have exerted themselves with greater warmth, and, I may truly add, with greater sincerity, than the Merchants of Glasgow, for a restoration of that happy union so ardently wished for by every true friend to America or Great Britain; and I am fully convinced that every Merchant in this Colony views with the greatest abhorrence the very idea of such villanous, disingenuous, and unmanly conduct, as the writer of the above letter charges them with.

The greatest unanimity, gentlemen, is essentially necessary at this period, in this as well as every other Colony in America. Surely, then, our publick Printers should be extremely careful to promote, by their publications, an object of such importance, and avoid, with the greatest caution and resolution, every thing that may have a contrary effect.

MERCATOR.