who, under pretext of redressing grievances and reforming Church and State, have made most audacious and iniquitous resolves, tending to the subversion of all order and good Government, and the total abolition of law and justice:

And whereas; in compliance with the aforesaid resolves, many peaceable and well disposed persons, who have declined joining in such illegal Associations, have been insulted, persecuted, proscribed, and oppressed, and have suffered all the cruelty and torture that brutal, cowardly rage could devise; and as, in obedience to the orders of such Congresses and Committees, much private property has been destroyed, the most daring piracies and robberies have been perpetrated in the face of open day, and death and destruction denounced against all who dare oppose their lawless banditti:

And whereas the Pulpit and Press are become subservient to the infernal schemes of these diabolical assemblies, and are used as the great engines to destroy the peace and tranquillity of this devoted Nation, and to plunge it into all the horrours of rebellion and civil war; to accomplish which they daily teem with productions of the most inflammatory, seditious, treasonable nature; reflecting on, and highly injurious to the characters and interests of individuals, and particular societies of men; which individuals and particular societies labour under great disadvantages, through the want of mutual concert and intercourse with each other:

And as the Navy and Army sent hither by His Majesty for the support of the laws and preservation of the peace, have been marked out as the peculiar objects of the rancour and malignity of these reforming fanaticks; and as in their resolves they have publickly declared the officers and men to be their enemies, and with that charity and humanity which are peculiar to the holy men of Massachusetts, have endeavoured to deprive them of those necessaries and conveniences of life, which, among savages, are not denied to the brute creation; namely, straw to lie down on, and sheds to shelter them from the rigour of a most inclement season; and with their usual zeal for the propagation of irreligion and immorality, have spared neither pains nor expense to debauch the soldiers from their duty and allegiance, to persuade them to be guilty of perjury, treason, and rebellion; and as a few, by artifice and deceit, have been prevailed on to desert the service of their King and Country, some of whom have suffered the punishment due to so heinous a crime, and others have been condemned by their seducers to slavery, and sentenced to pass the remainder of their miserable days at hard labour in the mines:

As these illegal Congresses and Committees still continue to meet, vote, and resolve; and as His Majesty’s land and sea forces here assembled, are particularly affected by these meetings, it is therefore, with all deference, submitted to the Officers, whether, from the foregoing considerations; they should not immediately form a Congress, that, by uniting their counsels and arms, they may both act with greater force, and with more effect; and the appearance of a confederacy may render them no less respectable among the people than formidable to the rebels:

It is therefore humbly proposed by the Moderator and Selectmen, that a Military Congress be immediately formed, under the name of A Grand Congress of Control; that this Congress have a President, who shall be styled Comptroller General; a Secretary; three Delegates from each Regiment; three from the Navy, and one from the Engineers.

That as many as can conveniently meet, do assemble on every Monday and Thursday, immediately after the publication of the Boston Gazette and the Spy, to take cognizance of whatever may relate to them in these Papers; and also of the proceedings of the Provincial Congress now sitting at Concord.

That on these days they hear all complaints against Congresses, Committees, Town Meetings, Selectmen, Printers, Watchmen, and mob of the Town of Boston.

That they take cognizance of any injury, insult, or indignity, that may be offered by any man or body of men, to their Country, their King, their profession, their General, their men, or themselves; and where legal process cannot be obtained, that a summary mode of redress be adopted and put into execution.

That they appoint such inferiour Committees as shall to them appear expedient.

That they keep a faithful register of the occurrences of the times, and pursue every other measure which, in their united wisdom, they shall judge effectual, to obviate the insidious schemes of a most artful, indefatigable, unprincipled, and ungenerous enemy.

FOR THE MASSACHUSETTS GAZETTE.

Boston, April 6, 1775.

My worthy Friends and Fellow-Countrymen:

Experience has ever been found to be the best guide of human conduct; to profit from our past errours, is at once to discharge our duty and consult our truest interest. When we review our past behaviour, in any stage or station of life, how many instances may we find, wherein we should have acted a very different part if we had been aware of the consequences which have ensued; and which, should we again be placed in the same situation, we should very materially correct? Hence have originated the wise maxims and prudent and salutary observations of the sages of antiquity, which, if more carefully attended to, would make succeeding generations much more cautious and circumspect in their conduct than we, in fact, find to be the case. But such is the unhappy frailty of the human mind, that we are in general less attentive to the calls of reason and prudence than the suggestions of passion, prejudice, and vicious habits. We are act suddenly to gratify our present inclinations at the expense of our future happiness, and incur the same misfortunes which we have seen a thousand others do by a similar behaviour before.

If we look back upon the conduct of the Colonies for some years past, we may find many critical junctures where a prudent silence, or dutiful and rational remonstrance, would have been attended with the most salutary consequences, and put an end to that dispute which has since been so unhappily protracted. With what extreme caution, then, should we now proceed in our opposition, when our all depend upon adopting a proper mode of behaviour. We ought to be thoroughly convinced that we have truth, justice, reason, and equity for our foundation. How far these are the ground of the complaints of the Congress, I am endeavouring to discover to you, and beg your attention to that article of grievance which was omitted in my last, from motives of convenience, and is as follows: “Assemblies have been frequently and injuriously dissolved, and Commerce burdened with many useless and oppressive restrictions.”

In this article we have a striking instance of the consolidated modesty, as well as wisdom of the Congress. As to the first part, relative to the dissolution of Assemblies they might have recollected, that in some instances His Majesty, whose undoubted prerogative it is, by express instructions, had directed his Governours to dissolve the Assemblies, (unless they would recede from some rash, imprudent, and unjustifiable measures which they had adopted,) before they had so modestly told him, by styling them injurious., that he was not a judge of the propriety or justice of the steps which he himself had directed. In other instances, the Governours, of themselves, have dissolved Assemblies, when their proceedings have been such as required it. Here it is curious to observe the inimitable consistency and uniformity of the conduct of some members of the Congress, who, for some years past, as members of the General Assembly, have been endeavouring to prove that the Governour has the “sole power to prorogue, adjourn, and dissolve the General Assembly,” when and where he thinks fit; and now, at the Congress, complain of it as injurious that he has exercised this right, in instances where he himself thought His Majesty’s service required it. Such conduct can be accounted for on no other principle than a disposition in the Congress to raise fears and create jealousies in the people of a design to make them slaves, when, at the same time, they themselves are convinced that they are the mere suggestions of their own wicked arts and false insinuations. “And Commerce burdened with many useless and oppressive restrictions.” This is still more extraordinary. In all the disputes that have hitherto subsisted, the right of Great Britain to regulate the Trade of the Colonies was never till now contested; and the necessity