views of an abandoned Administration? If it was the first, you ought never to venture another, but confine yourself to past events and the facts of the day; if the latter, you must now be convinced, by what has already happened, of the dreadful consequences which may flow from so vile a prostitution of your integrity.

I shall now take leave to recapitulate some parts of your conduct, in order that it may be placed in a true point of light with the ignorant and uninformed.

On the nineteenth, day of April you sent a considerable part of your Army from Boston to destroy a supposed magazine at Concord. They landed early in the morning, and marched into the Country with all that overweening boastful presumption peculiar to young troops, ignorant of real service. Adding insult to misfortune, they paraded on their way to the sound of musick. Full of the idea of the fame and honour to be acquired in that memorable expedition, they treated their supposed weak and defenceless enemy with scorn and derision.

But what happened! According to your own relation of that woful and eventful day, this holiday humour did not last long. The same sun saw their offence and punishment. Terrour and dismay, inspired by a few opponents, seized upon the invincible host; they fled with a lucky and almost miraculous precipitancy back again to Boston.

But in the tale you tell of this unfortunate maiden enterprise, you are accused of want of candour, indeed of misrepresentation of facts. You say, in your circular letters to the several Governours to whom you have written, that the people fired first: if they did, it reflects the highest honour on their courage. They were but a handful to encounter so great a number. But although I have the highest opinion of their spirit and resolution, it requires no uncommon share of faith to credit this assertion; it is against probability, it is in the face of the most specifick and direct testimony of a great variety of persons.

If the information I have received is well founded, your orders were at that time the same as when you left Britain—not to strike the first blow. If this is the case, the cause of this contrariety in the evidence of the Country and the Army is sufficiently obvious; for it is as essential, perhaps, for the officer who commanded the Troops that fired first on the people to justify himself to you, as it is for you to vindicate your conduct to your superiours. Here is a combination of personal and particular interests to support the fact alleged in your behalf, independent of general reasons. Upon a fair and impartial state of the account, then, I cannot perceive that this motive for misrepresentation has one answerable to it on the part of the Country. If Lord Mansfield himself was to give his opinion on the reason of the case, I think I could predict it would be unfavourable to you.

But the intentional inaccuracy of that part of your letters which gives an account of the loss your Troops sustained in the action, is truly matter worthy of observation.

Your letter, calculated, as one would suppose, for the information of the Representatives of the Crown, says, that more than fifty were killed in the action; how many more, may it please your Excellency? Fifty more, sixty, or seventy? Why did you thus leave them to the uncertainty of guess and conjecture, when, from the returns of your officers, the loss must appear with the greatest exactness?

But, Sir, you are not only charged with the meanness of artifice, but an open violation of your word. The times are now so critically important as to require all the boldness and plainness of truth; in doing you all the justice you merit, I am under the necessity of touching the honour of your character.

When the miserable inhabitants of that Town which had been so long, and is to this day suffering under the weight of ministerial vengeance, applied to you for permission to leave it with their goods or effects, you gave your assent in the presence and hearing of many of your officers and several private gentlemen, and formally pledged your word, too, for the faithful performance: and what was the result of this business? You not only shamefully qualified the Province, by obliging the poorest fellow that went out to pay his; eleemosynary dollar to your Secretary for a permit, but you did more; repenting of that part of your solemn engagement which related to the transporting of the goods or effects, of the inhabitants, you submitted your Honour on that head to a prostitute lawyer, who, very consistently, gave it as his opinion, that effects meant nothing more than wearing apparel and household furniture; that it did not include moveables in general. It was upon this wretched quibble you refused to let the inhabitants carry away all their effects with them.

I have always been taught to believe the Army is the school of honour. In this school you were educated and nurtured: but I suspect you were an untoward boy, and that the principles inculcated upon you made little or no impression; otherwise you never would, as a gentleman, have consented to submit the plain obvious meaning of your words to the interpretation of a contemptible, paltry retailer of quirks and quibbles. You spoke in that business as a gentleman; and if you had need to explain yourself in respect to a word of doubtful import, you should have consulted Johnson’s Dictionary. This would have been a gentleman-like authority.

It requires a considerable degree of acuteness and sagacity in him who is about to do an unwarrantable or an unjust act, to estimate the quantum of moral turpitude and guilt contained in it. For it is not only the portion of it involved in the first view of the crime such an one has to consider, but the consequences which will flow from the act. You prohibited the inhabitants of Boston from carrying out their effects, in the manner I have mentioned; in consequence of which several families have been ruined by the late fire. It is true, you could not foresee the accident; but, nevertheless, the loss sustained by the owners of the goods has happened in consequence of the violation of your word: for if you had adhered to it, the owners of the merchandise would have removed it, and thereby have prevented the calamity which has befallen them.

I have but a word or two more for you, by way of advice. If you are still determined to act in the Swiss character you have assumed, at least let your conduct savour of that sort of honour which even a Swiss holds high.

VERUS.

JOHN HANCOCK, PRESIDENT, TO NEW-YORK CONGRESS.

Philadelphia, June 24, 1775.

GENTLEMEN: By order of the Congress I enclose you certain Resolves, passed yesterday, respecting those who were concerned in taking and garrisoning Crown Point and Ticonderoga. As the Congress are of opinion that the employing the Green Mountain Boys in the American Army would be advantageous to the common cause, as well on account of their situation as of their disposition and alertness, they are desirous you should embody them among the Troops you shall raise. As it is represented to the Congress that they will not serve under any officers but such as they themselves choose, you are desired to consult with General Schuyler, in whom the Congress are informed those people place a great confidence, about the field officers to be set over them.

I am, gentlemen, your most obedient humble servant,

JOHN HANCOCK, President.

To the Members of the Provincial Congress, New-York.

FIELD OFFICERS APPOINTED FOR THE THREE BATTALIONS OF THE PHILADELPHIA MILITIA.

First Battalion: John Dickensont Esq., Colonel; John Chevalier, Lieutenant-Colonel; Jacob Morgan and William Coats, Majors.

Second Battalion; Daniel Roberdeau, Esq., Colonel; Joseph Reed, Esq., Lieutenant-Colonel; Doctor John Cox and John Bayard, Majors.

Third Battalion: John, Cadwallader, Colonel; John. Nixon, Lieutenant-Colonel; Thomas Mifflin and Samuel Meredith, Esquires, Majors.

PHILADELPHIA COMMITTEE.

Committee Chamber, June 24, 1775.

Upon motion, Resolved, That if any Pilot, Shallopman, or others, shall be found assisting in the conveyance or introduction of Goods or Merchandise, contrary to the Association of the late Congress, or in receiving on shore or unloading from any vessel any goods which may have been ordered out of the Port, such persons shall be deemed