in any ship or ships bound from any of the Dutch settlements in that quarter, or on board Dutch ships from any quarter, which are bound to any port in the English American Colonies, except such as are consigned either to the Governours of New-England, Philadelphia, New-York, Halifax, or Virginia; and that such captures shall be considered as lawful prizes, and be shared among the officers and crews of those vessels concerned in taking them, the same as those who are enemies to the States, but that the crews (the captain, his chief mate, and supercargo, if any, excepted) be landed on the nearest Dominion of Great Britain, where such capture is made. Resolved, also, that Sieur Van Stort make this known in every Dutch port or harbour where he may touch.

“Ordered, that these resolutions be made known to his Excellency Mr. York, the British Minister to the States; and also a copy of the same be sent to the Dutch Resident at London.”

EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM CHARLESTOWN, SOUTH-CAROLINA, TO A GENTLEMAN IN PHILADELPHIA, DATED JUNE 29, 1775.

Our place has rather the appearance of a garrison town than a mart for trade; one company keeps guard all day, and two every night. In our situation we cannot be too watchful, and we may require much strength, for our negroes have all high notions of their liberty; and we lately learned by intercepted letters, and otherwise, that there have been endeavours to set the Indians on us. Mr. Stewart, the Superintendent of Indian affairs, is accused of being the person who has forwarded this wicked design, and he has fled for safety.

The Tories in Georgia are now no more; the Province is almost universally on the right side, and are about to choose Delegates to send to the Congress.

FREE THOUGHTS ON THE PRESENT TIMES AND MEASURES; ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE OF VIRGINIA.

MY COUNTRYMEN: In popular, mixed, and free Constitutions, the fluctuation of power ought to be carefully marked, and diligently attended to, lest the different branches arrogate to themselves rights and privileges not originally inherent in them. To resolve such Constitutions to their first principles, is the best criterion to judge of their purity. If they will not stand this test, we may safely pronounce them defective; and then our next inquiry should be, where has the errour begun, or the violation originated ? When this point is gained, like a skilful physician, who reckons a competent knowledge of the distemper of his patient half way towards his cure, we ought to exert ourselves to combat the evil in its origin, and eradicate it out of the political body. If lenitives should fail we should have recourse to corrosives; for the political as well as the human state must sooner or later sustain a convulsion, if the latent or obvious infirmities in its frame are not timely removed. As prudence will ever guard against the one, so it will endeavour to discover and heal the other. It is a duty of the first importance, interwoven in the honest man’s constitution, and founded in that love for his Country which, in the generous breast, supersedes all other considerations; it is a task Virginius has prescribed himself, and which he will constantly execute, let what may be the consequence.

In the present alarming situation of affairs between the American Colonies and Great Britain, if the publick attention were not wholly absorbed in the multiplicity of so many more alarming objects, a late Proclamation* would scarcely fail of attracting notice; but though it be of an inferiour nature, and more capable perhaps of exciting our contempt than indignation, yet, my fellow-citizens, I think it ought not to be suffered to pass unstigmatized. The person who manifests an intention of doing you an injury in your persons or properties, is perhaps a degree less criminal than the real aggressor, under the strict letter of the law, but not a jot so in faro conscientia. Whoever, therefore, would dare circumscribe your privileges, or abridge those rights which the laws of God, of nature, and reason, and the liberties of the British Constitution have given you, however dignified his station or exalted his condition, ought to be dragged out to open and publick view, and held up to the indignation of an injured, incensed people. Soothed as we have been hitherto by the Earl of Dunmore’s vacant indifference, amidst the convulsions of this distressed Country, if we did not consider him as a friend, we never imagined him an enemy. But time, the great revealer of secrets, has at last convinced us that we were sadly mistaken. His letter to the Earl of Dartmouth, replete with the most injurious misrepresentations and the most notorious falsehoods; his removal of the powder from the magazine of the Country, at a time that the minds of the people were alarmed with the justest apprehensions; his offers to our slaves, and the general turbulence thereby occasioned all over the Colony; his late Proclamation, charging you, my countrymen, with disaffection to the present form of Government, and a settled design of altering it; but above all, his late heroick transaction in setting a trap in the magazine, with the express intention to murder our incautious fellow-citizens.; all these circumstances put together, leave no doubt, my dear countrymen, I hope, in your breasts of the intentions and views of your Governour.

A countryman put a snake, pinched with cold and expiring with hunger, into his bosom. The snake no sooner began to feel a genial warmth and a renovation of strength from the fostering hand of its protector, than it displayed the native malevolence of its constitution; it bit the countryman, and if the kind protector did not expire of the wound, it was rather owing to the soundness and vigour of his constitution than to the leniency of the adder’s tooth.

In whatever light I behold the late conduct of John Earl of Dunmore, his disingenuity extorts my utmost contempt. As the representative of the King, candour and truth, at least, we had some reason to expect from him. But, alas! how have we been disappointed. Witness the above mentioned letter to the Earl of Dartmouth. As freemen, I humbly think, also, we were entitled to every species of freedom that a man in Great Britain claims. The British subject claims it as his undoubted right to associate with his fellow-citizens in a peaceable manner, deliberate on his grievances, and he thinks it no very extraordinary piece of presumption to petition the King for a redress. This privilege is denied you by the Earl of Dunmore. Your grievances he styles pretended, and the measures you have concerted to obtain a redress are termed unjustifiable; consequently, my countrymen, this pageant of State, this machine of Government, thinks it incumbent on him to inhibit you the exercise of a right that the King of Great Britain was never hardy enough to deny the British Nation. If I behold him gloriously engaged in clandestinely removing the powder from the magazine in the night, how is it possible to refuse him the tribute of my applause? Aided by your worthy compeer, Collins, (no despicable auxiliary,) the fame of that night’s transaction will certainly, if gratitude is not banished the world as well as virtue and honour, transmit your name, my Lord, with undiminished lustre to future ages. How will it sound in the annals of some future historian, that on such a night the Right Honourable his Excellency John Earl of Dunmore, Lieutenant-Governour and Commander-in-Chief of Virginia and Vice-Admiral of the same, had gone privately in the night, and burglariously broke open the publick magazine of the Country, and stole thereout about twenty barrels of gunpowder, lodged therein for the use and exigence of the Colony? And lest any part of this memorable transaction be forgot, I hope the historian will not omit to mention that Captain Henry Collins, commander of one of the King’s armed vessels (the terrour of oyster boats and fishing canoes) in the Bay of Chesapeake, had aided and assisted, and valiantly cooperated with your Lordship in that arduous and important exploit; that when remonstrated with on what the Virginians thought an imprudent, improper, absurd, disingenuous step, you honourably pledged your word that you would return the powder, and remove every cause of discontent, and that then, almost in a breath, you basely violated your word; that you made use of such low, unmanly evasions and subterfuges, to deceive the people of Virginia, as no one, unless totally dead to every sense of shame and every manly exertion, would have recourse to; that you have added the corruptions

* Published the 28th of March last, by our Governour.