those you preside over, it may be worth your while, as well as ours, to search out the reason of it. Respect, my Lord, is not to be obtained by force from a free people. If genuine, it must be a perfect volunteer; and nothing is so likely to ensure it to one in your station as dignity of character, a candid and exemplary conduct. We decline, on this occasion, a discussion of the subject unhappily in dispute between Great Britain and the Colonies. We presume not to interfere with your authority in summoning or dissolving Assemblies, when, by advice of your Council, you think there is proper occasion. What we claim as an act of justice, is, that our conduct should be fairly and impartially represented to our Sovereign. We do not mean to insinuate that your Lordship would, designedly, misrepresent facts; but it is much to be feared that you too easily give credit to some designing persons, who, to the great injury of this community, possess much too large a share of your confidence.

We have seen, my Lord, the copy of a letter you were pleased to write to the Earl of Dartmouth, dated the 29th of May, 1774. The design of the then Assembly was entirely misconceived, and the ill impressions your Lordship’s letter may have made on the minds of His Majesty and his Ministers, prove how dangerous it is, and how very unjust it may be, to attempt penetrating the thoughts of others, when they are not certainly known. Suspicions, we humbly conceive, can never justify direct and positive accusations. Men, we know, differ in religious sentiments; some may believe in the superintendence of a Providence, and that the care, especially of Nations, is an object of Divine goodness; whilst others may think, or affect to treat this, as well as other matters which our religion teaches, as things merely chimerical. We have likewise seen an authentick copy of extracts of another of your Lordship’s letters to the same noble Earl, dated the 24th of December, 1774. The more injurious the unfavourable representations contained in this letter were likely to be to this Country, the more careful we should have hoped your Lordship would have been in examining the evidences of the facts stated. Your Lordship had been pleased to represent, in the first letter, our House of Burgesses as fond of having it thought that a determined resolution to deny and oppose the authority of Parliament, always originates with them. Whether this was intended to draw down the particular resentment of Parliament on this Country, your Lordship can best determine. They have, indeed, protested against the power of Parliament, when they thought it extended contrary to the principles of the Constitution; but we do not know that they ever affected to take the lead of the other Colonies in this, or any other measure. The times of entering their protestations were merely accidental, as circumstances happened; and it is notorious, that the subject of the present complaint had been under the consideration of some of the other Colonies before the Virginians took it up.

It would seem, from your Lordship’s letter of the 24th of December, that the Association adopted by the General Congress was first recommended from Virginia; whereas the truth is, that in Virginia nothing more was resolved against, at first, than the importation and use of East-India commodities. The General Non-Export and Non-Import Agreement came first recommended to us from several of the Northern Colonies; this, we own, makes no difference now, as the several Colonies have united in the Association. It is only remarked, since this circumstance seems to have been thought material, as no strong testimony of a kind disposition in your Lordship towards this Country. That Committees were chosen, in the several Counties, is admitted: the design of them was to observe the conduct of those who were inimical to the interest of the Country. They were required to publish the names of all transgressors, that the Country might know their friends from their foes. This you were pleased to term “inviting the vengeance of a lawless mob to be exercised upon the unhappy victims.”

You further represented these Committees as assuming an authority to inspect the books, invoices, and all the secrets of the trade and correspondence of merchants. This, my Lord, was high colouring of assumed facts; which we, who inhabit different parts of the Country, are strangers to. To close your narrative upon this head, you were pleased to inform your noble correspondent, that every “County in this Colony was arming a company of men, whom they call an Independent Company, for the avowed purpose of protecting their Committees, and to be employed against Government, if occasion required; and that the Committee of one County had proceeded so far as to swear the men of their independent company to execute all orders which should be given them from their Committee.” These, my Lord, are things entirely without our knowledge; and upon the strictest inquiry, we are convinced they deserve no credit. There were a few companies of gentlemen formed, who were desirous of perfecting themselves in military exercise; but we find not more than six or seven throughout the whole Colony, which consists of sixty one Counties. This was done to distinguish them from the militia at large; the first and most considerable of these, was instituted for the better protection of the inhabitants of Norfolk Borough, and afterwards received your Lordship’s approbation so far that you expressed the warmest wishes that the example might be followed throughout the country, and gave commissions to their officers. That these companies were connected with the Committees, or that they were ever designed to act against, or in any sort to interfere with, What you are pleased to call Government, we do not know, or believe; but, on the contrary, we are verily persuaded that they were always ready and willing to exert themselves to support the Laws and His Majesty’s Government, to the utmost of their power.

Your Lordship’s assertion, that “the power of Government was entirely disregarded, if not wholly overturned, and that there was not a Justice of the Peace in Virginia who acted except as a Committee-man,” we cannot but consider as highly unjust, and extremely injurious to us. We have the greatest reason to believe, having it in full proof, that the Magistrates throughout the Colony duly attended their respective Courts; and though, for the reasons assigned in our former Address to your Lordship, they could not think themselves legally authorized to hear and determine civil suits, yet we are persuaded, that their former endeavours to preserve the peace and good order of Government were not interrupted, but exerted in the usual manner. The original cause of suspending the trials of civil disputes was, as your Lordship observes, the want of a Fee-Bill. This legal defect was much lamented, and not used, that we know of, as a popular argument, by any man of good sense; nor did the inhabitants of this Country join in what you are pleased to call an opprobrious measure, to engage their “English creditors to join the clamours of this Country.” Your Lordship’s assertion, that “not a few did it to avoid paying their debts, in which many of the principal people here are much involved,” we can only answer for ourselves in the negative; and must consider so indiscriminate a charge as extremely injurious. We were so far from desiring to do injustice to creditors, that it gave us great pain to observe that such a step was thought necessary; and nothing but the hopes of being relieved from the arbitrary system of Colony Government attempted to be introduced, could have prevailed with us to submit to a stoppage of our exports. The merchants of London, in their written message, by a respectable member of their body, to the Committee of the House of Commons, have done us ample justice in this respect, by representing, that they should have no uneasiness about remittances from America, unless Parliament pursued such means as were likely to prevent them.

The Congress, my Lord, we consider as instituted on principles of publick necessity; we do not deny our having a proper respect for that body. We learn, from good authority, that their humble and dutiful Petition to His Majesty was graciously received, though it is with concern we are told it has hitherto produced no good effect. But that the inhabitants of Virginia treated with “marks, of reverence the laws of the Congress, which they never bestowed on their legal Government, or the laws proceeding from it,” is one of a great number of facts requiring proof; since we must take leave to say, with confidence, that His Majesty’s subjects of Virginia have been second to none others, even to his dutiful and loyal subjects in any part of his wide extended Dominions, in all due respect to his Government, Governours, and all authority under him.