That a just and perfect reconciliation may soon take place, is our most ardent wish. But should the unhappy contest be farther prolonged, and America, still contending for independence, obstinately continue to reject all reasonable offers of accommodation, we conceive they will one day feel the loss they have sustained, when, from having been deluded by their seditious leaders, they shall become a prey to their Armies and their own intestine animosities; and shall then find, by sad experience, that peace, and happiness, and liberty, are only to be secured to them by the protecting power of this Country.

That your Majesty may long reign over a loyal, happy, and united people, is our most earnest and constant prayer.

Given under our common seal, this 25th day of September, 1775.

ADDRESS OF THE MAGISTRATES, ETC., OF KIRKCUDBRIGHT.

Address of the Magistrates and Council of the Burgh of Kirkcudbright, presented to His Majesty by William Douglas, Esq., their Representative in Parliament.

Kirkcudbright, September 25, 1775.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Magistrates and Council of the Burgh of Kirkcudbright, deeply sensible of the many blessings we enjoy under your Majesty’s mild and just government, humbly beg leave to assure your Majesty of our abhorrence of that daring spirit of licentiousness, so much encouraged and fomented by wicked and designing persons in different parts of your Empire, hurtful to the State, and destructive of that true constitutional liberty, under which all good subjects live contented and happy. And that it is with concern and indignation we observe the baneful influence of this spirit upon many of your American subjects, now in a state of actual rebellion, and openly avowing a revolt from that natural connection and dependance, which all the Colonies ought necessarily to have with and upon the Parent State; a rebellion as wicked and flagitious as it it unprovoked and ungrateful. We therefore humbly request your Majesty’s most gracious acceptance of this testimony of our affection and attachment to your Majesty’s person, family, and Government, and pray that such measures may be pursued, by the wisdom of your Majesty and your Parliament, as may most speedily and effectually restore and support obedience to the laws, and peace, union, and prosperity, in your Majesty’s wide-extended Kingdoms; over which, unimpaired by foreign or domestick foes, may your Majesty, and your illustrious house, reign glorious to latest posterity.

MATT. BUCHANAN, Provost.

London, September 26, 1775.

Yesterday, at Hicks’s Hall, there were about thirty of the Justices present, Sir John Hawkins, Chairman. He declared the motive of calling them together was to consider of an Address to the Throne, expressing their loyalty and attachment to the present Government, and readiness to support whatever steps were thought expedient, for reducing the Colonies to a proper sense of their duty. The measure met with the approbation of all present.

The following is the Address, which was unanimously agreed to, and will be presented to His Majesty on Friday next.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

We, your loyal and dutiful subjects, resident in this opulent County, sensible of the blessings which we derive from your Majesty’s mild and gracious Government, during which justice has been administered with an impartiality unknown to former ages, and under which every subject has felt himself protected in the enjoyment of all those benefits which are the ultimate end of civil institutions to ensure, humbly presume to address your Majesty at a crisis which we conceive to be a most important one, and such as is not to be paralleled in the history of this or any other Country.

We look back with awful reverence on that period, towards the end of the last century, when, by a revolution, from which it were impiety to exclude the interposition of Divine Providence, the bounds of regal authority, and the measures of civil subjection, were mutually adjusted and ascertained upon principles coeval with, and interwoven in the very Constitution of this Country.

To those genuine patriots and friends of religious and civil liberty, the actors in that noble cause, we at this day owe it, that persecution is banished to the realms of despotism; that illegal restraints of civil liberty are guarded against; that the ancient powers of Parliaments, over every part of the British Dominions, are recognised; and the supreme legislative authority, by a wise and happy temperature of various interests, declared to reside in the three estates, of King, Lords, and Commons.

Reflecting on the above auspicious event, and the numerous benefits that have followed from it, we seek in vain for the motives of that unnatural rebellion in North-America, into which the inhabitants of some of the Provinces thereof, not less by the artifices of a disappointed and impotent faction, than their own aversion to our religious and civil Constitution, have been precipitated.

To attain the ends of a lawless association, which aims at nothing less than an independence on the Mother Country, that would draw down destruction on their own heads, the legal government of the Colonies, now in rebellion, has been extorted by and transferred to those whose regard for the publick is absorbed in the hope of private gain, in the prosecution of their traitorous purposes. The hostilities originally commenced by the Americans have been continued in a manner practised only by savages; and, in the conduct of a war, in which, with unhallowed lips, they implore the Divine blessing, we behold, with equal amazement and horrour, the violation of those rules of war to which humanity and the practices of all civilized nations have given a sanction.

Miseries greater, if possible, than those of a war thus conducted on the part of our enemies, have been denounced against the Mother Country by its rebellious sons, who, by resolutions of non-importation, have endeavoured to cut off the sources of our wealth, and, by the dread of famine, to stimulate the industrious manufacturers of this Kingdom to oppose the power which has been their constant support. But, thanks be to God, the flourishing condition of our trade, the quick circulation of wealth, the state of publick credit, and the amazing increase of buildings and mercantile improvements, which present themselves to our eyes in every part of this Country, are evident proofs of the futility of all such attempts, as they are of the flourishing state of the Kingdom in general.

With very little attention to the merits of the dispute, and without being able to controvert that fundamental principle of civil society, that protection and allegiance are reciprocal, the Colonies resist the payment of taxes which their preservation has made necessary—founding their pretended exemption, not on reason, equity, or natural justice, but upon the construction of those grants to which the Colonies owe their political existence. The rights, whatever they are, which the Americans claim, are founded in charters from time to time granted by your Majesty’s royal predecessors, under proper limitations and restrictions, and with savings in favour of the legislative authority of this Kingdom. With the greatest professions of zeal for liberty do these infatuated people exalt the regal into arbitrary power; and from principles of law and logick, which are now for the first time advanced, contend that the acts of the aggregate legislative body are of less force to bind the subjects than those of an integral part thereof; and with all insidious arts of adulation, your Majesty is courted to accept of that absolute power which you have uniformly disclaimed, as well by the whole tenour of your conduct, as by refusing the means of preserving the supremacy of this Country over the Colonies, to the great council of the Nation.

For this singular instance of moderation, as for every other benefit which we derive from your Majesty’s paternal care and watchful regard for our interests, receive, most gracious Sovereign, the sincere and humble acknowledgments of us, your Majesty’s loyal and faithful subjects; and as the merciful forbearance, hitherto shown to the Colonies in rebellion, would, if farther extended, be injurious to the interests of the whole British Empire, accept also this tender of every assistance, which we are capable of rendering, towards establishing the authority of the British Legislature over its Colonies and dependencies; while, with unfeigned