No part of your Majesty’s subjects can wish more earnestly to preserve the constitutional superiority of the British Legislature over all parts of your Dominions than the citizens of Bristol. But they are convinced, from clear reason and severe experience, that this superiority can hardly be preserved by mere force, nor without acquiring the confidence and cultivating the affections of the great and numerous people who inhabit the British Plantations. We humbly conceive that this authority would suffer no diminution in the least prejudicial to it, by healing concessions, by the relaxation of penal statutes, which have been found ineffectual for their purposes, and by relinquishing the pursuit of an object, the possible attainment of which, under any circumstances of fortune, may admit of the most serious doubt. On the contrary, we have reason, although things have been carried to unfortunate lengths of hostility on both sides, to hope the most salutary effects from a return, under your Majesty’s provident and sagacious direction, to the ancient indulgent and happy usage of this Kingdom, with regard to its Colonies.

We find ourselves under an indispensable necessity of making, with respectful plainness, this dutiful and most faithful representation of our sentiments to your Majesty, lest it might be supposed that, by our silence, we were consenting to the opinions and wishes for coercive proceedings, expressed in the late addresses to your Majesty. We assure your Majesty, that we are men of peaceful dispositions; that we detest the thought of obtruding on your Majesty’s wisdom and clemency any sort of recommendation of force and rigour against any part of your people. That we who have long flourished by an amicable intercourse with the Colonies should call for coercive measures, as the probable means of future commerce, would not only be arrogant and presumptuous, but unnatural and ungrateful. No experience has hitherto taught us the good effects of such measures, and it little becomes us to recommend violent and hazardous proceedings. We must always look back with satisfaction and gratitude to that period of your Majesty’s, reign when a prudent concession restored tranquillity and commerce to all your Majesty’s Dominions. We trust that, after having humbly entreated the exertion of your Majesty’s wisdom for reconciling amicably the differences which unhappily subsist among your subjects, we have cleared ourselves to our own consciences, and acquitted ourselves in the eyes of Almighty God, of our Sovereign, and of our Country, from any share whatsoever in producing the calamities which the present proceedings, so inauspiciously begun, may yet bring upon this Nation.

ADDRESS OF THE CITY OF BRISTOL.

Address of the Mayor, Burgesses, Clergy, Freeholders, and Inhabitants of the City of Bristol, at the Guildhall assembled, presented to His Majesty by Charles Hotchkin, Esq., late Mayor; John Durbin, Esq., late Sheriff; Richard Combe, Esq., one of the Representatives in Parliament for Aldborough, in Suffolk; James Laroche, Esq., one of the Representatives in Parliament for Bodmyn; Matthew Brickdale, Esq., Thomas Tyndall, Esq., John Harcourt, Esq., Isaac Elton, the younger, Esq., William Miles, Esq., John Crofts, Esq., George Daubeny, Esq., William Hart, Esq., John Powell, Esq., and John Taylor Vaughan, Esq.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty’s dutiful subjects, the Mayor, Burgesses, Clergy, Freeholders, and Inhabitants of the City of Bristol, at the Guildhall assembled, beg leave to address your Majesty on the present conjuncture of affairs between Great Britain and your American Colonies.

With gratitude we acknowledge the many and great blessings we enjoy under your Majesty’s mild and auspicious government; during which, the trade and commerce of this ancient and loyal City have increased to a degree unknown to former times, to be attributed only to the wisdom of your Majesty’s Councils, and the many excellent laws lately passed for the encouragement of those inexhaustible sources of wealth.

Truly sensible of your Majesty’s unwearied endeavours for the support of the religious and civil rights of all your subjects, we cannot but with astonishment behold the conduct of a few disappointed men, whose sophistical arguments and seditious correspondence have, in a great measure, been the occasion of deluding your American subjects into open rebellion.

As British subjects, we testify our abhorrence of this unnatural rebellion; and, though we deeply lament the misfortunes our American brethren have brought upon themselves, yet we cannot but express our warmest wishes for the success of those measures your Majesty hath adopted in support of the legislative authority of Great Britain over all your Dominions, which we trust will now be permanently established, and hope that the loyalty which prevails here will soon convince our fellow-subjects in America of their errour, and bring them back to a just sense of their duty and allegiance; this, and this only, can restore them to your Majesty’s favour, and to that flourishing state they so long have and still might have enjoyed.

May your Majesty’s Councils ever prevail to the extirpating of licentiousness: and, by a firm establishment of real liberty, may you triumph over the enemies of our glorious Constitution, and long continue to reign over a free, united, and happy people. To obtain these great ends, we assure your Majesty of our utmost assistance and support, and declare, that a zealous attachment to your royal person and family, a veneration of the laws, and an ardent affection for order and good government, are the principles which direct and animate our conduct.

September 28, 1775.

EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM A GENTLEMAN IN LONDON TO A FRIEND IN THE COUNTRY, DATED SEPT. 27, 1775.

My opinion is not a whit changed from what it was last winter. Ministers and Parliaments cannot alter common sense. A majority in both Houses is devoted to the Minister, and the Minister to the invisible power which rules in the cabinet. The landed interest are as ignorant as the trading interest are venal. Hence the desire of the country gentlemen to tax America, and hence the addresses of several Towns to pursue the war. The Ministers promote and receive, with a greedy pleasure, these addresses, as they equally assist in imposing upon the King, and keeping them in office. A few circumstances have happened, which the mass of the people do not understand, but which men of discernment say have lulled the Kingdom into a most fatal errour. The loss of the American trade has not been felt, owing to the large orders from Spain for the flota, from the Baltick and Germany, owing to the peace between Russia and the Porte, and the troubles in Poland having ceased. These orders came very opportunely, together with larger remittances from America than usual. The very considerable quantity of grain from America, and the advanced prices of oil and tobacco, have enabled the Americans (except those in Boston ) to discharge their debts this year better than formerly. This prodigious influx of money has been placed in the stocks for a little temporary interest, (and this has kept up the funds,) in expectation that the American trade will, in a short time, be opened again. My opinion is, that the American trade will never be opened again; that the Colonies are lost. Owing to the temporary orders which I have already explained, some weak people persuade themselves, that if the American trade should be lost, we shall not suffer by it. How ignorant are those men! Is the consumption of three millions of people no loss? Such men deserve no notice. Time alone can undeceive them. Six months from this date, this Country will begin to awake, and not sooner. Disputes of another complexion will happen next summer, all of them originating in this ruinous American war. I am confident there will be no more petitions from America, and I am also confident that, as soon as the Delegates to the Continental Congress are informed of the treatment their petition has met with, a system of civil government, for that great Country, will make its appearance, that people here have no idea of; and that foreign assistance, which intelligent men know very well was offered to them a few months ago, will be accepted, on condition of granting to that foreign Power certain exclusive commercial advantages. From that instant Great Britain must date her decline, and I fear her downfall. America has offered to compromise this unhappy difference. She wishes most