with confidence upon the wisdom and rectitude of your Majesty’s measures for bringing the present unhappy differences to a conclusion which shall be consistent with the honour of Great Britain.

But if our unhappy and deluded fellow-subjects in America shall continue in their unnatural and unprovoked rebellion, with our fortunes and with our lives we will assert the supremacy of our King and Parliament over every part of the British Empire; and teach the sons of anarchy, that the same arm which was lately stretched out for their defence and security, and which drove all their enemies far from their borders, can with equal ease chastise ungrateful and rebellious subjects; happy that the rod is in the most mild and merciful hand, in the hand of the father and friend of his people.

Signed in our name, in our presence, and at our appointment, by our Praises, one of the Magistrates of Leith, and the seal of the said Town is hereto affixed.

JAMES CUNDELL, Prascs.

Leith, October 12, 1775.

ADDRESS OF THE GENTLEMEN, ETC., OF SEVERAL TOWNS IN THE COUNTY OF WILTS.

Address of the Gentlemen, Clergy, Clothiers, and other Tradesmen, of the Towns and neighbourhood of Bradford, Trowbridge, and Melksham, in the County of Wilts, transmitted to the Earl of Suffolk, one of His Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State, by Philip James Gibbs, Esq., Thomas Johnson, Esq., and Paul Newman, Esq., and presented to His Majesty.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty’s dutiful and faithful subjects, the Gentlemen, Clergy, Clothiers, and other Tradesmen of the Towns and neighbourhood of Bradford, Trowbridge, and Melksham, in the County of Wilts, approach the throne at a season we think critical and alarming to the honour, peace, and welfare of our Country, to testify our affectionate attachment and loyalty to your Majesty’s person and Government, our sincere abhorrence of that rebellious spirit which has appeared among our American fellow-subjects, and our unfeigned sorrow for those inquietudes which, from humanity, and concern for the common welfare of your people, your royal mind must feel, on account of those unnatural and dangerous convulsions which at present rend the British Empire.

Though we declare ourselves steadfast friends to constitutional liberty, and disdain the imputation of appearing as abetters of oppression and slavery; though we wish our American fellow-subjects all that indulgence and encouragement, which justice to the rest of your Majesty’s people, and the common interest, safety, and welfare of the Empire will admit of; yet we cannot but condemn that uncandid and malignant spirit with which they have boldly imputed to the British Legislature odious and iniquitous designs against the just rights and liberties of your Majesty’s subjects; with intention to inflame the minds of your people here, and hurry them likewise into unnatural acts of violence; whilst we can perceive no ground for so black an imputation, but the Legislature’s endeavouring to protect the persons and properties of peaceable subjects from injury, to support order and Government, and to maintain its own constitutional authority. We cannot but condemn that want of equity which leads them to urge the advantages Great Britain derives from their commerce as a sufficient reason for their not being subjected to bear an equitable proportion in the publick burdens of the State, whilst, from the same commerce, themselves derive superiour advantages, according to their property employed in it, and their different ranks and conditions in life. We cannot but condemn their want of gratitude to their Parent Country, and of tenderness to their poorer fellow-subjects here, shown in the rash unwarrantable prohibition of all commerce with your Majesty’s European Dominions; by which they designed and hoped to deprive those of the means of subsistence, who, by the sweat of their brows had long contributed to the protection and prosperity of America; though we have the pleasure to assure your Majesty, we as yet feel no such melancholy effects of American ingratitude and unkindness, by any unusual failure of demand for our manufactures, or of employment for our poor.

Ardently wishing for the speedy restoration of peace and harmony throughout the British Empire, upon an equitable and constitutional foundation, we at the same time think it our duty to assure your Majesty of our determined readiness to use any lawful means in our power to support the constitutional rights of your crown and of the British Parliament, in and over every part of the British Dominions; not doubting but that, from the purity of your Majesty’s intentions, and the benevolence of your heart, all desirable mercy will be mixed with any severity that will with deep regret be seen needful for accomplishing that important end.

That your Majesty may long reign with glory and honour, over a free, a united, a happy and grateful people; that your descendants, adorned with princely virtues, and friends to the rights and happiness of mankind, may inherit your crown to latest ages, is the fervent prayer of your Majesty’s dutiful and faithful subjects.

ADDRESS OF THE JUSTICES OF THE PEACE FOR THE COUNTY OF MIDDLESEX.

Address of the Justices of the Peace for the County of Middlesex, in General Session assembled; and also of the Gentlemen, Clergy, and Freeholders of the same County, presented to His Majesty by Sir John Hawkins, Knight, Chairman of the Session, the Reverend Sir George Booth, Baronet, and John Brettell, Esquire.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

The humble Address of the Justices assigned to keep the peace, and to hear and determine divers Felonies, Trespasses, and Misdemeanors, in the County of MIDDLESEX, in General Session assembled; and also of the Gentlemen, Clergy, and Freeholders of the same County, whose names are hereunto subscribed.

We, your Majesty’s 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 it is 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 power of Parliaments over every part of the British Dominions, is 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 Governments of the Colonies, now in rebellion, have, by degrees, been subverted, and the allegiance due to your Majesty from your loyal subjects there, has been extorted by and transferred to a few usurpers, whose regard for the publick is absorbed in the hope of private advantage. In the prosecution of their traitorous purposes, the hostilities originally commenced by the Americans have

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