others who may hereafter fall into my hands. I must be understood to stipulate for those unfortunate Canadians, your prisoners, who have thrown themselves into the arms of the United Colonies for protection, whose enraged countrymen have with difficulty been restrained from acts of violence on the garrison of Chambly.

I shall expect your Excellency’s answer in six days; should the bearer not return in that time, I must interpret your silence into a declaration of a barbarous war. I cannot pass this opportunity without lamenting the melancholy and fatal necessity which obliges the firmest friends of the Constitution to oppose one of the most respectable officers of the Crown.

I am, Sir, &c.,

RICHARD MONTGOMERY.

To Governour Carleton.

ADDRESS OF THE JUSTICES, ETC., OF THE LIBERTY OF THE TOWER OF LONDON.

Address of the Justices assigned to keep the peace, and of the Grand, Jury, Gentlemen, Clergy, Freeholders, and principal Inhabitants of the Liberty of the Tower of London, and Precincts thereof, presented to His Majesty by Robert Pell, David Wilmot, John Spiller, Thomas Tryon Cotton, and Richard Rutson, Esquires, and the Reverend Doctor Mayo.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

The humble Address of the Justices assigned to keep the peace, and of the Grand Jury, Gentlemen, Clergy, Freeholders, and principal Inhabitants of the Liberty of the Tower of LONDON, and Precincts thereof.

Deeply impressed with a due sense of the blessings we enjoy under your Majesty’s mild and gracious Government, we, your Majesty’s faithful and loyal subjects, think it our indispensable duty, at this alarming crisis, to declare our abhorrence of the unnatural rebellion in America, excited, encouraged, and supported by the advice and assistance of a few disappointed seditious persons at home.

We feel exceedingly for the distresses of our deluded brethren, and lament the situation into which their own obstinacy and unjust spirit of independency have brought them, under the false colour of opposing the right of British taxation; attempting, at the same time, to captivate your royal mind by setting up charters, granted by the Crown, as superiour in operation and effect to those wise and wholesome laws enacted by the British Legislature, for the good of all your Majesty’s subjects, abroad and at home.

It is with the greatest respect and gratitude we observe your Majesty, instead of countenancing arbitrary Government, resting the valuable privileges of Britons on their natural and proper basis, viz: King, Lords, and Commons.

May, therefore, that period soon arrive, when the leaders and a betters of this most unnatural rebellion shall be brought to shame and punishment, and due subordination and respect be paid to the British laws. To accomplish which desirable ends, to restore peace and happiness, and to promote every other constitutional purpose, we beg leave to assure your Majesty that we will, to the utmost of our power, support the honour and dignity of the Crown, and maintain, with our lives and properties, the authority of the British Legislature over the whole Empire, against all invaders of our glorious Constitution.

ADDRESS OF THE BAILIFFS AND CITIZENS OF THE CITY OF LITCHFIELD.

Address of the Bailiffs and Citizens of the City of Litchfield, transmitted to the Earl of Dartmouth, one of His Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State, and presented to His Majesty.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

The humble Address of the Bailiffs and Citizens of the
City of LITCHFIELD:

May it please your Majesty to permit us, your dutiful subjects, to approach your sacred person with hearts filled with loyalty, gratitude, and affection, and to express our grief and astonishment that any of your Majesty’s Colonies, raised and protected as they have been, and enjoying, in common with all your Majesty’s British subjects, the blessings resulting from that most excellent form of Government established in these Kingdoms, and from your Majesty’s paternal attention to the welfare of all your subjects, should suffer themselves to be inflamed and drawn into a most causeless and unnatural rebellion. And we think it our duty, as friends to the Constitution, to assure your Majesty that we will cheerfully contribute the utmost in our power in support of such measures as shall be found necessary for asserting and maintaining the supreme legislative authority of the British Parliament through your Majesty’s Dominions.

Given under our common seal, at the Guildhall of the said City, the 23d day of October, in the year of our Lord 1775.

ADDRESS OF THE GENTLEMEN, ETC., OF THE COUNT OF WORCESTER.

Address of the Gentlemen, Clergy, and Freeholders of the County of Worcester, presented to His Majesty by Edward Foley, Esq., one of their Representatives in Parliament.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Gentlemen, Clergy, and Freeholders of the County of Worcester, beg leave to assure your Majesty of our warmest fidelity and attachment. We are sorry to observe that the present season is a crisis which demands an open and explicit avowal of these sentiments from every loyal and faithful subject. That spirit of riot and disorder which has so long prevailed amongst many of your Majesty’s subjects in America, has at length terminated in rebellion, and we are alarmed lest our silence, at such a juncture, should, by a misguided and infatuated people, be considered as an approbation of their proceedings. We have beheld their conduct with indignation and abhorrence, convinced that it is founded upon the worst of motives—an hostile and determined opposition to the legislative authority of their parent and protecting Country.

The supremacy of Great Britain, over all its depending parts, is a necessary and essential doctrine of the Constitution of this great Empire; and as the executive power of the Crown can never be so duly and properly employed as in the defence of the laws and Constitution, we trust, and humbly hope, that your Majesty will now effectually exert that power in the support and vindication of the legislative rights of this Country.

We assure your Majesty, that in the prosecution of this just and necessary measure we shall be ready to afford our best assistance with cheerfulness and alacrity; convinced that, by so doing, we shall support the true and most valuable interests of commerce, and contribute to the permanent prosperity of your Majesty and this Country.

Worcester, October 23, 1775.

ADDRESS OF THE BISHOP AND CLERGY OF THE ISLE OF MAN.

Address of the Bishop and Clergy of the Isle and Diocese of Man, transmitted to the Earl of Suffolk, one of His Majesty’s principal Secretaries of State, and presented to His Majesty.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty:

Permit, most gracious Sovereign, the Bishop and Clergy of the Isle and Diocese of Man, few in number, inconsiderable in influence, and remote in situation, but in duty and affection to your sacred person, your family and Government, equal to those of any Diocese in your Majesty’s Dominions, to express before you sentiments which, springing warm from their hearts, their coolest and most deliberate judgments also approve.

Fully sensible of our own unimportance, we should think it presumption to interrupt your Majesty with the tender of our most humble duty, did not the circumstances of the times, and the very culpable behaviour of some of our fellow-subjects, seem to call upon all persons, of all ranks and professions, “high and low, rich and poor, one with another,” to declare their abhorrence of the daring and unprovoked rebellion, begun and carried on in several of your Majesty’s Colonies, against the authority of the whole legislative power of Great Britain.