reign, permit us, the Gentlemen, Freeholders, Justices of the Peace, and Commissioners of the Land Tax of the County of Lanark, to approach your Majesty’s throne, sincerely regretting that any of your subjects, should prove undeserving of the constitutional blessings which all of them enjoy.

We have at no time beheld with indifference the seditious conduct of your deluded American subjects; but now, since they have had the audacity to break out into open and unprovoked rebellion against the supreme legislative authority of our Country, we are struck with the highest indignation, and think it our indispensable duty to express these our sentiments to your Majesty.

What means, under Providence, may prove most conducive to enforce your Majesty’s legal authority, to reduce your disaffected Colonies to allegiance, and recall them to their duty, we do not presume to suggest; but beg leave to assure your Majesty, that whatever measures your Majesty and your Parliament, in your united wisdom, may be pleased to adopt for these salutary purposes, we shall zealously promote; firmly determined to maintain, and to transmit inviolate to posterity, the authority of the Crown, the supremacy of the laws, and the unity of the Empire of Great Britain.

Signed in our presence, and by our appointment, by

JAMES LOCKHART, of Lee, Præses.

Hamilton, October 27, 1775.

PETITION FROM THE INHABITANTS OF NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.

Petition and Memorial from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, presented to the King by Sir George Savile, Bart.

To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty.

The humble Petition and Memorial of the Free Burgesses, Traders, and Inhabitants of NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty’s most loyal and dutiful subjects, the Free Burgesses, Traders, and Inhabitants of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, humbly beg leave to approach your throne, deeply impressed with a grateful sense of the many blessings we have enjoyed in consequence of the late glorious Revolution and the happy elevation of your Majesty’s illustrious House, to the just and mild government of these Kingdoms; by which great events our natural rights as men, and our constitutional privileges as Britons, have been amply secured and defended.

Feeling for the imminent danger of this Country, and the distresses of our fellow-subjects in America, we esteem it our duty to lay before your Majesty our humble opinion of those measures which threaten the destruction of this powerful Empire; and we do this the more freely, from the fear lest your Majesty should be induced to pursue the present unhappy system, on the false suggestions and dangerous advice of many of your deluded subjects. At a time when addresses of approbation are industriously sought by those interested men who have plunged an happy and united people into all the horrours of civil war, we should ill deserve the blessings of freedom and of commerce, were we, by our silence, to give a sanction to their mischievous infatuation.

In the present unnatural war with our American brethren, we have seen neither provocation nor object; nor is it, in our humble apprehension, consonant with the rights of humanity, sound policy, or the Constitution of our Country.

Notwithstanding the various abuses and misrepresentations of that unhappy and persecuted people, royal Sir, looking to their declarations and conduct, we cannot but consider them as loyal, affectionate, and grateful. Your Majesty’s Ministers have found them firm, temperate, and brave; let your Majesty’s humanity and noble nature act in their behalf; vouchsafe to restore America to her former happy situation, and grant her “peace, liberty, and safety.” So shall the gratitude of millions secure a reign of lasting happiness to your Majesty, and the strength of an industrious and rising people establish your throne, in your royal line, to the latest posterity.

These are the humble prayers and requests of disinterested men, who speak the language of humanity and truth. As none of your subjects are more sincere in their attachment to your Majesty’s person and Government, in defence of which, in a just cause, they would cheerfully sacrifice their lives, they hope your Majesty will not treat this their humble Petition and Memorial with neglect, but, by a gracious compliance with their wishes, confirm their gratitude, loyalty, and affection.

LORD MULGRAVE TO MR. WILLIAM SMITH.

Mulgrave-Hall, October 27, 1775.

DEAR SIR: Your letter, dated the I7th of this month, came to my hands too late to be answered by the last post; it was therefore impossible for me to be m time at Newcastle to attend the meeting, which I suppose by your letter to have been held last Monday. You have not explained yourself as to the nature of the humble address to His Majesty, upon which, you say, my sentiments would oblige my friends. Had I received your letter in time, I should have suspended the attention to my private affairs, so particularly necessary from the severe misfortune which has lately befallen me, to have been present at the meeting, and expressed my sentiments upon the address, which you hint it might be thought proper for me to present. As it is, I must beg that you will communicate this letter to my friends.

If the address is to signify the approbation of the independent freemen of Newcastle to any measures which may enforce the legislative authority of this Country, I should, with pride and pleasure, be the instrument of laying such sentiments from so respectable a body at His Majesty’s feet.

But should any application be intended to the throne, similar to some that I have seen in the papers, recommending a surrender of the powers of the Legislature, under an idea of restoring the tranquillity of the Empire, at a time when unanimity is so desirable, and every appearance of division amongst ourselves on this important point should be avoided, (as such addresses, from whatever motives they may take their rise, must tend to increase the distresses of the unhappily deluded Americans, by delaying their submission to that power, the continuance of whose protection alone can secure to them the enjoyment of those liberties which they have been so fatally induced to believe they assert by resistance, ) I shall most sincerely lament that the precipitancy with which this step was taken, precluded the possibility of offering my reasons against it at an earlier period, and more fully than can be done in this letter; as they might, perhaps, have had some weight, upon a subject I have so much considered, with those of whose good opinion I have received such repeated and flattering marks.

I am the more anxious to have my sentiments upon this subject clearly explained, as I should think myself highly blameable in having solicited so important a trust as that of a share in the Legislature, had I entertained a design of sacrificing its powers.

In the last Parliament (to my conduct in which I owed the honour of so respectable an invitation to Newcastle) no man opposed with more zeal many of the measures respecting America than I did, on a conviction of their inexpediency; but so far was I from entertaining the smallest doubt of the supreme power of Parliament over all the Colonies, as much as over Great Britain itself, that I frequently declared, in the most explicit terms, my assent to that proposition, founded in the principles of the Constitution, and essential to the preservation of its unity. I now think, that upon the vigorous and effectual assertion of that absolute power, entire and unmodified, depends the prosperity and perhaps the existence of this Empire.

Such, Sir, are my opinions upon the present important and critical situation of publick affairs, which you will do me a favour in making known to those who wished to have intrusted the care of their most important rights to my zeal and diligence.

I shall leave this place for London on Tuesday next, where I shall be glad to receive any commands you have for me. I beg you will accept my thanks for the professions of your continued inclinations to serve me; and that you will believe me to be, with regard, your most obedient and most humble servant,

MULGRAVE.

To Mr. William Smith, Surgeon, in Newcastle.