Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty’s most loyal and dutiful subjects, humbly beg leave to approach your throne, to testify our grateful acknowledgments for the many blessings we enjoy under your Majesty’s auspicious Government, to the gentleness and mildness of which we owe the rapid increase of our manufactures, giving full employ to all our poor, even at advanced wages; and to the protection therefrom derived, attribute the extension of our commerce abroad, and the consequential flourishing situation of this populous Country.

Silence in us, therefore, would be criminal, at a time when sedition, fomented by the misrepresentations of artful, ill-designing men, working upon the minds of narrow and self-interested people, hath, in some of your Majesty’s Colonies in North-America, erected the standard of rebellion—a rebellion as unnatural as unprovoked; the abetters whereof, for want of real grievances to palliate in any degree their treasonable purposes, are obliged to have recourse to speculative opinions and ideal doctrines, incompatible in practice with every form of Government.

Impelled by a grateful and just sense of the happiness we have enjoyed under your Majesty’s reign, we, your Majesty’s most faithful subjects, deem it a duty incumbent upon us, as good citizens, thus publickly to declare our utter abhorrence of the conduct of those traitorous and rebellious people, who are striking at the root of American liberty, which can only be preserved by due obedience to the legislative authority of Great Britain; that we sensibly feel the insult offered to the supreme authority of these realms; and with the greatest sincerity assure your Majesty that we will, to the utmost of our abilities, exert ourselves in supporting the execution of such measures as shall be found necessary to bring the Colonies to a due sense of their dependance upon the Mother Country, and a proper obedience to the laws of this Kingdom.

PROVINCIAL CONGRESS OF NEW-JERSEY.

A list of the Deputies who attended this Congress.

BERGEN: John Demarest, Jacobus Post.

ESSEX : Abraham Clark, Lewis Ogden, Samuel Potter, Caleb Camp, Robert Drummond.

MIDDLESEX : Azariah Dunham, John Dennis.

MORRIS: William Winds, William De Hart, Jacob Drake, Silas Condit, Ellis Cook.

SOMERSET Hendrick Fisher, Cornelius Van Muliner, Ruloffe Van Dyke.

SUSSEX : William Maxwell, Ephraim Martin, Thomas Potts, Abia Brown, Mark Thompson.

MONMOUTH : Edward Taylor, John Covenhoven, Joseph Holmes.

HUNTERDON : Samuel Tucker, John Mehelm, John Hart, Charles Stewart, Augustine Stevenson.

BURLINGTON: Isaac Pearson, John Pope, Samuel How, John Wood, Joseph Newbold.

GLOUCESTER: John Cooper, Joseph Ellis, Thomas Clark, Elijah Clark, Richard Somers.

SALEM: John Holme, Edward Keasby, Benjamin Holme, John Carey.

CUMBERLAND: Theophilus Elmer, Jonathan Ayars.

CAPE-MAY: Jesse Hand.

Tuesday, October 3, 1775.

Several of the Deputies returned to serve in this Congress for the respective Counties of this Colony assembled at Trenton, pursuant to the appointment of the late Provincial Congress.

Wednesday, October 4, 1775.

The Congress again assembled, and, several other Members attending, proceeded to the election of a President and Vice-President; when Samuel Tucker, Esq., was chosen President, and Hendrick Fisher, Esq., Vice-President.

John Mehelm, Esquire, at the request of the Congress, consented to act as Secretary until a Secretary be chosen.

On motion made, Ordered, That the President do wait upon the Ministers of the Gospel in this Town, and, in the name of this Congress, request their alternate attendance and service every morning, at nine o’clock, during the session, in order that the business of the day may be opened with prayer, in the most humble manner to supplicate Almighty God, that, out of his infinite goodness and mercy, he will be pleased to influence and direct the Councils of America and Great Britain, so that peace, unanimity, and harmony, may be happily re-established between both Countries upon a permanent foundation.

The Congress was accordingly opened with prayer by the Rev. Mr. Spencer.

The Congress then proceeded to examine the Certificates of the Election of the Deputies for the several Counties in this Colony, and the following gentlemen were returned as duly elected, to wit:

BERGEN : John Demarest, Jacobus Post, Abraham Van Boskirk.

ESSEX: Abraham Clark, Lewis Ogden, Samuel Potter, Caleb Camp, Robert Drummond.

MIDDLESEX: John Dennis, Azariah Dunham.

MORRIS: William Winds, William De Hart, Jacob Drake, Silas Condit, Ellis Cook.

SOMERSET: Hendrick Fisher, Cornelius Van Muliner, Ruloffe Van Dyke.

SUSSEX: William Maxwell, Ephraim Martin, Thomas Potts, Abia Brown, Mark Thompson.

HUNTERDON: Samuel Tucker, John Mehelm, John Hart, Charles Stewart, Augustine Stevenson.

MONMOUTH: Edward Taylor, John Covenhoven, Joseph Holmes.

BURLINGTON: Isaac Pearson, John Pope, Samuel How, John Wood, Joseph Newbold.

GLOUCESTER: John Cooper, Joseph Ellis, Thomas Clark, Elijah Clark, Richard Somers.

SALEM: Grant Gibbon, Benjamin Holme, John Holme, Edward Keasby, John Carey.

CUMBERLAND : Theophilus Elmer, Jonathan Ayars.

CAPE-MAY: Jesse Hand, Elijah Hughes.

A Petition from twenty-four Inhabitants of the County of Monmouth, suggesting that the Deputies returned for that County were not duly elected, was read, and ordered a second reading.

A Letter from the Committee of Safety of New-York to the Committee of Safety of this Colony, relative to the apprehending of Deserters from the Continental Troops, was read, and ordered a second reading.

A Petition from Daniel Maskell, of Cumberland County, praying that Commissions may issue for a Company of Minute-Men in that County, was read.

Ordered, That Commissions do issue to the several persons therein named.

A Letter from the Committee of the County of Morris, recommending the several persons therein named for Commissions in the Battalion of Minute-Men in that County, was read.

Ordered, That Commissions do issue accordingly.

Mr. President laid before the Congress a Letter from the Earl of Stirling, enclosing copies of some Letters lately written by his Lordship, on the subject of his having received a Commission of Colonel of a Regiment of Militia, together with the Return of his Regiment.

Ordered, That the Return be filed, and that the Letters be laid on the table for the inspection of the Members.

Sundry copies of Associations from the Township of Freehold, in Monmouth County, the Township of Hills-borough, in Somerset County, and the Township of Mansfield, in Burlington County, were read, and ordered to be filed.

A Petition from a number of Inhabitants of the Town-ship of Nottingham, praying that the petitioners may be allowed to join Capt. Harrison’s Company of Light-Infantry, in Trenton, was read, and ordered a second reading.

The Congress adjourned till nine o’clock, to-morrow morning.