and regret we find ourselves constrained to lay before your Excellency some observations on the reply you were pleased to make to the Council’s address in answer to your speech at the opening of the present session of Assembly; more especially at this unhappy period, when even the appearance of disunion between the several branches of the Legislature ought carefully to be avoided. Your reply, Sir, though rather darkly penned, contains, we apprehend, some reflections and innuendoes which our consciences tell us we do not deserve, and which we cannot, therefore, with honour, or due regard to our station, pass unnoticed.

Your Excellency was pleased, in your speech, to ask us whether we could answer for your personal safety. We replied, in our address, in such plain and open language as we thought could not have been misunderstood, could not have admitted any doubt or cavil, nor the most distant hint of subterfuge, that you and the other officers of the Crown are, in our apprehension, perfectly safe in this Province. From persons who have too much at stake not to dread the consequence of a total subversion of Government, order, and authority; who, while they lament the publick disorders of the present times, are anxiously studious to lessen their effects on the inhabitants of this Province, such a declaration might, we think, have been received with joy and gladness by your Excellency, rather than with insinuations of your doubts and apprehensions, drawn from the language of Associations, the orders and resolutions of Congresses and Committees, or from the effects of either of them, in this or the neighbouring Colonies. We trusted that you would have congratulated us on the degree of serenity still existing in this Province, rather than damp our hopes by foreboding what may happen here from what has happened elsewhere, or by throwing an unworthy reflection on the inhabitants of this Province, in supposing that such officers of the Crown who have or shall conscientiously discharge their duty need be under any doubts of the protection, support, and applause of the people.

It is not necessary or proper for us to extend our views to other Colonies, in order to form our sentiments or opinions of the conduct and behaviour of officers of the Crown. With respect to Crown officers in general in this Province, we cannot but think it an ungenerous insinuation that there are any who have departed from the line of their duty, from the impulse of timidity or other motives, in view to present safety. Such aspersions, permit us to say, ought not to be thrown out, but on the surest grounds that such characters really exist amongst us.

If the return for the affection and regard which your Excellency acknowledges you have experienced from all ranks of people in this Province is to be general calumny and detraction, it is not likely there will be found many who will choose to pay “such a price for such a consideration.”

We promised ourselves that the experience you have long had of our zeal in the cause of publick justice, the honour of Government, and support of the Constitution, might have induced more confidence in our assertions than the language of your reply seems to convey. However, Sir, if ever we again have the honour of a reply from you to an address, we trust, that whilst the Council of New-Jersey preserve a conduct which calumny dares not openly asperse, though they should happen to differ in opinion with your Excellency as to the real circumstances of the Province, they will escape every insinuation of subterfuge or insincerity; which, however applicable to secret foes, must be heard with disdain by the known friends and real well-wishers to this Country.

MESSAGE FROM THE GOVERNOUR TO THE COUNCIL.

December 6, 1775.

GENTLEMEN: The uninterrupted harmony which has subsisted between me and the Council has been one of the most satisfactory events of my administration. It has been my constant inclination and endeavour to preserve it by every means consistent with my duty. My conduct to you, as a body and as individuals, has ever been such as to manifest a disposition to oblige you as far as was in my power. If this has been hitherto the case, which I believe none of you will deny, it is not probable that I should, at this unhappy period, wantonly, and without cause, do any thing that might endanger that harmony, or occasion “even the appearance of disunion.” Why you should therefore, of a sudden, apprehend that I meant, in my reply to your address, to cast any reflections on your conduct, I cannot conceive. If my expressions are, as you say, darkly penned, that circumstance might have afforded you a just pretence for asking an explanation, but surely not for an unhesitating application to yourselves of any matter “which your consciences tell you that you do not deserve.”

Your address was perfectly satisfactory to me, except that part in which you gave your opinion respecting the personal safety of the officers of this Government. I should have been very happy if I could have joined you in that opinion, and should not then have failed congratulating you on so joyful an occasion. It did not appear to me that it was warranted by the circumstances really existing in the Province, and it evidently carried with it an implication that the degree of apprehension mentioned in my speech was ill founded. As nothing was further from my intentions than the exciting of false alarms, I did not choose to lie even under the suspicion. On that account, I thought it necessary to particularize some of the reasons which induced me to differ in sentiments with you on that point. Whether you or I have the best grounds for our opinion, others will judge. I expressed not the least doubt of your thinking the opinion you have just and light, but I thought it proper, at the same time, to assure you that I could not agree with you in that opinion, “without being guilty of a subterfuge, which gentlemen of your candour must disapprove.” Why you should, from these words, suppose that I meant a distant hint that you had been guilty of such a subterfuge, I cannot imagine; especially as your “consciences tell you that you do not deserve it.” Nor can I conceive that you have the least pretence for taxing me with “throwing an unworthy reflection on the inhabitants of this Province.” Whatever I may think applicable to some individuals on the present occasion, I have said nothing which can, without manifest perversion of my words, be applied to the people at large. My real opinion of them, and my confidence in their affection and regard, are too fully and clearly expressed in my speech, (and my conduct has been conformable thereto,) not to defeat any purpose that may be intended by such an unworthy suggestion.

Though I think as favourable of the Crown officers in general in this Province as you can do, yet I am not able to comprehend that it must therefore be an “ungenerous insinuation” to intimate that some of them may have been induced, by timidity or other motives, to “depart from the line of their duty.” That some have actually departed from the line of their duty, from some motives or other, is a matter too publickly known to justify any attempt at concealment, particularly as you have at this session advised me to suspend one of the most considerable of them from his office, on that account only.

I entirely agree with you, that “aspersions ought not to be thrown out but on the surest grounds.” Why then, have you, without any foundation whatever, thrown out that a “general calumny and detraction” on “all ranks of people in this Province” is to be found in my reply? Is it because I there told you that “it is not likely that there will be found many of them who will choose to pay such a price (as their honour) for such a consideration as their safety? Or is it because I said that it was not “probable (if they should) that they would meet with your approbation?” Or is it merely to give you some pretence for introducing an otherwise inapplicable quotation?

Far be it from me, however we may differ in sentiments on particular points, to pretend any doubt of your zeal in the cause “of publick justice, the honour of Government, and support of the Constitution.” I have never given the least intimation of the kind; but, on the contrary, I have had frequent occasion, and never omitted any opportunity of signifying my approbation of your conduct. Even the reply at which you have so causelessly taken offence contains “my hearty thanks for the assurances you gave me of your readiness to exert yourselves in the defence of the Constitution,” &c. But if you expect an implicit “confidence in your assertions,” even when they may happen to appear to me evidently not well founded, you expect more than is possible for you to obtain. I ever wish you to give