LORD STIRLING TO NEW-YORK CONGRESS.

Elizabethtown, December 4, 1775.

By a letter of the 27th ultimo, from the President of the Continental Congress, I am informed that he has wrote to the Convention of New-York, to furnish the Continental troops under my command, in this Province, with as many fire-arms as they can spare, and that he has desired them to be sent for their use.

I should be very glad to know what number can be spared; and as I am ordered immediately to despatch six companies, of ninety each, to the new fort on Hudson river, in the Highlands, it would facilitate that service very much if three hundred stand of arms could immediately be sent over to me; and in order to avoid any danger there may be in passing by water to this place, I will take care at any appointed time to receive them with a proper guard, at Hoboken, Weehawken, or any other place on Hudson river that shall be thought most proper.

The six companies destined to garrison the before mentioned new fort, I hope will be ready to move during this and the next week. I purpose to march them to Dobbs's Ferry, where it will be necessary that two or three sloops should attend about eight days hence, in order to embark and sail with them as they arrive. As soon as I can fix the day on which the first company can be there, I will inform you of it.

Be pleased to inform me whether the barracks at the new fortress be in readiness to receive the six companies I am ordered to send there, and whether provision, fire-wood, &c, be provided. I shall use my utmost endeavours to furnish the companies I send off with twenty-four rounds of powder and ball. I hope your Congress will provide a further supply of those articles at the fortress.

I am, sir, your most humble servant,

STIRLING.

Nathaniel Woodhull, Esq., Vice-President of the late New-York Provincial Congress.

GOVERNOUR TRYON TO WHITEHEAD HICKS.

Ship Dutchess of Gordon, New-York Harbour,

December 4, 1775.

SIR: I desire you will lay before the Corporation the enclosed paper, containing my sentiments on the present convulsed state of this country, and that you will please to make the same publick.

I am, &c.,

WILLIAM TRYON.

To Whitehead Hicks, Esq., Mayor of the City of New-York.

TO THE INHABITANTS OF THE COLONY OF NEW-YORK.

I take this publick manner to signify to the inhabitants of this Province, that His Majesty has been graciously pleased to grant me his royal permission to withdraw from my Government, and at the same time to assure them of my readiness to perform every service in my power to promote the common felicity.

If I am excluded from every hope of being any ways instrumental towards the reestablishment of that harmony, at present interrupted, between Great Britain and her Colonies, I expect soon to be obliged to avail myself of His Majesty's indulgence.

It has given me great pain to view the Colony committed to my care in such a turbulent state as not to have afforded me, since my arrival, any prospect of being able to take the dispassionate and deliberate sense of its inhabitants, in a constitutional manner, upon the resolution of Parliament for composing the present ferments in the Provinces. A resolution that was intended for the basis of an accommodation, and if candidly considered in a way which it will be most probably successful, and treated with that delicacy and decency requisite to the cultivation of a sincere reconciliation and friendship, might yet be improved for the purposes of restoring the general tranquillity and security of the empire. I owe it to my affection to this Colony, to declare my wish that some measure may be speedily adopted for this purpose, as I feel an extreme degree of anxiety in being witness to the growing calamities of this country, without the power to alleviate them; calamities that must increase, while so many of the inhabitants withhold their allegiance from their Sovereign, and their obedience to the parent country, by whose power and patronage they have hitherto been sustained and protected.

WILLIAM TRYON.

Ship Dutchess of Gordon, Harbour of New-York, December 4, 1775.

TO HIS EXCELLENCY WILLIAM TRYON, ESQ.

New-York, December 6, 1775.

SIR: As you have been pleased to address yourself in a publick manner to the inhabitants of this Province at large, an apology can hardly be necessary for the freedom I use in conveying my sentiments to you on the interesting contents of your letter, in which, as an individual, I feel myself deeply concerned.

The rectitude of your Excellency's conduct, in your official capacity, has deservedly acquired you an eminent degree of popularity and esteem among all orders of men; and, on this account, every step you take is an object of peculiar attention; even what in another might seem offensive and exceptionable, in you is regarded with the most indulgent partiality. I should with regret see you embrace any measure which might tend to alienate the affections of the people, and sully the laurels you have reaped from your former virtuous administration.

With respect to your letter under consideration, permit me to intimate to you, that, unless it be a mere formality, arising from the necessity of your station, it is, at least, a very indiscreet proceeding, and can answer no other end than to lessen you in the general estimation. We have too good an opinion of your understanding to imagine you can seriously believe there is any thing conciliating, or looking towards an accommodation, in the resolution you mention; a resolution, the terms whereof are diametrically opposite to every principle of liberty, and which has been recommended to us by the most indelicate and indecent of all arguments—the point of the bayonet. We must confess to you, that we are as yet in a state of too much simplicity to understand rightly that species of kindness which is evidenced by carnage and devastation.

Our interests we consider as inseparably united with those of our sister Colonies. In union we place our strength; in disunion we see our destruction. We have also the greatest confidence in the judgment and integrity of those who are entrusted with the management of publick affairs; and we can never think of deserting the common cause and breaking the most sacred engagements, by venturing to decide on what is properly a subject of general determination, and by exposing ourselves to the snares and entanglements of a separate treaty. The necessity of union we have been taught by the sagacious Lord North himself, who declared in the House of Commons, in support of the motion, that if one link of the chain could be broken, the whole would inevitably fall to pieces, and that divide et impera (divide and domineer) is a maxim both just and wise in Government. For this instance of plain dealing we are very much indebted to his Lordship; and if we do not profit by it, we shall exhibit to the world a lasting monument of unexampled stupidity.

We would not wish to suppose that you would offer such violence to your "affection for this Colony," or bring such an indelible stain upon your own honour, as to be capable of stooping to the mean task of promoting those flagitious and dark designs avowed by the Minister; and yet, there are unfortunately some appearances, which, in a people less ingenuous than we are, might too easily beget a suspicion of the kind.

It is incumbent upon us to thank your Excellency for the genteel and polite language in which you are pleased to charge us with disloyalty and rebellion. To say we have traitorously conspired against His Majesty's crown and dignity, and wantonly trampled upon the laws of the State, according to the stale jargon of the times, "would be far more harsh and ill-sounding than the smooth, harmonious expressions you have adopted. Only to tell us we "withhold our allegiance from our Sovereign, and our obedience from the parent country," is civil enough, all things considered. But, at the same time, we beg leave to assure you that you have been deceived as to the fact, and that, though we have been forced to stray from the ordinary