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and happiness have been derived from you. | objects of civil society and constitutional proBut we are in danger of being shipwrecked tection, to wit, liberties and life. upon your rocks. To avoid these, we are willing to be tossed, without a compass or guide, for a while, upon an ocean of blood. Wishing you success in your disinterested labors to promote the happiness of this country, I am, sir, with much esteem for your firmness, your most obedient humble servant."

-Almon's Remembrancer.

PETITION

OF THE NATIVE AMERICANS RESIDING IN
LONDON TO HIS BRITANNIC MAJESTY,
IN 1774.

FROM THE BOSTON PATRIOT.

Messrs. Editors:-Having recently been employed in searching for old records, I met with a manuscript copy of the following petition of a number of native Americans, who were then in London, to his Britannic majesty, in the year 1774. If you think it sufficiently interesting to publish, you are at liberty to do it. Among the number of signers is the late Arthur Lee, of Virginia, a gentleman whose life and character seem to be but little known at the present day, although he was one of the firmest patriots of the revolution, and his services, though not conspicuous, yet were eminently beneficial to the cause he had espoused.

It will be remembered, that the bills there alluded to are the last of the series of those acts of the British parliament which produced a crisis, and were the immediate cause of the war of the revolution ⚫

To the king's most excellent majesty,

The petition of several natives of America, most humbly sheweth :

Your petitioners most humbly represent to your majesty, that, to destroy or assume their chartered rights, without a full and fair hearing, with legal proof of forfeiture, and the abrogating of their most valuable laws, which had duly received the solemn confirmation of your majesty's royal predecessors, and were thence deemed unchangeable, without the consent of the people, is such a proceeding as renders the enjoyment of every privilege they possess totally uncertain and precarious. That an exemption of the soldiery from being tried in the Massachusetts Bay, for murder or other felony, committed upon your majesty's subjects there, is such an encouragement to licentiousness and incentive to outrage, as must subject your majesty's liege people to continued danger.

Your petitioners and their countrymen have been ever most zealously attached to your majesty's person and family. It is therefore with inexpressible affliction that they see an attempt, in these proceedings against them, to change the principle of obedience to government, from the love of the subjects towards their sovereign, founded on the opinion of his wisdom, justice and benevolence, into the dread of absolute power and laws of extreme rigor, unsupportable to a free people.

Should the bills above mentioned receive your royal sanction, your majesty's faithful subjects. will be overwhelmed with grief and despair.

It is therefore our most earnest prayer that
your majesty will be graciously pleased to sus-
pend your royal assent to the said bills.
And your petitioners, etc.,
Stephen Sayre,
William Lee,
Arthur Lee,
Edmund Jennings,
Joshua Johnson,
Daniel Bowley,
Benjamin Franklin,

That your petitioners, being your majesty's most faithful subjects, are obliged to implore your gracious interposition, to protect them in | Thomas Buston, the enjoyment of those privileges which are the | Edward Bandcroft, right of all your people.

Your majesty's petitioners, have already seen, with unspeakable grief, their earnest prayers rejected, and heavy penalties inflicted, even on the innocent among their countrymen, to the subversion of every principle of justice, without their being heard. By this alarming procedure all property was rendered insecure ; and they now see in two bills (for altering the government of the Massachusetts Bay, and the impartial administration of justice there) the intended subversion of the two other grand

Thomas Brondfield,
John Boylston,
John Ellis,
John Williams,
John Alleyne,
Ralph Irard,

Willliam H. Gibbs,
William Blake,
Isaac Motte,
Henry Lawrence,
Thomas Pinckney,
John T. Grimpke,
Jacob Reade,

Philip Neyle,

Edward Fenwicke,
Edward Fenwicke, jr.

John Peroneauf,
William Middleton,
William Middleton, jr.
Ralph Irard, jr.,

William Heyward.

LETTER

From a late London paper, copied from the Maryland Gazette of date 1776, ridiculing | the idea that manufactures could be carried on in America.

All the articles of news lately published, that seem improbable, are not mere inventions. Some of them, I can assure you, on the faith of a traveller, are serious truths. And here give me leave to instance the various numberless accounts the news writers have given us (with so much honest zeal for the welfare of poor old England !) of the establishing manufactures in the colonies to the prejudice of those of this kingdom. It is objected by superficial readers, who yet pretend to some knowledge of those countries, that such establishments are not only improbable but impossible; for that their sheep have but little wool, not in the whole sufficient for a pair of stockings a year to each inhabitant; and that, from the universal dearness of labor among them, the working of iron and other materials, except in some few coarse instances, is impracticable to any advantage. Dear sir, do not let us suffer ourselves to be amused with such groundless objections. The very TAILS of the American sheep are so laden with wool, that each has a cart or wagon,

object that the upper lakes are fresh, and that cod and whale are salt water fish: But let them know, sir, that cod, like other fish, when attacked by their enemies, fly into any water they think they can be safest in; that whales, when they have a mind to eat cod, pursue them wherever they fly; and that the grand leap of the whale in that chase up the falls of Niagara is esteemed by all who have seen it, as one of the finest spectacles in nature !—Really, sir, the world is grown too incredulous: Pendulumlike, it is ever swinging from one extreme to another. Formerly, every thing printed was believed, because it was in print: Now things seem to be disbelieved, for just the very same reason. Wise men wonder at the present growth of infidelity! They should have considered, when they taught people to doubt the authority of newspapers, and the truth of predictions in almanacs, that the next step might be a disbelief in the well-vouched accounts of ghosts and witches, and doubts even of the truth of the A

-n creed.

Your humble servant,

A TRAVELLER.

AN ADDRESS,

PARLIAMENT, 1782.

FROM THE LONDON CHRONICLE, March 9, 1782.

The humble and dutiful declaration and address of his majesty's American loyalists, to the king's most excellent majesty, to both houses of parliament and the people of Great Britain.

on four little wheels, to support and keep it OF AMERICAN LOYALISTS TO THE KING and from trailing on the ground. Would they caulk their ships? Would they fill their beds? · Would they even litter their horses with wool, if it was not both plenty and cheap? And what signifies dearness of labor, where an English shilling passes for five and twenty? Their engaging three hundred silk throwsters here in one week for New York was treated as a fable, because, forsooth, they have no silk there to throw. Those who made this objection, perhaps, did not know, that, at the same time the agents from the king of Spain were at Quebec contracting for 1000 pieces of cannon, to be made there for the fortifications of Mexico, with 25,000 axes for their industrious logwood cutters, and at New York engaging an annual supply of warm floor carpets for their West India houses-other agents from the emperor of China were at Boston, in New England, treating about the exchange of raw silk for wool, to be carried on in Chinese junks thro' the straits of Magellan. And yet all this is as certainly true as the account, said to be from Quebec, in the papers of last week, that the inhabitants of Canada are making preparations, for a cod and whale fishery this summer in the upper lakes. Ignorant people may

We, his majesty's most dutiful and faithful subjects, the loyal inhabitants of America, who have happily got within the protection of the British forces, as well as those who, though too wise not to have foreseen the fatal tendency of the present wanton and causeless rebellion, yet, from numberless obstacles, and unexampled severities, have hitherto been compelled to remain under the tyranny of the rebels, and submit to the measures of congressional usurpation; animated with the purest principles of duty and allegiance to his majesty and the British parliament, beg leave, with the deepest humility and reverence, on the present calamitous occasion of public and national misfortune in the surrender of lord Cornwallis, and the army under his lordship's command, at YorkTown, humbly to entreat that your majesty, and the parliament, would be graciously

war.

The penalty under which any American subject enlists into his majesty's service, is no less than the immediate forfeiture of all his goods and chattels, lands and tenements; and if apprehended, and convicted by the rebels, of having enlisted, or prevailed on any other person to enlist into his majesty's service, it is considered as treason, and punished with death: Whereas, no forfeiture is incurred, or penalty annexed, to his entering into the service of congress; but, on the contrary, his property is secured, and himself rewarded.

In the former case, he withdraws himself from his family and relations, without any possibility of receiving any assistance from or affording any relief to either. In the latter, he is subject to no such peculiar self-denials, and real distresses.-The embodying provincial corps in New-York, and sending them on services to Savannah-or in Philadelphia, and ordering them to Pensacola, when they might be more usefully employed in the province where they were raised; the drafting troops from the corps, and from under the command of officers with whom they enlisted, to form new corps, and to give a command to other officers, are all measures which have had their discouraging effects on the recruiting service.

pleased to permit us to offer this renewed testi- | must recur, resting our appeal upon such proofs mony of loyalty and attachment to our most to the unerring and unbiased decision of truth gracious sovereign, and the British nation and and candor. government; and thus publicly to repeat our most heart-felt acknowledgments for the infinite obligations we feel ourselves under for the heavy expenses that have been incurred, and the great national exertions that have been made, to save and rescue us, and your American colonies, from impending ruin, and the accumulated distresses aud calamities of civil For such distinguished proofs of national ease and regard, we confess ourselves unable | to make that adequate return which our hearts, replete with the most dutiful and grateful sensations, most willingly offer, but which we have not words sufficient to express. Our sufferings as men, and our duty as loyal subjects, point out to us at once, the propriety, in our present situation, of thus publicly repeating our assurances, that we revere, with a kind of holy enthusiasm, the ancient constitution of the American colonies; and that we cannot but lament every event, and be anxiously solicitous to remove every cause of suspicion, that might have the most distant tendency to separate the two countries, or in any remote degree to lessen the claim we have to the present aid and continued exertions of Great Britain; especially if it should arise from any misrepresentation or distrust, either of our fidelity or numbers, to entitle us to the future countenance and protection of that sovereign and nation, whose government and laws, we call God to witness, that, in the integrity of our souls, we prefer to all others. The local prejudices of birth and education, and the weight of past and happy experience, conspire together to render, in our breasts, most sacred and inestimable, our relation to British subjects and British laws. We deem it more valuable than life itself, and under the most trying circumstances, have invariably resolved, in defiance of every hazard, to assert our rights; and, as far as in our power, in opposition to every other state and kingdom in the world, to adhere to the nation and country from which we sprung; and to which with honest pride and gratitude, we acknowledge that we owe both our natural and political existence.

Unhappy, indeed, for ourselves, and we cannot but think unfortunately too for Great Britain, the number of well affected inhabitants in America to the parent country, cannot, for obvious reasons, be exactly ascertained. But there are facts from which the most undoubted and undeniable conclusions may be inferred, and to which, for want of other evidence, we

The desultory manner also in which the war has been carried on, by first taking possession of Boston, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Portsmouth, Norfolk, in Virginia, Wilmington, in North Carolina, etc., etc., and then evacuating them, whereby many thousand inhabitants have been involved in the greatest wretchedness is another substantial reason why more loyalists have not enlisted into his majesty's service, or openly espoused and attached themselves to the royal cause; yet, notwithstanding all these discouraging circumstances, there are many more men in his majesty's provincial regiments than there are in the continental service. Hence it cannot be doubted but that there are more loyalists in America than there are rebels; and also, that their zeal must be greater, or so many would not have enlisted into the provincial service, under such very unequal circumstances. Other reasons might be enumerated, why many more have not enlisted into his majesty's provincial service, if we were not prevented from it by motives of delicacy and tenderness to the character of the person to whose management the business of that department was principally committed.

We also infer from the small number of militia collected by general Greene, the most popular and able general in the service of congress, in the long circuitous march he took through many of the most populous, and confessedly the most rebellious counties in that country, that there must be a vast majority of loyalists in that part of America, as well as elsewhere. The presumption becomes stronger from a consideration of the well known seduction and compulsion which were made use of by the rebel generals, and other officers, in order to embody the militia, as well as from the manner in which the militia are there mentioned by general Greene, in his public despatches in the course of one month. In that of the 10th of March, he says:-"Our militia have been upon such loose and uncertain footing, ever since we crossed the Dan, that I could attempt nothing with confidence." In his next of the 16th, in giving his account of two brigades of militia, consisting of three captains, ten subalterns, and 561 rank and file, he returns two captains, nine subalterns, and 592 rank and file missing, besides one regiment, of which he could get no return, and adds, "those missing are supposed to have gone home." According to the report of the generals and field officers, very few were killed or taken; most of them having thrown away their arms, and aban- | doned the field early in the action. In that of the 30th, he writes, "that nothing but blood and slaughter have prevailed among the whigs | and tories; and their inveteracy against each other must, if it continues, depopulate this part of the country." Surely, whole brigades throwing away their arms, and returning home, and all that sort of conduct, must carry with it the most presumptive evidence, not only of their aisaffection to the measures of congress, but of their loyalty and attachment to his majesty, and the British nation and government; especially if you take into the account this well known fact, that the rebels have recruited the continental army, and in all instances assembled the militia, by deceiving some, terrifying many, and driving more, to assist in their military operations. On the contrary, the service of the loyalists has in all cases been ready and voluntary; and in many unsolicited, and in some unnoticed, if not rejected.

If it should be said, if such is the number and disposition of the loyalists in America, how comes it to pass that they have not been of more importance to his majesty's service? We answer, might it not with equal propriety be enquired why his majesty's forces have not more fully answered the just expectations of

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the nation? And might not the question with greater propriety be put to his majesty's commanders in America? A due deference to whom, we trust, will be thought the most decent apology for our waiving the mention of many more of the true and undeniable causes which we have it in our power to assign. And permit us to add, that it is only from modesty, and a wish to avoid both the appearance and imputation of selfish ostentation, that we decline entering into a particular enumeration of such proofs of allegiance and fidelity, from the conduct and sufferings of American loyalists, as have never been equalled by any people, in any age, or in any country. We cannot, however, refrain from hinting at some incontestible advantages the loyalists have been of, in affording supplies to the royal army, by acting as guides and pilots, and (independent of those employed in the provincial line) as militia and partisan troops. As corps of Refugees, they have been too often distinguished by the zeal and gallantry of their behavior, to need the mention of any particular instance; if they did, we might refer to the affair of the Block-house, opposite Fort Knyphausen, where captain Ward, with about 70 Refugees, withstood and repulsed the attack of general Wayne, at the head of three chosen brigades of continentals. As a militia, acting by themselves (for we take no notice of the many thousands that, at different times, particularly in Georgia and South Carolina, have attached themselves to the royal army) a small party some time ago, under the command of one Bunnion, went from Long Island to Connecticut, and there surprised and took prisoner a rebel major general, named Silliman, and several other officers.

A party of militia also not long ago went from Wilmington, in North Carolina, 60 or 70 miles into the country, and took major general Ashe, with two or three field officers, and some other persons, and brought them prisoners to his majesty's garrison at Wilmington. Another party of militia lately went near 200 miles up into the country from Wilmington, to a place called Hillsborough, and with a body of 6 or 700 militia, attacked a party of rebel troops, who were there as a guard to the rebel legislature, then sitting at that place, and took the rebel governor, Mr. Burke, several of his council, II continental officers, and about 120 of the troops prisoners, whom the militia delivered to major Craig, who commanded the king's troops at Wilmington. Other more voluntary alerts, performed by the loyalists in South Carolina and elsewhere, might be mentioned without number. Surely such are not timid friends!

We defy the most incredulous opposer of American loyalty, as well as the most determined advocate for congressional usurpation, to point out a single instance wherein the likes has been done, or attempted by the rebel militia; or that they have in any instance voluntarily assembled in such numbers, or attempted any military achievements whatever, without the express orders and coercion of their tyrannical rulers.

The establishing civil government, and forming a militia in a colony as soon as the rebel army is drove out of it, is the best measure that can be adopted to make the loyal inhabitants importantly useful to the king's interest. It is the highest political absurdity that ever was thought of, to imagine that a colony is to be retained, and the peace and good order of government restored by the force of arms and martial law, and that too without the partial aid and concurrence of its inhabitants. And it is equally preposterous to expect that aid and concurrence, without some regard is paid to the prejudices and inclinations of the people. They should be treated with confidence and honored with notice, by being appointed to all offices of civil government. The protective authority and persuasive influence of which is the only measure that can extend to, and connect the people of a British province in one common interest and voluntary submission. A province, thus restored to the influence of civil government and the exertions of the militia, the natural force of the country, the royal army might proceed to the next, ever keeping the rebel forces in front. Thus province after province might and would be speedily reclaimed to their former happy and most eligible situation of British subjects.

of congress, and restoring them to the protection and benefit of British laws." The importance the possession of some part, if not the whole of the revolted colonies, must be of, as. an asylum for loyalists, as well as the weight it would be of in fixing the preliminary articles, and influencing the definitive treaty, whenever such an event should take place, strongly enforces the political propriety and necessity of the American war. It also appears to be a political and necessary measure, in order to detain the rebel forces in the revolted colonies; for there can be no doubt, if his majesty's troops were withdrawn from thence, but their views and operations would be immediately turned towards the province of Quebec to the northward, and the British West-India islands to the southward, and when the contiguity of the one, and the proximity of the others to the revolted colonies is considered, it is not improbable to suppose, from the connection now subsisting between America and France, Spain and Holland, but that, by the united forces of those powers in those adjacent islands, cooperating with the Americans, that the British islands must be immediately taken; and that all the continental possessions of Great Britain would soon after be irrecoverably lost. If we take into our view the effect the evacuation of America must have upon the minds of people, and the unavoidable intercourse there has been, and must continue to be, from the mutual wants and supplies of each other, it would be folly to imagine, but that many of the inhabitants of Quebec, and the Islands, would, from various motives, and with different views, under such circumstances, contribute in some measure towards facilitating their own reduction, and hastening the surrender to some other power. If Great Britain can maintain a naval superiority in the American seas, the continent, with proper conduct, is undoubtedly retainable. If she cannot, her insular possessions in America are still less tenable than her continental; for this plain reason, that the former are more assailable by naval force than the latter. Consequently, the prosecution of the American war with magnanimity and vigor appears to us the best, if not the only measure for re-animating his majesty's loyalists in America, to a strenuous exertion, of their most distinguished endeavors, for discouraging the efforts of the rebels-for dispiriting the hostile powers of Europe, and for maintaining the dignity, and

The policy of prosecuting the American war is strikingly obvious for more reasons, but particularly as it affords the most encouraging hope that can possibly be held out to his majesty's loyalists to persevere in their principles and exertions, at the same time that it affords a number of safe ports to the royal navy during the war. It is also political, in order to prevent vast numbers of distressed people from going to England, and throwing themselves and families, helpless and ruined, upon national bounty for maintenance and support. It is humane and just, from a consideration of the repeated declarations that have been made, that "it was the gracious and firm resolution of his majesty and the British nation to pre-preserving the exterior territories of the British serve, in every just and necessary measure, for the redemption of his majesty's faithful American subjects from the tyranny and oppression

nation and empire.

Relying with the fullest confidence upon national justice and compassion to our fidelity

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