Page:American History Told by Contemporaries, v2.djvu/221

No. 72] frequent Printer and Publisher of false News and seditious Libels, and wickedly and maliciously devising the Government of Our said Lord the King of this His Majesty's Province of New-York, under the Administration of His Excellency William Cosby, Esq ; Captain General and Governour in Chief of the said Province, to traduce, scandalize and vilify, and His Excellency the said Governour, and the Ministers and Officers of Our said Lord the King of and for the said Province to bring into Suspicion and the ill Opinion of the Subjects of Our said Lord the King residing within the said Province) the Twenty eighth Day of January, in the seventh Year of the Reign of Our Sovereign Lord George the second, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. at the City of New-York, did falsly, seditiously and scandalously print and publish, and cause to be printed and published, a certain false, malicious, seditious, scandalous Libel, entituled, The New-York Weekly Journal, containing the freshest Advices foreign and domestick ; in which Libel (of and concerning His Excellency the said Governour, and the Ministers and Officers of Our said Lord the King, of and for the said Province) among other Things therein contained are the Words "Your Appearance in Print at last", gives a Pleasure to many, tho most wish you had come fairly into the open Field, and not appeared behind Retrenchments made of the supposed Laws against Libelling, and of what other Men have said and done before ; these Retrenchments, Gentlemen, may soon be shewn to you and all Men to be weak, and to have neither Law nor Reason for their Foundation, so cannot long stand you instead : Therefore, you had much better as yet leave them, and come to what the People of this City and Province (the City and Province of New-York meaning) think are the Points in Question (to wit) They (the People of the City and Province of New-York meaning) think as Matters now stand, that their LIBERTIES and PROPERTIES are precarious, and that SLAVERY is like to be intailed on them and their Posterity, if some past Things be not amended, and this they collect from many past Proceedings." (Meaning many the past Proceedings of His Excellency of the said Governour, and of the Ministers and Officers of our said Lord the King, of and for the said Province). . . among other Things therein contained, are these Words, ["] One of our Neighbours (one of the Inhabitants of New-Jersey meaning) being in Company, observing the Strangers (some of the Inhabitants of New-York meaning) full of Complaints, endeavoured to perswade them to remove into Jersey ; to which it was replied, that