Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/312

288 represent to your Majesty, that your Parliament, the rectitude of whose intentions is never to be questioned, has thought proper to pass divers acts imposing taxes on your subjects in America, with the sole and express purpose of raising a revenue. If your Majesty's subjects here shall be deprived of the honor and privilege of voluntarily contributing their aid to your Majesty, in supporting your government and authority in the province, and defending and securing your rights and territories in America, which they have always hitherto done with the utmost cheerfulness; if these acts of Parliament shall remain in force, and your Majesty's Commons in Great Britain shall continue to exercise the power of granting the property of their fellow subjects in this province; your people roust then regret their unhappy fate in having only the name left of free subjects. With all humility we conceive that a representation of this province in Parliament, considering their local circumstances, is utterly impracticable. Your Majesty has therefore been graciously pleased to order your requisitions to be laid before the representatives of your people in the General Assembly, who have never failed to afford the necessary aid, to the extent of their ability, and sometimes beyond it, and it would be ever grievous to your Majesty's faithful subjects, to be called upon in a way that should appear to them to imply a distrust of their most ready and willing compliance." Besides this petition to the king, they sent letters to Lord Shelburne, General Conway, the Marquis of Rockingham, Lords Camden and Chatham, and the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury. They also, in February, 1768, issued a circular letter to the rest of the colonies, inviting them to engage in a common defence of their rights, concluding the letter with an expression of their "firm confidence in the king, their common head and father, and that the united and dutiful supplications of his distressed American subjects will meet with his royal and favorable acceptance."

The English ministry naturally dread ed any step which seemed to lead to a prospect of union of action on the part of the colonies. Hence Lord Hillsborough, recently appointed Secretary for the Colonies, directed Governor Bernard to press upon the House of Representatives the propriety of rescinding this circular as "rash and hasty," and artfully procured by surprise against the general sense of the Assembly, and to dissolve that body in case of refusal. He also addressed a circular with the same instructions to the rest of the royal governors. "As his Majesty considers this measure," it observed, "to be of the most dangerous and factious tendency, calculated to inflame the minds of his good subjects in the colonies, and promote an unwarrantable combination, it is his Majesty's pleasure that you should exert your utmost influence to defeat this flagitious attempt to disturb the public peace, by prevailing upon the Assembly of your province to take no notice of it, which will be treating it with the contempt it deserves." When Bernard communicated this message to the new Assembly,