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Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Letter from William Tryon to William Petty, Marquis of Lansdowne
Tryon, William, 1729-1788
July 04, 1767
Volume 07, Page 497

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[From Tryon's Letter Book.]
Letter from Governor Tryon to Earl Shelburne

No 2.

Brunswick 4th July 1767.

By the enclosed reports of the Committee of both Houses met at Newbern to state and settle the publick accounts of this province at the last General Assembly, his Majesty may observe the low state of the publick fund of his colony of North Carolina. I have taken every publick and private opportunity of recommending a stricter examination into the Treasurers' receipts and disbursements of the publick money, and the urgent necessity of establishing order and more compulsive regulations for the several receivers or collectors of the public money. The Treasurers have hitherto shewn so much illjudged lenity towards the Sheriffs that upon a medium the Sheriffs have embezzled more than one half of the public money ordered to be raised and collected by them. It is estimated that the sheriffs arrears to the publick amount to forty thousand pounds proclamation money, not five thousand of which will possibly ever come into the treasury as in many instances the sheriffs and their securities are either insolvent or retreated out of the province. The treasurers lenity or rather remissness in the material part of their duty I construe to be founded on a principal of caution, for by not suing the sheriffs in arrear they obtain a considerable weight of interest among the connections of these delinquent sheriffs and which generally secures them a re-election in their offices when expired. I flatter myself some better regulations will be established at the next general assembly prorogued to the second of December before which time I much wish to be honoured with his Majesty's commands relative to the claims of the Council and Assembly in the nomination of the treasurers as recited in my letter of the 31st of January last, as also in the Journals of both houses.

I have the honor to be, my Lord &c.