Documenting the American South Logo
Colonial and State Records of North Carolina
Circular letters from William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth to the American Governors
Dartmouth, William Legge, Earl of, 1731 - 1801
March 03, 1775
Volume 09, Page 1137

-------------------- page 1137 --------------------
[B. P. R. O. Am. & W. Ind.: Vol. 279.]
Private Circulars to the Governor of North Carolina and to other Governors.


Whitehall, March 3rd 1775.

My separate dispatch of this day's date, including a Resolution of the House of Commons, may be ostensibly of use in case the General Assembly should think fit to take up the consideration of that resolution, but it is fit I should observe to you that is not His Majjesty's intention, for very obvious reasons, that you should officially communicate it to them. At the same time as I think it cannot fail to be an object of discussion in the Assembly, I must add that the King considers that the good effect of it will, in great measure, depend upon your ability and address in a proper explanation of it to those whose situation and connections may enable them to give facility to the measures it points to; and His Majesty has no doubt that you will exert every endeavour to induce such a compliance, on the part of the Assembly, as may correspond with His Majesty's ideas of their justice, and His earnest wishes to see a happy restoration of the Publick Tranquility.

I am &c.,
DARTMOUTH.

———


Whitehall, 3rd March, 1775.

It is fit I should acquaint you that the resolution of the House of Commons which accompanies my separate dispatch, passed in the Committee by a majority of 274 to 88, and was received and agreed to by the House without a Division, and indeed the great Majorities which have appeared in both Houses upon every question that has been proposed for maintaining the Supremacy of Parliament is such an evidence of the general sense of the Nation upon that subject as must show how little ground there has been for those assurances which have been artfully held out to the Americans of support here in the dangerous conduct they have adopted, and convince them that there neither can nor will be any the least relaxation from those measures which that conduct has made indispensably necessary for reducing the Colonies to a state of due obedience to the Constitutional authority of Parliament.

I am &c.,
DARTMOUTH.