To His Excellency, Josiah Martin Esquire, Captain General, Governor, &ca,
Most Excellent Governor:
Permit us, in behalf of ourselves, and many others of His Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects within the County of Anson, to take the earliest opportunity of addressing your Excellency, and expressing our abomination of the many outrageous attempts now forming on this side the Atlantick, against the peace and tranquility of His Majesty's Dominions in North America, and to witness to your Excellency, by this our Protest, a disapprobation and abhorence of the many lawless combinations and unwarrantable practices actually carrying on by a gross tribe of infatuated anti-Monarchists in the several Colonies in these Dominions; the baneful consequence of whose audacious contrivance can, in fine, only tend to extirpate the fundamental principles of all Government, and illegally to shake off their obedience to, and dependance upon, the imperial Crown and Parliament of Great Britain; the infection of whose pernicious example being already extened to this particular County, of which we now bear the fullest testimony.
It is with the deepest concern (though with infinite indignation) that we see in all public places and papers disagreeable votes, speeches and resolutions, said to be entered into by our sister Colonies, in the highest contempt and derogation of the superintending power of the legislative authority of Great Britain. And we further, with sorrow, behold their wanton endeavors to vilify and arraign the honour and integrity of His Majesty's most honourable Ministry and Council, tending to sow the seeds of discord and sedition, in open violation of their duty and allegiance.
We are truly invigorated with the warmest zeal and attachment in favour of the British Parliament, Constitution and Laws, which our forefathers gloriously struggled to establish, and which are now become the noblest birthright and inheritance of all Britannia's Sons.
We should be criminally wanting in respect and gratitude to the names of those ancestors, and ill deserve the protection of that Superiour Parliamentary power, could we tamely suffer its authority to be so basely controverted and derided, without offering our protest to your Excellency against such ignominious disobedience and reproach; for we consider that, under Divine Providence, it is solely upon the wisdom and virtue of that superior legislative might that the safety of our lives and fortunes, and the honour and welfare of this country, do most principally depend.
Give us leave, therefore, Sir, to express our utter detestation and abhorrence of the late unjustifiable violation of publick commercial credit in the Massachusetts Government.
We protest against it with the utmost disdain, as the wicked experiment of a most profligate and abandoned Republican faction, whereby the general repose and tranquility of His Majesty's good subjects on this Contiment are very much endangered and impaired. We think it indispensibly necessary, and our duty at this alarming crisis, to offer this memorial and protest to your Excellency, against all such enthusiastick transgressions, (more especially the late ones committed by the common cause Deputies within this Province,) to the intent that it may be delivered down to posterity, that our hands were washed pure and clear of any cruel consequences, lest the woful calamities of a distracted country should give birth to sedition and insurrection, from the licentiousness of a concert prone to rebellion.
And we cannot omit expressing further to your Excellency, that we consider all such associations at this period of a very dangerous fatality against your Excellency's good Government of this Province, being calculated to distress the internal welfare of this Country, to mislead the unwary ignorant from the paths of their duty, and to entail destruction upon us, and wretchedness upon our posterity.
We do, most excellent Governor, with all obedience and humility, profess and acknowledge, in our consciences, that a law of the high Court of Parliament of Great Britain is an exercise of the highest authority that His Majesty's subjects can acknowledge upon earth,
and that we do believe it hath legal power to bind every subject in that land, and the dominions thereunto belonging. And we do, moreover, with all duty and gratitude, acknowledge and reverence in the utmost latitude an Act of Parliament made in the sixth year of the reign of his present most sacred Majesty, entitled “An Act for the better securing the dependance of His Majesty's Dominions in America, on the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain.And we do further beg leave to express our detestation of the many scandalous and ignorant deliberations on the power of that Parliament in the control of His Majesty's Provincial Charters. For could the doctrine of such unruly propositions possibly exist, or should their insolent attempt unhappily prevail, it must at once extinguish those Laws and that Constitution which are the glory of the British Empire and the envy of all Nations around it.
We are truly sensible that those invaluable blessings which we have hitherto enjoyed under His Majesty's auspicious Government, can only be secured to us by the stability of his Throne, supported and defended by the British Parliament, the only grand bulwark and guardian of our civil and religious liberties.
Duty and affection oblige us further to express our grateful acknowledgements for the inestimate blessings flowing from such a Constitution. And we do assure your Excellency that we are determined, by the assistance of Almighty God, in our respective stations, steadfastly to continue His Majesty's loyal Subjects, and to contribute all in our power for the preservation of the publick peace; so, that, by our unanimous example, we hope to discourage the desperate endeavours of a deluded multitude, and to see a misled people turn again from their atrocious offences to a proper exercise of their obedience and duty.
And we do furthermore assure your Excellency, that we shall endeavor to cultivate such sentiments in all those under our care, and to warm their breasts with a true zeal for His Majesty, and affection for his illustrious family. And may the Almighty God be pleased to direct his Councils, his Parliament, and all those in authority under him, that their endeavours may be for the advancement of piety, and the safety, honour and welfare of our Sovereign and his Kingdoms, that the malice of his enemies may be assuaged, and their evil designs confounded and defeated; so that all the world may be convinced that his sacred person, his Royal family, his Parliament,
and our Country, are the special objects of Divine dispensation and Providence.