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To his Excellency the Right Honourable Lord WILLIAM CAMPBELL, Captain-General, Governour, and Commander-in-Chief in and over his Majesty' s Colony of SOUTH-CAROLINA:
The humble Address of the Commons House of Assembly of the said Colony:
May it please your Excellency:
We, His Majesty' s loyal subjects, the Representatives of the inhabitants of this Colony, met in General Assembly at this very alarming and critical period, beg leave to assure your Excellency that we are willing to postpone the consideration of our private affairs whenever the publick exigences demand our attention; fully convinced that the safety of private property entirely depends upon the security of publick rights.
We most sincerely lament that His Majesty' s Councils, and the conduct of his Ministers, have incapacitated us from meeting your Excellency, whose zealous endeavours in Great Briain for the welfare of this Colony claim our grateful acknowledgements, with those effects of joyful congratulation, the fleets of real sentiments upon your arrival and assumption of the reins of Government, with which, in happier times, we have ever been accustomed to meet His Majesty' s Representatives; but the calamities of America, our present dangerous and dreadful situation, occupy all our thoughts, and banish from us every idea of joy and pleasure.
Although we will not doubt the fervent zeal of your Excellency' s heart for the real interest and happiness of this Colony, nor the sincerity of your Excellency' s professions to be instrumental in restoring that harmony, cordiality, confidence and affection, which ought to subsist between Great Britain and her Colonies; yet we cannot but excellency has thought proper to pass on "measures" which have been "adopted" by the good people of this Colony, in confederacy with all Colonies on this Continent, from Nova-Scotia to Georgia, for their own safety and for the preservation of their liberties, and the liberties of generations yet unborn.
In times when the spirit of the Constitution has full operation, and, animating all the members of the State, gives security to civil liberty, then we claim to be "the only legal Representatives of the People in this Province, the only constitutional guardians of its welfare;" but in the present unhappy situation of affairs, though our constituents might have thought us competent, yet as our meeting depended upon the pleasure of the Crown, they would not trust to so precarious a contingency, but wisely appointed another representative body, for necessary, for special, and important purposes.
We want words to give an idea of our feelings at your Excellency' s expression, "If there are any grievances that we apprehend the people of this Province labour under." as if you doubted their existence. The world resounds with
By order of the House:
RAWLINS LOWNDES, Speaker.
In the Commons House of Assembly, July 12, 1775.
Address of the Commons House of Assembly of South-Carolina to the Governour
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a catalogue of them. Your Excellency surely cannot be unacquainted with them. We should have esteemed it a high obligation, if your Excellency had pointed out to us what effectual mode for the redress of those grievances could have been pursued, or what steps we have omitted which we ought to have taken, in order to avert the inevitable ruin of this once flourishing Colony. Every pacifick measure which human wisdom could devise has been used; the most humble and dutiful Petitions to the Throne, Petitions to the House of Lords and House of Commons of Great Britain, have been repeatedly presented, and as often treated, not only with slight, but with rigour and resentment: we, therefore, with all due deference to your Excellency' s judgment, beg leave to observe, that the present are the only measures which seem best calculated for our preservation, and the removal of our intolerable grievances. However, not confiding in them alone, we wait the event, and leave the justice of our cause to the feat Sovereign of the Universe, upon whom the fate of Kingdoms and Empires depends.