Address of His Majesty' s Council

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May it please your Excellency:

We, His Majesty' s Council of the Massachusetts-Bay, having been honoured with your Excellency' s message, informing us of His Majesty' s orders, "that you should repair to England, to lay before him the state of affairs in this Colony," beg leave to assure your Excellency, that from a sense of the many virtues which distinguish and adorn your character, we feel the most sincere regret at the necessary occasions which call you from us.

The critical situation of affairs in America, during your administration in the Province, has afforded an opportunity for the severest trial of those virtues; and we should betray a great degree of insensibility, or be wanting in common justice to your character, were we to suffer them to pass unnoticed. We reflect with gratitude upon that care and attention, by which we have been secured from many of the calamities and miseries with which we have been threatened.

Your concern for the evils we have unavoidably suffered has exceedingly endeared your Excellency to us; and we shall ever entertain a profound respect for the prudence, benevolence, and candour, which have been so conspicuous in your civil department, as well as the great steadiness, vigilance, and humanity, which have marked your military character.

We have seen with pleasure the many efforts you have made to avert this unhappy rebellion. We lament that the success has not been equal to your endeavours. But the undisturbed constancy and firmness with which you have pursued this principle, opposed to every abuse which wickedness, delusion, or enthusiasm could devise, has been as much the object of admiration to the loyal, as the subject of disappointment to the disaffected people of this Province.

The difficulties you have had to encounter, during your administration, are known but to a few. Your patience and secrecy have kept them from the publick eye. To lay them open to the world, would be a subject offensive to your delicacy, as well as too large to come within the compass of our address.

We flatter ourselves, that our loyalty to the best of Kings will recommend us to the care and protection of your Excellency' s successors in command; whose characters, in their important stations, promise every encouragement we can wish. And we hope your Excellency will be pleased to recommend us to our gracious Sovereign; to assure him we are unalienably attached to his sacred person and Government; that hoping for his approbation, and relying on the benignity of his royal mind, we support ourselves with all possible patience, under the difficulties we are obliged to encounter.

We wish your Excellency a safe arrival at the Court of Great Britain, where we doubt not you will meet the gracious approbation of our royal master.