Thanks to the Merchants of New-York

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New-York, October 20, 1774.

It has been deemed by some proper and eligible to return publick thanks to a set of Mechanicks for bravely refusing their assistance in securing their Sovereign' s Troops from the inclemencies of the seasons; what acknowledgments are not due to you, gentlemen, for asserting and preserving your rights of thinking and acting in a more humane and reasonable manner, against the unwarrantable and bold attempts of those persons who use the prostituted name of liberty only to infringe that of others with success and impunity. Suffer not then these sons of licentiousness and disorder to encroach further. The unbounded and lawless heights to which they have risen in a neighbouring Province, demands your serious attention; take heed that while the words tyranny and oppression are bandied about and fixed on Britain, you are not unawares enthralled at home, and subjected to a domination the most abject and slavish, viz: that of the idle, the vicious, and profane, for it is not among the industrious artisans, the honest farmers, or frugal tradesmen that you are to look for these children of mischief, tumult, and riot, but among those who either having nothing to lose, or, having wasted their own substance, would gladly become the masters of yours. These are the men who excite sedition and commotions, nay, would even blow the trumpet of rebellion through the land, so they might in the confusion of the times but divide and share in your property. Thanks, gentlemen, thanks for the noble stand on the late occasion, and may every Province, after your example, thus uphold the privileges of freemen and early crush these atrocious intruders on true and genuine liberty.