Report

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A report having been circulated, that a printed paper, published as extracts of letters from London, dated there the 7th and 8th of April, last, which were printed on the back of a copy of the late Act of the English Parliament, for shutting up the port of Boston, and distributed about town on Saturday last, May 14th, were spurious, and that the intelligence was not written from England, but fabricated here. As I am able to prove the said report to be entirely false, I leave every one to judge whether it comes from the friends or the enemies of the rights and liberties of Great Britain and the Colonies. The letters, whose contents are printed on the back of the Act aforesaid, were received on Thursday, the 12th instant, by the Samson, Captain Coupar; the latest ship arrived here from London. They were by one of the writers committed to the particular care of the gentleman who delivered them here, who is now in town, and can prove both the receipt of them in London, and the delivery here. One of the letters, which contains the most circumstantial account of the facts, is left in the hands of the printer of the New-York Journal, who can both vouch for the truth of the copies, and produce the original of the principal letter; the other two letters, which were also seen by him and several other persons in town, are now gone to Philadelphia, by a gentleman of that place, who was here when Captain Coupar arrived. These letters (one of which was from a military officer of eminence, both on account of his rank and literary abilities) soon after their arrival, were read to several gentlemen in town, who thought their contents so important, that they solicited for the copies, and were at the expense of making them public.

NEW-YORK, May 17, 1774.