Address of the Borough of Plymouth

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Address of the Mayor, Recorder, Justices, Aldermen, Common Council, Freemen, and Inhabitants of the Borough of Plymouth, presented to His Majesty by the Right Honourable Lord Barrington and Sir Charles Hardy, Knight, their Representatives in Parliament.

The humble Address of the Mayor, Recorder, Justices, Aldermen, Common Council, Freemen, and Inhabitants of the Borough of PLYMOUTH.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty' s dutiful and loyal subjects, the Mayor, Recorder, Justices, Aldermen, Common Council, Freemen, and Inhabitants of the Borough of Plymouth, beg leave to assure your Majesty of our steady attachment to your person and family, in these times of publick commotion. We reflect with gratitude on the many blessings dispensed to us by your Majesty' s goodness, and observe with the deepest concern the calamitous effects of that spirit of discontent which prevails among your subjects in America, and is increased to such a degree as to produce all the evils of a civil war in that quarter of your Dominions. Arduous questions of Government, of which we are incompetent to judge, we do not affect to decide; we leave them to your Majesty, assisted by the Great Council of the Nation, in confidence that the powers vested in you by the laws of your Kingdom will ever be directed towards the attainment of the great end of their institution — the good of your people. And we persuade ourselves that, under the influence of measures concerted with wisdom and executed with firmness and moderation, the Colonists will be brought to a just sense of their duty, that good order will be re-established among them, and that peace and harmony will take place throughout the British Empire.

Permit us further to assure you, Sir, that we contemplate with abhorrence every proposition that is inconsistent with the idea of your Majesty' s perfect security on the throne of these Kingdoms, because we look up to your Majesty as the faithful guardian of those liberties which were recovered by the Revolution, have been protected by your illustrious family, and which, we trust, will be preserved entire to us and our descendants.