Answer of "One of the Committee" to the fore

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FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN: Your Committee of fifty-one having laid before you their proceedings on Thursday evening, I should not have troubled you at this time, had not eleven of the Committee made a formal resignation, and published an appeal to you in justification of their conduct.

You are told, that "the people have an undoubted right to convene themselves, and come into whatever resolutions they shall think proper, if they be not contrary to law." This is granted by every one; but you would think me a very impudent fellow, and deserving of the severest reprehension, if I, as a member of that Committee, was to call you together this evening by an anonymous advertisement, and propose a set of resolves to you of the last importance, without either giving you the least previous notice of their contents, or consulting your Committee upon the occasion. Would you not be all of opinion that I deserved the highest censure, both from you and the Committee? This was the ground of your Committee' s conduct; and their disapprobation, as you have seen, was conceived in the mildest terms the nature of the case could admit of. And let those who quitted the chamber in a rage, ordering their names struck off, and afterwards bawling along the streets, "the Committee is dissolved — the Committee is dissolved" — let them, I say, be answerable for the consequences of a division, if a division must take place. Your Committee, notwithstanding the evident designs of a faction to dissolve them, are determined to persevere in promoting, to the utmost of their ability, the important ends of their appointment, so long as you, their constituents, shall signify your approbation of their conduct.

The remainder of the appeal is taken up with a declaration of Mr˙ McEvers' s, artfully selected to throw an oblique slur upon that gentleman' s character. You are told, "that he declared, before the question was put, that these proceedings should be published, in order to be sent home by the packet." But they forgot to tell you, that Mr˙ McEvers previously declared that the resolves were printed in Mr˙ Holt' s paper on purpose to be sent home by the packet, and that he wished our proceedings might accompany that paper wherever it went. This is all that your Committee had in view in publishing their proceedings. They conceived that the resolves were printed and held up to the world, not only as the act of this Committee, but of the city at large, and that they would evidently pass under such a construction, unless the mode of obtaining them was publicly disavowed. But you will readily discover how artfully this has been represented, with a view of tarnishing one of the most amiable characters among us; a character that is strongly marked in the breast of every

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ONE OF THE COMMITTEE.

New-York, July 9th, 1774.