Letter from the Committee of Correspondence to the Committee of Boston

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Elizabethtown, New-Jersey, July 28, 1774.

GENTLEMEN: The arbitrary and cruel oppression under which your Metropolis now labours, from the suspension of commerce, must inevitably reduce multitudes to inexpressible difficulty and distress. Suffering in a glorious and common cause, sympathy and resentment, with peculiar energy, fill the breasts of your anxious countrymen. As the King of Kings and the Ruler of Princes seems, in a remarkable manner, to be inspiring these Colonies with a spirit of union, to confound the counsels of your unrighteous oppressors, and with a spirit of humanity and benevolence towards an innocent and oppressed people; so, we trust, he will also inspire your town with patience, resignation, and fortitude, until this great calamity shall be overpast.

We have the pleasure to acquaint you, that, on the 21st instant, at the city of New-Brunswick, the Province of New-Jersey, with singular unanimity, seventy-two Delegates from the several counties, and a majority of the House of Representatives present and approving, entered into similar resolutions with the other Colonies; elected five Deputies for the proposed Congress, and the County Committees then agreed to promote collections in their respective counties, for the relief of such of the unhappy inhabitants of the town of Boston as may now be reduced to extremity and want. To accomplish this purpose with the more acceptation to yourselves, we, the Committee of Correspondence for the Eastern Division, request that, by the return of the post, you would be pleased to advise us in what way we can best answer your present necessities; whether cash remitted, or what articles of provision, or other necessaries, we can furnish from hence, would be most agreeable; and which we hope we shall be able to forward to Boston very soon after your advice shall be received. We doubt not gentlemen are devising every possible method for the employment of those who, by their

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We are, gentlemen, your very humble servants,

By order,

WILLIAM P˙ SMITH, Chairman.