Letter regarding Dutchess County

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New-York, May 15,1775.

Mr˙ GAINE: As in this season of publick distress, every altercation that may tend to promote divisions and animosities, ought carefully to be avoided; and as a coalition of parties in the County of Dutchess will probably very soon take place, and a proper union between its inhabitants established, no reply, for the above reasons, will be sent you in answer to the observations in one of your last Papers, on the Protest from that County; instead of which, as it may be somewhat satisfactory, you may assure the publick that the numerous body of freeholders and inhabitants who have heretofore been averse, to the nomination of Committees, opposed solely from a virtuous principle of promoting there-by by the real interests of their Country. They conceived, and had good reasons to believe, that as the mode of application for redress of grievances adopted by their Assembly was the only constitutional one, it would most probably be attended with the desired effect; and that no motives unfriendly to the liberties of their Country ever influenced any part of their conduct, when opposed to Committees.