Newbern (North-Carolina) Committee

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Committee Chamber, August 28, 1775.

On motion, Ordered, That a Proclamation signed by Governour Martin, dated on board His Majesty' s Sloop Cruiser, the 8th instant, be produced and read; which was done accordingly.

Resolved,That the said Proclamation is a compound of falsehood and illiberal abuse, artfully and insidiously dressed for publick exhibition, and evidently calculated to dissuade and intimidate the unwary and credulous from the duty they owe themselves and posterity; aiming to reflect dishonour, by the most personal invectives, on gentlemen whose zeal for their Country' s happiness has not only impressed us with a lively and lasting sense of their virtue, integrity, and abilities, but has happily hitherto rendered

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That the said Proclamation tends to stimulate and encourage the Crown officers and Court dependants in this Province to a vigorous exertion of their feeble powers in support of those infernal schemes of which the said Governour is the avowed patron.

That by admitting a name that might have been respectable to so foul and disgraceful a composition, the Governour has degraded himself from the elevated rank of our most gracious Sovereign' s representative, to the level and degree of a contemptible scribbler; with this only difference that as the latter would view his venal production from a garret in Grub-Street, the Governour is reduced to the necessity of smuggling his from the equally narrow limits to which unnecessary fears, the concomitants of guilt, have precipitately driven him.

That by the said Proclamation, as well as by sundry Letters heretofore published, the Governour has given the fullest evidence of his unfriendly disposition towards this Province, and manifested a determined resolution, as far as in his power, to subvert a Constitution which, at the expense of life and fortune, every honest man ought to support.

That therefore the aforesaid enormous Proclamation, in length no less than six feet, in breadth three, ought to be detested and despised by every real friend to the rights of mankind, and in our opinion deserves the infamy of being consigned to the flames by the hands of the common hangman, as the just reward of treason and rebellion against our happy Constitution, and as a false, scandalous, and malicious libel against the first and fairest characters in this country.

By order of the Committee:
JOHN GREEN, Chairman.
J˙ SITGREAVES, Secretary.