Address of Francis Lewis

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To the Inhabitants of the City and County of NEW-YORK.

GENTLEMEN: The trust you were pleased to repose in us, in appointing us members of the Committee of Correspondence, renders it necessary to inform you of the above proceedings, as well as to justify our conduct upon the points on which we divided. We voted against Mr˙ Thurman' s motion, because 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; and although the manner of calling them might not be deemed so regular as might be wished, though practised heretofore in the debates on the Stamp Act, yet considering that a respectable number of our fellow-citizens did meet, and did no acts but what were conformable to the general spirit of all the Colonies in this alarming state of our public affairs, we therefore conceived that our disavowing their conduct would naturally tend to hold up the idea of a division, if not a disapprobation of the resolutions; and as the resolutions do not so much as insinuate that they came from the Committee, no charge could lie against them for any matter contained in them. For these reasons, also, we voted against Mr˙ McEvers' s motion to publish the proceedings, and because he declared, before the question was put, that these proceedings should be published, in order that they might be sent home by the packet. This declaration from a member of the Committee, has, in our opinion, such a tendency to hold up a disunion amongst us, which must impede the public business, and retard a redress of our grievances, especially as the gentlemen who voted for his motion heard the reasons offered against their being published, that we conceive we cannot, with such a majority, answer the end of our appointment; and, therefore, in justice to ourselves, and from a regard to the public interest, we desire that our names may be erased out of the list of the Committee. And we are humbly of opinion,

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FRANCIS LEWIS,
ISAAC SEARS,
JOSEPH HALLETT,
THOMAS RANDALL,
ALEXANDER MCDOUGALL,
ABRAHAM P˙ LOTT,
P˙ V˙ B˙ LIVINGSTON,
LEONARD LISPENARD.

We, whose names are hereunto subscribed, though not present at the debates, do likewise request our names may be struck out of the list of the Committee.

JOHN BROOME,
ABRAHAM BRASHER,
JACOBUS VAN ZANDT.

N˙ B˙ It may be proper to inform the reader, that printing the proceedings of the Committee has been agitated several times, and judged inexpedient, because every citizen, by the rules of the Board, may have access to them in the presence of one of the members; that Mr˙ McEvers' s motion was made after the Committee adjourned to Monday next, and some of the members were gone, and one going down stairs.

New-York, July 8th, 1774.