Address of the Boroughs of Dunfermline, Inverkeithing, and Culross

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Address of the Boroughs of Dunfermline, Inverkeithing, and Culross, presented to His Majesty by Lieutenant-Colonel Archibald Campbell, their Representative in Parliament.

Most Gracious Sovereign:

We, your Majesty' s most dutiful and loyal subjects, presume to approach your throne with the deepest and most grateful sense of the manifold blessings which, under the dispensation of Divine Providence, we have happily enjoyed during the course of your Majesty' s auspicious reign.

It is with equal sorrow and surprise that we find ourselves called upon to express our abhorrence and detestation of those rebellious violences into which some of your Majesty' s subjects on the Continent of America have been unhappily deluded, and to such a degree as to manifest a desire of shaking off all dependance upon that Legislature which they have so often petitioned in time of distress, by which they were so frequently and so effectually relieved, and by whose favour and under whose protection their prosperity and opulence have been carried to so great a height.

It is the sincere and ardent wish of these your ancient and faithful Boroughs, that peace and good order in that part of your Empire may be speedily and happily re-established by the wisdom of your Majesty' s councils, and by the success of your arms in support of your crown and dignity, and the authority of the British Legislature. And we beg leave to assure your Majesty that we are ready, from every principle of loyalty and attachment, to contribute cheerfully thereto, by the utmost exertions in our power.

May it please your Majesty, we are your Majesty' s most dutiful and loyal subjects.

Signed by order, and in the name of our respective Councils:

JOHN KIRK, Chief Magistrate of Dunfermline.
ARCH˙ CAMPBELL, Chief Magistrate of Inverkeithing.
JAMES JOHNSTON, Chief Magistrate of Culross.

Dunfermline, October, 1775.