New-York Delegates to New-York Congress

v2:1591

Philadelphia, July 6, 1775.

GENTLEMEN: We have the honour of your favour of the twenty-ninth June, accompanying your plan and proceedings respecting an accommodation with the Parent State. Nothing could be more interesting or acceptable to us, than a communication of the sentiments and wishes of our worthy constituents on this most important subject; and while we applaud the wisdom of your decisions, we beg you to be assured that they shall command our most earnest and respectful attention.

Deeply sensible of the calamities of a civil war, we have nothing more at heart than to be instrumental in compromising this unnatural quarrel between the two Countries, on the solid basis of mutual justice and constitutional liberty; and the most strenuous efforts, on our part, shall be exerted with unremitting ardour, to accomplish this salutary purpose.

We acknowledge, with the utmost gratitude, the deference, you are pleased to pay to our judgment, and your delicacy in leaving us unrestrained, in a point of all others the most essential to yourselves and your posterity, to the Continent of America, and the whole British Empire; and happy shall we esteem ourselves if, in the discharge of this difficult and arduous trust, we shall merit your approbation and the confidence of our Country.

We have the honour to be, with the greatest respect, gentlemen, your most obedient humble servants,

HENRY WINSER,
WM˙ FLOYD,
JOHN JAY,
JOHN ALSOP,
PHILIP LIVINGSTON,
JAMES DUANE,
ROB' T R˙ LIVINGSTON.

Provincial Congress of New-York.

P˙ S. We have unanimously agreed to be silent on that article in the Plan of Accommodation which asserts, "That no earthly legislature or tribunal ought, or can of right interfere or interpose, in any wise howsoever, in the religious and ecclesiastical concerns of the Colonies." As the inhabitants of the Continent are happily united in a political creed, we are of opinion that it would be highly imprudent to run the risk of dividing them by the introduction of disputes foreign to the present controversy, especially as the discussion of them can be attended with no one single advantage. They are points about which mankind will forever differ, and therefore should always, and at least in times like these, be kept out of sight. We are the more confirmed in these sentiments by this circumstance, that both this and the former Congress have cautiously avoided the least hint on subjects of this kind, all the members concurring in a desire of burying all disputes on ecclesiastical points, which have for ages had no other tendency than that of banishing peace and charity from the world.

LEWIS MORRIS,
JAMES DUANE,
JOHN ALSOP,
FRANCIS LEWIS,
HENRY WISNER,
PHILIP LIVINGSTON,
ROB' T R˙ LIVINGSTON, JR˙,
JOHN JAY,
WILLIAM FLOYD.

N˙ B. The other Delegates are absent.