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The Governour' s Answer to the Address of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Commonalty of the City of NEW-YORK, delivered to the Mayor to be laid before the Corporation.
GENTLEMEN: I receive with satisfaction your congratulations on my return to this Country, and obliging assurances of your affectionate regard from my former residence amongst you, and of your continued confidence in me at this melancholy crisis of publick affairs, already carried to an extreme much to be lamented by every good man and well-wisher of his King and Country.
I confess my disappointment at the change of circumstances in this Government, and feel the weightiest distress at the present unfriendly aspect of the times. Long residence in the Colonies, and a happy experience of repeated friendships, have, as it were, naturalized me to America, and bound me, while I remained in England, faithfully to represent the loyalty, sentiments, and situation of the inhabitants of this Province, and to support their interest with my best endeavours. At the same time, my breast glowing with an ardent zeal for the honour of my Sovereign, and affection for my native Country, I was induced to embark again for this Government, cherishing the pleasing hope of being able to contribute, in some small degree, the hastening the general wish of the Nation for a speedy and happy reconciliation between Great Britain and her Colonies. If there can be a time when it would be wisdom and humanity to listen to the calm and dispassionate
I am acquainted, in a despatch from the Earl of Dartmouth, that the Memorial and Representation of the General Assembly of this Province, were unfortunately blended with expressions containing claims, which made it impossible for Parliament, consistent with its justice and dignity, to receive it; yet the Petition to the King has been presented to His Majesty, who was pleased to receive it with the most gracious expressions of regard and attention to the humble requests of his faithful subjects in New-York; and I am authorized to say, that nothing can give greater satisfaction to the royal breast, than to see us again a happy and united people.
WILLIAM TRYON.
New-York, July 7, 1775.
Governour Tryon' s Answer to the Address
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voice of reason and moderation, it surely must be the present. I wish to embrace the idea, that neither disloyalty in His Majesty' s American subjects, or disaffection to the Mother Country, constitute any part of the present unnatural controversy; but that the contention flows from a mere misconception of constitutional principles. The Parliament, in their Resolution of the 27th of February, having made the first advance to a measure of accommodation, it would surely be glorious in the Americans to avail themselves of so important an opportunity in so noble a cause. In the present moment, were America to liberate the restraints she has laid on her commerce and constitutional authority, and through her Provincial Assemblies grant, suitable to the ease of their circumstances, supplies to the Mother Country for the protection of the whole British State, I am confident in my own mind the controversy would fall to the ground, and that many acts of conciliatory grace would be extended to America by Great Britain, which national honour cannot suffer to have torn from her by violence.