Chap. XLI.} 1777. July 6. |
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On the same day thanks were addressed to the
lord mayor, aldermen, and livery of London, for their unsolicited sympathy.
‘North America,’ it was further said, ‘wishes most ardently for a lasting connection with Great Britain on terms of just and equal liberty; less than which generous minds will not offer, nor brave and free ones receive.’
The desire for harmony was so intense, that Richard Penn, a proprietary of Pennsylvania and recently its governor, a most loyal Englishman, bound by the strongest motives of affection and interest to avert American independence, was selected to bear the second petition to the throne.
He assumed the trust with alacrity, and on the twelfth of July embarked on his mission.
The hope of success grew out of the readiness of the Americans, on the condition of exemption from parliamentary taxation, to bear the restraints on their trade; or, as an alternative, to purchase a freedom of trade like that of Scotland, by taxing themselves towards the payment of the national debt.
From the complacency engendered by delusive confidence, congress was recalled to the necessities of the moment by a letter from Washington.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1860.
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