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PREFACE.

TH

HE very favourable reception that the Annual Register has been honoured with from an indulgent Public, has made it no lefs our duty than our intereft to exert our utmost endeavours to make our work as worthy of their attention as we are able. The time of publication we are sensible is a point which it is our duty and intereft to attend to; and it is never without extreme regret that we have found the publication delayed beyond the beginning of the fummer. But for the lateness of the prefent publication we have only one excuse to make -a very fevere illness which for feve

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PREFACE.

ral weeks confined the gentleman principally concerned in the work to his bed. This created an unavoidable delay; but the firft efforts of his returning health were employed in endeavours that the diligence and attention in the execution might in some measure compenfate for the lateness of the publication.

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Retrospective view of affairs in the colonies in the year 1764. General effect of the late laws. Impeachment of Mr. Oliver. Assembly of Massachusett's Pay dissolved. General Gage arrives at Boston. Great consternation on receiving the Boston port bill. New assembly meet at Boston, and are adjourned to Salem. Provincial and town meetings. Assembly of Virginia dissolved. Philadelphia. New York. Address from Gentlemen, &c. of Boston to the new governor. Address from the council rejected. Transections of the house of representatives at Salem. The assembly dissolved. Address from the town of Salem. General temper and disposition of the people throughout the continent. Solemn league and covenant. Proclama-tion against it. Measures relative to the holding of a general congress. Resolutions passed in different places. Address from the justices of Plymouth county. Uneasiness excited by the arrival of troops. False alarm. Proclamation for the encouragement of piety and virtue, &c. Hostile appearances. New judges incapable of acting. New counsellors compelled to renounce their affices. Fortification on Boston Neck. Provincial magazine seized. The people in a violent ferment. Company of cadets disband themselves, and return the standard. Sundry resolutions passed by the delegates of the county VOL. XVIII. 1775. [4)

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of Suffolk. Remonstrance. Answer. Writs for holding a general assembly countermanded by proclamation. The representatives meet notwithstanding at Salem; vote themselves into a provincial congress, and adjourn to the town of Concord. Remonstrance from the provincial congress; governor's answer. State of affairs at Boston. Further proceedings of the provincial congress. Proclamation.

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T happens most unfortunately this year, that our own public affairs not only take the lead among those of Europe, but have in a great degree absorbed all other matter of political speculation. A cessation seems to take place in the animosities and designs of other states. The great disturbers of mankind appear to forget their rapacity and ambition, whilst they conteniplate the new and unthought-of spectacle we exhibit to the world, and perhaps eagerly predict the advantages which they may derive from fts fatal consequences.

It need scarcely be mentioned, that the unhappy contest in which we are involved with our colonies, is the event which has thus excited. the attention of mankind. Those colonies, which were so long our strength and our glory, whose rapid growth and astonishing increase mocked the calculations of politicians, and outstripped the speculations of philosophers; those colonies, which equally excited the apprehensions of our enemies, and the envy of our friends, still attract the eyes of the world, to them and o us, as to a common centre; but present a very different appearate of things to observation. Happy will it be, if this general attention is productive of no other sentiment, than the admiration which arises from novelty, or the generous sympathy which feels for the miseries of mankind.

The penal laws, which we saw pas ed, in the last session of the last parliament, relative to the colony of Massachusett's Bay, and which were intended to operate both as a chastisement for past, and a preventative of future misdemeanors in that province, were unfortunately poductive of effects very different from those which the sanguine promoters of those bills had hoped, and which administration had held out to the nation. Other purposes were expected from them besides punish inent and prevention. It was expeeted, that the shutting up of the port of Boston would have been naturally a gratification to the neighbouring towns, from the great be nefits which would accrue to them, by the splitting and removing of its commerce; and that this would prove a fruitful source of jealousy and disunion within the province. It was also thought, that the particular punishment of that province would not only operate as an example of terror to the other colonies, but that from the selfishness and malignancy incident to mankind, as well as from their common jealousies, they would quietly re-ign it to its fate, and enjoy with pleasure any benefits they could derive from its misfortunes. Thus it was hoped, that besides their direct operation, these bills would eventually prove a means of dissolving that band of union, which seemed of late too much to prevail amongst the colonies.

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