348 Appendix.

Contempo-
rary Printed
Pamphlet
Md.Hist.Soc.

as to your Lordships in your great Wisdom shall seem most con-
ducive and Effectual to that important End.

And your Memorialists as in Duty bound will ever pray.

Wednesday, October 23, 1765, A. M.
The Congress met according to Adjournment.
The Petition to the House of Commons being Ingrossed, was
Read and Compared, and is as follows, viz.
To the Honourable the Knights, Citizens, and Burgesses of Great-
Britain, in Parliament assembled.

The Petition of his Majesty's dutiful and loyal Subjects, the
Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the Colonies of the Massa-
chusetts-Bay, Rhode-Island, and Providence Plantations,
, , New- Jersey, Pennsylvania, the Gov-
ernment of the Counties of New-Castle, Kent, and Sussex, upon
Delaware, Maryland,

Most humbly Sheweth,

That the several late Acts of Parliament imposing divers Duties
and Taxes on the Colonies, and laying the Trade and Commerce
thereof under very Burthensome Restrictions, but above all the
Act for granting and applying certain Stamp Duties, &c. in America,
have fill'd them with the deepest Concern and Surprize; and they
humbly conceive the Execution of them will be attended with Con-
sequences very Injurious to the Commercial Interest of Great-Britain
and her Colonies, and must terminate in the eventual Ruin of the
latter.

Your Petitioners therefore most ardently implore the Attention
of the Honourable House, to the united and dutiful Representation
of their Circumstances, and to their earnest Supplications for Relief,
from those Regulations which have already involv'd this Continent
in Anxiety, Confusion, and Distress.

We most sincerely recognize our Allegiance to the Crown, and
acknowledge all due Subordination to the Parliament of Great-
Britain, and shall always retain the most grateful Sense of their
Assistance and Protection. It is from and under the English Con-
stitution, we derive all our Civil and Religious Rights and Liberties:
We Glory in being Subjects of the best of Kings, and having been
Born under the most perfect Form of Government; but it is with
most ineffable and humiliating Sorrow, that we find ourselves, of
late, deprived of the Right of Granting our own Property for his

p. 22

Majesty's Service, to which our Lives and Fortunes are entirely
devoted, and to which, on his Royal Requisitions, we have ever been
ready to contribute to the unmost of our Abilities.