Raynors HCA 2015-08
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 8/27/2015
A complete issue of The Gentleman’s Magazine, London, February 1774, disbound, 44pp., VG. A two page letter written to Earl of Dartmouth under the signature of Raleigh (actually Arthur Lee), exposes the injust treatment of the colonialists immediately after the Boston Tea Party. In small part, “The report to be made upon the petition from the house of representatives of Massachusetts Bay against their governors, will have so decisive an influence on the people of that province, that I feel myself compelled to address your lordship on the subject. A discovery is made by letters under their own hands that the governor and lieutenant-governor had been secretly labouring to subvert the chartered rights of the colony; to subject the people to arbitrary government; and to subdue them by military force. It appeared that to accomplish these ends they had painted the proceedings of the people in the most false and odious colours, forging falsehoods where misrepresentations would not suffice. All this was done under the cloak of secret and confidential correspondence ...For some years past the people of America and those of Boston in particular, have been abused, misrepresented, and oppressed beyond the example of the worst of times. They have seen for a series of years every representation against them received; every application for them rejected. When the authors of the secret information which tended to bring upon them the displeasure of their sovereign, the resentment of parliament, and to subvert their liberties, were providentially discovered, and their representations proved false and wicked, the consequence has invariably been the encouragement and reward of those so detected. .... From the interior a letter written to Lord North in Behalf of the Americans. In it the writer directly warns the Lord in part, “The American revenue act has long been matter of contention, and seme of our most judicious members have advised the repeal, wisely considering it as the only means to prevent, perhaps, the total defection of the colonies: but this advice, though so evidently calculated for the generai good, has been disregarded; the duty on tea continued, an article 'tis well known the Americans refused to import; and lately the East-India Company have been authorised to send over great quantities, ... Should your Lordship attempt to enforce, by military discipline, laws they do not acknowledge legal, the consequence will, I fear, be fatal ; for so determined are these generous people to preserve inviolate their rights—so justly are they animated by their apprehensions of subjection,—that they would encounter patiently the most terrible difficulties rather than submit: yes, they would. Dare the vast vollies of your thundering ore. And dye the Atlantic's verge with noble gore, ere they would suffer themselves to be dispossessed of the inestimable blessings they now enjoy, to purchase which their foiefathers endured the greatest distress and lived content in unfrequented woods, divested of ill the comforts and necessaries of life. ....”
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