r the most essential
grievances of which they complain, and professing that their future
conduct, if their apprehensions should be removed, would prove them
worthy of the regard they had been accustomed, in their happier days
to enjoy, they add:

"Permit us then most gracious sovereign, in the name of all your
faithful people in America, with the utmost humility to implore you,
for the honour of Almighty God, whose pure religion our enemies are
undermining; for your glory which can be advanced only by rendering
your subjects happy, and keeping them united; for the interest of your
family, depending on an adherence to the principles that enthroned it;
for the safety and welfare of your kingdom and dominions, threatened
with almost unavoidable dangers and distresses; that your majesty, as
the loving father of your whole people, connected by the same bonds of
law, loyalty, faith, and blood, though dwelling in various countries,
will not suffer the transcendent relation formed by these ties, to be
farther violated, in uncertain expectation of effects that, if
attained, never can compensate for the calamities, through which they
must be gained."[239]

[Footnote 239: The committee which brought in this admirably
well drawn, and truly conciliatory address, were Mr. Lee,
Mr. John Adams, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Henry, Mr. Rutledge, and
Mr. Dickinson. The original composition has been generally
attributed to Mr. Dickinson.]

[Sidenote: Address to the American people.]

The address to their constituents is replete with serious and
temperate argument. In this paper, the several causes which had led to
the existing state of things, were detailed more at large; and much
labour was used to convince their judgments that their liberties must
be destroyed, and the security of their property and persons
annihilated, by submission to the pretensions of Great Britain. The
first object of congress being to unite the people of America, by
demonstrating the sincerity with which their leaders had sought for
reconciliation on terms compatible with liberty, great earnestness was
used in proving that the conduct of the colonists had been uniformly
moderate and blameless. After declaring their confidence in the
efficacy of the mode of commercial resistance which had been
recommended, the address concludes with saying, "your own salvation,
and that of your posterity, now depends upon yourselves. You have
already shown that yo