om the Hon'ble East India
Company. As soon as it was known here that the Company had determined on
this measure, and that certain gentlemen of this town were fixed upon as
factors, there appeared a dissatisfaction in many persons. But at first
there did not appear any resentment against the supposed factors, nor
was there, as far as we ever heard, any mention made of a design to
bring them under any obligations not to execute their trust, but the
general voice among the opposers of the Company's plan was, that the
teas must not be landed, or, if landed, not sold. About three or four
weeks ago, a printed anonymous address to the Company's factors was
brought to this place by the post, either from New York or Philadelphia,
but whether it was fabricated at either of those places, or this, we
cannot determine. The design of it was, to represent a number of
gentlemen, who cannot justly be considered in any other light than
commercial factors, as Crown officers, and they, in the said paper, are
expressly put on the same footing with the late stamp officers,
doubtless with a design to render them odious to the people, and much is
said in it to dissuade or intimidate them from executing their expected
trust. Soon after this, a second anonymous address, but much more
inflammatory, appeared here in one of the newspapers from New York. Both
these were printed in one or more of the newspapers of this town, and
several other pieces were also published here, to rouse the people to an
opposition to the Company's design, and their rage against us and the
other gentlemen, factors for the Company in this place. As things were
then circumstanced in this place, we judged it might tend to undeceive
many persons that were misled, to publish some observations on the
Company's plan, to answer the objections that were made against it, and
to point out some of the beneficial consequences attending the execution
of it. Accordingly we, by the assistance of a friend, got printed in
Messrs. Fleet's Evening Post, of the 24^th October, a piece signed
Z[42], in which this affair is canvassed with as much freedom as the
temper of the times would bear, and altho' this was penned in haste, and
under the restriction of the afore-hinted shackle, we have the
satisfaction to find, that in the opinion of the most judicious amongst
us here, every objection that has been started against the Company's
plan is fully answered, and altho' this publishment does not see