sing loyalty and affection; one to the people of Great Britain,
showing how barbarously and tyrannically they had been treated by a
corrupt administration, etc.; and one to the French people of Quebec,
inviting them to make common cause with them, and urging them to take up
arms against the English, who had only recently conquered Canada. Their
province was only wanting, they said, to complete the bright and strong
chain of union! The congress also sent letters to the colonists of
Georgia, East and West Florida, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, exhorting
them to shake off their dependence on their mother country, and to join
them in their contest. They also sent a remonstrance to General Gage,
against his military proceedings, which bore, they said, a hostile
appearance unwarranted by the tyrannical acts of parliament: forgetting
that it was the conduct of the Bostonians alone which induced him to
take these steps. Finally, the congress resolved that if any attempts
were made to seize any American, in order to transport him beyond sea
for trial of offences committed in America, resistance and reprisals
should be made: then, having agreed that another general congress should
be held on the 10th of May next, they dissolved themselves; i. e. on the
28th of October.

It has been seen that General Gage had issued writs calling the assembly
to meet at Salem on the 5th of October. Before that day arrived, he
thought it expedient to countermand the writs by proclamation, and to
discharge such members as were already returned. This proclamation,
however, was not heeded. Ninety members met on the day appointed,
and though the governor was not there to open the session, or any one
deputed by him to administer the oaths, they appointed a committee to
consider the proclamation, and resolved themselves, with others who
might afterwards join them, into a provincial congress. Having chosen
Mr. John Hancock, the owner of the Liberty sloop, and a great merchant
in the contraband line, to be their president, they adjourned to the
town of Concord, about twenty-live miles distant from Boston Here their
first business was to appoint a committee to wait upon Governor Gage
with a remonstrance, in which they vindicated their meeting by a
reference to the distracted state of the province, and called upon him,
for the honour of the king and the public peace, to desist from the
construction of fortifications against the town of Boston. The governor