The Virginia Gazette

NEW BERN, March 15.

ON Monday last a special Court of Oyer and Terminer was held here for this District, when a very respectable Grand Jury, summoned from the several Counties of the District, appeared, and were empannelled and sworn; to whom were presented a great Number of Bills of Indictment, against the People called Regulators, sixty one of which they found, and then made the following Presentment.

WHEREAS a Number of unthinking and deluded People, Inhabitants of the County of Orange and of the neighbouring Counties in this Province, under the Influence and Direction of several wicked, seditious, evil designing, and disaffected Persons, have assumed to themselves the Title of Regulators, and in open Defiance of the Laws of the Land, in great Numbers, under Arms, assembled together, violently resisted, insulted, and beat, the Sheriffs and other Officers in the Execution of their Office, and expressly refused to pay their Shares of the publick Taxes laid by the General Assembly of the Province for the Support of Government; and at the last Superiour Court of Justice held for the District of Hillsborough, in the Month of September last, assembled together, in a riotous and tumultuous Manner, barbarously insulted and broke up that Court, cruelly beating and wounding the Officers thereof, destroying and pillaging the Houses of such Persons as were obnoxious to their Ringleaders, and have lately assembled themselves in great Numbers, armed and arrayed in warlike Manner, and publickly avowing their Intention of marching to Newbern, and of carrying into Execution by Force their hostile Measures: We, the Grand Jury of the District of Newbern, being thoroughly sensible that Actions and Attempts so execrable and mischievous (if permitted) are plain Usurpations of the Power of the Legislature, substituting in its Place armed and lawless Force, and thereby leaving as a Prey to the stronger the Lives, Liberties, and Properties, of our weaker Fellow Subjects; and that honest Industry can have an Existence no longer than Property, which is the Fruits of it, is secured by fixed and established Laws; and we being fully and perfectly sensible of the great Happiness and Liberty which the Subjects of this Province do enjoy under his Majesty's gentle and benign Administration thereof, and that such flagitious Crimes, in Proportion to the Success of them, must necessarily be subversive of these invaluable Blessings, and introductory of Anarchy and Confusion, do therefore present all such wicked, seditious, evil designing, and disaffected Persons, who, under the Title of Regulators, have hitherto perpetrated, or attempted to perpetrate, or may hereafter attempt to perpetrate, such enormous Crimes or Offences, as being Enemies to his Majesty's Person and Government, and to the Liberty, Happiness, and Tranquillity, of his good and faithful Subjects of this Province.

GIVEN under our Hands and Seals, this 15th Day of March, in the Year of our Lord 1771.

As these infatuated and deluded People who call themselves Regulators are often gathering themselves in Bodies, and still oppose the civil Government of this Province, the Grand Jury also drew up an Association, thereby solemnly engaging to support Government against the Insurgents, at the Risk of their Lives and Fortunes, and to adopt every salutary Measure in their Power for restoring Peace and Tranquillity, and enforcing a due Execution of the Laws of the Province; which Association was immediately signed by his Excellency the Governour, the President, and Gentlemen of his Majesty's Council, the Speaker of the House of Assembly, the Members of the Grand Jury, and a great Number of others. And we have now the most sanguine Expectations that such spirited and decisive Measures will be pursued as will restore Peace and good Government to a Part of the Province that bids fair to be the most respectable County in it, could Government entirely root out a Set of the most extraordinary Men of any Kingdom or Nation in the World that ever met together to disturb the Community in which they were Members.