The New Hampshire Gazette

To the King's Most Excellent Majesty.

The humble Address of the Gentlemen, Clergy, Merchants, and other principal Inhabitants of the City of Bristol.

There is nothing so reasonable, or so just, as the desire universally expressed by the nation, that a clear and full account may be obtained, of the immense supplies given by their representatives in, and raised upon the people, since the last sessions of parliament. The motives on which, and the ends for which, those vast sums, in our present circumstances especially, were so readily voted, and so cheerfully paid, were sufficiently divulged, and therefore the manner in which they have been applied, ought to be no secret.

The Arcana Imperii are well suited to despotic governments, but are inconsistent with, and dangerous to, the liberties of a free people. Besides, it is no way reconcilable to the nature of our constitution, which is founded on reason and equity, the liberty of the subject's persons, and the security of their properties.

We find some additional reasons to strengthen the people's claim, which we could wish, though friends to it, that they had rather wanted. These reasons consist in disappointments and losses. In the former, we had felt something of them before, and experienced them abundantly in the last war, witness our attack on Carthagena, our invasion of Cuba, our Descent upon Bretagne, and many others. However, we must allow our present disappointment to be of quite a new species, and yet much more galling and provoking than all the rest put together. For notwithstanding all our liberal grants, and the known sanguine expectations of those who gave, at least of those who paid them, we have attempted nothing.

Our losses are to the full as wonderful, and rather more affecting. In the West Indies our enemy has a confessed superiority, which has been augmented by the capture of almost the single ship of force we had then cruising in those seas. In North America our colonies have been ransacked for many months, by the most barbarous nations, almost without defence, though our publick papers daily published their distresses in hopes of hastening their relief. We have been deprived of Minorca in a manner which does as little honour to the French as to us. Our navy has been disgraced in the Mediterranean. His Sardinian Majesty is said to have acceded to the treaty between the courts of Vienna and Versailles, and we know not how soon some other court may follow the example. If this, instead of a public, were a private case, on such suggestions as these, a court of equity would beyond a question, decree an account.