Your Majesty, therefore, we are sure, will
frown, not upon those who have the warmest attachment to this
constitution and to their sovereign, but upon such as shall be found
to have attempted by their misrepresentations to diminish the
blessings of your Majesty's reign, in the remotest parts of your
dominions."
This is not the language of party-adroitness or of a low cunning, but
the calm utterance of truth by American manhood. There is no
indication of the authorship of the petition, but a strong committee
was chosen at the meeting which adopted it, consisting of James Otis,
Samuel Adams, Thomas Cushing, Richard Dana, Joseph Warren, John Adams,
and Samuel Quincy, to consider the subject of vindicating the town
from the misrepresentations to which it had been subjected. This
petition, accompanied by a letter penned by Samuel Adams, was
transmitted (April 8, 1769) to Colonel Barre, with the request that he
would present it, by his own hand, to His Majesty. Both the letter
and the petition requested the transmission to Boston of all Bernard's
letters, a specimen only of which had now been received. "Conscious,"
the letter said, "of their own innocence, it is the earnest desire of
the town that you would employ your great influence to remove from the
mind of our Sovereign, his Ministers, and Parliament, the unfavorable
sentiments that have been formed of their conduct, or at least obtain
from them the knowledge of their accusers and the matters alleged
against them, and an opportunity offered of vindicating themselves.
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