chops of the Channel to stop the communicating of the provincial intelligence to the agent. He will deliver his papers to the agent on reaching London.

"J. WARREN, Chairman.

"P.S. - You are to keep this order a profound secret from every person on earth." — Frothingham's History, p. 85, note.

In the same volume, p. 848, is the following:

"SECRETARY OF STATE'S OFFICE, WHITEHALL, May 30, 1775.

"A report having been spread, and an account having been printed and published, of a skirmish between some of the people in the Province of Massachusetts Bay and a detachment of his majesty's troops, it is proper to inform the public, that no advices have as yet been received, in the American department, of any such event.

"There is reason to believe that there are despatches from General Gage on board the 'Sukey,' Captain Brown; which, though she sailed four days before the vessel that brought the printed accounts, is not yet arrived."

It thus appears, that Captain Derby, sailing four days after the government messenger, had arrived before him; viz., before the 30th of May; and that the ministry had attempted to discredit the accounts which he brought.

This attempt was at once counteracted by our agent at London in the following notice, dated the same day :

"LONDON, Tuesday, May 30, 1775.

"As a doubt of the authenticity of the account from Salem, touching an engagement between the king's troops and the provincials in the Massachusetts Bay, may arise from a paragraph in the Gazette' of this evening, I desire to inform all those who wish to see the original affidavits which confirm that account, that they are deposited at the Mansion House, with the Right Honorable the Lord Mayor, for their inspection.

"ARTHUR LEE,

"Agent for the Ho. of Reps. of the Mass. Bay."

The authentic despatches were not delivered in London to Lord Dartmouth till the 10th June, when Lieutenant Nunn,

of the navy, arrived with them; and they were published from Whitehall the same day. - Force, vol. ii. p. 945.

In the mean time, the previous accounts by Captain Derby had been so far credited, that a special meeting of several members of the Constitutional Society was held at the King's-Arms Tavern, Cornhill, London, June 7, 1775; and a subscription of a hundred pounds voted "to be applied to the relief of the widows, orphans, and aged parents of our beloved American fellow-subjects, who, faithful to the character of Englishmen, preferring death to slavery, were, for that reason only, inhumanly murdered by the king's troops, at or near Lexington and Concord, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, on the 19th of last April."

"Which sum, being immediately collected," was ordered to be sent to Dr. Franklin.

In illustration of the effect produced in England by the affair of Lexington, we may take the following extract from a letter of Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, dated Strawberry Hill, June 5, 1775:

"You must lower your royal crest a little; for your majesty's forces have received a check in America. But this is too sad a subject for mirth. I cannot tell you any thing very positively: the ministers, nay, the orthodox 'Gazette' holds its tongue. This day sennight, it was divulged by a 'London Evening-Post' extraordinary, that a ship, on its way to Lisbon, happened to call at England, and left some very wonderful accounts, nay, and affidavits,—saying, to wit, that General Gage had sent nine hundred men to nail up the cannon, and seize a magazine, at Concord; of which, the accidental captain owns, two cannon were spiked or damaged. An hundred and fifty Americans, who swear they were fired on first, disliked the proceeding, returned blows, and drove back the party. Lord Percy was despatched to support them: but, new recruits arriving, his lordship sent for better advice, which he received; and it was to retire, which he did. The king's troops lost an hundred and fifty; the enemy, not an hundred. The captain was sent for to be examined, but refused. He says Gage sent away a sloop four days before he sailed: which sloop, I suppose,

is gone to Lisbon; for, in eight days, we have no news of it. The public were desired by authority to suspend their belief: but their patience is out; and they persist in believing the first account, which seems the rather probable, in that another account is come of the mob having risen at New York, between anger and triumph, and have seized, unloaded, and destroyed the cargoes of two ships that were going with supplies to Gage; and, by all accounts, that whole continent is in a flame.

"So here is this fatal war commenced!

"The child that is unborn shall rue

The hunting of that day.'"

This letter fixes the date of the first publication of Captain Derby's news. "This day sennight," from June 5, would have been May 29. The subsequent phrase, "eight days," in Walpole's letter, implies that the arrival was on the 28th May; and we have seen Captain Derby receiving instructions from the Committee of Safety on the 27th of April. The passage must have been less than a month, a very short for one those days.

The expressions of sorrow and foreboding in Walpole's letter remind us of the fact which the poet Rogers used to tell all his American friends. He remembered, that, when the news of the first blood shed at Concord and Lexington reached London, his own father put on a black suit from that day, and continued to wear it till his death.

There is a characteristic letter from Dr. Franklin to Edmund Burke in this connection:

"PHILADELPHIA, May 15, 1775.

His troops

scarce

"DEAR SIR, -You will see by the papers that General Gage called his assembly to propose Lord North's pacific plan; but, before they could meet, drew the sword, and began the war. made a most vigorous retreat, to be paralleled in history. The feeble Americans, who pelted them all the way, could scarce keep up with them.

-twenty miles in three hours,

"All people here feel themselves much obliged by your endeavors to serve them. I hear your proposed resolves were negatived by a

great majority; which was denying the most notorious truths, and a kind of national lying, of which they may be convicted by their own records.

"The Congress is met here pretty full. I had not been here a day before I was returned a member. We dined together on Saturday, when your health was among the foremost.

"With the sincerest esteem, I am ever, dear sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

"B. FRANKLIN."

Mr. SIBLEY exhibited to the meeting a file of original documents, belonging to the library of Harvard College, relating to the battle of Lexington. Amongst them were the depositions of the inhabitants of Lexington and vicinity, who were eye-witnesses of the engagement and of the conduct of the British troops on their march, given under oath before William Reed, Jonah Johnson, Jonathan Hastings, John Cumming, William Stickney, and Duncan Ingraham, Justices of the Peace for the county of Middlesex, whose authority as justices, and respectability as men, are certified at Charlestown by Nathaniel Gorham, Notary Public.

The file also contained letters from Joseph Warren, -one dated Cambridge, April 27, 1775; the other, May 16, 1775.

Mr. DEANE produced the following letters, copied from the Letter-book of Edmund Quincy, the father-inlaw of John Hancock. The Letter-book belongs to the Belknap collection of papers, which has recently come into the possession of the Society.

Such of the never us are missing I fund, 1879, in the Papen, which I bmcrued from the mid. of Vce.

Letter from Edmund Quincy to John Hancock.

To the Hon. J. HANCOCK, Esq.

LANCASTER, March 25, 1776.

DEAR SIR,Your peculiar favor of the 10th current, per Mr. Avery, came safe to hand; and I am obliged with the same. By it I am pleased to find my last of Feb. 8 was got safe, containing the paper I had supposed was in your hands some months before; and that your health permitted your so close attention. I hope my last, of 18th current, will arrive the ensuing week, having therein advised you of the cowardly evacuation of the fortress of Boston; and of the king's ships hurrying out of the harbor; and of the operation of our D[orchester]-Hill formidable batteries to the enemy's consternation, erected principally in one night by the well-timed assistance of four hundred carts and wagons of timber fixed for the purpose, and other materials of defence, by which intrenchments were effected sufficient to stand every supposable kind of attack or opposition of the enemy; whose numbers, as we now learn, were-effective and non-effective men no fewer than seven thousand five hundred. It also appears that the Tory gang had, for a month before, such warning, that they had hired several vessels for their own safety, which lay ready, under pay, to take them, bag and baggage, and make their exit with the fleet upon the earliest notice of a necessity of evacuating the town; which General Howe, with his Council, determined upon, after an application to G[eneral] Washington for five days' cessation of arms, at the end whereof G[eneral] Howe promised to leave the town. To which G[eneral] W[ashington] politically answered in the negative, and added that he would sooner run the risk of sacrificing fifty thousand men in storming the fortress, &c. Howe was all the time making preparation to be gone, which they say was much accelerated by an accidental fire among several of Prospect-Hill barracks some nights before, which