Copy of a Letter Prepared for the Congress

Page v2:1600

GENTLEMEN: I have seen your appointment and directions from the Provincial Congress to receive from me the records and files of the Secretary' s office. This delivery by me would be a transaction that I dare not be a volunteer in. My appointment is by His Majesty' s special commission to be Secretary of this Province, and to hold the same during His Majesty' s pleasure and my residence in the same; by which appointment I execute that office in the different branches of duty, viz: as recording the transactions of the General Assembly, and of the Governour and Council when they meet on any other or special occasion; also, when they sit as a Court of Appeals from the Courts of the Common Law in this Province, or from sentences of the Courts of Probate of Wills, &c. I am also to give every vessel a certificate and passport that she is regularly cleared outwards. These are all separate branches of the Secretary' s office, and I am under oath to keep the game agreeable to the directions of the law in all things whereunto that office hath relation; and thus the records, &c., are committee to my care and trust, &c.

Now, gentlemen, consider my situation. If I am active, and voluntarily deliver these archives; so committed to my care without proper authority, am I not criminal? In this Province I know there is not above one single precedent of this nature, and that not a parallel. This happened in Governour Cranfield' s time, or soon after he abdicated the chair of government of this Province. A number of men armed attacked the Secretary' s office, (one Chamberlain then Secretary,) and forced from him all the records and files thereof, not only what is now esteemed the Secretary' s office, but also what is now called the Recorder' s, such as deeds and conveyances of freehold estates; also, those of the Court of Probate of Wills, &c., and the several Courts of Common Law, General Sessions of the Peace, &c. What confusion this transaction occasioned is not to be conceived. All the archives of the Province thus held in the hands of the multitude, and which so remained till the glorious revolution in King William and Queen Mary' s time, when a general amnesty took place, &c., &c. Notwithstanding, those records and files have never, to this day, found the way to their respective offices, but still remain (what is left of them) in that confused Condition to this time; and doubtless many widows and orphans, as well as others, have met great disadvantages, and suffered much loss. If you turn your thoughts to the present distressing situation of North America — two armies of twelve or fifteen thousand men each, and both His Majesty' s subjects, now encamped within cannon shot of each other, alternately spilling the blood and spreading the carnage of their fellow subjects — these, I think, call for all our thoughts and endeavours how to extricate us without haling into action any affair not likely to contribute to the first and grand affair of peace and harmony between Great Britain and America. If you examine the transactions of the neighbouring Province for precedents, your search, I imagine, will be fruitless. General Gage has been personally at Salem, and though he disapproved the transaction of the town meetings, be never pretended to intermeddle with the records; Cambridge, whose situation is in the midst of the dispute, nor Concord, though that town has been plundered, yet the County or Town records remain unaffected.

For these reasons I cannot think any such power as taking the records, from the usual places, &c., was delegated to you in your appointment. I have been thus prolix in giving the reasons why, if the records of the Secretary' s office are taken out of my possession by you, they will be token without my consent or approbation.

I am, Gentlemen, yours.

Letter prepared by Mr. Atkinson on the same subject, but not sent to the Congress. [1775-07-05] New-Hampshire Congress. [S4-V2-p1600] [Document Details][Complete Volume]